"It sounds possible. What is the time gap between the instant we reach the tubes and the earliest the guns can fire?"
"We leave their cone of fire exactly six-tenths of a second before they can blast us."
"Plenty of time. Let us go."
Jason held up his hand. "Just one thing. I'm game if you are. We carry cutting equipment and weapons. Once inside the ship there should not be too many problems. But it is not a piece of cake by any means. The two of us go. But we don't tell Meta—and she stays here."
"Three have a better chance than two to get through."
"And two have a better chance than one. I'm not going unless you agree."
"Agreed. Set the plan up."
Meta was busy with her new-found interest in codes and ciphers; it was a perfect time. The Earth navy ships were well trained in precision rock-throwing—as well as being completely bored by it. They let the computers do most of the work. While the preparations were being made, Kerk and Jason suited up in the combat suits: more tanks than suits, heavy with armor and slung about with weapons. Kerk attached the special equipment they would need while Jason short-circuited the airlock indicator so Meta, in the control room, would not know they had left the ship. Silently they slipped out.
No matter how many times you do it, no matter how you prepare yourself mentally, the sensation of floating free in space is not an enjoyable one. It is easy to lose orientation, to have the sensation that all directions are up—or down—and Jason was more than slightly glad of the accompanying bulk of the Pyrran.
"Operation has begun."
The voice crackled in their earphones, then they were too busy to be concerned about anything else. The computer informed them that the wall of giant boulders was sweeping toward them—they could see nothing themselves—and gave them instructions to pull aside. Then the things were suddenly there, floating ponderously by, already shrinking into the distance as the jets fired on the space-suits. Again following instructions, they accelerated to the correct moving spot in space and fitted themselves into the gap in the center of the floating rock field. They had to juggle their jets until they had the same velocity as the boulders; then, power cut off, they floated free. "Do you remember the instructions?" Jason asked. "Perfectly."
"Well, let me run through them again for the sake of my morale, if you don't mind." The battleship was visible now far ahead, like a tiny splinter in space. "We do nothing at all to draw attention as we come in. There will be plenty of activity around us, but we don't use power except in an extreme emergency. And we get hit by small-caliber fire—the best thing that can happen to us because it means the big stuff is firing at something else. Meanwhile the other attack of flying rocks will be coming in from our flank. We won't see them—but our computer will. It is monitoring the battleship as well, and the instant the big guns fire on the second wave, it will send the signal go. Then we go. Full power on the rockets toward the main drive tube. When our suit radar says we are eleven hundred meters from the ship, we put on full reverse thrust because we will be inside the guns. See you at the bottom of the tube."
"What if the computer fires the tube to clear us out?"
"I have been trying not to think about that. We can only hope that it is not programmed for such a complex action and that its logic circuits will not come up with the answer…"
Space around them exploded with searing light. Their helmet visors darkened automatically, but the explosions could still be clearly seen, they were so intense. And silent. A rock the size of a small house burned and vaporized soundlessly not a hundred meters from Jason, and he cringed inside the suit. The silent destruction continued—but the silence was suddenly shattered by deafening explosions, and his suit vibrated with the impact.
He was being hit! Even though he expected it, wanted it, the jarring was intense and unbelievably loud. Then it stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and dimly, he heard a weak voice say go.
"Blast, Kerk, blast!" he shouted as he jammed on full power.
The suit kicked him hard, numbing him, slowing his fingers as they grappled for the intensity control on the helmet and turned it off. He winced against the glare of burning matter but could just make out the disk of the spaceship's stern before him, the main tube staring like a great black eye. It grew quickly until it filled space and the sudden red glow of the preset radar said he had passed the eleven-hundred-meter mark. The guns couldn't touch him here—but he could crash into the battleship and demolish himself. Then the full blast of the retrojets hit him, slamming him against the suit, stunning him again, making control almost impossible. The dark opening blossomed before him, filling his vision, blacking out everything else.
He was inside it, the pressure lessening as the landing circuits took over and paced his rate of descent. Had Kerk made it? He had stopped, floating free, when something plummeted from above, glanced off him and crashed heavily into the end of the tube.
"Kerk!" Jason grabbed the limp figure as it rebounded after the tremendous impact, grappled it and turned his lights on it. "Kerk!" No answer. Dead?
"Landed… faster than I intended."
"You did indeed. But we're here. Now let's get to work before the computer decides to burn us out."
Spurred by this danger, they unshipped the molecular unbinder torch, the only thing that would affect the tough tube liners, and worked a circular line on the wall just above the injectors. It took almost two minutes of painstaking work to slowly cut the opening, and every second of the time they waited for the tube to fire.
It did not. The circle was completed, and Kerk put his shoulder to it and fired his jets. The plug of metal and the Pyrran instantly vanished from sight—and Jason dived in right behind him into the immense, brightly lit engine room, made suddenly brighter by a flare of light behind him. Jason spun about just in time to see the flames cut off, the flames leaping from the hole they had just cut. The end of a microsecond blast. "A smart computer," he said weakly. "Smart indeed."
Kerk had ignored the blast and dived into a control room to one side. Jason followed him—and met him as he emerged with a large chart in a twisted metal frame. "Diagram of the ship. Tore it from the wall. Central control this way. Go."
"All right, all right," Jason muttered, working to keep pace with the Pyrran's hurtling form. This was what Pyrrans did best, and it was an effort to keep up the pace. "Repair robots," he said when they entered a long corridor. "They won't bother us…"
Before he had finished speaking, the two robots had raised their welding torches and rushed to the attack. But even as they moved, Kerk's gun blasted twice, and they exploded into junk. "Good computer," Kerk said. "Turn anything against us. Stay alert and cover my back."
There was no more time for talking. They changed their course often, since it was obvious that they were heading toward central control. Every machine along the way wanted to kill them. Housekeeping robots rushed at them with brooms, TV screens exploded as they passed, airtight doors tried to close on them, floors were electrified if they were touched. It was a battle, but really a one-sided one as long as they stayed alert. Their suits were invulnerable to small-scale attacks, insulated from electricity. And Pyrrans are the best fighters in the galaxy. In the end they came to the door marked centra kontrolo, and Kerk offhandedly blasted it down and floated through. The lights were lit, the room and the controls were spotlessly clean.