For twelve long hours the conflict raged on. Wave after wave of battle cruisers, several huge warships and swarms of small fighter craft descended through the swirling, turbulent atmosphere of the planet, while the giant star Rigel shone with a piercing blue-white hotness in the black sky. They were met with a flood of similar craft pouring upward through breaks in the cloud cover, and the two armies engaged each other in a chaotic, terrible dance of death. Lethal bolts of energy crisscrossed the sky in a frenetic display of color, and in comparison the missiles being fired in all directions seemed to almost leisurely stroll toward their intended targets. When the weapons did meet their target there was a large flare of orange light quickly swallowed up by a black shroud of smoke, marking the place in the sky where another brave fighter pilot sacrificed their life for the “greater good”. At one point a warship from on high fired a huge globe of red light which spun and thrashed around like a trapped animal as it arced downward toward an enemy warship. The ruby globe impacted the aft section of the Rigellian warship and disintegrated an entire rear quadrant of the vessel. The subsequent reactor breach shattered the warship in two and sent an enormous quantity of white-hot, radioactive debris to rain further destruction and death across a wide swathe of the planet’s surface.
The battle for the Rigellian military installation at Ceren Tahk seemed to switch hands by the minute. One moment forces of the Coalition - a shaky, unstable and ultimately temporary affiliation of the Galactic Alliance, the Kellurian Empire and several other planetary groups - appeared to be gaining the upper hand, but that quickly changed as a new wave of enemy forces broke through a flank and shifted the focus of the battle yet again. The losses were mounting for each side, both in terms of lives and vessels lost. The Galactic Alliance took a bruising on the giant warships and the myriad of single-man fighters, while the Kellurians were losing huge numbers of their medium-sized battle cruisers. But the Kellurians fought with a tenacity and ferocity rarely seen, and for each of their battle cruisers lost, over twenty similar Rigellian vessels were destroyed. This would be the last time Galactic Alliance forces would fight alongside the Kellurians.
On the planet’s dark surface, visible through breaks in the clouds, a small area glistened and flashed with blue and white sparks. The gigantic, sprawling military base of Ceren Tahk was under a final ground and air assault. Several large military transports had made it intact to the surface and thousands of ground troops swarmed into the installation through large gaping openings blasted in the surrounding walls. The Rigellian troops defending the base knew they were outnumbered but fought with tremendous bravery and skill. The majority of the fighting was occurring in the center of the complex, where the administration and computer buildings were located, but a significant amount of conflict was also happening in the spaceport area on the outer perimeter. It looked as if the Rigellians were holding onto their spaceport positions, which were in upper-level control centers protected by heavy metallic blast panels. Increasingly a small band of about a dozen Galactic Alliance forces were being pinned down in a corner of a large room amidst a number of squat, block-shaped storage facilities. The storage units offered a modicum of protection against the blanket of Rigellian weapons fire directed at them, but also offered no means of escape from the enemy soldiers safely amassing behind the walls in front and along side of them.
The cacophony of disruptor fire, explosions and ricocheting shrapnel made it difficult for the orders of Admiral Joseph Willston of the starship Full Moon to be heard, but his voice did not reveal a sinking feeling inside him as he realized that he and his valiant group of infantry men and women would most likely not be able to outlast the Rigellians in their relatively safe, fortified positions. “Concentrate your fire at that juncture area to the left of the white column,” he shouted, as he spotted what he hoped would be a weak area in the array of blast panels. It appeared that one panel did not close completely and was slightly ajar and provided an opening to the area behind it. One of the infantrymen got off a shot from a shoulder-held laser cannon and hit the opening squarely, and between the slot openings in the blast panel, a bright flash of white light was followed by black smoke pouring out. Enemy fire ceased to come from behind that particular blast panel, but after a few seconds increased from behind the other panels.
So engrossed in the battle for their lives, the Alliance forces did not notice an entry hatch open up in the wall behind them, and a human figure in a red Rigellian military uniform carrying a highly advanced, powerful laser rifle jumped in. “Admiral!!” one of the Alliance soldiers called out, “Behind you!” The Admiral and several other personnel whirled around and brought their weapons to bear on the sudden intruder. “Don’t shoot!!” the stranger in the red uniform called out in perfect English. “I’m from the Alliance!!”
