To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga (12 page)

“No. Cut the Drive!”

“Cut the Drive?” Incredulously. “You heard me.
Cut
!” Then, to Grimes, “And what the hell are
you
waiting for?”

The Ensign knew what he had to do; he had rehearsed it often enough. He did it. From the nozzles that pierced the outer shell spouted the cloud of reflective vapor, just in time, just as the enemy’s lasers lashed out at their target. It seemed that the ship’s internal temperature rose suddenly and sharply—although that could have been illusion, fostered by the sight of the fiery fog glimpsed through the viewports before the armored shutters slammed home.

There were targets now on Grimes’ fire control screen, two of them, but he could not loose a missile until the tumbling rotors of the Drive had ceased to spin, to precess. The use of the anti-laser vapor screen had been risky enough. Abruptly the screens went blank—which signified that the temporal precession rates of hunted and hunters were no longer in synchronization, that the fields of the pirates had failed to lock on. In normal spacetime there would be no need to synchronize—and then the hunters would discover that their quarry had claws and teeth.

Aboard
Epsilon Sextans
the keening note of the Drive died to a whisper, a barely audible murmur, fading to silence. There was the inevitable second or so of utter disorientation when, as soon as it was safe, the engineers braked the gyroscopes.

Craven acted without hesitation, giving his ship headway and acceleration with Inertial Drive. He was not running—although this was the impression that he wished to convey. He was inviting rather than evading combat—but if the Waldegren captains chose to assume that
Epsilon Sextans
was, as she had been, an unarmed merchantman (after all, the anti-laser screen could have been jury rigged from normal ship’s stores and equipment), taking evasive action, that was
their
error of judgment.

Grimes watched his screens intently. Suddenly the two blips reappeared, astern, all of a hundred kilos distant, but closing. This he reported.

“Stand by for acceleration!” ordered Craven. “Reaction Drive—stand by!”

It was all part of the pattern—a last, frantic squandering of reaction mass that could do no more than delay the inevitable. It would look good from the enemy control rooms.

“Reaction Drive ready!” reported Baxter over the intercom.

“Thank you. Captain to all hands, there will be no countdown.
Fire
!”

From the corner of his eye Grimes saw Craven’s hand slam down on the key. Acceleration slammed him brutally back into his chair. There was a roar that was more like an explosion than a normal rocket firing, a shock that jarred and rattled every fitting in the Control Room.

Craven remarked quietly. “That must have looked convincing enough—but I hope that Baxter didn’t really blow a chamber.”

There was only the Inertial Drive now, and the two blips that, very briefly, had fallen astern, were now creeping up again, closing the range. “Anti-laser,” ordered Craven briefly.

“But, sir, it’ll just be wasting it. They’ll not be using laser outside twenty kilometers.”

“They’ll not be expecting a gunnery specialist aboard this wagon, either.”

Once again the nozzles spouted, pouring out a cloud that fell rapidly astern of the running ship, dissipating uselessly.

Craven looked at his own screens, frowned, muttered, “They’re taking their sweet time about it . . . probably low on reaction mass themselves.” He turned to Grimes. “I think a slight breakdown of the I.D.’s in order.”

“As you say, sir.” The Ensign could not forget having been called a damned, sneaking, prurient puppy. Let Craven make his own decisions.

“Stand by for Free Fall,” ordered the Captain quietly. The steady throbbing of the Inertial Drive faltered, faltered and ceased. There were two long minutes of weightlessness, and then, for five minutes, the Drive came back into operation.
A breakdown,
the enemy must be thinking. A
breakdown, and the engineers sweating and striving to get the ship under way again.
A breakdown—it would not be surprising after the mauling she had endured at the first encounter.

She hung there, and although her actual speed could be measured in kilometers a second she was, insofar as her accelerating pursuers were concerned, relatively motionless. Grimes wondered why the warships did not use their radio, did not demand surrender—
Epsilon Sextans’
transceiver was switched on, but no sound issued from the speaker but the hiss and crackle of interstellar static. He voiced his puzzlement to Craven.

