by Hank Davis
“Can’t tell, sir.”
“We’d better assume that they did. Notify all gunnery officers to switch their batteries over to central control. If we come in fast and high and hit them with simultaneous fleet concentration, we can vaporize the whole base before they can take a crack at us.”
“I’ll send the order out at once, sir,” said the executive officer.
The fleet pulled into tight formation and headed toward the Imperial base. They were halfway there when the fleet gunnery officer entered the control room and said apologetically to Commander Krogson, “Excuse me, sir, but I’d like to suggest a trial run. Fleet concentration is a tricky thing, and if something went haywire—we’d be sitting ducks for the ground batteries.”
“Good idea,” said Krogson thoughtfully. “There’s too much at stake to have anything to go wrong. Select an equivalent target, and we’ll make a pass.”
The fleet was now passing over a towering mountain chain.
“How about that bald spot down there?” said the Exec, pointing to a rocky expanse that jutted out from the side of one of the towering peaks.
“Good enough,” said Krogson.
“All ships on central control!” reported the gunnery officer.
“On target!” repeated the tech on the tracking screen. “One. Two. Three. Four—”
Kurt stood by the front observation port watching the ground far below sweep by. He had been listening intently, but what had been said didn’t make sense. There had been something about batteries—the term was alien to him—and something about the garrison. He decided to ask the commander what it was all about, but the intentness with which Krogson was watching the tracking screen deterred him. Instead he gazed moodily down at the mountains below him.
“Five. Six. Seven. Ready. FIRE!”
A savage shudder ran through the great ship as her ground-pointed batteries blasted in unison. Seconds went by and then suddenly the rocky expanse on the shoulder of the mountain directly below twinkled as blinding flashes of actinic light danced across it. Then as Kurt watched, great masses of rock and earth moved slowly skyward from the center of the spurting nests of tangled flame. Still slowly, as if buoyed up by the thin mountain air, the debris began to fall back again until it was lost from sight in quick rising mushrooms of jet-black smoke. Kurt turned and looked back toward Commander Krogson. Batteries must be the things that had torn the mountains below apart. And garrison—there was only one garrison!
“I ordered fleet fire,” barked Krogson. “This ship was the only one that cut loose. What happened?”
“Just a second, sir,” said the executive officer. “I’ll try and find out.” He was busy for a minute on the intercom system. “The other ships were ready, sir,” he reported finally. “Their guns were all switched over to our control, but no impulse came through. Central fire control must be on the blink!” He gestured toward a complex bank of equipment that occupied one entire corner of the control room.
Commander Krogson said a few appropriate words. When he reached the point where he was beginning to repeat himself, he paused and stood in frozen silence for a good thirty seconds.
“Would you mind getting a fire control tech in here to fix that obscenity bank?” he asked in a voice that put everyone’s teeth on edge.
The other seemed to have something to say, but he was having trouble getting it out.
“Well?” said Krogson.
“Prime Base grabbed our last one two weeks ago. There isn’t another left with the fleet.”
“Doesn’t look like much to me,” said Kurt as he strolled over to examine the bank of equipment.
“Get away from there!” roared the commander. “We’ve got enough trouble without you making things worse.”
Kurt ignored him and began to open inspection ports.
“Guard!” yelled Krogson. “Throw that man out of here!”
Ozaki interrupted timidly. “Beg pardon, commander, but he can fix it if anybody can.”
Krogson whirled on the flight officer. “How do you know?”
Ozaki caught himself just in time. If he talked too much, he was likely to lose the scout that Kurt had fixed for him.
“Because he . . . eh . . . talks like a tech,” he concluded lamely.
Krogson looked at Kurt dubiously. “I guess there’s no harm in giving it a trial,” he said finally. “Give him a set of tools and turn him loose. Maybe for once a miracle will happen.”
“First,” said Kurt, “I’ll need the wiring diagrams for this thing.”
“Get them!” barked the commander and an orderly scuttled out of the control, headed aft.
“Next you’ll have to give me a general idea of what it’s supposed to do,” continued Kurt.
Krogson turned to the gunnery officer. “You’d better handle this.”
When the orderly returned with the circuit diagrams, they were spread out on the plotting table and the two men bent over them.
“Got it!” said Kurt at last and sauntered over to the control bank. Twenty minutes later he sauntered back again.
“She’s all right now,” he said pleasantly.
The gunner officer quickly scanned his testing board. Not a single red trouble light was on. He turned to Commander Krogson in amazement.
“I don’t know how he did it, sir, but the circuits are all clear now.”
Krogson stared at Kurt with a look of new respect in his eyes. “What were you down there, chief maintenance tech?”
Kurt laughed. “Me? I was never chief anything. I spent most of my time on hunting detail.”
The commander digested that in silence for a moment. “Then how did you become so familiar with fire-control gear?”
“Studied it in school like everyone else does. There wasn’t anything much wrong with that thing anyway except a couple of sticking relays.”
“Excuse me, sir,” interrupted the executive officer, “but should we make another trial run?”
“Are you sure the bank is in working order?”
“Positive, sir!”
