Farradyne dropped into his chair and snapped the belt. He turned the Lancaster by ninety degrees and grasped the toggle on the ultradrive. Ten seconds later he resumed normal flight for a few seconds and then, at another angle, used the ultradrive again.
He paused long enough to take his space bearing, and then plunged the ship down between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, far to the South of the ecliptic.
"Norma," he asked quietly, "who is Howard Clevis' boss?"
"Howard reports to Solon Forester directly."
"Oh, fine," groaned Farradyne. "Getting to the Solon is no picnic. How do we go about it?"
A flick of color caught his eye and he turned to look at the radar. The line had wiggled slightly and as he watched, its extreme end formed into a signal-pip. Farradyne looked through the telescope and saw the starship again—or another one. Whether they had one with supervelocity tracking methods, or several hundred covering the solar system like an interception net, it made no difference. The enemy was on his trail.
Farradyne played with the high-space drive again and cut some more didoes back and forth across space, ending up this time not too far from Mercury.
From below there came a rapid conversation in multi-tones, like someone dusting off the keys on a pipe organ played in mute.
Farradyne swore, and then he sat there looking at the big chronometer on the wall, counting off the seconds. Seventy of them went under the sweep hand before the radar trace hiked up into the same, familiar extreme-range warning.