Elal shrugged. "What is there to do? We have you. Perhaps you will be of help, if you can remember much of Thusca. So far as we know, you are the only man who has been there and returned. Outside of...." And then he broke it off.
"You're going to leave the world go by default?" Stan asked coldly. "And Avis, too?"
The group of Aurelians looked annoyed. "What would you have us do?" Elal asked. "We gambled and we lost. We are outnumbered ten to one. And this is not the only world we have to worry about, Martin. There are a thousand others."
"And you'll be outnumbered at each one, won't you?" Stan asked grimly. "You'll be continually retreating but the odds will never get any better. As your ring of defenses collapses and allows you to concentrate more and more, the area the Thuscans have to concentrate on will be steadily getting smaller. You have to make a stand for it—why not here?"
"It wouldn't work. We would lose. And we're far too large a part of our total fleet to take the risk."
They wanted to give up because it looked bad on paper, Stan thought. They didn't want to see blood spilled, they didn't want to get their fingers dirty.
"Where's the Thuscan fleet?"
The young man at the controls worked the dials of a screen which lit up to a luminous black. There was the Earth at one end of the screen—a green globe the size of a basketball—and then the star-flecked, velvet sky.
Stan watched a small collection of brilliant lights move slowly across the screen. The operator pressed another button and that segment of the heavens suddenly leaped forward into the viewscreen. The collection of lights swiftly evolved into the glowing, rod-like ships of the Thuscans. They were arranged into a triangle, a large, reddish colored ship at the apex.