"Concor could lie, and so could you," growled Tichron. But he carefully reclipped the gun to his belt. "Perhaps you'll be killed trying to take the supply ship." "Perhaps you will...." Wilding barked orders. The lighter was closed up and sealed. Atom-converters purred with steady vibrations. With a grunt and heave, the lighter moved into the airlock shaft. Lights dimmed and the jarring increased in tempo. Movement steadied into a smooth glide. Automatic door-flaps opened ahead and closed behind. Blast-off ritual began. Suddenly the tiny ship shot from the surface like a cork from a bottle. Acceleration pangs became nagging nausea. Wilding licked his lips. "Perhaps we'll all be killed. It will save a lot of trouble...." From the shadow-cone of the planetoid, the lighter moved out to anticipate the orbit of the expected supply ship.... In space, frontal attack is impossible. Ships approach and pass each other at terrific relative velocities. Limited human senses cannot function rapidly enough, and even the automatic mechanisms which control a ship in spaceflight can react only according to the impulses built into them. Surprise is almost equally impossible, since combat requires that both ships be moving at approximately equal speeds on courses nearly parallel. Though Wilding had planned carefully, he knew that there is a vast difference between plans and execution. Anything, or any number of things, could go wrong. For one thing, if it came to an actual running fight, his craft was practically unarmed. Aboard the supply ship would be robot brains for mass detection, target-course computation, and the automatic aiming and firing of atomic warhead torpedoes. There had been neither time nor material to build such complicated machines. Even the control of the lighter was accomplished manually. Moving out from the asteroid, the lighter described a wide curve. It came upon the supply ship from behind, striking a speed only slightly greater than that of its quarry. Rapidly overhauling the larger spacecraft, it sent no recognition signal and was prepared to answer none. Already the supply ship had begun tedious deceleration preparatory to sighting the flare beacon and dumping the stores for the prisoners on Asteroid 297. It was a dull, routine maneuver. In the control cabin, pilot-captain and astrogator crouched over chart-screens and fed order tapes into the electronic devices which ran the ship. Men may be careless and overconfident. Machines are not-- * * * * * Alarms whined and clamored. Red lights blinked on the control panels, reporting intrusion. Instruments went into automatic action to determine the sector and nature of possible menace. Data tapes spewed from the battery of electronic brains. Electric typewriters clattered like machine-guns.