VI + 

Titan lay ahead of me, pursuing its track around Saturn. + 

My ship drove toward it, flaming out fuel in reckless amounts as I poured on the acceleration. I had to get there fast. We’d already missed our rendezvous time with Thorsten by two days. He was going to figure out what happened⁠—must have done so already⁠—and would be hot behind us. I had to land, get the engines installed, load supplies, and take off into hyperspace before he hit. + 

It was a race against time. I built up velocity to a point no sane skipper would ever dream of, leaving just enough fuel to brake with, knowing I wouldn’t need it to get back. + 

Part of me sat in the control room, plotting curves, charting fuel consumption figures on a graph, watching the black line rise hour by hour to the red crayon slash that meant I had done all I could. + 

And part of me was down in the cabin with Pat, but if I’d let the two parts mix.⁠ ⁠… + 

No ship in the System had ever hit the speed I begged out of my ship’s heaving engines. No human being had ever traveled as fast before, tracing his track across the white stars in the blue fire of his jets. + 

If I made it to Titan in time to get into hyperspace, I would have Pat with me. There’d be stars to look at, and the worlds that circled them. Star on star, marching past the ship, world after spinning world, fair against the stars, and a million things to see, a thousand lifetimes to live. + 

Out there, where other beings lived, was adventure enough for both of us, and enough of dreaming. Maybe she’d forget Thorsten, maybe some of the things she’d said had been lies, maybe the whisperings in darkness were true. + 

If I could get to Titan in time. + 

I might as well have walked. I knew there was no hope before I finished landing. + 

Titan was an empty moon. Where the project bubble had been was a circle of fused concrete around a mess of melted alloys. A corpse in a T.S.N. spacesuit lay on its back and stared at Saturn. + 

I looked down at it, cursing, my shoulders slumping under the weight of my helmet. + 

And I heard the voice on the command frequency. + 

“Hey⁠—you⁠—you down by the bubble.” The voice was weak, and getting weaker. + 

“Yeah!” I shouted into my mike. + 

“Holcomb?” + 

“Yeah, for Christ’s sake! Where are you?” + 

“Your right⁠—about a hundred yards. Start walking over here. I’ll talk you in.” + 

I started off at a lope, kicking my way over the rough ground. That voice was pitifully weak. + 

I found him, curled around a rock, his head and arm supported on a rifle that was leaned against the stone. + 

“Holcomb⁠—” + 

“Yeah.” He couldn’t even turn his head to look at me. + 

“I’m Foster⁠—Lou Foster. Commanding, Marine guard detail.” + 

I remembered him. The one who filled a practice football with water. + 

“Yeah, Lou. How’s it?” + 

“No damn good at all, Ash. I’ve been waiting for you.” + 

“Thorsten?” + 

“Yeah⁠—our old classmate, Harry the horse. About thirty-forty hours back.” + 

“You been in that thing all this time!” + 

“Sure⁠—snap, if you breathe shallow and don’t drink anything. Helps to have a couple of spare tanks.” He could still try to chuckle. + 

“Well, hell, guy, let’s get you over to my ship.” + 

“No can do, Ash. No sense to it.” + 

I was straining to hear the words now, even with his set right next to mine, I knelt down and touched helmets with him. + 

“Listen, Ash⁠—he’s got the stuff. The diagrams, the charts, the figures⁠—everything. He’s even got the tech detail to put it together for him.” + 

“All right, Lou. It figured. But can the yak. Come on, boy, over my shoulder you go, and down to the can with you.” + 

“Lemme lay! Goddam it, quit tryin’ to move me! I didn’t walk over here⁠—I got flung when the dome let go!” He was screaming. + 

“Sorry, Lou!” + 

“S’all right.” He bubbled a chuckle. “I see by my infallible little T.S.N. instruments that I’m gonna run outta breathin’ material ’na couple minutes. ’S’all right by me. Luck to ya, Ash.” + 

“Yeah.” + 

But he didn’t strangle. He didn’t choke in his helmet; there was still air in his tanks when he died. + 

I went back to my ship and sat behind the control board, smoking a cigarette. I rubbed a hand across my tired eyes, and wondered what I was going to do next. + 

Thorsten had thought of everything. He couldn’t have found technicians to assemble the drive anywhere else, so he’d come out here and kidnapped them. That was an elementary move, obviously planned far in advance. + 

I’d been running a useless race. I would have realized it long ago, if I hadn’t been half-crazy about Pat. + 

She laughed at me when I told her about it, but she laughed in a peculiar way. + 

“I could have told you,” she said, laughing. “Ash Holcomb, the big undercover agent, heading like mad for Titan! And what does he find?” + 

