"Captain Hendricks!" cried the man excitedly, "A message is coming through from the Proxima transsender ... they're under attack!"
Strykalski was on his feet. "Attack!"
"The nonhumans from Eridanus have launched a major invasion of the solar Combine! All the colonies in Centaurus are being invaded!"
Strike felt the bottom dropping out of his stomach, and he knew that all the others felt the same. If this was a war, they were the ones who would have to fight it. And the Eridans! Awful leathery creatures with tentacles ... chlorine breathers! They would make a formidable enemy, welded as they were into one fighting unit by the functioning of the group-mind....
He heard himself saying sharply into Ivy's communicator: "See to it that my ship is fueled and armed for space within three hours!"
"Hold on, Strike!" Ivy Hendricks intervened, "What about the tests?"
"I'm temporarily under Research and Development command, Ivy, but Regulations say that fighting ships cannot be held inactive during wartime! The Cleopatra's a warship and there's a war on now. If you can have your gear jerry-rigged in three hours, you can come along and test it when we have the chance. Otherwise the hell with it!" Strykalski's face was dead set. "I mean it, Ivy."
"All right, Strike. I'll be ready," Ivy Hendricks said coolly.
Exactly three hours and five minutes later, the newly created hyper-ship that was still Old Aphrodisiac lifted from the ramp outside the Substation dome. She rose slowly at first, the radioactive flame from her tubes splashing with sun-bright coruscations over the loading pits and revetments. For a fleeting instant she was outlined against the swollen orb of Saturn that filled a quarter of Tethys' sky, and then she was gone into the galactic night.