By applying pressure at the right places we turned their attention inward to us rather than to the outside, and by making carefully timed sorties here and there about the periphery we forced them through sheer military necessity to gradually tighten their loosely organized League into tightly centralized authority, with the power to demand and obtain--to meet our force with counterforce. By desperate measures and straining of all their youthful resources they managed to hold us off. And with every strain they were welded more tightly together. And slowly they were learning through war what we could not teach through peace. Curiously enough, they wouldn't believe our aims even when captured crews told them. They thought it was some sort of tricky mental conditioning designed to frustrate their lie detectors. Even while they tightened their organization and built new fleets, they would not believe that we were forcing them into the paths they must travel to avoid future annihilation. It was one of the ironies of this war that it was fought and would be fought with the best of intentions. For it was obvious now that we could never win--nor could they. The Rebels, as we called them, were every whit as strong as we, and while we enjoyed the advantages of superior position and technology they had the advantage of superior numbers. It was stalemate,--the longest, fiercest stalemate in man's bloody history. But it was stalemate with a purpose. It was a crazy war--a period of constant hostilities mingled with sporadic offensive actions like the one we were now engaged in--but to us, at least, it was war with a purpose--the best and noblest of human purposes--the preservation of the race. The day was coming, not too many years away, when the first of the aliens would strike the Outer worlds. Then we would unite--on the League's terms if need be--to crush the invaders and establish mankind as the supreme race in the galaxy. But this wasn't important right now. Right now I was the Executive Officer of a scout ship commanded by a man I didn't trust. He smelled too much like a stinking coward. I shook my head. Having Chase running the ship was like putting a moron in a jet car on one of the superhighways--and then sabotaging the automatics. Just one fearful mistake and a whole squadron could be loused up. But Chase was the commander--the ultimate authority on this ship. All I could do was pray that things were going to come out all right. We moved out in the lower red. Battles weren't fought in Cth. There was no way to locate a unit at firing range in that monochromatic madness. Normal physical laws simply didn't apply. A ship had to come out into threespace to do any damage. All Cth was was a convenient road to the battlefront. With one exception.