This arguing of hideous entities! The piping thoughts of slimy things that should be wriggling through some stagnant roadside ditch back on the planet Earth. The cold thought of the brain-blasting thing that lived on a planet covered by miles of swirling gases. The pinpoint eyes of the being with the mottled skin.
Cosmic Crusade! He laughed to himself, deep in his throat. This wasn't the way he had imagined it. He had thought of gleaming ships of war, of stabbing rays, of might arrayed against might, a place where courage would be at a premium.
But there was nothing to fight. No physical thing. Nothing a man could get at. Another universe, a mighty thing of curving space and time… that was the enemy. A man simply couldn't do anything about a thing like that.
"This place," Herb whispered to him, "is giving me the creeps.”
Chapter Nine
"We can do it," said Caroline. She flicked a pencil against a sheet of calculations. "This proves it," she declared.
Kingsley bent over her shoulder to look at the sheet. "If you don't mind,”
he said, "would you lead me through it all again. Go slowly, please. I find it hard to grasp a lot of it.”
"Kingsley," said Herb, "you're just an amateur. To get as good as she is you'd have to think for forty lifetimes.”
"You embarrass me," she said. "It's very simple. It's really very simple.”