I fed flame into my portside jets, throwing the mike away from me as I grabbed the controls. The ship arced over, singing her death-song in snapping stanchions and straining plates, in the angry howl of the converters, in the drumfire of jets that coughed and choked as fuel poured into them, but which opened their throats and bellowed just the same. "Ash!" That was Pat. "Holcomb!" That was Thorsten. But I was pure metal-jacketed, fireborne death, howling silently toward the sleek cruiser that was Thorsten's flagship, the best known and most feared silhouette in space. * * * * * The gates of Hell opened in space. Every ship in the hemisphere ahead of me vomitted fire as the ones behind me and beside me lanced out of the way of the arrowing missiles. There was no way for Thorsten to avoid me. Fire blossomed at the throats of his jets, and the flagship shot forward. I snarled, twisted the wheel, and kept my nose pointed for his bridge. Proximity torps began exploding all around me. They weren't doing Thorsten a bit of good. Either they hit me, or, without air to carry the shock, they were as good as not there at all. "Here's your hyperspacial drive, Harry!" I howled. "Here it comes--compliments of Ash Holcomb, hired gun!" Suddenly a missile exploded under my bow. It was a clean hit. The ship screamed escaping air, and shuddered, bucking upward. It wasn't just stanchions ripping loose now, or buckling plates. It was snapping girders, and metal spewing out into space like teeth from a broken mouth. The trouble board winked solid fire at me. I didn't care about that. The ship was unhurt in the only place that counted--her engine room--and the stern jets kept firing. But I was bent over the wheel, sobbing in pure, white-hot, frustrated rage, because I was going to miss. I'd been slammed up off my trajectory high enough to miss, and Thorsten's ship was firing every tube he had to drive herself down and away, behind a protective screen of other ships. I could hear the hysterical relief in Thorsten's laugh over the radio. I could hear something else, too. It hadn't mattered what Pat did, once I'd swung the ship into line. I couldn't have pulled it out of the collision course myself. It had taken an atomic rocket to blast me out of the way. But it was different, now. I was folded over the wheel, blood running down my chin from my bitten lip, my knuckles aching as I tightened my fists. Pat said: "Ash--I'm sorry." There was a sob in her voice. "But you won't give up," she stumbled on. "You'll never give up, until you and Harry are both dead. And I couldn't stand losing both of you." I never knew what she hit me with, but the back of my skull seemed to explode inward, and I slid out of the seat to the deck. I started crawling toward her. She sobbed, but she hit me again. VII