Edmond Hamilton - Battle for the Stars

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THE TWO THOUSAND CENTURIES:
The Era of the Federation and United Worlds—62,339-129,999.
BATTLE FOR THE STARS
By
EDMOND HAMILTON
ISBN 1-58873-992-9
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1961, renewed Estate of Edmond Hamilton
Reprinted by permission Spectrum Literary Agency
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
For information contact:
PageTurnerEditions.com
PageTurner Editions/Futures-Past Science Fiction
A Renaissance E Books publication
THE TWO THOUSAND CENTURIES
The Era of Interplanetary Exploration and Colonization—1971-2011.
The Era of Interplanetary Frontiers—2011-2247.
The Era of Interplanetary Secession—2247-2621.
The Era of Interstellar Exploration—2300-2621.
The Era of Interstellar Colonization—2621-62,339.
The Era of the Federation and United Worlds—62,339-129,999.
The Era of the Star Kings—130,000-202,115.
CHAPTER 1
It was no place for a man to be.
Men were tissue, blood, bone, nerve. This place was not made for them. It was made for fire and force
and radiation. Go home, men.
But I can't, thought Jay Birrel. Not yet. My feet ache. I didn't sleep well. I want to see my wife, but I
can't go home. I have to go on into this place where a human being looks as pathetic as an insect in a
furnace.
Such thoughts made Birrel uneasy. He disliked imaginative thinking and imaginative people, he regarded
himself as a tough, practical man. They had a job to do and that was all there was to it, and he might as
well quit mooning about it. He straightened up a little more. He was always doing that, trying to gain a
little height, so that when he gave an order to a man he would not have to look up to him. It seemed a
little foolish to do it, but he could not quite get over the nagging consciousness that his height was only
average.
He said, “Radar?"
Joe Garstang, beside him, answered without turning. “Nothing has been monitored yet. Not yet."
Garstang was a younger man than Birrel, but he was so big and broad and slow-speaking that he made
you think of a rock. The rock could worry, though. Birrel sensed the worry now and thought, He doesn't
like this job ... And he doesn't like having me aboard. No captain likes to be outranked on his own
ship, especially on a mission like this one. Well, that is too bad, I do not like it either, but we are
going ahead into that mess anyway.
He concealed his own profound distaste at the prospect they were watching. It was comparatively quiet
here in the bridge, with only a muted chattering from the calc-room just aft. The place was almost like a
metal-and-plastic shrine, with the broad control-banks as its mechanical altar, Venner and the two
technicians their silent ministrants, and he and Garstang watching the screens like anxious supplicants.
The screens were not really windows. They were the final sensitive parts of a chain of incredibly
complicated mechanisms that took hold of some of the faster-than-light radar information flowing into the
ship, and translated it into visual images. But they looked like windows—windows through which
smashed the light of a thousand thousand suns.
This place was cluster N-356-44, in the Standard Atlas. It was also hellfire made manifest before them.
It was a hive of swarming suns, pale-green and violet, white and yellow-gold and smoky red, blazing so
fiercely that the eye was robbed of perspective, and these stars seemed to crowd and rub and jostle each
other. Up against the black backdrop of the firmament, they burned, pouring forth the torrents of their
life-energy to whirl in cosmic belts and maelstroms of radiation. Merchant ships would recoil aghast from
the navigational perils here. Unfortunately, this was not a merchant ship.
There was a rift in the cluster, a narrow cleft between cliffs of stars, which was roofed by the flame-shot
glow of a vast, sprawling nebula. It was the only possible way into the heart of the cluster, this channel.
Had others gone in this way? Were they still in here? That was for them to find out.
He looked at the looming, overtopping cliffs of stars that went up to the glowing nebula above and down
to a fiery shoal of suns below. He thought of Lyllin, waiting for him in the quiet house back at Vega. He
thought that he had no business having a wife.
"Radar?” he asked again.