A stunned Admiral Willston looked in disbelief at what appeared to be a human wearing the uniform of a Rigellian Aquitane, one of the highest levels of command. “I’m a lieutenant on the starship Balindorn,” the new arrival shouted out, “and I can get us out of here.” The appearance of someone in a Rigellian uniform caused the weapons fire directed toward the Alliance people to stop, as the Rigellians behind the blast panels were obviously as taken by surprise by this latest twist as were the Alliance personnel. “Get away from that cabinet,” the lieutenant shouted as he pointed his weapon toward a large, black, unmarked storage locker against a back wall. He fired his laser rifle at what looked like a locking device on the front and blew it completely off in a shower of sparks. The doors flew open revealing nearly two dozen high-powered laser weapons similar to the one he was carrying.
“A weapons locker!” exclaimed one of the Alliance fighters. “Everybody grab a weapon,” the lieutenant shouted, “and prepare to lay down cover fire at that far wall!” He pointed to a wall toward their left which seemed to have acquired some lights and possibly movement behind it. “That’s where they’re moving to,” the lieutenant said as the new weapons were quickly seized and passed around, “and they’re going to start firing any second!”
“Start moving through the doorway,” Admiral Willston ordered. “Garrett and Harrison, hold back and lay down cover fire!” The admiral, lieutenant, and two of the higher-ranked Alliance fighters turned around and started firing thick layers of laser fire at the blast panel as their comrades swiftly dived through the access hatch.
A split second later the blast panel they were targeting erupted in a fierce barrage of laser fire. A huge firefight quickly engaged and thick, lethal flurries of laser bolts were exchanged in both directions. The personnel ran through the hatch as quickly as possible. The admiral and lieutenant were the last ones through, firing their laser rifles the whole time. They found themselves in a dark, featureless corridor as the lieutenant hit a switch which closed the access hatch. Right before the hatch sealed shut the lieutenant fired one last laser blast through the hatchway which destroyed the keypad on the other side, making it impossible to open the hatch again. Gasping for breath from their harrowing ordeal, Admiral Willston turned to the lieutenant and said, “Did you say you could get us out of here? I’d like to hear how!”
“No time to explain now, Admiral,” the lieutenant said as he looked at a small view screen sewed right into the sleeve of his uniform. “Please follow me!” He turned and started running down the dark passageway, followed by the baffled, terrified Alliance personnel.
It seemed that for a very long time the group ran in near-panic down dimly-lit, unmarked corridors, led by the lieutenant in the red Aquitane uniform looking intently at the view screen. They could hear a tremendous amount of weapons fire happening outside, and several very loud, low concussion-type noises as large-scale ordnance exploded. At one point they had to stop, reverse direction and double-back on the route they had just traveled. Finally the lieutenant stopped in front on a set of huge gray doors. “Here it is,” he said, almost to himself. He pressed a control unit on his sleeve as a row of lights across the set of doors started flashing and with a loud hiss the heavy metal doors started opening. They ran in to find themselves at one end of an extremely large, hangar-like room, completely empty except for some small equipment scattered around the outer perimeter and some large supply cables lying on the floor. The outside doors on the far side of the room were wide open, and they could see the dark, cloudy sky lit up with bright flashes of light and color as the fight for Ceren Tahk raged.
“Here what is?” Admiral Willston asked breathlessly as they all looked around the empty, cavernous room. An alarm went off on one of the monitors a soldier was carrying. She looked at the small screen next to the blinking light. “We’re being scanned,” she said ominously. “They know where we are.” Right at that moment some ceiling lights came on. Looking around, the lieutenant said, “I’m sure they have us on video monitors by now.” A smile started to cross the lieutenant’s face. “That means they’ll be able to see us leave.” He started to again push control units on the sleeve of his uniform.
“I thought you said you could get us out of here,” the Admiral said. Just as the last word came out of his mouth, his face was bathed in a golden glow of light. In front of them, in the middle of room, a mass of glowing yellow light and glittering sparkles started forming and swirling around in front of them. The Alliance people looked in dumbfounded amazement as the swirling gold particles massed themselves into what became the shape of a large vessel of ship of some kind. “A cloaked ship!” one of the Alliance soldiers shouted in total amazement. “There was a cloaked ship in this room!”
