"Now, what I would like to know," Cob demanded when the small talk had been disposed of, "is what's with this 'Project Warp'? What are you planning for Lover-Girl? Your techmen are tearing into her like she was a twenty-day leave!" "And why was the _Cleopatra_ chosen?" added Celia curiously. "Well, I'll make it short," Ivy said. "We're going to make a hyper-ship out of her." "Hyper-ship?" Cob was perplexed. Ivy Hendricks nodded. "We've stumbled on a laboratory effect that warps space. We plan to reproduce it in portable form on the _Cleopatra_ ... king size. She'll be able to take us through the hyper-spatial barrier." "Golly!" Celia Graham was wide-eyed. "I always thought of hyperspace as a ... well, sort of an abstraction." "That's been the view up to now. We all shared it here, too, until we set up this screen system and things began to disappear when they got into the warped field. Then we rigged a remote control and set up telecameras in the warp...." Ivy's face sobered. "We got plates of star-fields ... star-fields that were utterly different and ... and _alien_. It seems that there's at least one other space interlocked and co-existent with ours. When we realized that we decided to send a ship through. I sent a UV teletype to Admiral Gorman at Luna Base ... and here you are." "Why us?" Cob asked thoughtfully. "I'll answer that," offered Strike, "Lover-Girl's a surge circuit monitor, and it's a safe bet this operation takes plenty of power." He looked over to Ivy. "Am I right?" "Right on the nose, Strike," she returned. Then she broke into a wide smile. "Besides, I wouldn't want to enter an alien cosmos with anyone but Lover-Girl's family. It wouldn't be right." "Golly!" said Celia Graham again. "Alien cosmos ... it sounds so creepy when you say it that way." "You could call it other things, if you should happen to prefer them," Ivy Hendricks said, "Subspace ... another plane of existence. I...." She never finished her sentence. The door burst open and a Communications yeoman came breathlessly into the office. From the ante-room came the sound of an Ultra Wave teletype clattering imperiously ... almost frantically. "Captain Hendricks!" cried the man excitedly, "A message is coming through from the Proxima transsender ... they're under attack!" Strykalski was on his feet. "Attack!" "The nonhumans from Eridanus have launched a major invasion of the solar Combine! All the colonies in Centaurus are being invaded!" Strike felt the bottom dropping out of his stomach, and he knew that all the others felt the same. If this was a war, they were the ones who would have to fight it. And the Eridans! Awful leathery creatures with tentacles ... chlorine breathers! They would make a formidable enemy, welded as they were into one fighting unit by the functioning of the group-mind.... He heard himself saying sharply into Ivy's communicator: "See to it that my ship is fueled and armed for space within three hours!"