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cornered animal, theFighting Rowboat hurled herself at the invaders.
The shifts were very small now. They had almost ended. . . . They had ended.
Abruptly, theFighting Rowboat found herself in black space, with the light of
the artificial sun that the Center Aliens had hung over the Battle Line
dwindling to a tiny bright dot behind her. And around the crew, on instruments
and on screen, the scout ships of the Silver Horde finally registered each one
no more than a third the size of theFighting Rowboat, but within theFighting
Rowboat's vicinity they numbered in the dozens.
In the light of the distant artificial sun Miles could even see the two
closest, as gleams of dull silver, seen briefly, like the soft flash of the
pale belly of a fish glimmering for a moment up through deep water.
Miles' hands came down on the controls, and theFighting Rowboat flung herself
at the nearest pale gleam.
Now the whole crew was aware of the working psychic elements. Now, through
their weapons, they could finally feel the alien minds of the weasel-shaped
members of the Horde aboard the nearest scout ships. The consciousness of the
aliens was like a small, hard fist pushing back at the strength that enclosed
and emanated from theFighting Rowboat.
That bubble of strength flowed over and encapsulated the alien consciousness
aboard the scout boats within weapon range. Miles, with the others, felt how
they had held the scout members of the Horde will-less within their bubble of
psychic power.
They had done it. The closer scout ships were drifting helplessly, their
crews paralyzed. Luhon's quick fingers danced over the firing-control buttons
before him, and from the weapons of theFighting Rowboat pale sighting beams
reached out to touch the scout ships and a second later there stabbed down the
center of those sighting beams a force which ripped open the enemy vessels.
TheFighting Rowboat struck, and moved, and struck again. . . . Suddenly they
were in a little open space. They were through the first line of scout ships.
They had won. At least in this first contact.
A furious feeling of triumph rolled through their network of common
sensitivity. They had struck the enemy and lived. Their savage souls exulted
at the thought.
But now, plainly before them on the screen and swiftly closing down about
them, were the second-line scout ships of the Horde, and these were each half
again as big as theFighting Rowboat.
The next contact was one they could not win. But their ancient instincts
hurled them forward.
Abruptly then, it happened for athird time to Miles.
As it had when his painting had been stolen and he had climbed the cliff, as
it had when he was fighting with Chak'ha, so it happened once more now. He
went into hysterical strength. Into overdrive.
Suddenly it was on him again like a motor, relieved of the governor that had
artificially limited its potential power, winding itself up tight to full
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output. He felt all of one piece, and strength raced through him. Now he knew
without thinking about it that the two other beings sitting beside him at the
controls would be no match for him in any physical encounter. The Horde had
evoked it again in him this finaloverdrive of strength. It seethed within him.
He could almost feel it churning and frothing, searching for the needed
physical violence that would provide it with a necessary point of escape.
But there was no such point. His physical strength was not needed here the
ship was his muscles. All that was left for him to do here was push buttons,
and that he could have done with the ordinary strength that was in him. His
arms and legs ached to be in action, but there was no job for them only the
small, easy tasks they were already doing. A feeling of frustration, wild and
furious as a storm at sea, began to build to hurricane force inside him.
All the while, theFighting Rowboat was closing with those larger ships of the
Horde which must finally destroy her. And here sat Miles, tapping a great
reservoir of strength in himself for which there was no use.
The storm mounted in him. It shook his whole body, so that his arms and legs
trembled. His vision blurred. He felt as if he were tearing himself apart with
a wild urge to greater action.
The overdrive power boiled within him, like a whirlpool of force, like a
circular river seeking an outlet and hemmed in by tall mountains. It raced
faster, still faster, seeking an outlet and then, suddenly, he found it.
It was like a pass through the mountains leading to a higher land. It was a
release for the explosive, whirling power building within him but it was
something more. It was, at this last moment before his own certain
destruction, that which he had always searched for in his painting. An
overdrive of the creative spirit, comparable to the overdrive of hysterical
strength in the physical body.
In the same moment in which he recognized this, the pent-up force within him
went pouring through its newfound outlet. It flashed through and upward,
leaving his body at peace but switching his intellectual centers to an almost
unbearable certainty and brilliance. Then, without warning, all strain was
over.
The motor wound tight in him suddenly shifted to a higher gear, a gear in
which its power was more than sufficient and its speed was limitless. He
seemed almost to float because of the new power of perception and thought he
controlled.
He glanced about him. The control room of theFighting Rowboat seemed both
brighter and smaller. The three-dimensional objects within its metal walls
seemed to stand out aggressively, with a sort of supersolidity. He looked back
at his two companions and found that even the flying fingers of Luhon seemed
to have slowed.
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