by DUNCAN LUNAN

 

Proud Guns to the Sea

 

The necessary characteristic of a troubleshooter is his ability to solve insoluble problems—even if he does it with his own neck!

 

 

"Heave to, heave to," cried Henry Martin,

"And bring yourselves under my lee;

For I have turned robber all on the

salt sea, the salt sea, the salt

sea,

For to maintain my two brothers and me."

 

"We shall not heave to," the rich mer­chant cried,

"Nor bring ourselves under your lee;

But we will give unto you the death

shot, the death shot, the death

shot,

And we will point your proud guns to the sea."

—The Ballad of Henry Martin

 

Things had been quiet on Hallway for more than a month. There were long spells, in the evolution of this rather atypical colony, when nothing happened; nothing but the steady surrender of the land to the mastery of Twenty-sixth Century agriculture. The mineral resources of the country were still being mapped in detail. In a few months, the second-wave colonists would begin industrial de­velopment, starting the planet's long climb to self-sufficiency—in the far future, say a hundred or two hun­dred years, to partnership status and colonies of its own.

At present Hallway's population was about fifteen hundred, unusually high for a first-wave colony. The rea­son was that Hallway already had an advanced spaceport and ferry sys­tem, whereas most colonies de­pended on the ferries of visiting gal­leons until after third-wave expansion. Hallway was being colo­nized not for its future contribution to interstellar trade, but because of its position: it was the last stopover point for Terran-Astral galleons on their way into the Keron Empire.

In other words, Hallway was the most remote outpost of the human race. There were human beings fur­ther on—Terran-Astral had had per­manent offices on the major Keroni worlds for twenty years—but this was the outermost human planet, far beyond the normal sphere of human influence. Hallway and its sister worlds lay on the direct line from the human sphere to the Keron, a thin bridge of stars right through the older, very much larger sphere of the insectile Sheekathryn. Man had come up against the Sheekathryn af­ter three centuries of expansion, and narrowly escaped destruction at their hands; the Keroni had interstellar travel brought to them, and their escape was narrower still, but in 2501 human and Keroni explorers met at the heart of the Sheekathryn Empire.

Even now, so large and slow was the Sheekathryn Empire, that Sheekathryn colonies a few light-years from the star bridge knew nothing of the human-Sheekathryn war or the Keroni conflict in the op­posite direction. A year after Hall­way was colonized, two Sheekathryn ships had touched down and made first contact all over again.

Though trade with the Keron Empire was building up, so far only a few ships a year made the long jour­ney across the Sheekathryn sphere. The initial trade had been mainly in ideas, the human physical sciences for the Keroni variants of Sheekathryn psi technology, and the material cargoes were of equipment to boost the scientific revolution. For meaningful trade across the gulf, the Keroni would need their own gal­leons. There could have been a one-way trade, benefiting the Terran-As­tral Partnership more than the Ker­oni, but the lizards were sharp enough to see that and fierce enough to refuse it.

All this meant that the Terran-As­tral agent on Hallway had, so far, an undemanding post, despite the ferry system years ahead of the colony schedule. It explained how Jack Kellney could have such a position when still in his late twenties: by the time Hallway's traffic was significant he'd be older, experienced, and thor­oughly familiar with the colony he himself had helped to build. It also explained the biggest anomaly of all: that the agent on a colony still at first-stage expansion should have the use of a Stelrond schooner, the most expensive spacecraft (in cost and operation) built by man.

All the equipment landed by the last visiting galleon had been phased into use, weeks ahead of schedule. With his responsibility for that cargo discharged, Kellney had very little to do. The day the Mendelssohn came out of warp, he was going fishing; he was out in the country when the alarm went on his individual com­municator.

It took a few seconds to dig it out: he had thrust the thing deep into his kitbag. "Kellney here."

"Transmit for fix, Jack. We'll need you back here."

"O.K., here we go. What's hap­pening anyway? Have we a space-wreck emergency?"

"You're located. An aircar will be over you in minutes. It's not a space-wreck, yet. We've got a piracy alert!"

"You've got a what?" The huge Terran-Astral galleons would make incredible prizes, more than any pi­rate could handle. It had been tried only once in history, and then pri­marily for ransom. The major point against it was that by reason of sheer size, the galleons came out better armed than anything else in space. Piracy of Terran-Astral ships was fantasy.

"The message torpedo came out of warp a few minutes ago, screaming piracy. It belongs to the Mendelssohn of Partnership Europa. She's coming through armed and active, so every­thing else watch out!"

