He swore and scowled at his luck.

Then, as the pain intensified, he grasped the lever of the hyperjet again and thrust it forward. The tube sputtered feebly, came on full force for a second, sputtered again and was silent.

He jerked the lever back and forth on the forward side of neutral and rammed it desperately all the way forward. The tube coughed, grabbed once more for a moment, and sputtered out. He goosed it four more times, but only got two boosts as a result. Then he twisted it past the stop to the first emergency position. It wheezed, fired for two seconds and died.

Sweat forming in beads on his face, he ignored the pain in his shoulder and reached to the control column with his injured arm. He swung back the second safety stop bar out of the way and rammed the lever all the way forward.

The tube fired for another second, but that was all. He had used the last erg.

But how much time had he bought with his final means of retreat from the spillthrough trough? He checked the celestial crisscrosses.... Not much....

Altman? he wondered suddenly. Where was the Cl.u.s.ter Queen? It wasn't showing up on the scope any longer. Neither were the crates. Had he retrieved them and shoved off? Brad jiggled the scope's brilliance control, wondering whether it was faulty and was simply not registering the Queen.

An abrupt _thud_, coincident with a sharp jar throughout the ship and a sudden shifting of the pseudogravitational field almost to normal, brought him upright in his seat. He realized immediately what was happening.

He hadn't been able to pick up the Queen on the scope because it was too close to register as a blip separate from the central luminescence on the screen which was representative of the Fleury itself. Altman had maneuvered alongside, aligned the hatch f.l.a.n.g.es of the two ships and activated his magnetic grapples. The nearness of his grav coils had restored some of the Fleury's internal stability. He was preparing to board the Fleury. He would be aboard within ten minutes.... It took that long to make minute adjustments in order to insure perfect superimposition of the f.l.a.n.g.e surfaces.

Brad smiled grimly and unsnapped his harness with nervous fingers. If he could get into his suit in time, it would be simple to open a hatch aft and let the air spill from the Fleury. Then when Altman undogged the inner hatch of the Fleury's air lock, it would be sucked open violently and pull the skipper of the Cl.u.s.ter Queen into a vacuum. It would make a mess out of the air lock and the control compartment--but that would be advantageous. It would be evidence to prove at least that Altman had taken the initiative in boarding the Fleury without first dispatching his intention of doing so to the nearest port, as required by the law.

Brad planned that if he then found the Queen's locks dogged, he would temporarily close the Fleury's inner lock and fill the between-ships pa.s.sage with normal pressure air so he would be able to open the Queen's hatches against the thirty-pound pressure in the other ship. After opening her hatches, he would leap back to the Fleury's inner hatch, release the single doglatch and let the vacuum suck all the air from the other ship too. He would immediately report the defensive action to Vega IV, borrow emergency cad rods from the Queen, prevent an internal pile blast aboard the Fleury and withdraw the crippled ship, together with its engine compartment evidence, to the node of the arc to await the arrival of investigators.

He clamped the helmet on his neck ring with a minute to spare as he rea.s.sured himself it was a perfect plan and had a reasonable chance to success. It was one too that required no physical exertion. He couldn't go through any rough stuff with his sprained arm.

Stiffening, he watched the first of the six doglatches on the hatch swing to the unlocked position. He moved over against the starboard bulkhead, well away from the hatch. He would have to get out of the suit again, and it would be a messy job if he were standing close to Altman when the vacuum went to work on him.

The final doglatch unsnapped. The hatch crashed open and he imagined he could almost hear the swoosh of escaping air.

Instead he heard a mocking voice over his audio.

"You were right, captain," the voice laughed.

"Who'd think Conally would try a trick like that?" Altman taunted, extending a s.p.a.cesuit clad leg across the hatch ledge.

"You would and did.... He'll probably be right behind the hatch to the left there, boss."

Brad sprang forward.

But Altman turned suddenly in his direction and pointed a gun at Brad's stomach. It checked the attack. Brad backed away hopelessly.

"Okay," Altman jerked his head in the confines of the helmet, "go to work."

