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"It ought to be in view in a few minutes," answered the shorter alien.
Miles turned to look at the other. In spite of the change that had taken
place in him, and in spite of the fact they had been together aboard the ship
now for some days, he had gotten no feeling of response from the two aliens.
It was as if they were wrapped around, not merely with human appearances, but
with some sort of emotional and mental protective device that kept him from
feeling them the way he had felt the people of his own world, as individuals.
It struck Miles now that from the first he had had no names for the two of
them. They had simply been the taller and the shorter, in his mind, and
whenever he had spoken to one, the one at whom he directed his words seemed
instinctively to know he had the responsibility to answer.
"What are you people like, in there toward the center of the galaxy?" Miles
asked now, looking down at the other. "I don't think I ever asked you." The
alien did not turn his head but kept gazing into the screen as he answered.
"There's nothing I can tell you," he said. "You are, as I said, a barbarian
by our standards. Even if I could explain us to you, you wouldn't understand.
Even if you could understand what we're like, knowing it would only frighten
and disturb you."
A little anger stirred in Miles at this answer. But he held it down.
"Don't tell me you know everything, you people?" he asked.
"Not everything," answered the alien. "No. Of course not."
"Then there's always the chance that you might be mistaken about me, isn't
there?" said Miles.
"No," said the alien flatly.
He did not offer any further explanation. Miles, to keep his anger under
control, made himself drop the subject. He turned back to watching the screen.
After some minutes, during which the orb of the distant sunlike lamp continued
to swell until it was very nearly the size of the sun as seen from Earth, he
began to catch sights of glints of reflected light forming a rough bar across
the lower part of the screen.
"Yes," said the alien beside him, once more answering his unspoken question.
"You're beginning to see part of the ships, the supply depots, and all else
that make up our defense line."
As they got even closer, the line began to reveal itself as visible
structures. But even then, Miles discovered, the screen could not hold any
large part of it in one picture. With a perception he suddenly discovered he
now possessed, Miles estimated the line to stretch at least as far as the
distance from the solar system's sun to its outermost planet.
They seemed to be moving in toward the thickest part of the line, and as they
got close, Miles saw round ships very much like the one he was on. These
floated in space, usually with a raftlike structure nearby, and were spaced at
regular intervals across the screen.
Miles had assumed that they were fairly close by this time. But to his
intense surprise they continued to drive onward at a good speed, and the ships
continued to swell on the screen before him. It was some seconds before he
realized that the ships they were approaching were truly titanic in size, as
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large in proportion to the ship he was on as the ship he was on would have
been to a four-engine commercial jet of Miles' native Earth. These great ships
were certainly no less than several thousand miles in diameter.
"If you want a word for them," the alien beside Miles answered his unspoken
thought, "you might call them our dreadnought class of fighting vessels.
Actually, they're not fighting vessels the way you'd think of them at all.
They're only vehicles to carry a certain critical number of our own people,
who will use their personal weapons on the Horde when the Horde gets within
range. Without our people inside it, that ship you see is a simple shell of
metal and not much more."
It was becoming clear to Miles that they were headed for one monster of a
ship in particular. He assumed they would be transferring him into the larger
ship and wondered what it would be like inside that enormous shell of metal.
But instead of coming right up to the dreadnought, they slowed and stopped in
space perhaps four or five miles from its surface. At first Miles did not
understand this. Then, turning around, he discovered he was alone in the room.
His wide-ranging awareness, developed during those last days on Earth, echoed
back the information to him that he was now alone on this ship. Plainly, the
two aliens had gone to the larger vessel to report or whatever their duty
required them to do.
It was some minutes before either returned, and then only one came back. It
was the taller of the two who finally materialized alone in the pilot room of
the ship, where Miles was waiting, and Miles' awareness told him that the two
of them were alone in the ship.
"I'll take you now to your position on the line," said the taller alien. As
usual, he did nothing that Miles could see with his hands; but the unbroken
surface of the dreadnought filling most of the screen began to slide off it at
one side, and Miles knew that they were moving away from it and down the
Battle Line toward its left end.
If the dreadnought had proved to be larger than Miles had ever imagined, the
distance to the left end of the line from its middle turned out to be even
longer than he had estimated. For several hours they slid at high speed past
globe-shaped vessels of varying size, from the enormous bulk of the
dreadnought down to the ships smaller than the one Miles was on. As they
approached the far end of the line, the ships grew progressively smaller.
Also, their shape changed. No longer were they all globular. Many of them were
rod- or cigar-shaped.
"These are the ships," the taller alien explained to Miles, without being
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