"What can it be?" Jack could hear the aircar coming. "If the Sheekathryn attacked them for any reason, they wouldn't call that pi­racy." But as he said that, he remem­bered the unknown regions of the old Empire surrounding the star bridge. Anything could be going on there. "You'd better have the Star-shell wheeled out; I'll get aloft right away."

Back at the colony field, he changed at once into flying gear. A tractor was easing the white dart of the Stelrond ship from the hangar onto the grass. He took off on rocket thrust, converting immediately to the smooth power of the Stelrond drive, and in seconds was climbing out of the atmosphere.

There were no other ships near him as he closed with the radiating speck of the torpedo. The Men­delssohn's warning had been a for­mality in that sense; it would be many years before there were inter­planetary freighters curving across the emergence orbit. On a piracy alert, the galleon would be coming through warp with its teeth bared. Another ship, unless it were shouting its identity, might be close enough to qualify for automatic destruction. The Starshell's automatic call-sign was going out at full power. But Jack had the emergence zone to himself: the planet was a bow in the sky off to port, narrowing slowly as it moved toward the unbearable sun.

The orbital space-warp detectors, more sensitive than those on the Starshell, flashed him the first alert. Ahead of the schooner space was be­ginning to fold; starlight caught in the pseudogravitational web shifted toward its center. The galleon's drive-field was snatching in the net in handfuls, till it was compressed into a point of probable creation.

The final transfer of energy took place between the drive-coil and the underlying "C-field" of the universe, shifting the galleon from the mirror-image point light-years away, and the starship came up the long axis of the dispersing warp.

The piracy alarm was no joke, Jack realized as the emergence zone stabilized. The warp faced away from him and he was taking the schooner around the blooming flower of starlight, but already the galleon's belligerence was pene­trating the distorted space. Identify yourself or be destroyed, the incoming ship was signaling electronically as it decelerated into normal space. Kell­ney stood off while the starship went on to PK maneuvering and made circumsolar orbit. Around it, deadly symbiotic partners, missile batteries floated free. Psychokinetic control had held them in that configuration through the warp. Earth dolphins, trained in Sheekathryn techniques, made up the PK teams.

The galleon was a cylinder of ice, made stable in vacuum by chemical additives. Bio-engineering had grown the hull from the ice-ore of a "snowball" moon. Building ships for Terran-Astral gave the planet Eu­ropa its partnership relation with the monopoly spaceline. The galleon was two miles long, from the lateral antennae of the drive unit to the air locks at the stern. Half of that length was cargo space; Infiltration turrets flashed along the remainder. As Jack closed for rendezvous, he saw with amazement that hull repair ma­chines were moving along the ship. Large patches of the galleon's rera­diative coating had been blasted off: it could only be the effect of a close-range missile action, with nuclear warheads. The ship was building up a faint haze of sublimed gases, now that the bare patches were in sun­light instead of interstellar blackness. The robots had already started re­spraying. It's like something from a child's adventure story, Kellney thought, stupefied.

Maneuvering around the floating missiles, he brought the schooner in toward the stern of the ship. The en­trance lock was right on the axis of the galleon: spinning the dart to match the rotation of the cylinder, Jack docked with the "gun-carriage" of the arrival slipway and was drawn into the air lock. Beyond, in the weightless turnaround space at the core of the ferry port, he left the ship to the galleon crew and was taken forward to the captain's cabin.

The captain, to his surprise, was himself a little rattled. He carried re­sponsibility for the fabulous ship and its thousand or so passengers, and was always on the alert for the deadly whims of space; but there hadn't been combat since the Sheekathryn War, nearly two hun­dred years before. Even a galleon captain could be forgiven for not being mentally prepared.

"It was a Keroni ship," the captain told him at once. "Not one of their biggest, but a warship, the kind their nobles command. The attack was ob­viously premeditated: they must have studied our flight pattern to Hallway for some time. To recharge a drive unit between jumps takes only forty-eight hours, so they would have to be within two light-days of our emergence to detect it in time. As it was, they reached us only three hours before jump—we'd stored enough power to come most of the way here. We put the emergency generators full on and were able to make the jump to Hallway within the hour."

"It must have been a hot engage­ment," said Kellney. "I saw your hull damage as I rendezvoused."

"They must be maniacs!" the cap­tain declared. "I don't think they in­tended to destroy the Mendelssohn initially, but they were determined we shouldn't escape. The first attack was with PK forces, trying to take over our own amplifiers. It only failed because I was realigning for the final jump at the time. The dol­phins on watch managed to hold our trim until the PK control was fully manned, but by that time we were already swapping missiles. The con­flict had escalated to nuclear warheads by the time the drive unit was primed and we could break away."

