You"ll find branches there. Be carefull, there"s no gravity in that part of the ship. Take the one that goes ninety degrees north of your horizontal. At thetop you"ll find a medium charge interstice laser, mounted on a universal belt encircling the ship, I"m powering it now." He paused momentarily while his hands did things below the range of the camera"s pickup.

"It is a single-person mounting. Sorry, philosoph. But you could help him with the computer. If he doesn"t have to watch the imageouts and battlescreen at the same time..."

The two men of peace were already on their way.

Malaika uttered a silent prayer in the hopes that the two scientists wouldn"t cut up the ship and turned back to his tables.

"How are we doing, Wolf?"

"They"re still closing, sir. Not as rapidly now that we"ve picked up our own speed, but still closing. Yon want to go on maximum?"

"No. No, not yet. That"s strictly out last gasp, if we need it. Let them continue to think theGlory"s just another freighter for a while. First I want to see what our braincases can do with the popgun."

The braincases in question were making their way along the pullway at breakneck speed. Fortunately, there was no drifting cargo to impede their progress. The great metal-fabric enclosure was almost completely empty. A few cases drifted lazily in their spiderweb enclosures, giving the pale green cavern and its ghostly atmosphere a tinge of perspective. The feeling was enhanced by the lighting, or lack of it.

Since this area of the ship, although by far the largest, was rarely visited except upon arriving or departing a cargo stop, the lighting was kept to a minimum. Even so it would have been lost in the cargo compartments of one of the great "Soaring Sun" cla.s.s freighters.

They had no trouble locating the correct branchway at the end nexus of the main one. It was the only strand headed remotely in the required direction. Tse-Mallory launched himself upward and began to float up to the rope. He reached out and began to pull himself rapidly upward, hand over hand.

Truzenzuzex, he knew, would be right behind him. With its four hands the insect could go faster than he, but there was no reason for him to pa.s.s Bran since ho couldn"t operate the human-contoured gun nearly as well.

They reached the gun housing, a sphere of thick metal like a blister in the skin of the ship. It had its own emergency power and air supply. Far off to both sides he could see where the mounting"s powered belt encircled the skin of the vessel. Moving along that belt the gun could cover an approaching threat from any angle. He had only a second to wonder what it was doing on a private yacht before he was inside the sh.e.l.l and buckling himself into the gun seat, Truzenzuzex secured the hatch behind them, moving to the computer imageouts to Bran"s left, A more modern weapon would have had both combined in a single helmet-set that would fit down over the gunner"s bead. The insect began to cannabalize braces, locks, and belts from the emergency compartments, until he had built himself a reasonably solid harness opposite the "puter.

Bran wrapped his light hand around the pressure trigger with all the fondness of a proud father caressing his new-born. His left went into the battlesureen sensory pickup. He let go of the trigger for a moment, reluctantly, to tighten the nerve sensors around his spread left hand. He flexed it once to make sure the pickups didn"t pinch and then returned the right to the trigger grip. Next began a careful examination of the screen and dial scopes. It was definitely an early model, but then laser weapons hadn"t changed much in their basic design for several centuries, and probably wouldn"t in several more. The base design was too cheap and efficient. He had no doubt that he could operate this one effectively on the first try. Come to that, he"d d.a.m.n well have to! Their pursuers weren"t likely to give them a practice shot.

Under impulses from his left hand the battlescreen Ht. He was gratified to see that his combat reflexes, at least, were still operative. On the screens were two dots the size of his thumbnail. For a moment he almost panicked, thinking he was back on the old Twenty-Five. If an opposing ship had m amazed to approach this close in a war situation they"d have been vapourized by now. But then, this wasn"t a war situation. At least not yet. He put that unpleasant line of thought out of his mind. Something for the diplomats to sharpen their tongues on. Obviously neither of the approaching ships had expectations of meeting even token resistance. It was simply a game of catch-up. They came on openly and without caution. Possibly, hopefully, they also had their screens down or at least underpowered.

