by Jerry eBooks
“Fire control to bridge: enemy battery silenced,” Atkins reported firmly.
“Secure fire control,” Culver ordered, then turned on his heel. “The enemy’s ordnance is destroyed, sir,” he asserted. “Our combat crewmen are engaging the enemy in front of his ship.”
“Send Mr. Atkins my congratulations,” Sanderson replied promptly. “Then inform the combat detachment of the situation.”
Culver turned back to the intercom-then started, as a siren wailed somewhere in the bowels of the ship. A station amidships was buzzing frantically; he plugged in the mike. “Bridge,” he answered.
“Atomic bomb watch to bridge: instruments show unprecedented activity of the bomb. Dangerous reaction predicted.”
Culver fought to keep his voice down as he relayed the information. The bridge watch simply came to a dead stop; all eyes were on Sanderson.
Even the phlegmatic commander hesitated. Finally: “Prepare to abandon ship,” he ordered, heavily.
At once the confusion which had accompanied the preparations of the combat detachment was repeated throughout the ship. Atomic bombs by this time were largely made of artificial isotopes and elements; the type which they carried had never been tested in combat—and radioactive elements can do strange and unpredictable things when stimulated. Mere concussion had started the trouble this time, and the mind of man was incapable of prophesying the results. The bomb might merely increase in the speed of its radioactive decay, flooding the ship and the bodies of its men with deadly gamma rays; it might release enormous heat and melt the cruiser into a bubbling pool of metal; it might blast both of the ships and a mile on cubic mile of rock out of existence—but all they could do was abandon the cruiser and hope for the best. All mankind was unable to do more.
Sanderson’s forceful personality and Carpenter’s prowling corpsmen prevented a panic. Men cursed as they struggled with obstinate clasps and joints. A few of Kelly’s apprentices. who had not gone into combat flung cases of concentrated food through the landing trap to the tunnel floor. Culver packed the ship’s records—logs, papers, muster sheets, inventories—into an insulated metal can for preservation. A picked force of atomic technicians in cumbersome lead suits vanished into the shielded bomb chamber with the faint hope of suppressing the reaction.
Sanderson paused before sealing his helmet. “Mr. Culver, you will have all hands assemble in or near the landing trap. We must advance, destroy the enemy and take refuge in his ship; it is our only hope.”
Navigation buzzed; Culver made the necessary connection. “One moment, sir,” he murmured to Sanderson. “Bridge.”
The young exec could visualize old Lieutenant Watson’s strained expression, his set jaw. “Navigation requests permission to remain aboard when ship is abandoned,” Watson said slowly. “Chances of crew’s survival would be materially increased if the ship reversed engines and departed this area—”
Sanderson was silent a long moment. “Permission granted,” he finally answered in a low voice. He started to say more; caught Carpenter’s eye and was silent.
But Culver could not maintain military formality in answering Watson’s call. “Go ahead, Phil, and—thanks,” he replied, almost in a whisper.
Carpenter stepped forward quickly. “This is no time for sentiment, Mr. Culver,” he snapped. “Lieutenant Watson’s behavior was a little naive for an officer, but the important fact remains that his antiquated altruism may be the means of preserving the lives of more important personnel.” He waved a sheaf of loose papers excitedly. “This report of mine, for example, on the psychiatric aspects of this battle will be invaluable to the Board—”
Crack!
All the wiry power of the young exec’s rigidly trained body went into the punch; literally traveled through him from toe to fist and exploded on the psycho officer’s jaw. Months of harsh discipline—psychological manhandling—the strain of combat—repressed emotions, never really unhampered since his childhood—the sense of the war’s futility which had not been completely trained out of anyone—his poorly-concealed hatred for Carpenter—all these subconscious impressions came boiling up and sped the blow—and his hand was incased in a metal glove.
Carpenter’s head snapped back.
His feet literally flew off the deck as his body described a long arc and slammed into the far wall. He sprawled there grotesquely like a discarded marionette. Miraculously his glasses were unbroken.
