darted on manual control pads. Graphical quantifications of starship physics jumped in their display volumes. Then the brilliant electron river abruptly vanished.
"Lost their envelope," Horss surmised. "They'll be slow to maneuver."
"If we can damage their emitter grid before they can re-pattern it," Iggy said, "they won't be following us. We need some rocks to throw."
"They just launched twenty bombers and forty fighters," Horss said. "And the space door is closing!"
Zakiya pushed aside her thoughts of real aliens, tried not to worry about Direk’s injuries, and now saw only the impossible problem of maneuvering the Freedom through the already too-small opening of the space door. They could not afford to turn off the protective starlight drive field for the length of time needed to maneuver into open space. “How will you get us out of here, Jon?" she asked.
"You’re asking me?" Horss replied. "Uncle Iggy just cancelled my only idea - which I wasn't going to try anyway! If this rock snags our drive field... who knows what will happen!"
Zakiya and Horss both turned to Khalanov. He glanced at the closing space door and turned to smile at them. Then he looked at Horss. "Have you noted the power-to-mass ratio of our ship?" Khalanov asked him.
"Yes, sir," Horss replied. "And the space door is still closing."
"That it is," Khalanov agreed. "I could have designed it myself. Single curtain of amalgamated rock, about two kilometers high and four long."
"And a hundred meters thick!" Horss added.
"After initial acceleration," Khalanov continued, "the door moves at a linear speed of about two meters a second. In about fifteen minutes it will be half closed. Anyway, about the ship's power-to-mass ratio. Why do you think I designed it that way?"
"For ramming half-closed space doors?" Horss guessed.
"Hardly," Khalanov said. "Because she ordered me to." Khalanov nodded at Zakiya.
"I don't remember doing that," Zakiya protested, feeling strangely confident because of Iggy's relaxed mood. She shifted Sammy from one side of her body to the other.
"It was simply a consequence of your mandate for a very high geometry rigidity protocol," Iggy explained. "Rigidity, as you know, is an important factor in starlight drive efficiency. Most warships improve rigidity by careful placement of their many objects of great mass, such as armaments and passive shielding. The Freedom, however, is -"
"Really big and mostly empty," Horss interrupted. "Totally unarmed. And, by the way, the space door is still closing."
"So, the Freedom is quite rigid," Zakiya proposed.
"Absolutely rigid," Iggy said. "It has active geometry stabilization, particularly in the hull."
"So that adds a tiny amount to its speed and maneuverability," Horss said, staring at the image of the closing space door. "And I suppose it adds some amount of safety when the ship is not protected by the drive field."
"The spare power of the Freedom," Iggy continued, "makes the hull as close to impregnable as I can determine. It is almost a different form of matter. The passive shielding and the exterior tuning towers, however, can be damaged."
"You are planning to ram the space door, aren't you?" Horss asked with some awe and much admiration. "But what about us passengers?"
"You infer a possibility of Newtonian disaster," Khalanov said. "Yes, it is a possibility, but not if we time it right. First, the space door needs to be near its midpoint of closing, where its leading edge will be slightly more exposed vertically. Next, the ship will maneuver by starlight drive in a certain direction. Then the drive will stop for a very brief interval, bringing the ship's full mass in motion toward the door. The door and much of the surrounding material should shear away. Some of this debris may cause secondary collisions which we could feel but the primary impact ought to be minor. The quicker we can then align to our primary escape vector, the less uncomfortable we should be. Do you disagree with any of this?"
"Starlight drive bypasses the quaint old notions of momentum," Horss said. "I didn't think you could add starlight drive velocity to the rest-mass of the ship when you turn off the drive. Oh. I see what you mean. It isn't the ship that will move, it's the rock we're inside of. The space door will strike us as we position ourselves in its path. I didn't know the orbital configuration of Headquarters provided such a possibility."
"All motion is relative, Jon," Zakiya said meaningfully.
"Then, I didn't imagine you could pilot a starship inside a rock using a frame of reference you couldn't see," Horss said. "How do you move a starship a few meters using starlight drive?"
"But you do understand the procedure?" Iggy asked Horss.
"I understand it," Horss replied. "I just don't know if I believe it!"
"The door is still closing," Zakiya said, taking her turn to remind Iggy.
