Obviously that was the intention all along.
He passed through a dozen star systems. All of them were deserted, abandoned, uncharted. All of them thick with long bands of metallic space junk. Not just pieces of exploded space mines now but also gigantic chunks of ancient spaceships, artificial moons, natural satellites. All of it very, very old — but still making for a very effective barrier.
Like barbed wire… he thought.
By the time he entered the thirteenth system, his brain was fighting hard to put everything together.
First, a minefield. Then the celestial equivalent of barbed wire. What did this tell him?
Or better yet, what could he expect next?
The answer came a moment later when his spacecraft's defensive warning systems began blaring. It was so loud, Hunter thought his crash helmet would split in two.
He pushed his quadtrol and asked it what the hell was going on. The answer from the know-it-all device was both chilling and brief: "Antispaceship missiles closing in…"
Pull up, Hawk'
Hunter didn't even think about it. He yanked on the F-Machine's control stick and put the superfighter on its tail. An enormous missile roared beneath him not two seconds later.
He leveled off with a reverse loop, but no sooner were his wings straight when the defensive warning alarm went off again. He didn't have to ask the quadtrol what was going on this time. He could see the flare of another huge missile coming his way. He veered right purely on instinct and saw the giant missile pass by an instant later.
His defensive warning system never shut down; it kept right on blaring as more missiles were headed for him. The quadtrol said the weapons were not being fired from any hard surface, so there weren't people down there on those devastated planets trying to knock him down. Rather the missiles seemed to have been left dormant in space, programmed to come alive whenever an intruder came near.
Another flare showed up straight ahead. Hunter played it smart this time. Just as he was going into his third evasive maneuver, he hit his quadtrol's universal event inquiry switch. Essentially, this was asking the device to scan anything unusual within its vicinity. It quickly assessed the missile as it roared by. The weapon was a true monster, at least fifty times bigger than the F-Machine and too big to have been built as a simple antispacecraft weapon.
That was enough for him. He hit his throttles hard and rocketed away from die area with an incredible burst of speed. It took some fancy maneuvering to get around the waves of space junk in his path. But he counted to three and then pulled back on the juice again. He found himself twenty-five light-years away from the missile barrage — and this time he was breathing hard.
Once stable again, Hunter asked the quadtrol exactly what kind of a missile had been being shot at him back there.
The answer came back: Saturn 5.
Hunter stared at the readout for a moment. It was the reply he'd received while tearing across the Galaxy; now it was appearing in the right time context. But why did the name itself sound so familiar? It wasn't any kind of rocket he'd heard about since coming to this century. But how about in his last?
He asked the quadtrol what the missile's original function was. The reply that came back only pricked his memory: " Original lunar exploration vehicle booster.'"
Hunter finally asked the quadtrol when and where the missile had been originally designed. This reply took a while to churn out. When it did, it was both startling and mystifying.
It read: " Earth, 1961 a.D."
Hunter had learned by now that few things in this time and place made sense, especially out here in the wilds of outer space.
But all this was especially absurd. He was supposed to be in an empty part of the Galaxy, yet already he'd encountered an ancient minefield, light-years of obstructions and ancient debris. Now a barrage of gigantic missiles, designed more than 6,000 years ago, on Earth, of all places, weapons that would turn him into subatomic dander if one ever hit him.
What was the explanation for this?
Before he could come up with a suitable answer, the comm set inside his helmet suddenly came to life again.
"This is your one and only warning… Leave this sector immediately…"
The voice was gravelly and distorted. It sounded like it was coming from a million miles and a few thousand years away. Which was not that far from the truth.
"We have orders to shoot you down," the voice said again. "Leave at once…"
Hunter turned around in his cockpit and was astonished to see three spacecraft had crept up on his tail. Always watch your six. Those four words came back to him loud and clear now. His failure to do so had suddenly put him into a very grave predicament. Another band of space junk was lying dead ahead. It stretched for light-years in every direction, up, down, left, and right, and was much denser than those before it. Pushing himself into ultra-ultradrive now could prove fatal or, at the very least, slightly suicidal.
In other words, he'd fallen into a trap.
At that moment, one of the strange craft pulled up alongside him. It was about the same size as the F-Machine, and the similarity did not stop there. It also had a wing under midfuselage, though its tips were cranked upward at both ends. It had a tail supporting two small wings in the back, but these were pointing downward. Its nose was conical and blunt, and it was carrying four ancient yet extremely lethal-looking missiles underneath its body.
There were two men in the glass bubble cockpit staring back at him. Helmets on, oxygen masks in place, he could only see their eyes. Hunter's psyche was flashing like crazy now. Memories were washing up inside him. This craft was the closest thing he'd seen to his machine since coming to this century. And he'd seen its type before. Way, way back, in that other Me he had led, before all the insanity began.
He asked the quadtroclass="underline" What is it? But he already knew the answer. He'd seen it during his quick galactic crossing.
" F-4 Phantom," was what the quadtrol screen said.
Somehow Hunter knew this might take him ages to understand, but at the same time, he realized the quadtrol was right.
This plane was a Phantom — or better yet, a recreation of one that had the ability to fly in space. He knew this type of flight machine. He had fought alongside these aircraft in his previous life; he was sure of it.
But what could they possibly be doing here?
There were more of them coming up to meet him. But he didn't want to fight them. The Seven Arm was supposed to be deserted — though all this had given lie to that notion. But whatever the case, he was the intruder here. And he had already passed through a number of defensive barriers and still he had not stopped.
In other words, these guys had every right to shoot him down.
Still, he had to get away from them. He had to find Far Planet, or this whole exercise would become a huge, senseless joke. But the debris was still pretty thick up ahead. He still couldn't boot his craft up to any kind of ultrapower as he wasn't sure if he would pass right through the debris or simply crash into it.
Maybe a warning shot will scare them away.
Hunter pushed his weapons bar, and a mighty multiblast shot out of the front of his craft. Six beams of blinding X-beam power. Butthen something strange happened: the flight of ancient aircraft suddenly started shooting — not at him, but at the barrage of X beams he'd just fired.