Connely went back to the control room, and found MacIntyre looking much improved. Connely, using short and simple language, described the trouble he’d had with the Mangle, the new fuel tank, and the “reflex helmet.”
MacIntyre looked serious. “That business with the fuel tank sounds bad.”
“Oh,” said Connely, “the fuel tank sounds had, does it? I have to eat, you know. How do I get out of this helmet?”
MacIntyre appeared to be searching his memory. He said hesitantly. “To tell you the truth. Con, the microcircuit for that helmet was so unusual, and I got so interested in it, that I don’t believe I ever did read the operating instructions.”
Connely restrained himself with an effort. In a very low voice, be said, “You don’t happen to have any suggestions, do you, Mac?”
“Hm-m-m,” said MacIntyre. “Well, maybe we could squirt the food in?”
This suggestion left Connely speechless. Before he had recovered, the annunciator gave a buzz, and announced in its synthetic voice: “Ship sighted. Class III cruiser, identity unknown. No recognition signal.”
MacIntyre growled, “A Space Force ship would have identified itself right away. That must be the raider we’re looking for.”
* * *
Connely whirled to thrust the drive control full ahead. The accelerometer needle wound around its dial in a tribute to the power of the ship’s monster drive unit. The communications screen cut into the battle-control circuit to show a small green image being overtaken by a much larger red image.
After a little while, Connely saw that the cruiser was losing its struggle to narrow the gap fast enough, and stepped over to look at the trip meter.
On the rectangular chartlike face above the meter itself a little white dot representing the scout ship was moving past within easy distance of Space Center 7.
MacIntyre said, “As I remember, the fleet based at Seven has half-a-dozen dreadnoughts, and around eighty other ships above the size of scouts. To operate here, any raider would need to be out of his head.”
Connely tried the communicator, and could contact neither the cruiser nor Space Center 7.
The annunciator sounded its buzzer. “Ship sighted. Dreadnought of unknown class and identity. No recognition signal.”
The battle screen now showed a huge red image closing in fast on an intersecting course. The likelihood of its being on this course by pure chance wasn’t worth thinking about.
Connely said, “We’re trapped, Mac. We built up so much momentum getting away from that cruiser that we’ll land right in the lap of the dreadnought.”
“That’s the dreadnought’s worry,” snapped MacIntyre. “With the stuff we’ve got on board, we could take on the sector fleet.”
“If it works.”
“It’ll work,” said MacIntyre positively.
The communicator chimed and Connely snapped it on. A bored voice said, “You come through Maury’s territory, you either pay your tariff or we squash you. We already picked off two of you little bugs.”
Connely snapped off the communicator and glanced at MacIntyre.
MacIntyre said, “We can’t be in Maury’s territory. I specifically set up the course to avoid that.”
Connely snapped on the communicator. “According to our trip-meter, we’re nowhere near Maury’s territory.”
“Your trip-meter must have a busted bolt, pal. Now cut out the 6-V act and pay your tariff like a good little boy. Or get squashed.”
MacIntyre knocked forward a lever that put the handling of the ship and its weapons completely under control of the battle computer.
On the view screen a pair of the dreadnought’s monster turrets lit up in a white blaze as the fusion guns let loose their warning blasts. The scout ship continued on its course.
MacIntyre set his jaw. Connely, bathed in sweat, watched the two screens.
* * *
On the battle screen, a burst of yellow lines left the dreadnought as ultra fast missiles and missile-killers streaked out on their tracks. The dreadnought lit with dazzling blasts from its fusion weapons, and the space distorters of the two ships reflected these blasts, to hurl the searing bolts of energy back and forth between them. Enormous blue-white blurs reached out from the dreadnought, to haul the scout ship bodily off its course.
Connely felt a gathering vibration of the deck underfoot. On the screen, the racing missiles arced in, like a fist closing to squash a gnat. Then the overloaded space-distorters ceased to throw the fusion bolts back at the dreadnought, but merely deflected them into space.