“Then we’d better make straight for that base. If this boy here is a fair example of what they have down there, their defenses may be too tough for us to crack if we give them a chance to get set up!”
Kurt gave a slight start which he quickly controlled. Then he had guessed right! Slowly and casually he began to sidle toward the semicircular bank of controls that stood before the great tracking screen.
“Where do you think you’re going!” barked Krogson.
Kurt froze. His pulses were pounding within him, but he kept his voice light and casual.
“No place,” he said innocently.
“Get over against the bulkhead and keep out of the way!” snapped the commander. “We’ve got a job of work coming up.”
Kurt injected a note of bewilderment into his voice. “What kind of work?”
Krogson’s voice softened and a look approaching pity came into his eyes. “It’s just as well you don’t know about it until it’s over,” he said gruffly.
“There she is!” sang out the navigator, pointing to a tiny brown projection that jutted up out of the green jungle in the far distance. “We’re about three minutes out, sir. You can take over at any time now.”
The fleet gunnery officer’s fingers moved quickly over the keys that welded the fleet into a single instrument of destruction, keyed and ready to blast a barrage of ravening thunderbolts of molecular disruption down at the defenseless garrison at a single touch on the master fire-control button.
“Whenever you’re ready, sir,” he said deferentially to Krogson as he vacated the controls. A hush fell over the control room as the great tracking screen brightened and showed the compact bundle of white dots that marked the fleet crawling slowly toward the green triangle of the target area.
“Get the prisoner out of here,” said Krogson. “There’s no reason why he should have to watch what’s about to happen.”
The guard that stood beside Kurt
grabbed his arm and shoved him toward the door.
There was a sudden explosion of fists as Kurt erupted into action. In a blur of continuous movement, he streaked toward the gunnery control panel. He was halfway across the control room before the pole-axed guard hit the floor. There was a second of stunned amazement, and then before anyone could move to stop him, he stood beside the controls, one hand poised tensely above the master stud that controlled the combined fire of the fleet.
“Hold it!” he shouted as the moment of paralysis broke and several of the officers started toward him menacingly. “One move, and I’ll blast the whole fleet into scrap!”
They stopped in shocked silence, looking to Commander Krogson for guidance.
“Almost on target, sir,” called the tech on the tracking screen.
Krogson stalked menacingly toward Kurt. “Get away from those controls!” he snarled. “You aren’t going to blow anything to anything. All that you can do is let off a premature blast. If you are trying to alert your base, it’s no use. We can be on a return sweep before they have time to get ready for us.”
Kurt shook his head calmly. “Wouldn’t do you any good,” he said. “Take a look at the gun ports on the other ships. I made a couple of minor changes while I was working on the control bank.”
“Quit bluffing,” said Krogson.
“I’m not bluffing,” said Kurt quietly. “Take a look. It won’t cost you anything.”
“On target!” called the tracking tech.
“Order the fleet to circle for another sweep,” snapped Krogson over his shoulder as he stalked toward the forward observation port. There was something in Kurt’s tone that had impressed him more than he liked to admit. He squinted out toward the nearest ship. Suddenly his face blanched!
“The gunports! They’re closed!”
Kurt gave a whistle of relief. “I had my fingers crossed,” he said pleasantly. “You didn’t give me enough time with the wiring diagrams for me to be sure that cutting out that circuit would do the trick. Now . . . guess what the results would be if I should happen to push down on this stud.”
Krogson had a momentary vision of several hundred shells ramming their sensitive noses against the thick chrome steel of the closed gun ports.
“Don’t bother trying to talk,” said Kurt, noticing the violent contractions of the commander’s Adam’s apple. “You’d better save your breath for my colonel.”
“Who?” demanded Krogson.
“My colonel,” repeated Kurt. “We’d better head back and pick him up. Can you make these ships hang in one place or do they have to keep moving fast to stay up?”
The commander clamped his jaws together sullenly and said nothing.
Kurt made a tentative move toward the firing stud.
“Easy!” yelled the gunnery officer in alarm. “That thing has hair-trigger action!”
“Well?” said Kurt to Krogson.
“We can hover,” grunted the other.
“Then take up a position a little to one side of the plateau.” Kurt brushed the surface of the firing stud with a casual finger. “If you make me push this, I don’t want a lot of scrap iron falling down on the battalion. Somebody might get hurt.”
As the fleet came to rest above the plateau, the call light on the communication panel began to flash again.
“Answer it,” ordered Kurt, “but watch what you say,”
Krogson walked over and snapped on the screen.
“Communications, sir.”
“Well?”
“It’s that message we called you about earlier. We’ve finally got the decoder working—sort of, that is.” His voice faltered and then stopped.
“What does it say?” demanded Krogson impatiently.
“We still don’t know,” admitted the tech miserably. “It’s being decoded all right, but it’s coming out in a North Vegan dialect that nobody down here can understand. I guess there’s still something wrong with the selector. All that we can figure out is that the message has something to do with General Carr and the Lord Protector.”
“Want me to go down and fix it?” interrupted Kurt in an innocent voice.
Krogson whirled toward him, his hamlike hands clenching and unclenching in impotent rage.
