by Jerry
He saluted and the thirty-two men in the briefing room returned the salute. He left and Stehle reappeared.
“Operation Vendetta will proceed as planned. Man your ships!”
ELEVEN-FIFTEEN.
Inside the little interstellar scout ship, Wilbur Featherday strapped himself into the control seat and flipped a switch which turned on the viewscreens.
Outside, in every direction, rows of ships extended towards the horizon—gleaming metal spheres several times the size of his own little craft and the thirty-one like it. The entire scene was in sharp relief—garish, like an overexposed photograph—in the blue-white glare of the incandescent crater where Lunar had been.
The speaker on his control board came to life. “All fleet units lift on signal,” it said. A moment later it emitted a brief high-frequency note.
Outside, as seen on the viewscreens, the hundreds of gleaming spheres trembled, shook themselves free of the ground, and floated straight upward into the sky like bubbles rising in a pond. Featherday’s little ship, and the others like it, remained stationary.
He swallowed a sob. The entire Terran fleet was going to meet certain and swift destruction. Two hundred thousand brave men were going aloft to attack in the face of vastly superior weapons, not in the hope of victory, but only with the purpose of screening the escape of the Vendetta mission into interstellar space.
“All Vendetta units lift on signal,” the speaker said.
Featherday laid his fingers on the bank of keys set into the arm of the control chair.
Beeeep! His index finger jabbed down. The landscape fell out from underneath him. A rising sibilant whistle penetrated from outside. The viewscreens showed thirty-one similar craft, little metal balls, rising with him. The whistle faded, the sky turned purplish and then black, and the stars came out from behind the glare of the Fortress Lunar crater. The vast curve of the Earth’s surface slowly dropped away and became more convex. . . .
When the radar altimeter needle flashed past the two-hundred mile mark, Featherday pressed down with his middle finger on a second key.
The Earth vanished. So did the other rising ships, the Moon, and the blazing pit where Lunar had been.
Featherday wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. The easy part of the mission was over.
MIDNIGHT.
Chief of Staff W.W. Moore talked with the President of Earth via telescreen.
“But Walter,” the President said, “was it necessary to go through with the attack—all the way? Couldn’t you have had the fleet fire a salvo, and then land again? The Vendetta ships would still have been able to escape without being noticed. . . .”
Moore’s shoulders were bowed. The attack had indeed been a terrible business. With incredible heroism and a prodigious expenditure of missiles, a portion of the Terrant fleet had managed to penetrate to within twenty thousand miles of the Hyadic battle lattice. For perhaps a minute, hope had run high in Command Central that what had been planned as a frightfully costly screening maneuver for Vendetta would in itself achieve at least a partial victory. Then, heartbreakingly, that brave assault had dissolved into incandescent gases, molten driblets, and masses of fused machinery. The Hyadic superiority in weapons was simply too great to be overcome by courage alone.
“Mr. President,” Moore said, “believe me, we tried and tried to find a plan which would avoid throwing away so many lives. But our every effort in that direction came to ruin on one point of difficulty. Not only must the Hyadics not notice the departure of the scout ships, they must not be able to infer it. We couldn’t take the slightest risk of putting the Hyadic home defense forces on guard. We know that the Hyadic commanders are master strategists. We simply could not afford to give them any reason to suspect that the takeoff of our fleet was anything more than the usual preliminary to a battle. . . .”
“I suppose you’re right, Walter,” the President sighed. “But two hundred thousand men. . . .”
Moore nodded grim agreement.
The door of Moore’s office opened and General Stehle came in, carrying a sheet of paper. “A message, sir,” he interrupted. “From the Hyadic commander.” Moore took the sheet and read it:
FROM: LORD SHOGUL SHAPURIQ
COMMANDER, TASK FORCE 211
IMPERIAL FLEET, ALANIAN EMPIRE OF THE HYADES.
TO: COMMANDER, MILITARY
FORCES OF EARTH.
THE SHIPS OF MY COMMAND ARE NOW IN POSITION TO ANNIHILATE ANY CITY OR OTHER TARGET ON THE SURFACE OF EARTH.