“I found Lou Foster, Pat,” I said, feeling the steel in my voice slicing upward in my throat. + 

“That wasn’t anybody’s fault!” she said quickly. “He happened to get in Harry’s way.” + 

“Go tell Andrea Foster,” I said. + 

“Stop it, Ash! You can keep bringing up horrible examples, but it still doesn’t mean anything, compared to travel to the stars.” + 

“What was wrong with the way it was going to be done?” I asked. + 

But she was pulling her protective shell of mockery around her again. “Oh, stop it, Ash! You’re licked, and now you’re trying to justify it by claiming foul, the way losers always have.” + 

But the last thing she said, as I slammed out of the cabin, was: “This time, you got the spanking, Ash. Now stop crying about it.” But somehow, she didn’t sound as happy as she’d probably expected. + 

I took the ship back out into space, finally, heading Sunward. All I could do was hope I’d get within radio range of a T.S.N. ship before Thorsten found me. + 

But that didn’t happen. I wasn’t anywhere near the Belt when I had to sit and watch Thorsten’s fleet come flaming at me out of space and surround my ship, sliding into tight courses that held me on a deadly and invisible leash. + 

And I could feel things crumbling inside me. All the principles the Academy had built in, and love, and fear⁠—remorse, friendship, bravery⁠—none of it meant anything. They were things that human hearts and minds were capable of, but when yesterday’s love is today’s revulsion, when friends are deadly enemies, when all the world thinks of you as just another space bum⁠—what then? I had the destiny of the System riding in the holds behind me, and nobody really knew or cared that I’d break my heart to keep it safe. + 

They were my eyes, but they weren’t altogether normal as I stared out of the control room screens at the waiting fleet. + 

They kept their distances. They all had their launchers pointed at me, and on a few of the old T Class rack-mounts I could see the homing torps lying in wait on the flat upper decks. + 

I went back to Pat’s cabin. She was sitting up on her bunk, staring at me. Fire lay buried deep in her eyes, but she kept her face smooth. + 

“Okay, Pat,” I said. “Thorsten’s got his crew in a globe around me. He wants this ship. Should I give it to him?” + 

What I was saying didn’t match my voice. I was tired, and mad, and I couldn’t look at her. I could feel my lower teeth sliding back and forth against my upper ones. + 

“No⁠—I know you too well, Ash,” she said. “Not the way you’d give it to him.” She pushed herself up and stood in front of me. Her eyes kept getting wider and wider. “Ash! You’re crazy. If you think you can fight your way out of this⁠—” her voice broke. “You know you don’t have a chance. I’ve seen Harry’s fleet in action. This is one ship, Ash⁠—one ship!” + 

Her entire body was radiating urgency. She was standing stiff-legged, every muscle quivering, trying to get her words through the desperate red haze that was building up in front of my eyes. I couldn’t see her very clearly. + 

But I could see her well enough to laugh at her. + 

“Fight?” I said. “Fight? I’ve had fighting⁠—all the fighting I’m ever going to do. I’ve been fighting too much, too often. I had a name and a friend, once⁠—and I had a girl, once, too. Now all I’ve got is a job, and some orders, and a conscience, maybe. No⁠—I’m not going to fight.” I threw back my head and laughed again. I reached out and grabbed her arm. “Come on⁠—you’re going to have a grandstand seat.” + 

I pulled her up the companionway and into the control room, and threw her into the copilot’s seat. I pulled out my gun. + 

“Reach for those controls,” I said, “and I’ll blow your hand off.” She sat in the chair, her face gray, staring out at Thorsten’s fleet. + 

I reached over and switched the radio to Thorsten’s frequency. + 

“Thorsten!” + 

“Yes. Holcomb?” + 

His, too, wasn’t quite the same voice it had been. It was even, clipped, used to commanding a crew that didn’t enjoy being commanded. + 

“I’ve got Pat,” I said, keeping my gun on her. + 

“Let’s stick to relevancies, Holcomb. How much for the ship?” + 

He’d given himself away! I could have laughed. + 

“No, Thorsten, let’s keep it where I want it⁠—how much for Pat?” + 

There was a pause on the other transmitter. I was playing my cards right. Thorsten had me, and the ship. But I had his wife, and that was swinging the scales my way. Why should he offer to pay me, now? A bluff? No⁠—he had a better one in the ships, with their launchers ready. Why should he be willing to dicker for the ship? Because she was in it, that was why. If I refused to give up, he could always blow me out of space, or take the ticklish chance of trying to disable the ship without wrecking the engines. But he wasn’t going to do that. Pat was worth too much to him. + 

