Quest for the Well of Souls - Jack L. Chalker [32]
Looking out at the attacker, whose second missile was already in the air, the eerie face and glowing eyes of the captain never wavered, but he shouted to the navigator, "Did you get me a fix?"
Before the navigator could reply, the grenade struck, closer this time, metal fragments flying from it and causing a series of nasty gashes in the Trader's side and forward superstructure.
The captain shouted corrective orders; the fog was becoming thick again, and the cutter was becoming harder to see—as was the Trader. In a matter of minutes they would be invisible to each other. This, oddly, favored the cutter, which would continue to close because of its smaller, lighter nature as they both followed the current.
Joshi peered out from under a tarpaulin. "God! I wish I could see what's going on!" he complained. "Fog's getting thick again!"
"You're better off alive!" snapped Mavra Chang. "Get back under here and stay here! This captain knows what he's doing!"
I hope, she added silently to herself. There was no way that she or Joshi could swim.
The navigator on the bridge had waited for a short interlude in the exchange. Now it gave the information. "34 south, 62 west!" it called.
"Exactly!" snapped the captain. "How close are we to the Ecundan hex point and Usurk?"
The navigator brightened with the light of understanding. "At this speed," it replied, "maybe ten, twelve minutes' time at the most!"
That satisfied the captain. "All aloft!" he yelled. "Full sail!" Their bow was angled away from their pursuer at this point, the proper angle, and there was an eight- to ten-kilometer wind blowing.
The cutter, which, even though it was closing, was having increasing difficulty locating the bigger craft in the fog, got enough of a glimpse to see the sails unfurling.
The Parmiter, on a watch platform midships, cried out, "They're putting on sail! We have to catch them fast or we might lose them! Com'on, you bastards! They can't see us but we can still see them! If you can't hit something that size from this distance, we're all lost!"
The Parmiter was right. The early morning light of the sun occasionally revealed a small part of the Toorine Trader. Coming out of the still-darker northwest, their craft, of black aluminum, was indistinguishable from the water.
The bow tube fired again, and this time it was a close call. They were not only closing, they were getting the range; had they been able to use two bow tubes, they might have hit the Trader dead on. The constant turning, however, made aiming more chancy, for each time a tube came up the angle had changed slightly.
On the bridge of the Toorine Trader the captain was becoming worried. The last shot had blown a gash in the stern and blew open a hatch cover. Obviously the cutter was getting the range while managing to keep just out of cannon's reach. The captain resolved that if he got out of this, the company was going to pay for some of those rocket mines for his ship.
"We must be getting close to the border!" The captain shouted to the navigator. "Man boiler room! Preheat coke! Man Type A defenses!"
Two Twosh bowling-pins scampered across the deck on bright white-gloved hands, then hopped atop a tarpaulin-covered shape at the bow. The tarp came off, revealing a device resembling a small telescope with a dome-shaped housing. The Twosh poised before a control board with form-fitting indentations to the rear of the device, huge oval eyes staring at the dead controls.
Another rocket mine soared, then struck amidships, blowing a huge hole in the side of the Trader.
"Shift ballast to compensate!" screamed the captain. Come on, you bastards, where's that border?
Then suddenly, as if someone had lifted a dirty curtain, the Toorine Trader came out of the fog and stood clear to the pursuers, a sitting duck.
"We got 'em!" screamed