Chapter XI

Glayne sat alone in the pilot's massive shock seat of the _Algol_. The instruments rose about him on all sides in terraced banks with the battle screen directly in front of his eyes. Tentatively he reached for the firing studs, accustoming his fingers to their shape. When he saw that the last of the _Algol's_ lifeboats had been picked up he realized that the time had come.

He transferred his gaze to the discoid that was vague and indistinct beneath its anti-energy shield. Fastening his eyes to the armored outer lock doors of the landing dock, he gently fed power to the drivers. The _Algol_ shuddered and gradually picked up speed. Glayne dropped the anti-shield, realizing that he would never get through the barrier with the energized shield functioning. But once he was through, it would have to go up quickly or his ship would be shattered by the roving secondaries. Hand hovering tensely over the shield control, he guided the ship toward the landing dock.

His speed increased; at twenty kilometers he was streaking toward the discoid in a free fall, all energy sources quiet. Fifteen--ten--five--and the _Algol_ was boring through the energy barrier, stormed and buffeted as it sought to impede the passage of the individual circuits. Suddenly she emerged _inside_ the shield and Tjadlinn was rushing upwards.

Like lightning Glayne's fingers stabbed at the shield control and fed power to the drivers. He braked the ship crazily to avoid the lashing secondary beams that reached hungrily for him. Once ... twice--and yet a third time the Kellander beams found the cruiser and slashed through her half-formed shield, dealing terrific blows to the plummeting ship.

Then the massive beralloy doors of the landing stage were expanding hugely in his screen and he braked with all the power he could shunt into the straining drivers. Somehow his clutching fingers found the Kellander firing studs and he lashed out repeatedly against the outer lock. It whitened, ran into slag, crusted, and flared again and again as the ravening bolts struck it. Desperately Glayne fought to prevent blackness encroaching on the corners of his vision.

Suddenly a rending, thundering roar filled the _Algol_ and she was crashing headlong through the weakened beralloy doors of the landing dock. But even above that deafening roar, Glayne could hear the scream of twisted and tortured metal. Then the big ship stopped moving and all was quiet except for the shriek of air escaping through the crevices around her mangled hull.

Groggily, Glayne shook his head in an effort to shake off the black-out which had engulfed his vision. In spite of his circulation exercises he couldn't see anything. Then a glimmering of the answer occurred to him and with wild surmise he experimentally flicked the firing stud of the ship's Kellanders.

Nothing happened.

Then Glayne understood. Every bit of the ship's power was cut off, including the lights and the battle screen. Obviously the Jewel power was cut off. Evidently the impact of the _Algol's_ crash had jarred the delicate power drains so that Tjadlinn was once again without power. But he'd have to make sure.

Heartened, he rose and took a space suit from the locker, checking to see if its light torch was operating. As he turned away, a vague, ridiculous hope struck him. He took a second suit from the locker.

* * * * *

Twisted and buckled beralloy plates had sheered long, jagged gashes in the equally tough armor of the cruiser, Glayne saw, as he clambered from the emergency lock. A little air still sighed through the huge rent which the cruiser had smashed in the skin of the discoid. The gigantic landing dock was dwarfed by the three hundred meter bulk of the cruiser. Small Delban craft had been flung violently on either side and now littered the walls with their battered bodies. One or two of the Delban technicians had been caught by the crash and were either smeared thinly along the blastway or turned inside out as their bodies exploded from lack of air pressure.

Hurriedly Glayne flashed his torch about, trying to find the mono-car which his party had used to get to Selzi-Narfid's quarters. The car itself was gone but he found the gleaming mono-rail and followed it at a rapid trot. Fortunately the passage was well-equipped with automatic air-locks, one of which had whipped in place when the air pressure dropped suddenly. When he came to the first of these, he found that the dilator was without power. He fumed at the wasted time as he burned around the lock with his torch and triggered the mechanism with his finger.

After he closed it behind him, Glayne picked up his jogging pace down the mono-rail passage. He felt a kind of grim, ruthless hatred when he thought of Bro-Doral. He hoped wistfully that he would find the sneering sadist before Garstow's energy beams ripped the discoid to pieces.

He wondered what had happened to Niala Chodred. During the battle he had consciously held his thoughts away from her and the dull ache of her memory. A chill loathing spread through him as he thought of the Vibra-Death. He knew of the agonies of that nerve torture; it produced not one slow death but thousands. More passionately than ever he longed to find the Bro.

Suddenly Glayne felt the floor of the discoid tremble under his feet. At first he ignored it, but it grew persistently stronger and he realized that the fleet was again hurling its energy beams at the discoid--but this time they were penetrating because there was no shield to stop them. He quickened his pace, rounded a long curve, and found that he had reached his goal.

