Nebula by Howard Marsh Page B

we’ve been able to translate everything that was recorded, even their idiomatic expressions. We translated the files in all three UFOs that crashed on Earth, and we were able to tap into the storage on several of the robots that they left on Mars, and that gave us additional files of all the message traffic. Fortunately they used storage devices intended to survive crashes, like our black boxes on airliners, so we got a lot of information dating from when they first left their own planet until they crashed here. We know quite a bit about what they can do, how they think, and when they’re likely to arrive and begin their attack. Here’s the situation from their perspective.” He then used a combination of displays and discussion to outline the likely alien courses of action.
    “ When the aliens realized what was going to happen to their planet, they started on an enormous project to build a fleet that could evacuate most of their population. They had several decades to do that, but it still meant that all the effort would be on the large transport ships, so their military arm was generally ignored. But it’s still very impressive, especially when compared with the military fleet Nebula had been able to build so far. According to the records found in the UFO, the alien fleet consisted of several hundred thousand huge transports, four battleships, fifteen heavy cruisers, twelve light cruisers, one hundred sixty five fighters, thirty eight small reconnaissance ships of the type that crashed in Roswell, and several hundred robotic ships of varying sizes and capabilities, most with some amount of armament. The displays showed photos and diagrams of each type of ship, with a list of crew size, weapons, maximum speed, and other details. They also had additional warships in various stages of construction and repair, so their fleet may be a bit more powerful now than it was when the UFOs crashed here. But we don’t think that they would have had time to do much of this repair and construction.”
    Brad started into the war planning by reiterating what Giovanis had said earlier about the difference in passage of time for the alien fleet and the defenders on Earth. “This is an important point, and it’s a crucial part of our planning. Since they’ll probably hurry back here at maximum speed, about 99.999% the speed of light, their local time would slow down to nearly zero, and that would hamper their ability to plan or to adapt to changes that take place on Earth. It also prevents them from having time to complete construction and repair on the ships that were not yet operational. This gives us a big military advantage. We know that they’re coming; we have a pretty good understanding of the size and strength of their fleet; and we also have a lot of time to prepare for their arrival.”
    Relativistic time dilation was clearly an important part of the reasoning on how and when the aliens would be able to invade and how Nebula could respond. The aliens would have limited ability to coordinate the invasion with their exploratory team on Earth even if it was still operating, and they’d have very little time to adapt based on information that the team could send unless they slowed down to prevent the relativistic time dilation. And if they did that, they would take many more years to get here. They really had no good choices, and Nebula definitely had an advantage because of the time and distance factors.
    This all made sense to Harry, and he started to see the consistency in everything that he’d been told and shown since Walt first approached him. He also was now much more aware of the importance of Nebula’s mission and was starting to feel less angry with them and more aligned with their interests, and even excused their strong-arm methods. If this were all true, as it seemed it was, they would be justified in doing almost anything to assure success. But he still wondered if they made a mistake when they detached