Garstang looked at the tell-tales and said, “Still nothing.” He turned, his heavy brows drawn together into
a frown, and said doggedly, “It still seems to me that if they're in here, we should have come in with the
whole squadron."
Birrel shook his head. He had his own doubts riding him, but, once you started showing doubt, you were
through. He had made his decision, he had committed them, and now he had to look confident about it
no matter how lonely and exposed he felt.
"That could be exactly what Solleremos wants. With the right kind of ambush, a whole squadron could
be clobbered in this mess. Then Lyra would be wide open. No. One ship is enough to risk."
"Yes, sir,” said Garstang.
"The hell with you, Joe,” said Birrel. “Say what you're thinking."
"I am thinking that it was not my lucky day when you picked the Starsong for your flagship. That's all."
The ship moved onward through the fiery channel, toward the pair of red binary stars that marked its
end. The binaries hardly seemed to change size, the swarm of stars on either side of them seemed to
creep back with infinite slowness, even though the ship moved at very many times the speed of light.
Once, thought Birrel, such velocities had been thought flatly impossible. Then the light-speed barrier had
been cracked by the ultradrive which altered the basic mass-speed ratio by bleeding off mass as energy
and storing it, then automatically reconverting it into mass when a ship decelerated. At such velocities,
Birrel felt that it was ridiculous for him to be chafing at their slowness. He always felt that, and he always
chafed.
Looking at the upper screen that showed the flaring, billowing belly of the nebula above them, like the
underside of a burning ocean, Birrel said to Garstang, “Does it seem to you that the pace is speeding up?
I mean, this jockeying for power between the Sectors has gone on a long time, ever since Earth lost real
authority. But it seems different lately, somehow. More incidents, more feeling of something driving ahead
toward a definite goal, a plan and a pattern you can't quite see. You know what I mean?"
Garstang nodded. “I know."
The computer banks back in the calc-room clicked and chattered. Relays kicked, compensating course,
compensating tides of gravitic force quite capable of breaking a ship apart like a piece of flawed glass.
The two red binaries gave them a final glare of malice and were gone. They were out of the channel.
A star the color of a peacock's breast lay dead ahead.
Venner, the anxious and alert young officer who stood not far from Garstang, said, “That's the nearest
star with E-type worlds, sir. We've plotted five others farther in."
Garstang looked at Birrel.
Birrel shrugged. “If they're based in here, it'd be on an E-type. Take them one by one."
Garstang gave his orders. Birrel watched the blaze of peacock-blue grow swiftly. No ambush in the
channel, so now what? Ambush on the world of the blue star? Or nothing? Time and money wasted and
maybe it was all just a feint on Solleremos’ part, trying to draw the Fifth here while a move was made
somewhere else.
Suddenly Birrel felt old and tired. He had been in the squadron for almost twenty years, ever since he
was seventeen, and in all these years the great game of stars, the strain, the worry, had never let up.
It must have been nice in a way, Birrel thought, in the old days a couple of centuries ago when the United
Worlds still governed in fact from Earth, and all the star-squadrons were part of one galactic fleet whose
struggles were only with the natural perils of the galaxy itself. But that had not lasted long.
The trouble was that it had got too big, too fast. It should have taken millennia to expand so widely. But
the fact that on scores of E-type starworlds they had found peoples completely human in every respect,
had upset all calculations. The anthropologists were still arguing whether that was because original
germinal spores of life, seeding worlds of similar type, had produced identical chains of evolution, or
whether there had been a long-ago spread of some human stock through all these worlds. Opinion
inclined to the latter theory, but it didn't really matter. What mattered was that finding all these
star-peoples, some of them semi-barbaric but others almost up to the technical level of Earth, had
accelerated the expected slow expansion into a human explosion across the vast areas of the galaxy.
Too big, too fast. The United Worlds that had been set up back on Earth had handled it for a while, but it
could not govern that vast sprawl of stars at anything like a local level. That was when the Sectors had
been set up, the subdivisions of the UW. And that, thought Birrel, was when things had taken a different
path.
