by Zach Hughes
At first, the plan seemed to be designed to allow young Texicans a holiday from the fleet. A growing group of men began to take liberty from the battle group commanded by Wal, assemble on the empty sands of the big sandy country and do what young Texicans had been doing for generations, ride airorses. This in itself did nothing to arouse the suspicion of the high brass, who were too involved in the speculation regarding just when the Empire would choose to strike to notice that the airorses riding on the desert weren't of the usual sort. Those who took note of the weekly gatherings of the young in the desert grinned, remembering when they, too, were young and life seemed to be lent a rosy color merely by the act of mounting an airors. Nor did the presence of repair vans from the Blink Space Works arouse any undue interest. Kids were always tinkering with their mechanical steeds and now that they were all in the services, drawing a man's pay in good Texas credits, they had the money to waste on new doodads for their airorses.
Lex and his co-conspirators took some pains to hide the extensive alteration sheds which were built in the shadows of the dunes and camouflaged with desert growth.
They assembled in groups of hundreds at a time, one hundred on one day, a hundred on the next, as the program accelerated and then there was some grumpy grumbling from the brass, because it seemed that certain battle group commanders were too lenient in allowing their men planet leave. There were ships of the line on duty with a skeleton crew. Only the continued inactivity of the Empire fleet saved some high officers from be called on the carpet.
When two thousand young Texicans left their posts on the fleet ships at the same time, grouped in the desert and began to perform a ballet of precision flying, Murichon Burns was called into President Resall's office to explain why so many fleeters were off duty at once. By then it was too late. Murichon took an official arc into the sands to find deserted sheds, traces of activity which demanded some explanation, and several airorses with alterations which sent a cold chill of fear through his heart before his anger rose up and sent him hurtling toward the station of Arden Wal's battle group in a new destroyer to find that the ships were, true, on station, but that on each ship there were just enough men to keep the machinery running.
Two thousand of Texas' finest, ranging in age from fifteen to the early twenties, were in space. And they were in space on airorses. When the news broke, the planet held its breath.
In council, the old men of Texas looked to Murichon, for it had become known, after a hasty investigation, that his son was the ringleader.
"It is well known that the range of an airors is limited by its life support system," said Belle Resall, to open the discussion. "What do they hope to accomplish by killing themselves?"
That was the way Murichon had felt when he first realized that Lex and his alien friends were leading a strike force of airorses into deep space, but then he'd prowled the deserted sheds in the desert and found the converted airorses. He had one wheeled into the council room.
The vehicle was recognizable as a standard Blink-built airors but certain things had been done. The dome had been enlarged and armored to withstand the most deadly space radiations. The air regeneration unit was beefed up. Murichon opened the dome and pointed out features, space to store a considerable ration of dehydrated food, large tanks for water.
"As you can see," Murichon said, "the boys have not been idly playing tag out there in the sands. As this model indicates, they've successfully extended the range of an airors. We estimate that by living on short rations they can take one of the altered models all the way to mother Earth, if that's what they have in mind."
"And weapons?" asked a grizzled Ranger official.
"None," Murichon said.
"None?" asked Belle Resall. "Then why?"
"Unless you consider this pod, on the left underside, a weapon," Murichon said. "We've tried to figure out why they installed it and the best we can guess is that it was built to carry an explosive charge in the range of fifty pounds of expand." He looked at Belle, who was asking a question with her eyebrows.
"Expand is a charge used by miners," he explained. "Fifty pounds of it would take out about half of Dallas City. What it would do to, say, an Empire Middle guard cruiser can be imagined."
Murichon detached the pod and held it in both hands. He showed it to the group, wordless.
"All right," Belle said. "They've extended the range of the airors by adding to the life support system. If I understand all I know about power, the blink generator in an airors is equal to that of a small destroyer. That means they can go almost anywhere they want to go in the galaxy. They've added a detachable pod to carry an explosive charge. Does this mean they're going to attack Empire on airorses, head on?"
"I think not," said ex-President Andy Gar, in civilian clothing. "I know that boy. I've had a few talks with his friends, that Empire fleeter Wal, the others. They're not suicidal."
"We have this to consider," said old man Blink, Billy Bob's father, who had narrowly escaped being President. "The alterations were evidently done under the direction of my boy, Billy Bob. He's got a head on him." The old man smiled proudly. He was allowed his moment, for Blinks were and had always been one of the prime raw materials of Texican greatness. "He's been coming down to the plant of late studying the captured Empire gear we're testing. He was especially interested in the range and sensitivity of Empire detection equipment. I think they're planning to do something in regard to that fleet which is building up out there and I think it's based on the sensitivity of the detection instruments. Empire has been fighting a stagnant war for a few hundred years, fighting it by a formula. They're geared to detect the ships of the Cassiopeian fleet. The instruments are good, don't doubt that, but they're calibrated to size. They'll spot a Cassiopeian Vandy at incredible distances, but when the size falls much below Vandy volume—"
"I think I see," Belle said. "Then an airors, even one of these beefed-up models, would be too small to make much of an impression on Empire detection instruments."
