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lock.”
    “And about as welcome, too,” adds Brandt. A hint of a smile cracks his face. He shakes it away. “That means he’d try to sneak away at a lesser speed so we couldn’t see his warp—but that doesn’t make sense. He’d be cutting his own lead. We couldn’t catch him with thirteen days of chase.”
    “Fourteen,” corrects Barak.
    “Fourteen, thirteen, what’s the difference? We’re still too far away.”
    “Only if it’s a trick,” puts in Korie. “We’re too far away only if his engines are still in perfect working order. But his only reason for stopping is that he’s in trouble too—and this could be our chance to move in for the kill.”
    Brandt nods. “It seems the most likely thing, that he’s in trouble too. . . .”
    “If he is,” insists the first officer, “we might be able to get to him before he can recharge his cells.”
    The captain looks at him, “That is a possibility—however, that would necessitate that we repair our own engines first. . . .” He drops into his chair again, thumbs a switch. “Engine room, this is Brandt.”
    A pause, then, “Leen here.” The chief engineer’s voice comes filtered through the speaker.
    “Status report, please.” Brandt leans back in his chair.
    “Uh—we’re still searching. It’s definitely something in the second phase circuitry.”
    “How long till you fix it?”
    “Hard to say, sir—we’ve got to find it first. And then it depends on which component it is. Some of them are damned inaccessible. It could take two or three hours. Then again, maybe not.”
    Brandt looks at Korie—the first officer is frowning. “Let’s hope not. Do you know yet how it happened?”
    “Yes, sir, but you won’t like it.”
    “Tell me anyway.”
    “Some kind of field interference—focused on the number three function.”
    “So?”
    “So, the generator tried to compensate for it—introduced a reciprocal vibration.”
    Brandt ignores Korie’s impatience. “That shouldn’t have affected the warp.”
    “It didn’t, not at first—but the thing was an unstable quantity. The generator couldn’t match it. As it built up, we got a first-level resistance to the secondary fields. The warp was stable, all our fields were stable, but we weren’t getting any push. That’s why our speed started to drop when the vibration hit the red line. And because of resonance, all our other stress-field functions went wild too. Hell, Captain,” Leen mutters, “it’s such a piddling little thing—and it’s practically crippled us! If they’d let us have those Thorsen generators when we asked, this thing’d never have happened. I could have simply cross-phased and out-circuited number three. We could have limped along on five and still maintained speed.”
    Brandt smiles, “If it can be done, Chief, I’m sure you can do it.”
    “Hell! I could do it with these, if they’d let me put in the override equipment I need—but if they ever found out I could run this ship on five generators, they’d take one out.”
    The captain grins at this. He glances up, but Korie is not grinning—he is glaring meaningfully.
    Brandt’s grin fades. “Listen, Chief; we still have a chance at that bogie. He’s dropped out of warp. Mr. Korie here is champing a bit—so try and get your repair crew on the ball, will you?”
    “Aye, aye, sir. I’ll have the warp up again as soon as possible.”
    “Good man.” Brand disconnects; he looks to his pale first officer. “Well, Mr. Korie, I assume you still want to go after that bogie. . . ?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Uh huh.” Brandt turns to his dark-skinned astrogator. “What say, Al?” Can we sneak up on him?”
    “Why not just go after him at full speed?” interrupts Korie. Brandt looks back to him.
    “He’s got a point there,” puts in Barak. “At top speed we could close with him in eight hours.”
    The captain looks at them both, clears his throat gruffly. “I don’t like it,” he says. “I don’t