“Bridge to stations, report.”
“Engine okay,” said Diego Gonzales.
“Radio and main radar okay,” said Endre Vadász.
“Gun Turret One okay and hungry,” said Jean Irribarne. The colonists in the other emplacements added a wolfish chorus.
Easy, lads, Heim thought. If we have to try those popguns on a real, functioning warship, we’re dead. “Stand by to lift,” he called. Clumsy in his spacesuit, he moved hands across the board.
The lake frothed. Waves swept up its beaches. A sighing went among the trees, and Meroeth rose from below. Briefly her great form blotted out the sun, where it crawled toward noon, and animals fled down wilderness trails. Then, with steadily mounting velocity, she flung skyward. The cloven air made a continuous thunderclap. Danielle and Madelon Irribarne put hands to tormented ears. When the shape was gone from sight, they returned to each other’s arms.
“Radar, report!” Heim called through drone and shiver.
“Negative,” Vadász said.
Higher and higher the ship climbed. The world below dwindled, humped into a curve, turned fleecy with clouds and blue with oceans. The sky went dark, the stars blazed forth.
“Signal received on the common band,” Vadász said. “Jubalcho must have spotted us. Shall I answer?”
“Hell no,” Heim said. “All I want is her position and vector.”
The hollow volume of Meroeth trapped sound, bounced echoes about, until a booming rolled from stem to stern and port to starboard. It throbbed in Heim’s skull. His open-faceplate rattled.
“Can’t find her,” Vadász told him. “She must be far off.” But she found us. Well, she has professional detector operators. I’ve got to make do with whatever was in camp. No time to recruit better-trained people.
We should be so distant that she’d have to chase us for some ways to get inside the velocity differential of her missiles. And she should decide her duty is to stay put. If I’ve guessed wrong on either of those, we’ve hoisted our last glass. Heim tasted blood, hot and bitter, and realized he had caught his tongue between his teeth. He swore, wiped his face, and drove the ship.
Onward and outward, New Europe grew smaller among the crowding suns. Diane rose slowly to view. “Captain to radio room. Forget about everything else. Lock that maser and cut me in on the circuit.” Heim reached for racked instruments and navigational tables. “I’ll have the figures for you by the time you’re warmed up.”
If we aren’t destroyed first. Please … let me live that long. I don’t ask for more. Please, Fox has got to be told. He reeled off a string of numbers.
In his shack, among banked meters that stared at him like troll eyes, Vadász punched keys. He was no expert, but the comsystem computer had been preprogrammed for him; he need merely feed in the data and punch the directive “Now.” A turret opened to airlessness. A transceiver thrust its skeletal head out for a look at the universe. A tight beam of coherent radio waves speared from it.
There were uncertainties. Diane was orbiting approximately 200,000 kilometers on the other side of New Europe, and Meroeth was widening that gulf with ever-increasing speed. But the computer and the engine it controlled were sophisticated; the beam had enough dispersion to cover a fairly large circle by the time it reached the target area; it had enough total energy so that its amplitude then was still above noise level.
Small, bestrewn with meteoritic dust, in appearance another boulder among thousands on the slope of a certain crater wall, an instrument planted by the men from the boat sat waiting. The signal arrived. The instrument—an ordinary microwave relay, such as every spaceship carries by the score, with a solar battery—amplified the signal and bounced it in another tight beam to another object high on a jagged peak. That one addressed its next fellow; and so on around the jagged desert face of the moon. Not many passings were needed. The man’s-height horizon on Diane is about three kilometers, much greater from a mountaintop, and the last relay only had to be a little ways into that hemisphere which never sees New Europe.
Thence the beam leaped skyward. Some 29,000 kilometers from the center ofDiane, it found Fox II.
The problem had been: how could a spaceship lurk near a hostile planet from which detectors probed and around which warcraft spun? If she went free-fall, every system throttled down to the bare minimum, her neutrino emission would not register above the cosmic background. But optical, infrared, and radar eyes would still be sure to find her. Unless she interposed the moon between herself and the planet. No … She dared not land and sit there naked to anyone who chanced close when the far hemisphere was daylit. She could not assume an orbit around the satellite, for she would move into view. She could not assume a concentric orbit New Europe itself, for she would revolve more slowly-thus drop from behind her shield—Or would she?
Not necessarily! In any two-body system there are three points where the secondary’s gravitation combines with the primary’s in such a way that a small object put there will remain in place, on a straight line through the larger bodies. It is not stable; eventually the object will U(fe;. perturbed out of its resting spot; but “eventually” is remote in biological time. Fox put herself at the most distant Lagrangian point and orbited in the moon-disc’s effortless concealment.
