He could tell almost the precise instant when the other jaw of his trap was discovered, for Plot, Communications, and Intelligence all jerked up their heads and looked at him. He grinned at them. What they'd picked up would be an enemy beam from Luhin, recklessly sweeping space to find the Coar fleet and warn it of the onrushing Group Three. The enemy commander reacted fast. It was obvious he'd never beat Group Three to Luhin, and he made no futile attempts at dodging, but reversed drives and accelerated toward the nearest enemy, which was Tulan. Tulan was not surprised at that either, for though Coar's fleets had bungled the war miserably, when cornered they'd always fought and died like men. He matched their acceleration to hold down the relative speeds. The swift passing clash would be brief at best. He formed his forces into an arrangement he'd schemed up long ago but never used: a flat disc of lighter ships out in front, masking a doughnut-shaped mass behind. He maneuvered laterally to keep the doughnut centered on the line of approach. * * * * * Roboscouts appeared and blossomed briefly as they died. The fuzzy patch of light on the screens swelled, then began to resolve into individual points. The first missiles arrived. Intricate patterns of incandescence formed and vanished as fire-control systems locked wits. A sudden, brilliantly planned salvo came streaking in, saturating the defenses along its path. Ships in Tulan's secondary formation swerved frantically, but one darting, corkscrewing missile homed on a Heavy, and for an instant there were two suns. Tulan, missing Jezef's smooth help, was caught up in the daze and strain of battle now. He punched buttons and shouted orders as he played the fleet to match the enemy's subtle swerving. Another heavy salvo came in, but the computers had its sources pinpointed now, and it was contained. These first few seconds favored the enemy, who was only fighting the light shield in front of Tulan's formation. Now the swelling mass of blips streaked apart in the viewers and space lit up with the fire and interception. Two ships met head on; at such velocities it was like a nuclear blast. Then Coar's ships crashed through the shield and into the center of the doughnut. Ringed, outgunned, outpredicted, they hit such a concentration of missiles that it might as well have been a solid wall. Ships disintegrated as if on a common fuse; the ones that didn't take direct hits needed none, in that debris-filled stretch of hell. Tulan's flagship rocked in the wave of expanding hot gasses. There was a jolt as some piece of junk hit her; if she hadn't already been under crushing acceleration away from the inferno she'd have been holed.