"Plot a course parallel to whatever direction a normal to the plane of the space door aperture will take in one-eighty seconds from my mark," Iggy requested. "I have a programmed directive that will kill the drive at the right instant based on your course parameters. After we clear all obstructions, it will be up to you to begin the escape."
"ALL HANDS!" Horss shouted. "THIS IS NOT A DRILL! YOU HAVE THREE MINUTES TO SECURE YOURSELVES FOR POSSIBLE IMPACT IN THE DIRECTION OF THE SHIP'S BOW." Warning lights would now be flashing throughout the ship and the message would repeat until no longer needed. "Give me a few seconds to wring the course out of the galactic database, Admiral. Damn! I don't trust any course I can't see!"
The navigation tank immediately blossomed with a gleaming display of icons and data curves describing the motions of bodies in the surrounding volume of space. "Freddy! You beat me to it but keep at it! Give me a heading when Uncle, uh, Admiral Khalanov gives you his mark."
"Countdown to mark," Iggy warned. "Three, two, one, mark!"
"Course set," Freddy stated. "Shall I set the course to start automatically, Captain?"
"Do it, Freddy. Are you ready, Admiral?" Horss was addressing Khalanov.
"My course directive is now in the queue and based on Freddy's computation of the velocity. The drive will quench very close to the theoretical limit of the starlight drive pulse-width. I'm also assuming we are at the measured distance to the space door." Khalanov turned from his control panel to observe the expressions on the faces of Horss and Zakiya. "But don't let me upset you," he said calmly. "Keep in mind that I built this ship and I don't intend to destroy it."
What remained of the 180 seconds quickly drained away. The klaxon of a proximity danger warning blasted briefly and was manually killed. The Freedom collided with the partially closed space door, shearing away most of the two kilometers of it. The Freedom emerged into space amid tumbling debris. The Honor floated directly before them.
"Honor is retreating, but not fast enough to avoid us," Horss said. "Closing vacuum doors in Ring Zero North. Damage Control to Ring One North."
"Pattern failure in our drive envelope," Iggy warned. "Fall-back pattern. Retuning. Collision interval value to Honor on my mark. Mark."
"Seventeen seconds," Freddy said.
"Engage escape route at mark plus fifteen," Iggy said.
"I think the space door debris got the Honor's grid, Uncle Iggy," Horss said. "We threw rocks at them. Confirm active drive envelope."
"Confirmed," Iggy said. "But out of tune! I'll take care of it. We scratched my ship, Nephew!" And Iggy added, just loud enough for Zakiya to hear: "God will take care of it, not Uncle Iggy."
Horss rotated the holographic display tank that floated before the captain's chair. Then the bridge aligned with the holograph. The ship was now pointed at a patch of space computed to be clear at mark plus fifteen. To one side, the asteroid bulk of Navy headquarters dwarfed them. To the opposite side, the carrier Honor loomed over the dark horizon of the Freedom. Fighters and bombers formed a net above them. Below them the Navy flagship Eclipse vectored toward them, imaged like a luminous bubble rising through the darkly translucent false image of the Freedom. Horss continued to r
otate the angle of escape, nudging it until the last instant.
Zakiya held her breath and squeezed Sammy as Iggy and Jon worked their controls.
Navy Headquarters and all of the ships disappeared. The stars swirled so quickly with abrupt navigation directives they, too, disappeared. Shrouded in the darkness of its drive envelope, the Freedom leaped, stopped, darted in a new direction, stopped, and shot away into the emptiness between the stars. The distant stars reappeared as the final escape course held steady for a few moments. Far behind them the Eclipse followed, its presence detected from the bending of starlight as it plowed through the interstellar quantum pathways.
"They're gaining on us," Freddy reported.
"I can't finish retuning the envelope while navigation directives are moving it around!" Iggy complained. "We've got something bent near the bow. Stop the ship!"
"And let the Eclipse catch us?" Horss asked.
"Let me have the helm," Zakiya said. She walked past Horss and handed Sammy over to Freddy. The helmsman got up and she took his seat. She logged in to the helm and selected her control options. Ship's sensors fed their data into her ocular terminals. She raised her hands in front of her, causing them to appear in her control interface. Her eyes and her hands now controlled the navigation of the ship.
Zakiya saw the stars. She saw the lines of dark matter between them, the quantum paths, the currents and tides, the waves in the ocean of space that carried all the