The Gripping Hand

"The situation is this: Sinbad and Atropos are on course for the Jump point and decelerating. The leading elements of a war fleet from Byzantium, the most powerful of our allies, have already reached the Crazy Eddie point and are standing by for orders.

"Meanwhile, things are happening in the pursuing fleet." Joyce zoomed in on a screen.

The structure they'd been calling Khanate B was under heavy deceleration. The tremendous junk pile was no longer a single object. The bright sparks of fusion drives were separating in pairs.

Another screen showed a blurry picture relayed from Atropos: two Khanate ships docked and remained docked until one reconstructed ship began to decelerate, leaving part of its mass as debris.

"We don't know what this means," Joyce said. Reporterspeak for I don't know. Kevin and Freddy had given over arguing about it, but Re

"So what have we got?" Re

Bury wasn't asking, so Joyce did. "How?"

Re

"But high thrust-"

"As Allah wills, Joyce. What of Group 13, Kevin?"

"Aye, there's the rub. They never turned off their drives. They did low thrust forever, right up to midpoint turnover, and dropped mass every step of the way. Fuel tanks, Engineers, that mirror thing, who knows? It looks like they'll get to the Crazy Eddie point just behind Group A, but with plenty of fuel to spare. If we miss our Jump, I'd say we're dead. So, we're forced to jump."

"If so, Kevin, they've made themselves very vulnerable to Medina. The Medina forces will face seven hundred Khanate ships strung in a long line. Is this a wi

"You're missing something," said Glenda Ruth Blaine.

An odd source, but- Kevin said, "Okay. What?"

"I don't know." She perched on the edge of the water bed and scratched behind Ali Baba's ear. "But they're Warriors. They're following a Master's orders, but that doesn't make them silly. Remember their mission and look again."

Cynthia knew how to prepare Turkish coffee. Bury sipped his and said, "Fuel matters here. The Khanate ships are depleted. Are we? Base Six is following us, of course."

"They'll be a hundred and ten hours late. They can rescue any ship that ran dry, but that doesn't help us fight. Still, we could refuel from a Medina ship. I don't think we even need to, And we'll go through the Crazy Eddie point at three hundred per, just like last time, with the East India ships to triangulate for us."

"Ah!"

Cynthia snapped alert. "Excellency?"

"I'm all right, Cynthia. Kevin, the debris. The mass, the junk left over when two ships merged at a thousand klicks per second. Set Atropos to tracking the course of the junk. You'll find that a mass equivalent to over a hundred spacecraft is on course to pass straight through the Crazy Eddie point just when we would like to do that."

"Okay, lie down already. Freddy?"

"I'm on it." Freddy Townsend was working his control board hard. A screen lit: Rawlins's talker.

Now why am I less scared than I was? Re

While Freddy was at work, Re

"I will learn," Omar said.

Now no one had time to explain things, and her questions were distracting. Joyce could only record everything and hope to make sense of it later. "We've heard about the ‘fog of war,' " Joyce dictated. "It's all too real. I don't know what's going on, and neither does anyone else, not really. Sometimes you just have to make choices and stick with them."

With twenty minutes to go, Kevin gave the order to strap in. The Khanate ships' stream of high-V debris couldn't be far away.

"I have a feed from Atropos," Freddy said. "On Screen Three."

Star-sprinkled black. Kevin said, "I don't...One bluer than the others. That stellar background ...? Freddy, it's a Master ship that's just popped through. Now prove me wrong."

Medina called. "We have a Khanate Master ship just emerged from the Sister. One ship only. It made no attempt to communicate, so our man has fired on it. He reports an overpowered shield."

"One lousy Master. That's all it takes," Re

Bury was chuckling. "Why, Kevin?"

"This whole thing falls apart if the Khanate Warriors get the right orders. Here's a Master, just in time, and hell, it's even too late for us to abort!"

Bury was laughing with some effort. "Yes, Kevin, they can send orders to their Warriors, but what would they say? What can they learn in time, across a lightspeed gap of thirty-eight minutes?"

Medina was still speaking, had said something about the barrage. Re

"The Warriors will solve it. Hold to the plan."

Pity Omar hadn't been at the comm. The lightspeed gap was already too great to get any answers. Eight minutes. Everyone strapped in? "Joyce! Strap in!"

"Okay, Skipper." She'd been standing on her chair to get altitude, photographing them at work. She dropped and strapped in, cheerful as hell, hugging the camera like her own baby.

The Khanate Master ship was still in view, glowing fiercely bright in green. Medina's forces must be bathing her in energy. She'd never get a message through that.

The feed from twenty East India ships was providing good triangulation: he would hit the point dead center. Bury was doing savasama, but his heartbeat and brain-wave displays were all over the place. Scared. Calling his attention to it would be worse than useless. Behind Sinbad a darkness was growing... black dots crowding out the stars. What the hell?

Two minutes. And weird lighting effects among the black dots, sparks in rainbow colors.

The Byzantium fleet! They were blocking the Khanate barrage, catching the stuff with their Langston Fields.

And the Crazy Eddie point was here, now, unseen, passing at three hundred klicks per second as Freddy touched the contact.

Orange murk looked in through the screens. Re

"Re

"When I start the drive."

Sinbad was coming alive again, but slowly. Now Afro pos was a black near-circle against white light, unmistakable, a few hundred miles distant... almost toward the core of Murcheson's Eye, according to Sinbad's instruments.

Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes to get ready, then all hell.

There was a lot to do, but some of it would have to wait for the Motie Engineers, and they were flat out of action.

Communications. "Atropos, this is Sinbad. Atropos, this is Sinbad, Sinbad, Sinbad..."

It would just be dawning on Joyce Mei-Ling Trujillo that they were inside a star. Wonder and terror and a reflex reach for the camera. Glenda Ruth was a basket case, no better off than the Moties. "Atropos, this is Sinbad..." Others were moving. Re