There were five great Sectors, and there were five governors, who headed the Sector Councils.
Solleremos of Orion, Vorn of Cepheus, Gianea of Leo, Strowe of Perseus, Ferdias of Lyra-and all of
them jealous of each other. Five great pro-consuls, paying only a lip-service allegiance to the shadowy
UW far away on Earth, all of them hungry for space, hungry for power. Yes, even Ferdias, thought
Birrel. Ferdias was the man he served, respected, and even loved in a craggy sort of way. But Ferdias,
like the others, played a massive game of chess with men and suns, moving his squadrons here and his
undercover operatives there, laboring ceaselessly to hold on to what he had and perhaps enlarge his
Sector just a little, a small star-system here and a minor cluster there...
And the game went on, and this mission was part of it. Ferdias wanted to know if Orion ships were
secretly basing in here where they had no business to be. This cluster was no-man s-land, part of the
buffer zones that were supposed to reduce friction between the Sectors. Actually, stellar wildernesses
like this one were the scenes of frequent, nameless little struggles that were never reported at all. Birrel
hoped, not too strongly, that he was not about to start another such.
"We're getting close,” said Garstang.
Birrel shook himself and got down to business. There followed a few minutes of activity on split-second
timing, and then the Starsong was shuddering to the vibration of her mass-reconverters as she plunged
toward a bright world almost dangerously close to her. There was still no sign of any enemy, and the
communicators remained silent.
An hour later by ship's chrono they had located the one port of entry listed for the planet and they had set
the Starsong down in the middle of a large piece of natural desert that served well enough for what little
space traffic ever came here.
It was night on this side of the planet. There was no moon, but, on a cluster world, a moon is a useless
luxury. The sky blazes with a million stars, so that day is replaced not by darkness, but by light of another
sort, soft and many-colored, full of strange glimmers and flitting shadows. By this eerie star-glow, through
the now unshuttered ports, a town of sorts was visible about a mile away.
Otherwise there was nothing. No ships, no base, no legions from Orion Sector.
"The ships could be hidden somewhere,” Garstang said pessimistically. “Maybe halfway around the
planet, but waiting to jump us as soon as they get word."
Birrel admitted that that was possible. He had put on his best dress coverall of blue-and-silver, and now
he stuffed a portable communicator into one pocket. Garstang watched him dourly.
"How many men will you want?” he asked.
"None. I'm better alone on this one."
Garstang's eyes widened a trifle. “I won't come right out and say you're crazy.
"Look, I know what I'm doing,” Birrel said impatiently. “I was here once before, years ago, when old
Volland commanded the Fifth, and I know these people. They're what you might call poor, but proud.
They have a lot of traditions about long-ago splendor, how their kings once ruled the whole cluster and
so on. They detest strangers, and won't let more than one in at a time."
"Fine,” said Garstang. “But what if you run into trouble in there?"
"That's the reason I'm taking the porto.” Birrel frowned, trying to plan ahead. “Exactly thirty minutes after
I enter the town I'll contact you, and I'll continue to call at thirty-minute intervals. If I'm so much as a
minute late, take off and buzz hell out of the place. It'll give me a bargaining point, anyway."
They went down to the airlock, which was open now and filled with a dry, stinging wind. Birrel paused,
looking toward the distant town that was a lonely blot of darkness between the star-blazing sky and the
gleaming sand. Here and there in it lights burned, but they were few and somehow not welcoming.
Garstang said, “A lot can happen in thirty minutes. Suppose you're not able to bargain?"
"Then you're on your own. But don't get yourself trapped—if it looks hopeless, you take her away."
Garstang snorted. “I'd get a fine reception from Ferdias if I went back and told him I left you here."
"Don't fool yourself,” Birrel said roughly. “Ferdias would rather lose a commander than a ship, anytime.
Just remember that."
He went down the ladder to the sand and began to walk.