“Thorsten! You heard me⁠—how much for your wife?” + 

He cursed me. His voice was a lot lower than it had been. + 

“I’ve got a gun on her, Thorsten.” + 

Suddenly, he sighed. “All right, Holcomb. You win⁠—but not as much as you’d think. I’ll make a deal.” + 

I laughed at him, still keeping my gun pointed at Pat with a rock-steady hand. “What am I supposed to think you’ve been doing, Thorsten?” + 

It was getting to be too much for me. I could feel all the pressure that had built up in the last ten days starting to come to a head, ready to explode and to hell with who the pieces hit. + 

“Oh, no, Thorsten⁠—no deals. No bargains, no sellouts, no compromises. I’m up to here on doublecrossing and crisscrossing. I hired out to you and Transolar, and before that I hired out to anybody who had money or a chance for me to get some. And all the time, I was hired out to Earth government. I’ve had too many jobs, Thorsten⁠—my gun’s been on the line too long. There are too many oaths and too many loyalties. Too much of my honor’s been spread from one end of the System to the other. Now I’m quitting. The towel’s going in, and from now on, it’s me that I fight for.” + 

I had the mike up against my mouth, and I was yelling into it. “I know what you’re going to offer me, Thorsten. I know what I’d offer. You want the girl and the ship. You want one as bad as the other, but you won’t settle for half. So you’re offering me my life, and a free ride to Earth. Well, you can take that deal and stuff it. Earth! Who the hell would want to live on the Earth you’d leave, after you and your Martie friends got through with it. No, Thorsten, it’s no bargain. It’s a Heads you win, Tails I lose proposition, no matter how you slice it.” + 

I laughed again, enjoying it, because it was going to be my last laugh. + 

“Holcomb!” He must have guessed what I was working myself up to do, because there was sheer desperation in his voice, but I cut him off. + 

“Shut up, Harry! I told you I was quitting. You know the racket I’m in. You don’t just quit it. You go out with your hand on the wheel and your jets full on. And here I come!” + 

I fed flame into my portside jets, throwing the mike away from me as I grabbed the controls. The ship arced over, singing her death-song in snapping stanchions and straining plates, in the angry howl of the converters, in the drumfire of jets that coughed and choked as fuel poured into them, but which opened their throats and bellowed just the same. + 

“Ash!” That was Pat. + 

“Holcomb!” That was Thorsten. + 

But I was pure metal-jacketed, fireborne death, howling silently toward the sleek cruiser that was Thorsten’s flagship, the best known and most feared silhouette in space. + 

The gates of Hell opened in space. Every ship in the hemisphere ahead of me vomitted fire as the ones behind me and beside me lanced out of the way of the arrowing missiles. + 

There was no way for Thorsten to avoid me. Fire blossomed at the throats of his jets, and the flagship shot forward. + 

I snarled, twisted the wheel, and kept my nose pointed for his bridge. + 

Proximity torps began exploding all around me. They weren’t doing Thorsten a bit of good. Either they hit me, or, without air to carry the shock, they were as good as not there at all. + 

“Here’s your hyperspacial drive, Harry!” I howled. “Here it comes⁠—compliments of Ash Holcomb, hired gun!” + 

Suddenly a missile exploded under my bow. It was a clean hit. The ship screamed escaping air, and shuddered, bucking upward. It wasn’t just stanchions ripping loose now, or buckling plates. It was snapping girders, and metal spewing out into space like teeth from a broken mouth. The trouble board winked solid fire at me. + 

I didn’t care about that. The ship was unhurt in the only place that counted⁠—her engine room⁠—and the stern jets kept firing. But I was bent over the wheel, sobbing in pure, white-hot, frustrated rage, because I was going to miss. I’d been slammed up off my trajectory high enough to miss, and Thorsten’s ship was firing every tube he had to drive herself down and away, behind a protective screen of other ships. + 

I could hear the hysterical relief in Thorsten’s laugh over the radio. + 

I could hear something else, too. It hadn’t mattered what Pat did, once I’d swung the ship into line. I couldn’t have pulled it out of the collision course myself. It had taken an atomic rocket to blast me out of the way. + 

But it was different, now. + 

I was folded over the wheel, blood running down my chin from my bitten lip, my knuckles aching as I tightened my fists. + 

Pat said: “Ash⁠—I’m sorry.” There was a sob in her voice. “But you won’t give up,” she stumbled on. “You’ll never give up, until you and Harry are both dead. And I couldn’t stand losing both of you.” + 

I never knew what she hit me with, but the back of my skull seemed to explode inward, and I slid out of the seat to the deck. I started crawling toward her. She sobbed, but she hit me again. + 