the ship was like putting a moron in a jet car on one of the
superhighways--and then sabotaging the automatics. Just one fearful
mistake and a whole squadron could be loused up. But Chase was the
commander--the ultimate authority on this ship. All I could do was pray
that things were going to come out all right.

We moved out in the lower red. Battles weren't fought in Cth. There was
no way to locate a unit at firing range in that monochromatic madness.
Normal physical laws simply didn't apply. A ship had to come out into
threespace to do any damage. All Cth was was a convenient road to the
battlefront.

With one exception.

By hanging in the infra band, on the ragged edge of threespace, a scout
ship could remain concealed until a critical moment, breakout into
threespace--discharge her weapons--and flick back into Cth before an
enemy could get a fix on her. Scouts, with their high capacity
converters, could perform this maneuver, but the ponderous battlewagons
and cruisers with their tremendous weight of armor, screens, and
munitions couldn't maneuver like this. They simply didn't have the
agility. Yet only they had the ability to penetrate defensive screens
and kill the Rebel heavies. So space battle was conducted on the classic
pattern--the Lines slugging it out at medium range while the screen of
scouts buzzed around and through the battle trying to add their weight
of metal against some overstrained enemy and ensure his destruction. A
major battle could go on for days--and it often did. In the Fifty Suns
action the battle had lasted nearly two weeks subjective before we
withdrew to lick our wounds.

* * * * *

For nearly a day we ran into nothing, and such are the distances that
separate units of a fleet, we had the impression that we were alone. We
moved quietly, detectors out, scanning the area for a light-day around
as we moved forward at less than one Lume through Cth. More would have
been fatal for had we been forced to resort to a quick breakout to avoid
enemy action, and if we were travelling above one Lume when we hit
threespace, we'd simply disappear, leaving a small spatial vortex in our
wake.

On the "morning" of the third day the ships at the apex of Quadrant One
ran into a flight of Rebel scouts. There was a brief flurry of action,
the Rebels were englobed, a couple of cruisers drove in, latched onto
the helplessly straining Rebel scouts and dragged them into thr