He looked up at the incredible sky as he walked, and he thought of how wonderful that had seemed to
him when he had first come here. But that had been a long time ago. He had been young and eager then
and bursting with pride that he belonged to the Fifth, feeling somehow that space and stars were all his
personal property.
What's changed me? Birrel wondered. I'm older, I'm thirty-seven, I'm a little tired, but it's more than that.
I look at things differently now. Maybe it's the weight of command, or maybe being married, or it might
be that this is something that happens to every man as he goes along, that the excitement goes out of
things and, you have seen so much happen, that you glimpse the shape of possible disaster long before it
ever reaches you. The devil with it, he thought, this is no time for brooding, I had better be on my toes.
The town took shape as he approached it. The stonebuilt houses, mostly round or octagonal, were
scattered about with no particular plan. Under the red and gold and diamond-colored stars that burned
above them as bright as moons, they looked curiously remote and evil, like old wizards in peaked hats,
peering with winking eyes. The dry wind blew, laden with alien scents, and, apart from the wind, there
was no sound at all.
CHAPTER 2
The quiet was only what Birrel had expected. Not a soul in this place could have remained unaware of
the coming of the ship, but, with cold hostility, they were ignoring it. Nobody came out to meet him, no
one moved against the scattered lights ahead. Birrel tramped on, wondering how many eyes watched him
come.
Three men met him at the edge of the town. They wore pale cloaks and carried long staffs or wands of
office that were tipped with horn. They were all of seven feet tall. They wore their hair high on their beads
to accentuate this height, and they were slender and graceful as reeds, moving with a light, dancing step
as though the wind blew them. But their faces in the starglow were smooth and secret, their eyes as
expressionless as bits of shiny glass.
"What does the man from outside desire?” asked one of them, speaking in Basic.
Birrel said, “He desires to speak with your lord about the others who have come here from outside."
But they were not going to make it that easy for him. Their faces remained impassive, and the one who
had spoken said coolly, “Others?"
Birrel retained his patience. The Sector held a great many worlds, and their different peoples varied
widely in psychology, and anyone who got impatient would not get far with them. That was all the more
true here in the no-man's-land of the cluster.
"Yes. The others,” he said, and then just stood stolidly, waiting.
Finally the tall man shrugged delicately and said, “Our lord has wisdom in all matters. Perhaps he will
understand your words."
They fell in around Birrel and moved with him into the wide, sandy space that went between the
wandering houses. The nerves tightened up in his belly, and his back felt cold. He looked at his wrist
chrono, carefully. Garstang would be watching with the ‘scope, but once he was in among the houses he
could no longer be seen.
That was almost at once. The tall men walked on with their light, swaying stride, so that he had to move
at an undignified trot to keep up with them. The stone houses with their high roofs closed in behind him,
and there were only shadowy walls and sandy ways and a few dusty, leafless shrubs. Birrel had heard of
the strange, underground cultivation these people maintained in great caverns, but had never seen that.
He thought that this dark, poor, town ill accorded with old tales of cluster-kings. Yet many of the human
peoples at far-separated stars had such legends—the persistence of the legend, indeed, was one reason
for the theory that all these various human stocks in the galaxy, so completely human that they could and
did interbreed, had been seeded through the star-worlds by a space-conquering people in the remote
and forgotten past.
Tall figures back in the shadows watched Birrel pass.
They said nothing, but their silence was in itself hostile. Soon, when they were close to the center of the
town, his guide stopped beside a round, stone structure from whose open door came light.
"Will the man from outside enter the dwelling of our lord?"
Birrel breathed a little more easily as he went through the door. Apparently he had guessed wrong, and
he stopped.
He had not guessed wrong at all.
The odd, square, crystal lamps in the big, bare stone room did not really light it as much as did the soft
starglow pouring in through the high windows. There was quite enough light to show him the four men
here. They were not the tall natives of this world. They were men dressed much like himself and all but
one of them had sonic shockers at their belts and wore upon their shoulders the insignia of Orion Sector.
