Alex noticed that sweat had beaded on Ida's lip hair. Then blinked as salt droplets roll down his forehead, into his eyes. He deliberately looked over at Doc, Hugin, and Munin.
The tigers were pacing back and forth, their tails lashing. Doc sat perfectly still on the tabletop.
"I have a diversion on missile one," Bet called suddenly. "The bassid's turnin'... come on, you. Come on... right on and..." She blanked her pickup as one Goblin, idiot sure its mission was accomplished, blew a meter-long diversionary missile into nothingness.
"Dummy," Bet said triumphantly, pulling off her helmet.
Sten suddenly muttered obscenities, yanked stick and controls back: "Stupid missile's got a misfiring engine... no way to get a track on it."
The second Goblin arrowed straight into Sten's vision— and Sten desperately stabbed at the manual det switch.
The small nuclear head on his missile fireballed... but Sten had already switched "himself" to the second countermissile, spun it on its own axis, and pushed full drive.
"You have a negative hit on that," Ida said, keeping her voice calm.
Sten didn't answer. He was slowly overhauling the Jann missile. He closed in... and his helmet automatically switched him from radar to realtime visual.
Gotcha... gotcha... gotcha... he thought as the blackened drive tubes of the Goblin grew visible.
"Seven seconds till contact." Ida said, wondering how her voice stayed level.
And Sten fired his missile.
Another atomic fireball.
"I still have a—nope, I don't. Radar echo. We got 'em all. Lieutenant, old buddy."
Sten took off the helmet; he blinked around the control room. He'd stayed with his missile right until det point—and his mind insisted that the explosion had temporarily flare-blinded his eyes. Slowly the room went from negative to overexposed to normal.
Nobody applauded. They were, after all, professionals. The only comment was Alex's: "An' noo y'ken whae a Scotsman wearit kilts. It's so he noo hae to change trews when aught like this happens."
"Fine," Sten said. "First problem out of the way. With only two long-range launches, that's probably all they've got. Which means they'll close with us in..."
"Four hours," Ida said.
"Four hours. Perfectly lovely. Find us a place to hide. Preferably some nice world about 6AU wide with one hundred percent cloud cover."
Ida swung the scope console down on its retracting arm and started scanning the space-globe around them.
"Here's the plan. Ida'll find some world where we can go to ground." Sten said, in his best command voice. "Maybe we'll be able to reach it before the bad guys catch up with us. We'll go in-atmosphere, set it down—"
"Set this clunk down in-atmosphere?" Ida asked.
"—then we'll sit on what hopefully is a tropic isle until they get tired of lurking and we can go home."
"You call that a plan?"
"Doc. you got an alternative to sitting around up here and dying a lot?" Sten asked.
The team got to work.
"The enemy ship has diverted course, Sigfehr," the Jann XO said. "Probability is they are plotting landfall on Bannang IV."
Involuntarily the captain started, then composed himself. "That ship cannot be from any world in Lupus Cluster."
"Obviously not, sir."
"That increases my interest. An out-cluster ship, with enough antimissile capability to deter even us. Obviously a ship with what must be considered a valuable cargo. What is our closing rate?"
"We will be within intercept missile range in three hours, sir."
"And Bannang IV?"
"They could in-atmosphere at approximately the same time."
The captain allowed himself a smile. "Were I not interested in their cargo, it would be tempting to allow them to land on Bannang. It is true—Talamein will revenge his own."
"Your orders, sir?"
"Unchanged. Continue the pursuit. And destroy them."
"It ain't much of a world," Ida said, "but it's the best I can do."
Sten eyed the screen, half-consciously read it aloud: "Single solar system. Sun pretty much G-one yellow dwarf... five worlds...That's too close to the sun. Desert world... two methane giants."
"Unknown IV looks like home," Ida put in.
"Unknown IV it is. Let's see... about twelve thousand km on the polar axis. Spectograph—where the hell—okay: Acceptable minims on atmosphere. Grav's a little lighter'n normal. Mostly land... acceptable bodies of water... single source of electronic emission."
"So it's inhabited," Bet said from the galley area.
"Which is where we won't put it down. Maybe they're related to these clowns on our tail. You're right, Ida. That's our new home."
"Maybe it's our new home," Doc said. "Both screens, you will note, show about the same figure. We'll reach your Unknown Four just about the same time as the Turnmaa. The suspense should be most interesting." He pulled a chunk of raw soyasteak from Munin's plate and swallowed it.
Sten itemized: ground packs, weapons, surface suits, survival gear, first-contact pouches... as ready as possible.
The computer clacked and spat out seven small cards. Each duplicated the data held in the Cienfuegos' computer—the data the spy ship had been dispatched to gather, an analysis of a mineral found on a world in the now-distant Eryx Cluster.
Sten wondered if he'd ever find out why the Emperor was so interested in the gray rock that sat on the mess table in front of him. His but to do, keep from dying, and not ask classified questions.
He distributed the cards to the team members and tucked one each into Hugin and Munin's neck pouches.
"Ah hae to admire a mon wi' organization," Alex said. "Noo a' wha Ah hae to worry aboot is splittin' yon sample. Ah gie it a whirl an hour ago."
"And?" Sten asked curiously.
"Two iridium drills, two shipsteel crystals, an' one scratch in m' mum's heirloom diamond. It's hard, it is."
Sten's hand dropped, fingers curled. From the sheath in his arm a crystal knife dropped into his hand. Sten had grown it on Vulcan while doing time in the deadly industrial Hellworld for labor sabotage.
Double-edged, with a skeleton grip, the knife had a single purpose. To kill. There was no guard, only grooves on the end of the haft. The knife was about 22cm long and only 2.5cm thick.
Its blade, however, was barely 15 molecules wide. Far sharper than any razor could be. Laid against a diamond, with no pressure, it would cut smoothly through.
Sten carefully held the ore sample in one hand and started cutting. He was somewhat surprised—the blade met some resistance.
"Aye," Alex said. "Ah nae ken whae we're doin' aie this. A substance ae tha'... it's price is beyond reckon."
"Worst abortion anybody's ever seen," Ida said proudly.
"Worse than that," Doc added. "Ugly. Misshapen. Improbable. It should work just fine."
While the others in the team were readying themselves for landing, Doc and Ida had been building the decoy, three Gremlin antimissile missiles. The first was rebuilt to broadcast a radar echo like the Cienfuegos. The second was modified to provide an extremely eccentric evasion pattern, and the third was to provide diversionary launches, much as the Cienfuegos would under direct attack.
Finally the entire team stood around the three welded missiles, deep in the cargo hold of the ship.
"Pretty." Sten said. "But will it work?"
"Who the hell will ever find out?" Bet said. "If it does, we're fine. If it doesn't..."