fitted to two carriers. With five mekronal-treated men, he crowded aboard a third.

Then, on the visiscreen, bleak Hyperion was looming. Boone waited, taut and strain-straught, hand on the carrier-release lever.

Now, slowly, the mountain peaks so far away began to form a pattern ... a distortion and projection of the same pattern Boone had seen before, looking up at the crags that pierced the ice-shell.

For a moment he almost thought that in a prick of black he was seeing the rift made by the fallen Cartel sphere-ship.

Not that it mattered; enough that he had a mark to shoot at.

The captain's voice rasped from the com-box: "Boone! You'd better hurry. Our detectors show Federation ships approaching!"

The last lingering fragments of Boone's hesitation vanished. He pressed the button set to trigger the first carrier.

Like a scarlet lance, the sleek craft shot from its cradle--speeding out from the sphere; hurtling down towards the ice-shell, faster and faster.

Boone pressed the second button.

Another explosive-laden carrier speared through the void upon its mission.

Boone turned in his seat. "Hatches--?"

"Secured and sealed," a brawny, blond-haired giant behind him grunted.

For the fraction of a second Boone stared at the rocky face, the grim-set jaw.

The others, too: four stone-featured crewmen, each waiting in silence despite the tension.

A tightness came to Boone's throat.

Only then, once again, the sphere-ship captain's voice was rasping: "Boone, those blips are coming closer!"

Tight-lipped, Boone pressed the third button ... the button that triggered this final carrier.

He jarred back, then, as the pressure of the craft's swift acceleration hit him.

But it only lasted for a moment. Free of the sphere-ship, the carrier sped out into space along the path slashed by the two before it. Behind it, the hurtling mother-globe was already 

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