“Still is,” the lieutenant said, chuckling. “Gentlemen, I present to you the Nirrin Doch, the most advanced Rigellian prototype spacecraft fully capable of traveling in compressed space!” In the next several seconds the gold energies of the cloaking device disappeared and a large, futuristic-looking craft stood in front of them like a mirage, internal and wingtip lights glowing in the darkness.
One of the soldiers stood slack-jawed in amazement. “We had only heard rumors of such a craft,” he gasped incredulously. “There was no intelligence on its location at all!”
“No doubt the Rigellian personnel watching this on video are just as astonished as you,” the lieutenant said. “The existence of this ship was hidden from nearly all Rigellians.” The room was flooded with some bright white light as an access door opened up on the bottom fuselage of the ship and the group quickly ran in.
“I’ll need anyone with any experience flying ANYTHING up in the control room with me,” the lieutenant shouted as they all scrambled in. The admiral got a panicked look on his face. “How can you possibly fly this, Lieutenant?” he asked incredulously. “This is a prototype. There are very few Rigellians who can even fly it!”
“Quite right, Admiral,” the lieutenant responded as they hurried to the bridge control area. “But I’ve been a prisoner of war since the Centaurus A engagement a year ago and spent the time in a Rigellian prison. Thanks to a sympathizer for the insurgency, I was provided with specifications and information about this ship. I’m fairly sure I can fly it!”
The doors to the command bridge opened up to a dark control area. The lieutenant punched some access codes into a keypad on the side wall and the control consoles activated in front of them in a burst of color and light. Dozens of computer panels, screens and controls sprung to life and started displayed huge amounts of information about the ship, all in the curious and very difficult Rigellian language of pictograms and symbols.
“First order of business is to get out of here,” the lieutenant said as he sat in the main seat. “That over there,” he said, pointing toward a computer monitor and array of switches and control inputs, “is the tactical station. Keep an eye on that and let me know what is going on around us,” he said to an astonished infantryman. “Weapons are minimal, but the force field emitters here are state-of-the-art,” he said, pointing to another group of monitor screens. One of them showed an outline of the spaceship. The lieutenant pointed to it, saying, “This one will be critical in getting us safely out of here.” He turned and pointed to another screen. “These are the power profiles, we need to keep an eye on them,” he said. The screen showed several multicolored lines creating nearly-horizontal traces along the bottom of the screen. Two lighter-colored lines were shown sweeping steeply upward disappearing off the upper-right corner of the monitor screen.
The lieutenant was swiftly flipping switches and activating systems. Everyone felt the ship lurch upward off the ground and slowly spin around so that its nose was pointing toward the open doors on the far end of the room. With a loud wind-like noise the giant ship skimmed above the floor of the hangar and picked up speed as it rushed toward the exit doors. The second it was clear of the hangar building the ion engines cut in and blasted the ship skyward, and in seconds it disappeared into the low, dense clouds.
Rapidly gaining tremendous speed, the ship burst through the top of the cloud deck almost right into the middle of the huge, raging battle between the Rigellians and the Coalition. Coming up from the bottom, the ship was headed directly into the densest aggregation of Rigellian cruisers and warship. “Rigellian forces dead ahead!” the soldier manning the tactical console. “They are scanning us.”
“Not to worry,” the lieutenant said, nearly chuckling with glee. “They’re going to help us escape.” He touched a couple of controls and veered the ship off to the left of the center of the Rigellian forces. “They are going to provide us with cover.”
Sure enough, nearly all of the Rigellian ships moved to place themselves between the Nirrin Doch and the Coalition forces, shielding the pathway of the still-accelerating vessel. They started to pour a heavy barrage of weapons fire in the direction of the Coalition forces, preventing them from firing on the prototype. “They did scan us, and picked up the transponders in my uniform,” the lieutenant said. “They think I am a Rigellian Aquitane.”
The ship roared upward and away from the battle area into a clear area of space. Still traveling as fast as they could, the lieutenant started to make preparations to take the ship into compressed space and travel faster than any Alliance personnel had ever traveled. “First thing we need to do is get these reinforcing force fields up,” he said, pointing to a computer monitor which showed an outline of the ship inside a three-dimensional box-shaped grid outlined in bright yellow lines. He hit a couple of controls on the console, and some indecipherable Rigellian script flashed across the screen. One portion of the yellow grid around the ship outline turned blue.
