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.Gritting her teeth, she focused her attention— and her thrusters—toward the enemy.Now everything depended on whether the alien knew there were people alive aboard Aster's Hope, Whether the alien had been able to analyze or deduce all the implications of the c-vector shield.And whether she could get away.The size of the other vessel made the distance appear less than it was, but after a while she was close enough to see a port opening in the side of the ship.Then—so suddenly that she flinched and broke into a sweat—a voice came over her suit radio."You will enter the dock open before you.It is heavily shielded and invulnerable to explosion.You will remain in the dock with your device.If this is an attempt at treachery, you will be destroyed by your own weapon."If you are goodlife, you will be spared.You will remain with your device while you dismantle it for inspection.When its principles are understood, you will be permitted to answer other questions.""Thanks a whole bunch," she muttered in response.But she didn't let herself slow down or shy away.Instead, she went straight toward the open port until the dock was yawning directly in front of her.Then she put the repro Gracias had done on the comp to the test.What she had to do was so risky, so unreasonably dangerous, that she did it almost without thinking about it, as if she'd been doing things like that all her life.Aiming her thrusters right against the side of the black box, she fired them so that the box was kicked hard and fast into the mouth of the dock and her own momentum in that direction was stopped.There she waited until she saw the force field which shielded the dock drag the box to a stop, grip it motionless.Then she shouted into her radio as if the comp were deaf, "Gracias!"Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlOn that code.Aster's Hope put out a tractor beam and snatched her away from the alien.It was a small industrial tractor beam, the kind used first in the construction of Aster's Hope, then in the loading of cargo.It was far too small and finely focused to have any function as a weapon.But it was perfect for moving an object the size of Temple in her suit across the distance between the two ships quickly.Timing was critical, but she made that decision also almost without thinking about it.As the beam rushed her toward Aster's Hope, she shouted into the radio, "Aster!" And on that code, her ship simultaneously raised its c-vector shields and triggered the black box.She was inside the shield for the last brief instants while the alien was still able to fire at her.Later, she and Gracias saw that the end of their attacker bad been singularly unspectacular.Still somewhat groggy from his imposed nap, he met her in the locker room to help her take off her suit; but when she demanded urgently, "What happened? Did it work?" he couldn't answer because he hadn't checked: he'd come straight to the locker from his capsule when the comp had awakened him.So they ran together to the nearest auxcompcom to find out if they were safe.They were.The alien ship was nowhere within scanner range.And wherever it had gone, it left no trace or trail.So he replayed the visual and scanner records, and they saw what happened to a vessel when a c-vector field was projected onto it.It simply winked out of existence.After that, she felt like celebrating.In fact, there was a particular kind of celebration she had in mind—and neither of them was wearing any clothes.But when she let him know what she was thinking, he pushed her gently away."In a few minutes," he said."Got work to do.""What work?" she protested."We just saved the world— and they don't even know it.We deserve a vacation for the rest of the trip."He nodded, but didn't move away from the comp console."What work?" she repeated."Course change," he said.He looked like he was trying not to grin."Going back to Aster.""What?" He surprised her so much that she shouted at him without meaning to."You're aborting the mission? Just like that? What the hell do you think you're doing?"For a moment, he did his best to scowl thunderously.Then the grin took over."Now we know faster-than-light is possible," he said."Just need more research.So why spend a thousand, years sleeping across the Galaxy? Why not go home, do the research—start again when we can do what that ship did."He looked at her."Make sense?"She was grinning herself."Makes sense."Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlWhen he was done with the comp, he got even with her for spilling ice cream on him.FRIENDS TOGETHER"Thousands of years?" Lars, as he asked the question, was still lying helplessly flat on his back, still attached to the mind-probing machine.He was staring at the rocky ceiling close above him, but he hardly saw the ceiling.The vision he had just experienced was still tremendously real.Neither his Carmpan partner nor the berserker answered him.Lars repeated the question aloud, in a weary and shaky voice: "Thousands of years? Their colony was that old, really?"The two people whose minds he had recently been in contact with, Temple and Gracias, had been conscious of such a length of history.For Lars, the feeling of their conviction was unmistakably authentic.Those folk aboard the Aster's Hope were members of some colony older than Lars had thought any Earth-descended colony could be.Just as the last threads of mental contact were about to break, Lars felt his Carmpan partner touch his mind and for a moment longer hold it gently.One more thought came through: The path of the colonizing ship from Earth to Aster, deviating from flightspace, may have undergone relativistic distortion, sending the ship into the Galactic past.But the contact we have just experienced was in our present, "Carmpan, what are we to do?"Try to keep secret from the berserker the existence of the at-right-angles weapon.Do not think of it."How am I to keep from thinking—?"But no answer came [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]