But his relief was short-lived.

Suddenly, the exterior view on his screen was webbed with crawling streamers of light, and the image began to break up.

"We are entering the ionosphere," came Lossin's voice. "Activating sand shields."

An armored shutter, designed for regions of s.p.a.ce heavy with micrometeorites, snapped across Dane's external view, which then went black. Moments later it was replaced by a graph of the planet's electrical fields, and Dane stared at his screen in disbelief-the Solar Queen was only twenty-five kilometers up, less than half the normal alt.i.tude of the ionosphere's lower boundary!

"Stotz! Tau! You getting these readings?" came Rip's taut voice.

"Affirmative." Stotz's voice was flat with tension.

Dane felt his own stress increasing again, like an invisible vise clamped round his skull as he tapped a query into his computer. The answer that popped up made his jaw tighten: the wild fluctuations of the planet's geomagnetic field were beyond anything reported on any planet listed in the ship's library computer.

Dane windowed up a view of the bridge. Rip Shannon looked as tense as Dane felt. His profile was severe, his hands moving swift and sure over the command console as the Queen struggled to gain alt.i.tude.

As Dane watched, for a moment he felt an echo in his mind-Rip watching him watch, and the flicker of vertigo this caused made him shut his eyes. He then felt an answering sense of displacement from Jasper-but nothing from Ali. For that, Dane thought grimly, he was grateful.

Then alarm thrilled through him as Lossin's console bleeped for attention.

"Retrofire detected, ten mark thirty-two, nine hundred kilometers-" The,Tath Trader's report ceased for a moment. Lossin bent over the com console. "Exiting ionosphere," he said then. "Trace lost." Dane could hear his puzzlement.

Over the com came a quick exchange. "We're still lifting at max, aren't we?"

"Yes, then how-"

"Belay the chatter," Rip said curtly, his rudeness, so rare, underscoring the tension.

Silence.

The Solar Queen shuddered, then seemed to slow, as though she had hit something; but at their speed, Dane knew, a collision with anything more solid than rarified gas would have destroyed the ship.

The sand shields snapped open again, and the external image flickered, shifting dizzily until it came to rest on what looked like an elongated tornado of flame twisting up into s.p.a.ce across the cloud-wrapped, lightning-webbed surface of Hesprid IV, dwindling to invisibility near a gleaming point of light.

"Blaster fire, two-ninety mark thirteen, ninety kilometers out." Lossin's voice sounded odd-almost thin.

Was it fear, excitement, Dane wondered? The sweat popping out on his own brow argued for the former.

"Ninety!" Stotz exclaimed over the comlink.

Dane realized they'd not known just how powerful colloid blasters were; that information was heavily cla.s.sified by the Patrol. Now they had a good idea, and it was far worse than anyone had a.s.sumed.

"Closer, we cook," Tooe murmured, her voice high.

Dane looked over, saw her huge yellow eyes watching him, her crest stiff. He nodded reluctantly; if they could feel the effects of a miss ninety kilometers out, a near miss would leave little more of the Queen than vapor and droplets of condensing hull metal.

Dane turned his gaze back to his screen and stared at the dissipating flare of the pirate weapon. What chance did they have now?

"It won't be so bad if we can get farther out," Stotz said suddenly. "Less atmosphere means less shock wave and radiation normal to the beam."

"Can't yet," Rip said, his voice tense. "Higher means slower, more time for them to lock onto us. I'm taking us at least one orbit around, so I can try to lose them in the EM glare over the cielanite islands. Anyway, the beams can't be very accurate with this h.e.l.lish magnetic storm going on."

Then as Dane and Tooe watched on their screens, he matched action to words and throttled back the jets, adjusting them to just match the tenuous grip of the atmosphere, keeping the Queen in a low, fast orbit.

Dane's harness creaked as acceleration fell to zero. They were in free fall. An atavistic part of his brain gibbered in ter-ror for a moment as two ancient nightmares awoke together: a predator's chase, and falling.

The sensation intensified briefly as the psi link woke. Now all four of them were there, but almost instantly they disappeared again.

