Commander Trey Ovakine, his naturally wrinkled and folded brow smoothed almost flat by the stress, was pondering whether or not he should raise an alarm to the skipper when the autodetectors went off in a level four alert -- imminent collission with solid object. The shields went up and the retrofield kicked in, bringing the Enterprise to a relative instantaneous halt in space; the interior of the vessel, seeking to follow the laws of momentum and inertia, sought vainly to continue in the previous line of flight. But most spaces were designed for occasional random motion of this sort, and the only casualties of the sudden stop were a few hundred credits' worth of beer, skog, vilium, Antrean Blue Terror, Arcturan Kickapoo Elixir, and other rare intoxicants from every known corner of the Galaxy. All these precious commodities quickly found their way to the deck at the forward end of the saloon compartment, where they collided, broke, spilled and otherwise misbehaved much to their temporary owners' despair; they vented their feelings loudly, after recovering their own proper places at various tables and stools from the same deck, where they had rather unexpectedly found themselves.

All seemed well, if motionless, for a moment. Then the first greeting from the Neezian asteroid belt made itself with a thundering, echoing crash which shook the entire vessel to its keel. Although the hastily raised shields deflected the amorous 500 kiloton asteroid from joining its lkife forever with that of the Enterprise, the impact was enough to still every living creature on board, including the singing man-eating plant.

Its passionate embrace foiled, the gigantic asteroid careened wildy off the port flank of the Enterprise directly toward the center of a shimmering spot in space which was all that could be seen of the still-masked pirate vessel following closely behind the Enterprise.

Trid had meant to replace the burned out auto-detection boards on his primary and secondary ship intelligence circuits, but had spent the money instead on new bullet-bras for a couple of the Lingerie Models. The asteroid contacted Trid's vessel directly aft of the bridge on the port side, with awful consequences...