The one exception, who wore only a plain coverall, stood directly in front of Birrel, a lean, dark
iron-faced man with very alert eyes, and the easy, dangerous manner of one who enjoys his work
because he is so admirably well fitted for it, as a cat enjoys hunting. He smiled at Birrel and said, “My
name is Tauncer.
Birrel had never seen the man before, but the name was enough to tell him the full depth of this disaster.
On more than one world he had heard this name and had seen the work of this man, the most famous of
Solleremos’ agents.
He said, “I should feel flattered, shouldn't I?"
Tauncer shrugged. “We all do what we can, Commander. Each in his own way. Please sit down."
Birrel sat down in one of the carven stone chairs. His feet barely touched the floor, making him feel
ridiculously like a child in an adult's chair. He looked toward the door, but none of the tall natives had
come in after leading him neatly right into this.
He wanted to glance at his chrono, but he did not dare. Tauncer was watching him, and he did not think
that those insolent, amused, black eyes missed much. The other men lounged, not watching him, not
doing anything, but Birrel was sure their weapons would come out in a burry if he grabbed for his porto.
He would have to stall as long as he could.
"Just as a matter of curiosity,” he said, “how did you set it up with these people? They're famously hostile
to strangers."
Tauncer nodded. “That's right. Only I'm not exactly a stranger. We all, in these days, have mixed
ancestry from many worlds—you have it, I have it, everyone. Well, I happen to have a trace of this
people's blood. Not much, but enough."
He added casually, “By the way, Commander, you might as well look at your chrono, if you want to. I
can see that you want to very much."
His white teeth showed, and Birrel felt a rising anger. Tauncer was enjoying himself. He was good at this,
very good, and he was going to have fun with the honest clod he had trapped. Well, perhaps that fun
could be spoiled.
He did look at his chrono, saying, “Of course, you know that I wouldn't walk in here with my eyes shut.
My men have their instructions."
Tauncer's tone was almost soothing. “I'm sure they have. And don't feel too badly about this,
Commander. This was all set up on a minute study of your psychology and past record. It would have
been almost impossible for you to act other than you have. All we had to do was wait."
It confirmed, for Birrel, what he had already guessed. The rumor about Orion ships basing in this cluster
had been purposely leaked so that he would walk right into Tauncer's hands. He cursed himself for his
bad judgment. Garstang had been right, he should have brought the squadron in.
"I suppose,” he said, “that all of this is for some good reason.
"Naturally,” said Tauncer. I just want the answer to one simple question."
He walked closer and stood in front of Birrel and looked at him keenly. He asked his question.
"What is Ferdias planning to do about Earth?"
There was a long moment of complete silence, during which Birrel simply stared at Tauncer, and Tauncer
probed him with a gaze like a scalpel.
On Birrel's part, it was a silence of sheer astonishment. No question could have taken him so
unexpectedly. He had been prepared to be grilled about squadron dispositions, forces in being, bases, all
the things that the men of Orion would like to know about Lyra. But this—
It didn't make sense. Earth was not part of the present-day star struggle. That old planet, so far back in
the galaxy that Birrel had never been within parsecs of it—it was history, nothing more. It had had its
day, its sons long ago had spread out to the stars and their blood ran in the veins of men on many worlds,
in Birrel himself. But its great day had long been done, and the Sector governors, who played the cosmic
chess-game for suns, paid it no heed at all. No, Birrel decided swiftly, the question was merely a fake, a
cover-up for something else, some other line of attack.
"I'll repeat,” said Tauncer. “What's Ferdias planning to do about Earth?"
"I haven't,” said Birrel, “the faintest idea what you're talking about."
"Possibly,” said Tauncer. “But I've been given the job of making the inquiry, and I'll need more than your
word and an expression of innocence. Where's Karsh?"
He shot out the last question so suddenly that it almost caught Birrel off guard, but he maintained his
blank look.
"Karsh?"
Tauncer sighed. “Well, these formalities are just delaying us. Dow!"