From his left Truzenzuzex began rattling off a. stream of figures and co-ordinates. One of the destroyers was slightly nearer than the other. The sloppy formation was the inevitable result of overconfidence on the enemy"s part. Bran began lining up a centre shot. His finger hesitated over the trigger, and he spoke into the intership mike.

"Look, Malaika. These people are here after something, and since we"ve only got one something worth risking an interstellar incident over, they"re going to want us in One piece. I don"t expect them to start any reckless shooting. They"re coming in as if all they expect to have to do is net us like a clippedGeech bird.

I"ve played with the AAnn before. They"re not overimaginative, but they think d.a.m.n fast. That means one good shot and one only, and then we"d better run like h.e.l.l. How close can you let them get while still giving us an outside chance to break their detection? a.s.suming they"ll be sufficiently confused to let us."

Maiaika. calculated rapidly in his head. "Um ... um ...mara kwa mara ... that Rildi fellow will have to decide whether to blow us to atoms or make another try ... the latter, I don"t doubt ...has to take us alive, or not at all... I can give you another two mils distance. La, one and a half, now."

"Good enough," said Tse-Mallory, concentrating on the screen, ft would have to be, he thought. "We"ll know it back here when the "puter hits it." Malaika didn"t reply. That will bring us down almost to ... to three," said Tnizenzuzex.

I supposed. Let me know when we reach three point one."

Time enough?"

Tse-Mallory grinned. "0le bug-wug, me friend, my reflexes have slowed down through the years, but dead yet they ain"t! It"ll be enough. Up the universe!"

"Up the universe!" came the even reply.

In Control, Malaika turned to Wolf, his face thoughtful.

"You heard?"

The shadow-man nodded.

"All right then. Start slowing down. Yes, slowing down! If he says he"s going to get only one shot, he"s probably going to get only one shot, and I want him to have as good a line as possible. So let"s make it look nearly as we can as though we"re giving up the chase."

Obediently. Wolf began cutting their speed. Slowly, but the AAnn compouters would notice it.

"Three point seven ... three point six... Truzenzuzex"s voice recited the figures with machine-like precision and clarity.

Bran"s body was steady, but he was trembling ever so slightly inside He was older.

"Tru, uh, did you spot any HTP drugs in that emergency locker?"

"Heightened TP? Three point five ... you know that stuff"s almost as carefully watched as the SCCAM circuitry. Oh, there"s some of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d stuff back there, the kind that"s available on any black market.

All that will do, my friend, to borrow a saying, is "screw up you bod" ... three point four ...not to mention your reflexes... screw it down, more likely. Relax."

"I know, I know!" His eyes never left the screen. "But, vertebrae. I wish I had some now!"

"Obscenity is better ... three point three ... pretend you"re back at the University working over old man Novy"s thesis. That ought to generate enough anger for you to take those ships apart with your bare hands..."

Bran smiled, and the tenseness left him. Back at the University old professor Movy had been one of their pet animosities.

"... three point two ..."

He could see the b.a.s.t.a.r.d"s ugly face now. He wondered what had finally happened to the old boy after ... His finger tightened on the trigger.

"... three poi ..."

Already the pressure-stud was being depressed.

In the nothingness of nowhere a lancet of emerald green brighter than a sun leaped from theGioryhole across a second of infinity. A milli-instant later it impinged on the drive fan of the nearest AAnn warship, which happened to be theUnn . There was a soundless flash of impossible scintillating gold flame, like the waves of tortured hydrogenthat march across the skin of stars. It was followed by an explosion of vapourized solids and an expanding, rapidly diffusing cloud of ionized gas.

The battle screen showed one white dot and one tiny nebula.

In the gun housing, Bran was frantically trying to reline the laser for a shot at the second ship, but he never got a real chance.

At the instant of silent destruction, Malaika had permitted himself one violent cry of "Oseee-yees!"

Then, "Wolf, Atha, get usmoving, watti !" Atha slammed over & connection and theGloryhole leaped forward at her maximum acceleration.

