He wasn't paying attention when Bob's return went dead, and only turned in time to watch the screen flicker once and go black.

"Oh, shit. What happened to Bob?" Rick muttered. Immediately Rick set up a replay of the last few seconds of signal from Bob and called up a telemetry analysis program. One of the rules learned early in the days of space exploration was "Never turn off the radio!" How a signal dies can tell one a lot about what happened to the transmitter. Rick reached the instant of failure and the analysis routines expanded the signal trace, showing a maze of squiggly lines on the screen that all suddenly went flat. That was actually the best news that Rick could have hoped for. It meant that the problem probably originated with the transmitter. Otherwise, telemetry signals from other parts of Bob's suit would have shown distortions just before the transmitter failure.

While concentrating on the loss of signal from Bob's suit, Rick still was listening with a fraction of his attention to the audio coming back from Pops. He heard Pops say: "Aw shit. Bob, where are you?"

Rick knew he'd never forget his last few words with Pops, nor the sick feeling he'd had inside when he saw the descending cloud of Phinons that Pops was looking at, and knew what the old commander was about to do.

The explosion still surprised him.

A thousand things went through Rick's mind all at once, but the most important was the intuitional technical sidebar relating the explosive force of a suit self-destruct to the probable magnitude of cometary surface movement at the radial distance of the Hyperlight from ground zero. Instantly Rick was out of his seat and into the pilot's, with one hand motion killing the gripfields and activating the Hyperlight's repulsors.

The ship bounced off the surface simultaneously with the glare from the suit explosion suddenly illuminating the control bubble. Rick glanced back to his monitoring station. All the screens were blank.

There was no reason to examine the LOS trace from Pops' suit.

Rick stayed in the bubble and started searching for Bob. He had all of the scanners going and had redirected the visuals from the APL system to the nav screen because it allowed for better magnification.

There was so much to search, Rick found, as he watched the scattering Phinon bodies. With a few adjustments Rick was able to focus only on bodies that seemed to be keeping station and a fixed orientation. He expected to find one-or none, if Bob was dead. He found six.

A soft chime sounded calling Rick's attention to the Dykdar scanners. "Rats," was all Rick could say as the display indicated that two Phinon ships were on their way out of the comet.

Okay, how much time before those ships arrive? Not much. Let's see if I can find Bob. Not that one. Another Phinon. Phinon. Phinon. There he is! Thank God he's alive! Damn, he's not looking toward the ship-probably doesn't know I'm above him. Those Phinons are after him. Rick hit the switch that opened up the exterior airlock door. I'll kill the Phinons, Bob. You just get your ass up here. The APL fired. Rick watched the Phinon die.

Bob watched, too. Rick could actually see the lieutenant look in his direction, and silently rejoiced when his jets fired even as the APL killed another alien. Then Rick saw the Phinon ships, too. This is going to be close!

Rick burst out of the control bubble to wait for Bob at the airlock. The wait was interminable even though he could calculate the number of seconds that must elapse before Bob would hit the lock.

Five, four, three, two- CLANG. You're early, Bob. Rick hit the switch to close the lock, saving Bob the precious seconds to do so himself, then activated the slam repressurization and the lock came up to full atmosphere in two seconds.

The inner lock door opened and Bob thrust out the Phinons to Rick. "Throw these in the stateroom," he ordered.

"Two ships are coming," Rick said.

"Saw 'em," Bob replied. His suit split like a clamshell and Bob was on his way to the pilot's bubble before its pieces hit the floor.

Rick hauled the two Phinons to the aft stateroom and threw one on each bunk. What would Pops think? Rick wondered. This had been his room. For an instant Rick wondered if he should jolt the Phinons with another dose of Sammi's drug. He looked at his watch and was shocked to realize that less than twenty minutes had elapsed since Bob had first knocked them out. He left them in the rescue bags for now-that was the safest place for them.

Rick went forward and dropped into the copilot's seat. He noticed that the shields were up but the ship was still near the comet. "I'm keeping the comet between us and the Phinon ships until I have our vector for home laid in," Bob said, not looking up from what he was doing.

Rick monitored all of the scanners. With the Dykdar he could see the trace of the Phinon ships. They'd split up and were suddenly coming at them from opposite directions from around the comet.

"Okay, got it," Bob said. "Time to fight or time to run or some reasonable combination thereof." The

Hyperlight accelerated away from the comet and the Phinon ships were instantly after them.The Phinons fired missiles, wicked little darts moving out at incredible accelerations. Bob avoided two of them easily, but a third hit the shields. "No sweat," Rick said, watching the indicators. "We took that one okay."