"Exactly," Murichon said. "I think they're going to try to sneak in past the scouts and plant charges on Empire ships."
"Damned fools," Belle said quietly, not angry. She felt a tightening in her chest, pure fear for two thousand Texas boys out there in deep space on a fool's errand. And she visualized the national period of mourning when the casualty reports were delivered back by a few survivors.
Actually, the plan was more complicated than the council had guessed.
While the council deliberated and mourned in advance, "Professor Emily Lancing was piloting an arc from San Ann to Dallas City, the homer tuned to the new house built outside the city on Lexington Burns's land. She felt a bit of reluctance about her errand, but since she'd been in on the plan from the first she felt she had a duty to carry out Lex's request. She had thought about having her husband make the trip, but she'd promised and she felt, after thinking it over, that the news would be more endurable coming from a sympathetic woman.
And Riddent Burns was a lot of woman, woman at her finest, big, strong, fat in the belly with life, a new Texican forming in there, causing her trim waist to expand and grow. She was one of those fortunate women to whom pregnancy is a blessing, smoothing any hint of roughness from her skin, adding a color to her face, bringing out that almost supernatural beauty which some women possess when they are building life within their bodies.
It was the nature of their relationship that there were no secrets, so she knew Emily Lancing and knew of the tender scene which had once occurred between Emily and her husband. Being a sensible girl, she recognized love when she felt it being lavished on her, and she knew that Lex loved her above all women and, rather than feeling resentment toward the older woman, she felt a sense of warmness, for Emily had done a nice thing for her husband at a difficult time. Therefore, when she answered the door and faced Emily Lancing, she smiled with genuine pleasure and led the lady into the fine, huge main room and plied her with good things, hiding her curiosity about th
e unexpected visit. However, her curiosity was not to be strained, for Emily, with a cup of good Earth-type coffee on her knee, looked at her, smiled uncertainly and said, "I came because I have something to tell you."
"About Lex," Riddent said. "I thought so. He's doing something dangerous, isn't he?"
"Yes," Emily said, admiring Riddent's control. "You mustn't be angry with him. He didn't want to worry you until, as he said, it was time to worry. He asked me to tell you after he was gone."
"Where?" Riddent asked, her heart beating a bit burpily, but calm on the exterior.
"Into Empire," Emily said.
"He'll come back," Riddent said, smiling.
"Of course."
"I don't think I want to know any more," Riddent said. "I think I'd rather not know because if I know then I'll worry more, I think. As it is, I will just pretend that he's on some simple spying mission or something—"
"Everything possible has been done to make it a successful mission," Emily said. "There is danger, of course, but if advance planning can eliminate danger, then it has been done. Lex is a brave and fine man, girl."
"Yes," Riddent said. "More coffee?"
"Thank you, no." She rose. "If you feel, later, that you'd like to talk about it, please call."
"Yes," Riddent said. She had known. He had been strangely possessive of her the previous evening, before leaving in the dead of night, holding her, taking her with great passion while being careful of the baby. And there had been all of those trips into the desert. At first she'd been angry, thinking that he was leaving her merely to play games with his comrades, but then, noting his seriousness, she'd come to believe that something special was happening.
"I won't worry," she said, walking toward the door with Emily, "but when can I stop worrying?"
Emily smiled. "Three weeks from this morning."
Three weeks. Three eternal weeks. During the third week the baby kicked for the first time, a strong, male kick which caught her by surprise and made her gasp, then laugh happily. She patted her distended stomach and said, "Easy there, you little beggar." And then she cried, for she wanted, so much, for Lex to be there, to place his big, rough hand on her skin and feel his son beginning those life-preliminary exercises.
Emily Lancing had been working on the micro-electronic techniques revealed by the two instruments which had come to Texas inside the skulls of Lex and Arden Wal. Texican spies had been searching for more indications of a hidden Empire technology and had come up with nothing. The mind monitors were, it seemed, the most closely guarded secret in Empire. After a few weeks the instruments themselves held no more secrets, could be duplicated easily on Texas, had there been a need. Thus, when Lex had come to her some weeks past, the building of a monitor to monitor she monitors was a simple thing and with some little burning of midnight oil a way had been found to make the monitors operative through the simple connection of electrodes to shaved spots outside the skull, rather than inside the bone structure. Thus, when the two-thousand-man fleet of converted airorses left Texas, one man in a hundred wore, or would wear at the proper time, Empire monitors. They were all of the local broadcast type found inside Wall's head, the type which, it was predicted, were to be found inside the heads of all top commanders in the Empire fleet. That was an example of the advance planning about which he'd hinted to Riddent.
