The slowest pirate -- the very first Jason had seen -- had only just arrived on the scene when a cannon shot from the opposite side that Jason had just barely avoided came streaking in. The captain of the relatively slower sailship could not maneuver away in time and came to an abrupt halt as the gravitonic bolt struck his ship, blasting his delicate gravitonic sails to atoms.
Again and again the pirates fired on Jason. Due to their general disorganization and confusion, Jason was able to avoid their crossfire by quickly maneuvering away from each bolt, and also periodically firing his particle-beam antimissile system with its dismally long charging cycle. But he could not keep this up forever! All the pirates would have to do is employ any simple coordinated attack and Jason would not be able to dodge in time. They could even wait for him to grow weary and sleep!
Jason would have to take turns with Dalton. But how long could they withstand a siege on both sides from this pirate armada?
As if to hammer home the dilemma of the situation, a near miss overloaded Jason's east sail. Jason heard a loud hiss from somewhere in the gravitonic systems as a breaker clamped down, safely shunting the overload out of the sail system.
If Jason tried to flee by sailing out of the gravitonic current to the side, he would slow down to a crawl on the meager gravitonic drifts outside a true current, leaving himself an easy target for the five active pirates.
He could storm past the group of pirates in front, and hope to escape down the nearby branch. But at close range he would not be able to avoid their cannon. And all six pirates would be firing on his fleeing sailship.
What could they do?? Jason skillfully swung his sailship this way and that, fired his gravitonic cannon again and again, fired the particle weapon each time it had charged. He was only just able to keep the pirates at bay. His uniform was soaked with sweat. Jason blinked and wiped his drenched forehead on his sleeve. He cursed under his breath. This was too much! How could he keep up this pace?? He could not turn it over to the computer; there were too many decisions he had to make solely based on intuition.
And then suddenly, the pirates stopped firing. Jason peered at the situation screen intently, grinding his teeth in apprehension. They were all still moving, turning in odd directions. What was going on? Then he realized their plan, for indeed they had finally come up with something, undoubtedly communicating on a gravitonic carrier wave -- scrambled, of course, otherwise Jason's communication scanner would have detected any messages. The three pirates behind Jason were now following each other around in a circular path. The three other pirates before Jason were doing the same, three sailships chasing each other around an endless circle. The plane of the circles of both sets of pirates were parallel to each other so from Jason's point of view he saw each flat on, going round and round. Their circles were almost as wide as the gravitonic current and it almost seemed the pirates were sliding along the inside of the tube-shaped current around and around.
Jason fired his gravitonic cannon at one of the three pirates circling before him; he aimed slightly ahead of the pirates circular path to compensate for the pirate's motion. The pirate simply slowed down, let the cannon bolt pass before him, then he sped back up until in his original position.
It was a great plan, Jason had to admit. Now the pirates would be able to easily avoid Jason's fire and their own crossfire by simply slowing down or speeding up along their circular paths without any chaotic maneuvers.
Jason watched them closely, firing his own cannon again and again. They easily avoided each shot. They themselves had not begun to fire. Undoubtedly, the pirates, in close communication with each other, were greatly enjoying the plight of their helpless prey between them. Jason imagined the captains of the outlaw ships laughing with glee at their clever plan. Whoever thought it up was indeed clever. He would probably also have each pirate craft target a different point around Jason's sailship making it near impossible for Jason to avoid their fire.
It looked like the end had come.
Jason looked over at Dalton still wearing his V-R helmet and frantically manipulating his arms about. Jason felt a surge of guilt for getting the poor boy into all this. Of course, Dalton HAD stowed away aboard the ship. Jason shook his head and swore softly, hating himself for not turning around after leaving Infinity City and taking the boy back. They would now both be killed, for Jason would not allow himself to be captured and sold into slavery. He would not even allow them to have his ship. As soon as the pirates blasted his gravitonic sails, Jason would go down to the bowels of the ship, open the chamber to the antimatter bleeder pods, remove the safeguards, then quietly order the computer to blow up the ship. It would be painless...
and honorable. But his parents, his best friend John One, or anyone on Infinity City would ever know what had happened to him.