"Tactical warheads, I take it," said Kellney. "They might have recov­ered some of your cargo afterwards, I suppose, but if they'd shattered the ice hull the loss of life would be to­tal!"

The captain nodded. "It looks like outright insanity to me. You've not heard anything about the Keroni de­claring war, have you?"

Jack shook his head. "Then you think this is one isolated ship, per­haps some noble with a grudge against us?"

"It's the most likely explanation," said the captain. "At any rate, I think there's no need to turn back to the human sphere. I've fired torpedoes to the nearer colonies along the bridge, and they'll pass on the alert."

"So what action do you intend to take, sir?"

"Well, Agent, we don't need any supplies from the colony. I have sup­plies and equipment for you, but they needn't be landed meantime. I don't want to hold the ship in orbit near Hallway, in case we bring the enemy down on you. These madmen could threaten the colony to force our surrender, and we couldn't pro­tect you from here. As soon as we've completed repairs I'll move the ship a light-year out of your system."

"While I check ahead with our of­fices in the Keron Empire," Jack supplied.

"That's what I had in mind," the captain said approvingly. "I don't think we're at war with the Keroni, but I can't take the ship and its pas­sengers on blindly. With that Stel­rond ship, you can burn around the offices in two or three days, making sure they all know what's happened, as well as checking the flight plan for us. You needn't become involved in the diplomatic issues at all, just make sure the offices are ready for the complaint when I make it offi­cially. And if by any chance there is trouble, that schooner will outrun it. It was for contingencies like this that you were assigned a schooner, though this is an extreme example."

Quite so, thought Kellney as he flew back to Hallway. He had to ad­mire the captain's style in leading Jack to volunteer for the mission; since Terran-Astral was a com­mercial spaceline, nobody could force him to go. Not having Jack under his authority on the Men­delssohn, the captain couldn't even order him to go. But he had no real choice, looking at his moral duties.

Of course, his girl on Hallway thought differently.

"You're not going to fly blindly into the Keron Empire!" she tried to insist, as he packed a flight bag for the trip. Once Sally had accepted the initial fact of the piracy—it took everyone a moment or two—she found plenty to criticize in the Terran-As­tral response. "That ship's got one missile for offensive armament and speed's its only defense! I suppose if you don't come back, we can take that as evidence that we are at war with the Keroni!"

"That will almost certainly be true," Jack agreed ruefully.

"Then don't go! This scouting mis­sion's completely crazy. Get a fleet of Stelrond ships from the nearest Partnership world and go in force!"

"Sally, pet, it's not quite that simple," he replied. "Suppose, as the captain so strongly suspects, there isn't a war? The Keroni are touchy, and sending a fleet of warships to check up on them could make trouble for the offices out there. The schooner can do all that's necessary, and its speed, and the Stelrond field, will be quite adequate protection. The Keroni don't have penetrators."

"They don't need penetrator mis­siles!" Sally cried in frustration. He couldn't put false reassurance over on this girl. "They've got all the psi tricks of their Sheekathryn slaves to draw on. They don't have to get through the Stelrond field to damage the ship, or you just as easily."

"They have to lock on to me first. Not so easy, with a ship coming out of warp unexpectedly, moving down from the speed of light and back."

"It's been done before," she re­minded him. "But if you're so con­fident, take me with you!"

That caught him by surprise. It was nice to have a girl who could do that, except when she did. "No, I don't think so," said Jack, taking her by the arms and thinking furiously. “I don't think when I ren­dezvous with the Mendelssohn, I'll give them the idea I couldn't face the mission without someone to hold my hand—especially someone as pretty as you." He kissed her, picked up the bag and made for the door. "I'll be back in forty-eight hours. See noth­ing drastic happens to the office while I'm away!"

As far as the risk turned out, he could have brought Sally along. No incursion into Keroni space could exactly be termed "routine," but nothing unusually alarming hap­pened as he flitted from star to star down the trade route to Keron. The Keroni were a reptilian species, fiercely competitive among them­selves and with outsiders; their whole culture was military, in hu­man terms. To build up a civilization they'd had to turn their aggression out into space, which partly ex­plained their spreading domination of the Sheekathryn Empire. Again and again, especially over Keron it­self, psi-powered scouts and war­ships came driving toward the Starshell to challenge him. But always his identification was accepted, the Terran-Astral ship was recognized, the challengers sheered away. Coded checks with the planetary offices showed all was well; he left them alert to the possibility of trouble, and took the schooner back out toward the stars.