The iron reserve which Sanderson had kept throughout the battle left him with the disruption of his neat, disciplined little military cosmos. For a long time he was unable to speak or move.
Two tough-looking psych corpsmen closed in on the exec, who stood facing the fallen officer, his fists clenched. He twisted angrily as they grabbed his arms.
“Let him alone,” Sanderson ordered, coming to his senses. They reluctantly released Culver.
“Mr. Culver,” the skipper said very quietly, “I need you now. You will resume your duties until this crisis is over. But, if we come through this, I’m going to see that you’re broken.”
Culver faced him, anger draining out of him like the color from his flushed face. He saluted, turned back to the intercom to give out the last order Sanderson had issued. “Attention all hands,” he called mechanically. “Fall in at the landing trap to abandon ship.”
Sanderson beckoned to the two psych corpsmen. “Please take Lieutenant Carpenter to sick bay,” he ordered. “Bring him around as soon as you can.”
The Asiatic squatted crosslegged behind his shining pneumatic machine gun, frantically raking the rock-strewn ground before him. The air ahead shimmered and danced with heat; the other side of his crude stone shelter must be glowing whitely, and the sweat ran down his yellow face even though the tiny cooling motor within his armor hummed savagely as it labored to keep him from suffocating. He must destroy the offending heat ray or abandon his position.
A confused impression of rubber-and-metal armor was all he received as Fontaine rushed upon him from the side. The two men came together and went down with a loud clatter of armor; rolled over and over in quick, bitter struggle. Even in the Atomic age there could be hand-to-hand combat.
It was an exhausting fight; the battle suits were heavy, and awkward. They wrestled clumsily, the clank of their armor lending an incongruously comic note. The lithe Asiatic broke a hold, cleared his right hand. Fontaine rolled over to avoid the glittering knife his opponent had succeeded in drawing. Here beneath the crust a rip in his rubberized suit would spell disaster. The Asiatic jumped at him to follow up his advantage. Fontaine dropped back on his elbows, swung his feet around and kicked viciously.
The metal boot shattered the Asiatic’s glass face plate, nearly broke his neck from its impact. Shaken by the cruel blow to his face, blinded by blood drawn by the jagged glass, gasping from the foul air and the oppressive heat, he desperately broke away and ran staggeringly toward the right, misjudging the direction of his ship.
Fontaine estimated the number of explosive bullets he had left, then let his enemy go, knowing there would be no more danger from that quarter. He lay unmoving beside the abandoned machine gun, breathing heavily. His near-miraculous survival thus far deserved a few minutes’ rest.
The enemy’s landing trap, like the Western one, was under the ship’s carriage; instead of a chain ladder, a ramp bad been let down. A terrific melee now raged around the ramp—Fontaine and his opponent had been so intent on their duel they had not seen the tide of battle wash past them. Here and there lay dead men of both sides; his recent enemy had soon been overcome and lay not a score of feet away, moving spasmodically. Battle-hardened as he was, Fontaine seriously debated putting the fellow out of his misery—death from armor failure was the worst kind in this war except radioactive poisoning—then carefully counted his explosive pellets again. Only six—he might need them. He dismissed the writhing Asiatic from his mind.
He looked up at the smashed hull of the enemy ship, and an idea came to him. They wouldn
’t be watching here, with their ship in danger of being boarded elsewhere.
He rose, moved quietly to the great right-hand tread. The flat links here were torn and disconnected; he seized a loose projection and hauled himself upward. Slipping and scrambling, using gauntleted hands and booted feet, he reached the top of the tread.
Directly above him was a jagged hole in the ship’s carriage, about four feet long. He seized the edges and somehow managed to wriggle his way inside.
The interior was a shambles of smashed compartments, with men and metal uncleanly mated. Fontaine laboriously pushed his way forward, climbing over and around barriers flung up at the caprice of Atkins’ guns. Once he was forced to expend one of the precious pellets; the recoil nearly flattened him at such close quarters, but he picked himself up and climbed through the still-smoking hole into a passageway which was buckled somewhat but still intact.
