Ellsner turned angrily to Branch.
The general sighed and stood up.
“That’s right, Ellsner.
The war is lost and every man in the fleet knows it.
That’s what’s wrong with the morale.
We’re just hanging here, waiting to be blasted out of existence.”
The fleets shifted and weaved.
Thousands of dots floated in space, in twisted, random patterns.
Seemingly random.
The patterns interlocked, opened and closed. Dynamically, delicately balanced, each configuration was a planned move on a hundred thousand mile front The opposing dots shifted to meet the exigencies of the new pattern.
Where was the advantage?
To the unskilled eye, a chess game is a meaningless array of pieces and positions.
But to the players—the game may be already won or lost.
The mechanical players who moved the thousands of dots knew who had won—and who had lost.
“Now let’s all relax,” Branch said soothingly.
“Margraves, mix us a couple of drinks.
I’ll explain everything.”
The colonel moved to a well-stocked cabinet in a corner of the room.
“I’m waiting,” Ellsner said.
“First, a review.
Do you remember when the war was declared, two years ago? Both sides subscribed to the Holmstead Pact, not to bomb home planets.
A rendezvous was arranged in space, for the fleets to meet.”
“That’s ancient history,” Ellsner said.
“It has a point.
Earth’s fleet blasted off, grouped and went to the rendezvous.”
Branch cleared his throat.
“Do you know the CPCs?
The Configuration-Probability-Calculators?
They’re like chess players, enormously extended.
They arrange the fleet in an optimum attack-defense pattern, based on the configuration of the opposing fleet.
So the first pattern was set.”
“I don’t see the need—” Ellsner started, but Margraves, returning with the drinks, interrupted him.
“Wait, my boy.
Soon there will be a blinding light.”
“When the fleets met, the CPCs calculated the probabilities of attack.
They found we’d lose approximately eighty-seven percent of our fleet, to sixty-five percent of the enemy’s.
If they attacked, they’d lose seventy-nine percent, to our sixty-four.
That was the situation as it stood then.
By extrapolation, their optimum attack pattern—at that time—would net them a forty-five percent loss. Ours would have given us a seventy-two percent loss.”
“I don’t know much about the CPCs,” Ellsner confessed.
“My field’s psych.”
He sipped his drink, grimaced, and sipped again.
“Think of them as chess players,” Branch said.
“They can estimate the loss probabilities for an attack at any given point of time, in any pattern.
They can extrapolate the probable moves of both sides.
“That’s why battle wasn’t joined when we first met.
No commander is going to annihilate his entire fleet like that.”
“Well then,” Ellsner said, “why haven’t you exploited your slight numerical superiority?
Why haven’t you gotten an advantage over them?”
“Ah!” Margraves cried, sipping his drink.