After that, there was nothing to do but wait, and watch the screens. Paula Quinton put in an appearance shortly after he had finished calling Skilk, pushing a cocktail-wagon on which their interrupted dinners had been placed. They finished eating, and drank coffee, and smoked. Most of the rest of his staff who were not busy on the bomb-project or at the shipyards or with the occupation of Konkrook drifted in; they all sat and stared from one to another of the screens, which told, in radar-patterns and direct vision and telescopic vision and heat and radiation detection, the story of what was going on to the north-east of them.
Keegark was dark, on the vision-screen; evidently King Orgzild had invented the blackout, too. Not that it did him any good; the radar-screen showed the city clearly, and it was just as clear on the radiation and heat screens. The Keegarkan ship was completely blacked out, but the radiations from her engines and the distinctive radiation-pattern of her contragravity-field showed clearly, and there was a speck that marked her position on the radar-screen. The same position was marked with a pin-point of light on the vision screen-some device on Sky-Spy, synchronized with the detectors, kept it focused there. The Company ships and contragravity vehicles all were carrying topside lights, visible only from above, which flashed alternate red and blue to identify them.
Time crawled slowly around the clock-face on the wall, the sixty-five-second minutes of Ullr dragging like hours. The spots that marked the enemy ship and her hunters crawled, too; seen from the hundred-and-fifty-mile altitude of the Sky-Spy, even the six-hundred-mile speed of the Gaucho was barely visible. They drank coffee till the stuff revolted them; they smoked until their throats and mouths were dry, they watched the screens until they thought that they would see them in their dreams forever. Then the Gaucho reported radar-contact with the Keegarkan ship, which had begun to turn in a hairpin-shaped course and was coming south down the Konk Valley.
After that, the Gaucho began reporting directly, and her topside identification-light went out.
"...doused our lights; we're down in the valley, altitude about a thousand feet. We're trying to get a glimpse of her against the sky,” a voice came in. “We're cutting in our forward TV-pick-up.” The voice repeated, several times, the wavelength, and somebody got an auxiliary screen tuned in. There was nothing visible in it but the darkness of the valley, the star-jeweled sky, and the loom of the East Konk Mountains. “We still can't see her, but we ought to, any moment; radar shows her well above the mountains. Ah, there she is; she just obscured Beta Hydrae V; she's moving toward that big constellation to the east of it, the one they call Finnegan's Goat. Now she'll be right in the center of the screen; we're going straight for her. We're going to try to slow her down till Aldebaran can get here...."
The enemy ship was vaguely visible, now, becoming clearer in the starlight. She was a Boer-class freighter, all right. Probably the Jan Smuts; the Oom Paul Kruger had last been reported at Bwork, and there was little chance that she had slipped into Keegark since the uprising had started. For all anybody knew, she could have been destroyed in the fighting before the Bwork Residency fell.
"All right, we have her spotted; we're going to open up on her,” the voice from the Gaucho announced. “She has two 90's to our one; we'll try to disable them, first.” The vision-screen lit with the indirect glare of the gun-flash, and the image in it jiggled violently as the ship shook to the recoil, then steadied again, with the enemy ship visible in the middle of it, growing larger and larger as the Gaucho rushed toward her. The gun fired again and again, flooding the screen with momentary yellow light and disturbing the image as the recoil shook the gun-cutter. The enemy ship began firing in reply; the shots were all wide misses. Apparently the geek gun-crew didn't know how to synchronize the radar sights, and were ignorant of the correct setting for the proximity-fuzes. The Gaucho's searchlights came on, bathing her quarry in light. It was the Jan Smuts; the name, and the figure-head-bust of the old soldier-philosopher, were plainly visible. Her forward gun had been knocked out, and she was trying to swing about to get a field of fire for her stern-gun.
"We're going to give her a rocket-salvo,” the voice said. “Watch this, now!"
The rockets leaped forward, from the topside racks, four and four and four and four, at half-second intervals. The first four hit the Smuts amidships and low, exploding with a flare that grew before it could die away as the second four landed. Nobody ever saw the third and fourth four land. The Jan Smuts vanished in a blaze of light that blinded everybody in the room; when they could see again, after some thirty seconds, the screen was dark.
