pportunity for a front-on pass.
He was either newly out of their academy or insultingly confident. My
lips felt tight as I canceled the frontal pass card, punched up two more
to take its place.

The base supervisor cut in on the phone. "It looks like old Dmitri
himself, Jerry, and he's flying one of the new K-12a models. Go get him,
boy!"

I felt like snapping back. He knew better than to break in on me at a
time like this. I opened my mouth, then shut it again. Did he say K-12a?
_Did he say K-12a?_

I squinted at the visor screen. The high tail, the canopy, the oddly
shaped wing tanks.

I'd gone off on the identification!

I slapped another evasion pattern into the controls, a standard set, I
had no time to punch up an improvisation. But he was on me like a wasp.
I rejected it, threw in another set. Reject. Another!

Even as I worked, I kicked the release on my own calculator, dumped it
all, selected like a flash an Ivar K-12a card, and what other
estimations I could make while my mind was busy with the full-time job
of evasion.

My hands were still making the motions, my fingers were flicking here,
there, my feet touching here, there. But my heart wasn't in it.

He already had such an advantage that it was all I could do to keep him
in my visor screen. He was to the left, to the right. I got him for a
full quarter-second in the wires, but the auto gunner was too far
behind, much too far.

His own guns flicked red.

I punched half a dozen buttons, slapped levers, tried to scoot for home.

To the left of my cubicle two lights went yellowish and at the same time
my visor screen went dead. I was blind.

I sank back in my chair, helpless.

* * * * *

The speed indicator wavered, went slowly, deliberately to zero; the
altimeter died; the fuel gauge. Finally, even the dozen or so
trouble-indicators here, there, everywhere about the craft. Fifteen
million dollars worth of warcraft was being shot into wreckage.

I sat there for a long, long minute and took it.

Then I got to my feet and wearily opened the door of my cubicle.
Sergeant Walters and the rest of the maintenance crew were standing
there. They could read in my face what had happened.

The sergeant began, "Captain, I ..."

I grunted at him. "Never mind, Sergeant. It had nothing to do with the
ship's condition." I turned to head for the operations office.

Bill Dickson strolled over from the direction of his own c