“How did it happen?” asked Taury wearily.

“I don’t know, your majesty. We heard you were at Sol through your agents, and secretly gathered ships. We don’t want to be under the Anvardi, Empress; they tax the life from us and conscript our men and take our women and children…We only communicated by ultrawave; it can’t be traced, and we only used the code your agents gave us. But as we passed Canopus, they called on us to surrender in the name of their king—and they have a whole war fleet after us!”

“How long before they get here?” asked Hunda.

“At this rate, sir, perhaps a week,” answered the captain of the ship. Static snarled through his words.

“Well, keep on coming this way,” said Taury wearily. “We’ll send ships against them. You may get away during the battle. Don’t go to Sol, of course, we’ll have to evacuate that. Our men will try to contact you later.”

“We aren’t worth it, your majesty. Save all your ships.”

“We’re coming,” said Taury flatly, and broke the circuit.

She turned to the others, and her red head was still lifted. “Most of our people can get away,” she said. “They can flee into the Arlath cluster; the enemy won’t be able to find them in that wilderness.” She smiled, a tired little smile that tugged at one corner of her mouth. “We all know what to do, we’ve planned against this day. Munidor, Falz, Mico, start readying for evacuation. Hunda, you and I will have to plan our assault. We’ll want to make it as effective as possible, but use a minimum of ships.”

“Why sacrifice fighting strength uselessly?” asked Belgotai.

“It won’t be useless. We’ll delay the Anvardi, and give those refugees a chance to escape.”

“If we had weapons,” rumbled Hunda. His huge fists clenched. “By the gods, if we had decent weapons!”

The Dreamer stiffened. And before he could vibrate it, the same thought had leaped into Saunders’ brain, and they stared at each other, man and Vro-Hian, with a sudden wild hope…

* * *

Space glittered and flared with a million stars, thronging against the tremendous dark, the Milky Way foamed around the sky in a rush of cold silver, and it was shattering to a human in its utter immensity. Saunders felt the loneliness of it as he had never felt it on the trip to Venus—for Sol was dwindling behind them, they were rushing out into the void between the stars.

There had only been time to install the new weapon on the dreadnought, time and facilities were so cruelly short, there had been no chance even to test it in maneuvers. They might, perhaps, have leaped back into time again and again, gaining weeks, but the shops of Terra could only turn out so much material in the one week they did have.

So it was necessary to risk the whole fleet and the entire fighting strength of Sol on this one desperate gamble. If the old Vengeance could do her part, the outnumbered Imperials would have their chance. But if they failed…