He was glad that he could be completely sure of one thing. It wasn't a nuclear bombardment--not yet. The cruiser was merely shelling the Station. When the cruiser launched an atomic warhead he'd know about it--rather, he wouldn't know. The fact that he was still alive and aware of what was going on told him a great deal about the nature of the bombardment. "What is it?" Helen Ramsey whispered. "Do you know?" "We're the catspaw in a naval attack," Corriston said. "The commander took a very great risk." It was incredible, but right at the moment he felt himself to be in the scoundrel's corner. He didn't want the Station to be blown apart in the great empty spaces between the planets any more than the commander did. When Corriston reached the viewport and stared out, the cruiser was following the Station far off to the side, in an obvious effort to outmaneuver it by maintaining a parallel rather than a directly pursuing course. But it was not escaping the swiftly turning Station's stern rocket jets. Blinding bursts of incandescence spiraled toward it through the void, and once or twice scored direct hits. He saw the cruiser shudder throughout its length, and then draw back, almost as if it were endowed with life and had nerves and arteries that could be ripped apart. There _were_ mechanical arteries that could easily enough be ripped. For an instant Corriston stared with a strange kind of detachment, freed from the terrible tension and uncertainty by his absolute absorption in the battle itself, freed from the almost mind-numbing sense of participating in a struggle that could end in utter disaster for Station and cruiser alike. He knew that if the cruiser maneuvered in too close, the puffs of flame from the Station's jets could turn into superheated gases roaring through space, destroying everything in their path. The Station, too, was only a pulsebeat from fiery annihilation. And a pulsebeat could be terrifyingly brief. But the decision had been made and there could be no turning back. Aboard the cruiser the decision had certainly come from very high up. Corriston turned the thought slowly over in his mind, still in the grip of his strange detachment. Just what did "very high up" mean? It meant--it had to mean--a conflict of personalities, the hot-headedness or stubbornness or glory-seeking that went with every decision made by strong-willed men. Aboard the cruiser someone had acted. After consultation? On just an impulse? In blind rage because the Station had ignored a warning that had been repeated twice? There was no way of knowing. But on the cruiser men were dying. That was important too. Just how reckless had the decision been?