ships. These supply ships made upthe base of the triangle. From the air these ships looked like a tinyforest of needles stuck upright in the ground, but from close range onthe ground, where Aron walked in the captain's uniform, they weremammoth towers of steel--again, a matter of scale.
He emerged from the sentry lines near the cargo ships. These were allsealed and unoccupied and he passed the rows of them without a glance.It was a long walk, for the ships were hundreds of feet apart. The openfield where they rested had the rough ground of a meadow, making hisattempted military stride more of a burlesque jerky gait while he triednot to stumble.
There was a guard outside the airlock of each of the warships, for thecrews remained aboard constantly. These guards were standing aroundtalking to friends or moving restlessly about.
The sentries saluted Aron as he marched by, for they could see the brasson his uniform gleaming in the dark. He found what he wanted, a group offour guards talking by one airlock. They snapped to attention as heapproached.
The base had expanded so rapidly, with new units and men being shiftedconstantly, that Aron counted on the men not knowing exactly who theCaptain of the guards should be. All the sentries knew was the insigniaof the Captain was before them and the man who wore them was to beobeyed.
His orders sent a chill of alarm through them. He said he had received areport of someone slipping through the guards and moving among the cargoships. Since the soldiers were needed to patrol, he wanted these men togather all the warship guards together and search the area of the cargoships.
In answer to the question in their eyes, he said he knew the warshipswould be unguarded but he was ordering a special detail to replace themimmediately.
The four dispersed and, in a few minutes, all of the lock guards hadleft their posts and were moving down to the cargo ships.
Time was the critical element now. Aron had taken a terrific chance bydonning the Captain's uniform, but he had pulled off the bluff and nowhe had to capitalize on it--fast!
While the ship sentries were on their futile search, he ran from ship toship, jumped into the open airlocks and worked quickly with pliers and ascrewdriver. It was a little trick that he had learned from a talkativespaceman in a bar many years ago. It worked on any ship. Disconnect atiny spring, cut a wire, and it was impossible to close the massiveairlock door.
Aron wanted very badly to have those doors stay open.
Twenty-seven ships, hundreds of feet apart. He was on his last five whenthe search was abandoned and the sentries began returning. He hoped theywould react normally, taking their time, dragging their feet and talkingto each other in disgust about the wild goose chase.
On the last two ships he had to use different tactics. The sentinels hadreturned. When he walked up to them, they came to attention sullenly,waiting the chance to deride the usual stupidity of the soldiers andtheir Captain.
Instead, they had their throats cut.
Finishing the last airlock, Aron then walked through the post. Right upthe main street he strode, his heart in his throat but his step anddemeanor firm. The time of night helped him, for there were few soldiersabout that might recognize him, and what few patches of light werethrown out from windows and doors were quickly swallowed by the blackmaw of darkness.
Up the main street, past the barracks, towards the last warehouse at thehead of the valley. The two pillars of rock that marked the opening ofthe canyon served as a background for the massive blank walls of thiswarehouse.
At the little door set in the center of the front wall there was asentry. He was grumbling to himself about having to do such a damn-foolthing as guard a warehouse when there wasn't an enemy within light yearsof the building.
He was wrong. And the enemy killed him.
Inside the warehouse, there being no lock on the door, Aron groped aboutin the stuffy, pitch blackness till he came to a little fire station setagainst a wall. There was a locker containing an insulated suit, hatchetand other fire-fighting equipment, at this station.
He donned the fire-fighting suit and helmet and went to one end of thebuilding that was walled-off. In this separate room was the emergencypower supply for the base. There was a turbine with a fuel supply andtiers of high-voltage storage batteries. There was also a fire hose onone wall because of the presence of the combustible turbine fuel.
* * * * *
Aron had to pause for a minute to gather his thoughts. He had come sofar, so fast through the first steps of his plan and now he was readyfor the final action.