As she flew home to San Ann to join her husband, who was standing by watching the progress of the airors fleet by reading the Empire monitors, which, in Addition to the signals detectable by Empire on a local basis, broadcast a beam receivable only on Texas, she felt a moment of doubt. Had she participated in a plan which would result in the death of hundreds of young men? She shook her head. No. She had confidence in them, those young men. There was a strange aura of strength about Lex Burns. Moreover, she believed in their mission. She was one of a pessimistic few, among whom Arden Wal was a standout, who felt that in a face-to-face battle Texas was destined to lose. She believed in the mission. Had she been given the opportunity, she would have been out there with them. Into the periphery.
She could read their position on the larger star charts. Their signal was loud and clear and moving in leaps as they blinked deeper and deeper. Toward far Centaurus, hidden now and then as fields of force blanked the signal, emerging ever deeper into Empire space.
It was decided, in the second week, to explain to worried friends and relatives why two thousand Texicans, mostly young, were missing from their regular stations. The Empire fleet was still running practice missions over in the galaxy, ever building, and the population was bored with reports which said that the situation was still tense, critical, but showed no change. The nation, Belle Resall decided, needed some positive news for a change.
"We can now announce," she said on a planetwide trid broadcast, "that steps are being taken to alleviate the tense situation in which we find ourselves. Numbers of our young men are in secret training to strike a blow to the very heart of our enemy."
The announcement was brief and cryptic. There was a Texican spy on Earth itself. There could, therefore, be Empire spies on Texas, or in near space. But saying that the blow would be struck at the heart of Empire would throw the enemy off guard, had he detected the blink signals of the airors fleet which, at that time, was boring deeper into the galaxy. Saying that the men were in training would make the enemy think that the blow would be long in coming, rather than imminent, as it was.
A planet buzzed with speculation. Hearts swelled with pride as families and friends realized that old so-and-so's unexplained absence meant that he was a part of the strike force.
Meanwhile, a mobilized planet put aside the things of peace and prepared for the ultimate battle. All production capacity was geared for war. Every able-bodied man was in uniform. Women manned the factories. Always a thinly populated, community-conscious world, the planet was drawn into even closer empathy among its people. There was a spirit of shared danger. People smiled and spoke on the streets. Teenage girls manned detection stations. Neighbor helped neighbor. Some luxury items fell into short supply as the resources were spent in the building of more and more ships of the line. But there was a plenty of food as city dwellers turned out en masse to harvest crops. The birthrate began to rise as thousands of baby male Texicans were born, Belle Resall's horde, they were called.
Now and then, as he blinked, cramped, living on wakers, eyes feeling as if they were full of desert sand, Lex thought of one future edition of himself, an unborn member of Belle's horde, his son. And he thought of his wife and of Texas and, in brief periods of sleep, alone in the small dome of hisZelda , his muscles cramped and already being shaped by the long period of non-movement, he dreamed.
He didn't like his dreams. He told himself that they were the result of his physical discomfort, for his dreams had always been pleasant ones.
But now they were anything but pleasant. One recurring nightmare never failed to break through the fatigue and bring him awake, grunting, moaning. He saw a beloved, familiar figure, clothing soiled and torn, a vile red stain covering all» limbs bent unnaturally. He saw blood. And he saw Riddent. Riddent dead. His urge was to turn around, forget the mission, but he found a strength which pushed him on and on.
Chapter Nine
The total mass of two thousand airorses would not equal that of one Empire Middleguard. Spread over a volume of space limited only by the necessity to keep in voice contact the airors fleet became mere motes in nothingness, detectable only by the signals sent ahead by the power of the blink generator. These could have been easily detected by any Empire ship, were, in fact, detected numerous times by the Emperor's patrol ships. However, the signals were being generated, when first detected, deep within Empire space and investigation proved space to be empty.
The very strength of the blink signals led to a result predicted by Arden Wal. At first the power signal of simultaneous blinks by two thousand generators raised alarms. Then, reports filed properly, the Empire, involved as it was
in assembling the largest fleet ever to be massed, while keeping a suitable force opposing the traditional enemy, discounted the signals as an unexplained phenomenon in the warp of space and assigned half a dozen scientists to investigate and advance a theory. Without leaving the comfort of the various laboratories in which they worked, the scientists postulated a minute bubble in the fabric of space and time, a moving bubble with random patterns zigzagging from the periphery into more dense portions of the galaxy in the general direction of Centaurus. Since the bubble avoided mass, skirting stars and black holes and planets, it was concluded that it would, in time, wear itself out without doing any damage. Had not a dozen investigations been made? Had not the finest detection instruments found nothingness in the area of the signals? The Emperor's fleet was equipped with the finest in instruments. Instruments don't lie. The space-time bubble theory was officially accepted at fleet headquarters and the attentions of the brass were returned, once more, toward the continuing buildup of force, a force which would, once and for all, establish the Emperor's power and teach those upstart Texicans a lesson.
