But no meteor is a smooth prolate spheroid, like a football with smoothly rounded ends. And no Earth ship was ever shaped like that, either.
It was visible on the plates of the HC-36 only a few seconds—then it vanished.
Orders were already snapping over the robot control system as Parmay charged for the main salon. He had heard the alarm and came running.
Tallen was slapping his hands over switch plates with lightning movements of his wrists. "Alien ship!" he shouted. "As soon as our radar touched her, she hit hypersee. That was about thirty-five seconds before our own equipment registered the echo, so she's had better than a minute to arrange herself nicely to blast us!"
"Won't she have to come out of hypersee to do it?"
"Sure, but where?"
"I'd—"
He was cut off by a hum of power from Fire Control; at the same instant, he saw the football shape of the alien on the screen. It was less than eight miles away.
