The first obstacles were starting to appear on the scanners now, along with
computer-generated arcs showing their orbits relative to the ship. No danger so far; the
closest would miss by more than a kilometer. Pias had arbitrarily set himself a safety
range of two hundred meters. Anything closer than that would be avoided; beyond that
limit, he refused to worry about it.
In the seat beside him, he knew Jules was watching the screen as intently as he was. At
the slightest hint that Pias might not be able to handle the situation, Jules was prepared
to switch control over to his co-pilot’s board and get them out of trouble. It was
comforting, in a way, to have such a backup, because Pias knew Jules was an expert
pilot. All the same, he was hoping it wouldn’t be necessary. More obstacles were
appearing on the scanner now, ranging in size from small boulders to large mountains.
Pias ignored the size and mass data also displayed on the screen; all he cared about
was how close the object’s path would come to his ship’s.
The first indication of something that would come within the safety limits appeared. Even
though the computer said it would miss the ship by a good seventy-five meters, Pias
wanted to take no chances at this stage. His hand moved to the attitude controls and
made ever so minor a course correction; they flew past the rock without trouble.
They were starting to reach the thickest part of the belt. The asteroid zone within the
DesPlainian solar system was not nearly as thick as that in Earth’s solar system, nor was
it as dense. In order to make this a fair test, they were approaching the belt at an
oblique angle that would cause them to spend a minimum of an hour traversing the
densest part of the swarm.
That first course deflection was merely the beginning. All too quickly the asteroids were
flying past them at distances of fifty meters or less. Pias’s hands were playing across his
console like those of a concert pianist at a keyboard. This was where all his training was
coming in handy. He had spent every spare moment for the last few months practicing at
these controls. The intellectual knowledge of where each control was located on the
board was of no use; his fingers had to know their way there by instinct, had to make the
proper adjustments-no more, no less-by sheer eye-to-hand coordination, bypassing the
conscious mind completely. The problem was immeasurably complicated by the fact that
he was dealing with three dimensions rather than two; he had to worry, not only about
right and left, forward and back, but also up and down.
Each correction he made altered the relative paths of the other rocks around him so that
their new courses had to be checked. Sometimes his changes actually brought him into
danger from asteroids that would have missed by a wide margin if he hadn’t swerved to
avoid a previous one.
There was sweat on his forehead and a drop trickled down into his eye, burning it. He
tried to blink it away; he dared not take his hands from the control board long enough to
wipe at it. For a while he was piloting with only one good eye, which diminished his depth
perception and made his movements slightly less reliable. After a few moments his eye
watered sufficiently to dilute the sweat and the discomfort eased. It was to his credit that
not once during that time did Jules make a move to take control away from him.
Then they were through the worst part of the belt, and Pias’s breathing started returning
to normal. He made a casual maneuver to slide gracefully away from one approaching
asteroid-and suddenly found himself facing an onrushing behemoth head on. It appeared
out of nowhere on the scanner and came straight toward him at a speed nearly equal to
his own.
If Pias had stopped to think, he and Jules might have ended up as slime on the face of
the space rock. His hands moved with a life of their own, swerving the ship’s direction so
quickly that he was nearly knocked out of his chair. He imagined he could hear the
asteroid scraping along the side of the ship as they passed one another, even though the
distance was nearly ten meters. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Jules’s hands
poised over the co-pilot’s controls; the more experienced man would have taken over in
another fraction of a second-but even that might have been too late.
Then abruptly they were out of the zone and into what was considered open space
again. The sensors indicated’ completely empty space ahead, so Pias reduced speed;
switched on the autopilot once more, and sagged limply back in his seat.
“Must have been a rogue,” Jules said calmly beside him. “Most of the asteroids within the
zone are moving approximately in the same direction and speed. Occasionally a free one
gets captured moving the other way. It doesn’t usually last too long because it collides
with the rocks going the other way, just like it nearly collided with us.”
Pias paused to regain his breath, then asked, “Well, how’d I do?”
“We’re alive and unscratched-that’s all that really matters. The Service doesn’t give
points for neatness.” He smiled as he added, “Next time, of course, you’ll have to
practice dodging while firing back at them at the same time. ”
“You’re so encouraging.” Pias plotted the course back to DesPlaines and spent the next
two hours relaxing after his ordeal.
Landings, as he had learned, were the hardest part of flying any air or
spacecraft-particularly landings on a three-gee world where the ground comes up to
meet you at a dizzying speed. This was the maneuver he’d practiced most often, and it
still made him slightly nervous. He moved with special care as he brought the ship down
to a perfect landing on the small private spaceport field that adjoined Felicite, the ducal
manor house of the d’Alembert family. As the two men climbed out of the ship, a
groundcar pulled up to the edge of the field and their wives waved at them.
Yvette Bavol and Vonnie d’Alembert were the other halves of what were acknowledged
to be the two best undercover teams in the Service of the Empire. All four were high-grav
natives, with all the speed, strength, and agility that implied. All four were intelligent and
resourceful, highly trained, and highly motivated. In addition, Jules and his sister Yvette
were members of the extraordinary Family d’Alembert, with its tradition of loyalty and
devotion to the Empire and its rulers.
“I see you both made it back intact,” Vonnie shouted as the groundcar drove onto the
landing field to meet the two men.
The car pulled to a stop and each of the spacefarers kissed his wife in greeting. “How
can you ladies have ever doubted me’?” Pias asked immodestly.
“I had no doubt whatsoever that you’d brag about it afterwards,” his wife laughed. “It
was the part in between takeoff and landing that worried us.”
“I had to teach him something,” Jules said. “There’s only so many times you can save the
Empire on dumb luck alone. ”
The incident he referred to had happened six months ago during the coronation of
Empress Stanley Eleven, while the forces of Lady A’s conspiracy had been massing to
attack Earth. Pias, alone in a space vessel he didn’t know how to pilot, had been the only
one in position to warn the Imperial Fleet that they were heading for an ambush. He’d
accomplished the feat by pushing buttons at random and piloting his craft in the most
absurd way possible so that the Imperial Fleet stopped short of the ambush site to
investigate.
It was an achievement of special daring-but afterwards, all concerned agreed that it
would be best if, in the future, the young Gospodin Bavol learned how to fly a spacecraft
accurately. They’d been fortunate that, because of the rout of the conspiracy’s forces,
there was a quiet period with no assignments, giving Pias time to learn the needed skills.
His intensified course under Jules’s watchful eye had made him into a very good pilot in a
surprisingly short time. The four young people were laughing as they climbed into the
groundcar for the short ride to the manor house itself. The past few months had been a
welcome and much needed vacation after the strenuous assignments that culminated
with the coronation. The entire Empire had been shaken by the bold attack on Earth, but
it had held on and had not toppled. There followed a period of peace that allowed
everyone a chance to breathe more easily–even though the agents knew such a state of
affairs could not last forever.
The call they’d feared came that very night, after they finished dinner. The frequency and