SURRENDER TERMS ARE AS FOLLOWS:
1. FORCES OF THE ALANIAN EMPIRE OF THE HYADES WILL LAND ON EARTH.
2. ALL EARTH GOVERNMENTAL AUTHORITY WILL BE TAKEN OVER BY IMPERIAL HYADIC MILITARY OFFICERS.
3. ALL EARTH MILITARY FORCES WILL BE DISBANDED.
4. RESISTANCE TO IMPERIAL HYADIC MILITARY PERSONNEL WILL BE PUNISHED BY DESTRUCTION OF CITIES AND OTHER MEASURES AS NECESSARY.
FAILURE OF THE EARTH MILITARY COMMANDER TO ACCEPT THE ABOVE TERMS WITHIN ONE TWENTY-FIFTH EARTH REVOLUTION WILL BE CONSIDERED AS RESISTANCE.
Too soon, Moore thought. They’re rushing us—we’ll have to stall them as long as we can. . . .
“What is it, Walter?” the President asked.
Moore apologized and read the message aloud to the telescreen. Then he summarized his misgivings. “I can’t negotiate effectively until we have reports from all the Vendetta ships.”
“Do you think they’ll come in on time?”
“I hope so,” Moore said. “But if there are any delays—it could be bad.”
TWELVE-FIFTY.
That tremendous room, Command Central, was virtually empty, most of its innumerable telescreen banks dead and deserted.
General Stehle was sitting before a subspace radio transmitter. “Good,” he said. “Stand by, then.” He snapped a switch, breaking contact, and turned to Chief of Staff Moore.
“That makes thirty-one,” he stated, “and Featherday still hasn’t reported.” When Moore failed to comment, he went on, “Taken together with the fact that his mission was to Coronis, that fact makes it likely that Featherday is never going to report.”
Moore shook his head. “Let’s not give him up for lost.” He glanced at his watch. “We can’t wait any longer, though, or the Hyadics will start hitting cities. . . .”
He walked over to a radioman who was still on duty before his microwave transmitter “Send this,” he ordered, thirty and handed the man a message:
FROM: GENERAL W.W. MOORE
CHIEF OF STAFF
TERRAN ARMED FORCES.
TO: LORD SHOGUL SHAPURO
COMMANDER, TASK FORCE 211
IMPERIAL FLEET, ALANIAN EMPIRE OF THE HYADES.
HYADIC FORCES MAY LAND AT THERE WILL BE NO OPPOSITION.
ANOTHER interstellar jump. The viewscreens in Wilbur Featherday’s scout ship showed strange new constellations and, scattered in various directions, a number of very bright blue-white stars. Those stars were all members of a single open cluster which, from the Earth, appears as an arrowhead in the cold winter sky.
The Hyades.
One of the cluster stars was much brighter—much nearer—than the others. Featherday verified by means of the spectro-classifier that it was Coronis—the star to which the planet Alania belonged.
The home system of the Hyadic Empire.
A chill skated down his spine at the thought. This was the big one, the toughest mission in a bunch of tough missions.
Alania!
If a planet could be impregnable, if a world could be so guarded by multitudes of perfect machines’ incredible weapons, and fanatical defenders that no attack could harm it—then Alania would be that world. This was baiting the lion in his den, with a vengeance!
Tense with sudden apprehension, Featherday spent several minutes sweeping the sky around the star Coronis with a photoelectronic telescope, trying to locate planets. In the end, he concluded reluctantly that he was too far out and made a jump several light-
days nearer.
This time he found planets—seven, in all. He studied the farthest-but-one from the star, a giant frozen world four billion miles from Coronis and just about thirty thousands miles in diameter. It had a fair-sized satellite. . . .
Featherday cursed loudly in the confines of the control cabin. That satellite meant extra trouble—quite possibly there was an Alanian observing station on it. The safest procedure would be to arrive near the planet on the night side, at a time when the satellite was on the sunward side. That would necessitate knowing the orbital period of the satellite.
He jumped the ship a light-hour nearer the planet and observed the change in apparent position of the moon. After making a calculation, he swore again: he would have to wait almost an hour before making the final jump. . . .