One of the other men came forward. Tauncer spoke to him in a low voice and he nodded and went into
another room. Birrel's pulse began to pound heavily. No more than fifteen minutes had elapsed since he
entered the town. There was plenty of time left for mischief. Yet he said flatly to Tauncer, “You must
know that you don't have much time."
"All the time in the world, Commander. Your men aren't coming in after you."
"You're pretty sure."
"Yes, I'm sure. Can't you hurry that up, Dow?"
"All ready.” Dow came back carrying a light tripod with a projector mounted on top of it. And now
Birrel had a leaden feeling. He had seen that particular type of projector before. It was called a
vera-probe and it beamed electric wave-impulses in a carefully controlled range that absolutely stunned
and demoralized a man's name, and a half-forgotten one at that. Why should Earth occupy his mind?
Why, Tauncer?
How long is thirty minutes? How long does it take three cruisers to come from Point X to Target Zero?
How long does it take for a man to realize he's through at last?
Tauncer seemed to know his thoughts. “Time almost run out, Commander? I'm afraid that's not going to
help you. Ready, Dow?"
Dow said again, “All ready.
Tauncer nodded. Dow touched a stud on the projector.
As though that touch had done it, a dull and mighty roaring echoed from out in the desert—the
full-throated cry of a heavy cruiser taking off.
The men looked, startled, toward the open doorway. Desperately, Birrel tugged free of their hold, out of
the unseen force that was already battering at the edges of his mind.
"You out there!” he shouted at the doorway. “The men from outside will destroy you unless I go free!
Call your lord—"
Then Tauncer's men caught up to him and one of them hit him hard on the side of the jaw. Birrel shut up,
hanging with blind determination to his consciousness. Forethought had provided this one chance. He
would not get another.
The cruiser came low over the town. Dust sifted out of the cracks of the stone walls. The men fell to their
knees, covering their heads with their hands. The floor rocked under them, beaten by the rolling hammers
of concussion, as the shock wave hit them.
CHAPTER 3
The ripped sky closed upon itself with a stunning, thundering crash. After a minute or two the noise and
the shock wave ebbed away.
Silence.
The men began to get up again. But Birrel did not move.
The cruiser came back. This time it was even lower. Garstang must have tickled her belly on the peaked
roofs. Good God, thought Birrel, he's overdoing it. This time the stones were shaking loose, the whole
town rocking from that tremendous shock-wave.
When it was over, a long, thin shape came in through the doorway. it was the leader of the tall, native
men who had brought Birrel here. He was not smug and secret now. His face was a mask of fear and
rage as he spoke to Tauncer.
"You said that if we helped you, you would keep all other outsiders away!"
"We will,” said Tauncer. “Listen—"
"Yes, listen,” mocked Birrel. “Listen to it coming back. It'll keep coming back, unless I walk out of here,
until—"
Dow hit him across the mouth to silence him. The tall man stood hesitating. Then the Starsong roared
back over, and this time it did seem as though the roof was going. When it had passed, the man's
hesitation was gone. With a kind of desperate haste, he grabbed Birrel's arm and shoved him toward the
open doorway.
"Oh, no,” said Tauncer, starting forward. “You can't do that."
The tall man turned on him a face livid with frustrated anger, and he took that anger out on Tauncer.
"Shall the children of kings be destroyed to serve mongrels such as you? Shall I call my people in?"
Birrel, heading toward the door, saw outside it the crowd of tall, pale-cloaked men who had gathered.
Tauncer saw them too and he stopped, his face dark and wary.
Still full of resentment at being so easily trapped, Birrel could not forego the gesture of flicking dust off his
sleeves before he went through the door. Tauncer's dark eyes showed a gleam of amusement at this bit
of bravado, but it stirred the man Dow to rage.
He cried violently, “Are we just going to stand here and let him go?"
Tauncer shrugged. “Why, yes, there are times when you just stand and do nothing and this is one of
them."