"Great. We'll be in hyperspace in thirty seconds," Bob said. "Just hold them off."Rick trained the Hyperlight's weapons on the marginally closer of the two Phinon ships. He fired the laser and two "smart rocks," kinetic kill vehicles driven by small sequential matter-antimatter explosions. The first smart rock overloaded the Phinon's shields and it collapsed to nothing but a smile of satisfaction on Rick's face.There was a bright flash through the bubble, like a flare igniting. The Hyperlight shuddered, then settled down. "God dammit! What was that?" Bob yelled."X-ray laser. Power density way, way, up there! Holy shit!" Rick said."Yeah. Holy shit and the drive is gone," Bob replied.Rick was already checking the diagnostics. "We had a squib burn-through of the shields. Right above the port hyperdrive nacelle. That one's wrecked."

"Gonna be a long walk home," Bob said.

"Hell no!" Rick shouted, but he was looking at the weapons display. He'd sent the remaining

complement of smart rocks at the Phinon fighter.

It did the trick.

"Hell, no!" Rick said again, springing up from the chair. "The sublight drive is gone, Bob. But we only

need one nacelle for hyperdrive. Just give me a half hour in the engine compartment."

Rick grabbed his tools and diagnostics equipment from the locker and was soon sprawled on the aft deck, working like a maniac. "Bad news," Bob said over the comm a short time later. "The Dykdar shows a couple more ships on their way. I'm going to run up the reaction drive. Might as well buy what time we can."

Lying on the deck, Rick could feel the rumble as the reaction drive flared to life, but it was the last thing he noticed outside himself and the hyperdrive motor.

The Hyperlight only needed one unit, but the remaining one had been balanced to work with another, and the adjustments necessary to get it to function by itself were many and complicated. Still, Rick rose to the occasion and in exactly 29 minutes turned over and shouted, "Hyperdrive, now!"

And they were on their way back home.

Bob lost track of how long he had been staring out the window at the monochrome phantasmagoria of hyperspace. Lacking anything else to do after getting the drive online, Rick had gone off to take a shower ten, twenty-maybe sixty minutes ago. Bob didn't know.

He kept part of his attention on the scanners, and no Phinons had followed them into hyperspace. That was good.

Still, it didn't change the fact that he'd lost a man.

Rick finally came forward and slumped into the copilot's chair. His hair was still wet. Ah, ten minutes ago, Bob thought.

"I guess I should thank you for saving my life," Bob said.

"Saved mine, too. But you're welcome. To repay me you can pilot us back home."

"The best I can do is the Solar System," Bob answered. "We have almost no reaction mass left. Our velocity relative to the Sun once we drop out of drive is going to be around eight hundred kps. But we're going to have to drop out early because I don't want to get too close to the Hague Limit. I still remember that artwork Pops showed us of a hyperdrive motor hitting it while activated."

"What artwork?"

"Oh. Sorry. I forgot. You were dancing with Paula when he showed me. Anyway, thirty-five hours from now we're dropping out and then we'll just coast through the Solar System. But shit, it's going to take us over forty days just to get to the orbit of Pluto, and we're not going to get any farther in than the orbit of Uranus."

"Space is big," Rick said. "Damn."

Bob ran his hand through his hair, then put his hands behind his head and leaned back. He sighed. "Rick, what the hell happened to Pops? Did you see it?"

Perceptively, Rick said, "He didn't have a choice, Bob. And there was nothing we could do." Rick briefly described what he'd seen on the monitors. "I didn't even get a decent chance to say good-bye."

"I owe my life to Pops, too," Bob said. "If he hadn't done what he did, the Phinons would have killed me soon. Some leader I am. First Pops saves my ass, then you save it again, and even after I'm back aboard you have to save it a third time or we'd be toast back there at the comet."

"You're forgetting what's in the back stateroom," Rick said. "You brought the live Phinons back to the ship. That's what's important. That's what Chris sent us out here to do. Pops knew what price might have to be paid. So did my dad. So did you."

"Dammit, I know that!" Bob said. "It just doesn't feel that simple."

After that there wasn't much to say-or do, except to wait until breakout. Bob took his own shower, then returned to the control bubble and refined his estimates for breakout time, and calculated just how close to the inner system he'd be able to bring his crippled ship.

Of course, once they left hyperdrive, they could always radio for help, but that would mean the Belt would find out about them. And the hyperdrive.

Rick came forward again. "I was just checking on the aliens. I took them out of the bags. They're not stirring yet, but I don't know what the hell we're going to do with them the whole time we're coasting back into the system. I don't think we have enough ampoules to keep them sedated that long, and even if we did it would probably kill them, I'd think."

"Yeah. I think we're going to have to send out an SOS, but I'd rather the Belt didn't find us first."

"We're coming back awfully late, anyway," Rick said. "Maybe Chris will have the Patrol monitoring deep space for us continuously."

"Good point," Bob said. "Only I think it will be Knoedler who will be looking for us."

"I don't suppose it matters. The jig is up once we show up with the Phinons anyway. I just hope Sammi can actually perfect her bugs once she has those guys."

Bob was looking at Rick when he mentioned Sammi, but this time he thought he detected a change in Rick from how he usually talked whenever her name came up. He decided to keep the topic going.

"I'm sure she will," Bob said. "She's an awfully smart girl. A genius. That intimidates the hell out of me.