“Anything wrong, sir?” asked the technician on the screen.
Kurt raised a significant eyebrow to the commander.
“Of course not,” growled Krogson. “Go find somebody to translate that message and don’t bother me until it’s done.”
A new face appeared on the screen.
“Excuse me for interrupting sir, but translation won’t be necessary. We just got a flash from Detection that they’ve spotted the ship that sent it. It’s a small scout heading in on emergency drive. She should be here in a matter of minutes.”
Krogson flipped off the screen impatiently. “Whatever it is, it’s sure to be more trouble,” he said to nobody in particular. Suddenly he became aware that the fleet was no longer in motion. “Well,” he said sourly to Kurt, “we’re here. What now?”
“Send a ship down to the garrison and bring Colonel Harris back up here so that you and he can work this thing out between you. Tell him that Dixon is up here and has everything under control.”
Krogson turned to the executive officer. “All right,” he said, “do what he says.” The other saluted and started toward the door.
“Just a second,” said Kurt. “If you have any idea of telling the boys outside to cut the transmission leads from fire control, I wouldn’t advise it. It’s a rather lengthy process, and the minute a trouble light blinks on that board, up we go! Now on your way!”
XIV
Lieutenant Colonel Blick, acting commander of the 427th Light Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial Space Marines, stood at his office window and scowled down upon the whole civilized world, all twenty-six square kilometers of it. It had been a hard day. Three separate delegations of mothers had descended upon him demanding that he reopen the Tech Schools for the sake of their sanity. The recruits had been roaming the company streets in bands composed of equal numbers of small boys and large dogs creating havoc wherever they went. He tried to cheer himself up by thinking of his forthcoming triumph when he in the guise of the Inspector General would float magnificently down from the skies and once and for all put the seal of final authority upon the new order. The only trouble was that he was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that maybe that new order wasn’t all that he had planned it to be. As he thought of his own six banshees screaming through quarters, his suspicion deepened almost to certainty.
He wandered back to his desk and slumped behind it gloomily. He couldn’t backwater now, his pride was at stake. He glanced at the water clock on his desk, and then rose reluctantly and started toward the door. It was time to get into battle armor and get ready for the inspection.
As he reached the door, there was a sudden slap of running sandals down the hall. A second later, Major Kane burst into the office, his face white and terrified.
“Colonel,” he gasped, “the I.G.’s here!”
“Nonsense,” said Blick. “I’m the I.G. now!”
“Oh yeah?” whimpered Kane. “Go look out the window. He’s here, and he’s brought the whole Imperial fleet with him!”
Blick dashed to the window and looked up. High above, so high that he could see them only as silver specks, hung hundreds of ships.
“Headquarters does exist!” he gasped. He stood stunned. What to do . . . what to do . . . what to do—The question swirled around in his brain until he was dizzy. He looked to Kane for advice, but the other was as bewildered as he was. “Don’t stand there, man,” he stormed. “Do something!”
“Yes, sir,” said Kane. “What?”
Blick thought for a long, silent moment. The answer was obvious, but there was a short, fierce inner struggle before he could bring himself to accept it.
“Get Colonel Harris up here at once. He’ll know what we should do.”
A stubborn look came across Kane’s face. “We’re running things now,” he said angrily.
Blick’s face hardened and he let out a roar that shook the walls. “Listen, you pup, when you get an order, you follow it. Now get!”
Forty seconds later, Colonel Harris stormed into the office. “What kind of a mess have you got us into this time?” he demanded.
“Look up there, sir,” said Blick leading him to the window.
Colonel Harris snapped back into command as if he’d never left it.
“Major Kane!” he shouted.
Kane popped into the office like a frightened rabbit.
“Evacuate the garrison at once! I want everyone off the plateau and into the jungle immediately. Get litters for the sick and the veterans who can’t walk and take them to the hunting camps. Start the rest moving north as soon as you can.”
“Really, sir,” protested Kane, looking to Blick for a cue.
“You heard the colonel,” barked Blick. “On your way!” Kane bolted.
Colonel Harris turned to Blick and said in a frosty voice: “I appreciate your help, Colonel, but I feel perfectly competent to enforce my own orders.”
“Sorry, sir,” said the other meekly. “It won’t happen again.”
Harris smiled. “O.K., Jimmie,” he said, “let’s forget it. We’ve got work to do!”
XV
It seemed to Kurt as if time was standing still. His nerves were screwed up to the breaking point and although he maintained an air of outward composure for the benefit of those in the control room of the flagship, it took all his will power to keep the hand that was resting over the firing stud from quivering. One slip and they’d be on him. Actually it was only a matter of minutes between the time the scout was dispatched to the garrison below and the time it returned, but to him it seemed as if hours had passed before the familiar form of his commanding officer strode briskly into the control room.
Colonel Harris came to a halt just inside the door and swept the room with a keen penetrating gaze.
“What’s up, son?” he asked Kurt.
“I’m not quite sure. All that I know is that they’re here to blast the garrison. As long as I’ve got control of this,” he indicated the firing stud, “I’m top dog, but you’d better work something out in a hurry.”