The maneuver had never been tried before. But then, no had ever before needed to have a warship on call, unbeknownst to an enemy who occupied the ground where he meant to be. Heim thought it would become a textbook classic, if he lived to brag about it.
“Meroeth to Fox II,” he intoned. “Meroeth to Fox II. Now hear this and record. Record. Captain Heim to Acting Captain Penoyer, stand by for orders.”
There could be no reply, except to Lac aux Nuages. The system, simple and hastily built, had been conceived in the belief that he would summon his men from there. If anything was heisenberg at the other end, he wouldn’t know until too late. He spoke into darkness. “Because of unexpected developments, we’ve been forced to lift directly, without passengers. It doesn’t seem as if we’re being pursued. But we have extremely important intelligence, and on that basis a new plan.”
“First: we know there is only one capital ship in orbit| around New Europe. All but two others are scattered beyond recall, and not due back for quite some time, sentry vessel is the enemy flagship Jubalcho, a cruiser. I don’t know the exact class—see if you can find her in Jane’s—but she’s doubtless only somewhat superior to Fox”
“Second: the enemy learned we were on the planet recalled the two vessels in reach. They are presently accelerating toward New Europe. The first should already commenced deceleration. That is the lancer Savaidh. The other is the cruiser Inisant. Check them out too; but I think they are ordinary Aleriona ships of their respective classes. The ballistic data are approximately as follows—” He cited the figures.
“Now, third: the enemy probably believes Meroeth is Fox. We scrambled with so much distance between that contrary identification would have been difficult or impossible, and I also we took him by surprise. So I think that as far as he knows, Fox is getting away while the getting is good. But he cannot communicate with the other ships till they are near the planet, and he doubtless wants them on hand anyway.
“Accordingly, we have a chance to take them piecemeal. Now hear this. Pay no attention to the lancer. Meroeth deal with her; or if I fail, she’s no major threat to you. Moreover, nuclear explosions in space would be detected and alert the enemy. Stay put, Fox, and plot an interception for Inisant. She won’t be looking for you. Relative-velocity will be high. If you play your cards right, you have an excellent probability of putting a missile in her while warding anything else she has time to throw.”
“After that, come get me. My calculated position and orbit at the time are approximately as follows.” Again a string of numbers. “If I’m a casualty, proceed at discretion. But bear in mind that New Europe will be guarded by only one cruiser!”
Heim sucked air into his lungs. It was hot and had an electric smell. “Repeating message,” he said. And at the end of the third time: “The primary relay point seems to be going under Diana’s horizon, on our present course. I’ll have to sign off. Gunnar Heim to Dave Penoyer and the men of Fox II—good hunting! Over and out”
Then he sat in his seat, looked to the stars in the direction of Sol, and wondered how Lisa was doing.
Increment by increment, Meroeth piled on velocity. It didn’t seem long—though much desultory conversation had passed through the intercom—before the moment came to reverse and slow down. They mustn’t have a suspicious vector when they encountered Savaidh.
Heim went to the saloon for a snack. He found Vadász with a short red-haired colonist who slurped at his cup as if he had newly come off a Martian desert. “Ah, mon capitaine,’’ the latter said cheerily, “je n’avais pas bu de café depuis un sacre longtemps. Merci beaucoup!”
“You may not have much to thank me for in a while,” Heim said.
Vadász cocked his head. “You shouldn’t look so grim, Gun—sir,” he chided. “Everybody else is downright cocky.”
“Tired, I guess.” Heim slumped into the Aleriona settle.
“I’ll fix you up. A grand Danois of a sandwich, hm?” Vadász bounced out. When he returned with the food, he had his guitar slung over his back. He sat down on the swinging his legs, and began to chord and sing:
The memory came back. A grin tugged at Heim’s lips. Presently he was beating time; toward the end, he joined in the choruses. That’s the way! Who says we can’t take them? He returned to the bridge with a stride of youth.
And time fled. And battle stations were sounded. And Savaidh appeared in the viewports.
The hands that had built her were not human. But the tool was for the same job, under the same laws of physics, as Earth’s own lancers. Small, slim, leopard-spotted for camouflage and thermal control, leopard deadly and beautiful, the ship was so much like his own old Star Fox that Heim’s hand paused. Is it right to kill her—this way?
A legitimate ruse of war. Yes. He punched the intercom. “Bridge to radio. Bridge to radio. Begin distress signal.”
