The man looked disgusted. “Help her.”

  “Don’t do that,” Mack told the woman, “unless you’ve all-cleared the frying pans.”

  She looked at him without comprehension, and he pushed over to her and pressed keys. The first alarm fell silent and the second dwindled to a lonely wail. One of the red lights turned green, then amber and purple.

  “I’ll get that software now,” Mack told the man. “You really want all disks? It’ll take us a while—”

  The siren howled again and something crackled at the back of the ship. The woman cursed in an incomprehensible tongue, left the pilot’s seat, and began what sounded as though it would become an extended complaint to her male partner.

  With an apologetic look, Mack slipped into the seat and tapped three keys. Battle harness snapped into place about him, and the little ship shot forward with a violent acceleration that slammed both boarders against the jumper mountings. Skewing sidewise, it fired a single missile.

  The shock of its detonation followed instantly, drenching the little ship with momentary heat and radiation.

  Mack sighed as he watched the readings creep back toward normal, and began recharging. It would be necessary to wait, perhaps for days, until the wreck of the DS long-range pursuit cooled down enough for him to board. Even then, it was quite possible that every fuel tank it had carried had been breached. He searched the boarders, taking a few items that might be of value and trying very hard not to notice whether either one was still alive, then pushed them out of the airlock.

  · · · ·

  God muttered, “Pawn takes bishop. That puts it on F five, doesn’t it?”

  The Devil’s snarl was the DS long-range pursuit’s only threnody.

  · · · ·

  Mack scanned his instruments anxiously. There had been fuel enough for only a single charge. The second, surviving, pursuit would already have reported his position. Eventually the absence of the pursuit he had destroyed would be noted, and the correct conclusion reached. The second, or a more powerful, ship would begin searching for him.

  As carefully as ever, he determined his exact location and retrieved that of the mysterious world that was his destination. If it was possible—if only it was somehow possible—to refuel here, charge, and refuel again. He could get to within a single jump of it.

  An uncharted yellow sun was in easy nuclear range. It looked promising.

  · · · ·

  “Here we are,” Tobi remarked, and put the transmission into Park. Rain lashed the windshield as she pushed the headlight switch in and turned off the ignition.

  Mack leaned back in his seat.

  “Are you still an alien from someplace a gadzillion light-years away from here?”

  He nodded.

  “And your spaceship’s right here. It’s just that it’s under the water.”

  He nodded again.

  “Under the fucking Pacific Ocean. That’s really, really good.” She felt herself grow angry. “Because if it wasn’t, if it was floating on top or up in the clouds, we couldn’t possibly see it because it’s too goddamn dark.”

  “This is the only way I can make you believe me,” Mack explained. “There are probably regulations against it—I don’t know, and to tell the truth, I don’t care. I’ve got to carry out my mission, and you’re far inside enemy territory.”

  “You want me to go back to the station and tell everybody in Portland that we’ve been contacted by aliens.”

  “Only me. One alien.”

  She nodded, suddenly afraid he was going to switch on the dome light. “You could at least put away that gadget you’re playing with and hold my hand.”

  “I’ve been wanting to,” he said, and did.

  “You’re the pilot. It’s just a teensy ship, you said. A one-person ship, and you fly it.”

  Thunder boomed in the distance; she felt rather than saw his nod and snuggled closer.

  “So I’m out here in the dark and the rain with a lunatic. Will you get mad if I call you a lunatic? I’m mad enough for both of us already.”

  “No,” he said.

  “We’ll sit out here looking at your ship—underneath the water, those big combers you can see once in a while way out there—for a couple of hours, and a few days from now we’ll get some carryout and maybe a bottle of wine and go out here to look at your ship again.” She shrugged, and her lips brushed his. “You’re not the only one who’s crazy.”

  “That’s good.” (She was warmed by the smile in his voice.) “We need a great many crazy people, so I can get my fuel. Two represents an increase of one hundred percent.”

  “Your hands are so hard.” She wanted to say that they were strong, too, but told herself that she mustn’t push things too fast. “I think you’re really a bricklayer.”

  “I’m alone on my ship for months at a time,” Mack explained through the language filter. “Once for more than a year. When something goes wrong, I must repair it. There’s no one else. I tear down my equipment to inspect it, too. And…”

  “And what?” she asked him.

  “Sometimes I take things apart just for something to do, and to train myself to do it quickly and efficiently. Usually there’s no subjective gravity, and so—” He was silenced by three sharp raps on her window.

  “Oh, God!” She pushed the button, then started the engine and pushed again. “A cop. We were just talking, Officer. We stopped for a minute to look at the view. I’m—”

  He bent to peer through the window, a large man nearing middle age, in an orange slicker on which POLICE was printed in bold black letters. “To look at the view,” he repeated skeptically.

  Mack pointed. “When the lightning flashes, we can look far out to sea.”

  Tobi said, “If I were to tell you we were sitting here conferring about a news story, you wouldn’t believe me, so I won’t, and we’ll move if you tell us to. But we’ll just go someplace else and talk some more.”

  The policeman blinked away raindrops. “You’re the anchorwoman. Channel Seven. Tobi Butler.”