Unlike the shielded drive coils of the huge galleons, the Stelrond drew its power from outside the ship. The fusion generators that threw the schooner around were the nearby stars, tapped through the same spacewarp that moved the ship. With all that energy to use, the Stelrond warpfield was more versatile, ex­tended in time and variable in space where the galleon's field was static. It also had lower settings, allowing the ship to streak around the planets without going up to light-speed and making an actual jump. But the price of versatility was high: the Stelrond coil, fantastically complex and im­mersed in liquid helium, had a short and very expensive lifetime. If the Starshell had been privately owned, that foray into the Keron Empire would have used up years of his Ter­ran-Astral salary.

No war. No trouble, no ex­planation for the Keroni pirate far out on the star bridge. The Keron Office would raise the matter with the reptilian rulers, and the privateer should be tracked down, but that was another story now. It was safe for the fabulous capital investment of the galleon to proceed into the Empire, arid Jack took the Starshell out to the prearranged rendezvous.

The galleon's fusion piles were still recharging the standard drive unit for the next jump. Kellney dined at the captain's table that night, sampled the entertainments of the luxurious passenger section, swam in the canals of the ship's in­ternal hydrosphere. The galleons were the mobile capitals of the Part­nership and few planets, even the Partnership Worlds themselves, could match them for glamour. There was nothing to compare on Hallway, still only a first-wave colony, and Jack made the most of it. He discussed the pirate attack with the galleon's officers, and various theories were put forward and shot down; but the whole thing remained a mystery when he lifted the schoo­ner from the departure slip, and pointed the prow at the brilliant fire of Hallway's sun.

A missing signal can be just as ef­fective as an alarm. By the time the Starshell was on one-fifth planetary drive, sliding down toward the planet, radio waves could penetrate the Stelrond field without being dis­torted out of recognition—and the in­ner navigational beacons weren't there to recognize.

Kellney switched up to four-fifths interplanetary, and swung the ship far out beyond the emergence zone before he came to rest. He had im­posed only two or three seconds' de­lay on radio communication, but it would take longer for a hostile ship to reach him.

The Hallway tower answered at once, after the lag. "The pirate ship's here," the operator told him. "They haven't come near the colony, and they say they're not going to, but the whole planet's now supposed to be a Keron holding."

"And they've backed it up by de­stroying the beacons?"

Five seconds lag, there and back.

"That's right. We put on the emer­gency signals, in case they did hit the colony, but they hit the satellites in­stead. We've dispersed all nonessen­tial personnel into the countryside, but there were no reprisals against the colony."

"Where is the ship now?"

"It's orbiting the planet, five hun­dred miles up. We think they may have missile damage: they got the ship through to Hallway, but they're reluctant to try for a landing. Their next pass over us will be in twenty-five minutes."

"That's fine. Unless they've got warp detectors spaced along the or­bit, they don't know I've come back. Unless I transmit while they're on this side, I'll just be a speck far out in the ecliptic." Kellney had his radar sweeping the space around him, with the drive set to cut in automatically if anything materialized nearby; but he'd have to cut down the beam strength. How sensitive were the Keroni detectors? Pretty good, judg­ing by his frequent challenges in the Empire.

"O.K. We got off message tor­pedoes calling for warship assistance, the Stelrond ships should be here in a few days. Do you want the full text of their 'occupation' broadcast?"

"Yes, let's have it."

"’This ship is the battle cruiser of M'sirat, third of the house of Karn. I have turned privateer in and without the Empire to support the failing for­tunes of our house; let it be made clear that I will allow no opposition, nor recognize any authority but my own. This planet, designated "Hall­way" in the human tongue, now be­comes my base of operations and all planetary authorities are now subject to me.' Message ends.

"They didn't make reprisal threats, or even mention noncoop­eration," the Hallway tower added.

"They didn't have to," saidKellney. "We all know the arma­ment of a Keroni warship, and they gave a demonstration when they burned out the satellites. That was done with PK, I suppose?"

"Apparently. There weren't any missile tracks."

They went on comparing notes till the pirate was due over the horizon, but Jack already had the main points of the situation. He agreed with the deduction that M'sirat's ship had been damaged in the missile ex­change with the Mendelssohn; it ex­plained most of the puzzles in the Keroni takeover. M'sirat had at­tacked the galleon with psi forces at first, then gone all the way to nuclear weapons as the conflict escalated. He must have wanted the galleon, or its cargo at least, pretty badly, but against the galleon's rows of fire-control computers his chances were slim. Beaten off with damage, prob­ably with losses, he had made repairs and then jumped to Hallway. If he wasn't willing to attempt a landing, on the Keroni version of the Stel­rond, that jump must have stretched the ship to its limit.

