The Cosmic Computer

by H. Beam Piper

  IX

  Barathrum was a grim land, naked black and gray. Spines and crags ofbare rock jutted up, lava-flows like black glaciers twisting amongthem. It was split by faults and fissures, pimpled with ash-cones.Except for the seabirds that nested among the cliffs and the few thinpatches of green where seeds windblown from the mainland had takenroot, it was as lifeless as when some ancient convulsion had thrust itup from the sea, Barathrum was a dead Inferno, untenanted even by thedamned; by comparison, the Badlands seemed lushly fertile.

  The four craft crossed above the line of white breakers that markedthe division of sea and land; the gunboat _Goblin_ in the lead, hersisters, _Vampire_ and _Dragon_ to right and left and a little behind,and the _Lester Dawes_ a few miles in the rear. Fred Karski was at the_Goblin's_ controls; Conn, beside him, was peering ahead into theteleview screen and shifting his eyes from it to the map and backagain.

  Somebody behind him was saying that it would be a nice place to beair-wrecked. Somebody else was telling him not to joke about it. Fromthe radio, his father was asking: "Can you see it, yet?"

  "Not yet. We're on the right map-and-compass direction; we shouldbefore long."

  "We're picking up radiation," Fred Karski said. "Way above normalcount. I hope the place isn't hot."

  "We're getting that, too," Rodney Maxwell said. "Looks like powerradiation; something must be on there."

  After forty years, that didn't seem likely. He leaned over to look atthe omnigeiger, then whistled. If that was normal leakage frominactive power units, there must be enough of them to power ten townsthe size of Litchfield.

  "Something's operating there," he said, and then realized what thatmeant. Somebody had beaten them to the spaceport. That would be one ofthe new companies formed after the opening of Force Command. He waswishing, now, that he hadn't let himself be talked out of coming herefirst. Older and wiser heads indeed!

  Fred Karski whistled shrilly into his radio phone. "Attentioneverybody! General alert. Prepare for combat; prepare to takeimmediate evasive action. We must assume that the spaceport isoccupied, and that the occupants are hostile. Captain Poole, will youplease make ready aboard your ship? Reduce both speed and altitude,and ready your guns and missiles at once."

  "Well, now, wait a minute, young fellow," Poole began to argue. "Youdon't know--"

  "No. I don't. And I want all of us alive after we find out, too,"Karski replied.

  Rodney Maxwell's voice, in the background, said somethingindistinguishable. Poole said ungraciously, "Well, all right, if youthink so...."

  The _Lester Dawes_ began dropping to the rear and going down towardthe ground. Conn returned to the teleview screen in time to see thetruncated cone of the extinct volcano rise on the horizon, dwarfingeverything around it. Fred Karski was talking to Colonel Zareff, backat Force Command, giving him the radiation count.

  "That's occupied," the old soldier replied. "Mass-energy convertergoing. Now, Fred, don't start any shooting unless you have to, butdon't get yourself blown to MC waiting on them to fire the firstshot."

  The dark cone bulked higher and higher in the screen. It must be sevenmiles around the crater, and a mile deep; when that thing blew out,ten or fifteen thousand years ago, it must have been something to see,preferably from a ship a thousand miles off-planet. It was so hugethat it was hard to realize that the jumbled foothills around it werethemselves respectably lofty mountains.

  When they were within five miles of it, something twinkled slightlynear the summit. An instant later, the missileman, in his turretoverhead, shouted:

  "Missile coming up; counter-missile off!"

  "Grab onto something, everybody!" Karski yelled, bracing himself inhis seat.

  Conn, on his feet, flung his arms around an upright stanchion and hungon. Fred's hand gave a twisting jerk on the steering handle; the_Goblin_ went corkscrewing upward. In the rearview screen, Conn saw apink fireball blossom far below. The sound and the shock-wave neverreached them; the _Goblin_ outran them. _Dragon_ and _Vampire_ werespiraling away in opposite directions. The radio was loud with voices,and a few of the words were almost printable. A gong began clangingfrom the command post on top of the mesa on the mainland.

  "Be quiet, all of you!" Klem Zareff was bellowing. "And get back fromthere. Back three or four miles; close enough so they won't dare usethermonuclears. Take cover behind one of those ridges, where theycan't detect you. Then we can start figuring what the Gehenna to donext."

  That made sense. And get it settled who's in command of thisDonnybrook, while we're at it, Conn thought. He looked into the rearand sideview screens, and taking cover immediately made even moresense. Two more fireballs blossomed, one dangerously close to the_Dragon_. Guns were firing from the mountaintop, too, big ones,and shells were bursting close to them. He saw a shell land on andanother beside one of the enemy gun positions--115-mm's from the_Lester Dawes_, he supposed. He continued to cling to thestanchion, and the _Goblin_ shot straight up, and he was expectingto see the sky blacken and the stars come out when the gunboat leveledand started circling down again. The mountainside, he saw, was sendingup a lightning-crackling tower of smoke and dust that swelled into amushroom top.

  Klem Zareff, on the radio, was demanding to know who'd launched that.