He vaulted the high curbing and pounded down the tapestried corridor to the wide entrance stage. The dilator stud refused to operate, so Glayne burned into the lock to operate the stud. He discovered that the port itself was locked and a sudden unreasoning hope blazed up in him. With rapid movements he burned the lock out altogether and threw his weight against the door. With a wheeze it dilated and he staggered into the luxurious apartment, stumbling from the force of his own momentum.

He was scrambling to his feet when something hit him. It was soft with rounded contours which he perceived even through the unsympathetic thickness of his spacesuit. And it had red hair and green eyes.

It was Niala.

"Glayne ... oh, Glayne," she murmured, clinging tightly to him.

"But ... but you're not hurt," he stammered, his mind striving to adjust to the realization of a hope which it had long rejected.

"I thought they had killed you," she sobbed happily. "But you got away."

"Yes, he did," remarked a third voice, familiar and hated. "It was unfortunate."

Glayne whirled. Gort Bro-Doral stood inside the entrance stage, a black Cardy gun in his hand.

"Without you in the audience, Captain, I didn't see much point in amusing myself with the girl. But now that you have returned, Glayne--"

The big Guardian crouched to spring at the Delban, gathering his legs under him.

"I shouldn't do that, Captain," Bro-Doral observed sharply, waving the Cardy menacingly. "Life is too sweet to throw it away so rashly, isn't it? Besides, such refined methods require time and I fear your leader, Admiral Garstow, doesn't propose to give us that commodity."

It was true, Glayne realized. The energy beams of the assaulting fleets were smashing tremendous blows at the discoid so that it shuddered violently. The shocks increased in strength even as he turned his attention to them. Somewhere deep in Tjadlinn air was escaping with a screaming whistle where the skin was ruptured.

"You seem to have no idea how hideous Death is, Glayne," said the Delban, approaching them slowly. "Out here on the periphery of the galaxy we like to make some sort of a ceremony of his coming--you see, he is always hovering around us." The Delban produced his explosive, nasal snicker. "Death is a fascinating subject; I have often wondered why you people in the Main Galaxy ignore him. Ever present, you know. And always waiting for you to step into his dark embrace."

Glayne watched Bro-Doral narrowly. He was but a couple of meters away. As the blows of the Kellander beams smashing into the discoid increased, he became more preoccupied with his subject and his grip on the Cardy grew lax. Glayne's hand tightened imperceptibly on the spare spacesuit.

"--out here on the Edge," Bro-Doral was saying, "Life is considered only a prelude to Death. Personally--"

* * * * *

Glayne lunged, flinging the extra spacesuit to one side. Bro-Doral alerted instantaneously, but his Cardy wavered for a fraction of an instant toward the empty space suit. Before he could recover his mistake Glayne's flying body had struck him. The two went down together in a thrashing tangle. Glayne's movements were hampered by the bulky spacesuit and he felt his desperate grip on the Delban slipping. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bro-Doral extending his long fingers for the Cardy which he had dropped. Frantically he sought to restrain the Delban's long arm, missed, and saw the Delban slither from his grasp and reach for the gun.

Glayne scrambled to his feet just in time to see Niala snatch up the weapon a split second ahead of Bro-Doral. For a brief instant the Ruler of Ten Thousand Suns stared into the muzzle of Death. Then it wrapped him in its dark embrace forever as Niala fired.

Glayne retrieved the spacesuit and hurriedly helped her don it. The screaming whistle of escaping air formed a mad symphony with the rumbling crashes of corridors and whole levels caving in upon themselves. They raced from the apartment, through the tapestried corridor to the mono-rail which twisted like a live thing under the impact of the blasting energy beams. Jolt after jolt shook the discoid as torpedoes and mines exploded with devastating energy concussions deep within its entrails.

It was uphill all the way as the tremendous mass of the Tane Jewel dragged at their flagging steps. Niala fell a half a dozen times from the smashing shocks that shook the discoid. Glayne helped her to her feet, only to be thrown down himself the next instant by the concussion of an energy torpedo. Huge seams opened in the tough beralloy sides of the mono-rail passage as the mammoth support beams fractured.

Panting, they finally reached the point where the air-lock had fallen in place automatically. Glayne pushed at the port, expecting it to dilate. It didn't move a fraction of a centimeter. A rapid examination showed that it was sprung. Feverishly he felt for his torch to cut it down.

But it was gone!

He suddenly felt sick, realizing that he had lost it in the struggle with Bro-Doral. Now he would never be able to find it again. They were trapped. Waves of defeat swept over him as he crouched in the darkness.

