But the pirate ship shot clear like lightning as Thorn smashed down a key. Swiftly, it veered after the Saturnian ship, seeking to run beneath its keel.
The Gargol rolled, to keep presenting its guns toward its enemy. For a brief moment the two ships rushed side by side through space, their rocket-tubes flaming and their guns pouring shell at each other.
Whizzing white flares of energy burst around the Venture, and it rocked wildly as it was hit. Red lights flashed on the panel before Thorn, warning that two keel compartments had been holed.
But Gunner's pirates were not idle. They were concentrating all their fire upon the Gargol's stern, hoping to wreck its tubes and completely disable the cruiser. The Saturnian ship volleyed upward through space in a sharp veering turn to escape that fire.
"We didn't get ‘em!” Stilicho muttered. “But they'll get us if we come too close quarters again. Their guns and inertrum armor are too heavy for us!"
"We're closing in again!” Thorn exclaimed, his black eyes blazing now. He called down to Gunner, “Stand ready! And get those stern-tubes!"
Like two fighting hawks of space, locked in a death combat out here in the lonely immensity of starry space, the two ships maneuvered. Then again, using his superior speed, Thorn drove the Venture in close against the Saturnian ship.
Guns of the Gargol vomited shell that blinded Thorn as they broke around the Venture. He clung with wild recklessness to the side of the enemy, as Gunner's batteries let go.
"They're hit!” Lana cried, her blue eyes blazing with electric excitement.
The Gargol's clustered stern rocket-tubes had, been struck by a salvo of atom-shells that had blasted the tubes into a fused, horribly twisted mass of inertrum.