The huge craft had reached the water moon’s far orbit, although it still wasn’t visible this far away.

The shuttles were visible as they burned brightly, their exhaust tails tiny streaks in the blackness.

Once more, Pa Kur tapped his comm. Excited, begging voices bubbled from it. The Palain subhumans pleaded with the captain of the Windsor League vessel. Several of them at once continued to explain how they had just escaped New Men captivity.

The commander of the hammership was cautious. The woman had an obvious right to be.

From on the water moon, a planetary cannon beamed. The ray struck perfectly, smashing a shuttle apart as metal melted and then exploded with air, water vapor and flesh and bones. A second cannon beamed. This one struck the outer shield of the hammership.

The two planetary cannons wreaked havoc among the shuttles, destroying one after another. Finally, the hammership’s railguns targeted and fired, screaming shells through the atmosphere, silencing the planetary lasers. Hangar bay doors opened and fighters launched.

The last two Palain shuttles neared the hammership. The escapees pleaded anew, some of them crying in terror.

Pa Kur listened intently.

“Please,” begged one of the escapees. “Board us and search the shuttles. We really are who we say we are.”

“What about bombs?” the hammership captain asked.

“Don’t you think we’ve already thought of that?” a shuttle speaker answered. “The New Men are cruel and inhuman. They’ll do anything to win. We’ve searched everywhere through the shuttle. We’re safe, I promise you. But you’re going to have to see that for yourself. That’s why we ask you to board and search us.”

“Very well,” the captain said. “Prepare for boarding.”

It took ten minutes of maneuver for the two shuttles to stop fully and the fighters to circle them with their guns live.

More time passed as two shuttles left the hammership, accelerated and then decelerated. Finally, several spacemen left a Windsor League shuttle, using hydrogen exhaust to propel themselves to the nearest escapee shuttle.

“Thank you, thank you,” wept one of the Palain escapees. “We owe you so much.”

“No,” Pa Kur said. “You owe no one anything as you are mere tools.” He pressed a button.

Hypnotism was an interesting phenomenon. The sub-men were particularly susceptible to the practice. The people in the shuttles believed they had looked for thermonuclear bombs, when in fact they had not. How otherwise could they have sounded so convincing?

Pa Kur’s radio pulse reached the two shuttles. Seconds later, each of them ignited, blowing apart. Powerful thermonuclear blasts also took out the hammership’s two shuttles and many of the space-fighters. Even more important, gamma rays, X-rays and heat billowed at the hammership. Clearly, the blasts would fail to knock down the shields, but they would whiten the ship’s sensors for a short time.

“We shall begin,” Pa Kur told his Sevens, “in three seconds.” The time passed. “Now,” he said.

Pa Kur engaged the single-ship’s thruster. As acceleration increased, he switched on a timer, watching it closely.