Once more the ship lurched, nearly throwing Ben out of his seat. He snapped on the rear view screen in time to see one of his own air-to-air rockets flash out to intercept a pursuing Earth missile. It exploded, uncomfortably close, and the concussion wave jarred the ship again.
Suddenly, he saw something else. As the ship turned slightly in its outward course, the pale disk of Earth’s moon filled the view screen. Somewhere beyond, Ben knew, the orbit ship was waiting. But now, as he started to look away, a dozen long black shadows moved out in silhouette across the moon’s yellow disk like phantoms in the blackness. They were moving, and moving fast, moving outward, already far beyond his own ship.
They were not missiles. They were too large and swift for that, and they were moving into deep space beyond Earth’s orbit. A moment later they had passed across the disk of the moon and were gone again into blackness, far out of range of the escaping raiders.
Only one thing was possible. They were space craft. But they looked like no ships that Spacers had ever launched.
Ben heard a swift intake of breath and saw Tom Barron staring at the view screen over his shoulder.
“Did you see that?” Ben asked.
“I saw it,” Tom Barron said.
“What were they?”
The Earthman’s eyes were bright. “Ships,” he said. “Hundreds of ships, maybe thousands. That was just one squadron.”
“You mean Earth ships?” Ben asked incredulously.
But Tom Barron was shouting for his sister, throwing the rear compartment open in excitement.
“They’ve launched the fleet,” he cried. “Joyce, they’ve done it, just the way they promised! This raid must have been the trigger.”
Ben Trefon stared at them. The girl was dressed in baggy Spacer fatigues, three sizes too large for her, with the cuffs and sleeves rolled up. She hugged her brother, squealing with excitement. “Did you actually see them?”
“No doubt about it. And if they’ve thrown up one squadron, that must mean the whole fleet is going out!”
“Going out where?” Ben broke in.
Tom Barron laughed. “You’ll find out, soon enough. Don’t worry, there won’t be a one of you that doesn’t find out! You think you can raid us and raid us, steal our food, steal our women—well, you’ll see. You’ve made your last raid.”
Numbly, Ben turned back to the control panel. It was incredible. Of course, Earth had always been heavily fortified for defensive action against the raiders, even though their ignorance of space techniques had made their efforts feeble. And it was true that Earth had even launched a punitive expedition from time to time in futile attempts to strike back at the Spacers. Once in a while an Earth ship had hijacked a Spacer patrol ship or a small cargo ship moving through the Asteroid Belt, shooting down the crew and gutting the ship. But these had been minor harassments to the Spacers, clumsy and foolish gestures and nothing more. There had never been anything even approaching a major assault by Earthmen against the Spacer strongholds. The very idea was ridiculous. Even if ships had somehow been built, it took crews to man them. And that was the flaw. Cruel and treacherous as they were, everyone knew that Earthmen were basically cowards when it came to space flight.
And deep space was no place for cowards.
Ben turned his attention back to his radio. The whole idea of an Earth fleet attacking Spacers was laughable. The shadows he had seen must have been missiles of some sort, some new defense maneuver. Maybe that was what his father had been thinking of when he warned about trouble on its way.
But one thing was certain: if he couldn’t establish contact with his squad leader and do it soon, he would be in plenty of trouble trying to locate the orbit ship. He flipped off the automatic signal and began transmitting by hand signal, carefully probing in all quadrants of space around his ship.
Suddenly there was a response as a wave of static blotted out the blanket of overlying radio chatter.
“Squad 13 here,” a voice came through. “Who’s contacting?”
Ben breathed a sigh of relief. “Unit 4, Squad 7,” he said. “Can you hear me?”
“Just barely, but you’re coming through, Unit 4. Why are you contacting?”
“No response from Squad 7 leader,” Ben returned. “I’m reporting in for a track on Orbit 3.” There was a burst of static, and his contact became blotchy. He waited, then again caught the message. “Sorry, Unit 4. Squad 7 leader never got off, and the orbit ship has been hit. We’re crippled ourselves.”
“Do you need help?” Ben felt his hands trembling on the microphone. With the orbit ship knocked out—
“You’d never find us,” Squad 13 came back. “And we’re out of contact with the command ship—not even sure it’s functional—so it wouldn’t be any help. Follow disaster orders and get yourself out of there, boy. Any way you can. They’re really coming after us.”
Static broke in again, and Ben snapped off the transmitter after a vain attempt to recontact. He took a deep breath, trying to think. Something had happened to the escape plan, something catastrophic enough to disrupt communications almost completely and throw the retreating raiders into a disaster pattern. Of course, raid plans often had to be changed somewhat to get ships and their cargoes back to the orbit ship safely, but disaster pattern meant disorganized retreat—essentially every man for himself and don’t look for support.
And that could only mean that somehow this raid had really exploded a powder keg.
There was only one thing to do—to move and move fast, forgetting organized plans and heading out for the original rendezvous point by any means he could get there. If the raid still had a command ship, it would be waiting there to collect the stragglers and direct their orbits home.
Ben turned to his captives and pointed to the acceleration cots at the rear of the cabin. “Strap down,” he said.
“What are you planning to do?” Tom Barron asked.
“I’m going to travel,” Ben retorted. “And if you two don’t want to be squashed against the bulkhead, you’d better strap down tight.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Tom Barron said. “There’s no place for you to go. You people are going to be wiped out of the sky.”
“Maybe so,” Ben Trefon said. “But if you think I’m going to sit around and wait for them to come and get me, you’ve got a surprise in store.”
They strapped down.
For Ben Trefon the next few hours were a nightmare that taxed his ingenuity and navigational skill to the utmost. All of his life he had been taught navigation; it was part of a Spacer’s heritage to pilot ships.
He had grown from childhood with intimate contact and knowledge of the great wilderness of space that lay beyond planetary boundaries in the solar system. But he had never before been forced to put all of his knowledge to the test so abruptly or under such pressure.
He knew that until he had contacted his command ship and joined with the other raiders into some sort of organized retreat he was a sitting duck for any kind of assault weapon the Earth forces chose to throw at him. A squadron of ships could provide a blanket of protective coverage for themselves; a single ship could depend only on its own small store of counter weapons. Now, as he accelerated to the limit of his tolerance, he was even more vulnerable because he would have so little time between detection of an assault weapon and the moment of explosion. Three times in rapid succession he “hooked” Earth missiles, each time barely getting them detonated before they struck his ship. In the blackness around him there was no sign of other ships, but the periodic flash of a contact explosion on all sides of him told him that out in the blackness other raiding ships were following the same course he was.