Priority one: What do they want and where are they from? And beyond that, how did they get here? Are they capable of faster-than-light travel? I’ve prepared a list of questions to go over, starting with a series of “handshake” binary sequences…
“What do you think he’s saying?”
“What would you say?”
“Who are you? Where am I? What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure ‘entertaining’ is exactly the word I’d choose, Your Grace,” Tuominen said dryly. “Your approach to the rarefied and refined world of diplomacy seems just a trifle . . . direct, shall we say?”
“But it doesn’t take a thousand men to open a door, my lord."
"It might to keep it open.”
As Captain, I want two things done. First, find Cyrano Jones, and second… close that door.
“Don’t come back till you have him!” the Ticktockman said, very quietly, very sincerely, extremely dangerously.
“Like the old saying, ‘Finders keepers, losers weepers.’ And Petey boy, I’m the finder’s keeper from now on.”
So where do we find this useable idealist?
“Hotheads,” Flannery told the walls thoughtfully, “make the best men obtainable, once they’re tamed. Nothing beats an idealist who can face facts. And the intelligent ones usually grow up.”
If eyes had laser capacities, Rayeon’s ashes would be spread thinner–and brighter–than Saturn’s F Ring. “You want me to* cheat?*” Tsaraki said. “I’ll win this tried and true or admit defeat and swallow my pride.”
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads!
He said, ‘welcome to the frickin’ Guardians of the Galaxy’. Only he didn’t say, ‘frickin’.
I’m sending you back to your own dimension. Who knows? Some of you may even survive the trip. And if you do, remember this: You are not welcome here! This plane is protected!
The conference room in which he sat was probably, at that moment, the most carefully protected, eavesdropping-proof conference room in the entire explored galaxy. If it wasn’t, he reflected wryly, it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying.
The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools.
Goaded, Illyan snapped, “I didn’t promise it was idiot-proof!”
Since the war, we’re the only intelligent species left in the universe, therefore we think everything in this universe has to conform to our paradigm of what makes sense. Do you have any idea how arrogant that view is and on how little of this universe we base it?
*A spaceship from another star
They ask me where all the people are
What can I tell them?
I tell them I’m the only one
There was a war, but I must have won
Please take me with you…*
“We win or we die.”
“Personally, I prefer winning.”
“Seems odd you’d name your ship after a battle you were on the wrong side of.”
“May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.”