An amber light began pulsing in the upper right quadrant of the deep space scanner, and simultaneously the drone on the target screen became outlined in a well defined halo.
Immediately, a robot voice from the unmanned gunship came through a speaker in the console: “Terra 10 reports target acquisition, AGRAD Six.”
The Gunner nudged a communicator control with his knee and replied, “Confirmed, acquisition positive, target positive. Maintain.” He turned in half-profile to the audience and explained, “At present, all firings are initiated by Moonbase. Eventually Terra 10 will be programmed to fire automatically at any valid target intruding upon her defense envelope. We demonstrate now a Moonbase clearance and a Terra 10 automatic firing sequence.”
Whaleman returned his attention to the console. His fingers danced across a line of staggered buttons, setting up the automatic firing mechanism. A Path Control Positive light began flashing from the console. He threw the Attack-Track onto “AGRAD Auto” and pulled the Time Positive Line over beneath Battery Six.
“AGRAD Six on Automatic Ready,” came the robot report from the gunship.
“Terra 10 cleared to attack,” Whaleman clipped back, his speech not much different than the robot’s.
The FIRE button immediately illuminated on the Gunnery Console. The amber pulser of the deep space scanner immediately became a steady light, growing in brilliance and rapidly changing color to a light pink and on through the shades of red until it flared out and disappeared from the electronic display. At that exact instant, the target drone disappeared from the target screen.
“Target diffused,” the robot announced.
“Confirmed,” Whaleman responded. “Recycle AGRAD Six to Standby. Secure from Automatic Ready.”
A murmur of voices was rising behind Whaleman. One official exclaimed, “Instant annihilation! And at three thousand miles!”
Another gloated, “Wait until you see the MAMEs in action. You’ll dare anyone in the universe to attack us! ”
His face an emotionless mask, Whaleman was busily setting up the next exercise. Inwardly, he was elated over the reactions of his audience. A long-awaited, impossible dream had become a reality, and Gunner Whaleman had figured prominently in that transition. Even with nerveless genes, he had ample cause for elation.
A thousand miles from Board Island, scene of the demonstration, a somewhat different audience, at an agricultural station on the North American continent, exhibited a reaction that would have been found entirely disconcerting by Gunner Whaleman.
“That’s our answer,” declared Tom Cole, the self-proclaimed King of the Reevers. “We’ve got to get that gunship.”
George (Hedge) Hedges/Bolsom, a six-footer with blond hair and pale skin, tore his Reever-blue eyes away from the televiewer long enough to acknowledge his chief’s remark.
“How the corporation are we going to get that gunship, Tom?” he growled. “She’s a thousand miles high right now and bound for Jupiter in just a few days.”
The Reever leader had broodingly watched the cycling of the MAME batteries, as televised from Board Island.
“We get the Gunner, Hedge,” he replied tensely. “He’s the key to the whole problem.” He turned to the squatly powerful man at his other side, John (Blue) Fontainbleu Oraskny, a homan-sized four-and-a-half footer. “Blue, you run get Stel. And do it Mars quick. I want her to get a good look at that uniform.”
Blue had been unhappy at the necessity for leaving the televiewer, but he hurried away toward the line of plastic domehuts flanking the clearing. All the men of the Reever. commune, about eighty in number, were present to view the long-awaited exercises of Terra 10. The Reevers, bound forever to the garden planet by unchallengeable law, never missed a teleview of space events. They had gathered at the viewer in quiet bunches, all dressed identically in the prescribed transparent vests and black crotchguards, watching the proceedings with solemn interest. A soft murmur went up as Zach Whaleman punched the button on a MAME battery to explode a ten mile diameter meteoroid which was streaking through space nearly a million miles from Earth.
“By Mars, that’s some shooting,” Tom Cole had softly observed.
“I think this guy’s a Reever, Tom,” Hedge commented.
Cole chuckled. “What guy? The Gunner? Just because he’s big and has red hair?”
“I never saw a normer look like that,” Hedge insisted.
