start learning something really useful.
So for the best part of a day Spartacus had been able to carry on with its bridge-making without hindrance. The only drones attacked during that period had been the ones attempting to hijack feeder cables that supplied the backup stations. When the scientists finally had time to take stock of things after the backup stations had been secured, they found that Spartacus had made full use of the opportunity.
"I reckon we've lost the initiative," Fred Hayes declared after a lengthy analysis of the statistics. "Spartacus had built up a hell of a lead for itself by this morning. It's been upgrading primaries and getting bigger all the time, and putting in a whole private power network for itself on top of that."
"You don't think we could catch up with it if we put everything into an all-out Haystack effort?" Krantz asked.
"Our prediction is that tomorrow morning we'd be twice as far behind as we were this morning," Dyer answered. "And after that it would go on getting worse exponentially."
"Our estimates about this part were way out.