“The computers will initialize and deploy the force fields,” he said, pointing at the screen. “The yellow boxes around the ship will turn blue whenever the force fields are in place, you don’t have to do anything but watch it” said the lieutenant. “Why do we need reinforcing force fields?” one of the soldiers asked. The lieutenant looked at the velocity monitors and pushed the ionic engines to their very limits. “If we don’t have all the reinforcing fields in place, when we drop into compressed space the stresses will shred the entire ship into rubble,” he said.
“What is going on with these power profiles?” another soldier asked in disbelief. “I’ve never seen power levels of this magnitude!”
The lieutenant pointed at the three traces running at the bottom of the screen. “This is the power profile of the ship running on regular ion power,” he said. Moving toward the other fainter traces climbing up the side of the monitor, he said, “This is the power profile of the ship right before it drops into compressed space. It needs huge amounts of power to successfully build the space warps. To get that much energy, the warp engines are powered by a quantum singularity. But there is a safety interlock that will not allow the singularity to be brought online unless all the reinforcing fields are in place.”
“We are being pursued,” the soldier monitoring the tactical console interrupted. The tactical monitor showed a group of six Rigellian battle cruisers coming up from the planet’s surface directly at them, one cruiser a bit ahead of the other five.
“Damn, that’s bad,” the lieutenant said. “Can’t you outrun them?” the admiral asked frantically. “Isn’t this supposed to be the fastest ship in the galaxy?”
“Yeah, it is in compressed space,” the lieutenant said with more than a little anxiety in his voice. “But in regular space we’re too big and bulky to get up a great deal of speed. Those battle cruisers are faster than us and can possibly catch up with us.” He made a quick glance over to the force field console as the fifth yellow box turned to blue. “Three more force fields to go, and then we leave them in the dust.”
The Nirrin Doch plunged with ever-increasing speed into the darkness of space. The six warships behind them were slowly but steadily closing the gap between them, with the leading ship becoming uncomfortably close. A flash of light burst out of the bottom of the lead vessel as it fired a missile at the Nirrin.
“Incoming fire!” said the soldier at the tactical station. “A nuclear missile!” The lieutenant looked over at the console. “Those missiles don’t have the relativistic drive the modern ones have,” he said. “They’ll be moving pretty slowly and we should be able to get out of its way.”
The star-like missile seemed to glide on a nearly-straight trail and closed in on the Nirrin. “Holding steady,” the lieutenant said, his calm outer demeanor belying his rapidly-beating heart. Seconds passed with incredible tenseness as the missile got closer. Suddenly the lieutenant said, “Everyone hang on,” as he operated some controls and the entire ship jerked upward and to the right. On the tactical screen the marker for the missile skimmed underneath the marker for the ship and veered toward the right and off the monitor screen. “Whew,” said the lieutenant with a sigh of relief. “That was a bit close. At these speeds I can’t make any really sharp turns.” He turned to the force field monitor. “We have to get those fields up!” he shouted, desperation clearly creeping into his voice.
“Seven of eight fields are deployed!” the soldier said. “This last one is a little slow.”
The lieutenant cast a worried look at the monitor. “I don’t like this at all,” he said almost under his breath.
“Incoming!” announced the tactical station, as another missile was launched from the Rigellian cruiser at the Nirrin. As before, the missile made a long, gentle curving arc toward them. Right before the missile got dangerously close, the Nirrin dipped down and toward the left. Its increased speed would not allow it to change its direction with as much ease. At the last second the missile started to change its course toward the sluggish wobbling of the Nirrin but luckily continued upward and again peeled off to the right.
“This is getting worse,” the lieutenant thought to himself. Onboard the closer Rigellian cruiser, the commander was hunched over the tactical console on his ship. “How long until the other cruisers are within range?” he asked sharply. “Approximately twenty seconds,” was the reply. The commander looked up at the view screen at the fleeing Nirrin as it slowly, inexorably grew closer. “Fire remaining missiles,” he said coldly.
From underneath the lead battle cruiser two small blue stars seemed to detach themselves and swoop forward toward the Nirrin. “We got two on our tail,” the tactical station said with noticeable alarm. The lieutenant’s jaw dropped open and did not even have enough time to say much before the missiles were almost on top of them. Coming in from behind, from the upper-left and lower-right, swerving left or right would not be an option. In a split second, the lieutenant knew what had to be done. Continuing his forward motion, the entire ship rotated counterclockwise sixty degrees on its long axis. As the wings spun out of the missiles’ paths, the missiles themselves crossed no more than thirty feet in front of the Nirrin, nearly colliding together, and they continued on their separate pathways, careening off toward either side.