In the direct-vision screen from the Sky-Spy, the whole countryside of the Konk Valley, five hundred miles north of Konkrook, was lighted. The heat and radiation detectors were going insane. And in the shifting confusion on the radar-screen, there was no trace either of the Jan Smuts or the Gaucho.
"Well, the geeks did have an A-bomb,” Themistocles M'zangwe said, at length. “I'd been trying to kid myself that we were just preparing against a million-to-one chance. I wonder how many more they have."
"Paula, find out who was in command of the Gaucho; he'd be a junior-grade lieutenant. Fix up orders promoting him to navy captain, as of now. It's probably the only thing we can do for him, any more. And promotions of the same order for everybody else aboard that cutter. Authority Carlos von Schlichten, acting Governor-General.” He picked up a phone. “Get me Commander Prinsloo, on Aldebaran...."
He ordered Prinsloo to launch airboats and make a search; cautioned him to be careful of radiation, but to take no chances on any of the Gaucho's complement being still alive and in need of help. While that was going on, the Sky-Spy reported another ship coming over her horizon to the east, from the direction of Bwork. That would be the Oom Paul Kruger. Hargreaves had already learned of the advent of the second freighter. He was unwilling to take the Procyon off her station until the Aldebaran returned from the Konk Valley. In this, von Schlichten concurred.
Somebody suggested that a drink would be in order. They had just watched the all-but-certain death of three Terran officers, fifteen Terran airmen, and ten Kragans, but they had all been living in too close companionship with death in the past three days-or was it three centuries-to be too deeply affected. And they had also watched, at least for a day or so, the removal of the threat that had hung over their heads. And they had seen proof that they had a defense against King Orgzild's bombs.
They were still mixing cocktails when Pickering phoned in.
"Some good news, general, from Operation ‘Hildegarde.’ We ought to have at least one bomb ready to drop by 1500 tomorrow; four or five more by next mid-night,” he said. “We don't need to have cases cast. We got our dimensions decided, and we find that there are a lot of big empty liquid-oxygen flasks, or tanks, rather, at the spaceport, that'll accommodate everything-fissionables, explosive-charges, tampers, detonator, and all."
"Well, go ahead with it. Make up a few of them; as many as you can between now and 2400 Sunday.” He thought for a moment. “Don't waste time on those practice bombs I mentioned. We'll make a practice drop with a live bomb. And don't throw away the design for the cast case. We may need that, later on."
CHAPTER XIII
The Company fleet hung off Keegark, at fifteen thousand feet, in a belt of calm air just below the seesawing currents from the warming Antarctic and the cooling deserts of the Arctic. There was the Procyon, from the bridge of which von Schlichten watched the movements of the other ships and airboats and the distant horizon. The Aldebaran was ten miles off, to the west, her metal sheathing glinting the red light of the evening sun. There was the Northern Star, down from Skilk, a smaller and more distant twinkle of reflected light to the north of Aldebaran. The Northern Lights was off to the east, and between her and Procyon was a fifth ship; turning the arm-mounted binoculars around, he could just make out, on her bow, the figure-head bust of a man in an ancient top-hat and a fringe of chin-beard. She was the Oom Paul Kruger, captured by the Procyon
after a chase across the mountains north-east of Keegark the day before. And, remote from the other ships, to the south, a tiny speck of blue-gray, almost invisible against the sky, and a smaller twinkle of reflected sunlight-a garbage-scow, unflatteringly but somewhat aptly rechristened Hildegarde Hernandez, which had been altered as a bomb-carrier, and the gun-cutter Elmoran. With the glasses, he could see a bulky cylinder being handled off the scow and loaded onto the improvised bomb-catapult on the Elmoran's stern. Shortly thereafter, the gun-cutter broke loose from the tender and began to approach the fleet.
"General, I must protest again against your doing this,” Air-Commodore Hargreaves said. “There's simply no sense in it. That bomb can be dropped without your personal supervision aboard, sir, and you're endangering yourself unnecessarily. That infernal-machine hasn't been tested or anything; it might even let go on the catapult when you try to drop it. And we simply can't afford to lose you, now."