  “Belter—you recognized the freckles, right? I’m a co-anchor. I’ve got all my clothes on, see?” Lightning painted the night with white fire, and thunder rumbled behind it; but neither of them looked beyond the windshield.

  “An hour be enough for you two to talk?” the policeman asked.

  “Certainly, Officer. More than enough.”

  He nodded. “I’m supposed to keep the kids away from here. If your car’s still here when I get back, I’ll have to move you along.” He straightened up, and sensing rather than seeing something stared out into the blacker dark beyond the low stone railing. “Turn on your headlights, Ms. Belter.”

  She pulled out the switch and swore as the beams lit up a wall of shining metal that seemed to have cut them off from the rest of the world.

  Lightning flamed again, and her jaw dropped. The hull of the largest supertanker would have been lost inside it. A full hundred stories it towered, and its width was three times its height; its length, concealed behind the blunt, mountain-like prow, was unguessable. “My ship,” Mack told her. There was a touch of pride in his voice.

  Reverently she said, “Shit,” and did not know that she had spoken. The policeman was sprinting for his squad car and its shortwave radio.

  “If I’m able to complete my mission,” Mack explained, “the capabilities of my little ship will be increased a hundredfold. The rulers have promised that, and E-One says it’s true. With a hundredfold increase—”

  She silenced him with a gesture. “Look! Down there, that line across the water. Is it on fire?”

  “That’s the emerald, my main battery lens.” Lightning returned, and half the ocean was ablaze with hot viridian and dancing berylline.

  “It’s—it’s…” Her back against her door, she pointed a trembling forefinger. “You’re true!” Her cell phone buzzed as she snatched at it. “Who is this? Sharmaine? Sharmaine, I’ve got—

  “But it’s New York. Sharmaine, this—” She fell silent, listening, then spoke to Mack, the vast ship rising from the Pacific almost forgotten. “Somebody nuked New York. The whole damned city’s wiped out. Eighteen million people.”

  · · · ·

  “I’m speaking from a secret location on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean,” Tobi announced from the acceleration couch Mack had rigged up next to his. “As you know, chemists at a dozen top universities have synthesized the incredibly powerful fuel that will permit this ship to attack and destroy the one that is devastating the whole world.” She glanced at Mack, who nodded.

  “Captain Chance has indicated that he is ready. You will now witness the takeoff as a second passenger aboard the deep-space patrol ship that is, quite literally, the only chance Earth has. This is Tobi Belter for—”

  A giant’s first slammed her deep into softness that was no longer soft, but darkness.

  · · · ·

  When she returned to consciousness, Mack asked, “Want me to feed the screen?”

  Weakly she nodded, and the camera that had been focused upon her swiveled.

  “Am I still on? I guess I am. I can’t hear anything in my earphones. If we’ve already jumped—that’s what Captain Chance says, he says ‘jumped’—there will be a delay due to the speed of light. Have we, Captain?”

  He nodded. “Twenty-nine point two seconds.”

  “A delay of about a half minute.”

  In her ear, the new national anchor said, “We got footage of your takeoff from a satellite, Tobi. Incredible. It’s still raining sea water as far east as Jefferson City, Missouri.”

  “What you are looking at is what Captain Chance sees in his screen. It’s a simulation of the enemy ship, based on the data this ship’s onboard computer has. It may change while you watch because new data can revise our guess at the type of ship we’ll be facing.

  “It looks pretty horrible, Captain. Is it bigger than ours?”

  “About thirty times our size,” Mack told her. “A knight.”

  “Did you say a night?”

  The enemy ship vanished, buried under graphs and leaping numbers that were not in Arabic notation. “There seems to be a filter problem,” Mack told her. “A heavy battle cruiser. Is that what you heard the first time?”

  “No, but it doesn’t matter. Can we beat it?”

  He shook his head.

  “But we must,” Tobi told the listening world. “It may be a hundred times bigger, but we have to win. Captain Chance is determined. So am I, not that it matters. Have we engaged yet, Captain?”

  He nodded again. “Those dots—” He touched a key and the enemy ship returned. “Are missiles. At this range they’d take a month at least to reach us, but they know I’ve got to bore in to use the main battery effectively. If I short-jump, I’ll cut the range and one will be right on top of us.”

  “What are you going to do?” Tobi asked.

  “I’m going to run,” Mack said. “It’s the only thing I can do.” He and the ship vanished into hyperspace, and she with them.

  · · · ·

  “We are taking evasive action,” she said when she was less real again, and watched the scarlet line of a laser creep toward them as the image of the DS heavy battle cruiser dwindled.

  In her ear, the new national anchor said, “Can you tell us whether battle is imminent, Tobi?”

  She ignored him. “As I understand it, we can leave those missiles behind by moving the fight to another part of the solar system, so that’s what Captain Chance is planning to do. Those fiends that have killed so many good people may be bigger and stronger than we are, but they have to come after us. In space fighting, that’s an enormous advantage. Another is that our smaller size makes us a lot harder to locate and hit. But our main battery—that’s the big laser that takes up so much room on our ship—can destroy the enemy.”

