There was a violent lurch, followed by the beep of Allen’s radio pulse, and the Earth disappeared again.

Judy turned away from the radio to see Allen lifting his finger off the keyboard. “Damn it, I told you not to touch that until I gave the word! Get away from there!”

Allen looked hurt. “I think I just saved our lives,” he said. “Somebody shot at us.” He pointed out the aft windows into the cargo bay, where a cherry-red stump still glowed where the vertical stabilizer had been. Hydraulic fluid bubbled out into vacuum from the severed lines.

Judy took it all in, in less than a second, then whirled and kicked herself forward between the commander’s and the pilot’s chairs to look at the fuel pressure gauges. They remained steady, but the hydraulics and the auxiliary power units that drove them were both losing pressure fast. It hardly mattered, though; both systems were used only during launch and descent, and there could be no descent without a vertical stabilizer.

She shut off the alarms and clung to the command chair for support. “That was stupid,” she said. “Of course the laser satellites would fire on something that suddenly pops into orbit where it doesn’t belong. Damn it! Now there really is going to be a war.” She turned around to face Allen. “Take us back again, but this time put us short of the Earth. I don’t want to go into orbit; I just want to be in radio range.”

Allen hesitated. “I—I don’t think we should—”

“Do it! The end of the world is about fifteen minutes away. I don’t care what it takes, just get us within radio range. And outside laser range.”

Allen nodded.

While he punched numbers on his keyboard, Judy tried to compose what she was going to say. She wouldn’t report the damage yet, not until she was sure everybody had their fingers off of the missile launch buttons.