At 0500 hours the alarm gong clanged raucously. Harrigan was struggling into his trousers as O'Brien stuck his head in the door and shouted, "Jack! They've cut us off!"
The captain explained the situation hurriedly as they sprinted toward the bridge. "Port watch just spotted 'em. Three o'clock, low, in an arc. There's only seven of them, but apparently they've taken Polaris Base and cut us off from Sector I."
A series of muffled thuds was heard, and suddenly a succession of electric, blue-white flashes from outside the ports turned the dimness of the passageway into intense, eye-straining brilliance.
"Hot hell! We must have got us one," Harrigan roared, and the two men broke into a run.
In the powerful bridge screens they could see the great cloud of smoke hanging in the void, where the League ship had been hit, and, coming through it, several more of the grim pursuers. Occasionally a beam of ripping, ravaging energy would lick out towards the Albion, but the slim fingers of death fell shorter of their goal by the minute.
"Well," Mike breathed in relief, "we can outrun them. But what now?"
"Better set a course for Antares IV," Harrigan advised. "The maintenance depot there can install the Hyper-drive in a few days and we can make it back to Terra then regardless of what the League holds."
As soon as the Albion was safely out of range of the League ships, the two officers were joined on the bridge by Master Gunner Cliff Irvington. They discussed the narrow squeak for a few minutes. At length Irvington punched out his cigar and confessed, "I could stand a drink."
Ten minutes later they were seated in Harrigan's Spartan quarters over a bottle of good Terran Irish whiskey and a flagon of Jovian Blongah. Irvington downed an heroic shot of the Jovian mixture, shivered, howled and grabbed for the pitcher of water which the orderly had placed on the small table.