  “Cripple it, anyway,” Mack told her. “Kill it with three or four hits, maybe.”

  In her ear, the new national anchor said, “Is there any way for you to escape the enemy’s missiles, Tobi?”

  “I apologize, folks,” she told her audience, “this thirty-second delay, or whatever the exact figure is, is the pits. But there’s not much we can do about it.”

  The new national anchor said, “Got you, Tobi. I’ll try not ask any more dumb questions. The lag seems to have been cut by your passage through the fourth dimension in any case.”

  Earth replaced the enemy in Mack’s screen, and the face of a general replaced Earth. “We think he’s within extreme range now, sir,” the general told Mack. “The Russians have the window, and they’d like to use it. What do you say? Want to give them the go-ahead?”

  “Not yet. I can bring it in quite a bit more.”

  The President overlaid the general. “I’m told that one of our subs will be able to launch in about fifteen minutes. For geopolitical reasons—”

  “Hold until I tell you,” Mack said, and short-jumped again.

  · · · ·

  Tobi said, “I can’t describe it. I really can’t. What did you see, John?”

  In her ear the new national anchor said, “Lost you for a minute there, Tobi, but I think we’re getting you back now. You probably don’t care, but you and Captain Chance have the largest audience in history, well in excess of two billion. That’s most of the remaining population of the world.”

  My God, she thought, what will I do for an encore? And the answer came to her at once: Die.

  “You wanted to know what it looked like to us. We didn’t see anything, just lost the picture.”

  “I feel like I’ve been to heaven and hell,” she told the two billion. “Different parts of me, but both at once. Only I can’t describe either one for you, because there aren’t any words for what’s going on there. Not really.”

  The enemy ship was on screen again, its long dark hull polka-dotted with crimson. Mack said, “They’re locked to us. No use waiting,” and short-jumped for the third time.

  · · · ·

  This time it was a simulation of Earth that she saw, with ICBMs streaking up from Russia and China, and a shadowy vessel that was still submerged in the Bay of Bengal.

  “Won’t they see those too?” she asked Mack. “Can’t they jump away from them?”

  For the first time that day, he smiled. “They’re watching us, and some of those ought to be on top of them before they can recharge.”

  · · · ·

  “Pawn takes knight,” God announced almost regretfully. “You know if it weren’t for the suffering, this would be lots of fun.”

  · · · ·

  Five hundred thousand light-years from Earth, Tobi Belter tapped Captain Mack Chance’s shoulder. He froze, then spun around.

  “I’m here,” she told him, “freckles and all. Not one of those fake things. Not a simulation. This is me.” She took a half step closer, so that they were almost touching. “Feel something. Anything. I’d like that.”

  His hand stroked the back of her thigh.

  “This is the one before the next to last, isn’t it? You’re recharging—I can hear the machines. That will use up the fuel we brought from Earth. You’ll jump once more, and then we’ll have to refuel somehow.”

  “I left you on the shuttle,” Mack said.

  She smiled a little sadly. “You thought you did. Those things have two airlocks. One to outside and one to the cargo bay. When I saw you were getting ready to go, I went out through the cargo bay. I got into our ship about three minutes before you did, and hid.”

  “We’re going back,” he said. “I can take you back to your own world and get more fuel, start over.”

  “Yes, you could. But you’re not going to.” For perhaps ten seconds she was silent. “The President was thinking about taking our ship. Did you know that? Seizing it and having American scientists go over every molecule of it. Imagine what they’d learn! They already know how to make jump fuel.”

  “I was—” Mack interrupted himself. “Are you saying he told you?”

  “Of course not. But I’d talked with him several times, and I know how to tell what a politician’s thinking. That was what he was thinking, and he tried to sound me out without telling me anything. There’d be a PR problem, a big one, after the way we’d built you up. That’s what I told him, and it was the truth. Then I offered him an alternative that was nearly as good, and better in some ways, with no problem attached. Do you think I could’ve pulled off that stunt on the shuttle without the astronauts’ cooperation?”

  Mack said nothing, glancing at his screen then back to her.

  “This is the alternative. I’ll go with you, make you take me along—”

  “You can’t.”

  “I think I can. So does the President. You’re going to take me along, and I’m going to learn as much as I can about our ship and how it works. When it’s transformed into a supership that even you can hardly—”

  “If,” he told her. The word came like a stone.

  “When it’s transformed, made eight times faster and twelve times more powerful, which is what you told me once, I’m going to learn all I can about that. And I’m going to get you to take me back to Earth, which will be nothing to you then. You’ll probably tell us a lot more than you have already, too, because the things you know now will be child’s play to you then, and if Earth becomes a space power you’ll have a friendly force and a refueling station behind enemy lines.”

  He had turned from her to press keys. “We’re going back. We’ll jump back as soon as we’re charged.”

  “It will be the end of our mission.”

  “My mission.”

  “Ours, because if you take me back and kick me out, the mission is over. Failed. You’ll have to land to refuel, and they’ll never let you get away again.”

  “You’ll be killed.” His shoulders sagged, and she knew that she had won. “Tobi—oh, Tobi!”

  “Tell me you love me. That will make it easier.”