"Missile away-now!"

It happened like lightning. There was scarcely time to register the launch before the missile flashed into the enemy formation ...

... and struck the remaining Trollheim full on.

Josephine Santander sagged in her command chair. They'd come so far, paid so much, and they'd missed. Defender rode the Kangas' flank at less than a light-second, and it was over. The Ogre still had to make its final translation, but she couldn't stop it. She couldn't even follow into normal-space to engage the Kangas there. They knew when they were going, and even if she'd known that herself, it would have taken months of calculations by the best theoretical physicists to put Defender on the same gradient and follow them.

She'd failed. The bastards were going to get away with it, and there was noth-

But then her brain hiccuped suddenly, and she straightened slowly as an idea flickered. It was preposterous-insane!-but it refused to release her... .

She raised her head, looking into the screen to Defender's command bridge. Onslow had aged fifty years in the last twenty seconds, she thought, and his shoulders were as slumped as hers had been.

"Captain?" He didn't even blink. "Captain Onslow!" His dulled eyes flickered, and a tremor seemed to run through him.

"Yes, Ma'am?" His voice was mechanical, responding out of rote reflex.

"We may still have an option, Steve." He looked at her incredulously. "We've still got Defender's multi-dee," she said softly.

His face was blank for an instant, and then understanding flared.

"Of course." Life returned to his eyes-the blazing life of a man who has accepted the inevitability of something far worse than his own death and then been shown a possible way to avert it after all-and suppressed excitement lent his voice vibrancy as he nodded jerkily. "Of course!"

Animation rippled across the flag bridge as the commodore's words sank home. Defender herself could become a weapon. It had never been tried before-as far as anyone knew-but it was a chance.