:How long will it take to travel that distance in this craft?: 

<About two minutes.>

That is stunningly fast. Vanyel doesn't comment; he knows these people have technology that leaves theirs in the dust. (And it's not, technically, as fast as a Gate.)

:All right. I'll come: 

The door closes without any visible motion or action on his part and then the craft takes off, also without one. The motion up and sideways feels strange; the ground tilts to give the four-legged better purchase when the craft is accelerating sideways. The ground isn't blurry, maybe just because they're now high above it. It looks rather picturesque. 

They decelerate and land in a mountain valley that does not obviously contain a spaceship though if you're starting from the premise that it does then it's obviously beneath all those felled trees.

Vanyel stares out at the view in awe. This is amazing. 

Focus, he reminds himself as they land. Work to be done here. How large does the spaceship seem likely to be, based on all those felled trees? 

The spaceship is probably sixty meters long. (There are a lot of felled trees.)

That is big. Presumably very heavy. 

:How much does it weigh?: Vanyel asks. :Er, approximately how many times your body weight, we probably don't use the same measurements here: 

<Four hundred sixty times my body weight> he says instantly.

Did he just know that or is he that fast at mental math. :That...is not going to be easy to move even with magic: Vanyel admits. :We could probably lift it briefly, with a lot of mages - maybe get it lifted onto a whole bunch of wagons - but there's no road nearby, either...: 

<So it should probably wait until the antigravity is working properly outside the ship> he says seriously. <We are confident we can do it, it will just take some time. ...would you both like to come in and see it?>

:Sure, we'll come in: He's still absorbing the concept riding with the first part. :You can...make it float? If you can even make it float mostly, just so it's lighter to lift, we can use magic to push it, that's feasible: 

<Ordinarily we can make it float! Getting things into the space above the sky is very difficult until you learn how to make them float. Right now we cannot make it float, though we can make things inside it float if we want to. Once we can get it to float it'd be easy to move even if the engines are still not working?>

:We can make things float - I could probably float this craft that we're on right now, for a minute or two - but it's limited to what human mages can do and we get tired. You have a way to do it without magic entirely?: 

<We don't have any Gifts. I suppose in some cases we might be doing the same thing without them but in general we characterize our inventions purely in terms of the physical forces that govern the universe, one of which is gravity, the force that pulls all things towards each other. You might only have noticed it as the force that pulls things towards your planet because on a planet that is by a very large margin the most significant context in which it operates.> This is probably an illegal amount of explanation all by itself but he needs these people if he doesn't want to let the other group of people conquer the world, and he might in fact end up letting them do that, if it means having a decisive amount of force on Earth. And he could use some goodwill in the meantime.

:I mean, magic is doing that, I think? Or that's my understanding. It's a physical force that people with the right mind-parts can control. ...Makes me wonder if your planet somehow has different physical laws from ours: 

<That would surprise me; the physical laws are generally the same everywhere, and it is speculated that if they were not then it would be impossible to survive there at all. Maybe having the right mind-parts lets you do things we can do only with sophisticated equipment, though.> The shuttle drives itself right into the airlock of the bigger ship, which closes behind them and washes the shuttle. 

Vanyel nods, distracted by several simultaneous trains of thought, and waits to follow him out into the bigger ship. 

There is a ramp, and then they can walk over onto the bigger ship!

The bulk of it turns out to be dominated by an extraordinarily well-kept lawn where several dozen Andalites like him are milling around on the grass. It gives a convincing impression to visual senses of going on forever but to other senses it's obviously under a big opaque dome. This is attached to some conference rooms and rooms with screens and rooms with mechanical equipment. 

Some of the Andalites are operating human construct bodies right now. They are standing in the grass looking somewhat stressed and unhappy and practicing saying words, over and over again. They are totally nude.

Aaaaaaaah so much nudity and also some of them are men who are attractive - aaaaaaaaah... Vanyel frantically thinks for distractions. 

:Do your people, um, want advice? On seeming normal among humans, I mean: 

<We would very much appreciate that!>

Vanyel should absolutely say something about the NAKEDNESS being VERY CONSPICUOUS but he's too embarrassed, the words won't come out. He heads over and introduces himself, though, a bit stiffly. They're doing reasonably well on getting pronunciation right with trial and error, but as a human in possession of a mouth, he can do his best to tell them how to correct something as well as what. 

:You look kind of miserable, is the main thing: he tells them. :If you went to try to talk to other humans right now, they'd be: he's about to say 'wondering who in your family just died' but these people just escaped a war, that's probably incredibly tactless to joke about, :um, wondering what's wrong: 

"...that is because of standing. Ding. Standing is very unplezent when you only have two legs. Eggs. Is there a se-cret?"

He absently corrects their pronunciation. :Hmm. I don't find it unpleasant, it might be something you need to get used to. You could take a break and sit down?: 

What a concept. How do they do that.

...Well, humans often sit in chairs, or on sofas, but you can just sit down on the ground, like this. Or cross-legged. Or kneel, or with your legs folded under you. Or you can squat, like this, if you just need to rest for a second and plan to get right up again.