Craven laughed grimly. “They know who
we
are—or they think that they know. And they know that we know who
they
are. After what happened before, why should we expect mercy? All that we can do now—they think—is to get the Mannschenn Drive going again. But with that comic beacon of theirs working away merrily they’ll be able to home on us, no matter how random our precession.” He laughed again. “They haven’t a care in the world, bless their little black hearts.”

Grimes watched his screens. Forty kilometers—thirty—“Sir, the ALGE?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s your party now.”

For the third time reflective vapor gushed from the nozzles, surrounding the ship with a dense cloud. Craven, who had been watching the dials of the external temperature thermometers, remarked quietly, “They’ve opened fire. The shell plating’s heating up. Fast.”

And in the Control Room it felt hot—and hotter, Grimes pressed the button that unmasked his batteries. The gas screen, as well as affording protection from laser, hid the ship from visual observation. The enemy would not be expecting defense by force of arms.

He loosed his first salvo, felt the ship tremble as the missiles ejected themselves from their launching racks. There they were on the screens—six tiny sparks, six moronic mechanical intelligences programmed to home upon and destroy, capable of countering evasive action so long as their propellant held out. There they were on the screens—six of them, then four, then one. This last missile almost reached its target—then it, too, blinked out. The Waldegren frigates were now using their laser for defense, not attack.

“I don’t think,” remarked Craven quietly, “that they’ll use missiles. Not yet, anyhow. They want our cargo intact.” He chuckled softly. “But we’ve got them worried.”

Grimes didn’t bother to reply. The telltale lights on his panel told him that the six AVM launchers were reloaded. The AMMs—the anti-missile missiles—had not yet been fired. Dare he risk their use against big targets? He carried in his magazines stock sufficient for three full salvos only— and with no laser for anti-missile work dare he deplete his supply of this ammunition?

He had heard the AMMs described as “vicious little brutes.” They were to the Anti-Vessel Missiles as terriers are to mastiffs. Their warheads were small, but this was compensated for by their greater endurance. They were, perhaps, a little more “intelligent” than the larger rockets—and Grimes, vaguely foreseeing this present contingency, had made certain modifications to their “brains.”

He pushed the button that actuated his modifications, that overrode the original programming. He depressed the firing stud. He felt the vibration as the war-rockets streaked away from the ship, and on his screens watched the tiny points of light closing the range between themselves and the two big blips that were the targets. They were fast, and they were erratic. One was picked off by laser within the first ten seconds, but the others carried on, spurting and swerving, but always boring toward their objectives. Grimes could imagine the enemy gunnery officers flailing their lasers like men, armed only with sticks, defending themselves against a horde of small, savage animals. There was, of course, one sure defense—to start up the Mannschenn Drive and to slip back into the warped continuum where the missiles could not follow. But, in all probability, the Waldegren captains had yet to accept the fact, emotionally, that this helpless merchantman had somehow acquired the wherewithal to strike back.

Two of the AMMs were gone now, picked off by the enemy laser. Three were still closing on the target on
Epsilon Sextans’
port quarter, and only one on the target abaft the starboard beam. Grimes loosed his second flight of AMMs, followed it with a full salvo of AVMs. Then, knowing that the protective vapor screen must have been thinned and shredded by his rocketry, he sent out a replenishing gush of reflective gas.

He heard Craven cry out in exultation. The three AMMs of the first flight had hit their target, the three sparks had fused with the blip that represented the raider to port. The three sparks that were the second flight were almost there, and overtaking them were the larger and brighter sparks of the second AVM salvo. The Anti-Missile Missiles would cause only minor damage to a ship—but, in all probability, they would throw fire control out of kilter, might even destroy laser projectors. In theory, one AVM would suffice to destroy a frigate; a hit by three at once would make destruction a certainty.

And so it was.

Seen only on the radar screen, as a picture lacking in detail painted on a fluorescent surface by an electron brush, it was anticlimactic. The blips, the large one, the three small ones and the three not so small, merged. And then there was an oddly shaped blob of luminescence that slowly broke up into a cluster of glowing fragments, a gradually expanding cluster, a leisurely burgeoning flower of pale fire.