Alternatively, he didn't really want the planet. Even as a pirate base its use would be limited. He might, with luck, ambush one more galleon if another was already com­ing along the star bridge—if not, Jack couldn't see the Sheekathryn worlds around Hallway, with their total lack of material technology, supplying the needs of the house of Karn. M'sirat might raid them for psionic operators for his own ship, but to supply slave labor to the Empire from here was uneconomic and unnecessary. If another galleon didn't pass through, Jack could see M'sirat finishing his repairs and pulling out. If the torpedoes did get through, as they certainly should, he would have only days to do it before a Stelrond fleet came down on him.

Kenney stayed out in space, let­ting the Starshell drift past the planet like some wandering asteroid. He had risked discovery by keeping ra­dar sensitivity high, though he no longer got echoes from the planet at the new setting. Better to be given away by a beam that let him detect oncoming missiles, than one which let the missiles get too close to him. With psychokinetic boost, the pirates could send missiles out very fast in­deed.

He wasn't detected. Eventually he set all the alarms on automatic, and went to sleep. When he was wakened it was only the communications alarm, but that was trouble enough.

"The pirates have made a land­ing!" the Hallway field reported. "They're a hundred miles inland, but obviously they're going to cover the colony with whatever they're setting up. They've brought down one of the Stelronds from the starship, and they're mounting some kind of ground defense installation!"

That information represented painstaking work by the colony's few Sensitives. The psi talents didn't sit well with human intelligence, and it was only thanks to a Sheekathryn beacon on one of the Antares planets that reliable psi-sensitivity had ever evolved. The Sensitives down at col­ony headquarters must have excep­tional insight into the activity on the pirate ship. "How did they manage the landing?" Dismantling the drive implied that the ship was too badly damaged ever to leave.

"They sent down Sheekathryn ships, they must have been carried as lifeboats." The Sheekathryn ships were flying psionic amplifiers, with no other power or propulsion; their activities would be easier for a Sensi­tive to follow. "The Keron ship's still in orbit. We doubt if they can move it now, except on PK drive."

PK drive, or the Sheekathryn ships, would be adequate to ambush an incoming galleon. Even if the ship were immobile, it would still make a very nasty weapons platform with its PK amplifiers and missiles. Whatever the plan was, M'sirat couldn't be allowed to establish on-planet defenses.

"O.K.," said Kellney, settling him­self at the controls. "When will they be back over the horizon?"

"Ten minutes, approximately."

"That's not enough. After the war­ship passes over, I'll come down and take out the installation with the penetrator."

"That's assuming a great deal, Jack. It's a long time since the Sheekathryn War. To get close to a Sheekathryn team without being detected, and let go your missile with­out being knocked out, may not be so easy these days."

"I'll have to chance it," the agent replied. "If I don't succeed, better prepare for a major battle when the Stelrond fleet gets here."

Once again, radio silence fell as the Keroni warship made its transit across the planet. As soon as it sank over the horizon, the schooner moved: at two-fifths interplanetary drive, it was closing on the planetary atmosphere in seconds.

In atmosphere, not even a Stel­rond ship could keep up that kind of speed. The re-entry fireball was held away from the ship, but he had to come down steadily to four-fifths planetary, then three-fifths. By then he was down into the stratosphere—he had decided on speed rather than a low-level approach—and was start­ing his attack run on the alien instal­lation.

At one-fifth planetary, a new voice broke into the communications channel which should have been his alone. "Kellney, this is M'sirat. Your actions were foreseen, weeks ago when this planet was examined by our scouts. Call off your attack."

The colony had been under obser­vation by Sheekathryn minions, prior to the attack on the Men­delssohn! If they had narrowed their analysis down to individuals, countering the threat could be harder than anything in the history of the Sheekathryn War. But the Starshell was on autopilot, banking now towards the grounded Stelrond facility. Even if they knocked him out at the controls, the ship would still deliver the penetrator to its tar­get—and that missile, homing through a Stelrond field of its own, was hard to divert with PK.

"You with your ship were recog­nized as a threat from the outset," said M'sirat. "To cancel it, my ser­vants visited your office soon after we made orbit around the planet, and removed a young female acting as your deputy."

