“Yes. Very clever. Only a human pilot would think of that.”

Ausfaller had maneuvered the Hobo Kelly between us and the tugs. If the tugs fired a conventional weapon, they’d blast the dome and kill us all.

The tugs came on.

“He still does not know what he is fighting,” Forward said with some satisfaction.

True, and it would cost him. Three unarmed tugs were coming down Ausfaller’s throat, carrying a weapon so slow that the tugs could throw it at him, let it absorb Hobo Kelly, and pick it up again long before it was a danger to us.

From my viewpoint Hobo Kelly was a bright point with three dimmer, more distant points around it. Forward and Angel were getting a better view through the phone. And they weren’t watching us at all.

I began trying to kick off my shoes. They were soft ship slippers, ankle-high, and they resisted.

I kicked the left foot fire just as one of the tugs flared with ruby light.

“He did it!” Carlos didn’t know whether to be jubilant or horrified. “He fired on unarmed ships!”

Forward gestured peremptorily. Angel slid out of his seat. Forward slid in and fastened the thick seat belt. Neither had spoken a word.

A second ship burned fiercely red, then expanded in a pink cloud.

The third ship was fleeing.

Forward worked the controls. “I have it in the mass indicator,” he rasped. “We have but one chance.”

So did I. I peeled the other slipper off with my toes. Over our heads the jointed arm of the Grabber began to swing…and I suddenly realized what they were talking about.

Now there was little to see beyond the dome. The swinging Grabber, and the light of Hobo Kelly’s drive, and the two tumbling wrecks, all against a background of fixed stars. Suddenly one of the tugs winked blue-white and was gone. Not even a dust cloud was left behind.

Ausfaller must have seen it. He was turning, fleeing. Then it was as if an invisible hand had picked up Hobo Kelly and thrown her away. The fusion light streaked off to one side and set beyond the dome’s edge.

With two tugs destroyed and the third fleeing, the black hole was falling free, aimed straight down our throats.

Now there was nothing to see but the delicate motions of the Grabber. Angel stood behind Forward’s chair, his knuckles white with his grip on the chair’s back.

My few pounds of weight went away and left me in free-fall. Tides again. The invisible thing was more massive than this asteroid beneath me. The Grabber swung a meter more to one side…and something struck it a mighty blow.

The floor surged away from beneath me, left me head down above the Grabber. The huge soft-iron puppy dish came at me; the jointed metal arm collapsed like a spring. It slowed, stopped.