Said Craven viciously, “The other bastard’s got cold feet. . . .”

And so it was. Where she had been on the screen was only darkness, a darkness in which the sparks that were missiles and anti-missiles milled about aimlessly. They would not turn upon each other—that would have been contrary to their programming. They would not, in theory, use their remaining fuel to home upon the only worthwhile target remaining—
Epsilon Sextans
herself. But, as Craven knew and as Grimes knew, theory and practice do not always coincide. Ships have been destroyed by their own missiles.

With reluctance Grimes pushed the DESTRUCT button. He said to the Captain, gesturing toward the wreckage depicted on the screen, “Pick up survivors, sir? If there are any.”

“If there are any,” snarled Craven, “that’s their bad luck. No—we give chase to the other swine!”

18

GIVE CHASE . . .

It was easier said than done. The surviving frigate had restarted her Mannschenn Drive, had slipped back into the warped continuum where, unless synchronization of precession rates was achieved and held, contact between vessels would be impossible. The Carlotti Beacon in
Epsilon Sextans’
hold was worse than useless; it had been designed to be homed upon, not to be a direction-finding instrument. (In any case, it could function as such only if the beacon aboard the Waldegren ship were working.) Neither Craven nor Grimes knew enough about the device to effect the necessary modifications. The interstellar drive engineers thought that they could do it, but their estimates as to the time required ranged from days to weeks. Obviously, as long as it was operating it would be of value to the enemy only.

So it was switched off.

There was only one method available to Craven to carry out the pursuit—psionic tracking. He sent for his Psionic Radio Officer, explained the situation. The telepath was a young man, pasty faced, unhealthy looking, but not unintelligent. He said at once, “Do you think, Captain, that the other officers and myself are willing to carry on the fight? After all, we’ve made our point. Wouldn’t it be wisest to carry on, now, for Waverley?”

“Speaking for meself,” put in Baxter, who had accompanied Jane Pentecost to Control, “an’ fer any other Rim Worlders present, I say that now the bastards are on the run it’s the best time ter smack ‘em again. An’ hard. An’ the tame time-twisters think the same as we do. I’ve already had words with ‘em.” He glared at the telepath. “Our snoopin’ little friend here should know very well what the general consensus of opinion is.”

“We do not pry,” said the communications officer stiffly. “But I am willing to abide by the will of the majority.”

“And don’t the orders of the Master come into it?” asked Craven, more in amusement than anger.

“Lawful commands, sir?” asked Grimes who, until now, had been silent.

“Shut up!” snapped Jane Pentecost.

“Unluckily, sir,” the young man went on, “I do not possess the direction-finding talent. It is, as you know, quite rare.”

“Then what
can
you do?” demanded Craven.

“Sir, let me finish, please. The psionic damping device—I don’t know what it was, but I suspect that it was the brain of some animal with which I am unfamiliar—was in the ship that was destroyed. The other vessel carries only a normal operator, with normal equipment—himself and some sort of organic amplifier. He is still within range, and I can maintain a listening watch—”

“And suppose
he
listens to you?” asked the Captain. “Even if you transmit nothing—as you will not do, unless ordered by myself—there could be stray thoughts. And that, I suppose, applies to all of us.”

The telepath smiled smugly. “Direction-finding is not the only talent. I’m something of a damper myself—although not in the same class as the one that was blown up. I give you my word, sir, that this vessel is psionically silent.” He raised his hand as Craven was about to say something. “Now, sir, I shall be able to find out where the other ship is heading. I know already that her Mannschenn Drive unit is not working at full capacity; it sustained damage of some kind during the action. I’m not a navigator, sir, but it seems to me that we could be waiting for her when she reemerges into the normal continuum.”

“You’re not a navigator,” agreed Craven, “and you’re neither a tactician nor a strategist. We should look rather silly, shouldn’t we, hanging in full view over a heavily fortified naval base, a sitting duck. Even so . . .” His big right hand stroked his beard. “Meanwhile, I’ll assume that our little friends are headed in the general direction of Waldegren, and set course accordingly. If Mr. Grimes will be so good as to hunt up the target star in the Directory . . .”