Pursuit Through Hyperspace

"Hiding Place," see here.

Nicholas van Rijn's yacht, the Hebe G.B., has a high velocity hyperdive, uncommonly sensitive detectors and a crew experienced in overhauling;

she detects the hyperemission of another ship before that ship detects her vibrations;

establishing the other ship's course, she accelerates to intercept;

the other ship changes course;

the Hebe G.B. changes course accordingly and continues to gain on the slower ship;

the quarry does not turn back toward the Adderkop sun so is not Adderkop and does fear strangers;

the quarry goes off hyperdrive;

knowing both the quarry's superlight vector and the instant of cutoff, the Hebe G.B.'s computer estimates the decelerated ship's position;

approaching that volume of space, the Hebe G.B. executes a search pattern, entering normal space to sample the neutrino haze;

statistical analysis differentiates a faint nearby neutrino source from the stellar background;

the yacht goes to that position where a large cylinder with drive cones, auxiliary boat housings and a gun turret, all obviously of non-Technic design, becomes visible;

clearly not a warcraft, the stranger fires a single fusion shell which the Hebe G.B.'s robogunners intercept with a missile;

van Rijn orders his crew to establish contact and develop a common language fast so that he can talk business to the strangers - just like that! - but there will be another problem to solve first.