When a man has a price on his head he runs
for his life. And if he's finally cornered he
may have only one door left open to him—Time!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
May 1952
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Cap'n Cutlass! Earth merchantman three points starboard, obliqueecliptic eight degrees. Estimate speed 400,000, Marsbound. Your orders,sir?"
Robbin Cutlass was angry. He wouldn't let this one go by. Not evenwith a million credits on his head. But damn it, one ship and one crewcouldn't fight the whole Tri-Planet Entente Space Patrol alone. Butthat was how it had to be.
"Track her down!" He switched over to all-stations. "All hands readthis. Gunners to stations, oblique ecliptic eight, Earth reading threestarboard, two torpedoes across her bow and stand alert to blow her!Boarders don your suits, man lock stations and stand by. Drive-room cutin your Raven converters, jet minus 177 ecliptic acute 3-5-2 and holdher steady as she blasts. Now wait."
He checked in his own radar screen as a matter of routine.
Twenty years ago when his father had given orders from this samecontrol room things hadn't been like this. You knew, when the Vultureand a section of her fleet closed in to make the kill that nobody hadthe guts to try to stop you. Sure, Jeremy Cutlass had been a toughold duck—but even he wouldn't have been able to hold the fifty-shipbuccaneer fleet together after the Patrol had gotten fully organized.Robbin remembered how it had been when he died—the whole fleet hadhovered in double-echelon to each side of the Vulture, the fadedsun-glow from Pluto glimmering shadow-like from its long, slenderhulls—right at the very edge of the total darkness of Deep Spaceitself. And then the body of Jeremy Cutlass had been committed to thedeep of Infinity.
Those were the days when a man had friends—and now, all that JeremyCutlass had had, scattered as they'd been from one end of the Universeto the other—were either dead or sweating out their last days in thepenal colonies of Earth or Mars. All except for old Doc Raven—and he'dbe under lock and key too if the Vulture hadn't been able to carryout Jeremy's dying command—to rescue him from the penal colony ofMars, regardless of the cost. The cost had been the last eleven shipsof the fleet.
It had been worth it, yes. Not just because the conniving old toad wasprobably the best scientist Mars had ever produced, but because—
The intercom squealed frantically even as Cutlass saw what washappening in his own screen.
"Cap'n Cutlass! It's a trap, sir! I'm tracking Patrol ships from allpoints—"
There were at least 200 of them.
Even the Raven drive couldn't keep the Vulture from slewing, losingsome of her precious speed as Cutlass tapped out an unprecedentedecliptic-deviation and trajectory-variation pattern on the mastercontrol console.
A screen generator whined its overload as the Patrol ships got theVulture's range and pounded her with everything they had. This time,they were too many—and too fast.
"Run!" Cutlass howled to the drive-room. "Godammit, run!"
His eyes were hot and wet with the rage that rasped in his voice. NoCutlass that had ever buccaneered Space for four generations had evergiven that command. But now the notorious Vulture, last of her kindin the Solar System, finally was forced to take to her jets or betorpedoed to cosmic dust like all the rest.
Two screen generators went to hell and plastered the contr