He fixed me with his swimming old eyes and punctuated every word with a piercing flash. “You hold him down. You make him keep that throttle just a little bit shut. You make sure Tug One don’t kill him. Because, Officer Gris—yes, I saw your name on those orders and saw also you’re a ‘drunk’—if anything happens to Jettero Heller that can be laid to your account, there’s a lot of us will find and kill you, Officer Gris.”
It was so illogical! It was so unjust! It was I who had tried to prevent Heller from getting that ship! The old spacer might be in his dotage and his wits might be adrift but there was no mistaking the menace in his voice. In some intuitive way, did he sense I was Heller’s enemy?
Hastily, I got Atty into an airbus and told a driver to return him to the Emergency Fleet Reserve. I certainly hoped he would never find out or guess what was intended to happen to Heller. I watched them leave.
I was sick all over again.
PART FIVE
Chapter 6
I should have been more suspicious. My only excuse is that I was a bit confused and dazed with the events of the first half of the morning. I remember looking at my watch and being amazed that it was still so early.
But Heller wasn’t dazed. He was moving with fast, determined movements, putting speed and control into this scene.
I saw him go over to the hangar security guard captain. There was a money handshake and a sudden look of awe from the captain. “Yes, sir!” the security captain said, pushing golden paper into his tunic, “Post guards and make absolutely certain nothing is stolen from that ship. Good as done, sir!” And he rushed off to post his guards.
A motley mob of mechanics, cargo handlers and odds and ends of personnel had been gathered up by the bustling hangar chief to act as cleaning crews. My driver was standing beside a stack of cans and boxes and was handing out rags and cleaning materials to the workmen who then began crowding into the ship.
Heller and a mechanic were rigging vacuum hoses and passing them into the open air locks and ports of Tug One. Another crew was fastening water, sewage and power lines for groundside utilities.
There were so many bodies rushing about doing so many things, it made me quite dizzy.
Then, to cap it, a big lorry suddenly roared into the hangar. My driver rushed over to its cab and some workmen spilled out and began to unload it.
A commercial lorry? Big signs on it:
DRINK TUP FOR A TERRIFIC TREAT!
Tup? It was the mild, brewed concoction workers are supposed to rave about.
The truck workers found a long sheet of hull shielding and put it on a couple of supports, making a kind of bar. Then they unloaded some cases of canisters and stacked them along the shielding. This tup company, I’d seen in ads, provided “everything you need for a picnic party.” And sure enough, they unloaded some expendable portable stands with banners on them in garish colors and strewed them about the bar and spotted them on the floor. Then they all jumped back on the lorry and it roared away.
Heller let loose a piercing whistle, the way they do on battleships. All work ceased abruptly within and outside the ship. In that distance-defying Fleet officer voice he said, “Attention all. If this ship passes a Fleet-type inspection, totally clean, by four o’clock this afternoon, you will all have a tup party!”
Heads, incredulous, poked out of openings in the ship. People turned and stared. And there was the makeshift bar and there flowed the bright banners and there in cases was the tup!
A concerted yell of enthusiasm went up from all over the place. And if there had been action before, there was a blur now! Nothing like this had ever happened before in this hangar.
The voice of the hangar chief rumbled behind me and I turned, half expecting to be attacked. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking with awe at the busy Heller.
“Who is that guy? He’s a Royal officer, I can tell that. But I got the feeling I’ve seen his face before.”
Without thinking—I wasn’t being very bright that day—I said, “Jettero Heller.”
“No!” said the battered old hangar chief. “Jettero Heller the famous race driver! Oh, wait until I tell my wife and kids I’ve actually met the Jettero Heller.”
Oh, my Gods! If this got to the Grand Council we hadn’t left . . . I had an impulse to seize him by the tunic and drag him close and snarl. But he was too tough. Instead, I said, “He is on a mission that is totally secret. No word that he is here is to be spread around!” I had a vision of Crown inspectors swarming in to find out why we were still here and not on Earth! “You’ll forget his name! That’s an order!”
I might as well not have opened my mouth for all the attention he gave me. He was still looking at Heller. “My, but he’s a grand fellow! So efficient, so friendly.” And then and only then did his eyes shift to me. He looked me up and down. “Wish we had some in the Apparatus like that!” And walked off.
It didn’t help my morale. But looking at Tug One further depressed it. I slumped down on an old fuel rod case and looked at her. Lying on her belly as she was now, she was about forty feet high and about sixty feet wide, all out of proportion for her hundred and ten feet of length. And the massive arms that stuck out on either side of her bow looked silly.
The trundle dolly operator was preparing to move the machine: he was nearby, lifting the chock levers. I said to him, “What are those arms sticking out from her bow?”
