Joy lofted in Vodan. “We’ve struck him!” he shouted.

“He could launch his torps in a flock,” the engineer worried.

“No. Come look if you wish. His powerplant took that hit. He has nothing left except his capacitor bank. If he can use that to full effect, which I doubt, he still can’t give any object enough initial velocity to worry us.”

“Kh’hng. Shall we finish him off?”

“Let’s see if he’ll surrender. Standard band… Calling Imperial Meteor. Calling Imperial Meteor.”

One more trophy for you, Eyath!

Hell Rock shuddered and toned. Roarings rolled inward. Air drifted bitter with smoke, loud with screams and bawled commands, running feet and threshing wings. Compartment after compartment was burst open to space. Bulkheads slid to seal twisted metal and tattered bodies off from the living.

She fought. She could fight on under what was left of her automata, well after the last of the crew were gone whose retreat she was covering.

Those were Ferune, his immediate staff, and a few ratings from Mistwood who had been promised the right to abide by their Wyvan. They made their way down quaking, tolling corridors. Sections lay dark where fluoro-panels and facings were peeled back from the mighty skeleton.

“How long till they beat her asunder?” asked one at Ferune’s back.

“An hour, maybe,” he guessed. “They wrought well who built her. Of course, Avalon will strike before then.”

“At what minute?”

“Daniel Holm must gauge that.”

They crowded into their lifeboat. Ferune took the controls. The craft lifted against interior fields; valves swung ponderously aside; she came forth to sight of stars and streaked for home.

He glanced behind. The flagship was ragged, crumpled, cratered. In places metal had run molten till it congealed into ugliness, in other places it glowed. Had the bombardment been able to, concentrate on those sites where defenses were down, a megaton warhead or two would have scattered the vessel in gas and ashes. But the likelihood of a precise hit at medium range was too slim to risk a supermissile against her remaining interception capability. Better to hold well off and gnaw with lesser blasts.

“Fare gladly into the winds,” Ferune whispered. In this moment he put aside his new ways, his alien ways, and was of Ythri, Mistwood, Wharr, the ancestors and the children.

Avalon struck. The boat reeled. Under an intolerable load of light, viewscreens blanked. Briefly, illumination went out. The flyers crouched, packed together, in bellowing, heat, and blindness.

It passed. The boat had not been severely damaged. Backup systems cut in. Vision returned, inside and outside. Aft, Hell Rock was silhouetted against the waning luridness of a fireball that spread across half heaven.

A rating breathed, “How… many… megatons?”

“I don’t know,” Ferune said. “Presumably ample to dispose of those Imperials we sucked into attacking us.”

“A wonder we came through,” said his aide. Every feather stood erect on him and shivered.

“The gases diffused across kilometers,” Ferune reminded. “We’ve no screen field generator here, true. But by the time the front reached us, even a velocity equivalent of several million degrees could not raise our temperature much.”

Silence clapped down, while smaller detonations glittered and faded-in deeper distances and energy swords lunged. Eyes sought eyes. The brains behind were technically trained.

Ferune spoke it for them. “Ionizing radiation, primary and secondary. I cannot tell how big a dose we got. The meter went off scale. But we can probably report back, at least.”

He gave himself to his piloting. Wharr waited.

Rochefort groped through the hull of Hooting Star. Interior grav generation had been knocked out; free-falling, they were now weightless. And airless beyond the enclosing armor. Stillness pressed inward till he heard his heart as strongly as he felt it. Beads of sweat broke off brow, nose, cheeks, and danced between eyes and faceplate, catching light in oily gleams. That light fell queerly across vacuum, undiffused, sharp-shadowed.

“Watch Out!” he croaked into his radio. “Watch Out, are you there?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Helu’s voice in his earplugs, from the engine room.

Rochefort found the little body afloat behind a panel cut half loose from its moorings. The same ray had burned through suit and flesh and out through the suit, cauterizing as it went so that only a few bloodgouts drifted around. “Wa Chaou bought it?” asked Helu.

“Yes.” Rochefort hugged the Cynthian to his breast and fought not to weep.

“Any fire control left?”

“No.”

“Well, I think I can squeeze capacitor power into the drive units. We can’t escape the planet on that, but maybe we can land without vaporizing in transit. It’ll take a pretty fabulous pilot. Better get back to your post, skipper.”

Rochefort opened the helmet in order to close the bulged-out eyes, but the lids wouldn’t go over them. He secured the corpse in a bight of loose wire and returned forward to harness himself in.

The call light was blinking. Mechanically, conscious mainly of grief, he plugged a jack into his suit unit and pressed the Accept button.

Anglic, accented, somehow both guttural and ringing: “—Imperial Meteor. Are you alive? This is the Avalonian. Acknowledge or we shoot.”

“Ack… ack—” Before the noise in his throat could turn to sobbing, Rochefort said, “Yes, captain here.”

“We will take you aboard if you wish.” Rochefort clung to the seatback, legs trailing aft. It hummed and crackled in his ears.

“Ythri abides by the conventions of war,” said the un-human voice. “You will be interrogated but not mistreated. If you refuse, we must take the precaution of destroying you.”

Kh-h-h-h… m-m-m-m…

“Answer at once! We are already too nigh Avalon. The danger of being caught in crossfire grows by the minute.”

“Yes,” Rochefort heard himself say. “Of course. We surrender.”

“Good. I observe you have not restarted your engine. Do not. We are matching velocities. Link yourselves and jump off into space. We will lay a tractor beam on you and bring you in as soon as may be. Understood? Repeat”

Rochefort did.

“You fought well,” said the Ythrian. “You showed deathpride. I shall be honored to welcome you aboard.” And silence.

Rochefort called Helu. The men bent the ends of a cable around their waists, cracked the personnel lock, and prepared to tumble free. Kilometers off they saw the vessel that bore three stars, coming like an eagle. The skies erupted in radiance.

When ragged red dazzlement had cleared from their vision, Helu choked, “Ullah akbar, Ullah akbar… They’re gone. What was it?”

“Direct hit,” Rochefort said. Shock had blown some opening in him for numbness to drain out of. He felt strength rising in its wake. His mind flashed, fast as those war lightnings yonder but altogether cool. “They knew we were helpless and had no friends nearby. But in spite of a remark the captain made, they must’ve forgotten to look out for their own friends. The planet-based weapons have started shooting. I imagine the missiles include a lot of tracker torpedoes. Our engines were dead. His weren’t. A torp homed on the emissions.”

“What, no recognition circuits?”

“Evidently not. To lash out on the scale they seem to be doing, the Avalonians would’ve had to sacrifice quality for quantity, and rely on knowing the dispositions of units. It was not reasonable to expect any this close in. The fighting’s further out. I daresay that torp was bound there, against some particular Imperial concentration, when it happened to pass near us.”

“Urn.” They hung between darkness and glitter, breathing. “We’ve lost our ride,” Helu said.

“Got to make do, then,” Rochefort answered. “Come.” Beneath his regained calm, he was shaken at what appeared to be the magnitude of the Avalonian response.