The Commander glanced quickly at the screen, disbelief flicking momentarily over his square features. He leaped to the intra-phone, snatching the headphones from the Lieutenant-Commander.
"Mister Parek," he ordered, "swing with that ship. We must get in close—quickly!" Aside to McTavish, he added: "I hope the cable to that spaceboat holds when it snaps around on this turn."
"It will hold, sir," the Engineer assured him. "But we'll lose some speed by the drag—only until we re-accelerate, sir."
McPartland tossed the headphones back to Clemens, left the intra-phone, and went back to his screen. For the next few minutes he watched the alien silver sphere, flashing and glinting in the starlight.
Jon McPartland whispered, half to himself: "The cunning devils! They know something's up when a beaten ship comes back to fight again."
"Begging your pardon, sir," said Reynolds, the Ray Control Officer, in his quiet manner. "They must have seen the spaceboat strung behind and become suspicious."
"You're right, Mister," acknowledged the Commander. "The killers are careful of their skins." He glared at the hateful beauty of the other ship, growing no larger in his screen. "Come on," he challenged.
But the enemy avoided every effort of the earth ship to close in, turning inside. At last, the space fighters were carving a great circle in space, the Earthmen on the outside, traveling a greater distance so that superior speed was largely nullified.
McPartland glared into his screen. Clemens stood by his intra-phone, relaying messages from Parek. Reynolds sat before his calculators, unmoving except for fingers caressing the mike that still waited for his words. McTavish sprawled before his three dimensional model, his grey eyes going over and over every line of it.
At last the Commander spoke the thought in the minds of all four: "We're six Spatial units apart. Maximum range of their ray is five units; ours is four. Coming head on, we pass through the gap between their range and ours in seconds—we almost made it last time! But, if we overhaul them from behind, it might take minutes to close that gap with our speed advantage."