eyes go wide, laughed again. She pulled harder, and Fuller's laugh was driven from him by the impact of a thousand-year-old slug of metal which struck him high on the bridge of the nose. Jan let the old gun fall to the floor, It struck with a metallic clang. Fuller had been blown backward by the impact of the heavy slug. He fell to lie on his back, his face a study in death, mouth wide in surprise, blood covering his open eyes. Jan screamed. She screamed just twice, then bit on one knuckle, edged past the body, ran to the ladder shaft. Pete heard the shot echo throughout the room. The sound galvanized him into effort. He was on his hands and knees when Jan came running to him to throw herself down and put her arms around him. «Fuller?» Pete croaked. «Dead,» she said. «We've got to get out of here,» he said. He told her, then, what he had done and watched her eyes go wide. «Oh, no.» «They were going to kill us. I couldn't let them live.» «I understand.» He had noted the time of activation. Less than ten minutes had passed. «Can you walk?» Jan asked. «I think so.» He got to his feet and fought the dizziness. A man just didn't get a blow to the head and recover immediately and do heroic things. He walked with his arm across Jan's shoulder for support. The ladder shaft was torture. He dragged himself up rung by rung, Jan below him, encouraging him. She had not had time to think that her beautiful planet was going to be destroyed. She could think only of Pete, and the fact that they were both alive. When at last Pete struggled out into the open air the freshness of it seemed to help. They were still a long way, through the undergrowth, from the Lady Sandy. The way had been marked as Brad Fuller had hacked away jungle growth. But the going was slow. Pete's head ached, but he was able to keep going. The dizziness came and went. They broke through into the flood zone, covered by low, rank growth. The Lady was there, of course. Pete broke into a staggering run, the growth whipping at his legs. Inside, breathing hard, fighting to keep from blacking out again, he checked his watch. «We made it,» he said. There was just under an hour left. He could blink the tug far away to safety in mere seconds. The generator was at full charge, all systems operative. «Pete, isn't there anything we can do?» Jan asked, as he seated himself and began preparations for a quick blink. «Maybe. If there's time.» He'd kept himself on his feet with that hope, that faint, long-shot hope. He'd been thinking of that device down deep in the earth under the old fort. It had been man's last, great achievement in the use of the nuclear fusion. The trigger was a hydrogen bomb. The energy released by the fusion of a light chemical element to form nuclei of heavier elements was relatively minor, exploding so far underground. What happened with that explosion, however, was not minor. The fusion energy triggered an intricate reaction which released the bonding molecular energy of medium-heavy elements with a force which spread and could not be contained, not even by the core and crust of a planet. The planet buster had been such a terrible weapon that following the war against the Zede II group, a lot of money had been spent finding a way to counter it. There was, of course, no way to stop the reaction once it had been triggered, but U.P. scientists had found a way to disarm a planet buster before the hydrogen trigger exploded. For a long, long time, all ships of the line had been equipped with a magnetic beam which could penetrate miles of solid rock to disrupt the initial fusion action and prevent detonation. The problem was that when Pete was at the Academy there'd been talk of discontinuing the practice of making the neutralizer mandatory equipment for fleet ships. The chances of Rimfire's having a neutralizer were slim. She was an X&A ship. But X&A ships, going into the unknown, went prepared. Weaponry on an exploratory ship matched, and often exceeded, that of a ship of the line. He had fifty-two minutes. He punched in the coordinates for Rimfire's position, and the Lady Sandy blinked. Jan had been busy. She treated the knot on Pete's head, cleaned it, sterilized it. The skin was broken and blood had clotted his hair. The Lady came into normal space a few hundred yards from the shadowy outline of Rimfire. «Get me headache pills,» Pete told her. He had some thinking to do. He'd planned how to get into the same never-never zone with Rimfire previously, had had it worked out, but he wanted to be sure. Jan was alive, and soft-warm. He wanted to be with her forever, but not frozen in time and space like Rimfire. He took the powerful drug, and his head felt much better almost immediately. «We need to talk this over, Jan,» he said. «Pete, I don't want to see my planet destroyed.» «It's risky, Jan. We can blink back, call in some of the bright scientists from New Earth. Rimfire's not going anywhere.» «Please,» she said. «It means that much to you?» «Not if you think it's too risky,» she said. «But we were rich, Pete. We had a planet of our own. Didn't you like that?» «I did.» «I'll leave it up to you.» Forty-nine minutes. He talked it, using spoken thoughts to get it straight in his mind. «Okay. Rimfire programmed a blink in the normal mode. Something, perhaps the size of her generator, the power, something, caused her to vector off onto that generator harmonic which matched the blink mode of ships of a thousand years ago. Her computer was programmed to bring her back into normal space from the normal mode, and didn't function in the altered