They realized that nothing is ever done right in a hurry. Light leagues of space separated the human forces from the alien. Light years had to be crossed. As time passed, everybody sat tense, each with his own personal thoughts.
An alien race? Certainly everybody expected that Humankind would some day meet up with some stellar race distant and remote and probably as exotic-looking as anything that the most lurid magazines had ever used on their covers. Or possibly they would be human-looking. Each man had his own ideas, and no two were exactly alike. The aliens would come as friends. They would be met as friends. They would come as superiors to help them to reach Utopia, or come as masters to make them slaves. They were humanivorous—or they were good to eat themselves. And what might happen to an intelligent filet mignon?
And so the time passed slowly until Hatch's second, Major Spaceman Froman, and his scouts made contact.
They were wide spread as they came against that space lattice of Viggon Sarri's first wave. Their reports were sketchy and incomplete, because they had been ordered to make contact, to observe, and to swoop back. In snatches they described the fleet:
"Thousand feet long—"
"Five hundred in diameter—"
"Twelve turrets—"
"With four projectors each."
"Two forward and—"