The Return of Sathanas | Page 2

planetary system that gave me birth long years ago.
Once his defection [*2] had been fully exposed, Sathanas escaped our avenging fleet by the barest seconds. The ships in his fleet--several hundreds in numbers--had blasted up in the very face of our fleet--jockeyed into position in the center of the 'zone of weightlessness' [*3] between the planet Satana and her satellite Feon--then disappeared in that fierce burst of full acceleration into light speeds that is only possible in the precise center of such zones of weightlessness. To make the maneuver more untraceable, every ship in the enemy fleet disappeared in a different direction. Perhaps we could have followed a few of them, but never would we find all of those divergent trails at many light speeds into the depths of space.
Of course, they must have had some pre-arranged rendezvous. But where? Our only hope for their capture lay in attempting to follow some of them, and then, by keeping the various observed courses plotted on the space charts, eventually figuring out where, approximately, that rendezvous lay in all the infinite reaches of space. That blasting off in a variety of directions was a clever maneuver--one they had accomplished smoothly and at inimitable speed--and a precision that bespoke much dangerous practice in the zones of weightlessness.
I had flung the Darkome into that center of neutralized gravities between two spatial bodies and pushed the lever controlling the dis-flows to the driver plates. Rammed it home to the last notch, swinging the ship with short side bursts, jockeying the craft to conform with the zig-zag swings of the pursuit needle, following the crooked trail of the gas ions left hanging in the ether by the force flows from the driver-plates of the Satanists' ships.
Somewhere ahead, the enemy flung himself deeper into the evernight of space. My ionic-indicator--a device to pick up the most tenuous of ion trails (standard equipment on all the battle ships of Nor) had finally stopped its wild gyrations and held steady on what was an ionic trail dead ahead. This was it! No more of the excitement and doubt if we would get a trail that wasn't just a decoy--this was heavy with the exhaust of a large craft--steady enough to indicate that the ship or ships just ahead were actually going some place. And, if the speed that we were making was any indication of just how fast the enemy was going, he was really racing through space at close to the top acceleration of the Darkome--the Darkome that I had worked and studied over and had the crew tune until it had the reputation as one of the fastest ships in the Nortan fleet. But, then, it should be--the best mechanical minds in my planet had been building it for three centuries.
Like the thoroughbred that she was, the Darkome settled down to the chase... the scent of the quarry was in her mechanical nostrils--and her powerful drivers were capable of hurtling her to the infinity of spatial boundaries if need be. We would catch whatever was ahead of us if it took years at this terrific speed.
Somewhere ahead that enemy crew bored a hole ever deeper into speed blackened space, their drivers heating as those of the Darkome were heating. Where would the chase lead?
# Footnotes #
^112:1 This "universal viewer" is a device which assembles and coordinates the images resulting from a large number of penetray beams and their accompanying televisor--or direct-view screens. These beams point to every direction in space and the screen images are reprojected upon tiny mental vision (telaug) beams directly into the brain of the pilot of the ship. (Telaug beams carry mental messages in a large part of the communication system of the Nor-tans.) The result was a complete mental view in all directions disturbing to a man used to seeing in but one direction at a time. But to a pilot accustomed to the device, it was a vastly superior method to the older devices--which gave a single view of the space directly ahead. They were standard equipment on all Nortan war-craft of any size. With it, an experienced pilot is continuously conscious of the contents of space in every direction simultaneously--and could at the same time use his exterior vision for other purposes, to write a report--or a letter home.--Author.
^113:2 DEFECTION: Note the persistence of this word--WITH the meaning INTACT--"dis-integrant energy infection," is shortened to DEfection, and STILL means--"to fall into evil; err on a job."--Author.
^114:3 ZONE OF WEIGHTLESSNESS: In a place where no thing has weight, infinite acceleration can be achieved with every slight impetus--no inertia drag would crush the occupants. The acceleration would have no effect onthe bodies of the passengers.
A 'zone of weightlessness'--neutralized gravity--exists between any two bodies in space. These zones would be used by space ships