The vast machines that generated the atomic sphere were being assembled and shipped to the several places. Here they went together, fitted bit by bit by machinists and technical men who worked furiously against time to complete the job before the Loard-vogh came. They were many years building the original Palomar telescope, but this was war, and the techniques of fabrication had advanced since then. Perhaps the experience gained in that monstrous job--and in other mighty projects, some war-driven, some peace-measures--gave Sol the technical skill she needed. There would be no matter of years, this time. It was a matter of four very short months. One hundred and twenty days. Just one small third of a year. And there is a saturation point in the manpower curve; just because one man can dig a well in sixty days, it is no sign that sixty men can dig the well in one day. They could, mathematically, but you can't get sixty men with shovels in a three-foot circle either mathematically or physically. So time bore on relentlessly. Time that for the Loard-vogh seemed endlessly droning by was racing like fury for the laboring Terrans. For at the same instant that Vorgan was groaning about the four-month wait, Thompson was complaining about the utter impossibility of getting anything done in four months. What hurt Vorgan's sleep most of all was the fact that he feared that Terra knew of the imminent invasion. Terra knew, and that spoiled their sleep, too. But they did not tell Vorgan that they knew. If the Lord of All had known for certain, he would have slept better, for the uncertainty would have been removed. For four long months, Vorgan's vicious crew of Loard-vogh warriors drove through space, and then they deployed in battle array. Their nerves tautened, and the personal fighting ceased, for the chances of battle with a legal enemy stayed their hands against their fellows. They knew that they were approaching enemy territory. Their first glimpse of trouble would be a mushrooming blast in the sky--or even several simultaneous explosions. The first that went up would be a deadly signal that near by, or dead ahead, their hated enemy was making his advance stand. That was the gamble. They each pinned their hopes on being the watcher. Let another ship go up in fire and flame. In this game, where no man could help another, none even considered the idea of wanting death in preference to another. For one man's life was exactly as good as any other man's at this point--for until the initial shock wave hit, neither was doing a thing. They were on the offensive, the Loard-vogh. They were breaching a system that their leaders feared enough to break the Master Plan and send forth a full grand fleet to take this sector that lay more than a thousand light-years from the frontier of Loard-vogh conquest.