that would be the end of the New System. A sudden blast of insecurity would wreck our delicately balanced new order."

It was a fine ship, Danton thought. The Oligarchs knew machines. They worshiped them. The ship was also a monstrous arsenal, a hurtling fountain of destruction, loaded with hydrogen bombs and something called a proton cannon that could curl a planet up in space like a moth in a flame.

Power, death, throbbing around him, hot and terrible ... the ordnance console key inches from his fingertips. Keith had said he didn't want to go back to Earth. Not and face all that business again. Why not let go, blast, die right here when the attack came? That was a soldier's way!

"I'm going to throw her into an orbit," Danton said.

He saw the weird swirling light of the moons then, the moons of Mars, as the ship slowed in its orbit. Heavy cloud-banks drifting low in colossal valleys. And then he saw the ships. Three of them rising like giant silver beetles.

He didn't know whether he deliberately bungled and failed to lift the ship out of its orbit in time, or whether—but psychologically there weren't such things as accidental blunders. Anyway, now it was too late. Maybe everyone on earth would be wiped out because of it, but Danton blundered, moved too slowly. From the ships a white cloud of released energy flashed, blinded, billowed. His ship bucked and swerved and lurched.

Keith whispered tensely, "I'll take that ordnance, Captain. I'll take it!"

Van Ness weaved upright, sucking at an oxygen capsule, mumbling.

Danton said, "They're not firing now. They're curious, maybe. Let them get in close. They'll come in, try to identify us. It must have just occurred to them that this is one of their old ships. Then we fire, clear our course, and run."

"Run, run, get your gun!" Van Ness mumbled.

Danton swung the view-plate. The ships hovered behind, slightly above, coasting, waiting, watching. Danton laughed aloud. For a hundred years he had been dead. Now he was alive. Really alive. His fingers were hot and wet as he gripped the T-bar, and he saw that the ships were improved types. He couldn't escape back to earth now, even if he wanted to. And he didn't have time now to figure out whether he wanted to or not. It was too late now for thinking. He preferred it that way. He said, 

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