For behind her voice a pattern emerged, a pattern that was neither light, nor gay, nor superficial. It was a desperate clinging to the familiar little things that made up normal life, a deliberate avoidance of the war, the fear and the worry. And Fiske realized with an odd feeling of surprise that here was a counterpart of the wardroom gabfests aboard ship. The attitude was the same. There was no essential difference. He stood it until her voice faded into the background and then he turned off the playback. Ellen should have known that he understood how she felt. There was no need for this. He felt oddly cheated as he put the tape away in his locker and returned to the control room. The "Dauntless" broke out of hyperspace travelling just under Lume One, well within Eglan territory. Fiske knew from experience that the enemy detectors were efficient and it was always risky to breakout into normal space--but he had to come out to get a fix on potential targets. "Set!" the gunnery officer said. Instantly the "Dauntless" slammed back into fourspace. The scan had taken barely ten seconds, and with reasonable luck the dip into normal space would remain unnoticed long enough to give them the advantage of surprise. At best such an advantage would be fleeting. At worst he would breakout in the middle of an Eglan trap. Actuality would probably be somewhere in between. He'd have perhaps twenty minutes--and in that time he'd have to accomplish his mission and get the "Dauntless" back into the relative safety of fourspace. The world ahead was a small planet about two thirds the size of Earth, and from it came the persistent radiation of nuclear stockpiles and atomic machinery. There was a base here--a big one supported by a massive industrial complex. The Eglani had the habit of concentrating their works, which made for greater efficiency of operation, but also made them far more remunerative targets. * * * * * There was no waiting. The cruiser flashed into normal spacetime, a bank of red lights blossomed on the control board, and the gunnery officer launched a salvo of torpedoes at the Eglan Base. The torps were new. Each carried a tiny hyperspace converter that pushed them up into the lower orange. They would arrive on target milliseconds after they were launched, breakout into normal space, and detonate. They were tricky things that required nearly ten seconds data to adjust, but when properly set they could materialize within any fixed screen. The inherent qualities of fourspace made them useless against maneuvering ships, but against a city or a planetary base they were deadly. Of course, compartmentalized screening would reduce the damage, but if the Eglani were using a hemisphere, God help anything inside.