and Narth's next words were cut off as his diaphragm sagged. He swung
the cruiser in a curve and Narth was slammed sideways, the straps
cutting into him and the flesh of his face pulled lopsided by the
gravity. His eyes, bulging, went blank with unconsciousness.

The powerful blasters of the battleship blossomed like a row of pale
blue flowers, concentrating on the stern of the cruiser. A warning siren
screeched as they started breaking through the cruiser's shields. He
dropped the detector screen that would shield the cruiser from sight,
but not from the blaster beams, and tightened the curve until the
gravity dragged heavily at his own body.

The warning siren stopped as the blaster beams of the battleship went
harmlessly into space, continuing to follow the probability course
plotted from the cruiser's last visible position and course by the
battleship's robot target tracers.

He lifted the detector screen, to find the battleship almost exactly
where the cruiser's course analyzers had predicted it would be. The
blasters of the battleship were blazing their full concentration of
firepower into an area behind and to one side of the cruiser.

They blinked out at sight of the cruiser in its new position and blazed
again a moment later, boring into the stern. He dropped the detector
screen and swung the cruiser in another curve, spiraling in the opposite
direction. As before, the screech of the alarm siren died as the
battleship's blasters followed the course given them by course analyzers
and target tracers that were built to presume that all enemy ships were
acceleration-limitator equipped.

The cruiser could have destroyed the battleship at any time--but they
wanted to capture their flagship unharmed. The maneuvering continued,
the cruiser drawing closer to the battleship. The battleship, in
desperation, began using the same hide-and-jump tactics the cruiser used
but it was of little avail--the battleship moved at known acceleration
limits and the cruiser's course analyzers predicted each new position
with sufficient accuracy.

The cruiser made its final dash in a tightening spiral, its detector
screen flickering on and off. It struck the battleship at a matched
speed, with a thump and ringing of metal as the magnetic grapples
fastened the cruiser like a leech to the battleship's side.

In that position neither the forward nor stern blasters of the
battleship could touch it. There remained only to convince the c