Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  I quickly punched up a new pattern based on the little material I had in the calculator. At least I'd caught the roll. I punched that up, hurriedly, slipped it into the IBM, guessed that his next probability was a pass, took a chance on that and punched it in.

  I was wrong there. He didn't take his opportunity for a front-on pass. He was either newly out of their academy or insultingly confident. My lips felt tight as I canceled the frontal pass card, punched up two more to take its place.

  The base supervisor cut in on the phone. "It looks like old Dmitri himself, Jerry, and he's flying one of the new K-12a models. Go get him, boy!"

  I felt like snapping back. He knew better than to break in on me at a time like this. I opened my mouth, then shut it again. Did he say K-12a? Did he say K-12a?

  I squinted at the visor screen. The high tail, the canopy, the oddly shaped wing tanks.

  I'd gone off on the identification!

  I slapped another evasion pattern into the controls, a standard set, I had no time to punch up an improvisation. But he was on me like a wasp. I rejected it, threw in another set. Reject. Another!

  Even as I worked, I kicked the release on my own calculator, dumped it all, selected like a flash an Ivar K-12a card, and what other estimations I could make while my mind was busy with the full-time job of evasion.

  My hands were still making the motions, my fingers were flicking here, there, my feet touching here, there. But my heart wasn't in it.

  He already had such an advantage that it was all I could do to keep him in my visor screen. He was to the left, to the right. I got him for a full quarter-second in the wires, but the auto gunner was too far behind, much too far.

  His own guns flicked red.

  I punched half a dozen buttons, slapped levers, tried to scoot for home.

  To the left of my cubicle two lights went yellowish and at the same time my visor screen went dead. I was blind.

  I sank back in my chair, helpless.

  * * * * *

  The speed indicator wavered, went slowly, deliberately to zero; the altimeter died; the fuel gauge. Finally, even the dozen or so trouble-indicators here, there, everywhere about the craft. Fifteen million dollars worth of warcraft was being shot into wreckage.

  I sat there for a long, long minute and took it.

  Then I got to my feet and wearily opened the door of my cubicle. Sergeant Walters and the rest of the maintenance crew were standing there. They could read in my face what had happened.

  The sergeant began, "Captain, I ..."

  I grunted at him. "Never mind, Sergeant. It had nothing to do with the ship's condition." I turned to head for the operations office.

  Bill Dickson strolled over from the direction of his own cubicle. "Somebody said you just had a scramble with old Dmitri himself."

  "I don't know," I said. "I don't know if it was him or not. Maybe some of you guys can tell a man's flying but I can't."

  He grinned at me. "Shot you down, eh?"

  I didn't answer.

  He said, "What happened?"

  "I thought it was an Ivar K-12, and I put that card in my calculator. Turned out it was one of those new models, K-12a. That was enough, of course."

  Bill grinned at me again. "That's two this week. That flak got you near that bridge and now you get ..."

  "Shut up," I told him.

  He counted up on his fingers elaborately. "The way I figure it, you lose one more ship and you're an enemy ace."

  He was irrepressible. "Damn it," I said, "will you cut it out! I've got enough to worry about without you working me over. This means I'll have to spend another half an hour in operations going over the fight. And that means I'll be late for dinner again. And you know Molly."

  Bill sobered. "Gee," he said, "I'm sorry. War is hell, isn't it?"

  * * *

  Contents

  EXPEDITER

  By Mack Reynolds

  His assignment was to get things done; he definitely did so. Not quite the things intended, perhaps, but definitely done.

  The knock at the door came in the middle of the night, as Josip Pekic had always thought it would. He had been but four years of age when the knock had come that first time and the three large men had given his father a matter of only minutes to dress and accompany them. He could barely remember his father.

  The days of the police state were over, so they told you. The cult of the personality was a thing of the past. The long series of five-year plans and seven-year plans were over and all the goals had been achieved. The new constitution guaranteed personal liberties. No longer were you subject to police brutality at the merest whim. So they told you.