“Defense Commanders are different items,” the Reever leader explained. “They’re GPC’d for that extra size.” He laughed. “Bet your appleseeds, Hedge, the screens gave that boy a thorough shakedown before he ever put that uniform on.”
Whaleman was recycling the MAME batteries when Blue returned with a tall golden-haired beauty in tow. The girl wore nothing but a crotchguard. Heavy but shapely breasts jiggled in free suspension as she crossed over to Cole and Hedge. Tom Cole gave her a welcoming smile and pointed to the televiewer.
“Get a good look at him,” he commanded.
The girl turned interested eyes to the screen. “He’s beautiful,” she murmured. “Who is it?”
“Terra 10’s Gunner,” Cole replied. “Think your women can whip up some outfits like that one?”
She frowned thoughtfully, concentrating on the Defense Command uniform. “It’s not plastic.”
Hedge snorted, “Bet your bubbling beauties it’s not!”
“We might have some synfab that’s close enough,” the girl said. “But I don’t know about the insignia.” She nervously pinched a softly flaring hip and added, I believe we can come up with something passable.”
“Then do it,” Cole snapped. “For me, and for all of Team One. You have our sizes.”
The girl nodded. “How soon?”
“Two hours.”
She rapidly blinked her eyes, then said, “All right. Two hours.” Her eyes flashed a final appraisal toward the televiewer. “So. that’s a Gunner,” she said softly, and quickly moved away.
Hedge watched the girl’s swaying departure and asked, “What’s the plan, Tom?”
“I been thinking about it ever since they announced these exercises. I guess we got to go to Board Island.”
Hedge and Blue exchanged nervous glances. Hedge said, “Uh-huh. How the corporation we going to get there, Tom?”
“We’ll ride the Board’s commissary shuttle.”
Blue rubbed his forehead and stared stonily at the ground. “That means we have to tackle Boob,” he muttered.
Tom Cole nodded and absently rubbed his own head. “Makes me hurt just to think about it, but that’s what we got to do.”
Irritably, Hedge said, “I thought you was working something to neutralize that monster.”
“I am,” Cole replied. “But it’s not ready yet. And Terra 10 is. So ...” He turned slowly and gazed toward the distribution center, barely visible above the treetops.
“So we go without the neutralizer,” Hedge said unhappily.
“That’s the idea,” Cole muttered. “Blue, you spread the word. I want volunteers. We got to get Team One aboard that shuttle. That means a diversion team. I need about twenty men to draw Boob away long enough for us to get aboard.”
He peered into the sky, frowned, and added, “Sun’s going down. It’ll be dark by the time Stel gets those uniforms ready. Mars! I wish that just once we could have the odds on our side!”
“We got the odds, Tom,” Blue assured his leader, grinning. “We got you.” He lightly punched Cole on the arm and moved into a group of young men who were still entranced by the distant performance of the guns of Terra 10. “Hey!” he cried urgently. “Tom’s going to steal Terra 10! We need some Boob bait.”
Seconds later, the exciting news had flashed throughout the small commune of Reevers. Tom Cole was going to steal Terra 10! And the first frame of another impossible dream was falling into focus.
CHAPTER THREE
The Break-out
Tom Cole, or Tom Coleman/Seville as he was identified on official records, wa
s a born revolutionary. Just as Zach Whaleman had been genetically engineered for his life role as a corporation gunner, Tom Cole’s GPC code had been directed to a specific function—he was to have become a corporate manager or, at least, a government technician. Something in Tom’s genetic structure had stubbornly resisted this programmed tampering, however, and shortly after his birth it was already evident that the infant was doomed to classification within that small percentage of GPC failures. He was an evolutionary revert, or “reever,” with anomalies of both mind and body.
Many generations earlier, the human race had become optimized and homogenized into a “truly democratic” society wherein all members were equal in terms of size, color, intelligence, and emotional stability. Homan was the identifying term for these optimated humans who comprised roughly ninety-five percent of the Solan population, a pygmy race of ninety-pound physical weaklings, 4.5 feet tall, characteristically thin, tan-skinned, brown-haired, and brown-eyed. Only Defense Command candidates and a few additional rigorous-vocation groups escaped the optimization program. Homans generally regarded these exceptions as physical freaks—which indeed they were, in a world of 95% conformity—and as just a cut above the pathetic Reevers. The Reevers were themselves commonly regarded as mental incompetents and emotional misfits who could not be entrusted with the rights and privileges of a free society.
