Guy nosed the Loki cautiously toward the moon of Ertene. Their synthetic sun, dimming a bit now that the unbounded energy-intake was cut, shone full and bright upon one side, and Guy wasted precious minutes circling to the dark side.
It was mostly wasteland, yet Guy went die-straight to the half-concealed emplacement.
With callousness born of necessity, Guy rammed the dome and the Loki was flung away in the out-rush of air. Guy set his grapples, and literally tore the building apart, brick by brick, and then hooked onto the great vortex projector and lifted it high into the sky. He returned for the power equipment and took that also. He thanked his lucky star that the Loki was a Terran ship and not one of the less agile Ertinian jobs. The fact that it was fitted with everything but a set of turret-mounted MacMillans made Guy jump up and down in glee. He recalled the game of hide-and-seek of a couple of years ago, and knew that the Loki could take it.
He set the Loki down on a barren plain on the side away from Ertene, and donned space garb. Welding the vortex projector on the top of the Loki made a strange-looking spacecraft, but streamlining was unimportant in space anyway. He hooked girder after girder on the huge parabolic reflector, welding them securely to his hull. He fitted the supply cables with air-tight bushings through the walls, and then spent several hours fitting up a series of relays to a thumb-button on the pilot's levers.
His detector rang as he was finishing, and Guy poked the drive control without waiting to see the nature of the approaching ship.
He grinned as he arrowed away from Ertene, because he knew that no matter whose ship it was, it was against him. They'd given him the time he needed, and if he managed to get through the next phase, they would never be able to stop him again. No one would ever collect the price that was upon his head—a double price, one in Solar coin, one in Ertinian.
His detector rang again, and Guy saw a small Terran ship approaching. Its turrets jerked forward, and Guy's thumb hit the button. The Loki bucked to avoid the discharge of the AutoMacs, but the velocity of the Terran was too high to swerve. It ran into the floating vortex and went dead, at full velocity, on and on into the nothing of the sky. It was picked up later by Ertinians, who added it to their captured fleet.
And Guy, knowing that his life might control the future of billions of lives, hardened. Friend or foe, all must fall before him until he had reached the end of this phase of his life. If he fell, the Solar System itself might never recover from the outcome of his failure.
For Maynard, knowing his Terrans, his Martians, and also his Ertinians, could have pointed out the moves of the next five years on the fingers of his hand—and no one alive could have denied him.