Suddenly he heard a new sound in the mad cacaphony of destruction that raged about them. It was the tortured scream of rending, snapping beralloy. And along with it came the sensation of increased weight.

The Tane Jewel!

The huge beams which had anchored it in place had evidently collapsed under the impact of the assault and now the Jewel was falling freely through space, crashing through everything that stood in its path. And it was falling toward them!

Glayne's weight grew unbearable as it approached. Vaguely he could make out its steady gold brilliance behind him in the passage. Grimly he clung to a projection in the wall with one arm and hung onto Niala with the other.

Then the miraculous happened.

The air-lock door which had been sprung now dilated under its own tremendous weight and the air pressure which remained in the passage flung Glayne and Niala through the lock.

Summoning the last reserves of his diminishing strength, Glayne put his arm around her body and half-supported her, half-dragged her up the few remaining steps of the mono-rail passage to the landing dock. Forty meters separated him from the emergency lock of the _Algol_. Thirty meters. His straining muscles groaned in anguish. Twenty meters. Niala was unconscious and her slight form was an unbearable weight to him as he dragged her with painfully slow steps. Ten.... Five ... he reached the lock.

He heaved her bodily into the lock and clambered in himself. Then through the inner door. Across to the elevator. His muscles were a symphony of agony. Slowly, slowly the elevator climbed. The discoid was splitting and breaking up around the _Algol_--or was it wedging the cruiser more firmly than ever in the vise grip of the beralloy outer portals? The elevator door quivered for a moment, then dilated in a series of little shudders. Ever so slowly Glayne crawled across the bridge deck, dragging the girl. A shock seat ... a surette of verchromynal into the blue vein inside her elbow.

The crescendo of destruction reached new heights. The Tane Jewel was following him, splashing its insidious yellow radiance through the glassene window of the navigation bridge. It dogged his footsteps ... closer ... closer. The pilot's seat. The surette. Blackness encroached upon his vision. Dimly he was aware of his arm; it moved instinctively ... slowly ... slowly. The regular driver atomics began to shriek. His arm made another movement, flicking jet studs. Power suddenly sang in the forward jet chambers and ejected itself in a great, mushrooming flame. The _Algol_ lurched backwards ... another lurch ... straining ... a third. And the _Algol_ was suddenly free.

The yawning pit of blackness closed its gaping maw on Glayne and he slid down, down, down....

* * * * *

It occurred to Glayne, when he woke up, that his quarters in the _Algol_ had a changed appearance. He climbed from his acceleration hammock and bounded to the shower.

"Terran Standard!" he snorted to himself. "What the hell is Harbin doing puttering along like that?"

As he dried himself from the tingling shower he tried to put his finger on the change that had come over his quarters. For one thing, he couldn't find what he wanted. But an even worse defect was the absence of his dust.

Flag officers in the Stellar Guardians were generally conceded some slight idiosyncrasy through which they could assert their individuality in a service where individuality was otherwise rigorously suppressed. Glayne's own idiosyncrasy was dust. After five long years as a Dorleb training-cadet without a speck of dust to his name, Glayne felt he had earned his right to wallow in a bit of dust. But now it was all gone. His quarters were spotless.

He had finished dressing when a cautious knock sounded on his entrance portal; then it dilated before he could answer. Harbin's face appeared in the opening.

"Oh! I'm sorry, sir. Didn't think you were awake yet," Harbin said apologetically.

"Forget it," grunted Glayne. "Come in."

Harbin entered the room and fidgeted nervously for a moment. "Sir!" he finally burst out, "I ... we're sorry about that unpleasantness. I want to apologize on behalf of--"

Glayne snorted and cut him off with a wave of his arm. "What I want to know," he said with deceptive calmness, "is, where the hell is my dust?"

Harbin grinned. "Lieutenant Chodred. I advised her against it--told her it was one of your peculiarities. But she wouldn't listen."

"What 'she' is this?" inquired a new voice, pleasantly husky.

Glayne turned and saw Niala leaning in the entrance stage. "You know damned well whom we are talking about," he said ominously. "Why did you take away my dust?"

"Oh, is that all?" she laughed. It was a deliciously cool and tinkling laugh. Harbin foresaw an imminent explosion. Being a discreet warrior who longs to fight another day, he fled from the room.

But it never quite jelled. Glayne extended his arms to the laughing, green-eyed Niala. But she stood her ground.

"No," she teased. "Not when you have a beard like that."

Glayne swore and reached for his depilatory. He was going to set a new galactic speed record for shaving.