  But fears die hard, particularly when they are largely of the subconscious. And he had always, deep within, expected the knock.

  He was not mistaken. The rap came again, abrupt, impatient. Josip Pekic allowed himself but one chill of apprehension, then rolled from his bed, squared slightly stooped shoulders, and made his way to the door. He flicked on the light and opened up, even as the burly, empty faced zombi there was preparing to pound still again.

  There were two of them, not three as he had always dreamed. As three had come for his father, more than two decades before.

  His father had been a rightist deviationist, so the papers had said, a follower of one of whom Josip had never heard in any other context other than his father's trial and later execution. But he had not cracked under whatever pressures had been exerted upon him, and of that his son was proud.

  He had not cracked, and in later years, when the cult of personality was a thing of the past, his name had been cleared and returned to the history books. And now it was an honor, rather than a disgrace, to be the son of Ljubo Pekic, who had posthumously been awarded the title Hero of the People's Democratic Dictatorship.

  But though his father was now a hero, Josip still expected that knock. However, he was rather bewildered at the timing, having no idea of why he was to be under arrest.

  The first of the zombi twins said expressionlessly, "Comrade Josip Pekic?"

  If tremor there was in his voice, it was negligible. He was the son of Ljubo Pekic. He said, "That is correct. Uh ... to what do I owe this intrusion upon my privacy?" That last in the way of bravado.

  The other ignored the question. "Get dressed and come with us, Comrade," he said flatly.

  At least they still called him comrade. That was some indication, he hoped, that the charges might not be too serious.

  He chose his dark suit. Older than the brown one, but in it he felt he presented a more self-possessed demeanor. He could use the quality. Five foot seven, slightly underweight and with an air of unhappy self-deprecation, Josip Pekic's personality didn't exactly dominate in a group. He chose a conservative tie and a white shirt, although he knew that currently some frowned upon white shirts as a bourgeois affectation. It was all the thing, these days, to look proletarian, whatever that meant.

  The zombis stood, watching him emptily as he dressed. He wondered what they would have said had he asked them to wait in the hallway until he was finished. Probably nothing. They hadn't bothered to answer when he asked what the charge against him was.

  He put his basic papers, his identity card, his student cards, his work record and all the rest in an inner pocket, and faced them. "I am ready," he said as evenly as he could make it come.

  They turned and led the way down to the street and to the black limousine there. And in it was the third one, sitting in the front seat, as empty of face as the other two. He hadn't bothered to turn off the vehicle's cushion jets and allow it to settle to the street. He had known how very quickly his colleagues would reappear with their prisoner.

  Josip Pekic sat in the back between the two, wondering just where he was being taken, and, above all, why. For the life of him he couldn't think of what the charge might be. True enough, he read the usual number of proscribed books, but no more than was common among other intellectuals, among the students and the country's avant
garde, if such you could call it. He had attended the usual parties and informal debates in the coffee shops where the more courageous attacked this facet or that of the People's Dictatorship. But he belonged to no active organizations which opposed the State, nor did his tendencies attract him in that direction. Politics were not his interest.

  At this time of the night, there was little traffic on the streets of Zagurest, and few parked vehicles. Most of those which had been rented for the day had been returned to the car-pool garages. It was the one advantage Josip could think of that Zagurest had over the cities of the West which he had seen. The streets were not cluttered with vehicles. Few people owned a car outright. If you required one, you had the local car pool deliver it, and you kept it so long as you needed transportation.

  He had expected to head for the Kalemegdan Prison where political prisoners were traditionally taken, but instead, they slid off to the right at Partisan Square, and up the Boulevard of the November Revolution. Josip Pekic, in surprise, opened his mouth to say something to the security policeman next to him, but then closed it again and his lips paled. He knew where they were going, now. Whatever the charge against him, it was not minor.

  A short kilometer from the park, the government buildings began. The Skupstina, the old Parliament left over from the days when Transbalkania was a backward, feudo-capitalistic power of third class. The National Bank, the new buildings of the Borba and the Politica. And finally, set back a hundred feet from the boulevard, the sullen, squat Ministry of Internal Affairs.

