Paul raced to the control panel and set the drive; he wanted to get a long way from there and he did not care which way. Just away.... * * * * * Hoagland's crew had gotten off first. This followed a certain kind of reasoning that shows less troublesome planning to destroy than to protect. His crews had driven their ships as fast and as hard as ships and men could stand the gaff. The flight had dropped down out of supervelocity one by one, a quarter of a light year from Latham Alpha, coming into real space in a volume spherically as large as the outer limits of the Solar System. Here the earlier arrivals had waited for the followers, since no two ships could drive at precisely the same speed across a galactic distance. They had closed down into formation as they came out of superspeed, each arrival taking its place in the space pattern. Finally Hoagland counted noses and found them all in place. Then-- "Latham Alpha IV. The Galactic Relay Station!" The ships went into superdrive briefly to return a few hundred thousand miles above the ice cap where the relay station stood, waiting the last few hours of its term of years for the arrival of the last link in the Galactic Network. Hoagland's flight lined down on a long curve, one ship after the other, each pilot aiming for the station. It had been the first bomb, a clean miss, that had alerted Paul Grayson's little group. "Get that ship!" roared Hoagland. The leading ship, having bombed and missed, curled upward after its bombing dive, circled around and got on the tail of Grayson's spacecraft. The second ship made a closer miss, circled the course and laid its nose behind the first. A burst of orange flame licked across the nose of Hoagland's Number One craft and the shell glanced from Grayson's flank, sending a ringing crash through Paul's ship. All three of them looked behind to see ship after ship line up to race after them. Paul reached for the high drive. It was almost warm enough to use-- * * * * * Huston's flight had taken off a few hours later. There had been a lot of preparation: Data regarding dates, flight velocities, and some calculations as to the completion of the Network. Then a courier ship had been prepared--prepared like no ship had ever been prepared before. Unmanned, but timed to perfection, courier ships crossed space between Sol and Neosol in half the time of passenger flights. They carried tons of official mail; ordinary commercial mail was not permitted here.