Everyone on board the Nirrin had been knocked to one side as the ship spun on its axis. “What the hell just happened?” the admiral asked in deep confusion. “On second thought,” he gasped, “I don’t really want to know.”
“We have some breathing room,” the lieutenant said as he struggled to get the Nirrin on a firm heading. “Those cruisers carry a complement of four nukes. The lead cruiser is now out of missiles.” He looked over to the right. “Why isn’t that force field locked down yet?” he fairly shouted. “What is going on?” The forcefield monitor showed one final section of the three-dimensional grid surrounding the outline of the ship in bright yellow, while the other portions were in deep blue. The lieutenant reached over and hit a control under the monitor. Some Rigellian script was displayed on the screen. “That’s what the problem is,” he said excitedly.
“It’s in Rigellian!” a soldier said. “No one here understands Rigellian!” The lieutenant felt the color drain from his face, realizing it was true. There might be the answer to their problems right in front of them, but no one could read it.
Reaching down under the main console, the lieutenant dragged out a large notebook and threw it at the soldiers. “Look it up!” he said. The two soldiers looked back at the lieutenant in total astonishment. “An error manual?” one of them asked, nearly choking on his own words. “You want us to look it up in an error manual??!”
“We can’t read the message or the manual,” the other person said, almost pleadingly. “How can we look up something that we can’t read?” The admiral looked at all of them in disbelief. “This is what you can do,” the lieutenant said. “Take your handheld computer and put it up to the monitor, scan that script and have it translated into Rigellian machine nanocode,” he said, “and then look up the nanocode in the very back of the manual. Take the nanocode and have the computer translate that into English!” He glanced over to the tactical display and saw that the five cruisers had caught up to the lead cruiser and was now a group of six. “And hurry it up,” the lieutenant said.
The soldier with the handheld unit did exactly as he was told and translated the Rigellian script into machine-readable nanocode. Then, frantically flipping through the back of the manual, found some nanocode that matched the translation. “Here it is,” he shouted excitedly. “Running translation deconstructions.” The seconds ticked by ominously as the computer blinked furiously. The soldier looked at the computer screen and his eyes bugged out of his head. “What does it say?” the lieutenant asked.
Haltingly, the soldier read the contents of the screen: “Somnambulant interstitials converted”. He looked up at the lieutenant whose face froze in disbelief. “What the hell does THAT mean??” the admiral shouted. “What kind of nonsense is that?”
“I – I have no idea,” the lieutenant said in complete confusion. “That makes absolutely no sense.”
“What a second,” someone in the back said. “I took an interfacing linguistics course in college,” she said. “Sometimes if the computer uses the wrong algorithms to translate the nanocode, it will make no sense.” The lieutenant looked at her. “How do we tell it to use a different translation sequence?” he asked.
“You do this, and this,” she said, reaching over punching some controls on the computer unit. “We can set the translator to do repeated deconstructions, each time using a different translation matrix. Something sensible is bound to fall out.” The computer screen went blank for a few seconds, until a new message appeared. “’Simulation interlock engaged’, it says now,” the soldier replied. “Does that make any more sense?”
“Simulation interlock engaged,” the lieutenant said over again. Suddenly his eyes opened wide. “I get it!” he exclaimed. “When doing test flight simulations, the force fields can be deployed in such a way that they look fully extended but are not powered up, in what they call ‘safe mode’. The safety protocols will prevent the singularity from coming online while any of the force fields are in this testing mode.” He reached over to the forcefield console and punched in a couple of commands as the yellow portion of the field grid started blinking. “I hope we have enough time to rebuild the force field with a live algorithm.”
“Are the Rigellians still gaining on us?” the admiral asked the soldier monitoring tactical displays. “Affirmative, sir,” came the reply. “Can we go any faster?” the admiral asked. “Ion engines operating at 128% over safety parameters,” another soldier answered. “We dare not push them any farther.” Glancing at the tactical display, the lieutenant said, “They will be within missile range in fifteen seconds.”