mode.» She knew what he was doing. He was merely thinking aloud. But the chronometer was ticking off precious seconds. «The computer says this will work. In effect, I program a mixed blink. If I just programmed a blink in the old mode we'd come back into normal space right past wherever it is that Rimfire is hung up. What we have to do is program some delay into the blink, so that we'll exist in the same, whatever, frame, time and space, whatever, that Rimfire exists in.» Jan nodded. «We haven't tried that yet, you know.» «Pete.» «Okay, okay.» He punched instructions. «Hang on.» He felt the slide, the exit of his internal organs and tubings. His heart seemed to beat outside of his body, and once again he felt, in that timeless, endless eon of waiting, a great pity for the crew of Rimfire. He'd been looking at Jan's face when he pushed the blink button. If he had to spend eternity frozen in some strange state, he wanted to spend it looking at her. After a few thousand years, during which he had time to review his entire life, time to remember every moment with Jan, he saw her eyes blink and it was over. He breathed. «It works.» Thirty-five minutes. He talked as he made preparations. «What I did was program two sets of exit instructions,» he said. «First, the blink was programmed standard-mode, but with the generator tuned old-mode. That left us hung up.» «Wow,» Jan said. «I relived my whole life.» «It's not bad, except for that feeling of being outside of one's body,» Pete said. «But I also programmed a switch to old mode which, after a delay in tuning the generator—that went on while we were feeling timeless—» «Evidently doesn't affect a computer,» Jan said. «Evidently not.» So it worked. Now came the ticklish part. He told her what he expected of her. «We're going to have to actually make hull contact with Rimfire while we're hung up in time,» he said. That meant a series of tiny blinks. It didn't matter to either the generator or the computer how short the blinks were. The process was the same. He moved the Lady Sandy a few hundred yards closer to the shadow of Rimfire, measured carefully. Each blink was the same. Each took an eternity. «It's almost like psychotherapy,» Jan said, as they readied for another small blink which would cut the distance between the ships down to mere feet. «I can go back to the womb. I can remember every sensation, every word I've ever said or read, everything anyone has said to me.» «I spent a few thousand years going over our first month together,» Pete said. He had calculated it carefully. There was no time to wait for the Lady's generator to charge fully. Twenty-one minutes. He would make two more of the eternity blinks, hanging in limbo for a time which proved, in real space, to be only seconds. The next-to-the-last blink put the tug's metal side mere inches from the shadowy metal cliff of Rimfire's portside. In normal space it would have been simple. He would merely have snaked a cable over, and the field of the generator would have traveled down the cable to lift Rimfire back. However, to exist where Rimfire had solidity, he was in a state of frozen time, unable to blink an eye, much less control a cable. It had to be a hull contact. And since no one had ever blinked a ship into actual hull contact he had a few nightmare visions inspired by that man-made sculpture out in deep space, a ship fused, sharing a molecular bone with a stone asteroid. Nineteen minutes. Within a few seconds there could very well be another frozen sculpture in space, or in near space, a shadow of two ships, a huge X&A ship and a stubby tug blended together forever and ever, molecules intermixed, flesh become a mixture of metal and all the elements which went into the construction of the two ships. He used a precious few seconds kissing Jan. She felt, then, her first fear. Until that time she'd had total confidence. The kiss, the way he clung to her, told her that there was, indeed, danger. «You know,» Pete said, releasing her, sitting down, his fingers poised over the blink button, «I've dreamed about this moment from the first day I set foot on a tug. I've envisioned latching onto a big, rich ship. I've repeated a phrase a million times in my mind. Lord, how I'd like to be able to say to this ship, 'Captain, do you accept a Lloyd's?' « «I know, darling,» she said. «I know.» «And here I'm about to latch onto the most expensive, most valuable ship ever built, pull her out of trouble, and I'm not even going to be able to talk.» «It's all right,» she said. «We'll have a planet.» If it worked. If Rimfire had a neutralizer. If it wasn't already too late. «Ready?» «Hold my hand.» He squeezed her hand hard, pushed the button. A metallic, clanging thud was in his ears, remaining there for eons. All of his vital organs, all that was within him, his life force, his everything, seemed to flow up his arm and blend where their flesh made contact with all that was Jan. Chapter Twelve Captain Dean Richards, having reviewed all he had ever been exposed to in the way of mathematics, amused himself for a few thousand years figuring exactly how far his hand had moved. He'd started it toward his forehead to brush back his hair a few eternities past and it had moved exactly .0000000 0001211 millimeters. It would be interesting to calculate, in units of near infinity, how long he'd feel the tickle of the lock of hair. Tiring of that, Richards began at the beginning again. He knew the first moment of sensation. He was in the womb. He could feel the thump-thump of his mother's heart, hear the singing