The Return of Sathanas | Page 2

the war vessel,
Darkome--the crew alerted for battle action--its glistening hull plunging
toward the general area of the 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