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.
Slowly, muscle by muscle, Svantozik lowered himself. He said at last, “A proverb goes: ‘The hornbuck may run swifter than you think.’ I touch the nose to you, Captain Flandry.”
“I’m pleased to see my men didn’t hurt you. They had particular orders to get you alive. That was the whole idea.”
“Did I do you so much harm in the Den?” asked Svantozik bitterly.
“On the contrary. You were a more considerate host than I would have been. Maybe I can repay that.” Flandry took out a cigaret. “Forgive me. I have turned the ventilation up. But my brain runs on nicotine.”
“I suppose—” Svantozik’s gaze went to the viewscreen and galactic night, “you know which of those stars is ours.”
“Yes.”
“It will be defended to the last ship. It will take more strength than you can spare from your borders to break us.”
“So you are aware of the Syrax situation.” Flandry trickled smoke through his nose. “Tell me, is my impression correct that you rank high in Ardazir’s space service and in the Urdahu orbekh itself?”
“Higher in the former than the latter,” said Svantozik dully. “The Packmasters and the old females will listen to me, but I have no authority with them.”
“Still — look out there again. To the Sky Cave . What do you see?”
They had come so far now that they glimpsed the thinner part of the nebula, which the interior luminosity could penetrate, from the side. The black cumulus shape towered ominously among the constellations; a dim red glow along one edge touched masses and filaments, as if a dying fire smoldered in some grotto full of spiderwebs. Not many degrees away from it, Ardazir’s sun flashed sword blue.
“The Sky Cave itself, of course,” said Svantozik wonderingly. “The Great Dark. The Gate of the Dead, as those who believe in religion call it … ” His tone, meant to be sardonic, wavered.
“No light, then? It is black to you?” Flandry nodded slowly. “I expected that. Your race is red-blind. You see further into the violet than I do: but in your eyes, I am gray and you yourself are black. Those atrociously combined red squares in your kilt all look equally dark to you.” The Urdahu word he used for “red” actually designated the yellow-orange band; but Svantozik understood.
“Our astronomers have long known there is invisible radiation from the Sky Cave , radio and shorter wavelengths,” he said. “What of it?”
“Only this,” said Flandry. “that you are getting your orders from that nebula.”
Svantozik did not move a muscle. But Flandry saw how the fur bristled again, involuntarily, and the ears lay flat.
The man rolled his cigaret between his fingers, staring at it. “You think the Dispersal of Ymir lies behind your own sudden expansion,” he said. “They supposedly provided you with weapons, robot machinery, knowledge, whatever you needed, and launched you on your career of conquest. Their aim was to rid the galaxy of Terra’s Empire, making you dominant instead among the oxygen breathers. You were given to understand that humans and Ymirites simply did not get along. The technical experts on Ardazir itself, who helped you get started, were they Ymirite?”
“A few,” said Svantozik. “Chiefly, of course, they were oxygen breathers. That was far more convenient.”
“You thought those were mere Ymirite clients, did you not?” pursued Flandry. “Think, though. How do you know any Ymirites actually were on Ardazir? They would have to stay inside a force-bubble ship all the time. Was anything inside that ship, ever, except a remote-control panel? With maybe a dummy Ymirite? It would not be hard to fool you that way. There is nothing mysterious about vessels of that type, they are not hard to build, it is only that races like ours normally have no use for such elaborate additional apparatus — negagrav fields offer as much protection against material particles, and nothing protects against a nuclear shell which has made contact.