The crewman from the Queen stepped into the control cabin and walked toward the pa.s.sageway aft while Altman held the gun on Brad.

"Think you can do it quick enough?" Altman asked the crewman.

"Radiation, you know."

The crewman thrust the wide-mouthed gun above his shoulder where Altman could see it. "It'll just take one shot with this."

He disappeared down the pa.s.sageway.

"h.e.l.l, captain," the voice sounded a minute later. "It's dead. He musta used up all his reserve juice in that last surge upward."

"Okay," Altman smiled--a weird, distorted smile as seen through the thick, rounded helmet. "Come on back." He looked at Brad. "So you can't pull away from the trough any longer? That's tough."

Brad wanted to say, Okay, Altman, I'll go aboard the Queen with you. But he didn't. He realized the plea would have been futile anyway as he watched the crewman rejoin Altman and heard the latter say: "Just think, Conally, you could have come aboard. I would have let you a while back.

But you've made this thing too tough and gave my boys the chance to convince me we might have slipped up somewhere and you might be able to prove your side of the story."

The pair retreated to the air lock. Brad stood motionless, staring, not breathing.

"The pile'll hold," the crewman announced, "for another four hours, just about."

"Fine!" Altman exclaimed. "This junk'll slip through within an hour.

That'll give us another three hours, at least, to get this stiff aboard the Queen and transfer cargo before she blows. Then we can mop up on whatever crates we've...."

But the air lock closed and the rest of his words were cut off.

If he could only get cleaned up before it came. If he could only enjoy the luxury of a bath, a shave, clean clothes. Brad laughed at the last item, wondering how clothes could be expected to remain clean if they were on someone making the spillthrough transition at coasting speed.

The Fleury lurched as the Queen cut loose and blasted away. Brad had watched the pressure gauge climb back to normal and was removing his helmet at the time. The ship's one-sided gravity field caught hold unexpectedly and he toppled to the deck rolling to the port bulkhead.

His hurt shoulder rammed into metal and new pain knifed into existence as the heavy helmet clattered down and crashed against his head. The blow almost stunned him. But it left him with enough awareness to wish it _had_ knocked him insensible--permanently insensible.

The scope showed more cargo had spilled out in the last lurch. The Queen started over toward the crates, but coasted past, turned and came back to take post spatially alongside the disabled craft. Already the other ship's outline was beginning to blur as the Fleury slipped away from her hyperspatially--down the arc.

Brad straddle-stepped on the deck and bulkhead to the control column and broke out his pack of cigarettes. Suddenly his feet left the deck. The port gray coil had gone out, he realized grimly, the current having dropped below the minimum requirements. For a moment he became concerned over weightlessness. Then he cut in the heel magna-grips of his suit and clanged onto the floor. At least, he wasn't confronted with a topsy-turvy ship any longer. He blew a cloud of smoke into the air and half-centered his attention on the scope. Two more crates had left the Fleury's holds. With the grav fields out on the ship, they did not take up orbit. They just floated away, at an almost imperceptible speed. But the Queen was still apparently not interested in picking them up. There would be plenty of time to do that; right now she must stick close to the Fleury spatially, Brad realized, so her instruments would indicate the moment the spillthrough to normal s.p.a.ce occurred, so her crew could get to work.

As though hypnotized in inconsequential thought, he watched the crates slowly draw away. Almost incredibly expensive cargo. Cargo that Altman would surely not allow to go unrecovered. Even as booty, the crated equipment would bring every bit of what it was worth. But Altman would see that they were delivered--every one of them. A contract with West Cl.u.s.ter meant a good deal more than the face value of the one shipment of inter-calc banks.

Brad started and his face became alive with expression as a sudden realization drove home. It was followed almost immediately by a second jarring consideration. He tossed away the half-consumed cigarette.

It wasn't more than fifteen minutes later when he stood before the mike again.

"Altman," he called out.

Silence.

"Altman," he shouted louder.

"Go ahead and answer him, captain. Let's see what he has to say."

"You can't come aboard, Conally," Altman said finally.

"If you don't let me come aboard I'll slip through and be killed."