A thousand yards behind and astern, the unmanned Artemis followed the Darkside like a dog on a leash, its myriad functions controlled by an invisible chain of subetheric impulses from jerry-rigged remote controls on the Darkside's gun-deck.
In the faint light of the faraway sun, where the irrepressible Blake had sloshed paint on her flank, gleamed the legend: BOOBY TRAP.
Like shadows, the four ships of Flotilla Blue Three slipped through the patrol cordons of the Martian Space Force. In the infinite vastnesses of the interplanetary deeps they were unnoticed. Blast tubes silent, guided only by the ever increasing gravitational attraction of mammoth Uranus, and the reaction of whining gyroscopes.
Beneath them, its greenish disk ever increasing, lay Uranus ... cold, harsh, forbidding. The thick atmosphere of methane and ammonia lay in great turbulent belts, whipped to maniacal fury by the eternal storms that swept the unguessable surface of the ghastly planet.
Blake shivered slightly as the skeeter-valve of the Darkside closed soundlessly behind him and the blackness of the void closed in about the tiny boat. For just an instant, the familiar shape of the destroyer loomed comfortingly in the faint light of the dwarfed sun, and then it was gone, and he was falling away towards the mystery shrouded world that lay beneath him. The very size of the disk was frightening. A huge swirling mass 30,000 miles across seemed to be drawing him inexorably into its gassy body.
With an effort he settled himself down in the control chair and patted the tattered pin-up picture on the panel before him. It was a bit of Terra far from home, and the simple act gave him courage. This was certainly different from the Terra-Luna flights he had so often made alone ... this was different. He grinned to himself and spoke aloud the phrase made famous by ten thousand generations of actors and hacks. This, he declaimed, is it!
Quickly now, he set up the constants for Oberon and pressed the firing stud. There was a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach as the skeeter came alive and the vast disk of Uranus vanished from the forward vision ports. Speed was essential now. His trail would not mark the place of the Flotilla, but it surely would arouse the sharp eyes of the Cats who must be nearby. He pressed the second stud and the skeeter leaped ahead. The accelerometer stood at 7 Terran Gs. By long practice he could stand 11 ... and the skeeter ... stripped and souped up ... could produce 20. Far too many.
He set the seat to prone position. Maybe he could squeeze an extra one out of it now. 12 G! He gave the skeeter more power and the stars seemed to go into a crazy dance as his vision started to fail. Enough.
Thirty minutes of terrific speed and still no sign of the Cats. The tiny, dark disc of Oberon grew with alarming rapidity in the port. He began to decelerate so fast that he nearly blacked out again. Damn! Below him the tiny moon lay barren and bizarre in the greenish glow of its huge primary.