nose of the ship pushed through the force field. It was slow going. It was absorbing and deflecting the force field and it was slow going, but it was faster than the rising blue bar and numbers of the engine readout. It would be in before we could escape. Once a hole was opened, the cloud of flechettes.

Nothing. No weapon. Hand tools. The scrapers and scorers I’d been using for …

Scoring. Score and break!

It was absurd. A losing move. The kind of stupid move that would leave other gamers gasping with laughter.

The only move I had.

I undocked. I flew to a naked spar point. It was sharp, undulled by the usual safety knob. How much weight could I carry? I should know how much a section of spar end would weigh, I should know, but I didn’t, and no time now.

I guessed. Six feet. I could carry that much. I hovered by the spar end and fumbled, nearly dropped my scoring knife. I began to cut a ring around the foot-thick crystal. Cut. Cut. Don’t worry about retaining the splinters now.

The score came full around. I flitted back and launched straight into the spar. It broke clean. Clean enough. Not a professional cut, but it would do.

I wrapped my arms around it and took the weight. Not so much weight, I could lift it. But it was awkward, hard to turn around.

I tucked it under my arm on one side, got a slight supporting purchase with one talon, and beat wing.

I flew straight for the small craft. Faster, fast as I could fly, reckless, no time to worry about it now, no time to wonder how I would survive impact.

As if in slow motion the face in the window turned. It had only two eyes, both forward-looking. Blue. Almost pretty. The blue eyes watched me, and then widened. What alien emotion? Fear? Derision? Amazement?

The light was blinding, barely could keep my eyes open, nothing but those blue eyes staring.

I struck. The point of the spar sliced into sheet metal, penetrated a foot, then stopped. I yanked it back. It came free.

I dropped, took the full weight, and this time stabbed upward directly beneath the alien crewman. Again the spear point stopped hard.

But now the glow was dying away. The electric buzz of energy fields was weakening.

Height, you fool, use gravity, a voice in my head shrieked. Of course!

I beat wing to gain altitude. Up, up, the blue eyes followed me, still, it seemed to me, more curious than malevolent.

Up twenty feet. Now! I plunged. My wings hammered the air and I dropped, spear point down.

The spear struck the alien craft just above the cockpit. The crystal penetrated. There was no explosion. Nothing dramatic. But as I released the spar and let momentum carry me down past the window, I saw that the alien was staring with no expression at all.

The spar point had penetrated the cockpit, and penetrated his large head.

At that moment, with the alien ship half in and half out of the MCQ3’s force field, our engines at last kicked in.

For a giddy, terrifying moment the entire universe collapsed around me. And a moment later I was floating without sensation of speed through the blank white nothingness of Zero-space.

The alien small craft was with us still. The alien I had destroyed still stared with beautiful blue eyes.

We emerged almost immediately from Zero-space. Only one of the vessel’s Wise Ones had been aboard at the time of the attack. He appeared via uninet. I had met him very briefly. His current chosen name was Farsight. It was a name appropriate to his role. A Wise One’s name.

“It is clear that Ket is under attack from an alien species of unknown origin. We are calculating a return trajectory and hope to place this vessel at the disposal of some other home crystal. Perhaps we can be of some assistance, though without weapons …”

Farsight’s quills drooped and he lowered his eyes. He was very old. I hoped he was very wise. I wanted to believe he was. But he seemed unaware of the fact that we had an alien craft in tow.

Nonessential crew did not memm a Wise One. It wasn’t done. Especially not in the midst of a crisis. But I was too jangled to be very concerned with social niceties.

I keyed up a waiting memm. He could ignore it if he chose.

I was gratified (and encouraged) to see that Farsight responded by immediately opening a channel. His head jerked up and he seemed to be staring right at me.

“It’s still with us?”

“Yes, Wise One,” I replied. “It’s trapped within our force field. Or half in and half out.”

It was not encouraging to realize that the people in charge had no real idea what had happened down here by engine three. Had no idea that the force field had been compromised. The MCQ3 had been caught more unprepared than I’d imagined.

I memmed a very brief description of what had happened.

The reaction was immediate. There was a flurry of wings and half a dozen people zoomed past me, vectoring toward the alien ship. Lackofa was one of them.

He paused and yelled, “Well, come on, hero. You killed him.”

It was a typical backhanded slap/stroke from Lackofa. But it stung more than it soothed. I had killed. It was the second of the Five Laws: Take no sentient life. Second in importance only to: Lift for all.

I glanced back at Aguella. She was alive. But in no condition to join me. A long period of dockage, that’s what she needed. She’d be fine. She’d be fine.

Had to be fine. Her survival had become vital to me. She had to live. No one else had.

I undocked and flew to catch up with Lackofa. Jicklet was with him. Seven of us flitted before the nose of the craft, nervous, jumpy, unsure of how to proceed.

“It’s a container,” someone said. “Everything that matters will be within. We

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