"No. It's a primitive world, really. A very young one. Most of my world has no idea that all this even exists or that you, your world, The Hunter, Haven, or The Bromgrev exist. Most. of them would label this type of travel impossible.

Barbarians make good fighters, however, being so close to the animal themselves.

Quite a number of our best barbarians have been recruited to help out, mid the fact that most of my people believe this impossible helps us enormously to do our work."

He switched over to the head of her bed. She put her head in his lap . . .

"Do you find me more pleasing now than before?" she asked suddenly.

"Very much so," he replied softly.

"Are we--" She hesitated. "Are we sexually compatible?"

He grinned. "Not really. Your genes are Delialian, mine Terran; and we've never found the answer to that one."

"No, no! Not that way!"

"Oh, I see." And he did see. "Well, we're both from bi-sexual races, and we're opposites."

"I thought as much. Would you like to show me the barbarian's way, Ralph Bumgartner?"

He was ahead of her.

"I hate to disturb you, lover boy," the cyborg's voice burst in a half-hour or so later, "but I just thought I'd tell you both to take your time."

Bumgartner groaned, and rolled over onto the floor. He'd screwed a hundred alien life forms for the hell of it, but he had never been through an experience quite like this one.

"Wow!" he exclaimed, and exhaled. Regaining his composure, he asked shakily, "What's it all about, doll?"

"This is hard to believe," came the reply, "but we've been ordered to stand to and not come in-system."

"Huh? Why?"

"According to the report I just got, a Rhambdan fleet is starting to materialize between Neptune and Pluto. It looks like a full-scale attack force. The Bromgrev is going to try and take us."

STEP THREE.

1.

ALARMS RING. MEN, women, others, of many races and shapes, all drop what they are doing and run to their ships. Had they been on Earth, it would have been called a "scramble": get to your ships and get into action formation as quickly as possible. They had trained for it, practiced for it, until the actions were as reflexive as the eye reacting to a change in the light. There were approximately fifteen thousand ships of varying sizes and classes, mostly housed in bases hollowed out of asteroids and outpost planetary moons. Titan and Pluto alone accounted for about half, the latter being the only planet used for such things.

It takes time to group for an attack, and all defense is based on that fact.

The Bromgrev's fleets materializing almost in the midst of The Hunter's was a complete surprise, and they did not materialize in any apparent order. Had the aggressor's hand been tipped in any way, a waiting, much smaller group of defense ships could have eliminated the fleets easily, before they could orient themselves. Such was the value of spies in interstellar warfare, and such was the value of the Rhambdan mass mind that major decisions almost never leaked.

After the lead ships of the attacking force appeared, they quickly vanished once again into null, or zero stasis, accomplished when the rotation of the tachyons in their drive achieved parity of spin. Subjective time literally ceased to exist for the ship and the beings on it. "Zero stasis" made them almost impossible to locate, and gave them maximum protection, since the moment temporal stasis was achieved the ships were nearly impossible to locate, and their guns would be framed and manned. But it was a two-way street: the attackers could not know what was happening on the true, or A-1 time line of the battle, either; and communication was impossible between their ships.

Stasis time was used to make final checks and to head for rendezvous on automatics at D-1. Most battles were won or lost on the strength of planning and the precision of crew training: the trick was to arrive in a pattern so varied that the grouping points could not be predicted by the defenders' computers.

Otherwise, the defense would have you.

Joining the defense fleet within minutes were several large supplemental units that could be contacted and called in quickly. The attacker, then, had to hit fast and win decisively, since the tachyon drive played games with time and new units could show up within seconds of the defenders distress signal because of the greater mass available to the drive scoop near a stellar mass.

The Bromgrev's intelligence was extremely good, but there were simply too many different races and too many generals to consult, and, too, defensive patterns became obvious after careful study. The Bromgrev was his own planning staff, and could feed attack information even to the ships of his allies without their own commanders knowing where they were headed. Once in position, his ships would rendezvous at predetermined points and move in on the target. The defenders would have to halt the attack, turn it, or face losses too great to continue. True, spatial warfare being what it was, a large number of ships could attain the objective, but they could not hold it unless they scattered or destroyed the defending forces. Thus, ship-to-ship warfare was the rule, fought well outside the objective. . .

The pilot was like all his fellows: a specialist highly trained and fully aware of the capabthties of his ship and the objectives of the enemy. Like all of them, he had never really believed that there would be a battle -- not here, anyway, and certainly not now. He did not have time to think of strategy, brilliant maneuvers, or fast master strokes. When the buzzers sounded, he dropped everything and ran to the ship. The pilot was seated in the command couch within forty seconds of the alarm. Checking his board, be noted that the gunnery crew was already in place and the automated systems were functioning normally.

Gunnery consisted of two other individuals with whom he shared his quarters. A move had been made to make the ships entirely automated, but it had never worked; somehow the programers never quite imagined all conceivable situations.