On the still existing AAnn ship, theArr , panic reigned only in those areas of the vessel where Baron Riidi WW"s control was peripheral. Around him the crew only reflected fatal resignation. The one pleasant thought m all their minds was what they would do to the people on their quarry once the commander and the techs had extracted whatever it was they wanted from them. None glanced at the Baron"s face for fear of meeting his eyes.

The Baron"s polished claws sc.r.a.ped idly at the scales on his left arm. There was a voi pickup set by the right one.

"Enginemaster," he said calmly into the grid, "full power, please. Everything you can spare from the screens." He did not bother to inquire if they were now up.

He turned back to the huge battlescreen which dominated the bridge. On it a white dot had shrunk rapidly but had not succeeded in disappearing completely. Now, it could not. Without taking Ills eyes from the screen he addressed the crew over the comm-system.

"No one is to blame for the loss of the Unn. Not expecting inters.p.a.ce weaponry on a private craft of that type, only debris screens were up. That error has since been rectified. The enemy is faster than originally estimated. It apparently hoped to pa.s.s out of detector range in the confusion engendered by the loss of our sister-ship. This had not occurred. It will not occur. We are through playing polite.Bend your tails to it., gentlemen, we have a ship to catch! And when we have done I can promise you at least some interesting entertainment!"Inspired, the crew of theArr dipped to their tasks with a will.

Bran cursed once, briefly, as the surviving A. Ann ship shrank out of range.

Truzenzuzex was busily disengaging himself from his make shift harness. "Relax, brother. You did as well as we"d hoped. Better. They had their screens down, all right, or they wouldn"t have gone up like that.

We must have hit their generator dead on. Metamorphosis, what a show!"

Tse-Mallory took the advice and relaxed as well as he could. "Yes. Yes, you"re perfectly correct. Tru. A second time we wouldn"t have been so lucky. If we"d had a second time."

"Quite so. I suggest now a return to our cabins. This toy will be of no further use. If we had a real gun, now ... oh, well. After you, Bran."

Truzenzuzex had reopened the hatch and they dived down the pullway. Heading back through the murky green hollows they missed Mataika"s congratulations as they poured over the now untended mike in the gunsh.e.l.l.

"Ships and novas, ships and novas! By the tail of the Black Horse nebula! They did it! Those effete, simple, peace-lovingnduguzuri did it! Taking out a warship with one shot from that antique!" He shook his head. "We may not get out of this but, bymitume , the prophets, those lizards"ll know they"ve been in a fight!"

Wolf brought the merchant back to reality. Not that his mind had ever really left it, but his spirit bad - momentarily. It had been refeshing, anyway.

"They"re beginning to pick up on us again, sir. Slower than before. Much slower. But we"re running on everything we have and they"re still making up distance on us."

Atha nodded concurrence. "The screen may not show it yet, but it"s here in the readouts. At this rate we"ve got maybe three - no, four hours before they"re within paralysis-beam range."

"Je! That"s it, then.Pepongapi ? How many evil spirits?"

He sat down in his seat. Once they got that close they"d make mummies out of everyone on board and then unwrap their minds at their leisure. The methods might vary, but they would undoubtedly be unique in their unpleasantness. That could not be permitted to happen. As soon as the AAnn got that close he"d see to it that everyone had a sufficiently lethal dose of something from med supply to insure that questioning would remain an impossibility. Or possibly a laser would be better. Burned down to ashes, the AAnn technicians, good as they might be, couldn"t reconstruct. Yes, that was a better choice. After he finished with everyone else he"d have to make certain not to miss the brain. He"d have only the one shot. Better start looking for a mirror, Maxim!

If there were only some way they could pick up enough speed to swing out of detector range! Even if only for a few microseconds, it might be enough. s.p.a.ce was vast. Given that one precious interval the Gloryhole should easily shake her pursuers. Unconsciously, he put his hand over Atha"s.

"There"s got to be a way to pick up another half multiple!"

He didn"t notice the way her hand trembled when his covered it, not the way she looked down at it. He removed it abruptly without being aware of the effect he"d had on his co-pilot. It joined the other in digging at their owner"s hair.

