The Road to the Rim - A. Bertram Chandler [37]
Aboard Epsilon Sextans the keening note of the Drive died to a whisper, a barely audible murmur, fading to silence. There was the inevitable second or so of utter disorientation when, as soon as it was safe, the engineers braked the gyroscopes.
Craven acted without hesitation, giving his ship headway and acceleration with Inertial Drive. He was not running—although this was the impression that he wished to convey. He was inviting rather than evading combat—but if the Waldegren captains chose to assume that Epsilon Sextans was, as she had been, an unarmed merchantman (after all, the anti-laser screen could have been jury rigged from normal ship's stores and equipment), taking evasive action, that was their error of judgment.
Grimes watched his screens intently. Suddenly the two blips reappeared, astern, all of a hundred kilos distant, but closing. This he reported.
"Stand by for acceleration!" ordered Craven. "Reaction Drive—stand by!"
It was all part of the pattern—a last, frantic squandering of reaction mass that could do no more than delay the inevitable. It would look good from the enemy control rooms.
"Reaction Drive ready!" reported Baxter over the intercom.
"Thank you. Captain to all hands, there will be no countdown. Fire!"
From the corner of his eye Grimes saw Craven's hand slam down on the key. Acceleration slammed him brutally back into his chair. There was a roar that was more like an explosion than a normal rocket firing, a shock that jarred and rattled every fitting in the Control Room.
Craven remarked quietly. "That must have looked convincing enough—but I hope that Baxter didn't really blow a chamber."
There was only the Inertial Drive now, and the two blips that, very briefly, had fallen astern, were now creeping up again, closing the range. "Anti-laser," ordered Craven briefly. "But, sir, it'll just be wasting it. They'll not be using laser outside twenty kilometers."
"They'll not be expecting a gunnery specialist aboard this wagon, either."
Once again the nozzles spouted, pouring out a cloud that fell rapidly astern of the running ship, dissipating uselessly.
Craven looked at his own screens, frowned, muttered, "They're taking their sweet time about it . . . probably low on reaction mass themselves." He turned to Grimes. "I think a slight breakdown of the I.D.'s in order."
"As you say, sir." The Ensign could not forget having been called a damned, sneaking, prurient puppy. Let Craven make his own decisions.
"Stand by for Free Fall," ordered the Captain quietly. The steady throbbing of the Inertial Drive faltered, faltered and ceased. There were two long minutes of weightlessness, and then, for five minutes, the Drive came back into operation. A breakdown, the enemy must be thinking. A breakdown, and the engineers sweating and striving to get the ship under way again. A breakdown—it would not be surprising after the mauling she had endured at the first encounter.
She hung there, and although her actual speed could be measured in kilometers a second she was, insofar as her accelerating pursuers were concerned, relatively motionless. Grimes wondered why the warships did not use their radio, did not demand surrender—Epsilon Sextans' transceiver was switched on, but no sound issued from the speaker but the hiss and crackle of interstellar static. He voiced his puzzlement to Craven.
Craven laughed grimly. "They know who we are—or they think that they know. And they know that we know who they are. After what happened before, why should we expect mercy? All that we can do now—they think—is to get the Mannschenn Drive going again. But with that comic beacon of theirs working away merrily they'll be able to home on