Kellney switched to "transmit." Obviously the privateer had his loca­tion now. "You're bluffing, M'sirat. Nothing of the kind's been reported to me." Less than a minute to the missile launch.

"You can rely on nothing reported to you, Kellney. The attack on your field was made under shields of illu­sion, projected by the psionic ampli­fiers. Your personnel there will say they saw the girl recently, but they will be wrong. She has been on my ship for more than a day, in read­iness for your return."

The final seconds were running, out. He could go through with the at­tack, leaving no weapons at all to threaten the warship for Sally. He wouldn't get close enough to the warship in space to be a real threat, in any case. Kellney punched the override controls and the schooner peeled away from the target. He had to get either the orbiting ship or the planetary base, for the sake of the colony—but inspiration had given him a far-out plan. "All right, M'sirat!" he radioed. "I accept your challenge, and I'm coming up now to resolve the conflict in person!"

He didn't switch up to the higher drive levels: the Keroni had to be hooked before Jack could risk ap­proaching the starship. "What do you mean?" M'sirat demanded. "I have issued no formal challenge!"

Got him! . . . "By taking posses­sion of my fiancée to prevent me at­tacking your installation, you have changed the struggle for the colony to a personal quarrel between us. Honor requires you to meet me per­sonally to settle the question!" And without waiting for a reply, Jack cut in four-fifths planetary and made like a bullet for the warship.

It was sheer bluff, and his own au­dacity amazed him, but he couldn't see any other way forward. If the pri­vateer took over the colony the fu­ture looked bleak for everyone: the successful attack on his office showed what Sheekathryn powers could do, under ruthless Keroni direction. Hallway's human population might keep the freedom of their minds, if they obeyed every Keroni order without question. Kellney had no idea what he would do when he got aboard the warship, but he'd have the chance to do something. The only alternative would have been to de­stroy the ground base and let them do their worst to Sally—and when he tried to imagine it, he found that un­thinkable.

The schooner came out of warp, returning the outside universe to or­der from the blurred patterns of Stel­rond flight. He was floating in space again, less than a mile from the elliptical bulk of the warship. No mis­siles flared out to him; he had, mo­mentarily, regained the initiative from M'sirat.

The plan hadn't been clearly for­mulated in those hurtling seconds below. As he took the schooner toward the warship on maneuvering rockets, the underlying reasoning was falling into place. He knew that the Keroni had an elaborate code of honor, in keeping with their fierce temperament and military organiza­tion, though his only detailed knowl­edge was of isolated fragments mak­ing little sense in human terms. Coming from a poor Keroni house, probably from one of the outlying worlds, M'sirat's knowledge of hu­man values might be equally vague. He shouldn't know the precise meaning of the term "fiancée," or the obligations it connoted, much less the exaggeration of Jack's infor­mal relationship with Sally. The bluff had succeeded, Kellney was go­ing to board the pirate ship.

The warship was bigger than the schooner, but very much smaller than a galleon. At a guess, it might carry twelve or fifteen Keroni and twenty or thirty Sheekathryn—as a fighting unit, not the floating city of the Mendelssohn. Down the elliptical hull, in the same wraparound configuration as on human warships, ran four bulges for the Keroni variant of the Stelrond coil, shaped out of plasma by Sheekathryn PK ampli­fiers. There had been damage in the missile fight with the galleon: one of the Stelronds had been virtually obliterated by a multiple-warhead hit, penetrating deep into the hull. It looked as if all the rear of the ship might be in vacuum. Another of the coils had been cut out of its mount­ing, for the ground installation. What could they be building that would need that kind of power?

There wasn't any way to link the Starshell to the Keroni air lock. The schooner was too small to have a lock of its own, and to get out in space the cockpit had to be depres­surized. Kellney guessed correctly that the colored patches aft of the air lock were some kind of mooring: a gentle PK force took hold of the schooner and pulled it down to the Keroni hull.

The air lock cycle was conven­tional; some things were basic to all space technology, Kellney's space­suit softened as air thickened around him. He stepped through the inner door, taking off his helmet, and the moist heat of the Keron-comfortable interior, filled with unfamiliar odors, struck him at once.

He was surrounded by enemies; Sally, looking scared but not detectably under alien influence, was the only human or friendly face. M'sirat, several inches taller than Kellney, was older than he had expected: his golden scales were beginning to shine, and the colorful crest which would display his emotions in later life was beginning to develop. The Sheekathryn around him, elaborate wood-and-glass amplifiers cradled in their arms, were four-foot insectile figures, only their multifaceted eyes conspicuous.

