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missiles sped up the Channel toward the oncoming Orionid squadron.
Mason, staring tensely that way with Garr and old Hoxie, glimpsed a far crackling of sudden little points
of white light that shone out briefly against the winking haze of the drift, and then were gone.
"By Heaven, we got a quarter of em! yelled Hoxie, his voice cracking.
In the radar screen, a half dozen of the oncoming blips that were the cruisers of Orion had suddenly
vanished. The other blips were slowing down in the channel, starting to turn and swing into as dispersed
formation as was possible.
Mason thought that the Orionid commander had been coming too slowly. At high speed he might have
run the squadron through the gauntlet of outlaw ships, and taken his losses, but his cautious slowness in
navigating the Channel had worked against him.
"Keep firing, and work toward them along the edge of the drift! Garr shouted into his mike. Press up
the Channel!"
The Orionids were at a bad disadvantage. They were out in the open space of the Channel where radar
could easily spot them, while the outlaw ships were hard to separate by radar from the blurred jumble of
the drift.
Two more of the Orionid ships vanished in distant flares. Then suddenly, on the radar, the blips ceased
forming up in the Channel, and instead moved fast toward the jumbled blur that was the drift.
"They're going to try to break past us through the drift! Mason warned.
Garr nodded grimly. They'll wish they hadn't. So will some of us. But we know more about flying the
drift than they do."
He spoke sharply into his mike. Streaking down and across Devil's Channel came the ships of the
Marches, and with Garr's ship leading a loose formation they left the-Channel and plunged into the drift.
By ordinary star-ship standards both outlaws and Orionids were now moving at a mere crawl, the tiniest
fraction of light-speed. No higher speed was possible in the drift. Yet even so, the sight that met Mason's
eyes as he peered through the windows was appalling.
Jagged hunks of metal and stone and nameless cosmic debris as big as houses rushed past them, and
swarms of smaller particles that ranged down from pebbles to sandgrains. The pilot played his controls
like a frenetic musician, dancing the ship this way and that through the whirling maze. The radar was a
useless blur and alarm signals kept screaming of imminent danger like hysterical old women. And still
Garr's ship pressed forward, with the other captains of the Marches following, to intercept the Orionid
cruisers that were trying to shortcut through this maze.
A long metal bulk loomed up ahead, running toward them through the rivers of stone, and Garr yelled
coordinates into the intercom and the missiles leaped from the launchers below. But the Orionid cruiser
had seen them, it veered simultaneously in evasive action.
It veered regardless of the drift that was more deadly than any missile, and a rolling, tumbling swarm of
jagged stone slashed through it and sent it reeling away, a twisted wreck.
"Grab onto them and pound them! Garr bellowed into the mike, and the long ships of the Marches
leaped through the deadly labyrinth like hounds through a jungle.
Mason had seen star-ships in action before, and had served in one of them, but he had never seen
anything like this. In here, where radar and target-trackers were useless, ships fought each other by visual
contact in close combat, dodging through the swirling debris and attacking each other, and dodging and
hitting again.
The men of the Marches of Outer Space had had to dodge and hide in the drift more than once in their
lives. They knew this kind of crazy flying better than any conventional navy could, and it was their one big
advantage over the faster and more heavily armed Orionid ships. Out in open space the squadron of
Orion would blow them to atoms before they could close the range, but here in the drift it was different.
All around them deadly flares burst and died. Most missiles launched by either side missed and exploded
against some chunk of debris, but here and there a ship vanished in a radiant halo. Mason saw two of the
outlaw ships go like that, but five Orionids had gone and still the men of the Marches fought and dodged
and fought again.
Old Hoxie was yelling and swearing in a high, shrill voice, and he began to crow in triumph.
"We're giving them a belly full! They wanted to fight in the drift and they're damned well getting more than
they wanted "
Mason saw that it was true enough for now the Orionid cruisers were falling back, trying to withdraw
from the drift but getting hit harder and harder. Then he heard the communic suddenly squawking.
Garr Atten, who had been bellowing his orders into the intercom, turned and roared at Hoxie.
"Shut up! I can't hear the communic and someone's calling "
Hoxie shut up and they heard the slurred, heavy voice of Shaa of Rigel shouting from his ship somewhere
in the maze.
"Garr, I've been trying to reach you! One of the Orion cruisers broke out of the fight and slipped away
west through the drift. I've been fighting two others and couldn't turn to follow."
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