He would just be another Adventurer who had never come back.
These thoughts had only taken a moment. Jason turned back quickly to his command console. He would make a run past the orbiting pirates in front with his gravitonic cannon blazing, trying to reach the nearby gravitonic branch. Perhaps, he would disable one or two of the pirates before himself getting knocked out...
But then, with a sinking heart he saw from his situation screen that the pirates had all begun to fire at once. Jason checked the particle-beam antimissile system, found it at full charge, and then almost laconically fired the particle-beam to destroy at least one of the approaching bolts.
He was about to pull his ship hard over to avoid the other rapidly approaching bolts when he noticed a quick movement at the particle-beam console -- the charging indicator was streaking across the board! In the wink of an eye the damn system had come to full charge again! Jason stared at the readout, stunned for only a moment. He shook himself realizing that Dalton had switched the particle-beam's power source over to the mighty gravitonic generator -- Jason still had trouble exactly understanding how Dalton was able to convert the differing power systems.
Jason bent quickly to the particle-beam controls, swung the device over to aim at the next approaching gravitonic bolt and fired. The other remaining cannon bolts were only seconds away!
But the particle weapon charged almost instantly. Jason fired again at the remaining bolt in front then swung the particle weapon around to the other side of his ship and fired, charged, fired again, charged, and with only a second remaining fired at the final cannon bolt -- the last being so close that Jason heard the ship's electromagnetic deflector fields automatically snap on to protect the ship from the intense particle wave from the nearby explosion of the pirate's gravitonic bolt. He had beaten off their attack! Each pirate bolt had been absorbed by Jason's particle beams.
But they were firing again! Jason fired back with the newly rapid-charging particle weapon. He cried loudly with glee and began firing his own gravitonic cannon. They now had a chance!
Jason thought, with thankful excitement, his young partner Dalton was a genius! Dalton was saying something over the pilot room's speaker but Jason was not paying attention and could barely hear it over the computers rapid vocal reports regarding ship systems and enemy activity.
Dalton finally ripped off his V-R helmet, unstrapped himself from his pilot seat, jumped over and grabbed Jason's shoulder.
"Jason! Jason! Aim for their ships! You can destroy them!"
Without taking his eyes from the situation screen, the grav cannon and particle weapon boards Jason barked, "What?! How?
What are you talking about?" Then he added excitedly, "Dalton, you did it! The particle weapon's charging almost instantaneously!"
"It does even more, Jason! Look how fast it shoots! Can't you see it's faster-than-light?! I was able to add a gravitonic envelope split off from the gravitonic power source. It shoots as fast as a gravitonic cannon now, Jason!"
WHAT?! Jason thought. THAT WAS IMPOSSIBLE! Then he suddenly realized that he had been hitting the approaching gravitonic bolts though light-hours away almost instantaneously.
&n
bsp; The particle-beams were, impossibly though it seemed, indeed travelling as fast as the gravitonic bolts.
"Jason, you can destroy their ships with the particle-beams!
Hit 'em! Hit 'em!"
"Good idea, kid..."
Jason now unfurled the sails all the way and with the gravitonic generator already at maximum the sailship jerked forward and tore back toward the three orbiting pirate ships behind.
Something happened that Jason had not foreseen. The pirates panicked at the sight of Jason's aggressive attack, broke from their circular path, turned and fled. Jason pumped the particle-beam weapon at the closest. His own ship began to slow from the weapons draw on the gravitonic generator. The pirate jerked this way and that to avoid Jason's fire. He was finally struck! The image of the pirate on Jason's situation screen came to an abrupt stop. Without waiting, Jason aimed at the second and third pirates and fired again and again. The pirates began evasive maneuvers but Jason was in close. He fired again and again. The pirates were too foolish to flee in separate directions. This made it easy for Jason to target both. Almost at the same time both pirate craft came to an abrupt stop. Jason, with Dalton peering eagerly over his shoulder at the situation screen, now noticed the image of the first pirate struck with the new weapon was slowly expanding. Jason requested telemetry data for all three and the computer reported intense atomic radiation -- the first ship had blown completely, the two showed debris and an expanding cloud of lost atmosphere. All three had been destroyed in only minutes!