Another flare of light erupted from the pursuing ship, still only a point of light, now closer to the limb of the planet below as it fell behind the Solar Queen. But this time the deadly beam twisted up and away from the planet. And at its terminus, the point- of light faded out.

"Dane, what happened?" Tooe demanded. "Pirate blow up?"

"Intruder entering magnetopause," came Lossin's laconic tones.

"No," said Dane, as his heart slowed and understanding came. "He flew into Hesprid's shadow."

And Jasper's voice came over the comlink, the calm voice of the teacher: "The particle shock wave near the terminator deflected his beam."

"Conductivity rising," i-ossin cut in as, once again, coronal discharge crawled across the external view and the sand shields snapped shut. The Tath had apparently linked them to ship's sensors. *.

To distract himself from the growing sensation of helplessness, Dane explained to Tooe how the flood of particles from the restless sun bent around the planet, creating a kind of bow wave in s.p.a.ce.

Tooe seemed equally glad for the distraction. She listened carefully, her sensitive crest flickering, then she gave a quick nod, and said, "So pirate beam hit that and was deflected?"

"Yes," Dane said. "Unfortunately we can't rely on that happening again."

"Sections, confirm condition reports," Rip's voice interrupted.

Dane welcomed the new distraction as he listened to the terse reports of the others, and scanned his instruments as he awaited his turn.

"Jet temperature at sixty-three percent and holding," Jasper reported.

"Engines at ninety-eight percent," Johan Stotz said. "Still within parameters."

"All secure," Dane reported when his turn came. "No breakage detected."

And all the while, furnishing a ba.s.s harmony to the quick interchanges of the crew, the jets hissed and rumbled, keeping the Queen aloft against atmospheric friction, almost orbit, not quite flight.

"Hull temperature seven hundred fifty-five degrees and holding," said Tau from his station in the dispensary. "Refrigeration at fifty-five percent capacity, two hundred fifty minutes to discharge at this rate."

There was nowhere for the heat building in the hull to go-the refrigeration system would store it in pressurized tanks for another four hours before it had to be expelled through the jets, which would cut their efficiency in half during the discharge cycle. But they'd be away from the planet long before then. Or dead, Dane thought bleakly.

And again he felt a ripple of reaction from the three others, sharper this time. Ali was first to Cut it out, then Jasper; Rip was so preoccupied his focus functioned as a kind of shield.

Dane shook his head to free it of the inevitable vertigo that accompanied those links, and he looked at his screen. The sand shields were open again, and ahead of the ship, Dane could see a light glowing over the nightside curve of the planet, about twenty degrees off the port side of the Queen. Unlike the violent lightning, diffuse circles and chains of light like negatives of bacterial cultures that flickered in constant crawling motion underneath the clouds far below, this glow was constant.

When the ionization rose again, cutting off the external view, Lossin suddenly reported, "Retrofire, one-seventy mark eighty, four hundred kilometers."

"Intruder's trying to get under us," Rip said.

"Can they?" asked Tau over the com.

"Depends on their hull and coolant capacity," replied the navigator. "Lossin, can you get a ma.s.s reading on that ship?"

In the window he'd set to the bridge, Dane saw the Tath shake his head. "Too much fluctuation in the magneto-sphere." At that moment the shields snapped open again, and the Tath's neck fur fluffed out. "Trace lost. Can you not fly us in the ionosphere, above the reflecting layer's fluctuations?"

"That would take us too high," Rip replied. "Do what you can. No luck with the comsats?"

"Ten minutes to lock-on," reported Lossin, his neck collapsing to its normal size.

"Comsats?" Tooe asked. "Gleef could not reset?"

Gleef's voice came from the engine room. "We haff reset the comsats for tactical monitoring, but they were not all reoriented yet-"

"Must to wait for takeoff," Irrba put in from the jet department.

Dane murmured, "To avoid tipping off the pirates."

Tooe nodded, her pupils, slitting. "Now I see, me."

"And the images will be slow," Lossin added, from the control deck. "Too much noise."

"Planet's ringing.like a bell," came Stotz's terse voice. "Frequency dropping, amplitude increasing. But the rate of change is down."