He looked at her. “Those are to butt with. That’s a space tug. They butt into the sides of battleships and things and if they didn’t have those wide arms, they’d buckle the hullplates of what they were trying to move. Her stern is big enough to use, too. They butt and bump and push things around. I never seen that exact type before, she looks more powerful than the usual run; and that’s saying a lot, fellow. Even the auxiliary drives on those tugs are the same as they put in battleships today. Gods know what her main power is. And she’d have traction beam towing, too. You have to be careful of traction beam towing: one careless yank and it’d pull a battleship in half. A tug is all engines. I heard a few years ago one blew up: lost everybody aboard. Awful thing: you wouldn’t catch me serving on no tug. What are we doing with that thing in here anyway?”
I wished I knew! But one thing I did know: it was the ugliest spacevessel I had ever laid eyes on.
Heller seemed to have everything organized and going now. I saw him entering the hangar administration offices over on the other side. Even at that distance I could see he had some notebook out, consulting it as he walked. In a surge of fear, I realized he was heading for the communication control cubicle: he was about to personally place outside calls! With his insecurity, he could blow us apart! I raced after him.
There he stood, red racing cap on the back of his head, blond hair escaping around it, a totally composed look on his face. He was regarding the usual lengthy list of civilian contractors they place in hangar offices; in this case it was a smudgy, tattered list, augmented by little cards the contractors themselves stick on and around it to advertise their names. He was already reaching for the brush levers to register a call number when I stayed his hand.
“That’s an out-security action you’re doing,” I said.
He looked at me a bit languidly, his mind on his open notebook, “You know as well as I do that any of these contractors is totally secure. They handle all sorts of sensitive installations. And they well know that one leak from one of them would cause an instant cancellation of all future business.” He freed his hand and reached toward the brush levers again.
But I had gotten a glimpse of the lengthy list of items he had jotted down. “We’ve only got three million credits. We’ve already spent half a million for that tug. If we run over allocation . . .”
“This list total is under half a million,” he said.
But I had gotten a further look at the list. “I don’t see any note here to do something to shed the excess energy that makes these things blow up.”
“Oh, that,” he said. �
��I haven’t gotten around to inventing how to do it yet. It’s never been possible, you know.” He freed his hand once more and hit the brush lever plate.
He got his connection. “Hello, hello. Alpy? Hey, old boy, this is me, Jet. . . . Glad to hear your voice, too. How’s your father? . . . I got Tug One here! . . . No, I’m not kidding. She’s beautiful! . . . Now, Alpy, I want you to bring a design and estimation group down here tomorrow morning. . . . No, it’s just a job on the controls. . . . Will be good to see you, too.” He brushed off.
I tried to find some other objection. Heller was looking at the list on the wall. More brush levers. “Hello, hello. Let me talk to Petalv. . . . Enii? That you? . . . Yes, you’re right: Jet here. Enii, could you bring a design and estimation group down to the Apparatus spacebase hangar one? . . . Tomorrow morning . . . Ha, ha. No, I didn’t lose my wits and transfer to the Apparatus. . . . Just a general engine-maintenance checkup . . . Good. Will look forward to it.”
Another call. And another call. All first-name, old-pal calls. Gyro specialists. Cable renewals. Viewscreen refurbishing. Gravity coil reintensifying. Antisurveillance hull work. On and on and on. He was almost exhausting the contractor list.
Finally, between calls, I could stand it no longer. “Heller!” I wailed, “you’re planning work that will take months!”
“Weeks, unfortunately.”
The specter of Lombar began to loom over me. “Heller,” I said in desperation, “we’ve got to get out of here! We’ve got to get started on this mission!”
He looked at me in surprise. “I know! You were going to take a freighter. It takes a freighter weeks and weeks and weeks to get to Blito-P3. If we started right this minute on a freighter or if we started weeks from now in Tug One, we’d still get to Earth faster my way. I’m saving us time!”
And threatening us with being blown up, I snarled to myself. Oh, I thought, I could wring your neck! And instantly I was too sick at my stomach to stay in there.
I went and found a corner out of everybody’s way and wrapped myself in solid gloom.
After a while, I saw the irony of it. He was actually perfectly safe here, in reach of friends. Danger for him began when we hit Earth. But I certainly could not tell him that. Somehow, some way, I had to get him off this planet. And I couldn’t even understand why just thinking about it made me feel so ill.
Maybe it was that (bleeped), ugly abomination of a tug!
PART FIVE
Chapter 7
The day rushed itself forward into the afternoon. And at four o’clock Heller inspected the ship. All eyes were on him expectantly as he came out.
He cried, “A beautiful job! It passes! The party is on!”
About two hundred people let out a whoop that made the hangar ring. In a mad, happy mob they converged upon the makeshift bar and the tup canisters began to pop. There were buns there, too, and funny hats and streamers. And for the next two hours, the place was a bedlam of cries and songs and toasts to Heller and Tug One and anything else anyone could think of, except the Apparatus.
The hangar security guards were still at their posts but they had canisters of tup. The guard captain, a bit unsteady on his feet and his mouth full of sweetbun, tried to put his arm around my shoulder. “What a wunnerful bird that Heller is!”