He looked carefully in both directions, then saw a ladder and began to ascend. It brought him into a small storage compartment which was still illuminated. He grunted in satisfaction; if he had reached the still-powered portion of the ship, he was going in the right direction.
He eased the door open three inches; air hissed—this compartment must be sealed off. He quickly passed through, closed the door, and cautiously tested the air—good; this part of the ship still had pure air and insulation. Confidently he continued forward and climbed another ladder toward the bridge.
He had to wait at one level until a sentry turned his back. Then he sprang, and his steel fingers sank into the Asiatic’s throat. There was no outcry.
Faintly from below there came the sounds of a struggle; his comrades had successfully invaded the ship. Curiously, Fontaine tried his helmet radio. It had been put out of commission in his fight with the machine gunner outside.
There were no more sentries; that was odd. He proceeded with extreme caution as he came to the ladder leading up to the bridge. Here would be the brains of the Asiatic ship; his five remaining pellets could end the engagement now that the battle was raging on enemy territory.
He stumbled over something—a man’s foot. He dragged the body out of the shadows which had concealed it.
“What the devil—”
The man had been another guard. His chest was shattered; an explosive pistol was clutched in his right hand. One pellet was missing from the chamber.
Wonderingly Fontaine climbed the ladder, halted at the door.
Lying at his feet was another sentry. The man’s body was unmarked, but his face bore signs of a painful death. A small supersonic projector lay near him.
Fontaine opened the door—and turned away, sick.
Somebody had turned on a heat ray at close quarters. Officers and enlisted men lay in charred horror. And in the center of the room, the ship’s commanding officer slumped on a bloodstained silken cushion. The man had committed honorable suicide with a replica of an ancient Japanese samurai sword.
In his left hand was a crumpled sheet of yellow paper, evidently a radiogram.
Fontaine took the scrap from the lax yellow fingers, puzzled over the Oriental characters.
Then he went outside, and closed the door, and sat down at the head of the ladder to await the coming of men who might be able to solve the mystery.
The last man scrambled down the swaying chains and dropped to the ground from the Western cruiser.
Lieutenants Watson and Atkins were alone in the ship.
“Why did you stay?” demanded Watson, throwing the starting switch. He had hastily rigged an extension from the power room to navigation. “Only one man is needed to operate the ship, in an emergency.”
Lieutenant Atkins found a fine cigar in his uniform. “I’ve been saving this,” he remarked, stripping off the cellophane wrapper lovingly. “The condemned man indulges in the traditional liberties.”
“Answer my question,” Watson insisted, advancing the speed lever.
Atkins pressed a glowing heating-coil “lighter” to the tip of the cigar. “Let me ask you this—why did you make this heroic gesture?”
Watson flushed. “You might as well ask—why fight at all?”
“You might,” Atkins said, smiling slightly.
“I did this because our men come first!” Watson shouted almost in fury.
Atkins chuckled. “Forgive me. old friend—I find it hard to shake off the illusions I had back in the Last Surface War, myself.” He blew a huge cloud of smoke. “But when Culver sent down the commander’s congratulations to me for silencing that enemy battery, it struck me how empty all our battles and decorations are.”
Watson shoved the speed lever to maximum; the cruiser rolled backward down the tunnel at a terrific velocity, no longer impeded by masses of rock. After a long silence he asked: “Atkins—what were you fighting for?”
Atkins looked him squarely in the eye. “Well, I managed to hypnotize myself into a superficial love of massed artillery—it’s a perversion of my love for the symphony—used to conduct a small orchestra at the academy before it was dissolved and the funds allocated to a military band. I liked that orchestra; felt I was doing something constructive for once.” He was silent for a while, smoking and reminiscing. Coming back to reality with a start, he went on hastily: “Of course underneath it all I guess I was motivated just the way you were—to maintain the dead traditions of the service, to save our shipmates who would have died anyway, and to advance a cause which no longer exists.”