Flinx was also considering the problem, in his own way. He knew little about stellar navigation, and less about doublekay units ... but Malaika had forgotten more than he might ever know. He couldn"t match the mere h ant"s knowledge, but he could remember for him. The links in the trader"s mind branched a million ways. Patiently, he tracked down now this, now that one, bringing long-forgotten studies and applications to the surface where Malaika"s own system would pick them up, look them over, and discard them. In a way it was tike using the retrieval system at the Royal Library, lie kept at it with a steadiness he hadn"t known he possessed, until ...

"Butaktti ! Commonsense ...!" He paused, and his eyes opened so wide that for a moment Atha was actually alarmed. "Atha!" Sbe couldn"t prevent herself from jumping a little at the shout. He had it.

Somehow the idea had risen from its hiding place deep in his mind, where it had lam untouched for years.

"Look, when the Blight was first reached, survey ships went through it - some of it - with an eye towards mapping the place, right? The idea was eventually dropped as impractical - meaning expensive - but all the information thathad originally been collected was retained. That"d be only proper. Check with memory and find out if there are any neutron stars in our vicinity."

"What?"

"An excellent idea, Captain," said Wolf. "I think ... yes, there is a possibility - outside and difficult, mind - that we may be able to draw them in after us. Far more enjoyable than a simple suicide."

It would be that, Wolf, except for one thing. I am not thinking of even a complicated suicide.Mwolizurl , talk to that machine of yours and find out what it says!"

She punched the required information uncertainly but competently. It took the all-inclusive machine only a moment to imageout a long list of answers.

"Why yes, there is one, Captain. At our present rate of travel, some seventy-two ship-minutes from our current att.i.tude. Co-ordinates are listed, and in this case are recorded as accurate, nine point ... nine point seven places."

"Start punching them in." He swivelled and bent to the audio mike. "Attention, everybody. Now that you two minions of peace and tranquillity have effectively pacified half our pursuit, I"ve been stimulated enough to come up with an equally insane idea. What I"m ... what we"re going to try is theoretically possible. I don"t know if it"s been done before or not. There wouldn"t be any records of an unsuccessful attempt. I fee] we must take the risk. Any alternative to certain death is a preferable one. Capture is otherwise a certainty."

Truzenzuzex leaned over in harness and spoke into his mike. "May I inquire into what you ... we will attempt to do"?"

"Yes," said Wolf. "T admit to curiosity myself, Captain."

"Je! We are heading for a nueutron star in this sector for which we have definite co-ordinates. At our present rate of speed we should be impinging on its gravity well at the necessary tangent some seventy ...

sixty-nine minutes from now. At ha, Wolf, the computer, and myself are going to work like h.e.l.l the next few minutes to line up that course. If we can hit that field at a certain point at our speed ... I am hoping the tremendous pull of the star will throw us out at a speed sufficient to escape the range of the AAnn detector fields. They can hardly be expecting it, and even if they do figure it out, I don"t think our friend the Baron would consider doing likewise a worthwhile effort. I almost hope he does. He"d have everything to lose. At the moment, we have very little. Only we humans are crazy enough to try such a stunt anyway,kweli ?"

"Yes. Second the motion. Agreed," said Truzenzuzex. I I were in a position to veto this idiotic - which I a.s.sure you I would do. However, as I am not... let"s get on with it, Captain."

"d.a.m.ned with faint praise, eh, philosoph? There are other possibilities,watu . Either we shall miss our impact point and go wide, in which case the entire attempt might as well not have been made and we will be captured and poked into, or we will dive too deeply and be trapped by the star"s well, pulled in, and broken up into very small pieces. As Captain I am empowered to make this decision by right ... but this is not quite a normal cruise, so I put it to a vote. Objections?"

The only thing that came over the comm was a slight sniffle, undoubtedly attributable to Sissiph (she had given in to curiosity and Hipped on her unit). It could not be construed as an objection.

