...He was dragging, barely able to keep his legs moving. Like some big, overgrown baby working on his first steps...He stopped. He didn't move. Frowned. Steel and ivory plates flashed...It was bizarre. Watching him was like wearing X-ray glasses and being able to see his bones right through his skin...He was frozen up...

...All the Chee have been immobilized. Holographic emitters down. Motor centers down...The Chee-net that connects through their ship's onboard computer...The Pemalite ship, the one hiding in a deep, ocean canyon...That would be the only way to disable Chee systems...

...It was, as the Chee had said, about three hundred feet long. They had not told us what it looked like. But the faint green outline was strikingly clear: The Pemalite ship was shaped like a sort of clownish version of one of them. Like someone had done a cartoon of a Pemalite, exaggerating the vaguely canine head, making the slender hind legs stubby, the belly chubby...