Jason now checked the three remaining pirates. They too had broken from their circular path and were now advancing on him rapidly. Their recently fired gravitonic bolts were only seconds away! Jason swung his ship around to avoid the bolts, targeted the pirates and began blasting away with the miraculous graviton enveloped particle-beam. The pirates chaotically broke ranks to avoid the beams -- evidently, they had no defensive beams of their own, designed with large gravitonic systems to either attack or run. Jason swung around and moved in toward the panicked pirates while continuing to fire. In their haste to avoid his particle-beams the pirates moved in tight, random arcs, not realizing until too late that Jason was drawing closer. His shots were getting closer and closer. Finally, one of the pirates saw what was happening and tried to break and run. The pirate was an easy target. With intense satisfaction, Jason fired off a particle-beam shot that was a direct hit. The situation screen showed the pirate jerk to a stop then slowly expand into a cloud of debris gas.
Jason maneuvered on the remaining two like a fox chasing two chickens. He was so close now it was child's play. Child's play! "Dalton!", he cried. "Take the particle weapon controls!
I'll concentrate on maneuvering!"
"Aye, aye, Jason!", cried Dalton joyfully as he leapt to the console, steadying himself from the ship's swaying motion by gripping the console itself.
Jason brought the ship deftly around on an intercepting course with the nearest pirate. Dalton aimed perfectly and blasted the pirate before the nearby ship could move out of the way. Jason brought the sailship around and sailed after the remaining pirate at maximum speed. The pirate tried to flee but they caught up quickly and Dalton finished him off, Jason's sailship slamming to a complete stop as Dalton shunted all power from the gravitonic system into his new weapon, blasting the pirate craft so strongly that its image lasted only seconds before its dissipating vaporous debris became too thin to scan.
Three more of the pirates destroyed!
Still feeling intense battle lust, Jason brought the sailship around and sailed back up the gravitonic current, past the debris of the five vaporized ships. He approached the very first slow pirate they had seen that had been disabled but not destroyed by crossfire from the other pirates. The pirate now radioed a plea for mercy. Jason, without responding, looked over at Dalton with an evil grin and ordered, "He attacked first. Pay him back, Dalton!"
Dalton laughed with glee at his partner's ruthlessness and fired the particle-beam weapon once. The pirate was destroyed.
They continued back up the current to the first branch where they had disabled the second pirate ship they had seen. This time the pirates onboard sought to avoid death by warning Jason of retribution from their fellows if they were attacked. With sinister tones they warned Jason that seven other ships would be on his tail any moment. Jason radioed back that the rest were already destroyed. Then he ordered Dalton to fire. The last of the attacking pirates was finished off!
And also, unfortunately, was Dalton's marvelous hybrid weapon. The computer reported the problem. They discovered the conduit between the gravitonic system and the particle-beam weapon was almost completely destroyed -- enveloping the particle-beams with a gravitonic sheath, it turned out, created a strange high-energy backwave along the conduit that its material could not withstand.
Jason doubted they would meet any more pirates. Once this bunch failed to return, there would be no one else from The Gouge black hole to try again...
Quickly, he turned the ship around and headed back up the gravitonic current in search of the gravitonic whirlpool and the colony ship.
As they sailed away from the remains of the pirate ship Jason ordered the computer to continue the gravitonic radar search for the whirlpool. To the astonishment of both Jason and Dalton, the computer reported that the whirlpool had been detected several hours ago. They looked at each other in puzzlement -- that would have had to been during their encounter with the pirates. Jason ordered the computer to display the location on the 3D screen. The computer had detected ripples from the titanic phenomenon faintly emanating down the branching gravitonic current that Jason had first ducked into where he had encountered the third and fourth pirates. The whirlpool was down that current! Jason grunted in amazement. If they had not been chased in there by the pirates, the computer would never have detected the ripples, and they may never have discovered the whirlpool!
