Book 3 - Star's End Read Online Free PDF

suddenly grew dancey with a vengeance.
    “Attack imminent,” benRabi muttered.
    Those pilot fish were excited because they would feast no matter
what the outcome of battle. They would be perfectly content
nibbling dead shark or dead starfish.
    A dozen crimson torpedoes suddenly misted, stretched into long,
fuzzy lines, and solidified again near the starfish herd.
    A hundred swords of light started carving them into scavenger
food. Sharks were easy meat for particle beams.
    “Teach them to try end run through hyper,” Chub
whispered.
    The starfish herd had not bothered to dodge. They would not
begin maneuvering till the protection of the human ships began
breaking down.
    It might not hold, benRabi reflected. Five vessels could not
establish a sound fire pattern. There would be blind spots. Big
holes. To fill them would mean risking hitting your own people.
    The shark packs milled. They had not yet found workable tactics
for assailing a fleet of harvestships.
    Their intellectual slowness was the only hope for starfish and
starfishers alike. Something had happened to the sharks. Their
numbers were expanding almost exponentially. They were becoming ever
more desperate in their quest for something to eat.
    Their prey, historically, had been the stragglers of the great
starfish herds. The feeble and injured and careless. But now they
assaulted the strong and healthy as well, and had even begun
turning on their own injured. Even the firepower of a harvestship
could not hold the massed packs at bay when hunger heterodyned into
a berserk killing rage.
    “Not look so promising as you thought, Moyshe man-friend.
All going to come at once, from everywhere, crazy. Just killing and
dying.”
    There was dread in Chub’s thought. Moyshe was dismayed.
Even in the hell that had been the battle at Stars’ End the
starfish had not lost his good cheer.
    The starfish’s prediction proved correct. The red
torpedoes suddenly exploded in every direction. Moyshe had seen the
same reaction among humans. The first had been by a band of
fair-weather revolutionaries who had heard the police were coming.
Another time, a terrorist had lobbed a hand grenade into a crowded
theatre.
    But the sharks were not fleeing. The instant-insanity had seized
them. They were spreading out to attack.
    They arrowed in on the harvestfleet. Laser and particle beam
swords stabbed.
    Danion’s
fire was deadly. The realtime simulation
from the minds of a man and a starfish linked gave the weapons
people a fractional second’s advantage over their brethren in
ships relying on normal detection systems.
    The shark wave rolled round
Danion
like a breaker
around a granite promontory.
    They could have worn her down in time, had they had the patience
of the sea, and the sea’s resources for endlessly sending in
another wave. They had hurt her bad at Stars’ End. It only
took one shark getting through, with its multi-dimensional fires,
to ravage a whole section of ship. But this horde was more limited
in its numbers and more driven by hunger.
    “Oh, Christ,” benRabi swore as an explosion ripped a
huge chunk from a sister ship. A shark had gotten through there.
The service ships, still evacuating
Jariel
and trying to
plug the holes in the fire pattern, swarmed toward the fragment.
Clouds of frozen water vapor boiled round it as atmosphere poured
out.
    A shark flung itself into the starfish herd.
    The great night beasts were not defenseless. One burped a ball
of the. nuclear fire that burned in its “gut,” flung it
with Robin Hood accuracy. The shark perished in the fading flash of
a hydrogen bomb.
    One predator was gone. And one starfish was disarmed for hours.
It took the creatures a long time to revitalize their internal
fires.
    BenRabi had seen the peaceable starfish use the same weapon
against Sangaree raidships at Stars’ End.
    “Fur is flying now, Moyshe man-friend.” Chub was
straining for humor. “We doing all right, you and me. Maybe
your Old Ones decide you