  It had been built in the old days, when the Russians had still dominated the country, and in slavish imitation of the architectural horror known as Stalin Gothic. Meant to be above all efficient and imposing and winding up simply--grim.

  Yes. Josip Pekic knew where they were going now.

  * * * * *

  The limousine slid smoothly on its cushion of air, up the curved driveway, past the massive iron statue of the worker struggling against the forces of reaction, a rifle in one hand, a wrench in the other and stopped before, at last, the well-guarded doorway.

  Without speaking, the two police who had come to his room opened the car door and climbed out. One made a motion with his head, and Josip followed. The limousine slid away immediately.

  Between them, he mounted the marble stairs. It occurred to him that this was the route his father must have taken, two decades before.

  He had never been in the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, before. Few Transbalkanians had, other than those who were employed in the MVD, or who came under the Ministry's scrutiny.

  Doors opened before them, closed behind them. Somewhat to Josip Pekic's surprise the place was copiously adorned with a surplus of metal and marble statues, paintings and tapestries. It had similarities to one of Zagurest's heavy museums.

  Through doors and down halls and through larger rooms, finally to a smaller one in which sat alone at a desk a lean, competent and assured type who jittered over a heavy sheaf of papers with an electro-marking computer pen. He was nattily and immaculately dressed and smoked his cigarette in one of the small pipelike holders once made de rigueur through the Balkans by Marshal Tito.

  The three of them came to a halt before his desk and, at long last, expression came to the faces of the zombis. Respect, with possibly an edge of perturbation. Here, obviously, was authority.

  He at the desk finished a paper, tore it from the sheaf, pushed it into the maw of the desk chute from whence it would be transported to the auto-punch for preparation for recording. He looked up in busy impatience.

  Then, to Josip Pekic's astonishment, the other came to his feet quickly, smoothly and with a grin on his face. Josip hadn't considered the possibility of being grinned at in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

  "Aleksander Kardelj," he said in self-introduction, sticking out a lean hand to be shaken. "You're Pekic, eh? We've been waiting for you."

  Josip shook, bewildered. He looked at the zombi next to him, uncomprehendingly.

  He who had introduced himself, darted a look of comprehension from Josip to the two. He said disgustedly, but with mild humor oddly mixed, "What's the matter, did these hoodlums frighten you?"

  Josip fingered his chin nervously. "Of course not."

  One of the zombis shifted his feet. "We did nothing except obey orders."

  Kardelj grimaced in sour amusement. "I can imagine," he grunted. "Milka, you see too many of those imported Telly shows from the West. I suspect you see yourself as a present day Transbalkanian G-Man."

  "Yes, Comrade," Milka said, and then shook his head.

  "Oh, hush up and get out," Kardelj said. He flicked the cigarette butt from its holder with a thumb and took up a fresh one from a desk humidor and wedged it into the small bowl. He looked at Josip and grinned again, the action giving his face an unsophisticated youthful expression.

  "You can't imagine how pleased I am to meet you, at last," he said. "I've been looking for you for months."

  Josip Pekic ogled him blankly. The name had come through to him at last. Aleksander Kardelj was seldom in the news, practically never photographed, and then in the background in a group of Party functionaries, usually with a wry smile on his face. But he was known throughout the boundaries of the State, if not internationally. Aleksander Kardelj was Number Two. Right-hand man of Zoran Jankez himself, second in command of the Party and rumored to be the brains behind the throne.

  The zombis had gone, hurriedly.

  "Looking for me?" Josip said blankly. "I haven't been in hiding. You've made some mistake. All I am is a student of--"

  "Of course, of course," Kardelj said, humorously impatient. He took up a folder from his desk and shook it absently in Josip's general direction. "I've studied your dossier thoroughly." He flicked his eyes up at a wall clock. "Come along. Comrade Jankez is expecting us. We'll leave explanations until then."