Jason pulled back on the gravitonic power, slowed the sailship down, then smoothly came about. They sailed back down the current, grinned at each other knowingly as they saw the debris from the pirate craft, and turned into the branching current. The gravitonic radar system began reporting the faint signs that indicated the whirlpool.
Nervous there might be more pirates, Jason thoroughly scanned far ahead but there were no more sailships, pirates or otherwise, within the current.
Just before they dropped to their bunks exhausted, the computer running the ship on automatic, Jason entered a rather animated description of their encounter with the pirates into the ship's logbook. He winked at Dalton assuring him the account would definitely make the front page of the "Infinity City Journal of Recent Adventuring."
7. THE DISCOVERY
This present gravitonic current brought them near the whirlpool. They slid open the shield that had covered the pilot room's transparent dome to see what the whirlpool looked like to the naked eye. Gravitons were invisible sub-atomic particles, so there was nothing to be seen of them. However, gravitons easily deflected the photons that carried light. The whirlpool swirled around along a two-dimensional plane, and actually did bend light making the starlight that shown through it appear to swirl about and head toward the whirlpool's center like a smoke ring with a very small hole. It really looked like the stars were being washed down a drain, but this was an optical illusion.
Vast torrents of gravitons whirled inward toward the donut-shaped whirlpool's center. On each side of the center, two immense spouts of gravitons shot outward in opposite directions forming two tubular-shaped gravitonic currents. Had the colony ship fallen down one of these "chutes"? There was a method known to Jason that could lead to an answer.
Sailships could communicate with each other across vast distances, and almost instantaneously. By modulating their gravitonic sails at certain special resonant frequencies and phasings, they could send waves along the inside of gravitonic currents. The sails of a sailship anywhere along the same gravitonic current would resonate at the trans
mitted frequency, effectively receiving the "broadcast." The receiving sailship would be equipped with sensitive gear to receive the message and translate into coherent information. There was only a handful of feasible carrier frequencies, but the bandwidths were wide enough to allow audio/visual signals, and high rate computer data.
Unfortunately, many gravitonic currents were particularly noisy due to nearby interference from certain kinds of stars and other cosmic phenomena. In these cases, good old Morse code was the only means of long distance communication.
But, there was another advantage to a sailship's ability to send waves vibrating through gravitonic fields. When the waves struck massive objects, they bounced back! This was one way scouting sailships located new worlds along convenient gravitonic currents, and it was called GRAVITONIC RADAR. This was also how Jason figured he would determine if the colony ship was inside one of the two huge currents spouting out either side of the whirlpool.
He climbed to the pilot room, and checked their present course with the computer. Their path was now almost tangent to the whirlpool, and soon they would pass it by. The two spouts of gravitons, shooting out of both sides of the hub of the whirlpool were perpendicular to the current they were now in. Jason brought the ship out of the current, and around, heading down toward the spout pouring out in a southern Galactic direction.
The ship slowed considerably. Though there were no local gravitonic currents, there were enough "gusts," from the local effects of the whirlpool, to allow them to maneuver, and head toward the southerly spout without getting much closer to the dangerous whirlpool itself.
If the ship had slid down one of the spouts, it would not have gone far. No matter how much the whirlpool had accelerated it, without gravitonic sails it could not even travel as fast as light. It had been missing for 87 years, implying that it could be no farther than 87 light-years away, a considerable range for even a sailship to search.
As they headed toward the southerly spout, Jason allowed Dalton to take the helm. He watched Dalton proudly as the youth skillfully detected each new gust, determined its direction and magnitude, then trimmed and angled the sails to keep the ship heading toward the southerly spout.
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