ilometers.
The buffeting of atmosphere increases. Aware that he is being tracked
and pursued by Alliance fighters, he makes jerking motions with the
vessel, simulating (and nearly causing) atmospheric destruction.

1:31:37- Alliance fighters draw within firing range. Dorfman
mimics a lifeless crash-landing into the dark, heaving waters. The
pursuit ships hover for a time. Sixty foot waves show only scattered
debris, no signs of life. They break off.

1:55:24- Czech submarin-guerilla vessel picks up coded
recovery signal, makes toward the jettisoned escape pod, small and
coffin-shaped.

3:27:02- Submarin vessel recovers German pilot, returns to a
safer depth and slinks carefully back to guerilla base.

5:56:00- A large underwater door, thoroughly camouflaged,
opens in the root of tower-like Manta Island. Vessel enters, continues
forward, then slowly rises to the surface of a vast, underground
hollow. Heinrich Dorfman begins his exile, which will last until the
end of the war.

* * *

At 1440 hours, a bay door was opened aboard the Dreadnought, and a
small speed-shuttle emerged. Major Janson brought her to a safe
distance from the mother ship, double-checked coordinates, and took a
deep breath. Slowly he engaged the main engines, preparing for
light-speed.

"God help us..... At least I'll get to see Jenny and the kids."

He achieved the necessary momentum, switched on to full power, and
turned the controls over to the computer. Seven minutes later the bomb
detonated, and the ship burst into a thousand fragments.

His Christian God did nothing to save him.

......................................................................

V

At 0700 the following day the Dreadnought approached the Star Gate,
whose hexagonal frame gleamed coldly among the stars like the
blue-black barrel of a gun, surrounded by the vessels of its makers.

Linear skeletons, huge anti-matter projectors lay dormant within, their
task completed. A soft-glistening sheet of silver, like a fine spray
of undulating mist, shrouded the multiplied blackness beyond. This
protective film began to grow vague as the rounded monolith of the
Carrier, here and there ribbed or jagged, continued to advance
patiently, with measured speed.

This silent Gate to Cerberus, newest tool of Armageddon, like those
before it showed not the slig