and captain and crew, were her charges, dependent on her cold, mechanical wisdom and her vision and her strength. They had set up on the calculators what they wanted her to do and now there was nothing for them but to wait.
The Starsong spiralled higher, her radar system guiding her on a twisting evasive path between the clotted stars. Then Birrel saw a great, glowing edge slide across the forescreen and grow into a vastness of dust and cosmic drift, illuminated by the reflected glow of the half-smothered stars it webbed.
Radar reported that the three Orionid cruisers had come into the channel. But the Starsong was already skimming through glowing arms that reached like misty tentacles searching for more stars to entrap. Once in the cloud, she would be screened from the cruisers’ longrange radar by the most effective jamming device in space — the billions of billions of scattered atoms of the nebula itself.
Effective. Yes. But potentially as dangerous as Orionid warheads. For in a place where radar would work only at frighteningly short ranges, you could be onto a chunk of cosmic drift before the beams had time to tell the computers about it. All you had in the nebula was a chance, and not even a particularly good one. But against three cruisers you did not even have that.
Birrel went to the back of the bridge and strapped himself into a recoil-chair, beside Garstang and the others. Nothing moved now within the ship. The frail, breakable organisms of breath and heart and bone had abdicated their control. This was the hour of the ship, the hour of steel and flame and the racing electron, faster than human thought.
The Starsong spoke to herself in the calc-room, and plunged headlong into the cloud.
The universe was swallowed up in soft light, in racing, streaming tides of dust made luminous by reflection. Like an undersea ship of old, the Starsong raced with the gleaming currents and burst through denser, darker deeps, where the stars were faint and far away, to leap once more into a glory of wild light, where the dust- drowned suns burned like torches in a mist. And the metallic voices in the calc-room rose to an unhuman crying as the computers strained to take in the overwhelming surge of data from the short-range radar, analyze it, and send imperative commands to the control-relays.
They had almost a sound of insane music to them, those voices, and the Starsong seemed to dance to the music, whirling and swaying between the fragments of drift that threatened her with instant destruction if she faltered for the fraction of a second. Three times before, in his service, Birrel had been through this ordeal, yet that did not keep him from feeling half-dazed, clinging to the chair and laboring for breath as he felt and listened. The same illusion gripped him now that had mastered him before when forced to run a nebula — the feeling that the suns and star-worlds were all gone, that he was enwrapped in the primal fire-mists of creation. Mighty tides seemed to bear the ship forward, everything was a whirl and boil of light, millrace currents seemed to rush them endlessly through infinity, with all space and time cancelled out. He wondered briefly, once, whether the Orionids had followed them in and then he forgot them. The agony, the intoxication and the terror were far too great to admit any petty worries about anything human.
But at last, with almost shocking abruptness, they broke into clear space and the cloud was behind them and they were out in the fringe-edge of the cluster. Like men enchanted waking from a dream, Birrel and Garstang stood erect again, and the voice of the Starsong was stilled and human voices spoke once more.
Birrel went into the com-room and made contact with his squadron far ahead. He gave orders, and then rejoined Garstang on the bridge.
'Brescnik's on his way,” he said. “Can you keep clear?'
'I can,” said Garstang, and ordered full power. They were passing out of the last fringe-stars of the cluster and he had nothing between him and the Pleiades now but light-years of elbow-room. He took full advantage of it.
After what seemed a long interval, radar reported that the three Orionids had come out of the cluster by the channel, and then had turned around and gone back into the cluster.
Garstang looked at Birrel. “They didn't risk the nebula, and now they've seen the squadron coming.'
Birrel thought of Tauncer, and smiled.
The squadron neared them, moving with majestic consciousness of its own power and authority. In the screens, when they joined it, there was nothing to be seen but a few far-separated flecks of metal gleaming in the light of the distant Pleiades. But Birrel saw it as it was, forty-four ships awesome in their massiveness, thousands of men, all that made up the mighty Fifth. And he felt, as he always did, both the throb of pride that he had been given its leadership and the nagging doubt that he or any man was good enough to lead it.
The hard, excited voice of Brescnik, the Vice-Commander, came rapidly as they joined.
'So there is an Orionid base in there! By God, we'll soon—'
'No,” Birrel cut in. “There was no base in there. There was a trap, for me, but I still don't know just why they set it. Stand by.'
He sat down at the coding machine and set up a message. Top secret, in the code that only the governor and the commanders of the five squadrons knew, to Ferdias at Vega, briefly detailing his encounter with Tauncer.
'— am unable to explain interest in Earth, and your alleged plans concerning it. Suggest attempt to distract from some other objective. Await instructions. Birrel.'
In a remarkably short time the answer came back. “Report Vega at once with full squadron.” And it added, “Unfortunately, no distraction. Ferdias.'
Birrel sat looking at the cryptic tape for a long time after they had got under way in obedience to it. He did not understand it, could find no possible explanation for it. But all the same it made him feel, more strongly than ever, that premonition, that the pace, the tempo, of the great game for suns was indeed about to step up still faster, and that that was not good, not good at all.
CHAPTER 4
It always surprised Birrel, the warmth and eagerness he felt when he returned to Vega Four. It was not the world itself, though it was a nice planet and he liked its people. But there were lots of nice planets and Birrel had never felt that he belonged to any particular one of them. He had never stayed at one long enough to form any attachment, for his father also had served the Lyran fleet and, from childhood, his memories were only of a succession of bases on many worlds.
But now, watching the purplish bulk of the fourth planet spin toward them through the blue-white glare of Vega, even his nagging worry about what trouble Ferdias had in store for them only a little tempered his anticipation. It still seemed a little strange to him that he should feel this glad to be getting back to a woman.
Birrel had married only three years before, and the fact that he had done so in itself still rather amazed him. For he had always had a deep bias against wives and families. His father had died in a totally unnecessary and meaningless space disaster, and the memory of his mother's sad loneliness had given him that bias. Women were fine, but not a woman. His thinking had become fixed on that point and he was pretty sure he would never have asked Lyllin to marry him, despite the way he felt about her. But Lyllin was Vegan and her people had their own customs. It was she who had quietly suggested they marry and he had fallen all over himself agreeing. He was still glad of it, and still surprised.
He watched as the purplish globe expanded into a great, misty blue mountain-and-desert world, the capital of a Sector which was, in everything but name, an empire of stars. And when the Fifth, all traffic cleared away before it, broke atmosphere and came growling and thundering down across the black mountain-chains toward Vega City, he thought that Lyllin would have heard and would be down there now in the hillside villa, looking up at the giants as they came in.
They swept over the city toward the Fifth's home base, over against the foothills of the opposite black range. In smoothly scheduled detachments the ships made their landings, and the Starsong was in the first detachment.
When Birrel, a little later, walked down into the hot, stinging blue glare, Brescnik had already come over from his own ship. The Vice-Commander was a blocky, brusque and highly competent man. He was also hot-tempered and his comb of colorless hair seemed always to bristle up when he was angry.
'What the devil is all this about, Jay? Pulling the whole Fifth in as though it were a scout-detachment! What's