At +00.06, a systems check showed everything green and the pilot moved his command couch which resembled a common lounge chair with foot rest, to the halfway position -- best for maintaining circulation. Reaching to his right, he removed a helmet from its holder and placed it on his head as the gunners did the same. From the rear of the pilot's helmet trailed a series of thick cables which disappeared into the floor behind his couch. The pilot placed his arms and legs in straps and pulled an X-shaped belt series loosely over his midsection. If anything hit the ship, it would be essential that his body stay in place.

At +00.09, the pilot leaned back, relaxed, and flipped in order a series of eight toggle switches on a small console to his right.

Then he shut his eyes.

The starfield opened around him, seen as no one but a ship's crew ever saw it.

His mind melded with the ship's master computer, combining the incredible programming of a thousand military geniuses with his own brain, linking the ship's controls -- all controls -- to his own mental whims.

He was the ship.

Within sixty seconds of the buzzer's sounding, he had closed the locks, energized the piles, and was speeding out of the hole in the floating rock that was their station and home. . .

The gunners had slightly different views. They saw their own hemispheres in perfect depth and detail. As the pilot became the ship, they became one with their guns, which shot concentrated beams of energy to rip huge holes in other ships; energy drawn from the surpluses produced in their ship's drive. But each was also a qualified pilot; should anything at all happen to the pilot, the ship would instantly switch to the one of them least dangerously preoccupied with the enemy. This was rare, though: normally, one hit and you were out.

The pilot felt like God, with a total view of the heavens and fantastic depth of field. The sense of being alone, one with the universe and in total command, swept him every time, and did this in fact, to all the pilots. Some became so intoxicated that they could no longer bear to return to their normal selves. These the Valiakeans had "adapted" to the ships themselves: the cyborgs. Their number was steadily increasing.

The enemy was ahead. He could see them as energized dots, covering the sky like the center of a galaxy. And yet he was able to distinguish each and every ship and know instantly its size and relative distance. He slowed from D-1 to A-1, normal time, and the cloud of the enemy grew too dense to believe.

There must be a quarter of a million of them, he thought. All stops had been pulled out on this one, all right.

By the time defensive formations had been attained at +00.14, the defenders' ships numbered about a hundred thousand -- not enough, but good enough for a start; they could depend on the steady arrival of reinforcements as superfast messenger ships carried the news to the far fleets. These would proceed here at D-4, an anti-time state that would get the closest of them here before they it, and where deceleration could place whole friendly forces instantly in the midst of the enemy at any moment.

Defense was linked, overall, to a series of regional flagships for each battle theatre; these, in turn, were linked to the master flagship on which the overall battle commander -- The Hunter, if it was possible to get him -- would call the shots. The coordination could never have been done by brain alone, for simply to transmit messages the flagships and their units had to be on the same level at the same time.

All commands and comments were at the speed of thought.

"Commit on right flank," came the order from Flag 144.

The pilot and his backup units went into action.

The objective, of course, was to identify and knock out the opposition's flagships; when that happened, his formations lost the close contact needed for coordinated action, and, in the seconds before alternate coinmunication lines could be established, the enemy group could be eliminated. This was also true of the ships of the Rhambdan mass-mind; incorrectly time-phased with each other, each was The Bromgrev but momentarily on its own, out of touch with the mass- mind itself.

The pilot identified the flagship and started in, his formation of fifty ships in a rough cross. Flagships were generally built to look like fighters -- small and unassuming -- to decrease their vulnerability, but they were never hard to spot, as they were always the most protected ship in the formation. In the first few feints they could be easily pegged, but not easily taken out.

The cross fanned out, seeking a way around the fighter horde that advanced. The gunners opened up; the pilot put them in a slow spin at A-1. Shots rang out; invisible, silent but deadly beams from almost all of the ships on both sides at once. The attackers took the widespread formation with guns aimed out and on constant fire; the defenders depended on short accurate bursts.

A Rhambdan ship flew across the beam of the pilot's vessel, causing him to pull up and sending the ship into a fast reverse spin.

"Two on the right, six o'clock," came the flagship's warning, but the gunners had already pegged them and were hammering away.

One of the enemy suddenly turned into a pinpoint of light, then vanished.

The other crossed to the pilot's rear and did a roll, bringing his ship up on the pilot's tail. Maneuvering for the best shots, the pilot almost rammed the wreckage of the enemy ship they had destroyed.

"Three more on. Dive! Dive! Re-up minus, repeat, minus," the flagship ordered.

"Dive!" the pilot called to warn the gunners; and went to D-1, in the minus temporal level. "Down to 3 and back up fast," he warned them, then executed the acceleration at the mark. He reversed at the halfway, pulled back to his original position, and immediately phased back into A-1.

Ahead he saw the fighter chasing his own ship and he was now behind the chaser. As his own A-1 ship phased into D for the maneuver he had already accomplished, the gunners took the chase fighter out.

All over the millions of miles between Neptune and Pluto the battles went on, fleet to fleet, squadron to squadron, ship to ship, in levels of sub-light subjective time and at the four basic levels of faster-than-light, or D time.