Suddenly the force field monitor started flashing as the grid box turned completely blue. Right afterward a deep, loud sound permeated the entire ship as the quantum singularity was brought into play and started to tap into the nearly limitless energy of a black hole. On the power profile monitor the soldiers were amazed to see the three trace lines, which have pretty much hugged the bottom of the screen, shot upwards in a steep curve toward the top of the monitor.
This sudden surge of power was noticed on the lead Rigellian cruiser, which was monitoring the power profiles of the Nirrin via remote sensors. “Power generation on the Nirrin has increased exponentially,” the technician said. “The quantum singularity is engaged!” The Rigellian commander looked up with hate in his eyes. “They are preparing to enter compressed space,” he snarled. “Send to all ships,” he barked out. “Fire all missiles!”
Multiple flashes of light occurred on the cluster of Rigellian cruisers pursuing the Nirrin Doch as each ship fired its four nuclear missiles. A swarm of twenty blue stars fanned out from the cluster and spread out slightly as they headed unerringly toward the Nirrin. The missiles covered a wide area and it was a certainty that no matter how the Nirrin would swerve to avoid them, at least one of them would reach its target.
On the Nirrin the noise from the power generators was rapidly rising in pitch and volume. The entire ship seemed to be shaking and quivering as if barely able to contain the vast energies that were being extracted from the singularity. A computer screen on the console showed an outline of the ship and a large number of wavy lines forming a shell around it. The lieutenant looked at another indicator. “The spacetime warps are assembling around us,” he said. A small light on the console started blinking.
“Ten seconds until entering compressed space,” he said. “Nine … eight …!”
From outside the Nirrin it appeared as if the ship was being enveloped by strange waves of eerie blue light. You could see the ship through the shimmering blue waves but it looked unnaturally blurred and indistinct. The cluster of twenty nuclear missiles held together while gaining on the Nirrin and would reach their target shortly.
“Seven … six … five …!” the lieutenant counted as the noise from the singularity reached a howling, high-pitched crescendo. The tactical display showed the group of missiles closing in on the Nirrin with deadly accuracy. The Alliance soldiers looked at each other, frozen in terror. The admiral looked over at the lieutenant and for the first time saw the fear and uncertainty in his eyes. He honestly did not know if they were going to make it or not. He did know for sure that if the missiles struck first, with all this built-up power they would go up in one of the biggest human-caused explosions in history.
“Four … three … two …!” continued the lieutenant. Several soldiers held their breath and closed their eyes. Outside, the Nirrin was barely visible as it became completely enshrouded by the glowing blue space warps.
Several missiles were approximately 50 feet away from the tail end of the Nirrin. “One … zero!” said the lieutenant. The Nirrin was immediately swallowed by a burst of white light. A split-second later the first of the missiles sped through the space which was just occupied by the Nirrin Doch but was now completely empty, followed by the remaining nineteen. They continued on their path undetonated until they ran out of fuel and just continued drifting through the intergalactic medium.
Aboard the Nirrin, the soldiers sat in stunned silence, barely even breathing, and not entirely sure what just happened to them. The view on the main screen, which had been filled with the silvery glitter of a million stars, was now black and featureless. The high-pitched wailing of the power generators was now gone, and an eerie, unsettling quiet descended over everything.
“We are in compressed space, factor 3,” the lieutenant said after a while of flipping switches and reading screens. “We are traveling 27 times the speed of light.” He looked at another computer screen and frowned a little. “Destination, unknown,” he said.
The admiral was the first to breathe a sigh of relief. “That’s alright,” he said, quickly regaining his composure after their razor-thin escape from nuclear annihilation. “We’ll figure out where we’re going when we get there.” He looked around at the amazing prototype of vessel they were in, traveling faster than anyone had ever traveled before and said, “This is biggest prize ever!” he said, almost reverently. Turning to the lieutenant in the red Rigellian uniform, he said, “To call your work ‘outstanding’ is almost pathetically ridiculous, Lieutenant … um … what did you say your name was?”
“Begging the admiral’s pardon,” the lieutenant answered, “but there was no time for formal introductions earlier.” He operated a couple of control systems on the console in front of him. “I am a lieutenant junior grade, stationed on the Galactic Alliance starship Balindorn.” He turned to look at the admiral.
“My name is Twillig. Lieutenant Samuel J. Twillig.”
