'How do you know?' Jensen hated himself for the admiration which colored his tone. 'Where did you learn so much about the enemy?'

    MacKenzie never glanced up from the controls. 'Evans could have told you. Right now, I'm too busy.' He flung himself into the adjoining pilot's chair, took the helm, and almost immediately Marity veered.

    Still nauseous, Jensen sought stability in watching the analog monitor. As the attitude thrusters opened wide, the pared disk of Castleton's fell away, replaced briefly by space sprinkled with fixed stars, and the moving points of enemy warcraft. These were eclipsed in turn by the disk of Castleton's sun; MacKenzie flicked the stabilizers and banged the heel of his hand down, shoving the gravity drive into full acceleration.

    Jensen made a sound in protest as several g's of force ground his body against the crew chair. 'Out of the frying pan,' he managed, before discomfort forced him silent.

    MacKenzie James said nothing. His profile seemed motionless as laser-cut quartz in the lights off the monitors as Marity picked up speed. Fuelled by the gravitational field of Castleton's sun, she gained velocity at a rate that was frightening. Jensen battled for equilibrium. He was not the pilot that Shields was, but he could recognize when safe limits were transgressed. As if his worn old craft did not hurtle full tilt for annihilation in the fires of a star, Mac James sat back and flexed his scarred fingers in a manner that suggested habit. Then, as Marity's course held stable, he shoved forward against the force of acceleration and busied himself again with the circuitry.

    'Haven't you done enough ?' Jensen demanded, mostly to distract himself from fear. With the Khalia behind, and the inferno of Castleton's star raging forward, what composure he had left was faked.

    Mac James pulled a wire from the cowling and unceremoniously stripped it with his teeth. He twisted the bared end into a hook which he clamped to some unseen contact below. Another panel on Marity's control boards flickered to light; satisfaction made her captain expansive. 'You're better endowed with luck than brains, boy. You're not going to burn. Just maybe you'll be spared the hell of being bait for Khalia as well.'

He added no explanation. But as the third Khalian warship

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