Protector

A moment ago magnification had showed it as a dim red globe. Now a small blue-white star showed on its surface. The white spot spread, dimming; it spread across the surface without rising in any kind of cloud. Bre

“That should kill him,” Bre

“I presume that was a bullet?”

“Yah. A steel-jacketed bullet. And we’re moving against the spin of the star. I slowed it enough that the magnetic field would pick it up and slow it further, and keep on slowing it until it hit the star’s surface. There were some uncertainties. I wasn’t sure just when it would hit.”

“Very tricky, Captain.”

“The trailing ship probably has it worked out too, but there isn’t anything he can do about it.” Now the flare was a lemon glow across one flank of Plissthpok’s Star. Suddenly another white point glowed at one edge. “Even if they worked it out in advance, they couldn’t be sure I had the guns. And there’s only one course window they can follow me through. Either I dropped something or I didn’t. Let’s see what the last pair does.”

“Let’s put Protector back together. I think that must be the drive section ahead.”

“Right.”

They worked for hours. Protector was fairly spread across the sky. Roy worked with his shoulders hunched against deadly green light, but it never came. The second pair of Pak scouts was dead.

Midway they stopped to watch events that had happened an hour ago: the third pair of Pak scouts reco

Roy Truesdale was thirty-nine years old when he and Bre

There were times during those four years when Roy thought he would go mad.

He missed women. It wasn’t Alice Jordan be was missing now; he missed women, the varied score he had loved and the hundreds he had known slightly and the billions he had not. He missed his mother and his sister and his aunts and his ancestresses all the way back to Greatly ’Stelle.

He missed women and men and children and old people; people to fight with, to talk with, to love, to hate. One entire night he spent crying for all the people of Earth, taking care that Bre

He spent long periods in his room with the door locked. Bre

He missed the space. On any random beach on Earth you could run down the curve of wet hard sand between sea and shore until there was no strength left in you to do anything but breathe. On Earth you could walk forever. In his locked room aboard Protector, no longer hampered by Protector’s heavy acceleration, Roy paced endlessly between the walls.

Sometimes, alone, he cursed Bre

Sometimes he cursed Bre

He hadn’t been that much use during the battles. Had Bre

That was an angry thought: that he had been brought only because he belonged to the protector’s blood line, a living reminder of what Bre

“In a sense you’re being subjected to sensory deprivation,” Bre

Roy was losing the urge to talk.

“We’ve got all kinds of entertainment,” said Bre

Roy didn’t ask what he meant. He found out a few days later, when he walked into his room and found himself looking down a mountainside.

Now he spent more time in there than ever. Every so often Bre

He would sit for hours, staring out into the faintly unearthly landscapes, wishing that he could walk out into them. Too much of that was bad too, and he would have to turn them off.

It was during such a time — with the walls around him nothing but walls — that he began wondering again as to just what Bre

The Pak scouts had veered wide during the pass around the neutron star. Now their enormous turning radius had finally aimed them toward Home; but their 5.5 gee acceleration would not compensate for the time they had lost. They were out of the ru

A peaceful people was not that easily persuaded to prepare for all-out defense. It took time to convert factories to make weapons. Just how big a threat was one pair of Pak scouts?

“I’m sure they could destroy a planet,” Bre

“We’ll have less than a year to get ready for them.”

“Stop worrying. That’s long enough. Home already has message lasers that can reach Earth. That speaks well for their accuracy and their power. We’ll use them as ca

“But will they build them? These are peaceful people in a stable society!”

“We’ll talk them into it.”

Sitting in his room, staring into an empty, stormy seascape, Roy wondered at Bre

There had never been a war on Home, according to the tapes of their communications to Earth. Their novels rarely dealt in violence. Once they had used fusion bombs to shape harbors; but then they had the harbors, and now they didn’t even have the factories any more.

Had Bre

One day it occurred to him that there was a solution.