“Thank you,” Valerie said. “Let’s hope Captain Maddox feels the same way.”
***
Maddox sat in the shuttle’s control chamber, watching the passive sensor. The two star cruisers were increasing velocity. Their craft would be in red beam range soon.
Outside the asteroid maze, Victory’s neutron beam smashed rubble into fine particles. The ace threaded through the debris on their side, taking more chances than Maddox thought wise. The alternative was worse, though, so he kept his mouth shut.
“Maybe we could make a deal with the New Men,” Dana suggested.
Maddox knew that was her love for Ludendorff speaking. There would be no deals with the New Men. If these were the “good” ones the professor had spoken about before, why were they bearing down on them so hard? No. These were the regular New Men, invaders without quarter. There was only one way to fight them, no-holds-barred.
Keith sat back and swiveled to face Maddox. “We’re not going to make it like this, sir,” the ace declared.
“Suggestions?” Maddox asked.
“Increase acceleration as we roll the dice.”
“With what breaks through our hull and ricochets around inside?” the captain asked.
“That’s right.”
Maddox only needed to debate the idea a moment. The other alternative was to wait for the star cruisers to destroy them once the enemy got in range. “Do it,” the captain said.
“No,” Dana said. “That doesn’t make sense to take needless risks. We’re so close to our ship.”
“It’s a bitter choice, I realize,” Maddox said. “But we’re out of options.”
“We can’t keep attempting hazardous selections like this,” Dana said. “One of these times, the risks are going to catch up with us.”
“These are the New Men we’re dealing with,” Maddox said. “We’re forced into one hazardous venture after another because we’re playing to win, not come in second to them.”
“We’re humanity’s last hope against the planet-killer,” Dana said. “Ludendorff is our only hope against stopping it. We can’t afford to die just yet.”
“Negative,” Maddox said. “There’s always more than one way to win, even for humanity. Or haven’t you ever heard of the test they gave a chimpanzee?”
Dana stared at him.
“In an intelligence study,” Maddox said, “scientists once gave an imprisoned chimpanzee fifteen ways to escape. The ape found the sixteenth.”
“That doesn’t prove anything out here,” Dana said in exasperation.
“Go,” Maddox told Keith. Afterward, the captain put his helmet back on.
“Someone should look after the professor,” Dana said.
Maddox studied her, finally nodding. “Go,” he said.
“Now you trust me?” Dana asked in a bitter tone.
“Would you tell if I shouldn’t?”
Dana peered at him thoughtfully. “After all we’ve been through, yes, I would tell you if you shouldn’t.”
“I believe you,” Maddox said, although he wasn’t really sure he did.
His words made the doctor smile sadly. She locked her helmet to the vacc-suit, got up and hurried from the chamber.
“Here we go,” Keith said, while increasing velocity. “We’re playing craps in space.”
The shuttle continued to dodge and weave through the debris, but more pebbles struck the hull. Then a fist-sized rock bounced off the armor, leaving a large dent outside. More debris struck, one plowing through the hull armor. It shattered a water line in a secondary compartment. Moisture sprayed into the sudden vacuum. Hatches sealed. The line froze and the shuttle continued through the mass.
“I don’t know, Captain,” Keith said. “This isn’t looking good for us.”
“Where’s the optimist I’ve come to know?” Maddox asked.
“He’s struggling to break free of his pessimism, sir.”
“Faster,” Maddox said.
Keith bit his lower lip as he obeyed orders. The shuttle jinked one way and then another. The gravity dampeners purred at maximum. A larger boulder tumbled toward them. Keith couldn’t avoid it altogether. The tons of stone smashed one of the stubby wings and shredded open that side. The shuttle began to tumble end over end.
Maddox hoped the doctor had made it to medical and strapped herself down in time.
The ace struggled to right the craft. He might have won the contest. He was the master ace after all, but the craft plowed against another massive object, and they began to spin.
“We rolled snakes eyes this time, sir!” Keith shouted.
“Captain Maddox,” Valerie radioed.
Without the gravity dampeners in operation, not even Maddox would have been able to lift his arms. He tapped his board, saying, “Maddox here.”
“The enemy vessels have locked onto you, sir,” Valerie said. “I’m heading for you. Maybe if we can get close enough, I can try to energize the shield with you inside.”
“Valerie!” Keith shouted, even as he worked the controls.
“Yes?” she said.
“I have a better idea. You have to swoop onto us and use the star drive at the same time. Hopefully, what’s left of our shuttle will be caught up in your wash.”
“You think you’ll jump with us?” Valerie asked.
“It’s one of the theoretical problems we had on Titan,” the ace said. “It might work.”
“What do you think, sir?” Valerie asked Maddox.
“Do it, Lieutenant. Once the star cruisers fire their beams, we’re dead anyway. This at least gives us a chance, however slim.”
“Roger,” Valerie said. “I’m on my way. This is going to get tricky.”
Keith continued to fight against the out-of-control shuttle. He braked, used side-jets and applied thrust against the spin of the craft.
“If we can keep from hitting another rock,” the ace said, “I’ll be happy.”
Maddox studied the passive sensor. The lead enemy star cruiser was in beam-firing range. A light appeared on the comm-board. The captain slapped it.
A second later, a New Man appeared on the screen. He was lean like all the others, with golden skin and a sneering manner.
“Surrender or die,” the New Man said.
“We surrender,” Maddox said.
The New Man nodded. “The alien craft attempting to rescue you must immediately break off.”
“At once, Your Excellency,” Maddox said.
“The star cruiser is firing,” Keith said. “His talk was a trick to lull us.”
Maddox didn’t know why the New Man had bothered.
Keith jinked wildly. Because of their spin, the end of the shuttle violently flipped upward. The red beam slashed where the aft part of the craft had just been.
The shuttle now tumbled out of control faster than ever. A gravity dampener blew, sending dense smoke into the compartment.
Maddox knew the enemy must be retargeting them. Why had the New Man lied about asking for surrender?
Another gravity dampener gave out with a screeching sound. The tumbling end-over-end now produced too many Gs. Keith’s head slumped forward as the ace passed out. Maddox hung onto consciousness a little longer.
Then, Starship Victory filled the window outside.
Are we jumping? It was the captain’s last conscious thought before he too passed out from lack of blood to the brain.
-19-
Kane sat in the control room of his nondescript scout. He’d already spent many lonely days among the space debris in the Epsilon Indi System. He’d reached here from the Beyond in a single, agonizing leap. It had taken Kane twelve hours to recover sufficiently to drag himself to sickbay. The agony of the jump…he never wanted to do anything remotely like that again.
The K class star was twelve light-years from the Solar System. Instead of planets, Epsilon Indi had binary brown dwarfs as companions. The two masses—the larger sixty times greater than Jupiter—circled each other at 2.1 AUs. The brown dwarfs orbited Epsilon Indi at 1500 AUs. The pulling, twisting gravities of the star and its brown dwarfs had made this an unprofitable system for the larger corporations and even for the independence-minded wild-caters. No useful planets or asteroids orbited here. Despite the unprofitability of Epsilon Indi, because of the system’s proximity to Earth, Star Watch sent regular patrols through and often left recording buoys.