"I imagine their food is synthetic," said Ekaterina. Her snub nose wrinkled. "I should not like that. My folk have been peasants too many centuries." "There are no more peasants on Earth," said Grushenko stiffly. Then he shook his hairless skull and clicked his tongue in awe. "But the size of this! The power! How far ahead of us are they? A thousand years? Ten thousand? A million?" "Not too far ahead to murder poor old Solomon Levine," said the woman raggedly. Holbrook stole a glance at her. Sweat glittered on the wide clear brow. So she was afraid too. He felt that the fear knocking under his own ribs would be less if he could have been warding her, but she had been bleak toward him since their quarrel. _Well_, he thought, _I'm glad she liked Solly. I guess we all did._ "There was some mistake," said Grushenko. "The same mistake could kill us," said Holbrook. "It is possible. Are you wishing you had stayed behind?" The engines growled and grumbled. Fire splashed a darkness burning with suns. At 7800 kilometers out they saw one of the sputniks already identified on photographs. It was colossal, bigger than the _Rurik_, enigmatic with turrets and lights and skeletal towers. It swung past them in a silence like death; the sense of instruments, unliving eyes upon him, prickled in Holbrook's skin. Down and down. It was not really surprising when the spaceships came. They were larger than the boat, sleekly aerodynamic. Presumably the Zolotoyans did not have to bother about going into orbit and using shuttle rockets; even their biggest vessels landed directly. The lean blue shapes maneuvered with precision blasts, so close to absolute efficiency that only the dimmest glow revealed any jets at all. "Automatic, or remote-controlled," decided Holbrook in wonder. "Live flesh couldn't take that kind of accelerations." Fire blossomed in space, dazzling their eyes so they sat half blind for minutes afterward. "Magnesium flares," croaked Grushenko. "In a perfect circle around us. Precision shooting--to warn us they can put a nuclear shell in our airlock if they wish." He blinked out the viewport. Zolotoy had subtly changed position; it was no longer ahead, but below. He chuckled in a parched way. "We are not about to offer provocation, comrades." Muted clanks beat through the hull and their bones. Holbrook saw each whale shape as a curve in the ports, like a new horizon. "Two of them," said Ekaterina. "They have laid alongside. There is some kind of grapple." She plucked nervously at the harness of her chair. "I think they intend to carry us in." "_We_ couldn't do that stunt," muttered Holbrook.