I shook him off.
Heller was no place to be seen. A short time before I had seen him and my driver carrying the baggage from the airbus into the tug along with some new boxes. Heller must now be inside the ship.
My driver—blast, might as well call him Heller’s driver now—had had a busy day. He must have made a dozen trips to town. He had even been the one handing out the tup at the party start. He was apparently finished now. He had gotten himself a canister of tup and was sucking it down. He came over to me, grinning and happy like an idiot. “You got any orders for me?”
“No,” I said coldly.
“Then I’ll just go back to the old airbus and have me a little nap.” From a slight slur of speech, I realized that wasn’t his first tup today. Heller certainly could crash discipline. The driver hadn’t even asked permission or saluted or said “Officer Gris”!
How much of Heller’s money had today cost? Certainly not less than three hundred and fifty credits. Heller’s money? My money! And all on a stinking piece of ugly scrap metal!
The party finally died down. The Apparatus people had drifted off with happy, stupid grins on their faces. It was nearing sunset. At least, I thought, it’s all over. I was wrong!
I heard a “Hup, yo, hup, hup, yo!” cadence counting coming nearer! For an instant I thought it must be Fleet Marines come to rescue Heller. Only Fleet Marines counted cadence that way!
Slam, trap, slam, trap, slam, trap of military boots. And in through the hangar door came Snelz and half his platoon, eight men. They sounded like a regiment, their heavy combat boots banging on the hangar floor, shattering the echoes!
I remembered that Snelz was an ex-Fleet Marine. He had an officer’s baton—really a long blastick—and he was twirling it in blurring spins the way they do. What a precision picture of the perfect military drillmaster.
And his half platoon . . . Hey, they were in riot helmets and they carried blastrifles! They were a perfect example of crack elite troops. All eight of them.
The hangar guard captain had been lounging against the tug, half-finished canister of tup in his hand, the only one left on guard. He straightened up in amazement, particularly when he saw they were Apparatus troops.
“Scuh-wahd, halt!” cried Snelz. “Grough-und, har-rums, hup!”
With the whirring spin and strap-slapping perfection of Marines, the squad flipped their blastrifles off their shoulders, spun them down and over their arms, whizzed them around their backs, spun them again with an expert twist of wrist and brought them, all as one, to a uniform crash, butt beside their right boot. I hadn’t seen it since the Marines’ fancy parades at the Academy.
“Reh-yust, heasy, hup!” barked Snelz.
Each blastrifle jutted forward, each left boot moved a half yard to the left and came down with an ear-shattering slam.
To the goggle-eyed hangar captain, Snelz said, “We-yuh ahh hear-uh to re-LEAVE the gah-yard, SUH!” And he saluted smartly with his baton.
Despite this amazing display of eight usually mangy, drunken, criminal Apparatus riffraff from Camp Kill, I was a bit glad to see them. This was the squad that would take the night duty. They would be relieved at dawn by the other squad of the platoon. They would shuttle back and forth each day. They undoubtedly had an air-transport outside. At least this was running well. Heller would be thoroughly guarded. I did wonder dimly at the riot helmets and also at the extreme, well-drilled precision of these eight men.
Eight? There should be only seven left in this squad after I had bashed in the skull of one of them. A skilled Apparatus officer always notes things like that. I peered at them but the riot helmet visors made it hard to make out the faces. Oh, well, Snelz had simply gotten a replacement.
The disbelieving captain of the hangar guards had returned the salute with his tup canister. “The gah-yard is yuh-ores, suh,” he said, mimicking Marine custom.
Snelz turned. His baton did a spinning, expert twirl. He held it aloft, “Attention all! Poh-stings!” The baton spun again and came to point at a figure toward the center of the squad. “Gy-yardsman Ip! Your posting is within the ship. Hup!”
The one designated as Guardsman Ip did a precise back yank of the blastrifle, heels popping together at the same time. With the incredibly complex reverse swing of the heavy weapon—around the back, a spin around the other arm—the indicated figure shouldered the weapon, gave a precise, slapping salute and with firm, military marching steps, pivoting on exact right-angle turns, marched to the door of the air lock, stepped into the tug and slammed the door.
With a suddenness that startled me, a strange thing happened. All the remaining members of that squad and Snelz let out an exultant yell! Their mil
itary discipline was gone in a breath! They leaped into the air and slapped their hands; their blastrifles they flung upward! Then they grabbed one another by the shoulders and did a kind of crazy dance, yelling all the while.
Not one shred of military discipline remained. Even Snelz. He was laughing and doing a private waltz.
Then the guard captain, who had walked over to the makeshift bar, called to them, “There’s still some tup left over here.” And the whole group streamed, still laughing, toward the drinks.
It was not until that very moment that I suspected what this day really had been all about.
Invaders Plan, The: Mission Earth Volume 1 Page 26