"No, what would become of us, if you go out there and blow yourself up with that contraption?” Buhrmann supported him. “My God, I thought Don Quixote was a Spaniard, instead of a German!"
"Argentino,” von Schlichten corrected. “And don't try to sell me that Irreplaceable-Man, either. Them M'zangwe can replace me, Hid O'Leary can replace him, Barney Mordkovitz can replace him, and so on down to where you make a second lieutenant out of some sergeant. We've been all over this last evening. Admitted we can't take time for a long string of test-shots, and admitted we have to use an untested weapon; I'm not sending men out under those circumstances and staying here on this ship and watch them blow themselves up. If that bomb's our only hope, it's got to be dropped right, and I'm not going to take a chance on having it dropped by a crew who think they've been sent out on a suicide mission. What happened to the Gaucho when she blew the Smuts up is too fresh in everybody's mind. But if I, who ordered the mission, accompany it, they'll know I have some confidence that they'll come back alive."
* * * *
"Well, I'm coming along, too, general,” Kent Pickering spoke up. “I made the damned thing, and I ought to be along when it's dropped, on the principle that a restaurant-proprietor ought to be seen eating his own food once in a while.” “I still don't see why we couldn't have made at least one test shot, first,” Hans Meyerstein, the Banking Cartel man, objected.
"Well, I'll tell you why,” Paula Quinton spoke up. “There's a good chance that the geeks don't know we have a bomb of our own. They may believe that it was something invented on Niflheim for mining purposes, and that we haven't realized its military application. There's more than a good chance that the loss of the Jan Smuts has temporarily demoralized them. Personally, I believe that both King Orgzild and Prince Gorkrink were aboard her when she blew up. That's something we'll never know, positively, of course. That ship and everything and everybody in her were simply vaporized, and the particles are registering on our geigers now. But I'm as sure as I am of anything about these geeks that one or both of them accompanied her."
"Paula knows what she's talking about,” King Kankad jabbered in the Takkad Sea language which they all understood. “Just like Von saying that he has to go on our cutter, to encourage the crew. They always insist that their kings and generals go into battle, particularly if something important is to be done. They think the gods get angry if they don't."
"And we have to hit them now,” von Schlichten said. “They still have a couple of bombs left. We haven't been able to locate them with detectors, but those geeks Kankad's men caught on that commando-raid, last night, say that there were at least three of them made. We can't take a chance that some fanatic may load one into an aircar and make a kamikaze-raid on Gongonk Island."
* * * *
The Elmoran ran alongside, with her Masai-warrior figure-head and the black cylinder on her catapult aft. Somebody had painted, on the bomb: DIRE DAWN by Hildegarde Hernandez. Compliments of the author to H. M. King Orgzild of Keegark. A canvas-entubed gangway was run out to connect the ship with the cutter. Von Schlichten and Kent Pickering went down the ladder from the bridge, the others accompanying them. As he stepped into the gangway, Paula Quinton fell in behind him.
"Where do you think you're going?” he demanded.
"Along with you,” she replied. “I'm your adjutant, I believe."
"You definitely are not going along. Personally, I don't believe there's any danger, but I'm not having you run any unnecessary risks...."
"Von, I don't know much about the way Terrans think, except about fighting and about making things,” Kankad told him. “And I don't know anything at all about the kind of Terrans who have young. But I believe this is something important to Paula. Let her go with you, because if you go alone and don't come back I don't think she will ever be happy again."
He looked at Kankad curiously, wondering, as he had so often before, just what went on inside that lizard-skull. Then he looked at Paula, and, after a moment, he nodded.
"All right, colonel; objection withdrawn,” he said.
Aboard the Elmoran, they gave the bomb a last-minute inspection and checked the catapult and the bomb-sight, and then went up on the bridge.
"Ready for the bombing mission, sir?” the skipper, a Lieutenant (j.g.) Morrison, asked.
"Ready if you are, Lieutenant. Carry on; we're just passengers."
