I watched Miller's screen. A tiny point near the center of the screen swelled to a spec, and jumped nearly off the screen to the left. Miller centered it again, and switched to a higher power. This time it jumped less, and resolved into two tiny dots. * * * * * Step by step the magnification was increased as ring after ring of the lens antenna was thrown into play. Each time the centering operation was more delicate. The image grew until it filled a quarter of the screen. We stared at it in fascination. It showed up in stark silhouette, in the electronic "light" of the radar scope. Two perfect discs, joined by a fine filament. As we watched, their relative positions slowly shifted, one moving across, half occluding the other. As the image drifted, Miller worked with infinite care at his console to hold it on center, in sharp focus. "Wish you'd give me an orbit on this thing, Joyce," he said, "so I could lock onto it." "It ain't got no orbit, man," Joyce said. "I'm trackin' it, but I don't understand it. That rock is on a closing curve with us, and slowin' down fast." "What's the velocity, Joyce?" I asked. "Averagin' about 1,000 relative, Captain, but slowin' fast." "All right, we'll hold our course," I said. I keyed for a general announcement. "This is the Captain," I said. "General Quarters. Man action stations and prepare for possible contact within one hour." "Missile Section. Arm No. 1 Battery and stand by." Then I added, "We don't know what we've got here, but it's not a natural body. Could be anything from a torpedo on up." I went back to the Beam screen. The image was clear, but without detail. The two discs slowly drew apart, then closed again. "I'd guess that movement is due to rotation of two spheres around a common center," Clay said. "I agree with you," I said. "Try to get me a reading on the mass of the object." I wondered whether Kramer had been locked up as I had ordered, but at this moment it seemed unimportant. If this was, as I hoped, a contact with our colony, all our troubles were over. The object (I hesitated to call it a ship) approached steadily, still decelerating. Now Clay picked it up on the televideo, as it paralleled our course forty-five hundred miles out. "Captain, it's my guess the body will match speeds with us at about 200 miles, at his present rate of deceleration," Clay said. "Hold everything you've got on him, and watch closely for anything that might be a missile," I said. * * * * * Clay worked steadily over his chart table. Finally he turned to me. "Captain, I get a figure of over a hundred million tons mass; and calibrating the scope images gives us a length of nearly two miles." I let that sink in. I had a strong and very empty feeling that this ship, if ship it were, was not an envoy from any human colony.