And in the "reducer"—the standard, ten-foot tank in the lower well—the entire spectacle was reproduced in miniature. It was plainer there, clearer and much more readily seen; but it was so crowded that details were indistinguishable.
Haynes stood beside Kinnison's padded chair one day, staring up into the immense lens and shaking his head. He went down the flight of stairs to the reducer, studied that, and again shook his head.
"This is very pretty, but it doesn't mean a thing," he thought at Kinnison. "It begins to look as though I'm going along just for the ride. You—or you and Worsel—will have to do the fighting, too, I'm afraid."
"Uh-huh," Kinnison demurred. "What do we—or anyone else—know about tactics, compared to you? You've got to be the brains. That's why we had the boys rig up the original working model there, for a reducer. On that you can watch and figure out the gross developments and tell us in general terms what to do. Knowing that, we will know who ought to do what, from the big tank here, and we will pass your orders along."
"Say, that will work, at that!" and Haynes brightened visibly. "Looks as though a couple of those reds are going to knock our star out of the tank, doesn't it?"
"It'll be close in that reducer. They'll probably touch. Close enough in real space—less than three parsecs."
The zero hour came and the Tellurian armada of eighty-one sleek destroyers—eighty superdreadnoughts and the Directrix—spurned Earth and took its place in that hurtling wall of crimson. Solar system after solar system was passed; fleet after fleet leaped into the ether and fitted itself into the smoothly geometrical pattern which GFO was nursing along so carefully.
Through the Galaxy the formation swept, and out of it, toward a star cluster. It slowed its mad pace; the center hanging back, the edges advancing and folding in.
"Surround the cluster and close in," the admiral directed; and, under the guidance now of two hundred Rigellians, civilization's vast Grand Fleet closed smoothly in and went inert. Drivers flared white as they fought to match the intrinsic velocity of the cluster.
"Vice admirals of all fleets, attention! Using secondaries only, fire at will upon any enemy object coming within range. Engage outlying structures and such battle craft as may appear. Keep assigned distance from planet and stiffen cosmic screens to maximum. Haynes—off!"