Birrel went out through the door and through the scared, angry crowd outside it. They glared their hatred
at him, but no one stopped him, no one followed him. He snatched the porto out of his pocket and talked
fast to Garstang. Then, without trying to make a dignified exit, he stretched his legs and ran like the devil
toward the desert.
The cruiser dropped down ahead of him, as black and big against the stars as a falling world. The lock
yawned open, and Garstang was inside it to meet him. He started to ask what had happened, but Birrel
pushed him bodily away down the corridor, heading for the bridge.
"Get in there and do your stuff, Joe. We've got three Orionid cruisers coming this way up the planet's
radarshadow, and I don't know how close they are."
Garstang's square face got dismal, but his step quickened and his voice crackled orders as they went
past the radar and calc-rooms to the bridge. The intercom went suddenly crazy and men jumped at the
controlbanks. The last thing Birrel heard before the howling roar of take-off drowned everything was
Garstang observing complainingly that this sort of thing was hard on a ship.
They went up and away from the planet. Garstang's orders had been designed to shove them out on a
course exactly opposite from the course the Orionids must be using to come up, just as those others
were using the planet's radar-shadow to sneak in undetected, so the Starsong was using the opposite
radar-shadow to sneak out. But the cone of shadow would pinch out very soon.
"Less than a half-hour,” said Garstang, looking through a filter-port at the blazing peacock sun that was
sliding back as they pulled out. “It's pretty close quarters yet, but we'd better hit it and get all the start we
can before they spot us-we can't jam three of them."
Birrel nodded, grimly agreeing. Ultra-light-speed missiles, with their deadly warheads, each had their own
independent radar to home on their targets. A cruiser's defense against them was not armor, but
incredibly powerful shafts of electromagnetic force that jammed the radar of oncoming missiles and sent
them wandering astray. You could jam against the fire of one ship, maybe even two if you were lucky.
You could not jam against three. They would inevitably saturate and smother your defense.
Garstang gave the order for full acceleration schedule, the sirens wailed warning. Despite the unseen
autostasis that cradled frail human bodies against impossible pressures by swaddling them in a matrix of
force, they felt a wrenching deep in their brains and guts as the Starsong plunged ahead.
At fantastically mounting speeds the ship raced toward the two red binaries that guarded the entrance to
the channel. The scanners and ultra-radar had come into play, replacing normal vision, making their
cunning illusion of sight. Birrel watched the two red double stars hungrily. Then on the intercom
radar-room said dismally, “They've come on the ‘scope, sir. Three N-16s, overhauling us at a five to
three-point-six ratio."
Birrel glanced at Garstang. “It figures. Tauncer would have messaged them to keep right after us. They
didn't have to land and then take off again."
Garstang nodded silently. Now the Starsong was beginning to pass between the two huge red binaries
into that thicker sprawl of stars through which the channel led. He glanced at the tell-tales, then ordered
their acceleration schedule cut back. There was, Birrel knew, nothing else he could do. The channel
ahead was not straight and you could not take it too fast—in that swarm of suns the fabric of a ship could
be torn apart in some deadly resultant-point of gravity drags, or vaporized in collision. The only thing was
that the Orionids were still coming up on them.
But Birrel said nothing. This was Garstang's job and he let him do it. The enormous pairs of red suns
flashed past them on either side and were gone, and they were in the channel. Under his feet he could feel
the Starsong quiver, wincing and flinching like a live thing now and again as some new combination of
gravitic forces wrenched at her. On either side of them now the overhanging cliffs of stars seemed to
摘要：

THETWOTHOUSANDCENTURIES:TheEraoftheFederationandUnitedWorlds—62,339-129,999.BATTLEFORTHESTARSByEDMONDHAMILTONISBN1-58873-992-9AllrightsreservedCopyright©1961,renewedEstateofEdmondHamiltonReprintedbypermissionSpectrumLiteraryAgencyThisbookmaynotbereproducedinwholeorinpartwithoutwrittenpermission.Fori...

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