On the bridge of the Toorine Trader the captain was becoming worried. The last shot had blown a gash in the stern and blew open a hatch cover. Obviously the cutter was getting the range while managing to keep just out of cannon’s reach. The captain resolved that if he got out of this, the company was going to pay for some of those rocket mines for his ship.
“We must be getting close to the border!” The captain shouted to the navigator. “Man boiler room! Preheat coke! Man Type A defenses!”
Two Twosh bowling-pins scampered across the deck on bright white-gloved hands, then hopped atop a tarpaulin-covered shape at the bow. The tarp came off, revealing a device resembling a small telescope with a dome-shaped housing. The Twosh poised before a control board with form-fitting indentations to the rear of the device, huge oval eyes staring at the dead controls.
Another rocket mine soared, then struck amidships, blowing a huge hole in the side of the Trader.
“Shift ballast to compensate!” screamed the captain. Come on, you bastards, where’s that border?
Then suddenly, as if someone had lifted a dirty curtain, the Toorine Trader came out of the fog and stood clear to the pursuers, a sitting duck.
“We got ’em!” screamed the Parmiter in triumph. “Now let’s finish ’em off!”
The rocket crews sniggered and loaded for the kill. They were aiming at the midsection, hoping to strike the central mast. That would leave the big craft at their mercy.
The Parmiter’s crew took its time on this one, no longer worried about the problems of fog and elevation. They were so busy making sure of their shot that they failed to notice faint wisps of white begin to rise from the Trader’s twin stacks.
On the bow, the two Twosh at the strange console suddenly yipped in glee as sophisticated control panels came to life before them. A radar mast flipped up and started its slow back and forth sweep, and a large grid in front of one Twosh showed the cutter clearly.
The captain had won his gamble. Now, in the fight and run, with the current carrying most of the load, they’d drifted back over the high-tech hex border, into Usurk. That had activated all their technical devices. They could see the flare in the hand of a ghostly shape on the cutter deck prepare to touch off the rocket mine that would administer the coup de grace to the Toorine Trader.
But the Twosh suddenly elevated their platform to proper height, locked on, and fired with computer-aided accuracy.
The odd-looking telescope was better known as a laser cannon.
At the same time the Trader turned; sails came down in record time and when the master gauge on the bridge read ready a slim tendril shot out from the captain and pulled a lever, activating the great engines and twin screws.
Huge clouds of smoke billowed from the Trader’s stacks before the sails were even down, and it turned with astonishing speed and bore in on the small cutter. “Fire!” screamed the Parmiter, but at that moment a blinding beam of greenish-white light struck them full force. The grenade rose a half-meter, then exploded. The laser beam swept down, slicing off a part of the cutter’s bow.
The small ship exploded.
There was a blinding flash and roar as the balance of the rocket grenades ignited, and a great plume of water shot up, then fell, leaving only fragments where the ship had been.
A collective sigh of relief traveled the length of the Toorine Trader.
The captain surveyed the scene, its odd, transparent head cocked a little to one side. “Maybe they’re right,” it murmured to itself. “Maybe those grenades are too damned explosive to carry.”
Damage-control personnel started cleaning up, patching, and repairing, taking advantage of the high-tech hex to use their best equipment.
The Trader approached the now-visible coast of Ecundo, which looked wild and forbidding this far south. Shortly she’d head north, back up that coast, almost all the way under sail.
As the ship headed toward the land, it moved away from a single, tiny figure drifting south in the current It was too small, and soon much too far away, to be heard or noticed except by a few curious seabirds.
“Help me! Oh, please, god! Somebody help me!” came the anguished voice of the Parmiter. “Doc! Grune! Somebody! Anybody! Help me!”
But there was no one to help the Parmiter this time.
Nocha
The Torrine Trader had been patched well; only the fresh wood on parts of the bow, midsection, and superstructure hinted that something had been amiss.
A week later, the Trader was several hundred kilometers out, steaming across the Sea of Turagin to the northwest, on its way to deliver to Wygon huge crates of things whose function they couldn’t fathom and couldn’t have cared less about.
It was cold in Nocha, slightly above freezing. The crew stayed belowdecks as much as possible; the sea was extremely rough, and one could easily fall overboard into the chilly waters. Nobody wanted that—not in Nocha, where, only a few meters below the raging surface, thousand-toothed insects waited for just such a bonanza.
They were definitely not company customers, anyway, and no crewman wanted to give them anything for free.
The storm and cold had driven a tiny airborne figure farther west. She was almost exhausted, and had begun to doubt her ability to continue. No land had been in sight since she’d flown out over the sea to intercept the Trader before its landfall in Wygon three days hence—according to the schedule obtained from the company office in Damien.
She had no broad, great wings to maintain herself on comfortable updrafts above the storm. Her powers of flight were tremendous and included the ability to zig and zag almost at right angles with no efiort as well as to stand still. But doing so meant that her wings had to work constantly to keep her aloft.
And right now all four pairs were sore as hell. In desperation, she climbed as high as she dared, letting the gusts carry her tiny, frail body along like a leaf in the wind, allowing her some rest and forcing her to use her own powers only when she lost altitude. The system was working, yes, but it was a stopgap measure and not one that could be maintained for long periods. It was also taking her westward, although southwest, northwest, or due west she had no way of knowing.
The westward drift almost did her in. Hardly able to see, desperately fighting the elements, she was not prepared when the storm suddenly ceased and a wave of warmth washed over her. The atmosphere was also quite calm and at very low pressure, and she began dropping like a rock before she knew it.
Straining painfully to pull out of the fall, she realized she’d been blown across a sea-hex border. She pulled out just before hitting the waves and managed to maintain a low altitude. That was not enough; a gleaming silver fish that looked to be half teeth leaped from the water to grab at her. In panic, she managed to gain a little more.
Too exhausted to think straight she began to allow sensations of impending doom to penetrate her consciousness. She realized that, if she didn’t find some place to land soon, she would drop into the suddenly placid sea. And wet wings would incapacitate her, leaving her easy and tempting prey for those silvery appetites below.