Admiral Archer of the space fleet of the Empire of Man is preparing to celebrate his twenty-first birthday by collecting accumulated debts from the kleptocrats of a remote planet. How can you not sympathize with the poor guy, who has more animals than people under his command, more children than adults, more patched-up ships than serviceable ones, more robotic strikers than combat cyborgs - and on the event horizon a weapon capable of destroying the Galaxy has appeared? Written in 1982.