“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 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.”