"Damn! All right, let's get moving. Time's running out, and everybody's got to have a look at this."

Cumbers were the most cramped vessels since Gemini. Circulating the forty-odd beings aboard was a slow, uncomfortable process.

"She's about to start shooting," Beckhart said of the nearest destroyer. "She has. Missile swarm. We have four minutes to hide."

"How do you like that? Didn't even try to find out who we were or what we wanted."

"This is the Ship's Commander," von Staufenberg said into the public address system. "We're under fire. Engineering, stand by to go Null." Thirty seconds before the swarm arrived, he ordered, "Take her up to ten Bev. First Watch Officer, a gesture is in order. Program me an attack approach on the vessel shooting at us."

The Ulantonid's feathery antennae stirred, quivered. The action was comparable to a human's pleased chuckle.

The Star Lords were in Weapons Department already, hoping they would be allowed to play with their deadly toys.

"One missile," said von Staufenberg. "Right up her wake."

It was the classic Climber attack strategy. Drives were a warship's soft spot. They simply could not be designed so that thrust apertures could be shielded as well as the remainder of the vessel.

The dust in the crater flowed together suddenly, smashing in like the Red Sea on Pharaoh's chariots. The doughnut ship had vanished.

"Take her all the way to forty Bev," von Staufenberg ordered. "I doubt they know enough to look for our Hawking Point, but let's get that cross-section down anyway." One of the curiosities about the Climber was that no other race known to humanity had ever developed it. And for humans it had been an accidental by-product of other research.

Twenty-three minutes passed before the First Watch Officer reported, "Attack position, Commander."