It seemed to turn over on itself, described a couple of somersaults, and then sent a Coiling blast of energy before the humans' ship.
Renark blocked his mind and tensed his body. 'Screens!' he yelled.
But Asquiol had already raised them.
The ship shuddered and the screens proved effective against the alien weapons - but only just Asquiol aimed the energy-laden guns on the leading ship.
'The anti-neutron cannon would dispose of them quickly enough,' he said wistfully.
'And probably the system as well,' Talfryn added as Asquiol's rapid shots bit into the alien ship, and it exploded to form, almost immediately, nothing more than a ball of ragged metal.
Now the other ships came on in formation. But Asquiol bent over his guns and grimly pressed his fingers down on all studs. The ship took the enemy retaliation, but shuddered horribly. His own fire damaged two, which then spiralled away from their comrades.
Then the whole fleet sailed up in the strange, somersaulting motion and fired together.
'We can't take this attack!' Talfryn screamed.
Asquiol's eyes were intent on the enemy craft. He sent another great blast of energy slamming through space as the force of the joint attack hit the cruiser.
The ship shook, shuddered, groaned and came to a dead stop. Lazily it began to spiral through space while more of the alien ships came flooding up from the nearest planet. Asquiol did what he could to stop them, but with the ship out of control it was difficult to aim.
Renark was fighting the controls.
'We took it,' he shouted, 'but it's thrown our circuits crazy. Talfryn, get down there and see what you can do with the Master Co-ordinator!'
Talfryn scuttled from his seat and entered the elevator, dragging a space suit with him.
Asquiol, eyes narrowed, aimed his guns carefully, cursing.
He cut down several more, but these ships didn't seem to care whether they were destroyed or not. Momentarily Asquiol wondered if they had living crews aboard.
Something was wrong with the quality of the void. It did not have its normal sharpness. Rivers of colour, very faint, seemed to run through, and shapes seemed to move just beyond the limit of his vision. It was tantalising, it was maddening…
Willow, pale and tense, clung to a bulkhead, her eyes fixed on the big laser screen. Space was alive with boiling energy. It swirled and coiled and lashed through the disturbed vacuum. To her, it was as if the binary had suddenly gone nova, for she could not see through the multi-coloured patterns of force which obscured everything but the yellow, darting shapes of the enemy ships.
Slowly the patterns faded, but the alien vessels came on, Renark realised that the hideous nature of the void was not created by the force released in the battle. It was something else. Something much more ominous.
Asquiol kept up a rapid continuous fire. The screens took the brunt of the energy, but suddenly the ship was agonisingly hot.
Renark spoke into his mike.
'Talfryn, are you down there now?'
Talfryn's worried voice groaned back to him. 'I'm doing what I can. With any luck I should have fixed up most of the masters in five minutes.'
'Do it sooner,' Renark ordered, 'or you'll be dead.'
What were these aliens? Why were they so savagely attacking a ship when they hadn't even bothered to discover whether it was friend or enemy?
They came on with implacable ferocity.
Asquiol's lean face ran with sweat. Willow was on the floor now, her eyes wide, still fixed on the screens.
'Get into a suit, Willow,' he shouted. 'Get into a suit!'
She staggered up and walked unsteadily towards the locker from which she had seen Talfryn take a suit. Slowly she opened it, hissing with pain as the metal burned her hand, struggled to release a suit and clamber into it, its fabric automatically adjusting to the shape of her body.
Renark pulled on heavy gauntlets. The controls were now too hot for him to manipulate with bare hands.
Again and again the alien craft somersaulted and sent charges of energy towards the ship.
Asquiol felt his skin blister as he returned the fire and had
the satisfaction of seeing another three alien ships collapse into scrap.
Then Renark felt the ship responding again to the controls. Talfryn had fixed the Master Co-ordinator. He sent the ship veering away from the alien vessels.
Talfryn came rushing from the elevator, tearing off his helmet. He flung himself into his seat.
'Christ!' he shouted. 'More of them!'
Another fleet, larger than the one that had already attacked them, was coursing in to join the fight. As it got nearer, Talfryn noticed that the ships were not of the same design as the first fleet. In fact not one of these ships was of identical design. The weirdly assorted fleet fanned out - to engage not their ship but the enemy fleet!
Pale rays landed out and twined around the enemy craft, which vanished.
'By God, they're on our side!' Asquiol cried joyously as Renark eased his ship away from the area of the fight.
Suddenly a clear voice came over the speakers. It began giving directions. Talfryn moved the dials. 'I can't find the source,' he said. The voice, speaking their own language, although a slightly archaic version, began to repeat the directions in exactly the same tone as before - velocity, trajectory and so forth.
The ship was beginning to cool. The people inside relaxed somewhat.
'Don't bother finding the source,' Renark said. 'It sounds like a recording, anyway - an automatic instruction to visitors. We'll do as it says.'
Following the directions they found themselves shooting towards an ochre planet - small, ominous. The ships which had aided them now surrounded them, a motley assortment, but fast enough to stay with Renark's speedy cruiser.
When they were on course, a new voice broke into the taped instruction recital.
'Welcome to Entropium. We saw that you were in trouble and sent help. Forgive us for not doing so earlier, but you were then beyond our boundaries. You put up a pretty good fight.'
'Thanks,' Asquiol said softly, 'but we could have done with that help sooner.' Except in rare instances, Asquiol was not a grateful young man.
'That was out of the question,' the voice said lightly. 'But you're all right now, barring accidents…'
They sped down into the glowing red shroud of the planet.
'… barring accidents…'
Again and again they went through the same action, unable to do anything, trapped into it, as if they were on a piece of film being run many times through a projector.
Every time they appeared to reach the planet's surface they found themselves heading through the red mist again.
Then they were in the mist and motionless, the voice speaking amusedly:
'Don't worry, this will probably last a short while.'
Exhausted as he was, Renark had to use his special space sense to get some kind of grip on the situation. But it was virtually impossible. One moment he felt the presence of the red planet, the next it was gone and there was nothing in its place.
Several times they repeated their action of dropping down towards the surface until, quite suddenly, they were flashing through the fog and emerged into daylight - pinkish daylight - observing the jagged face of a sombre-coloured planet which, in its wild texture, was like a surrealist landscape painted by an insane and degenerate artist.
Willow lay on the floor in her space suit, her eyes closed, and even the men fought to control their minds and emotions as they jarred and shuddered at the sight of the alien planet. It was unlike any other they had ever seen, unlike any planet in the galaxy they knew.
Why?
It wasn't simply the quality of the light, the texture of the surface. It was something that made them uncomfortable in their bones and their brain.