“So do I; I got one of the Navy data operators drunk one night, just before I quit, and got the access code out of him.”
Dar frowned. “Why’d you do that?”
“I wanted to make sure I was going to be safe on my trip out here. And I found out I would be; there wasn’t supposed to be a sailor for fifty parsecs. The nearest fleet’s a hundred seventy-five light-years away, over toward Aldebaran, sitting on their thumbs and polishing the brightwork.”
“What’re they doing there?”
“Somebody called ‘em, about a year ago, to come take care of some pirates.”
“So, while they were on their way out, the pirates were coming back here! Great!” Dar said.
Sam took a deep breath. “Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. We’re getting carried away here. For all we know, those aren’t pirates out there.”
“Sure, maybe it is the Navy—and for all they know, we’re pirates. If you’ll pardon my saying so …”
A brilliant flare lit up the cabin. Sam shrieked. “I’m convinced! It’s pirates!”
Dar shrugged. “Pirates or Navy—after we’ve been turned into an expanding cloud of hydrogen atoms, I’m afraid I won’t really care much about distinctions.”
“You’re right.” Sam loosed her shock webbing. “Whoever it is, we’ve gotta get out of here.”
Dar’s head snapped up, startled. Then he waved an airy hand toward the porthole. “Sure—be my guest. It’s a great day outside, if you face sunwards. Of course, the night on your backside gets a teeny bit chilly.”
“Credit me with some sense,” she snorted. “This ship must have some kind of lifeboat!”
But Dar was looking out the porthole. “Get down!”
Startled, Sam obeyed. A rending crash shot through the ship, and she slammed back against the cabin wall. Dar bounced out against his webbing.
“What in Ceres’ name was that?” Sam gasped.
“They got tired of playing games.” Dar yanked his webbing loose and struggled to his feet, bracing himself against the pull of acceleration. “They shot to maim this time, and they had some luck. They got our gravity generator. Where’d you say the lifeboat was?”
“It’d make sense to put it between the pilot’s bridge and the passenger cabin, wouldn’t it?”
“Right.” Dar turned aft. “Since that makes sense, it’ll obviously be between the cabin and the cargo space. Let’s go.”
Sam started to protest, then shut up and followed.
The ship bucked and heaved. Dar caught the tops of the seats on either side, bracing himself. Sam slammed into his back. “Near miss,” he grated. “We got hit by a wave of exploding gas. Wish I had time to watch; this pilot’s doing one hell of a job of dodging.”
“Is that why my body keeps trying to go through the wall?”
“Yeah, and why it keeps changing its mind as to which wall. Come on.”
They wallowed through a morass of acceleration-pull to the aft hatch. Dar turned to a small closet beside the hatch, and yanked it open. “Two on this side; there’ll be three on the other side, I suppose.” He took down a slack length of silver fabric with a plastic bulb on top. “Here, scramble into it.”
Sam started struggling into the space suit. “Little flimsy, isn’t it?”
Dar nodded. “It won’t stop anything sharper than a cheese wedge. It’s not supposed to; the lifeboat’ll take care of that. The suit’s just to hold in air.”
The ship bucked to the side with a rending crash, slamming Sam up against him. Jumpsuit or not, he realized dizzily, she was very definitely female. Somehow, this didn’t seem like the time to mention it.
She scrambled back from him, and kept on scrambling, into her suit. “They’re getting closer! Hurry!”
Dar stretched the suit on and pressed the seal-seam shut, being careful to keep it flat. Sam copied him. Then he braced himself and touched his helmet against hers, to let his voice conduct through the plastic. “Okay, turn around so I can turn on your air supply and check your connections.”
Sam turned her back to him. Dar checked her connections, then turned on her air supply. When the meter read in the blue, he tapped her shoulder and turned his back. He could feel her hands fumbling over him; then air hissed in his helmet. He took a breath and nodded, then turned to the hatch, wrenched it open, and waved Sam in. She stepped through; he followed, and pulled the door closed behind them, wrenching it down. Sam had already pushed the cycle button. When the air had been pumped back into the reserve tank, the green light lit up over the side hatch. Dar leaned on the handle and hauled back; the three-foot circle swung open. Sam stepped through, and Dar stepped after her.
He sat down, stretching the web over his body. Sam leaned over to touch helmets. “How about the pilot?”
“He’s on his own—got his own lifeboat if he wants it.” Dar punched the power button, and the control panel lit up.
“You know how to drive this thing?”
“Sure; besides, how can you go wrong, with two buttons, two pedals, and a steering wheel?”
“I could think of a few ways.”
Dar shrugged. “So I’m not creative. Here goes.” The “READY” light was blinking; he stabbed at the “EJECT” button.
A five-hundred-pound masseur slammed him in the chest, and went to work on the rest of his body. Then the steamroller lightened to a flatiron, and Dar could breathe again. He sat up against the push of slackening acceleration and looked around through the bubble-dome. It had darkened to his right, where a sun was close enough to show a small disk and kick out some lethal radiation. But that didn’t matter; the silver slab of pirate ship filled most of the starboard sky. “Way too close,” Dar muttered, and pressed down on the acceleration pedal. The flatiron pressed down on him again, expanding into a printing press. He glanced behind him, once, at the silver-baseball courier ship, then turned back to the emptiness before him.
Sam struggled forward against the pull of acceleration. “Any chance they haven’t spotted us?”
Dar shrugged. “Hard to say. We’ll show up on their detectors; but they might not pay attention to anything this small.”
Then the silver slab began to slide toward them.
“Do they have to be so damn observant?” Dar adjusted his chair upright and tromped down on the acceleration pedal. The masseur dumped the steamroller on him again, shoving him back into the chair; he could just barely stretch his arms enough to hold onto the wheel.
The silver slab picked up speed.
“Somehow, I don’t think we can outrun them.” Dar turned the wheel left; the port-attitude jets slackened, then died, as the starboard jets boosted their mutter to a roar, and the lifeboat turned in a graceful U, throwing Dar over against Sam. She sat huddled back in her chair, face pale, eyes huge.
No wonder, Dar thought. He’d feel the same way if he were a passenger in a boat he was driving. He straightened out the wheel and held the pedal down, sending the little ship arrowing back toward the courier ship, which was taking advantage of the pirates’ preoccupation to try to sneak away.
Sam struggled forward, adjusting her chair upright, and laid her helmet against his. “Shouldn’t we be going away from them?”
Dar shook his head. “They’d have about as much trouble catching us as a lean cat would have with a fat mouse. Our only chance is to hide.”
“Hide? Behind what? There’s nothing out here!”
A bright red energy-bolt exploded just behind them and a little to their right.
“YEOW!” Sam shrank down inside her suit. “Hide behind something! Fast!”
“As fast as I can.” Dar threw the wheel hard over Sam slammed hard against his side.
“What’re you doing?”
“Evasive action. They might get smart and hook that cannon up to a ballistic computer.” And Dar proceeded to lay a course that would have given a triple-jointed snake double lumbago. They rattled around inside the lifeboat like dice in a cup.
“We’re winning,” Dar grated. “We’ve got it confused.”
A fireball exploded right under their tail.