But finally she did it once too often. Flying between two vessels, she held her line the merest fraction of a second too long. Two tractors lashed out and the three vessels flashed together, zone to zone to zone. Then, instantly, the two pirate ships became inert, to anchor in space their wildly fleeing prey. Then spy-beams licked out, to explore the Brittania’s interior.
At the touch of those beams, light and delicate as they were, the relay clicked and the torpedoes let go. Those frightful shells were so designed and so charged that one of them could demolish any inert structure known to man: what of seven? There was an explosion to stagger the imagination and which must be left to the imagination, since no words in any language of the galaxy can describe it adequately.
The Brittania, literally blown to bits, more-than-half fused and partially volatilized by the inconceivable fury of the outburst, was hurled in all directions in streamers, droplets, chunks, and masses; each component part urged away from the center of pressure by the ragingly compressed gases of detonation. Furthermore, each component was now of course inert and therefore capable of giving up its full measure of kinetic energy to any inert object with which it should come in contact.
One mass of wreckage, so fiercely sped that its victim had time neither to dodge nor become inertialess, crashed full against the side of the nearer attacker. Meteorite screens flared brilliantly violet and went down. The full-driven wall-shield held; but so terrific was the concussion that what few of the crew were not killed outright would take no interest in current events for many hours to come.
The other, slightly more distant attacker was more fortunate. Her commander had had time to render her inertialess, and as she rode lightly away, ahead of the outermost, most tenuous fringe of vapor, he reported succinctly to his headquarters all that had transpired. There was a brief interlude of silence, then a speaker gave tongue.
“Helmuth, speaking for Boskone,” snapped from it. “Your report is neither complete nor conclusive. Find, study, photograph, and bring in to headquarters every fragment and particle pertaining to the wreckage, paying particular attention to all bodies or portions thereof.”
“Helmuth, speaking for Boskone!” roared from the general-wave unscrambler. “Commanders of all vessels, of every class and tonnage, upon whatever mission bound, attention! The vessel referred to in our previous message has been destroyed, but it is feared that some or all of her personnel were allowed to escape. Every unit of that personnel must be killed before he has opportunity to communicate with any Patrol base. Therefore cancel your present orders, whatever they may be, and proceed at maximum blast to the region previously designated. Scour that entire volume of space. Beam out of existence every vessel whose papers do not account unquestionably for every intelligent being aboard. Investigate every possible avenue of escape. More detailed orders will be given each of you upon your nearer approach to the neighborhood under search.”
CHAPTER 4
Escape
Space-suited complete except for helmets, and with those ready to hand, Kinnison and vanBuskirk sat in the tiny control room of their lifeboat as it drifted inert through inter-stellar space. Kinnison was poring over charts taken from the Brittania’s pilot room; the sergeant was gazing idly into a detector plate.
“No clear ether yet, I don’t suppose,” the captain remarked, as he rolled up a chart and tossed it aside.
“No let-up for a second; they’re not taking any chances at all. Found out where we are? Alsakan ought to be hereabouts somewhere, hadn’t it?”
“Yeah. Not close, though, even for a ship—out of the question for us. Nothing much inhabited around here, either, to say nothing of being civilized. Scarcely one to the block. Don’t think I’ve ever been out here before; have you?”
“Off my beat entirely. How long do you figure it’ll be before it’s safe for us to blast off?”
“Can’t start blasting until your plates are clear. Anything we can detect can detect us as soon as we start putting out power.”
“We may be in for a spell of waiting, then .” VanBuskirk broke off suddenly and his tone changed to one of tense excitement. “Help, Noshabkeming, help! Look at that!”
“Blinding blue blazes!” Kinnison exclaimed, staring into the plate. “With all macro-universal space and all eternity to play around in, why in all space’s hells did she have to come back here and now?”
For there, right in their laps, not a hundred miles away, lay the Brittania and her two pirate captors!
“Better go free, hadn’t we?” whispered vanBuskirk.
“Daren’t!” Kinnison grunted. “At this range they’d spot us in a split second. Acting like a hunk of loose metal’s our only chance. We’ll be able to dodge any flying chunks, I think . there she goes!”
From their coign of vantage the two Patrolmen saw their gallant ship’s terrific end; saw the one pirate vessel suffer collision with the flying fragment; saw the other escape inertialess; saw her disappear.
The inert pirate vessel had now almost exactly the same velocity as the lifeboat, both in speed and in direction; only very slowly were the large craft and the small approaching each other. Kinnison stood rigid, staring into his plate, his nervous hands grasping the switches whose closing, at the first sign of detection, would render them inertialess and would pour full blast into their driving projectors. But minute after minute passed and nothing happened.
“Why don’t they do something?” he burst out, finally. “They know we’re here—there isn’t a detector made that could be badly enough out of order to miss us at this distance. Why, they can see us from there, with no detectors at all!”
“Asleep, unconscious, or dead,” vanBuskirk diagnosed, “and they’re not asleep. Believe me, Kim, that ship was nudged. She must’ve been hit hard enough to lay her whole crew out cold . and say, she’s got a standard emergency inlet port—how about it, huh?”
Kinnison’s mind leaped eagerly at the daring suggestion of his subordinate, but he did not reply at once. Their first, their only duty, concerned the safety of two spools of tape. But if the lifeboat lay there inert until the pirates regained control of their craft, detection and capture were certain. The same fate was as certain should they attempt flight with all nearby space so full of enemy fliers. Therefore, hare-brained though it appeared at first glance, vanBuskirk’s wild idea was actually the safest course!
“All right, Bus, we’ll try it. We’ll take a chance on going free and using a tenth of a dyne of drive for a hundredth of a second. Get into the lock with your magnets.”
The lifeboat flashed against the pirate’s armored side and the sergeant, by deftly manipulating his two small hand-magnets, worked it rapidly along the steel plating, toward the driving jets. There, in the conventional location just forward of the main driving projectors, was indeed the emergency inlet port, with its Galactic Standard controls.
In a few minutes the two warriors were inside, dashing toward the control room. There Kinnison glanced at the board and heaved a sigh of relief.
“Fine! Same type as the one we studied. Same race, too,” he went on, eyeing the motionless forms scattered about the floor. Seizing one of the bodies, he propped it against a panel thus obscuring a multiple lens.
“That’s the eye overlooking the control room,” he explained unnecessarily. “We can’t cut their headquarters visi-beams without creating suspicion, but we don’t want them looking around in here until after we’ve done a little stage-setting.”
“But