“How come?”

“Let’s say I’m planning to make a right angle turn in deep space. Home’s the easiest target after that. They’ve also got a good industrial civilization.”

HOME: Epsilon Indi 2, second of five planets in a system which also includes 200 asteroids randomly distributed in charted orbits. Gravity: 1.08. Diameter: 8800 miles. Rotation: 23 hours 10 minutes. Year: 181 days. Atmosphere: 23% oxygen, 76% nitrogen, 1% nontoxic trace gasses. Sea level pressure: 11 pounds/square inch.

One moon, diameter: 1200 miles, gravity: 0.2, surface composition: roughly lunar.

Discovery reported 2094, via ramrobot exploration probe. Settled 2189, by a combination of slowboats and ramrobots…

Settling Home had been made easier by two new techniques. The slowboats had carried sixty colonists each, in stasis. Sixty colonists would have filled three or four slowboats a century earlier. And, though no living thing could survive travel in a ramrobot, it had proved possible to ship fuel to the slowboats via ramrobot. An older technique was used extensively: colony supplies were shipped via ramrobot to orbit about Home, saving room aboard the slowboats. Rams that failed on the way would fail in time for replacements to be sent.

The original colonists had planned to call their new world Flatland. Perhaps it amused them to think of themselves and their descendants as flatlanders. Once on Home they had changed their minds: a belated attack of patriotism. Population: 3,200,000. Colonized area: 6,000,000 square miles. Principal cities… Roy spent some time memorizing the maps. Cities and towns had tended to form in the forks of rivers. The farming communities were all near the sea. Home had sea life but little land life, and farming of any kind required a complete ecology; but sea life was used extensively for fertilizer.

There were extensive mining industries, all confined to Home itself.

Communication with Earth formed a principal industry, which tended to produce other industries at a steady rate.

Three million… A population of three million at this date meant a heavy birthrate, even if initially augmented by bottle-grown babies and later by more colony ships. Roy hadn’t thought of that aspect of moving to a colony world. There was a pride in being the father of many children… a pride that would have less meaning on Home, where you didn’t have to prove genius or invent the wheel or something just to get the license. Still… he would have children on two worlds.

Still, Home would probably change for the worse when Brennan put it on a war footing. War was never fun, and Roy ought to know — this kind of interstellar war was going to be long and slow. What kind of mind did it take to plan a hundred and seventy-three years in advance?

The thing Brennan was building was slightly taller than he was, heavy and cylindrical. He had moved it near one of the great doors beneath which the components of Protector waited.

“I want to be damn sure I can get adequate polarization of the field,” he told Roy. “Otherwise the whole of Protector could wind up falling into it.”

“Like Kobold, huh? Can you do it?”

“I think so. The Pak did it… we assume. If I can’t do it I’ll have to assume they’re holding their ships in tandem some other way.”

“Where’s it going to ride?”

“I’ll string it behind the weapons pod. And your cargo ship behind the lifesystem. We’ll look somewhat strung out. It won’t surprise the Pak any that I’ve fiddled with the design of the ship. They would, given the tools and raw materials.”

“What makes you think they don’t have them?”

“I don’t think that,” said Brennan. “I keep wondering what they’ll build for me once they know what I’ve got.”

One day he was back in the observatory. “All finished,” he said briskly. “I can get the polarized gravity field I need. Which means a Pak could get it, which means they’re probably using it.”

“Then we’re ready for takeoff. Finally.”

“As soon as I know what the Pak scouts are doing. Twelve hours, I promise.”

In the ’scope screen the Pak scouts showed as tiny green lights, a good distance from each other, and measurably closer to Sol. Brennan seemed to know just where to find them, but then he’d been observing them for two months. “Still making three gravities,” he said. “They’ll be at rest when they reach Sol. I’ve been right about them so far. Let’s see how far I can carry it.”

“Isn’t it about time you told me what you’ve got in mind?”

“Right. We’re leaving the Flying Dutchman, now. The hell with convincing them I’m coming from Van Maanen’s Star. They’re seeing us from the wrong angle anyway. I’ll take off for Wunderland at one point aught eight gee, hold for a month or so, then boost to two gee and start my turn away from them. If they spot me in that time, they’ll turn after me, if I can make them think I’m dangerous enough.”

“Why,” he started to ask, before he remembered that one point aught eight was the surface gravity of Home.

“I don’t want them to think I’m a Pak. Not now. They’re more likely to chase an alien capable of building or stealing a Pak ship. And I don’t want to use Earth gravity. It’d be a giveaway.”

“Okay, but now they’ll think you came from Home. Do you want that?”

“I think I do.”

Home wasn’t getting much choice about entering the war. Roy sighed. Who was? He said, “What if two of them go on to Sol and the other comes after us?”

“That’s the beauty of it. They’re still eight light-months apart. Each of them has to make his turn eight months before he sees the others make theirs. Turning back could cost them another year and a half. By then they may just decide I’m too dangerous to get away.” Brennan looked up from the screen. “You don’t share my enthusiasm.”

“Brennan, it’ll be two bloody years before you even know if they’ve turned after you. One year for them to spot you, one year before you see them make the turn.”

“Not quite two years. Close enough.” Brennan’s eyes were dark beneath their shelf of bone. “Just how much boredom can you stand?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can make you a stasis field capsule, using two of the radon bombs.”

Ye gods, a reprieve! “Hey, that’s good. But you’d have to throw away the radon, wouldn’t you?”

“Hell, no. I wouldn’t do it. I’ll just move two of the bombs up into the lifesystem and rig a metal shell between the generators.”

Conscience smote him. “Look, do you feel the same way I do? About waiting, I mean. We could take turns on watch.”

“Come off it. I could wait for Judgment Day without unfolding my hands, if I had a reason.”

Roy laughed. The constant delays had really been getting to him.

The stasis box was a soft iron cylinder seven feet long, welded to the shells of two radon bombs to give a total length of fourteen feet. They’d had to run it through the door linking the kitchen and the exercise room.

It fitted Roy like a coffin. It felt like a coffin. Roy’s teeth clamped shut, holding words back, as he waited for Brennan to shut the curved hatch.

It made a very solid sound.

Are you sure this will work?

Idiot. Home was settled this way. Of course it’ll work. Brennan would’ve thought he was a fool.

He waited in darkness. He imagined Brennan finishing the welding, testing currents and circuitry and so forth before linking the switch. Then — he wouldn’t sense time passing. When the door opened would he foolishly ask, “Didn’t it work?”

Gravity dropped suddenly on him from above. Roy hit the floor and stayed there. He grunted in shock and surprise. No need to ask: Protector was in flight, making three gravities easy.

The hatch swung back. Brennan caught him under the armpits and lifted. His hands were hard as hatchet blades. He half walked, half carried Roy to a crash chair. He shifted his grip to Roy’s belt and slowly lowered him into the crash chair.