"Weapons, Ship's Commander. One missile. Stand by. Detection, when we go down I want you to get the ranges and vectors on everything you can see. We'll do what we can. And I want the tape rolling. Ship's Services, vent heat while we're Norm. All right. Everybody ready? Take her down, Engineering."

Heat accumulation was the biggest weakness of the Climber. There was no way to shed heat in Null. And a Climber often had to stay up for days while enemy warships hunted her.

The Climber was no warship in the slug-it-out sense. She was a hit-and-run fighter dependent on surprise for her effectiveness.

The Defender Prime brought them down just four kilometers behind the destroyer. The Climber rocked. The missile accelerated at 100 g. It arrived before the destroyer knew it was coming.

"One for the good guys," Beckhart grumped as the Climber went up again.

"What was that?" von Staufenberg demanded.

"Admiral, you're giving them valuable information just by blowing them out of space. You're telling them we can do it. You'll get them wondering how. Head home before we give them any hard data. Let's save the surprises for when they'll do some good."

Von Staufenberg reddened. There was no love lost between him and Beckhart.

"He's right, Manfred," the Defender Prime interjected. "You almost wasted the Climber advantage by committing them piecemeal during the war. They would have more effective if whole fleets had appeared suddenly. We would not have had time to adapt."

"Of course. Of course. I was thinking with my guts. Program a course for the mother, Melene."

Climbers did not have a long range. A mother ship awaited this one a hundred light-years homeward. A small armada protected her.

This Climber's crew regarded themselves highly.

Three: 3049 AD

The Main Sequence

BenRabi slammed his scooter through the entrance to Control Sector. Seconds later the massive shield doors rumbled shut behind him. The section was totally self-contained now. No one could come in or leave till those doors lifted.