"What is our question of honor over this female?" the Keroni de­manded. Learning English for his pi­rate career would have taught him some human customs; Jack would have to tread carefully.

"By using her as a counter in the colony situation, you commit your­self to a personal accounting with me," Jack repeated. He was sweat­ing, not only from the heat. "The su­periority of your ship and its arma­ment makes a face-to-face confrontation the only honorable course."

The Keroni snorted. "Our code of honor supports the latter statement. Having come aboard in these cir­cumstances, you cannot be impris­oned or harmed unless you practice some deception. You need not fear that I, M'sirat, would stoop to en­snare you on some technicality! Un­less you use your entry here to dam­age the ship or assault us, your mind and body will remain untouched. But why should I accept your first premise? Relations between our sexes differ from yours. Why should I not throw you off my ship, and con­tinue to hold the girl as a guarantee of your cooperation?"

"My concept of honor forbids that," Jack replied confidently. "I would have to destroy your plan­etary base regardless, and if you killed Sally in retribution you and I would be committed to conflict. Even if you refused personal combat, I would eventually destroy this ship. For instance, I could lob orbital and suborbital debris at you with the Stelrond field, until the shotgun effect destroyed you."

"Ingenious," the Keron agreed. "As no doubt you realize, this ship would have trouble escaping from here. Your attacks might overcome our shields in time. But what is your alternative to this unmatched con­flict, leading supposedly to my de­struction?"

Kellney took a deep breath. "Ne­gotiation," he said firmly. "There is no war between your species and mine, and economic cooperation continues between the Partnership and the Keron Empire. Though you attacked one of our galleons, no harm was done. Release your hos­tage, abandon your plans to take over Hallway or ambush more gal­leons, and we can agree on terms for the repair of your ship and your return to the Empire."

"No harm!" M'sirat exploded. "My ship torn open, K'sinar and others of my old friends dead! Is there to be no revenge?"

Kellney stood his ground. "Per­sonally, I am sorry for lives that have been lost. But I don't feel respon­sible, either personally or as a Ter­ran-Astral agent, for losses you sus­tained in attacking one of our ships. If you will cease harassing the Part­nership, I do have the authority to overlook that attack."

"Now you cross my concept of honor," the Keroni said grimly. "I was chosen by lot to become a pri­vateer, to set myself against all society and boldly take what is needed to maintain the house of Karn. I fully accepted that I might die in battle, or be hunted down. I cannot crawl back to my brothers and others of the house, saying 'I failed, and made terms.' I have made a quarrel with your space-line, and it must be pursued as relentlessly as if I preyed on another Keroni house. Only a Sheekathryn could turn aside from such a course."

The debate was turning against him, Kellney saw. His follow-up, the expected arrival of Stelrond war­ships, wasn't going to weigh against the pirate's determination. M'sirat was honor-bound to continue the struggle, and increasing the odds against him wasn't going to change that. "Well, do you have any sugges­tion?" he asked, a little desperate.

"The fight for the colony must continue," M'sirat said with un­shaken certainty. "Honor allows nothing less, though I have com­plicated the situation by abducting this female. Let us formalize the next stage of the conflict. You will hold off your attack until the ground in­stallation is completed. If you are nonetheless successful in the more sophisticated attack you will have time to prepare, then instead of kill­ing the girl as proposed we will re­lease her after a token flogging."

Kellney was shaken, but Sally didn't look any more scared. Having been on the Keroni ship more than a day, she must know more about their customs now than he did. "A token what?" he asked weakly, wishing that he really had an honor code to dictate his response.

"Flogging," the Keron said impa­tiently. "You must be familiar with that—why else have the word in your language?"

"Only as a perversion," Jack said. He began to summon up some con­viction. "It certainly has nothing to do with honor in our culture!"

"Nor ours," said the Keron. "But pain and humiliation are preferable to death, for the hostage . . . How then do you discipline your young, punish criminals, maintain order on your ships?"

"We manage," Jack said shortly. "I'm not going to allow you to flog Sally, so the whole line of thought's unprofitable. Can't we find a for­mula to end the whole conflict of in­terests?"

He meant a peaceful settlement, but he hadn't made that clear. "Only one course remains," snapped M'sirat. "We shall settle this matter by single combat, yourself as cham­pion of Terran-Astral, I for the pri­vateers and the personal issue be­tween us. Do you have a hand weapon?"

"There's one in my ship," said Kellney, somewhat stunned.

"Then go out through the lock, and arm yourself," the reptilian cap­tain said with finality. His slight crest was bristling, adding to his apparent height. "When I am suited and armed, I shall leave the air lock in search of you. We shall settle our differences out on the hull, in the vacuum."