  In a daze, Josip Pekic followed him.

  Comrade Jankez, Number One. Zoran Jankez, Secretary General of the Party, President of the U.B.S.R., the United Balkan Soviet Republics. Number One.

  Josip could hardly remember so far back that Zoran Jankez wasn't head of the Party, when his face, or sculptured bust, wasn't to be seen in every store, on the walls of banks, railroad stations, barber shops, or bars. Never a newsreel but that part of it wasn't devoted to Comrade Jankez, never a Telly newscast but that Number One was brought to the attention of the viewers. His coming to power had been a quiet, bloodless affair upon the death of the Number One who had preceded him, and he had remained in his position for a generation.

  * * * * *

  Josip Pekic followed Aleksander Kardelj in a daze, through a door to the rear of the desk, and into a somewhat bigger room, largely barren of furniture save for a massive table with a dozen chairs about it. At the table, looking some ten years older than in any photo Josip had ever seen, sat Zoran Jankez.

  He looked ten years older, and his face bore a heavy weariness, a grayness, that never came through in his publicity shots. He looked up from a report he was perusing and grunted a welcome to them.

  Kardelj said in pleasurable enthusiasm, "Here he is, Zoran. Our Comrade Josip Pekic. The average young citizen of Transbalkania."

  Number One grunted again, and took in the less than imposing figure of Josip Pekic. Josip felt an urge to nibble at his fingernails, and repressed it. He had recently broken himself of the smoking habit and was hard put to find occupation for his hands when nervous.

  Zoran Jankez growled an invitation for them to be seated and Kardelj adjusted his trousers to preserve the crease, threw one leg up along the heavy conference table, and rested on a buttock, looking at ease but as though ready to take off instantly.

  Josip fumbled himself into one of the sturdy oaken chairs, staring back and forth at the two most powerful men of his native land. Thus far, no one had said anything that made any sense whatsoever to him since he had been hauled from his bed half an hour ago.

  Zoran Jankez r
asped, "I have gone through your dossier, Comrade. I note that you are the son of Hero of the People's Democratic Dictatorship, Ljubo Pekic."

  "Yes, Comrade Jankez," Josip got out. He fussed with his hands, decided it would be improper to stick them in his pockets.

  Number One grunted. "I knew Ljubo well. You must realize that his arrest was before my time. I had no power to aid him. It was, of course, after my being elected to the Secretary Generalship that he was exonerated and his name restored to the list of those who have gloriously served the State. But then, of course, you bear no malice at this late date. Ljubo has been posthumously given the hero's award."

  It wasn't exactly the way Josip knew the story, but there was little point in his objecting. He simply nodded. He said, unhappily, "Comrades, I feel some mistake has been made. I ... I have no idea--"

  Kardelj was chuckling, as though highly pleased with some development. He held up a hand to cut Josip short and turned to his superior. "You see, Zoran. A most average, laudable young man. Born under our regime, raised under the People's Democratic Dictatorship. Exactly our man."

  Zoran Jankez seemed not to hear the other. He was studying Josip heavily, all but gloomily.

  A beefy paw went out and banged a button inset in the table and which Josip had not noticed before. Almost instantly a door in the rear opened and a white-jacketed servant entered, pushing a wheeled combination bar and hors d'oeuvres cart before him. He brought the lavishly laden wagon to within reach of the heavy-set Party head, his face in servile expressionlessness.

  Jankez grunted something and the waiter, not quite bowing and scraping, retreated again from the room. Number One's heavy lips moved in and out as his eyes went over the display.

  Kardelj said easily, "Let me, Zoran." He arose and brought a towel-wrapped bottle from a refrigerated bucket set into the wagon, and deftly took up a delicate three-ounce glass which he filled and placed before his superior. He took up another and raised his eyebrows at Josip Pekic who shook his head--a stomach as queasy as his wasn't going to be helped by alcohol. Kardelj poured a short one for himself and resumed his place at the heavy conference table.