"You're wasting melodrama, big boy. I wouldn't think of leaving you behind. Ask Concor, we were wondering what had happened to you."
"Concor could lie, and so could you," growled Tichron. But he carefully reclipped the gun to his belt. "Perhaps you'll be killed trying to take the supply ship."
"Perhaps you will...."
Wilding barked orders. The lighter was closed up and sealed. Atom-converters purred with steady vibrations. With a grunt and heave, the lighter moved into the airlock shaft. Lights dimmed and the jarring increased in tempo. Movement steadied into a smooth glide. Automatic door-flaps opened ahead and closed behind. Blast-off ritual began.
Suddenly the tiny ship shot from the surface like a cork from a bottle. Acceleration pangs became nagging nausea.
Wilding licked his lips. "Perhaps we'll all be killed. It will save a lot of trouble...."
From the shadow-cone of the planetoid, the lighter moved out to anticipate the orbit of the expected supply ship....
In space, frontal attack is impossible. Ships approach and pass each other at terrific relative velocities. Limited human senses cannot function rapidly enough, and even the automatic mechanisms which control a ship in spaceflight can react only according to the impulses built into them.
Surprise is almost equally impossible, since combat requires that both ships be moving at approximately equal speeds on courses nearly parallel.
Though Wilding had planned carefully, he knew that there is a vast difference between plans and execution. Anything, or any number of things, could go wrong. For one thing, if it came to an actual running fight, his craft was practically unarmed. Aboard the supply ship would be robot brains for mass detection, target-course computation, and the automatic aiming and firing of atomic warhead torpedoes. There had been neither time nor material to build such complicated machines. Even the control of the lighter was accomplished manually.