Watson buried his head in his hands. “I fought because I thought it was the right thing to do.”
Atkins softened. “So did X, my friend,” he admitted. “But it’s all over now—”
He paused to flick ashes from the cigar. “I saved something else for this,” he went on irrelevantly. “Carpenter is gone now, Watson, so we can dispense with his psychopathic mummery. What a joke if he should ever know I had this aboard.” He laughed lightly, producing a small, gold-stamped book bound in black leather. “This sort of thing is the only value left, for us,” he asserted. “Let us pray.”
And thus, a few minutes later, the two elderly officers died. It was not a great blast, as atomic explosions go, but ship and men and rock puffed and sparkled in bright, cleansing flame.
The bridge of the captured enemy ship looked fresh and clean. The remains of the Asiatic commanders’ gruesome self-destruction had been cleared away; blackened places about the room glistened with new paint. It was several hours after the battle.
Sanderson stood at attention reading a report to his surviving officers. Sergeant Fontaine, permitted to attend as the first witness to the baffling slaughter, fidgeted in the presence of so much gold braid. Private Carson, the strange child of the laboratory, present to assist Fontaine in guarding the disgraced executive officer, stood stolidly, a detached expression on his face.
“—and therefore the atomic explosion, when it did come, was hardly noticed here,” the commander concluded his report. “Lieutenant Watson did his duty”—he glared covertly at Culver, manacled between Fontaine and Carson—“and if we can return safely to our Advance Base this will go down as one of the greatest exploits in the history of warfare.”
He cleared his throat. “At ease,” he said offhandedly, straightening his papers. The officers and crewmen relaxed, shifted position, as Sanderson went on more informally: “Before we discuss any future action, however, there is this business of the Asiatic warlords—their inexplicable suicide. Lieutenant Carpenter?”
The psycho officer stepped forward, caressing his bandaged jaw. “I have questioned the ten prisoners we took,” he announced as clearly as he could through the bandages, “and my men have applied all of the standard means of coercion. I am firmly convinced that the Asiatic prisoners are as ignorant as we are of the reason for their masters’ strange behavior.”
Sanderson motioned him back impatiently. “Ensign Becker?”
The personnel officer rustled some sheets of paper. “I have checked the records carefully, sir,”
he asserted, “and Lieutenant Commander Culver is the only man aboard this ship who understands written Asiatic.”
Sanderson’s gaze swept over all his officers. “Gentlemen, the executive officer was guilty of striking the psycho officer shortly before we abandoned ship—I witnessed the action. I want to know if you will accept as valid his translation of the radiogram which Sergeant Fontaine found on the body of the enemy leader.”
“I object!” shouted Carpenter immediately. “Culver violated one of the basic principles of the officers’ corps—he can’t be completely sane!”
“True, perhaps,” admitted Sanderson testily, “but, lieutenant, would you care to suggest a plan of action—before we discover why our late enemies killed themselves so conveniently?”
“Commander, are you trying to vindicate this man?” Carpenter demanded indignantly.
Sanderson looked at the psycho officer with an expression almost contemptuous. “You should know by this time, lieutenant, that I have never liked Mr. Culver,” he snorted. “Unfortunately this could be a question of our own survival. If the officers present accept Culver’s translation of the message, I shall act on it.”
“.But we came here to begin court-martial proceedings—”
“That can wait,” the skipper interrupted impatiently. “This is my command. Carpenter, and I wish you’d remember that. Well, gentlemen? A show of hands, please—” He paused to count. “Very well,” he decided shortly. “Sergeant Fontaine. give the message to the prisoner.”
Fontaine threw a snappy salute and handed the yellow scrap of paper silently to the exec. Carson loosened his grip somewhat: Culver began to work out the translation—
FROM: Supreme Headquarters in Mongolia
TO: All field commanders