Of course, so do you on that score, Rick. You can keep up with her.""Somehow I don't think IQ is the first thing on Samantha's list when she thinks about men. I've never found that to be true of any other women," Rick said. "Hell, it's not true of me when I think about women," he added with a grin.

"You don't think she finds your intelligence attractive?" Bob asked, continuing the subtle inquisition.

"Attractive? Certainly. But not sufficient. And quit trying to be sneaky. You're no good at it. You know I like her, and I know you like her. But one thing I know that you don't is that she likes you, too."

"What? Bullshit," Bob said. He'd lost control of this conversation.

"No, it's not bullshit. Once the sorrow is gone, she'll admit that you get her all steamy. You think that

you're the first uniformed stud that a technogeek like me has lost out to? Buddy, I know the signs.""Okay, then, what's Paula's angle?" Bob asked. "She didn't even see me when we were introduced.""My family has a lot of money," Rick reminded him."So you're saying she's just a gold-digging bitch?""Don't call her that!" Rick said, suddenly angry."Aha!" Bob replied, but then Rick stomped out.

* * * Rick finished administering another dose of PMDP to each of the Phinons. Although he recalled that the dosages he was giving would have kept a bull elephant under for three days, he'd found it necessary to sock the aliens with another dose every twelve hours or they began to show evidence of waking up. He looked again at the hands, the ones that had been damaged when Pops had pulled them apart. They were getting better. It looked like the Phinons had incredible powers of regeneration. Perhaps that was also why the drug didn't work so well-the alien physiology might simply have regenerated whatever binding sites were deactivated by the PMDP, rather than waiting for the drug to clear out on its own.

Rick found the questions interesting, but not compelling. There were people on the Moon who could answer those questions. What was of much more concern to him was that he and Bob didn't have enough ampoules to keep the Phinons out for the entire duration of their return to Earth-Luna. Or till their rescue, rather, since no matter what they did, they'd have to call for help.

Bob entered the stateroom. "Same thing?" he asked.

"Yeah. They start stirring after twelve hours. We have enough of the drug to keep them out for a week or

so, but after that we'd either better have a cage ready or be rescued," Rick replied.

"It's another consideration," Bob said.

"Look at the hands," Rick said, pointing. "They're growing back. That hand there is the one that was

shattered. You'd never know it now."

Bob held up his own hand. "This is the hand I lost when I stole Hague away from the Belt. This one they put on still doesn't feel right."

"Breakout is in a few minutes?" Rick asked, changing the subject.

"Right. That's why I came back here. I want you up front to help me find out exactly where we are

ASAP. That will help us narrow down our options.""Okay."They went up to the control bubble and took their seats. Only seconds later the Hyperlight emerged from hyperspace right on the mark, and the reappearance of the stars out of the monochrome was spectacular.Really spectacular."Those aren't all stars," Rick said after a few seconds of staring."Damn right they're not," Bob said. "Where in the hell are we? And what do the scanners show?"What the scanners showed was hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of spaceships. What their eyes revealed was the brilliant dazzle of nothing any more exciting than a powerful reaction drive, multiplied thousands of times, scattered as far as the eye could see so it was nearly impossible to separate them from the distant stars.

"Oh my God," the lieutenant said. "The Phinons put reaction drives on their spaceships."

"Which means they want to come inside the Hague Limit. That proves that Chris was right. The Phinons really didn't have a two-element drive," Rick said.

"Look at how many there are," Bob said. "They could be using chemical rockets and it wouldn't make a hell of a lot of difference. Humans haven't built that many spaceships in our entire history."

For the next ten minutes the two shut up and tried to sort out their situation. They had emerged, surprisingly, less than one astronomical unit from the Hague Limit. This drew a sharp look from Rick. "We were less than twenty seconds away from tearing the ship to pieces," he said.

"Sorry," Bob said. "I was shooting for ten seconds, but I wanted to be cautious," he added, although he was even more shocked than Rick that they'd come out so close.

In addition, they'd come out inside a Phinon fleet. Bob determined that the fleet was moving on a vector 22 degrees different from their own, and the average fleet velocity was, at this moment, though the ships were accelerating, about 200 kps relative to the Sun. Surprisingly, the ships didn't seem at all interested in the Hyperlight, for none were turning in her direction, nor activating their sublight engines to catch them even though they were still (barely) outside the Limit.

"I've got some spectral data from their drives," Rick said. "Looks like ordinary matter-antimatter stuff within an open Dykstra field bubble, at a fractional percentage ratio. I suppose it could be partial mass conversion instead. It's a little hard to tell but I think the drive in your courier boat is more efficient than these are.

"Have you figured out where these ships are going?"

"Let's have a look," Bob said, and he threw up their position on a screen graphic of the Solar System. "See, we're headed up from Solar south, and so are they. But they're heading in deeper than we are, and-" Bob expanded the scale at the center of the screen. "Oh, shit. Jupiter. They're going to Jupiter."

"Biggest planet first, I guess," Rick said. "There are over four million people in the Jupiter satellite system."