The hunter-killer has quit wasting missiles. It's now a beamer duel.

"Hit!" Piniaz cries, in a mix of glee and amazement. "We hurt her that time." This is his second victory cry. Our horsefly game has paid off, viewed strictly as a one-on-one.

"She's gone hyper," Junghaus says. "Not putting weigh on. Looks like drive anomalies."

"Coward," the Commander jeers. He's won the round. They're staying in hyper, where we can't reach them without using a missile. A missile they can, no doubt, dodge or intercept. Climbers make their easy kills because they appear out of nowhere, making their missile launches before the other team can react.

The petty triumph feels good. We made monkeys out of them. But behind the good feeling there's the worry about the destroyer's sisters. They'll be forming their shell around our sphere of range.

"Commander, singleship is putting on headway."

"Ach! Getting too busy around here."

"She's launched, Commander."

"Climb, Westhause! Emergency Climb!"

The Climber shakes as if she's in the jaws of an angry giant hound. What a shot! Dead on our Hawking point. Only my safety harness keeps me in my seat. The ship feels like she's spinning. One missile. That's all a singleship carries. She won't be hitting us again. Let's hope we break away before she gets a good lock on our point. Don't want her dogging us forever.

I catch a glimpse of my face in the dead visual screen. I'm grinning like a halfwit.

'Take her down, Mr. Westhause. To hyper. Junghaus, check that destroyer."

Seconds pass. Fisherman says, "Still no weigh on, Commander. Drive anomalies are worse."

"Very well. What do you think, First Watch Officer? Did we damage her generators?"

"Possibly, Commander."

"Easy meat, eh? Make a launch pass, Mr. Westhause."

We make the run, coming in from behind, but the Old Man doesn't give the order to launch. The destroyer wriggles, but not well enough to get away. She doesn't shoot back. Out of missiles.

Damaged. Easy meat indeed.

"Take us out of here, Mr. Westhause."

Victory enough, Commander? Just let them know you could've taken them?

He pauses behind me. "That's for Haesler. They'll understand."

Piniaz's comm line is still open. The gunners all grumble about the lost chance to avenge their Chief. The Old Man scowls but says nothing. Must be a malfunction in the switch down there.

"Make for that star now, Mr. Westhause." Throughout the action, between maneuvers, the Commander and astrogator have been eyeing a sun with what seems an unhealthy lust. Why get hi there where the mass of a solar system will complicate our escape plan?

Another case of my not knowing what the hell is going on.

The star is an eleven-hour fly. In Climb. Blind. With internal temperature rising every minute. It passes in silence, with crew taking turns sleeping on station. Piniaz and Varese get little sleep.

They wrestle with the agonizing chore of redistributing the work of the men we lost.

I'll take in some of Piniaz's slack, though I'd rather stay in Ops. That's where the action is. I assume a post at the missile board while an energy-rated Missileman moves over to cover for Holtsnider. Covering Missiles shouldn't be difficult with only the one launch bay armed. The control position for Launches One and Four can be abandoned.

Varese ameliorates his shortage by using Diekereide and commandeering Vossbrink from Ship's Services. Bradley can cope without Voss.

Westhause again demonstrates what a fine astrogator he is. He brings us down so near the star that it appears as a vast, fiery plane with no perceptible horizon curvature. And he manages to arrive with an inherent velocity requiring only minimal angular adjustment to put us into stable orbit.

How does he manage so well with a computation system scarcely more sophisticated than an abacus?

The roar of the star should mask the Climber's neutrino emissions and confuse all but the closest and most powerful radars. I'm told orbiting or slingshotting off a singularity is even more effective. "Vent heat."

It'll be slow going this close to so mighty a nuclear furnace. Typhoons of energy pound our black hull.

"Fire into the star," Piniaz tells his gunners. "We don't want Aem seeing beams flashing around."

Slow work indeed. After a time, I ask Piniaz, "Will continuous firing strain the converters?"

"Some. More likely to cause trouble hi the weapons themselves, though."

Another hi an apparently endless string of situations I don't like. "How long before the other firm figures what we've done?"

"They'll be checking stars soon," Piniaz admits. "The trick isn't new. One of the Old Man's favorites, hi fact. We once star-skipped all the way home. He'll bounce us to another one as soon as Westhause has his numbers."

"Where'd you serve before you came into Climbers?" I ask, hoping to profit from a talkative mood.

Piniaz gives me a queer look and dummies up. So much for that. The man is as self-contained as the Commander, and less interested in coming out.

Next star-stop is an eight-hour fly. The troops again nap on stations. Westhause slides us into another gem of an orbit. I think we'll make it. The Commander has forced the enemy to enlarge his search sphere. He can no longer adequately monitor it. Visiting Ops, I suggest something of the sort to Yanevich.

He raises one eyebrow, smiles mockingly. "Shows what you know. Those people are pros. They know who we are. They know the Commander. They know our fuel margins." He nods. "Yeah. We've got a good chance. A damned fine chance, with Rathgeber gone. We've gotten out of tighter places."

Doesn't look that tight to me. Been no contact for over twenty hours.

The crew haven't used the hours well. To a man they're on the edge of exhaustion. They need to rest, to really relax, in order to bury the ghosts of those we left behind...

Some of the old hands are eyeing me oddly. Hope they're not thinking I'm a Jonah-----Convince yourself, Lieutenant.

Would those men be alive if you hadn't elbowed your way aboard? Would Johnson's Climber still be part of the patrol?

A man could go mad worrying about crap like that.

9 Pursuit

We keep chipping away at the mission duration record. Yanevich says the longest was around ninety days. He doesn't remember the exact figure.

Memory gets tricky out here. It adapts to the demands of CUmber service. For instance, the men we lost—I can't remember their faces.

I knew none but Chief Holtsnider very well, and he not as well as I'd like. I can make a list of physical characteristics, but his face won't come.

It takes an effort to mourn them.

The lack of feeling seems common enough. We're under pressure.

We've found ourselves an uninhabited star-covert. It has planets and moons and a full complement of asteroidal debris. A fine place to get lost. And just as fine a place for the opposition to have installed a low-profile detection probe, a passive observer as easily detected as our own beacons.

This guilt I have, about not hurting enough for those we lost, isn't an alien feeling. I used to feel the same way at funerals. Maybe it's a result of the socialization process. I just don't hurt.

Our grief and anger didn't last long after Johnson's girls mounted Hecate's Horse, either. Maybe this pocket society has ,o room for them.

Piniaz has shifted me to the gamma radiation laser. The weapon has a beam that can punch through the stoutest shielding when properly target-maintained. It's a notoriously unstable weapon, and this unit is no exception. It's been acting up for weeks.

The first indication came when it produced barely discernible anomalies in the power-pull readings. The draw varied despite a constant output wattage. The tendency of the input curve was upward, which meant we were putting more and more energy into waste wavelengths.