To The Stars

Kapustin was slightly mollified, but not completely pleased. “And where are his missiles? Isn’t the coward going to fire back?”

“Since he has a much smaller quantity, I imagine he will wait until the range has closed to exact the most value from them. But our defense screen is out there in front of us and will not be penetrated.”

The timing of the remark was most unfortunate. A moment after the words had left Onyegin’s lips the alarms sounded. OBJECTS ON COLLISION COURSE was spelled out in letters of fire and screamed aloud at the same time. Almost instantaneously after this damage reports began coming in from ship after ship. The Admiral stared, horrified, at the vision screen that showed debris spraying from his spaceships; one of them exploded in a gout of flame as he watched.

“What is it? What is happening?” he shouted.

“Meteorite field!” Onyegin said, though he knew that could not be possible.

The Admiral seemed paralyzed by the disaster, sitting gape-jawed in his chair. Onyegin called for a display of what had caused the damage. Although the entire encounter had been over with in less than a second, the computer had recorded the action and now replayed it at slow speed. The first sign of approaching trouble was a wall or a bar that swept in from space across their track. It was at least two kilometers long and speeding with great precision in a collision course. Then the impact. It had to be enemy action. When a section was enlarged he could see that the apparently solid bar was made up of discrete units of matter. Gaps appeared in it as defensive missiles exploded, but it made little difference to the overall strength. It struck.

“It appears that there is a secret weapon,” Onyegin said.

“What is it?”

A secret, Onyegin was tempted to say, but not tempted very much since he greatly valued his life. “Inert material of some kind that has been launched into orbit to meet us. What kind of material it is and how it is projected to reach us is still unknown.”

“Will there be more?”

“I would presume so, though of course we cannot know. They might have expended their effort in their single try…”

“More defense missiles. Launch them instantly!”

“They seemed to have no effect at all the first time, Admiral. If we expend them now we will not have them later when we need.”

He fell, struck to the floor by Kapustin’s open-handed blow. “Are you disobeying orders? Are you interfering with my command of this fleet?”

“Never! I apologize… just advice… never happen again.” Onyegin pulled himself to his feet; a runnel of blood twisted across his face. “Put out an umbrella of defense missiles…”

“All of them! This weapon must be stopped.”

Even as the command was uttered the missiles were launched. Onyegin wiped his sleeve across his mouth, smearing his uniform jacket with blood, unaware of it. What else could they do? There must be some action they could take, the fool of an Admiral was incompetent, the officers and men too much in fear of him to make any suggestions that might draw attention to them.

“Might I suggest evasive action as well, Admiral. It could be more effective than the missile defenses. Whatever the rebel’s weapon is, it is unpowered, there were no radiations of any kind detected before it hit. Therefore it must be launched into its trajectory, If we altered speed there is a good chance the weapons would miss.”

“What — slow down? Do you take me for a coward?”

“No, sir. Of course not. Speeding up would have the same effect. Hurrying forward into battle:’

“Perhaps. Issue the order in any case. It can do no harm.”

“Cease firing with the big cannons,” Admiral Skougaard ordered. “They’ve increased their speed so the last bombardment will miss, go behind them. But we made them suffer. Look at that screen. We seem to have hit a good quarter of them. The next barrage will finish them off. Are we in range of the small guns yet?”

“Coming up in thirty-two seconds, sir,” the ranging and aiming operator said.

“Commence firing then. I want a wall of iron out there for them to run into.”

The spiderweb turrets were in constant, minute and precise motion, pointing their tubular guns at the selected point in space. They were built of a simple array of girders upon which were mounted the launching tubes of the rocket guns. Flexible plastic tubes ran from the breech of each gun and back to the ship, carrying forward a continuous supply of the small steel rockets. It was a crude, fast — but deadly efficient weapon.