His big hands went over the ray tube controls experimentally, and he grinned as he swung the sights across the rear sector. "I'm sick of playing with asteroid fragments!"
Holber didn't move his eyes from the rear screen. A faint, distant flicker of red splashed against the deep black of space behind them. The pin point of flame pulsed steadily among the cold stars—it was the rocket wash of a ship, a ship far below the space lanes, a ship too black to be visible against its sable backdrop!
"Here he comes!" Mike said tensely.
"He's seen us by now." Nord's long fingers brought retarding jets flaming into brief life.
Their speed slackened. In the rear screen, the wash of the other ship swelled suddenly, and the outline of its dark hull cut a silhouette across the dying radiance of exhaust gasses.
It was Kadine's ship! In it was the secret of safe passage through the Asteroid Belt—a secret that would open a space lane for System Federation ships, give Science access to the guarded secrets of the mysterious Asteroids!
In it, too, were the papers which had brought the outlaw back from Jupiter's moons—gambling possible success there to wrest from the Federation itself scientific knowledge that might assure a pirate coup against interplanetary civilization!
Dhain Kadine, whose cunning and skill were legendary, had never hesitated in battle. He did not hesitate now! The black hull of his ship loomed in the view screen, and a slender, dazzling pencil of white darted forth—a heat ray stopped down to its most penetrating beam, concentrating the maximum fiery energy into a tiny area of searing destruction.
Nord whipped their vulnerable plastic hull aside, and the beam flared harmlessly in the view screens, as it lashed past, spending its fury against cold space. Nord threw the drive control lever forward to the last notch.