What Aron now needed for success was three things. Sulphuric acid andsalt water in large quantities and the right wind.
The first two had been thoughtfully provided by the People's Republic.The third was a matter of waiting. The land on Kligor was dry. Whatlittle water supplies were available weren't enough to maintain a basethe size the garrison had built. Since the ocean was only fifteen milesfrom the valley where the base was located, it was a simple matter topipe in water.
One of the mammoth cargo ships had been loaded with six inch flexiblehose, tougher than steel, wound on drums. It was a matter of a day'swork to fly the ship slowly from the ocean to the base, laying outfifteen miles of this flexible pipe on the ground.
It was salt water, then, that was received at the base. Most of it wasfiltered through a chemical plant in the valley to make fresh water, butit was salt water that was available to the fire hoses for the neededquantity and pressure.
The emergency power supply and the fire hoses were only normal safetyprecautions, but now, in the hands of the Traitor, they became deadlyweapons.
By pushing the lever that removed the lids from the storage batteriesautomatically for inspection he had sulphuric acid--for the law ofconservation of energy said that man had achieved the highest efficiencyof electro-chemical conversion, in practical form, in the lead acidstorage battery.
After finding the light switch and flipping it on, Aron found this leverand released it. Now all he needed was wind, and he had that, blowing acool ten miles an hour down the canyon and over the valley. He had toconsult the weather maps at his station for weeks to determine theprobability of this wind occurring and the weather conditions thatproduced it. One small breeze to chart, when his recording instrumentsgave hourly descriptions of the whole planet's climate. It wasn't toohard a job.
Yet that breeze had to be at the right time, at night and on the nighthe wanted. Close enough to the attack date to be effective yet not toosoon. Last night his instruments recorded the data that would producethis wind, so he was making his strike tonight.
He could not stand and gloat exultantly over his success. There weredead sentries and sprung airlocks that might be discovered.
With a twist of a nozzle, the fire hose came to life, throwing a pulsingstream of water on the batteries.
What Aron had done by ingenuity, luck, daring and careful planning wasfinished. It was now nature's turn.
* * * * *
The next night after his one man attack on the base, Aron had a visitorat his weather station. The visitor was in sad shape. His clothing wasdisheveled, his face dirty and unshaven, his eyes bloodshot and heseemed to be on the verge of a mental collapse with a frantic gleam tohis eye.
But he held a pistol in his hand and Aron didn't.
He was an officer of the Intelligence Corps of the People's Republic. Itwas not the officer who had first visited Aron, but one of the othersthat Aron had come vaguely to know, like picking out sheep from a flock.
He had been away from the base on a planetary reconnaissance mission thenight before. Since then he had gone through a nightmare ordeal.
He had returned to his base to find sixty ships of the People's Republicabout to fall into enemy hands without a struggle, because 200,000 menwere dead or dying of chlorine gas poisoning.
The gas that had come pouring out of the warehouse at the head of thevalley last night. It had billowed down the valley, its streamers andtent
acles pushed by the gentle wind bringing the sleeping men awakecoughing and gasping only to fall asleep again--permanently.
It had seeped through the barracks, the warehouses and into the openairlocks of ships, while dying men tried frantically to close thoselocks. They wouldn't close though, and the spacemen died puzzled as towhy not.
In galactic warfare, with the emphasis on speed, maneuverability, rangeand power of space cannon, et cetera, everyone had forgotten an archaicweapon--gas. Aron hadn't.
After the horror of this discovery, the Intelligence officer had taken aflier to Aron's station.
He was feeling justifiably sorry for himself and his empire's thwartedplans for conquest, now completely impossible since the United Empirehad been notified of the impending attack, and since the most strategicpart of that attack, the Kligor task force, had been destroyed.
His military mind refused to admit that one man, the Traitor, Aron,could have caused this tragic defeat. He was willing, however, to venthis desire for revenge on this one man.
Aron was unmoved by
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