"Je! We will try it, then. I suggest strongly you spend some time checking out Your harnesses and spreading yourselves as comfortably as possible. Provided that we strike the star"s field at the precise tangent I am almost positive that theGloryholecan stand the forces involved. If it cannot it will not matter, because our bodies will go long before the ship does.Haidhuru . It doesn"t matter. Physiologically I have no idea what to expect. So prepare your bodies and your spirits as well as possible, because in sixty ..."

he paused toglance at the chronometer, "six minutes, it will be all one way or all the other."

He cut the mike and began furiously feeding instructions and requests into a computer auxiliary.

If they had one consolation, thought Flinx, it was that there would be no borrifyingly stow buildup of gravity within the ship. They would either fail or succeed at such a supremely high speed that it would be over in an instant... as Malaika bad said, all one way or all the other. He did not care to imagine, what would happen if they missed their contact point and dived too close to the star. Dwell in the well. Not funny. He saw himself and Pip mashed flat, like paper, and that proved unamusing also.

The chronometer, oblivious of mere human concerns, continued to wind down. Sixty minutes left ... forty ... twenty to ... ten tofivetothreetotwo ...

And then, unbelievably, there were only sixty seconds left till judgement. Before he had time to muse on this amazing fact, there was a. slight jar. A silent screaming from the furthest abyss of time flowed like jelly over the ship. He hung on the lip of a canyon of nothingness, while it tried desperately to ingest him.

He refused to be ingested, REFUSED! A pin among other pins in a bowl of milk, while somewhere a million fingernails dug exquisitely scratching on a thousand hysterically howling blackboards- sscRRRREEEEEEEE..."

Chapter Twelve.

On board the destroyerArr the chief navigational officer blinked at his detector screen, then turned to stare up atwhere the Baron sat in his command chair.

"Sir, the humanx vessel had disappeared from my screens. Also, we are rapidly approaching a neutron star of considerable gravitonic potential. Orders"?"

Baron Riidi WW was noted for his persistence. The idea of a trapped quarry escaping him was most unappeaiing. Neither, however, was he a fool. His eyes closed tiredly.

"Change course thirty degrees, right to our present plane. Cut to cruising speed, normal." He looked up then, eyes open, at the battle screen. Somewhere out there was a white dot. Out there also, an invisible bottomless pit of uaimaginable energy masked an impossible retreat. Or a quick suicide. An inkling of the-human"s intentions percolated through his cells. He did not feel the least inclined to try to duplicate the event. Whether the idiot was alive or dead, he would not know for many months ... and that was the most infuriating thing of all.

He flexed his long lingers, staring at the brightly polished claws whose length was suitably trimmed to that for a high member of the aristocracy. Colloid-gems shone lavalike on two of them. He locked them over his chest and pushed out-ward. Those among the crew who were more familiar with the actions of the n.o.bility recognized the gesture. It indicated Conception of Impractical Power. Under the Circ.u.mstances it const.i.tuted a salute to their departed foe.

"Set a return course for Pregglin Base and signal our industrialist friend the following missive. No, I don"t wish an interstar hookup. Just send it. "Intercepted antic.i.p.ated vessel and made positive audiovisual identification. Repeat,positive . Chased to points..."give our current co-ordinates, shipmaster ... "where contact with same was irretrievably lost due to," "he smiled slightly," "an unexpected turn of speed on the part of the pursued vessel. In hostile action with same, the destroyerUnn was lost with all hands." Add this note, communicator, and scramble it to my personal code. "Sir. Your request has proven expensive in the extreme. Contrary to your indications we did not encounter, as you led me to believe, a terrified shipload of frightened moneylenders. As a result of your bungling. I now find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to account for my off-base time to my good friend Lord Kaath, C. How good a friend, he is will now be put to a considerable test. As will your ability to place judicious bribes, I hope, for both our sakes, that the latter will be sufficient. Explaining the loss of theUnn will be rather more difficult.

Should the true circ.u.mstances surrounding this idiocy leak out it would be more than enough to condemn us both to death by nth degree torture at the hands of the Masters. Kindly do keep this in mind."