“This is Commander Norman Powell of Fadeaway acknowledging receipt of your request. Virgil Grissom Kinney sits behind me. We are prepared to repel your attack. We-”

Something thundered throughout the habitat. Even ComStat vibrated.

“Simultaneous Valli bombardment from all sides,” a voice called out. “Zero integrity on sphere. Atmosphere draining.” Other voices joined in.

“Twenty millimeters pressure. Fifteen.”

“Four minutes.”

“Ten millimeters. Five.”

“Twenty-four blast holes each eight to ten meters-”

A dozen light arrays simultaneously blazed red.

“Zero pressure in main sphere.”

“How many men lost?”

“Look!” a shocked old voice cried. “They’re fighting outside!” Scrims lit up with the view of troops, sucked out through the blast holes by the voiding atmosphere, still ready for battle. Half of them were dead; the survivors-flung into space toward doom-unleashed their fire against the Valli fighters and the approaching destroyer.

“It’s pointless! They can’t harm anything from there.”

“ ‘The brave may fall, but never yield,’ Jord.” Powell opened the hatch to the airlock. “Now you know why I kept you up here. They wouldn’t blast ComStat knowing you’d probably be inside. They’ll have to board and storm to capture you.” He scanned an array of scrims. “Now. Get to your boat. There’s a suit in the lock.”

“It’ll take me too long to-”

“We’ll hold them off. Get out now!”

Baker kicked down the tubeway into the lock and slammed the hatch. He removed his jet pack, slipped on the bulky suit as fast as possible and cycled the atmosphere. From the safety box he seized a fuel bottle.

“Boarding ships launched from destroyer.”

“How many men left?” Powell’s voice asked, sharp and calm on Baker’s headset.

“Telemetry received on seven hundred fifty-three still inside, sir.”

Baker tightened the jet harness and kicked out toward the shuttle bay. He fired up the engine and tried not to look anywhere but along his direction of flight.

“Deploy them evenly around the blast holes,” Powell said, “until we’re sure which ones the ships will use.”

Baker ignored the ensuing spate of orders and troop movements. He glanced down just once to see ant-people running up to black, pool-sized holes inside the sphere, above and below him. Buildings had been toppled, plants uprooted. Debris lay spiraled toward the holes as if toward a drain, turned clockwise on one side of the equator, counter-clockwise on the other, looser twists in the higher latitudes, tighter ones in the middle.

Baker rocketed along the axis toward the docking bay.

“Reroute companies Bravo, Echo, and Oscar to hole one-thirty west, forty north. The first ship’s rammed us there.”

Baker looked around. Above and behind him, he saw the blunt nose of a boarding craft jammed into the blast hole. Laser fire from the craft attempted to clear the area, but there were too many places for the defenders to hide. Suddenly, hatches sprung open and armed troops swarmed outward. Brilliant points of light flared against their armor. Some fell. The others walked over them, firing indiscriminate laser fusillades.

From behind a broken tree, a sphere of blue gunsmoke blew outward and an invader several meters away flew backward against the ship’s hull as though hit by a meteor. His pressure suit exploded, boiling his lifeblood into the airless void.

Baker turned away from the upside-down scene in time to see the south pole of the sphere speeding toward him. He reversed and cut his engines just before reaching the hatch-way. A woman motioned to him, pointing toward a corridor; then she turned to join the fighting as soon as he had safely passed.

Hand-over-hand he pulled along the weightless passage. He felt the rumble of a another boarding craft ramming into Fadeaway.

What now? He turned the corner of the access shaft to the docking bay and continued along. I have to die again to get away from death? Is fake or real better? And where to? Circus is gone somewhere-

Yanking his way into the docking bay, he sealed the pressure doors with one hand and muscled toward the shuttle.

They’d see the ship if I move it out of the docking bay. The shuttle’s doors responded to his touch. I’ve got to transfer from inside.

Something reverberated throughout the bay. The airlock bulkhead bent inward as if hit by a battering ram. He cycled the pressurizer and removed his helmet.

“Can you take verbal commands?” he shouted to the boat’s computer. Lights turned green. The word YES appeared on a viewscrim. Strapping in, he spoke a series of carefully worded orders, all the time watching the docking bay doors; a bright point of light appeared at one corner and began to trace an outline.

“Do you understand these orders?”

YES.

Baker poised his finger over the transfer button.

“Come on. What are you waiting for?” They’re cutting the hatchway open. Come on.

Baker bit his lip and watched the outer doors slowly bend inward under the light thrust of a boarding craft. The steel plating easily gave way until part of it touched the nose of Baker’s shuttle, pitching it forward. Through the opening hatch of the boarding craft, he saw masks hiding behind the muzzles of laser rifles.

“Come on!” he cried.

WORKING.

“Damn you!” Baker reached the screeching stage as he watched the first few troops float out of the blunted nose of the other ship and cautiously propel toward him, weapons zeroed in on the cockpit. “You goddamned machine! It can’t take that long to figure out. It’s not that hard!” He jerked backward in his seat when the first of the boarding party touched the hood of the shuttle. No. They’ll pick me apart trying to find out why Kinney can survive.

The light under the transfer button glowed. Baker shrieked “Go!” and punched his thumb into it.

Darkness consumed him.

Black, swimming black. I should have stayed. I lay here so limp and unsafe. What if I don’t come back this time? I look scared. The doors! They’re bending in on me. I press beyond them into the shaft so dark and cold. I’m falling and I don’t want to fall. I’ve got to stop falling, got to stop. I’m needed. I’ve got to be needed somewhere-I know it. She’s telling me. Something needs help.

Baker took a heartbeat to realize where he was. His hands shot out for the ship’s controls and frantically punched buttons.

Directly ahead of him, a crater filled his viewing port.

Instead of falling toward it, though, the shuttle rose up and away from the planet’s surface.

The crater shrank. In a few moments, Baker saw the airless limb of the planet Mercury and beyond it the milky glow of the solar corona. The port turned nearly opaque the instant the sun blazed across the glasteel. He looked away by reflex.

I made it! He checked his instrument readouts and smiled. Intrinsic velocity retained. I’m rising into an orbit to accommodate my Earth orbital speed; I’ll be drifting beneath the halo of flak as safely as can be expected. At least it couldn’t hang too close to the surface without becoming meteorites.

“Begin search for Circus Galacticus and stand watch for other spacecraft.” Leaning back in the seat as best he could in freefall, he smiled wider.

The shuttle did not carry enough fuel to make it from the outer region of Mercury’s flak barrier to the inner orbits if he had transferred there. The flak could not reach to the surface, he suspected, and all he had to do was appear on the anti-revolutionward side of Mercury and let his Earth velocity take him away from the surface.

Something tapped at the ship’s hull once. Baker smiled after it happened again a few moments later. There it is. I was right about the flak. Starting to encounter it.