Tom Cole was a prime example of this latter contention. Conceived in a genetic revolt and born to a world long rid of “id” syndromes, it must have been, inevitable that the fierce and independent nature of this “evolutionary throwback” would involve him in constant conflict with his social environment. He had been systematically moved from one Terran commune to another, finally reaching rock bottom in the tiny “maximum-dependency” village at AgSta 23, near the North American strip city of Yorkport.
AS-23 was a fruit station, producing nearly 10% of Solana’s apples and pears. The sole responsibility of the Reevers there lay in the minimal human requirements of orchard maintenance. A small contingent of Homans, appropriately housed in a different sector of the orchards, saw to the technical requirements of harvesting, processing, packing, and shipping the bountiful yield at the station.
The Reevers were free to roam the orchards at will. They established their own working routines, and generally governed themselves. There were no fences and no human guards, but forbidden areas were patrolled by automated sentinels which the Reevers called “Boob” and which dealt out severe punishment to Reever trespassers.
Tom Cole’s mind had been busy with the Boob problem on that evening of the Terra 10 exercises as he led his thirty-man party into the heart of AS-23, the distribution center. The ground complex of food processing and storage buildings occupied a grudging five acres of precious terran soil and rose 100 feet to a pentagonal arrangement of loading docks. The fully automated 24-hour facility had no requirement for artificial lighting, so there was none. The raiders crowded into the open at the edge of the clearing and stared mutely at the cluster of buildings silhouetted against the night sky. The dark bulk of an Ag Train of twenty linked vans hovered at the pentagon as loading automats busily transferred bulk fruits into the commodious holds.
Tom Cole balanced his seven-foot, 300-pound frame on the balls of his feet, stretched to his toes, sighed, and squeezed his forehead in a nervous gesture. “They’re loading the Mercury supplier,” he observed.
“Wonder where Boob is?” Blue commented, licking his lips.
“At the ground docks, no doubt,” Cole replied. “He’s always over there when the Board shuttle is looting the goodies.”
He craned about to inspect his party. Ten, including Cole and Hedge, wore the blue and black uniforms of the Defense Command. The other twenty, the diversion teams were clad only in crotchguards and footskeins.
Blue was in charge of the diversion teams. He said, “Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out for sure. I’ll send—”
“No, wait!” Cole interrupted. “We’ll leave you here. Give us time to get over there opposite the ground docks, then start your play. Once you’re sure you have Boob’s attention, keep it for a full minute. Better make it a minute and a half, if that’s not stretching it too far. By that time, Team One will be snugly buttoned up inside the shuttle and you can break off. Tell your boys to be quick’n nimble and to play that fifty-yard line for all they’re worth.”
Blue nodded his understanding. “Shouldn’t I send a few baiters over with you, just in case?”
“In case, what?”
“In case it takes him less’n a minute to get us all.”
“In that case, buddy, just forget it,” Cole told his lieutenant. “If you can’t hold him, we can just forget the whole thing and go back to pruning apple trees the rest of our lives. You got to hold him, Blue.”
“Okay,” the squat little Reever replied. “We’ll hold.”
“Play it right, and there’s no need for any of you getting hit. Just watch that fifty-yard line.” Blue sniffed. “That line can disappear mighty quick, Tom, when that beetle’s riled.”
“You just got to be quicker,” Cole replied gruffly. He slapped Blue lightly on the cheek and mussed his hair, then grinned and waved Team One into the moonlit clearing. “Keep close to the trees, now,” he commanded in a loud whisper. “And remember, Boob’s got ears, too, so keep it quiet. Hedge, what’re you doing? Keep ’em in a single file, eh.”
The six-footer had been peering intently toward the shadows of the buildings, less than a hundred yards distant. “When Boob gets you once, you don’t forget so easy,” he said, smiling ruefully. “My head hurts just thinking about it.”
