“Let me get this done,” Brennan mumbled, and Roy shut up.

The thrust dropped easily to half a gee. Protector swung left, and the lifesystem pod swung oddly at the end of its cable.

Then Brennan turned the ram field off entirely. “There’s a bit of a gas shell,” he explained. “Now don’t bug me for awhile.”

Protector was in free fall, a sitting duck.

Eight hours later there were missiles. The scouts must have fired as soon as they saw the sparkle of Protector’s ram field go out. Brennan dodged, using the insystem drive. The missiles he’d thrown at the scouts had no apparent effect: the hellish green light from the lead ship continued to bathe Protector.

“He’s cut his ram field,” Brennan said presently. “He’ll have to cut his laser too, when he runs out of battery power.” He looked at Roy for the first time in hours. “Get some sleep. You’re half dead now. What’ll you be like when we round the star?”

“All dead,” Roy sighed. He reclined his chair. “Wake me up if he hits us, will you? I’d hate to miss anything.”

Brennan didn’t answer.

Three hours away, the neutron star was still invisible ahead of them. Brennan said, “Ready?”

“Ready.” Roy was suited up, floating with one hand on the jamb of the airlock. There was still sleep in his eyes. His dreams had been fearsome.

“Go.”

Roy went. The lock would pass only one man. He was at work when Brennan came through. Brennan had cut this close, to reduce radiation exposure from the neutron star’s thin gas envelope, and to reduce the time the Pak had to blast away at unprotected men.

They detached the cable that led to the drive section, then used it to reel the drive section close, coiling the cable as it came. It was thick and heavy. They stowed it against the stern of the drive section.

They did the same with the cable that towed the weapons pod. Roy worked his two-gravity muscles with adrenalin flooding his system. He was well aware of the radiation sleeting through his body. This was war… but with something missing. He could not hate the Pak. He did not understand them well enough. If Brennan could hate them, he could have caught it from Brennan; but Brennan didn’t. No matter that he called it war. What he was playing was high stakes poker.

Now the three main sections of Protector floated end to end. Roy boarded the Belt cargo ship for the first time in years. As he took his place at the controls, green light flooded the cabin. He dropped the sun screens fast.

Brennan came through the airlock shouting, “Foxed ’em! If they’d done that half an hour ago we’d have been cooked.”

“I thought they’d used up their stored power.”

“No, that would have been stupid, but they must be pretty low. They thought I’d wait to the last second before I took the ships apart. They don’t know what I am yet!” he exulted. “And they don’t know I have help. All right, we’ve got about an hour before we have to go outside. Get us lined up.”

Roy used attitude jets to put the Belt ship fourth in line, behind Protector’s weapons pod. It felt good to be handling controls, to be doing something constructive in Brennan’s war. Through the sun screens the components of Protector glared green as hell. They were already drifting apart in the reaching tides of the mass ahead.

“Have you named that star yet?”

“No,” said Brennan.

“You discovered it. You have the right.”

“I’ll call it Phssthpok’s Star, then. Bear ye witness. I think we owe him that.”

They were going to go past Phssthpok’s Star damn fast.

The four sections of Protector fell separately. Even the Pak cable would not have held them together. Worse: the tidal effect would have pulled the sections into line with the star’s center of mass. The four sections with their snapped cables would have emerged on wildly different orbits.

This way the self-maneuvering cargo ship could be used to link the other sections after perihelion. But he and Brennan could not ride it out here. The Belt ship’s cabin was in the nose of the ship, too far from the center of mass.

Roy knew this intellectually. Before they left the ship he could feel it.

Protector had been three receding green dots before the Pak laser finally went out. Then they were invisible. And the neutron star was a dull red point ahead. Roy felt its tides pulling him forward against the crash webbing.

“Go,” said Brennan.

Roy released the webbing. He stood up on the clear plastic of the nose port, then climbed along the wall. The rungs were made for climbing in the other direction. Maneuvering himself into the airlock was difficult. Minutes from now it would have been impossible. More minutes, and the tides would have crushed him against the nose port, a beetle beneath a heel.

The hull was smooth, without handholds. He couldn’t wait here. He hung from the jamb, then dropped.

The ship fell away. He saw a tiny humanoid figure crouched in the airlock. Then four tiny flashes. Brennan had one of the high-velocity rifles. He was firing at the Pak.

Roy could feel the tides now, the whisper of a tug hiside his body. His feet came down to the red dot ahead.

Brennan had dropped after him. He was using backpac jets.

The tug inside was stronger. Gentle hands at his head and feet were trying to pull him apart. The red dot was yellowing, brightening, coming up at him like a fiery bowling ball.

He thought about it for a good hour. Brennan had intimidated him to that extent. He thought it through backward and forward, and then he told Brennan he was crazy.

They were linked by three yards of line. The line was taut, though the neutron star was a tiny red dot behind them. And Brennan still had the gun.

“I’m not doubting your professional opinion,” said Brennan, “But what symptom was it that tipped you off?”

“That gun. Why did you shoot at the Pak ship?”

“I want it wrecked.”

“But you couldn’t hit it. You were aiming right at it. I saw you. The star’s gravity must have pulled the bullets off course.”

“You think about it. If I’m really off my nut, you’d be justified in taking command.”

“Not necessarily. Sometimes crazy is better than stupid. What I’m really afraid of is that shooting at the Pak ships might make sense. Everything else you do makes sense, sooner or later. If that makes sense I’m gonna quit.”

Brennan was hunting for the cargo ship with a pair of binoculars. He said, “Don’t do that. Treat it as a puzzle. If I’m not crazy, why did I fire at a Pak ship?”

“Dammit. The muzzle velocity isn’t anything like good enough… How long have I got?”

“Two hours and fifty minutes.”

“O-o-oh.”

They were back aboard Protector’s isolated lifesystem by then, watching the vision screens and — in Brennan’s case — a score of instruments besides. The second Pak team fell toward the miniature sun in four sections: a drive section like a two-edged ax, then a pillbox-shaped lifesystem section, then a gap of several hundred miles, then a much bigger drive section and another pillbox. The first pillbox was just passing perihelion when the neutron star flared.