"Above you!” yelled Gunner Welk wildly.
Thorn looked up, just glimpsed the huge, ponderous mass thundering down on the ship from above-a tiny planetoid, black and jagged and massive, spinning on its axis as it bore noiselessly down on them.
Thorn's hand on the keys blasted the ship to starboard with the speed of light. But he knew, even as he acted, that he was too late. He could not quite get clear.
There came a grinding shock, a scream of riven metal. He and Gunner Welk were thrown crazily together at a side of the control-room. His head rang inside his helmet.
He scrambled up, clutching a stanchion. There was a dead, unusual silence. He looked back into the stern of the ship, past Sual Av, who was scrambling unsteadily to their side.
"'We're wrecked!” Thorn exclaimed, his heart plummeting.
The little planetoid had crumpled up the whole stern half of the ship like cardboard. The air inside it was gone. The crumpled little craft was drifting silently in space, revolving slowly around the jagged planetoid that had been its Nemesis.
"Hell!” swore Gunner Welk, his voice coming to the other two in their helmets through the short-range audio with which all space-suits were equipped. “We were almost through, too!"
"What do we do now?” Sual Ay asked, his green eyes perplexedly staring through the glassite of his helmet.
Thorn shrugged heavily. “I don't know. I was a fool to try to run the swarm. But it looked like our best chance."