sound of blood in his tiny, forming veins. After a few times through a lifetime, things were revealed which had been lost in the haste or excitement of the moment in actual life. He found that he could concentrate on things he had seen with peripheral vision only and create almost a new set of lifetime awareness. The brain was, he had found, a most marvelous organ. He was astounded by the things it had stored, things which he hadn't even noticed at the time. Lord, what an educational tool! He could review, word by word, thought by thought, every book he'd ever read. He could extend theory. He was a mental superman, but he was helpless. And then the damned ship's alarm system clanged and clanged and Julie Rainbow was looking up at him with wide eyes. «Object in hull contact, sir,» Julie said. He had not fully recovered. He was still living an interesting, forgotten segment of his life. And things were happening too fast. The alarm was clanging and people were leaping to stations and a voice came at him from the bulkheads and all the metal in the ship. «Captain,» the voice said, «do you accept a Lloyd's?» «What in holy hell?» Dean Richards said. Chapter Thirteen He had to say it. He just had to say it. He'd just undergone an eternity of closeness with Jan which was unlike any other experience of his life, their souls, everything that was them blended and aware at the point of contact, their closely held hands. And he'd lived his life again, knew that with the knowledge he'd accumulated in deep, word-by-word study of every book he'd ever read he could breeze through any exam the Academy could throw at him and then teach the professors a thing or two. All that, and he still had to say, «Captain, do you accept a Lloyd's?» He sent the question through the cable communications system and it reverberated in the hull of the Lady. Then he clicked on the voice communicator. «Identify,» Rimfire sent. «U.P.S tug Ramco Lady Sandy.» Pete said. «This is Captain Dean Richards, U.P.S. Rimfire. I see no reason to understand your question.» «You did seconds or eternities ago, Captain,» Pete said. Dean Richards brushed the lock of hair back from his forehead. Yes, the man was right. But now Rimfire was functioning perfectly. «Captain Richards,» Pete said, «we can talk about that later. This is a vital question. Do you have a planet-buster neutralizer on board?» Richards was still trying to clear his head. «That, sir, is service business, not yours,» he said. Fifteen minutes. Pete's fingers flew. He felt the strange, eerie tug, knew that suspended, timeless feeling. He passed it going over the little he'd ever read about planet busters and neutralizers. Then they were back in normal space again. «Captain Richards,» he said, «you have an empty generator.» He was angry. Seconds were ticking away. Jan's beautiful planet was just under fourteen minutes away from destruction. «You can't blink. Answer my question or I'll blink you back and leave you there until I can get messages back to New Earth and get a fleet ship out here.» «That is classified information,» Richards said. «My God, man, a planet's going to blow up,» Pete shouted into the communicator. «I can explain everything later.» «Yes, we have a neutralizer.» «How long will it take to get it activated and to do the job?» «Hold one,» Richards said. Paul Victor, rubbing his eyes in puzzlement, had come into the control room. Richards put the question to him. «Activate in two minutes,» Paul said. «In position, five minutes to do the job. Maybe a little more if there's a great deal of heavy metal in the planet's crust.» «Get it going,» Richards said. He'd let the whole exchange be broadcast to the tug which was in hull contact with the Rimfire. Even as he gave the order he felt the Rimfire blink. The tug had moved him. More alarms sounded. He checked visuals and saw a water planet quite close. Ten minutes. «The buster is immediately under the fortified position directly below,» Pete said. «We have nine minutes and twenty seconds and counting.» Paul Victor looked up quickly. He'd started warming the neutralizer. It had one minute and thirty seconds to go before it was ready. He spoke into the communicator. «Young man,» he said, «it's going to be close. I'd suggest that you be prepared to blink us to hell out of here.» «Just neutralize that thing,» Pete said. «Neutralizer activated,» Paul said. Pete looked at the chronometer. Six minutes, thirty seconds. Jan was at his side, tense, her hand on his shoulder, her eyes on the visuals to get, she felt, what might be her last look at her beautiful planet. She'd seen Pete punch in a blink coordinate. She knew that he was ready to blink both ships out of the range of the devastating explosion. «There's a planet buster down there, all right,» Paul Victor said, as he sent the neutralizing beam out and down to flash through the planet's crust. «And there's one hell of a lot of heavy metal.» He had six minutes and five seconds to kill the capacity to react in a hydrogen warhead. «It will be very, very close,» Paul said. «Keep the tug skipper posted,» Richards told him. «It's old,» Paul said, «but it's alive. Good, strong reading. Going down slowly.» Jan reached for Pete's hand, praying at the same time. She was careful not to hold the hand which was poised over the blink button. There was just enough charge left in the Lady's generator to lift both ships to safety. Four minutes. Three. Two. At sixty seconds, Pete began to count down. «Lady Sandy,» Paul Victor said, «we're not going to make it. I'm sorry.» «Forty-nine,» Pete coun