Meroeth spoke, not in any voice but in the wailing radio pattern which Naval Intelligence had long known was regulation for Alerion. Surely the lancer captain (was this his first command?) ordered an attempt at communication. There no reply. The gap closed. Relative speed was slight by spaceship standards; but Savaidh grew swiftly before Heim’s eyes.
Unwarned, the Aleriona had no reason to doubt this was one of their own vessels. The transport was headed toward Mach limit; not directly for The Eith, but then, none of them did, lest the raider from Earth be able to predict their courses. Something had gone wrong. Her communications must be out. Probably her radio officer had cobbled together a set barely able to cry, “SOS!” The trouble was clearly not with her engines, since she was under power. What, then? Breakdown of radiation screening? Air renewal? Thermostats? Interior gee field? There were so many possibilities. Life was so terribly frail, here where life was never meant to be.
Or … since the probability of her passing near the warship by chance, in astronomical immensity, was vanishingly small … did she bear an urgent message? Something that, for some reason, could not be transmitted in the normal way? The shadow of Fox II lay long and cold across Alerion.
“Close spacesuits,” Heim ordered. “Stand by.” He clashed his own faceplate shut and lost himself in the task of piloting. Two horrors nibbled at the edge of consciousness. The lesser one, because least likely, was that the other captain would grow suspicious and have him blasted. The worst was that Savaidh would continue her rush to Cynbe’s help. He could not match accelerations with a lancer.
Needles wavered before his eyes. Radar—vectors—fan-pulse—Savaidh swung about and maneuvered for rendezvous. Heim cut drive to a whisper. Now the ships were on nearly parallel tracks, the lancer decelerating heavily while the transport ran almost free. Now they were motionless with respect to each other, with a kilometer of vacuum between. Now the lancer moved with infinite delicacy toward the larger vessel.
Now Heim rammed down an emergency lever. At full sidewise thrust, Meroeth hurtled to her destiny.
There was no time to dodge, no time to shoot. The ships crashed together. That shock roared through plates and ribs, ripped metal apart, hurled unharnessed Aleriona to their decks or against their bulkheads with bone-cracking violence.
A spaceship is not thickly armored, even for war. She can withstand the impact of micrometeorites; the larger stones, which are rare, she can detect and escape; nothing can protect from nuclear weapons, when once they have struck home. Meroeth’s impact speed was not great, but her mass was. Through Savaidh she sheared. Her own hull gave way. Air purled out in a frosty cloud, quickly lost to the light-years. Torn frameworks wrapped about each other. Locked in a stag’s embrace, the ruined ships tumbled on a lunatic orbit. Aurore flared radiance across their guts; the stars looked on without pity.
“Prepare to repel boarders!”
Heim didn’t know if his cry had been transmitted through his helmet jack to the others. Likely not. Circuits were ripped asunder. The fusion reaction in the power generator had guttered out. Darkness, weightlessness, airlessness flowed through the ship. It didn’t matter. His men knew what to do. He undid his harness by feel and groped aft to the gun turret he had chosen for himself.
Most of the Aleriona crew must be dead. Some might survive, in spacesuits or sealed compartments. If they could find a gun still workable and bring it to bear, they’d shoot. Otherwise they’d try for hand-to-hand combat. Untrained for space, the New Europeans couldn’t withstand that. The controls of Heim’s laser had their own built-in illumination. Wheels, levers, indicators glowed like watch-fires. He peered along the barrel, out the cracked glasite, past wreckage where shadows slid weirdly as the system rotated; he suppressed the slight nausea due Coriolis force, forgot the frosty glory of constellations, and looked for his enemy.
It came to him, a flicker across tautness, that he had brought yet another tactic to space warfare: ramming. But that wasn’t new. It went back ages, to when men first adventured past sight of land. Olaf Tryggvason, on the blood-reddened deck of the Long Serpent.
No. To hell with that. His business was here and now: to stay alive till Fox picked him up. Which wouldn’t be for along time.
A weapon spat. He saw only the reflection of its beam off steel, and squinted till the dazzle passed. One for our side. I hope. A heavy vibration passed through the hull and his body. An explosion? He wasn’t sure. The Aleriona might be wild enough to annihilate him, along with themselves, by touching off a nuclear warhead. The chances were against it, since they’d need tools that would be hard to find in that mass out yonder. But—Well, war was mostly waiting.
A spacesuited figure crawled over a girder. The silhouette was black and unhuman against the stars, save where sunlight made a halo on the helmet. One survivor, at least, bravely striving to—Heim got him in the sights and fired. Vapor rushed from the pierced body. It drifted off into space. “I hated to do that,” Heim muttered to the dead one. “But you could have been carrying something nasty, you know.”
