“Should I stomp on his hands and break his bones?” Meta asked.
Maddox wondered if the professor was dead or alive. They might need Villars if Ludendorff had died.
“No,” the captain said. “Take Villars to the brig. I’m going to warm up the disruptor cannon. Galyan, I’ll need your help for that.”
“Yes, Captain,” the AI said.
“Don’t hurt the slarn hunter,” Maddox told Meta. “We have to take our time with him later.”
“Ah,” Meta said. “Yes, I understand.” In her power-armor, she scooped up the tangled slarn hunter, marching out of the chamber with him, carrying Villars as if he was an oversized baby.
“What do we do first?” Maddox asked Galyan.
“Leave it to me,” the AI said.
***
“The captain did it,” Valerie said on the bridge. “Galyan is powering up the disruptor cannon.”
“None too soon,” Keith said. “How’s our shield doing?”
“It won’t be up for some time yet,” Valerie said.
“Fine,” Keith said. “If I can keep the drone from exploding, it won’t matter anyway.”
“How can you do that?”
“It’s going to take combination neutron and disruptor beam fire. I give us a fifty percent chance of success.”
“Those are bad odds,” Valerie said.
Keith glanced at the sergeant. “Maybe, but they’re better than a thirty percent chance. How much longer until I have the disruptor cannon?”
Valerie checked her board. “Two minutes,” she said.
The ace grinned in a nasty manner. “That should be just about right. Are you ready?”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Watch and learn, little lady, and see how it’s done.”
Valerie grinned tightly. Long ago, his hyper-confidence had bothered her. Now she drew strength from it because everyone was relying on the man. If anyone could do this, it would be Keith.
The ace began maneuvering the starship, once more coming out from behind the asteroid. The sight shocked him and caused Valerie to gasp.
The last drone attacked Ludendorff’s asteroid. Massive chunks of rock drifted from the main mass. The red beam sliced off another piece as they watched. Somewhere in the floating jumble of debris was the professor.
“Is he even alive anymore?” Valerie whispered.
The ace shook his head, shivering. That wasn’t his concern now. He had to destroy the Builder drone.
“Here goes,” Keith said, stabbing the control.
The purple neutron beam lanced from the starship, only to be halted by the drone’s shield. The same old contest began as the silver missile-shaped object continued to ray the disintegrating asteroid base.
“You can’t let the drone explode,” Valerie said.
Keith didn’t say a word. He already knew that. The professor might have survived the other nova-blasts. He wouldn’t survive another.
Soon, the starship’s antimatter cyclers howled, pumping the disruptor cannon with energy. Keith kept glancing at his board, waiting for the firing control to turn green.
“There’s an energy spike over there,” Valerie warned. “I think it’s getting ready to self-destruct.”
The ace’s teeth ground together, making an ugly noise. Then, the control turned green. The drone was still in his targeting array. Keith pressed the control. With a loud sound, the disruptor ray fired its globule of force.
The neutron beam had considerably weakened the drone’s shield. Maybe the alien AI over there knew that.
“It’s self destructing,” Valerie whispered.
Then an interesting sequence of events began. The neutron beam poured destructive force against the drone shield, turning it critical. The shield went down at the first touch of the disruptor glob. At the same moment, the drone ignited in a thermonuclear explosion. The disruptor energy “devoured” some of that annihilating force, weakening what should have been a killing explosion.
Valerie watched her instruments with absorbing interest. She had never seen or even read about something like this. The two forces partly cancelled each other out, like tons of dynamite used to quell a forest fire.
The remaining atomic energies billowed outward in a subdued blast. The collapsium armor shielded the crew from most of it.
Ludendorff’s asteroid didn’t fare as well. The rest of the planetoid broke apart, although the pieces didn’t all fly away. Instead, the asteroid became its own mini-field, the many pieces large and small drifting together in a churning circular mass.
As the disruptor cannon powered down, Keith sat back in his seat and swiveled around. “What do you think? Is the crazy professor still alive out there?”
Valerie sat hunched over her panel, her gaze glued to the instruments. Without looking up, she said, “That’s what I’m attempting to discover.”
***
Once more, Maddox found himself in the shuttle, creeping toward the smashed asteroid. This time, Keith piloted the craft. Meta remained aboard Victory with Riker watching the prisoner. Dana sat beside the captain, studying her panel as she searched for signs of life in the space debris.
From the starship, Galyan also tracked the rocks and radioactive dust. So far, no one had found any signs of life.
Ludendorff’s archeological partners were locked in their quarters aboard the starship. This time, the AI wouldn’t release them unless Maddox gave the order.
“I’m slowing down,” Keith said. Like Maddox and Dana, the ace wore a vacc-suit with helmet. It was a precaution against the heavy radiation outside.
The captain watched Keith work, amazed. He couldn’t believe the destruction out here. Why had the drones concentrated on the asteroid base? It didn’t make sense. They had certainly destroyed the asteroid.
Driblets of noise tapped against the hull outside, pebbles striking the shuttle as the ace tried to maneuver through the space junk.
“Ludendorff must be dead,” Keith said.
Maddox caught the ace’s eye and shook his head. Keith raised his eyebrows. Maddox twisted his head toward Dana.
The doctor sat hunched over her board with an intense look of concern on her features.
Keith gave the captain another questioning glance.
Maddox tried to give the pilot a look that said, “I’ll tell you later.”
That seemed to work. The ace resumed piloting without further comment.
“How long do you think we have?” Maddox asked Dana.
“Excuse me?” the doctor said in a lifeless voice.
“Will more drones come?”
“Why ask me?” Dana said. “I have no earthly idea.”
“It’s probably smart to go off what we’ve seen so far,” Keith said. “The drones must have a central computer headquarters somewhere in the asteroid belt. Valerie told me the star system is the Bermuda Triangle of space. Until now, though, no one has seen these drones.”
“The New Men must have seen them,” Maddox said. “Likely, they captured one and learned how to construct the device that shoots the red beam.”
“Let me rephrase,” Keith said. “No one on our side has seen these drones and lived to tell about it. I’d sure like to know how the New Men got hold of their first drone.”
“Yes,” Maddox agreed. “It might explain many things.”
“Captain,” Galyan said over the comm.
“Maddox here.”
“I have discovered an anomaly in the debris,” Galyan said. “Would you like its coordinates?”
“Please,” Maddox said.
“I am downloading them into the shuttle’s computers,” Galyan said.