by Larry Niven
By now the chase meant nothing to Hooker. In any case he should have been incapable of original thought.
They had come up along the galactic axis. Hooker, looking into the scope screen, saw the galaxy face-on. It was not bright, but it was wide. The galaxy showed like varicolored dyes poured into viscous ink, red dye and yellow and blue and green, but mostly red. Then the whole mass swirled around the center of the pot, so that the center glowed all colors—a continuous mass of stars packed so closely as to blot out the blackness behind, but it was not bright. There is dust even in intergalactic space. Nearly one hundred thousand lightyears of dust shaded the galaxy from Hooker’s view. The arms were almost black, the glowing areas spotted with black gaps and dust clouds. Everything was reddened and dimmed by Doppler shift.
He could not see Loeffler.
Habit used his fingers to magnify the view, slowly. The galaxy, already wide enough to fill the scope screen, expanded. In the core, individual, red giant stars appeared, bigger than anything in the arms. A blue-white spot appeared, and grew.
It grew until it filled the screen. There was a black dot in the center. And that grew too.
Hooker had watched for nearly an hour before the thought stirred in his brain. That hadn’t happened for a long time, but it did happen. Hooker’s memory capacity was nearly full, but his brain was in good working order, and he was guaranteed sane.
I wonder how much damage I did.
The thought threatened to skip away, but he grabbed for it, sensing somehow that it might be important. I held my com laser on him for hours. I may have damaged him. I’ve never seen him broadside; I’d have no way of knowing. But if his ship is badly hurt, I could finish the job with my laser, it never burned out. His did.
He’d have to wait until Loeffler got closer. The thought slipped away… and returned two days later. I wonder how much damage I did? How would I find out?
Every day he remembered the problem. A month and a half after he had first thought of it, he thought of the answer.
He could turn the ship sideways to fire the fusion drive laterally. Loeffler would imitate him to keep him from sneaking past and home. That would put Loeffler broadside to him.
He had done it once before, trying to make turnover for Wunderland. But Loeffler had been too far away for the scope to show details. If he did it now…He did.
Then he focused one of the side scopes on Loeffler, enlarged the image as far as it would go, and waited.
The time came when he should have gone to the steam room. He was half out of his seat, but he couldn’t leave. Loeffler hadn’t turned yet. The ships were lighthours apart. Hooker forced himself to sit down and to stay down, gripping the arms of the control chair with both hands. His teeth began to chatter. He shivered. A deadening cold spread through him. He sneezed.
The shivering and the sneezing continued for a long time, then passed. Steam-room time was over.
Loeffler began to turn. And Hooker knew why he had never turned for home.
There was no lifesystem at all. The lifesystem had always been the most fragile part of the ship. Aeons ago Hooker’s laser had played over Loeffler’s lifesystem and melted it to slag. Nothing was left but tattered shards, polished at the edges by gas molecules slipping through the ramscoop shield.
Loeffler hadn’t died fast. He’d had time to program the autopilot to arrange a collision course with Hooker’s ship.
Loeffler might have given up the chase long ago, but the autopilot never would, never could.
Hooker turned off his scope screen and went down to the steam room. His schedule was shot to hell. He was still trying to readjust when, years later, Loeffler’s ramscoop field swept across his ship like an invisible wing.
Two empty ships drove furiously toward the edge of the universe, all alone.
Dan Adkins artwork from IF Science Fiction