eespace.
The Rebs kept broadcasting right up to the end--after which they
surrendered before the cruisers could annihilate them. Smart boys.

But the Rebels were warned. We couldn't catch all their scouts and the
disturbance our Line was making in Cth would register on any detector
within twenty parsecs. So they would be waiting to meet us. But that was
to be expected. There is no such thing as surprise in a major action.

We went on until we began to run into major opposition. Half a dozen
scouts were caught in englobements at half a dozen different places
along the periphery as they came in contact with the Rebels' covering
forces. And that was that. The advance halted waiting for the Line to
come up, and a host of small actions took place as the forward screening
forces collided. Chase was in the control chair, hanging in the
blackness of the infra band on the edge of normal space. But we weren't
flicking in and out of threespace like some of the others. We had a
probe out and the main buffeting was taken by the duralloy tube with its
tiny converter at its bulbous tip. With consummate pilotage Chase was
holding us in infra. It was a queasy sensation, hanging halfway between
normalcy and chaos, and I had to admire his skill. The infra band was
black as ink and hot as the hinges of hell--and since the edges of
threespace and Cth are not as knife sharp as they are further up in the
Cth components, we bucked and shuddered on the border, but avoided the
bone-crushing slams and gut-wrenching twists that less skillful skippers
were giving their ships as they flicked back and forth between
threespace and Cth. Our scouting line must have been a peculiar sight to
a threespace observer with the thousand or so scouts flickering in and
out of sight across a huge hemisphere of space.

And then we saw them. Our probe picked up the flicker of enemy scouts.

"Action imminent," Chase said drily. "Stand by."

I clapped the other control helmet over my head and dropped into the
Exec's chair. A quick check showed the crew at their stations, the
torpedo hatches clear, the antiradiation shields up and the ship in
fighting trim. I stole a quick glance at Chase. Sweat stood out on his
gray forehead. His lips were drawn back into a thin line, showing his
teeth. His face was tense, but whether with fear or excitement I didn't
know.

"Stand by," he said, and then we hit threespace, just as the enormous
cone of the Rebel Line flicked into