Free Guardsmen of Tomorrow by Martin H. & Segriff Greenberg, Larry Segriff Page B

With the Kleinowskis off-line, he was as defenseless as the ice-wagon he’d come to save.
    The Archangel rocked under a glancing laser blast. On his shoulder, Hookah quivered. Through the creature’s anxious eyes, Dawes did his best to watch the view screen. The Kaxfen ships drew near. He could almost feel the heat of their beams on his face.
    Unexpectedly, two of the enemy ships slowed and hung back, covering him. The remaining ship came on. An electronically distorted voice crackled across his communications console. “You have invaded our territory,” it stated coldly.
    “Surrender your vessel, human, and prepare to be boarded.”
    Chilson Dawes experienced a moment of dread and an almost overwhelming sense of failure. He saw himself reflected in a bottle of despair as five thousand corpses tumbled through space amid the ruptured ruins of their cryo-ship, never to achieve their sought-after miracle of a new life in a new world. Through it all came Donovan’s condescending cluck and Straf’s accusing eyes burning in his brain.
    He shook himself and forced himself to think. Planet-killers be damned-his brain was his best weapon. He couldn’t let the Archangel be boarded, couldn’t let its revolutionary technology fall into the hands of hostile aliens.
    Abruptly calm, he sat back down in his chair and placed his hand on the communications console. “I warned you,” he said angrily. “Our two species might have been friends, but you forced this debacle. The result is on your heads, you bloody bastards.”
    He triggered the Sabre drive system. In the split-instant before the white light blinded him, he saw the resulting fold-space ripple, strike, and shatter the three Kaxfen vessels.
    When the white light subsided, he took a moment to assure himself that he was all right, and that Hookah was all right, too. Then, by touch alone, he examined the controls. Archangel’s computer spoke up to tell him what he already knew.
    He was back where he’d started from, beyond the Oort Cloud, just at the edge of Sol’s diminishing gravitational influence. He’d programmed the ship to bring him home in case of an emergency, or as close to home as the Sabre drive system allowed. He turned Hookah toward the view screen. Sol winked in the center of it, only a little brighter than the surrounding stars.
    Home. How good that sounded now that he knew there were wolves in the outer reaches.
    He wasn’t ready, though, to return home. His job wasn’t finished.
    “ Archangel .” He waited for the computer to acknowledge. “Calculate another jump.
    Estimate the Via Dolorosa’s current position and program coordinates for a fold-space exit just outside the minimum parsec’s distance with an added five-percent safety zone.”
    He waited impatiently. Placing Hookah on his lap, he stroked and stroked the creature until it purred loudly. “Good baby,” he murmured softly. “Good baby.”
    The computer finished its assignment. Dawes reached out for the trigger.
    Yet again he fell through fold-space, seemingly alone without walls or ship to surround him. Yet, strangely in his mind this time he felt a presence, that purring, and knew his isolation was false, that he had a companion.
    The stars resolved themselves once more in the view screen. As if anticipating him, Hookah stared outward and relayed the magnificent vision into his brain. Dawes caught his breath.
    The Archangel had emerged into normal space near the Spider Nebula. Looming gigantic off the ship’s port bow, its great glare lit the abysmal darkness. Staring into its heart was like staring into a furnace. Around that blazing heart clouds of dust swirled in constant motion. Particles collided, exploding in twinkling bursts. At its edges, great tenuous columns of stars rose up in weblike strands, light-years thick, to stretch and shimmer across the black firmament.
    Even with only the muted shades of Hookah’s vision, Dawes gaped in silent awe.
    Another man might have