The force was tearing him apart with pain. It came like iron fingers in his belly and across his ribs. It bent him over so that his face went purple.
No wonder the Trader Unions lost their big Caravans, packed to their rivets as they were with priceless radium and korse-210 from Tanit and the other planets of the suns Deneb and Achernar! The Council thought at first that it was Black Randolph looting, so the Unions Council ordered out the cruisers from the Interstellar Fleet to hunt him down. The cruisers, like the big Caravans, never came back.
Then they sent for Grim Thorssen.
The big Viking throwback was the spot trouble-tripper of the Fleet. He'd been decorated—and paid in credits—from Antares to Kruger-60 for a brash bravery that ran close to the margins of foolhardiness. But what looked like recklessness in some men was planned daring with the blond Nordic. He could think faster and shoot straighter than any other three men in the Fleet. He had the highest I.Q. that the books provided for, and black spots on his chest from friendly duels with his fellow officers using black disintegrater charges. He was smart and he was crazy and his brother Commanders loved him. They said to each other, "If anybody can do it, Grim will. He'll find out what grabs the Caravans and the cruisers."
Well, now he knew. Tortured and strained, bent in a thousand positions in a matter of minutes, he was sobbing out the thought that he wished he hadn't. There wasn't anything you could do to a force that turned your ship into a fantastic nightmare and cut you in two with lancets of agony.
The planet loomed in the forward window. A faint light hazed its outlines, as though a private sun of its own shone beyond it. Grim bit his lip until it bled, fighting the nausea and the throbbing in him. He had to land his ship. He had to find out what the force was, and what it wanted. He had to fight the tough luck that had hounded the Trader Unions ever since old Jasper Jones had retired. He had to—
The spacer grated on a ledge of rocks, its keel cracking and folding back and ripping off on the underside of the hull. A gigantic thin needle rising from a boulder towered before him. Grim yanked back on the power-brakes, but it was no use.
The blunt rock cliff loomed up. The nose of his vessel went ploughing into it with a force that snapped his leather safeties and skyrocketed him into the forward port....
There was a sun! Grim felt it beating hot into his closed eyes. Muscles ached and pain pounded through his big frame. His eyes came open to what was left of his ruined Corsair.