  "We did, sir; _Dragon_," Stefan Jorisson was replying. "We had to getrid of it. We took a hit. Gun turret's smashed, Milt Hennant's dead,and Abe Samuels probably will be before I'm done talking, and if weget this crate down in one piece, it'll do for a miracle till a realone happens."

  "Well, be careful how you shoot those things off," his fatherimplored, from the _Lester Dawes_. "Get one inside the crater and wewon't have any spaceport."

  The _Lester Dawes_ vanished behind a mountain range a few miles fromthe volcano. The _Dragon_, still airborne but in obvious difficulties,was limping after her, and the _Vampire_ was covering the withdrawal,firing rapidly but with doubtful effect with her single 90-mm andtossing out counter-missiles. There was another fireball between herand the mountain. Then, when the _Dragon_ had followed the _LesterDawes_ to safety, she turned tail and bolted, the _Goblin_ following.As they approached the mountains, something the shape of a recon-carand about half the size passed them going in the opposite direction.As they dropped into the chasm on the other side, another nuclear wentoff at the volcano.

  When Conn and Fred left the _Goblin_ and boarded the ship, they foundRodney Maxwell, Captain Poole, and a couple of others on the bridge.Charley Gatworth, the skipper of the _Vampire_, Morgan Gatworth's son,was with them, and, imaged in a screen, so was Klem Zareff. One of theother screens, from a pickup on the _Vampire_, showed the _Dragon_lying on her side, her turret crushed and her gun, with themuzzle-brake gone, bent upward. A couple of lorries from the _LesterDawes_ were alongside; as Conn watched, a blanket-wrapped body, andthen another, were lowered from the disabled gunboat.

  "Fred, how are you and Charley fixed for counter-missiles?" Zareff wasasking. "Get loaded up with them off the ship, as many as you cancarry. Charley, you go up on top of this ridge above, and take coverwhere you can watch the mountain. Transmit what you see back to theship. Fred, you take a position about a quarter way around from whereyou are now. Don't let them send anything over, but don't startanything yourselves. I'm coming out with everything I can gather uphere; I'll be along myself in a couple of hours, and the rest will bestringing in after me. In the meantime, Rodney, you're in command."

  Well, that settled that. There was one other point, though.

  "Colonel," Conn said, "I assume that this spaceport is occupied by oneof these new prospecting companies. We have no right to take it awayfrom them, have we?"

  "They fired on us without warning," Karski said. "They killed Milt,and it's ten to one Abe won't live either. We owe them something forthat."

  "We do, and we'll pay off. Conn, you assume wrong. This gang's been atthe spaceport long enough to get the detection system working and putthe defense batteries on ready. They didn't do that since thismorning, and up to
last evening they neglected to file claim. I'llassume they're on the wrong side of the law. They're outlaws, Conn.All the raids along the east coast; everybody's blamed them on theBadlands gangs. I'll admit they're responsible for some of it, butI'll bet this gang at the spaceport is doing most of it."

  That was reasonable. Barathrum was closer to the scene of the worstoutlaw depredations than the Badlands, not more than an hour at MachTwo. And nobody ever thought of Barathrum as an outlaw hangout. Peoplerarely thought of Barathrum at all. He liked the idea. The only thingagainst it was that he wanted so badly to believe it.

  They brought the body of Milt Hennant aboard, and Abe Samuels, swathedin bandages and immobilized by narcotic injections. A few more of the_Dragon_'s six-man crew had been injured. Jorrisson, the skipper, hadone trouser leg slit to the belt and his right thigh splinted andbandaged; he took over the _Lester Dawes_' missile controls, which hecould manage sitting in one place. Fred Karski and Charley Gatworthwent aboard their craft and lifted out.

  For a long time, nothing happened. Conn got out the plans of thevolcano spaceport and the photomaps of the surrounding area. Theprincipal entrance, the front door of the spaceport, was the crater ofthe extinct volcano itself. It was ringed, outside, withlaunching-sites and gun positions, and according to the data he had,some of the guns were as big as 250-mm. How many outlaws there were toman them was a question a lot of people could get killed trying toanswer. The ship docks and shops were down on the level of the craterfloor, in caverns, both natural and excavated, that extended far backinto the mountain. There were two galleries, one above the other,extending entirely around the inside of the crater near the top;passages from them gave access to the outside gun and missilepositions.

  With a dozen ships the size of the _Lester Dawes_, about five thousandmen, and a CO who wasn't concerned with trivialities like casualties,they could have taken the place in half an hour. With what they had,trying to fight their way in at the top was out of the question.

  There was another way in. He had known about it from the beginning,and he was trying desperately to think of a way not to utilize it. Itwas a tunnel two miles long, running into some of the bottom workshopsand storerooms back of the ship berths from a big blowhole or smallcrater at the foot of the mountain. According to the fifty-year-oldplans, it was big enough to take a gunboat in, and on paper it lookedlike a royal highway straight to the heart of the enemy's stronghold.

