The Star Fox

And a prize crew to take her back to Earth, the business part of him recalled. We’re damn near down to a skeleton complement. A few more captures and we’ll have to call a halt.

Fiercely: So we don’t sell the last one, but send word by. it. Whoever wants to sign on again can meet us at Staurn, where we’ll be refilling our magazines. With the kind of bank account I must have now, I can refit for a dozen more cruises. We won’t stop till we’re blown out of space—or the Federation gets off its duff and makes some honest war.

He gave himself entirely to the work of preparation. When battle stations were piped, a cheer shivered the length of the ship. Those were good boys, he thought with renewed warmth. They’d drawn reluctant lots to choose who must bring the seized Aleriona vessels home, and even so fights had broken out over the privilege of daily risking death in the Auroran System. Of course, the ones who stayed got a proportionately larger share of booty. But they had signed on his privateer for much more than that.

“Engines to full output!” If the enemy were on the qui vive, they would immediately observe on their instruments that another vessel orbited here. Radar alone was useless at such distances, for what was registered might as well be a meteorite: until it awoke.

“Internal field to standard!” Earth weight came back.

“Turning vectors: roll three points, pitch four and half points, yaw twelve points!” Stars wheeled across the ports.

“Acceleration maximum!” There was no sense of pressure in the compensating gee-field that webbed through the hull But the engines growled.

“Stand by for Mach drive! On the mark, five, four, three, two, one, zero!”

Starlight wavered, as if seen through a sheet of running water, and steadied again. In that brief passage, the fantastic acceleration of inertialessness did not build up a speed so great that aberration or Doppler effect counted. But the remote disc of Aurore shrank yet farther.

“Cut Mach drive!” An electronic signal had sent the command before Heim’s automatic words were well begun.

Computers chattered beneath Penoyer’s hands. Fox had returned to normal well ahead of the Aleriona ship. The latter was still traveling at more than the privateer’s kinetic velocity, but it would now be no trick to match vectors inside the Mach limit.

“Number Four Turret, give her one across the bows!” The missile streaked forth. Atomic fire dazzled momentarily among the constellations.

“Sparks, connect me on the universal band,” Heim ordered. He realized he was sweating. The outflank maneuver would not have been possible save for Uthg-a-K’thaq’s non-human sensitivity in the tuning of a gravitronic manifold, and the engineer could have been mistaken. But beneath the released terror, joy sang in the captain. We’ve got them! One more blow struck!

A siren wailed. The ship trembled. Automatons reacted; great clangings and thumps resounded through her plates. “My God!” Penoyer’s cry came thin. “They’re armed!” The viewports darkened, that eyes not be burned out by the intolerable brightnesses which blossomed around. Riven fragments of atoms sleeted through vacuum, were whirled away by the ship’s hydromagnetic field, spat X-rays into her material shielding and vanished starward. The meteorite detectors shouted of shrapnel thrown at kilometers per second by low-yield warheads.

Time was lacking in which to be afraid. “Parry her stuff,” Heim commanded his gunners. “Laser Turret Three, see if you can cripple her Mach rings.”

Beyond so elementary a decision, he was helpless. Nor could his highly skilled men do a great deal more than transmit it to their robots. The death machines were too fast, too violent for human senses. Radar beams locked on, computers clicked, missiles homed on missiles and destroyed them before they could strike. A blinding beam of energy probed from the Aleriona craft. There was no stopping it; but before it inflicted more than minimal damage, Fox’s own heavy laser smote. Armor plate vaporized, the ray burned through, the enemy weapon went dark. The Terrestrial fire-lance drew a seared line across the Aleriona hull as it probed for the exterior fittings of the interstellar drive. That was no easy target, with the relative position of the two vessels shifting so rapidly. But the computers solved the problem in milliseconds. The other ship crammed on acceleration, trying to shake loose. For a moment the laser pierced only emptiness.