“But how much longer can we afford to wait’? The Coronation is only two months away.”
Yvette reached across to ruffle his light brown hair. “At least you seem to be enjoying
yourself while we’re waiting. You’ve got a casino all your own to play with. The pirates
are just a little out of touch, that’s all; as soon as they learn about us, they’ll be here.
Besides-don’t you have some old Gypsy proverb or other to console you?”
“Sure.” Pias gave her a mock laugh. “`Patience is good, but quick hands are better.’ In
other words, all things come to he who waits-but he who takes gets them first.”
The Paradise made a second complete circuit of the four planets, and still there was no
sign of trouble. The entire crew was rapidly losing spirit. As was true of all d’Alemberts,
they longed for quick action, and the waiting was a strain on their nerves.
At last, on their third run from Egon to Bromberg, the Paradise’s pilot encountered an
unidentified reading on their detection screens. The object was matching their course
precisely, and was not emitting any of the standard recognition signals. All in all, it was a
prime suspect for a pirate craft.
Ever since the first voyage, Pias had scheduled “pirate attack drills” for the passengers
at irregular intervals. As he explained to them, it was just so they would know what to do
in case of an emergency. Rather than alarm people, he pretended that this was just
another drill. As they had done on previous occasions, the guests filed obediently to their
comfortable rooms and locked themselves in, expecting the “all clear” buzzer to sound in
a minute. This time, however, they were destined to wait a bit longer.
When the monitors showed that all the non-d’Alemberts were safely in their quarters,
Yvette activated the internal security system. Heavy metal doors slammed down in front
of all the passenger cabins, making it impossible for anyone to get in or out without at
least a heavy-duty blaster and five uninterrupted minutes of burning through the shield.
This would keep the pirates from bothering any of the ship’s guests-and it would also
keep the passengers out of the line of fire, giving the d’Alemberts free rein to act as
necessary.
At first, the Paradise made the standard maneuver for a ship that suspected it was about
to come under pirate attack: it dropped out of subspace into the real universe and began
sending out a distress signal to the nearest Navy base. This was necessary because a
ship within subspace could not generate a subcom signal; they would have to be in
normal space to call for help. Also, the theory was that by dropping into normal
space-thereby slowing their speed considerably-there was always the chance that the
pirate ship would overshoot them and then be unable to find them again.
The pirates, of course, knew this trick as well, and were quite prepared for it. The instant
the Paradise slipped back into regular space the pirate ship did the same, staying right
beside its prey and not giving it a chance to escape. Simultaneously, the outlaw vessel
sent out a jamming signal to prevent the Paradise’s distress call from being understood.
All this worked exactly according to the pirates’ plan.
Unfortunately for them, nothing else did.
The next phase of the attack was supposed to be a shot from the pirate ship to destroy
its target’s engines, thus making it incapable of further flight. But that was not possible
this time. The Paradise’s engines, located at the bottom of the onion shaped bulb,
retracted into the body of the ship. The Paradise could not fly in that configuration-but
neither could it be incapacitated unless the pirates were willing to blast large chunks out
of the vessel itself and risk losing a sizeable percentage of their potential loot.
The pirate captain decided not to do that. The Paradise was immobilized, which was all
he thought he needed; if the ship extended its engines again for an escape attempt, his
gunners could destroy the drive components then. In the meantime, he ordered his
boarding party into action.
Forty pirates, each clad in heavy battle armor, jetted across the gulf of space between
the two ships, bringing with them a boarding hatch. This was an auxiliary compartment
that could be sealed on the outside of the Paradise, thus allowing the pirates to cut
through the hull without letting the air escape. This was not a humanitarian gesture
prompted by concern for the welfare of the passengers and crew of the Paradise; the
pirates knew that many of the passengers were wealthy people, and there was always
the possibility of obtaining extra money by holding them for ransom.
When the pirates reached their objective, however, they discovered that the boarding
hatch was quite unnecessary. The Paradise’s outer hatch was standing ajar, an open
invitation for them to enter. This disturbed the leader of the boarding party sufficiently for
him to radio back to his own ship for further instructions. His captain, a man of great
bluster and little imagination, told him to proceed with the attack as planned. If the
Paradise’s crew were foolish enough to let the pirates in, they deserved what they got.
The Paradise’s main airlock would not accommodate all forty pirates at once. Fearing
that this might be a trap to break them into smaller groups, the attack leader had the
boarding hatch fastened to the ship anyway, so they could all go through the inner lock at
once. They waited the required three minutes for the pressure to equalize between the
airlock and the rest of the ship, then pushed through the inner lock, prepared for battle.
They found themselves facing an empty corridor-something that had never happened
before. The airlock confrontation was normally the crucial battle, because the crew of the
victim ship was hoping to stop the invaders at the bottleneck as they came out of the
lock. To let the pirates simply walk in unopposed did not seem like sound battle tactics.
Nevertheless, the leader urged his fighters to be cautious as they spread out through the
ship in search of their victims.
They had crossed several intersecting corridors without seeing any sign of life, and had
fanned out to cover more territory when, without warning, the ultragrav was turned up in
the hallways. Suddenly, the pirates found themselves battling the crushing forces of more
than two gees.
Space armor is heavy stuff, it has to be, to protect its wearer from the blaster beams he
can expect to take in a pitched battle. It is usually used under zero gravity conditions.
(This is another reason why the pirate vessel tries to destroy the engines of its prey-to
knock out the equipment for generating artificial gravity.) In freefall, a man in battle armor
is well-nigh invincible.
The pirates had encountered a standard one-gee field when they entered the Paradise.
This was uncomfortable, but hardly catastrophic. The armor could be managed under
such conditions, and the protection it gave more than made up for the slight loss of
maneuverability.
But now the gravitational pull was more than twice what they expected. Some of the
pirates, caught in an off-balance position by the sudden switch in gravity, fell to the floor
and had trouble getting to their feet again; like turtles on their backs, they kicked around
awkwardly in their cumbersome suits. Other pirates staggered, and had to brace
themselves against the walls to keep from keeling over like their fellows. Given enough
time, they could have adjusted to the situation and helped their comrades to their feet
again as well; but, of course, the d’Alemberts were not about to give them enough time.
The instant the ultragrav was turned on, an army of d’Alemberts appeared as if from
nowhere, descending on the hapless pirates. They too were clad in full battle armor-but
there was a difference. In this two-gee field, even with the heavy armor on, the
DesPlainians still only weighed about the same as they normally did on their own home
planet. They could move about with perfect ease and breathtaking speed. In comparison,
the pirates were stodgy and awkward, stumbling around like drunks on an icy sidewalk.
There was no contest. The d’Alemberts had blasters of their own, but scarcely needed
them. They closed rapidly with their foes, locked in personal combat. The pirates were
so slow-moving that generally the d’Alemberts would have a pirate’s helmet off before
the invader could raise his weapon and fire in self-defense. A gentle “tap” from an
armored fist was more than sufficient to render each pirate unconscious and past caring
about the outcome of the fight. The Paradise suffered no major damage at all, merely a
few minor burns on the walls where some stray blaster beams went awry. None of the
defending crewmembers was in any way hurt.
While the fight was going on inside the Paradise, an even more surprising development