"Thank you, sir. We'd thought of going in over the city at about five thousand for a target-check, turning when we're half way back to the mountains, and coming back for our bombing-run at fifteen thousand. Is that all right, sir?"
Von Schlichten nodded. “You're the skipper, lieutenant. You'd better make sure, though, that as soon as the bomb-off signal is flashed, your engineer hits his auxiliary rocket-propulsion button. We want to be about fifteen miles from where that thing goes off."
The lieutenant (j.g.) muttered something that sounded unmilitarily like, “You ain't foolin', brother!"
"No, I'm not,” von Schlichten agreed. “I saw the Jan Smuts on the TV-screen."
* * * *
The Elmoran pointed her bow, and the long blade of the figure-head warrior's spear, toward Keegark. The city grew out of the ground-mist, a particolored blur at the delta of the dry Hoork River, and then a color-splashed triangle between the river and the bay and the hills on the landward side, and then it took shape, cross-ruled with streets and granulated with buildings. As they came in, von Schlichten, who had approached it from the air many times before, could distinguish the landmarks-the site of King Orgzild's nitroglycerine plant, now a crater surrounded by a quarter-mile radius of ruins; the Residency, another crater since Rodolfo MacKinnon had blown it up under him; the smashed Christian De Wett at the Company docks; King Orgzild's palace, fire-stained and with a hole blown in one corner by the Aldebaran's bombs.... Then they were past the city and over open country.
"I wish we had some idea where the rest of those bombs are stored, sir,” Lieutenant Morrison said. “We don't seem to have gotten anything significant when we flew reconnaissance with the radiation detectors."
"No; about all that was picked up was the main power-plant, and the radiation-escape from there was normal,” Pickering agreed. “The bombs themselves wouldn't be detectable, except to the extent that, say, a nuclear-conversion engine for an airboat would be. They probably have them underground, somewhere, well shielded."
"Those prisoners Kankad's commandos dragged in only knew that they were in the city somewhere,” von Schlichten considered. “How about midway between the Palace and the Residency for our ground-zero, lieutenant? That looks like the center of the city."
The cutter turned and started back, having risen another ten thousand feet. Morrison passed the word to the bombardier. The city, with the sea beyond it now, came rushing at them, and von Schlichten, standing at the front of the bridge, discovered that he had his arm around Paula's waist and was holding her a little more closely than was military. He made no attempt to release her, however.
"There's nothing to worry about, reall
y,” he was assuring her. “Pickering's boys built this thing according to the best principles of engineering, and the stuff they got out of that big-economy-size shilling-shocker all checked mathematically...."
The red light on the bridge flashed, and the intercom shouted “Bomb off!” He forced Paula down on the bridge deck and crouched beside her.
"Cover your eyes,” he warned. “You remember what the flash was like in the screen, when the Jon Smuts blew up. And we didn't get the worst of it; the pickup on the Gaucho was knocked out too soon."
He kept on lecturing her about gamma-rays and ultraviolet rays and X-rays and cosmic rays, trying to keep making some sort of intelligent sounds while they clung together and waited, and, with the other half of his mind, trying not to think of everything that could go wrong with that jerry-built improvisation they had just dumped onto Keegark. If it didn't blow, and the geeks found it, they'd know that another one would be along shortly, and....
* * * *
An invisible hand caught the gun-cutter and hurled her end-over-end, sending von Schlichten and Paula sprawling at full length on the deck, still clinging to one another. There was a blast of almost palpable sound, and a sensation of heat that penetrated even the airtight superstructure of the Elmoran. An instant later, there was another, and another, similar shock. Two more bombs had gone off behind them, in Keegark; that meant that they had found King Orgzild's remaining nuclear armament. There were shattering sounds of breaking glass, and heavy thumps that told of structural damage to the cutter, and hoarse shouts, and lurid cursing as Morrison and his airmen struggled with the controls. The cutter began losing altitude, but she was back on a reasonably even keel. Von Schlichten rose, helping Paula to her feet, and found that they had been kissing one another passionately. They were still in each other's arms when the pitching and rolling of the cutter ceased and somebody tapped him on the shoulder.
The Second H. Beam Piper Omnibus Page 52
