"Hi, Cliff—Hi, Laf!"
"Hi, Kim!"
The three old friends shook hands cordially, then the two newcomers stared for minutes into the maze of lights flashing and winking in the tremendous space chart.
"Glad I don't have to try to make sense out of that," LaForge commented, finally. "Looks a lot different in battle harness than on practice cruises. You want me on that forward wall there, you said?"
"Yes. You can see it plainer down here in the reducer. The white star is Arisia. The yellows, all marked, are suns and other fixed points, such as the markers along the arbitrary rim of the Galaxy, running from there to there. Reds will be Boskonians when they get close enough to show. Greens are ours. Up in the big tank everything is identified, but down here there's no room for details—each green light marks the location of a whole operating fleet. That block of green circles, there, is your command. It's about eighty parsecs deep and covers everything within two hours—say a hundred and fifty parsecs—of the line between Arisia and the Second Galaxy. Pretty loose now, of course, but you can tighten it up and shift it as you please as soon as some reds show up. You'll have a Rigellian talker—here he is now—when you want anything done, think at him and he'll give it to the right panel on the board. QX?"
"I think so. I'll practice a bit."
"Now you, Cliff. These green crosses, halfway between the forward wall and Arisia, are yours. You won't have quite as much depth as Laf, but a wider coverage. The green tetrahedrons are mine. They blanket Arisia, you notice, and fill the space out to the second wall."
"Do you think that you and I will have anything to do?" Maitland asked, waving a hand at LaForge's tremendous barrier.
"I wish I could hope that we won't, but I can't. I have it from a usually reliable source that they're going to throw the book. That means hyperspatial tubes as well as open space—they'll probably strike everywhere at once."