“Mine, too,” Blue murmured, following along with his departing comrades for a few yards. “All I can say is—make it worth while, eh? When we get those guns, the first thing I’m going to do is blast me a couple of Boobs.”
Tom Cole’s teeth gleamed momentarily as he turned back for a farewell wave, then he and the Boarders were out of sight in the shadows. Blue transferred his attention to the ominous hulk of activity directly ahead. Only the mechanical whirrings of the automats broke the night stillness.
Blue hunched his powerful shoulders in an involuntary shiver and began silently counting off the seconds. His baiters were taking up their practiced positions and getting ready for the rush. Blue was proud of them—plenty proud. Every one of them had been zingoed at least once by Boob—they all knew what awaited them out there. But they were men—men—not machines. Not homogenes. Not human caricatures. Men. And they were going out there to do a man’s job.
Blue had set the offense as five four-man teams. One team would get out there and attract Boob’s attention. That was the most dangerous phase because you never knew where the monster would strike from. Sometimes the first hint of his presence came with that ultrasonic wave blasting into the brain and jerking you around like a rag doll. After that, you didn’t know much of anything, for days sometimes, except for the unrelenting pain and nausea.
A hundred and twenty seconds had passed since he began the count. Blue moved quietly out to the kickoff team and said, “Okay, get ready.”
Fear gazed back at him from all four faces—but determination, also.
“We’re ready,” muttered a pink-cheeked youth.
Blue held his breath for a moment, his eyes straining into the shadows of the buildings, then commanded, “Go!”
Two of the baiters leapt off into a running penetration of the forbidden area, splitting off into a Y several yards out and pursuing diverging courses. As soon as the first two reached the midway point, the other two streaked out in an identical pattern. Blue held his arm high, waiting the proper moment to signal the next team’s jump-off.
At the other side of the complex, Tom Cole and the boarding team waited in tense alertness some seventy yards clear of the ground level docks.
The Board Island commissary shuttle, a rather smallish van-type dense-atmosphere craft, occupied a loading stall in the packaged
foods area. Directly opposite the shuttle stood the dreaded and ever-alert autosentinel, Boob.
Like a huge bug, complete with twitching antennae and unblinking eyes, it stood fifteen feet high on six deceptively fragile looking legs. The roundish body measured ten by fifteen feet and bristled with six ultrasonic guns which could fire simultaneously at six different targets. Boob fired first and never asked questions, attacking one and all of the human race who ventured into the fifty-yard range of his gun-sensors. Somehow, though, and Tom Cole was still trying to understand it, only Reevers were affected by those ultrasonic blasts from the Boob guns. The Homan technicians could walk calmly about their duties in a veritable flood of Boob waves, while even a near-miss was enough to scramble a Reever’s brains for hours.
Hedge whispered, “Tom, I don’t think—” then stopped talking abruptly, frozen by a sudden movement of the autosentinel.
“Huh, he’s smelling the bait,” Cole grunted.
The sentry’s antennae had begun to lash about, the eyes glowing with a reddish light, and it was shifting in a sideways movement. Cole smiled grimly as the distant cries of “Hey, Boob!” floated across the clearing. The autosentinel moved with incredible speed then, the six legs meshing into furious motion as the ugly machine disappeared into the darkness between the buildings.
“That’s it—let’s go!” Cole commanded in a harsh whisper. He flung himself into the open and sprinted for the commissary van, his long legs rapidly closing the gap and the others jumping off at ten yard intervals and single-filing behind him in a disciplined rush toward dignity, and freedom, and manhood.
Blue heard his kickoff men sounding the “Hey, Boob!” baiting cry and immediately brought his arm down in a swift chop to send the stunting team into no-man’s-land. They looped off in a loose X-formation, echoing the baiting cry as they ran. A scream came from the darkness in the kickoff team’s area, and Blue knew then that contact had been established.
Don Pendleton's Science Fiction Collection, 3 Books Box Set, (The Guns of Terra 10; The Godmakers; The Olympians) Page 2