The yellow tracks of the missiles abruptly ended. It took Connely a few seconds to realize that the space distorters, in deflecting the accumulated fusion blasts from the dreadnought, had done it with such accuracy as to burn up every missile approaching the scout ship. A small faint dotted line traveled from the scout ship to the huge red image of the dreadnought. Red dots began appearing here and there all over the battle screen.
Connely blinked and glanced at the outside viewscreen. The dreadnought, filling the screen from end to end, was fast taking on the look of a piece of Swiss cheese. As Connely watched, chunks of armor plate and turret vanished right and left, leaving round holes several yards across.
A thin purple fan now reached out on the battle screen from the scout ship to the dreadnought. On the outside viewscreen, the dreadnought appeared to lengthen out like an image on a sheet of live rubber. It stretched out into an elongated cylinder dotted with oval slits.
Abruptly the fan faded. The cylinder snapped back, and the viewscreen showed the dreadnought with the look of a ground car that has just run into a tree at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.
Connely and MacIntyre looked at each other. MacIntyre grinned suddenly, “Well, Con, now what do you have to say about new equipment? Without the new drive the cruiser would have gotten us. Without the new weapons, the dreadnought would have.”
“It’s not new equipment I’m against,” said Connely, “but unreliable equipment. And I never saw a piece of new equipment yet that didn’t have at least one nasty shock built into it.”
“The new drive and weapons saved us.”
“And the leak the new helmet put in the new fuel line may finish us.”
“Oh” said MacIntyre. “I forgot that.” He grabbed the fuel tank instruction manual, and instantly buried himself in it.
Connely hit the Astroposit button, and a few moments later, got their position based on a comparison of the stellar patterns around them with known stellar patterns. This informed them they were right in the middle of Maury’s territory.
Scowling, Connely glanced at the trip-meter, which showed distance traveled so far, and, in its projected chart showed the ship drawing away from Space Center 7. Connely looked at the trip-meter, a standard item of equipment, as if it were a traitor. He pulled off inspection covers, peered in with lights and jointed mirrors, and found nothing wrong. Next he looked suspiciously at the new course-control, where MacIntyre had set up his course. A look into this strange item merely confused Connely, so he contented himself with a study of the instruction manual.
After a considerable time, MacIntyre handed Connely the tank instruction manual, and pointed out a paragraph:
Node Effect. CAUTION! Do not touch exterior surface of fuel tank while subspace control unit is in operation. Such contact may unbalance the matter-energy equilibrium designed into the tank, causing momentary formation of a subspace node at the point of contact. That portion of an object within the node will be projected into subspace and may not reappear within several light-years of the tank. Severe injury may result.
“Evidently,” said MacIntyre, “the dripping fuel is being thrown harmlessly into subspace. Since there’s a special repair kit for the fuel line, I think we can fix it all right.”
Connely sighed in relief. “Good. Now let me show you something.” He handed MacIntyre a big sheet of thin paper thick with diagrams and text in fine type, that had been pasted into an envelope in the back of the course-control manual.
MacIntyre scowled at the paper. then squinted at a sentence Connely pointed out, and read aloud:
“Unlike most course-controls, the late model Z60 is perfectly foolproof. If the inexperienced pilot sets the Z60 for an unnecessarily complex route from point to point, the new corrector circuits shorten the route automatically.”
MacIntyre looked up, speechless.
* * *
“Isn’t that nice?” said Connely. “You or I or anyone else painstakingly sets the Z60 for a roundabout route to keep out of dangerous territory. The Z60 then charitably decides we are too ignorant to know there’s a shorter way, so it puts us right through the middle of the place where we don’t want to go. Meanwhile, the standard trip-meter has no way to know the Z60 has changed the course, so the pilot finds it out when it’s too late.”
MacIntyre shook his head in disgust.
Connely said, “I had a hunch it was the equipment that was making the trouble. But I didn’t have all the facts, so I couldn’t prove I was right.”