This was a part of the business that had always thrilled him. Today it was just a job. A dirty, routine job. There wasn't any pleasure in it.

He thought of Jerry. Jerry who had laughed and gone to his death because a certain Blair Freedman had deserted him and tried to find glory.

The cutters were gyrating at a terrific speed now. The nose of the Z1000 was hot with the movement of the bearings. Freedman turned on the oilers. Long, thick jets of oil started to shoot out ahead of the ship, glancing off the blades, oiling the rocks.

Savagely, as though this was a personal battle, Freedman turned on the forward power. The Z1000 hit the remains of the wrecked patrol ship, ripped through it and into the sullen, slow moving mass of metal and rock. It shuddered once, then settled down, matching its blades against the mass.

The Z1000 moved stolidly ahead, its blades roaring.

It moved stolidly ahead, and the roar of the blades drowned out everything else.

The wall wouldn't be thick. Freedman grimaced. He remembered the months he had spent ripping through the first time.

He'd like to go on tearing and gouging, fighting the only way he knew—fighting nature.

Those slim, tube like army ships weren't for him. His job was to slog along, ripping away at the barrier that at once protected and cut off his home satellite from the other satellite nations.

The Z1000 was a fighting ship that would never enter the war directly, and yet affected its course more vividly than any single unit of the fleet.

Never enter the war directly?

Freedman wondered. Listening to the inhuman power of the Cutter, he wondered. It might be feasible. He had never studied speeds and pressures. Just how much punishment could the big ship take?

Suddenly, with a lurch, the Z1000 tore itself from the wall and flew out into space.

Swiftly, as the cutters were already whirring upward toward a breaking speed, Freedman cut the power and idled in space. To his left, the fleet was drawn up in neat battle lines. Captain Stew's guard ship was floating about, and he knew that Stew himself would be watching him coming. They had been listening to his thunderous battle with the rocks for some minutes.

 Prev. P 17/26 next