The Star Virus

But actually they were safer at super-light velocities than they would have been at just below the speed of light. Some collisions would be inevitable; but it was a feature of travel faster than light that solid bodies could pass straight through one another without disturbance, provided their velocity relative to one another was well in excess of the speed of light and that the transit time was short. If contact lasted for longer than a scant few microseconds, then the result was that of a normal collision at very high speeds. The danger to the Stond was that they might encounter two or more rock clusters in rapid succession, aggregating a lethal time period.

Rodrone was muttering a figure to himself. "Sixty-seven… sixty-seven…" This was the probability percentage that the worst would happen. The figure was known to him because he had worked it out long ago for obvious reasons. Twice before he had entered a comet similar to this one in order to evade pursuit. With each repeat performance, he knew, his personal probability of disaster rose. But he still clung to the previous figure, like an incantation. Fleeting pictures of Egyptian gods flitted through his mind, as if he were praying to them.

A comet provided an escape route for two reasons. The danger to the pursuer was equally as great as to the pursued, and the former was rarely seized with the same nerve born of desperation. Secondly, detection became extremely difficult. The quarry stood a good chance of leaving the comet in a random direction without being spotted. If, that is, he had not perished first.

Vision screens turned milky as they penetrated the comet. Vague lumps coalesced momentarily out of the murk, fading just as quickly. Every man's stomach knotted in reaction to the awareness of jagged rock passing through metal and air and flesh, too fast for the electromagnetic fields surrounding their respective atoms to interact.

Only the rear vision screen showed a sharp image. The Streall ship unhesitatingly followed them into the danger area, splitting itself into five sections as it did so. Then the picture abruptly vanished. Braxon was making random course changes to send the Stond bouncing about the interior of the comet like a flitting ghost.

"Release the mass torpedoes," Rodrone ordered. If their luck held, the Streall would be unlikely to find them now. This was the second part of the strategy. Eight torpedoes, able by means of their specially adjusted drover engines to increase their inertial mass. Long-range detector techniques would find them indistinguishable from a large vessel like the Strond.

As soon as the torpedoes had been launched to follow their own random patterns through the murky inside of the comet, they thankfully turned the nose of the Stond to the nearest point of exit from this perilous mass of gas, dust and rock. But shortly before they broke into free space, someone pointed to one of the long-range screens with a gasp.

The remains of what had until recently been one section of the Streall ship was drifting unpowered. It was a mangled, junked pile. One half had vanished completely in some cataclysmic explosion. The other exuded a stream of bodies, objects, fragments, gases and liquids.

Five times sixty-seven, Rodrone thought. That made three hundred and thirty-five per cent. Dead certainty.

IV

After he had set course for Brüde, Rodrone took a crowbar and levered open the crate to unpack his find.

Inside the splintered boards he encountered first fluffy white packing material, which he scattered impatiently about the control room until he came to a smooth, glossy surface. Then, like a man who has caught his first glimpse of gold, he broke open the remaining boards and strewed aside the packing material until the supposed Streall artifact stood revealed.

It was a flawless, crystal-clear lens about four feet in diameter and three thick, with a beautifully brilliant sheen superior to any plastic Rodrone knew, but more like ancient glass. His fascinated attention was immediately trapped, like a moth attracted to a flame, by a glowing swirl of light that occupied the central region, a blazing coruscation. At first he was fooled into thinking that it moved, but in fact it was frozen. The effect came from the impression it gave of ceaseless energy.

Rodrone blinked. Why did it amaze him so? It was only a gimcrack gadget, he told himself. Anybody could make one.

Nevertheless the impression of something remarkable and magical remained. He was about to examine the lens further when one of the men lounging about the control room and watching with interest suddenly murmured in bemusement.

"Say, look at that...."