He had talked himself into a cor­ner, Jack realized. There was no way out of this. Sally was watching him wide-eyed, whiter than ever. He made to speak to her, then decided against it. He raised his helmet in his gloved hands, facing her as he put it on, like a knight of old going to do battle for his lady, and stepped back into the lock.

Adjust, adjust to the situation, you're fighting for your life. As the pressure fell in the air lock, Kellney tried to get into the right frame of mind and couldn't make it. Going into vacuum was a routine, careful business into which emotion didn't intrude. "All you think about is your suit," his instructors had insisted, and the orderly systems check dead­ened his feelings.

The outer door opened and he climbed on to the hull, stepping slowly toward the open cockpit of the schooner. His magnetic shoes held to the skin of the Keroni ship, but not as firmly as he would like. Reaching in, he opened the arms locker and drew out the long-bar­reled pistol, careful not to knock it away out of reach. He retreated back along the hull, away from the air lock and the schooner. The outer door had gone down again.

The ship had passed orbital sun­rise: the blurred Hallway terminator was approaching below. They would have forty-odd minutes of sunlight to hunt each other across the hull. The thought of the battle continuing into the night was somehow a great deal worse. Jack climbed over one of the Stelronds, working his way across to the missile gash in the hull. There he could get down below the edge, and have a chance to pick off M'sirat as he came around the ship. Could he use vibrations in the hull to give him warning?

Kellney lowered himself over the edge of the gap, at great pains not to catch his suit. Feeling around with his left hand in the darkness, he found a bracing strut which would steady him when he came to fire. He checked his watch: M'sirat could be suited up by now, and coming through the lock. If he hadn't come into view in three minutes or so, he could be coming around the hull from some other direction. Jack couldn't keep turning around, weightless in the dark among all this torn metal, to cover every angle of approach: he'd either have to con­centrate on a likely direction, or get out on the hull and try to stalk M'sirat.

His helmet radio came alive. "Kellney," said M'sirat, "I have come to admire you as an opponent.

I have learned from the girl, through my servants, that your culture has no pattern of single combat as you pre­tend. I do not care to hunt you down, in these circumstances."

A trick, to get his location? Kellney felt that would be out of character for M'sirat. "Combat or negotiation," Jack answered firmly.

"Then go," said M'sirat. "Go freely. I shall bring the girl out to your ship."

Could it be a trick? It seemed too good to be true. Could he, by sheer boldness, have turned the kidnap­ping so far back on M'sirat that he would simply let Sally go? Had he, Jack Kellney, managed to rescue her from a warship of this size?

The trip back to the air lock, along the sunlit top of the hull, seemed to take years. He kept a watch to left and right, checking occasionally be­hind him, for what good it would do—M'sirat, he now realized, was taller than he was and could see far­ther round the hull. There was a Keron helmet in the cockpit of the schooner, but as he drew nearer he realized it was Sally, lost in the big spacesuit.

He checked around again, then leaned into the cockpit, touching his helmet to hers so they could speak without radio. It was just possible they might have tricked him with a Sheekathryn in the suit, but as his shadow fell across the faceplate he saw her human eyes inside.

"What's going on? Is it a trap?"

"I don't think so," she whispered. "Get in quickly, Jack, please. . ."

There was still no sign of M'sirat, but his back felt very exposed as Jack made his way round the nose of the ship. He climbed in beside Sally, pulling down the canopy. Pressure began to build up and he took off his outer gauntlets to work the controls.

The maneuvering rockets were powerful enough to break the PK mooring. The Starshell floated away from the warship, turning for Jack to scan the receding hull.

M'sirat was on top of the hull, from this angle. The helmet, built to accommodate a fully developed crest, added still more to his height. Realizing they were looking at him, the Keron raised a gauntlet in fare­well—then he turned slowly and took aim at the nearest Stelrond. There was a brilliant white flash from the gun, and then the whole ship blew in a swirling chaos of ionization.

Jack threw the Stelrond switches and the schooner leaped a hundred miles away. The swirling gases had become an even fireball, a glowing bubble shimmering into nothing against the stars. Perhaps the Stel­rond had been drawing solar power when it exploded, or perhaps the plasma itself held enough energy to destroy the ship.

He and Sally removed their hel­mets as the cabin pressure reached normal. "All I did was punch the keys of their rituals," Kellney said, shaking. "By pure chance one of them hit the destruct. What kind of allies are they going to make?"