"What made them skitter off like that?"
Gowlan looked at him. "I don't get it. What do you mean?"
Roysland waved his hand to indicate their surroundings. The corridors and rooms of the great ship were swarming with inspectors, who were photographing and checking every square centimeter of the ship.
"What happened? Why have we got this ship?" Roysland asked.
Gowlan thought for a moment, then nodded slowly. "I see what you're getting at. Let's see—
"The Killiver is cruising in ultradrive. They pick up a blip on the detector; it's an enemy ship. They're too far away to torpedo, but they're well within range of the aJ projectors. That gets us up to the moment of firing." He stopped and his frown deepened. "Wait a second; that doesn't make sense."
Roysland raised an eyebrow. "What doesn't?"
"Well, look here: The gunners would have had to be awake when the aJ's were fired. All right; that means they tracked the Enlissa ship, then cut in the automatics to fire the aJ's. They must have missed, because the Enlissa used the mindjammer after the aJ's were fired.
"But if that's so, then why didn't the Enlissa ship capture the Killiver?"
It was a good point. Roysland frowned and turned the thing over in his mind. A spaceship is expensive—hellishly expensive; the cost of a fleet of seagoing battleships is nothing in comparison. So you don't waste ships, even the enemy's. The whole object of a space battle is to destroy the enemy crew without destroying the ship. Even a badly-damaged interstellar vessel is worth saving.