none of its neck-snapping vehemence, as the Queen burst off into space. The harness cut across Brad's aching arm and set up a new, rending torture. But his good arm shot out and found the forward belly jet lever.

With what mushily reacted like the last erg of energy in the normal drive converter tanks, the jet responded feebly. He nursed the power carefully, determined not to waste juice through overcorrection. Finally the Fleury steadied and resumed immobility of attitude.

"Sorry, Conally," Altman apologized with exaggerated concern. "But her majesty's acting up frisky-like. Can't seem to do much with her.... Maybe if you came aboard we might find some way to quiet her down. How about it?"

Brad bit his lips and tightened his good fist until fingernails knifed into the palm. "No, damn you!" he shouted with all the volume his lungs could muster.

He summoned all the spacewise epithets any stevedore or crewman had ever used, added a few he imagined no one had thought of before, and held them in abeyance until Altman would answer.

But no sound came out of the speaker.

The reason was apparent on the scope. A half dozen of the massive crates had crashed through the hull—this time out of hold number One, the massometer showed—and the Cluster Queen was on her way to take them aboard.

But he was more concerned with another complication. The red power utilization indicator of the good hypertube was in motion, swinging back to zero on its dial. He saw the flicker of the needle in the corner of his vision.

He checked the suspicion against the blips on the scope and obtained verification ... the outlines of the Queen and the crates were fuzzy, despite the fact they were still nearby spatially. The fuzziness could only result from the Fleury's being removed hyperspatially from that vicinity.

He had accidentally touched the hyperjet lever while applying normal power to correct the three-dimensional spin. Which way had he moved it? Had he gone further into hyperspace? Or had he fallen further down the descending node toward spillthrough?

Studying sensations in his body for an indication of abnormal pain, he stared abruptly out the view port. The twisting pain was there—inside his chest. The star lines were short.

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 Cluster 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 flanges 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 flange 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 Cluster 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 passage 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 reassured 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 spacesuit 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 passageway 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 passageway.

"Hell, 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