"Anderson, Poul - 1964 Nicholas Van Rijn 02 - Trader to the Stars 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

course it was following, then poured on all available
juice to intercept. If the stranger had maintained quasi-
velocity, there would have been contact in three or four
hours. Instead, its wake indicated a sheering off, an at-
tempt to flee. The Hebe G.B. changed course, too, and con-
tinued gaining on her slower quarry.
"They're afraid of us," decided Torrance. "And they're
not nmning back toward the Adderkop sun. Which two
facts indicate they're not Adderkops themselves, but do
have reason to be scared of strangers." He nodded, rather
grimly, for during the preliminary investigations he had
inspected a few backward planets which the bandit
nation had visited.
Seeing that the pursuer kept shortening her distance,
the pursued turned off their hyperdrive. Reverting to in-
trinisic sublight velocity, converter throttled down to min-
imal output, their ship became an infinitesimal speck in
an effectively infinite space. The maneuver often works;
after casting about futilely for a while, the enemy gives up
and goes home. The Hebe G.B., though, was prepared. The
known superlight vector, together with the instant of cut-
off, gave her computers a rough idea of where the prey
was. She continued to that volume of space and then
hopped about in a well-designed search pattern, reverting
to normal state at intervals to sample the neutrino haze
which any nuclear engine emits. Those nuclear engin
known as stars provided most; but by statistical analy-
sis, the computers presently isolated one feeble nearby
source. The yacht went thither. . . and wan against the
glittering sky, the other ship appeared in her screens.
It was several times her size, a cylinder with bluntly
rounded nose and massive drive cones, numerous hous-
ings for auxiliary boats, a single gun turret. The prin-
ciples of physics dictate that the general conformation of
all ships intended for a given purpose shall be roughly
the same. But any spaceman could see that this one had
never been built by members of Technic civilization.
Fire blazed. Even with the automatic stopping-down of
his viewscreen, Torrance was momentarily blinded. In
struments told him that the stranger had fired a fusion
shell which his own robogunners had intercepted with a
missile. The attack had been miserably slow and feeble.
This was not a warcraft in any sense; it was no more a
match for the Hebe G.B. than the yacht was for one of
the Adderkops chasing her.
"Hokay, now we got that foolishness out of the way
and we can talk business," said Van Rijn. "Get them on
the telecom and develop a common language. Fast! Then
explain we mean no harm but want just a lift to Valhalla.
He hesitated before adding, with a distinct wince, "We