If only he could call Stehle by subspace radio to explain the delay! But there were strict orders to report only once, after landing, in order to minimize the chance of the enemy intercepting the messages.
That hour was bad; it gave his nervous system all too good a chance to react to the enormity of the risks lying ahead. When it had passed, his uniform was damp with sweat. His hand trembled as he laid his fingers on the control keys.
He pressed down with his middle finger.
An enormous circular region of blackness appeared on the viewscreens, blotting out Coronis and all the other stars in a third of the sky. That was the night side of Coronis Six. Featherday’s eyes flew over the instruments, seeking evidence that his little ship was being detected; but the electromagnetic spectrum down to infrared was dead.
Hoping desperately that the Alanians had no automatic monitoring instruments in orbits hereabout, he snapped on the altimeter radar. The planetary surface was ten thousand miles below. He turned on the interplanetary drive and started to make the fastest landing run he dared. If he could just make planetfall without being detected, he would probably be all right. . . .
ONE FIFTEEN.
Walter Moore, Terran Chief of Staff, stood alone, brooding upon the desolation before him.
The ground level of Central Base looked like a landscape in Hell. The Moon was sinking in the southwestern sky. The crater of Fortress Lunar had cooled until now it was an angry ember which illuminated the scene in somber red and melancholy shadows. Pools of darkness extended in rows across the desert to the gloomy horizon—seating pits for hundreds of brave ships which never would return.
Presently, though there was no sound, something made him look upwards. Almost directly overhead, a tremendous metal sphere was lowering itself out of the dark sky. A moment later, blinding white floodlights flashed down from its sides. It grew larger and larger. Still there was no sound. And the thing kept growing as it sank. . . .
The ship grounded about a mile from the surface buildings of Central Base. Its curved bottom touched the surface of the field—and kept on going down for another fifty feet. The sound, when it arrived some five seconds later, was something between a muffled explosion and a massive groan.
Moore had not moved a muscle. He had been waiting for this vessel to arrive. It was the Hyadic flagship.
The dazzling floodlights illuminated the entire field. Moore estimated that the vessel’s diameter must be about two thousand feet—beside it, any Terran ship would be dwarfed. Its surface was broken by hundreds of deadly turrets which menaced the sky and the earth. As he watched, missile launching ports opened to gape at the heavens.
He shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other and started to walk towards the Hyadic ship, squinting sourly against the glare of the lights.
“General Moore!” a voice shouted from behind him. He turned. A figure was waving from the door of one of the buildings.
“Stehle says Featherday is okay!” the voice shouted.
Moore started to tremble. After a moment he dropped his briefcase at his feet and put his face into his hands. He stood so, shoulders shaking, for perhaps a minute—sobbing from sheer relief, and giving thanks.
Then he picked up the briefcase and strode towards the huge sphere, head high, back straight, and grinning into the bright floodlights.
THE undersurface of the ship was like a great sloping metal roof above him when a rectangular section of hull sprang out and down to become a set of steps leading up into the vessel. Four Alanian guardsmen jumped down to the ground and advanced towards him, spreading out as they came and aiming their hand weapons at his belt buckle. Strange—Moore thought—that the most predatory conquerors ever known should be a race of pygmies. None of the mahogany-hued Alanian warriors topped four feet.
They herded him up the steps into the Hyadic flagship. Two minutes later he was in a large room near the geometric center of the vessel. The walls were masses of communication and control equipment. Several high-ranking Alanian officers turned to stare as the guards escorted him in.
This was the Bridge.
An Alanian whose uniform was open at the collar—a mahogany-skinned humanoid uncommonly tall for his race—he was almost five feet tall—came slowly forward. He stopped a couple of yards from Moore and stared up into the Earthman’s face.
“I am Shapuriq,” he said proudly. His voice betrayed a slight alien accent. “So you have come to accept surrender terms!”
Moore looked down at him.
“No,” he said. “To give them!”
Shapuriq scowled up at him. “Earthman,” he said sternly, “if you are planning an attack on the grounded ships of my fleet, you had better discard the idea. Seventy of my ships still ride orbits above your planet. For every Alanian who dies in such an attack, a million Terrans will die also.”
