help, had felt him fumbling with a microphone, had heard in his mind the faintest wisp of a prayer as he realized that contact would be made, and then had heard for an infinitesimal moment the agony of death, and then felt the peace of death, the absence of mind.
Jazz leaned back on the upholstered chair, noticed how cold it felt on his naked, sweating back.
The red light was still flashing. Jazz was puzzled, leaned forward again.
QUERY.
RESPONSE: SECOND ENEMY SHIP, ROUNDED SIIS III FOUR MINUTES AGO.
QUERY HOSTILE ACTS.
RESPONSE: Two PROJECTILES LAUNCHED, IMPACT 0.2, IMPACT 1.9.
Impact 0.2! Jason shouted at himself. And even as his fingers played along the control board and his mind sought the enemy captain's mind, his intellectually unfazeable mind was saying to him, "You fool, he would never have called for help by radio unless he had someone else nearby."
The other mind found; the flight path of the projectile mapped; contact inevitable; and by reflex Jazz did the only possible maneuver that would ensure survival: he swung the starship very slightly - and intercepted the projectile with the payload section of the ship, catching it deftly with the only portion of the ship the weapon could strike without causing a nuclear explosion.
At the same moment, Jazz released his last two projectiles, hoping that there would be no more enemy ships.
And his control room shuddered with the shock of impact. The enemy projectile was not nuclei, of course - on the surface of the stardrive, a nuclear explosion would not penetrate through the shielding. Instead, it was equipped with high intensity fusion - source lasers, and it melted a path ahead of itself for a critical number of seconds. Just long enough, with a few meters to spare, to penetrate the shielding of a stardrive.
Jazz didn't bother to wonder whether the projectile had had to force its way through enough payload that it would run out of fuel before penetrating to the stardrive core. He was too busy moving his ship (the controls still respond, good) to avoid the second enemy missile; and then he immediately shifted his attention to guiding his own projectiles as they homed in on the enemy ship.
He saw the enemy captain's disbelief as he realized that he had made contact - and yet Jason's ship had not exploded. And then the panic as the enemy captain tried to dodge Jason's projectiles, couldn't, and realized horribly that he would die as his fellow captain had just died.
And then the globe of fading light on the holomap.
QUERY.
RESPONSE: No ENEMY ACTIVITY.
QUERY LOCATION.
RESPONSE: SIIS III.
So Jazz had reached his destination; as was often the case, the Enemy had dispatched warships to intercept the colony ship before it could land. Those Enemy craft might have been orbiting Siis in for as much as a century, waking their captains only when Jazz's ship was sensed as it decelerated to subluminous speeds. Traditional pattern, except that there were two ships instead of one.
The tension of battle fading, he remembered how he had stopped the enemy projectile, and felt a horrible burning sensation in his stomach and groin.
He got up from the chair and went to the cupboard, dressed, and then for safety put on a pressure suit with a field helmet. He adjusted it for transparent and semipermeable, and then turned the wheel on the seal lock of the door leading to the back of the payload section.
The storage compartment was completely undamaged - none of the animal coffins had even come loose. Which left only one conclusion: the projectile had entered the payload section in the passenger tubes.
Jazz readjusted for impermeable, and opened the door at the back of the storage section. No rush of air into space - the monitor area was also undamaged.
Jazz looked at the dials that told the condition of all the passengers in each of the tubes. The A section dials were all functioning, and their message was uniform: no life in any of the coffins. The C section was as bad: the dials were all dark, meaning that the life - support system was out.
Only B section was intact, showing no damage. Jazz wasn't sure whether to be horrified at losing two - thirds of his colony, or relieved at still having one - third.
He opened the door to B tube and walked down the rows, inspecting each coffin for damage. There was none that he could detect, not even a shifting of