“Yes, sir.” Chives danced lean triple-jointed fingers over the board. The Hooligan plunged like a stooping osprey. She interpenetrated the enemy craft, so that Flandry looked for a moment straight through its turret. He recognized Svantozik at the controls, in person, and laughed his delight. The Ardazirho slammed on pseudo-deceleration. A less skillful pilot would have shot past him and been a million kilometers away before realizing what had happened. Flandry and Chives, acting as one, matched the maneuver. For a few minutes they followed every twist and dodge. Then, grimly, Svantozik continued in a straight line. The Hooligan edged sideways until she steered a parallel course, twenty meters off.
Chives started the phase adjuster. There was an instant’s sickness while the secondary drive skipped through a thousand separate frequency patterns. Then its in-and-out-of-space-time matched the enemy’s. A mass detector informed the robot, within microseconds, and the adjuster stopped. A tractor beam clamped fast to the other hull’s sudden solidity. Svantozik tried a different phasing, but the Hooligan equaled him without skipping a beat.
“Shall we lay alongside, sir?” asked Chives.
“Better not,” said Flandry. “They might choose to blow themselves up, and us with them. Boarding tube.”
It coiled from the combat airlock to the other hull, fastened leech-like with magnetronic suckers, and clung. The Ardazirho energy cannon could not be brought to bear at this angle. A missile flashed from their launcher. It was disintegrated by a blast from the Hooligan’s gun. The Donarrian, vast in his armor, guided a “worm” through the boarding tube to the opposite hull. The machine’s energy snout began to gnaw through metal.
Flandry sensed, rather than saw, the faint ripple which marked a changeover into primary drive. He slammed down his own switch. Both craft reverted simultaneously to intrinsic sub-light velocity. The difference of fifty kilometers per second nearly ripped them across. But the tractor beam held, and so did the compensator fields. They tumbled onward, side by side.
“He’s hooked!” shouted Flandry.
Still the prey might try a stunt. He must remain with Chives, parrying everything, while his crew had the pleasure of boarding. Flandry’s muscles ached with the wish for personal combat. Over the intercom now, radio voices snapped: “The worm’s pierced through, sir. Our party entering the breach. Four hostiles in battle armor opposing with mobile weapons—”
Hell broke loose. Energy beams flamed against indurated steel. Explosive bullets burst, sent men staggering, went in screaming fragments through bulkheads. The Terran crew plowed unmercifully into the barrage, before it could break down their armor. They closed hand to hand with the Ardazirho. It was not too uneven a match in numbers: six to four, for half Flandry’s crew must man guns against possible missiles. The Ardazirho were physically a bit stronger than humans. That counted little, when fists beat on plate. But the huge Gorzuni, the barbarically shrill Scothanian with his wrecking bar of collapsed alloy, the Donarrian happily ramping and roaring and dealing buffets which stunned through all insulation—they ended the fight. The enemy navigator, preconditioned, died. The rest were extracted from their armor and tossed in the Hooligan’s hold.
Flandry had not been sure Svantozik too was not channeled so capture would be lethal. But he had doubted it. The Urdahu were unlikely to be that prodigal of their very best officers, who if taken prisoner might still be exchanged or contrive to escape. Probably Svantozik had simply been given a bloc against remembering his home sun’s coordinates, when a pilot book wasn’t open before his face.
The Terran sighed. “Clear the saloon, Chives,” he said wearily. “Have Svantozik brought to me, post a guard outside, and bring us some refreshments.” As he passed one of the boarding gang, the man threw him a grin and an exuberant salute. “Damn heroes,” he muttered.
He felt a little happier when Svantozik entered. The Ardazirho walked proudly, red head erect, kilt somehow made neat again. But there was an inward chill in the wolf eyes. When he saw who sat at the table, he grew rigid. The fur stood up over his whole lean body and a growl trembled in his throat.
“Just me,” said the human. “Not back from the Sky Cave, either. Flop down.” He waved at the bench opposite his own chair.