“That was not our plan,” Moore said. “When our fleet went aloft to attack yours, a squadron of interstellar scout ships managed to escape—without your noticing, I think—into deep space. Their destination was the Hyades. . . .”
SHAPURIQ threw his head back and laughed loudly. “You poor, hopeless, optimistic barbarian,” he gasped. “Do you think you can frighten us? Indeed! You have sent ships to attack Alania. I can guess your plan! The little boats hide now in the darkness of interstellar space, but at your signal—unless we surrender!—they will swarm in and devastate Alania, like insects trying to sting a mountain to death!”
Moore grimaced impatiently. “Do you—?” But Shapuriq interrupted.
“Foolish savage,” he chortled, “with all the power of this great ship—” he stamped his foot on the deck—“I could not force a gram of matter or an erg of energy through the defenses of Alania! Your little boats will have short lifetimes indeed, if they are so witless as to obey your orders.”
“Do you know what a matter fuse is?” Moore asked.
“Yes,” Shapuriq grinned. “We discarded them as weapons a century ago. They became obsolete.” His smile suddenly vanished and he said scornfully, breath losing its control in the alien atmosphere, “Your schemes cannot harm great Alania . . . but for having thought them, you will die, and a tenth of Earth’s population with you. . . .”
“We didn’t plan to detonate Alania,” Moore said. “But at this moment one of those ‘little boats’ is sitting on the surface of Coronis Six. Would you care to explain to a witless barbarian what the defenses of Alania are going to do about converting that planet to energy?”
Shapuriq looked at Moore hard and straight for a long moment, then turned and called an order in the sing-song Alanian tongue to one of his officers. Moore’s knowledge of that language was slight, but when the officer pulled a book of tables down from its clamp on a shelf and started punching data into a calculator, he inferred the import of the command.
“If you told him to calculate the effect on Alania of the detonation of Coronis Six,” he said to Shapuriq, “I can tell you the answer: volatilization!”
The Hyadic commander made no comment.
Presently the calculator spat out a card. The officer read the printing on it, and Moore could see a nerve twitch beneath the mahogany skin, as he falteringly reported to
Shapuriq.
The commander of the Hyadic fleet stood looking downward for quite some time—several minutes. Moore waited patiently. When Shapuriq looked up there was hatred—and respect—in his dark eyes. “You are clever,” he admitted. “You have found a weak spot in our armor.” He bit his lip. “My fleet will withdraw from your planet. . . .”
“No!” Moore contradicted him. “I came here to lay down surrender terms. And I intend to!”
Shapuriq’s fingers were trembling as he fingered his tunic. “What are your terms?” he asked apprehensively.
“Point one. You must land all your ships and evacuate them, except for technicians who will serve as instructors for Terran prize crews.”
Shapuriq swallowed, and from his look it was something with a surpassingly bitter flavor. He nodded slowly.
“Point two. Within one week’s time, the remainder of the Imperial Hyadic fleet must be turned over to us.”
Shapuriq’s face twisted into a grimace of anguish. “You are trying to go too far,” he protested. “The rest of the Empire will sacrifice Alania before agreeing to that. . . .”
“The rest of the Empire has no option,” Moore said. “Every one of the thirty-two state-status planets in the Hyades is in exactly the same position as Alania.”
“But what are you trying to do,” Shapuriq exclaimed, “take over the Empire?”
“Yes! You forced us to this! You pushed us until our backs were against the wall, until we had nothing to lose but our lives. Now—our only hope of security lies in becoming your rulers.”
Shapuriq averted his face for a moment. Then he whispered, “I must call Imperial Headquarters on Alania. This is beyond my authority to negotiate. You will have to deal with the Prime Council itself.”
Moore nodded.
Shapuriq looked up into the Earthman’s face. “A moment ago you spoke of security,” he said. “There is none.” He shook his head slowly. “My people have feared this day since they began their conquests, five centuries ago. They surrounded themselves with every defense they could devise. And still this has come . . . your Empire will also fall, Earthman . . . even though you have won for now.”