"Good thing, too," Jasper said. "It's playing havoc with the focus of the jets."

"Just like it is with their blaster beams. And we'll be past it before the big show," Rip said, "if the computer projections are accurate."

"Good thing, too," Ali cut in, drawling as if this were just a sim-run. "When the ionosphere hits ground level, all h.e.l.l's going to break loose."

The implied warning shut everyone up.

For a time they flew unpursued, or so it seemed, but Dane knew there was another pirate ship out there, tracking them, waiting for its opportunity while the other two accelerated into higher orbits until the Solar Queen had come around the planet again.

He rubbed his thumb against the webbing of his acceleration couch as he frowned at the numbers flickering on his screen. What was Jellico up to on the North Star? It had no weapons; what could he do?

"Any sign of the North Star}" he asked.

"No," Lossin stated.

"Bad sign-" Stotz began.

"Not necessarily," Rip said in a slow, almost meditative voice. Dane saw him working at the control console; his hands never ceased moving. "I think I know where he was-hiding in plain sight-"

A sudden exclamation came from Craig Tau, quickly silenced.

"-where the pirates couldn't afford to be, when we took off," Rip finished, as though there had been no interruption. Which he probably didn't even hear, Dane thought, watching the navigator-pilot on the screen. Rip almost seemed to be in an altered state of consciousness. No longer did Dane feel stress from him; his focus was too strong for that.

"Where's that?" Tooe asked.

"Right over the Queen's landing spot, in synchronous...o...b..t-worst place to begin an interception," Rip replied.

Now Craig Tau laughed, a triumphant sound. "You're thinking like him now, my boy! I'll bet my next year's leave time you're right."

"But what can he do?" asked Ali.

There was a momentary silence, broken by a bleep from Lossin's console as the sand shields snapped open again.

"Whatever it is, we'll see soon," Rip said. "We're coming up on our first orbit, and that is where we took off."

He didn't need to point, for the light Dane had seen had rolled up over the horizon, revealing itself as an almost man-dalic pattern of light, like a vast pinwheel with an intricate in-ternal structure centered on the island they'd blasted off from.

And the Queen's flight was taking it just past the center of the maelstrom.

"I sure hope computer is right, me." Tooe's voice held bravado, and a question.

Dane tried to force a rea.s.suring smile. "With Frank on it, we don't need to worry."

And if it wasn't right, Dane thought, we'll never know it.

Rip felt a mild wash of bleakness from Dane, and instinctively pulled back from the sudden link without severing it. The sense of background presence seemed to steady him, but he didn't need discrete ident.i.ty. There seemed to be a level where the others' thoughts felt like his own-the safe thoughts, of facts and hypotheses. Almost like more windows on the control console, but inward ones. And-he reflected wryly to himself-he needed every advantage he could get.

"Comsats coming on line," reported Lossin suddenly. "Nine-minute lag."

Rip studied the fuzzy orbital plots intently. There was still no sign of Jellico and the North Star, but now he was certain of what the captain, was doing. He would have jetted out in the opposite direction while the pirates chased the Solar Queen.

And if he was right, Jellico was racing toward them at this very moment.

But Ali's question still beat on his mind. What could an unarmed ship, or even two, do against the overwhelming force of three ships armed with colloid blasters?

The pinwheel of fire over the island loomed ahead, now filling the cloudscape far below And then acid burned through his nerves as Lossin reported, "Retrofire detected. Ten mark twenty-five, nine hundred kilometers and closing."

Rip cursed under his breath, not caring if the sound carried over the comlink. He'd hoped to lose the third pirate in the noise from the cielanite islands. It hadn't worked.

Rip triggered the retros and the roar of atmosphere across the hull grew louder.

"Hull temperature rising," Tau warned. "Refrigeration at seventy-five percent and rising. Two-point-five hours to discharge."

Lossin boomed, "Intruder at fourteen mark twenty-two, seven hundred forty kilometers and closing."

Despair flooded Rip. The pirates had them boxed.

Chapter Twenty-Two.