His shot had given him away. A beam probed at his turret. He crouched behind the shield. Intolerable brightness gnawed centimeters away from him. Then more bolts struck. The enemy laser winked out “Good man!” Heim gasped. “Whoever you are!”
The fight did not last long. No doubt the Aleriona, if any were left, had decided to hole up and see what happened. But it was necessary to remain on guard.
In the dreamlike state of free-fall, muscles did not protest confinement, Heim let his thoughts drift where they would. Earth, Lisa, Jocelyn … New Europe, Danielle … there really wasn’t much, in a man’s life that mattered. But those few things mattered terribly.
Hours passed.
It was anticlimax when Fox’s lean shape closed in. Not that Heim didn’t cheer—so she had won!—but rendezvous was tricky; and then he had to make his way through darkness and ruin until he found an exit; and then signal with his helmet radio to bring a tender into safe jumping distance; and then come aboard and get a shot to counteract the effects of the radiation he had taken while unscreened in space; and then transfer to the cruiser—
The shouts and backslappings, bear hugs and bear dances, seemed unreal in his weariness. Not even his victory felt important He was mainly pleased that a good dozen Aleriona were alive and had surrendered. “You took Inisant?” he asked Penoyer.
“Oh, my, yes. Wizard cum spiff! One pass, and she was a cloud of isotopes. What next sir?”
“Well—” Heim rubbed sandy eyes. “Your barrage will have been detected from New Europe. Now when Inisant is overdue, the enemy must realize who lost. He may have guessed you went after Savaidh next, and be attempting an interception. But it’s most likely that he’s stayed pretty close to base. Even if he hasn’t, he’ll surely come back there. Do you think we can beat Jubalcho?”
Penoyer scowled. “That’s a pitchup, sir. According to available data, she has more teeth, though we’ve more acceleration. I’ve computed several tactical patterns which give us about an even chance. But should we risk it?”
“I think so,” Heim said. “If we get smeared, well, let’s admit that our side won’t have lost much. On the other hand, if we win we’ve got New Europe.”
“Sir?”
“Sure. There are no other defenses worth mentioning. We can knock out their ground-based missiles from space. Then we give air support to the colonists, who’re already preparing a march on the seaboard. You know as well as I do, no atmospheric flyer ever made has a fish’s chance on Friday against a nuclear-armed spaceship. If the Aleriona don’t surrender, well simply swat them out of the sky, and then go to work on their ground troops. But I expect they will give in. They’re not stupid. And … then we’ve got hostages.”
“But—the rest of their fleet—”
“Uh-huh. One by one, over a period of weeks or months, they’ll come in. Fox should be able to bushwhack them. Also, well have the New Europeans hard at work, finishing the space defenses. Evidently there isn’t much left to do there. Once that job’s completed, the planet’s nearly impregnable, whatever happens to us.
“Somewhere along the line, probably rather soon, another transport ship will come in, all unsuspecting. We’ll nobble her and send off a load of New Europeans as originally planned. When Earth hears they’re not only not dead, not only not at the point of defeat, but standing space siege and doing a crackling hell of a job at it … why, if Earth doesn’t move then, I resign from the human race.”
Heim straightened. “I’m no damned hero, Dave,” he finished. “Mainly I want to get home to the pipe and slippers. But don’t you think a chance like this is worth taking?”
Penoyer’s nostrils flared. “By … by Jove,” he stammered.
“Very good. Make course for New Europe and call me if anything happens.”
Heim stumbled to his cabin and toppled into sleep.
Vadász’s hand shook him awake. “Gunnar! Contact’s made—with Jubalcho—we’ll rendezvous inside half an hour.” Nothing remained of tiredness, fear, doubt, or even anger. Heim went to the bridge with more life running through his veins than ever since Connie departed. Stars filled the viewports, so big and bright in the crystal dark that it seemed lie could reach out and touch them. The ship murmured and pulsed. His men stood by their weapons; he could almost sense their oneness with him and with her. He took his place of command, and it was utterly right that Cynbe’s voice should ring from the speaker.
“Star Fox captain, greet I you again? Mightily have we striven. You refuse not battle this now?”
“No,” said Heim. “We’re coming in. Try and stop us.”
The laughter of unfallen Lucifer replied. “Truth. And I thank you, my brother. Let come what that time-flow brings that you are terrible enough to live with … I thank you for this day.”
“Good-by,” Heim said, and thought, a little surprised, Why, that means “God be with you.”
“Captain of mine,” Cynbe sang, “fare you well.” The radio beams cut out. Dark and silent, the two ships moved toward their meeting place.