But normal time progressed with the battle; and the more normal time that passed, the more numerous the defenders became. They came from all over the galaxy, at null-speeds, as fast as the messenger ships could get there, phase in, broadcast the alarm,and phase out for the next destination. An attack on Haven brought them all.

The pilot, in his own battle Sector, had done well, sustaining no injury while taking seven of the enemy. His squadron's luck had been equally good: of the fifty that started, thirty-seven were still operational.

The fighters had been drawn out or destroyed in the enemy squadron he had been facing, and new reinforcements had brought him back up to strength.

The flagship, still covered with fighters, was nonetheless exposed here and there, phasing in and out of stasis to confuse the attacking shots without losing contact for long with its defenders. One moment it was there, the next not.

The pilot's flagship deployed some of the newcomers along the entire D- line front while keeping the original ships at sub-light. Enemy protective fighter screen actions became multilevel as well, thinning them out.

The defenders bad made a breach almost in the center of the attack line, and The Bromgrev had called in a lot of reserves to plug it. This left only the rapidly thinning screen ahead with no reinforcements. They had to nail the flagship of the enemy squadron before the center plug was achieved and the right flank could be relieved. A breakthrough here would mean a total fragmentation of forces -- and a link with Haven forces on the other side of the offensive line.

The pilot decided to go in.

"Dive! Dive!" he warned the gunners, who mentally switched phase as the ship did, going to D-1, then back up through the center of the line at A-1, almost on top of the enemy flagship.

There was a rumble and a tremor as one of the enemy beams struck a glancing blow on his ship, but, for a split second, the gaps in the fighter screen exposed the enemy flagship. The gunners struck and the flagship winked out.

Almost as soon as it happened, the rest of the squadron rallied and moved in on the disorganized enemy fighters, mopping them up.

The pilot saw one ship of the defeated force phase into D, and received permission to chase. It was headed in-system.

The pilot located it at D-1 and started to close, but could not get in close enough for a good shot. Suddenly the object of the pursuit went to null, stopping dead almost literally in both time and space and causing the pilot to overshoot.

Cursing himself for his carelessness, he halted and backtracked, but the fugitive slipped through the defense zone at D-2, then came back up on the pilot's tail, firing steadily.

He rolled, and managed to come up just under the enemy ship. The gunners fired and seemed to strike the enemy, but did not destroy it. It vanished into A.

The, pilot brought his own ship up to A and finally spotted the ship, wobbling crazily but still headed in-system. He noted the trajectory but did not give chase. The enemy ship, disabled, sputtering, on its last legs, would be captured in Earth's gravity well and pulled down before he could phase to get to it. Let the ground men take it.

Moving back to the battle, the pilot could see the field emptying. The Bromgrev had lost too many ships in too short a time to penetrate and hold; the defenders were mopping up, but it was over. Back in contact with Flag, the pilot was told to break and return. The ship was no longer needed.

He broke and headed back for Base in the asteroids. As he completed the course setting, he could feel his power ebbing, his strength diminishing. The starfield was closing in on him.

"No! No!" he protested. "I can't go back! I can't. . ." The man on the couch awoke. For a few minutes he just lay there; then, slowly, his head throbbing with pain, he disconnected the helmet and straps. He heard audible groans over the ship's intercoms. The gunners, too, were coming out of it.

Shaking his head to clear it, he raised the couch to a sitting position and fed the coordinates for the remainder of the flight back to Base.

It was always this way: that feeling of freedom, of strength, of power, when be was the ship -- and the sense of puniness, of being an insect bound to the flesh, and one of billions, when he came out of it.

Flag had sounded Recall, and it reached the one very tiny area of the ship's computers that he couldn't reach: the automatic equipment that pulled them out of their union with their machinery even though they did not want it.

They never wanted it.

He felt a pain in his left shoulder and, rubbing it, saw that the shock of the glancing blow had caused him to be cut by the straps. Another aggravation of the flesh.

He glanced over at the two chronographs on either side of the control console, one labeled SUBJECTIVE and the other OBJECTIVE.

The subjective control read 04:51 Almost five hours of battle. It had been a rough one.

The objective one read 00:13.

In normal time, the whole thing bad been fought in thirteen minutes.

"Hey! Var!" hailed the voice of the right gunner.

"Yeah, Gro? What's the problem?"

"Who won?"

2.

THE SHIP CAME in low over the horizon, like some ghostly, misshapen balloon floating wobbily down as the helium slowly escaped, and it glowed a sickly blue much stronger than moonlight.

Everyone in town who was out that night saw it. A meteor, most said, and families rushed out into backyards to get a better view.

Jennifer Barrow heard the commotion outside her apartment and made her way over to the French windows and out onto the balcony. The warm, humid air enveloped her like a moist rug, and the mosquitoes took the exit as a signal to attack. She heard her neighbor muttering exclamations under his breath.

"What's going on, John?" she called over to him.

"A meteor, Jenny. Biggest damned thing I've ever seen! It's bigger and brighter than the moon! Wow! Look at that!"

"Describe it to me, John," she asked. "What's it like?"