  To Conn, it looked like a wonderful place to commit suicide. He'd onlyhad a short introductory course, in one semester, in military andprotective robotics, just enough to give him a foundation if he wantedto go into that branch of the subject later. It was also enough togive him an idea of the sort of booby-traps that tunnel could befilled with. He knew what he'd have put into it if he'd been defendingthat place.

  Colonel Zareff had sent one last message from Force Command when helifted off with a flight of recon-cars. After that, he maintained acommunication blackout. It was an hour and a half before he got closeenough to be detected from the outlaw stronghold. Immediately, thevolcano began spewing out missiles. Poole hastily took the _LesterDawes_ ten miles down the rift-valley in sixty seconds, while StefanJorisson put out a nuclear-warhead missile and left it circling aboutwhere the ship had been. From their respective positions, Fred Karskiand Charley Gatworth filled the airspace midway to the volcano withcounter-missiles, each loaded with four rockets. There wereexplosions, fireballs in the air and rising cumulus clouds ofvaricolored smoke and dust. Only about half the enemy missiles reachedthe _Lester Dawes'_ former position.

  When their controllers, back at the volcano, couldn't see the ship intheir screens, the missiles bunched together. Immediately, Jorissonsent his missile up to join them and detonated it. Including his own,eight nuclear weapons went off together in a single blast that shookthe ground like an earthquake and churned the air like a hurricane.Klem Zareff came on-screen at once.

  "Now what did you do?" he demanded. "Blew the whole place up, didn'tyou?"

  Rodney Maxwell told him. Zareff laughed. "They might just think theygot the ship; all the pickups would be smashed before they could seewhat really happened. You're about ten miles south of that? Be withyou in a few minutes."

  They got a screen on for his rearview pickup. Zareff had with him adozen recon-cars, some of them under robo-control; six gunboatsfollowed, and behind them, to the horizon, other craft were strungout--airboats, troop carriers, and freight-scows. They could see enemymissiles approaching in Zareff's front screen; counter-missiles gotmost of them, and a couple of pilotless recon-cars were sacrificed.The _Lester Dawes_ blasted more missiles as they crossed the top ofthe mountain range. Then Zareff's car was circling in and entering atone of the ship's open cargo-ports. Zareff and Anse Dawes got out.

  "Gunboats are only half an hour behind," Zareff said. "Get somescreens on to them, Anse; you know the combinations. Now let's seewhat kind of a mess we're in here."

  It was almost a miracle, the way the tottering old man Conn had seenon the dock at Litchfield when he had arrived from Terra had beenrejuvenated.

  The rest of the reinforcements arrived slowly, sending missiles andcounter-missiles out ahead of them. Zareff began worrying about thesupply; the enemy didn't seem to be running short. By 1300--Conn notedthe time incredulously; the battle seemed to have been going onforever, instead of just four hours--the _Lester Dawes_ had movedhalfway around the volcano and was almost due west of it, and theeight gunboats were spaced all around the perimeter. Then one stoppedtransmitting; in the other screens, there was a rising fireball whereshe had been. The radio was loud with verbal reports.

  "_Poltergeist_," Zareff said, naming half a dozen names. One or two ofthem had been schoolmates of Conn's at the Academy; he knew how he'dfeel about it later, but now it simply didn't register.

  "They're launching missiles faster than we can shoot them down," hesaid.

  "That's usually the beginning of the end," Zareff said. "I saw ithappen too often during the War. We've got to get inside that place.It's a lot of harmless fun to send contragravity robots out to smasheach other, but it doesn't win battles. Battles are won by men,standing with their feet on the ground, using personal weapons."

  "We'll have to win this one pretty soon," Rodney Maxwell said. "Theamount of nuclear energy we've been releasing will be detectableanywhere on the planet by now. The Government has a ship like the_Lester Dawes_ in commission; if this keeps on, she'll be coming outfor a look."

  "Then we'll have help," Captain Poole said.

  "We need Government help like we need the polka-dot fever," RodneyMaxwell said. "If they get in it, they'll claim the spaceportthemselves, and we'll have fought a battle for nothing."

  Well, that was it, then. The spaceport was essential to the MaxwellPlan. He'd gotten seven men killed--eight, if the recon-car that wastaking Abe Samuels to the hospital in Litchfield didn't make it intime--and it was up to him to see that they hadn't died for nothing.He spread the photo-map and the spaceport plans on the chart table.

  "Look at this," he said.

  Klem Zareff looked at it. He didn't like it any better than Conn had.He studied the plan for a moment, chewing his cigar.

  "You know, it's possible they don't know that thing exists," he said,without too much conviction. "You'll be betting the lives of at leasttwenty men; fewer than that couldn't accomplish anything."

  "I'll be putting mine on the table along with them," Conn said. "I'lllead them in."

  He was wishing he hadn't had to say that. He did, though. It was theonly thing he could say.

  "You better pick the men to go with me, Colonel," he continued. "Youknow them better than I do. We'll need working equipment, too; I haveno idea what we may have to take out of the way, inside."

  "I won't call for volunteers," Zareff said. "I'll pick Home Guards;they did their volunteering when they joined."

  "Let me pick one man, Colonel," Anse Dawes said. "I'll pick me."