by Alan Barclay
The Single Ship
Alan Barclay
How could Earth fight a war against an enemy whose base was unknown, who resources were unknown, and whose very physical appearance was unknown? Another thrilling episode of the Jacko War.
The Single Ship
by Alan Barclay
In the committee room at United Nations Military Headquarters on Moon Base a meeting was reaching its conclusion. There were empty coffee cups on the table and ash trays piled with cigarette stubs. Men in the uniforms of several nations, civilians mostly wearing spectacles, and neatly dressed, self-possessed stenographers were beginning to fold documents back into brief cases and button up uniforms or jackets and glance at wrist watches.
“Finally,” the chairman said, “it remains for Admiral Dickenson to select the man for the job.”
Everyone turned to look at Admiral Dickenson. So far this had been a technical discussion, and he was representing Advanced Fighter Group. He had therefore not said much up till this moment.
Dickenson was a gray-haired American officer, with a face someone had once described as having been carved out of teak with a dull ax.
“What sort of man do you want?” he growled.
“You know what we want, Admiral,” the chairman said. “The best you’ve got.”
Dickenson began flipping through the pages of a typed document.
“Our men are all good,” he said. “To get out into Fighter Group, stay there and continue to remain alive, they’ve got to be good.”
“The best, Admiral,” the chairman insisted.
Dickenson continued to turn the pages for a moment longer, then suddenly tossed the catalogue on the table. “I don’t have to look,” he told them with a sigh, “I know the man you want… I’ll give you Jason.”
“Jason?” someone asked. “Never heard of him… What’s his record?”
“Aged twenty-two—five kills to date.”
“Only five? But we want your top-line man!”
“He’s obviously inexperienced,” another officer protested.
“If you refuse him for this mission nobody will be better pleased than me,” Dickenson snapped. “He’s one of the most likeable boys we’ve got. But you ask me for the most suitable man to do this job, and I say Jason. I stick to that.”
“It’s Admiral Dickenson’s task to select the man,” the chairman interposed. “And he tells us Jason. Let us send for Jason.”
The committee picked up caps and files and papers, and dispersed. Some of them took the train across the plateau from Base into the lights and civilization of Moon City; others returned to their offices nearby.
Admiral Dickenson wrote an order and tossed it into his tray. It was picked up by a messenger, delivered to another office, recorded, and passed on to signals. Two hours later a radio man hammered it out with a host of other messages, orders, advice and information, all crammed together on the high-speed transmitter. It went out on a tight beam from a parabolic aerial carefully aimed towards a point many millions of miles out in space. The receiving aerial of Advanced Fighter Base picked up the whole stream of messages, drew them down into the interior of the rock and sorted them out.
Here the order hung fire for a week, for Lieutenant Jason was out on patrol. At the end of that time he returned, received his instructions, and soon found himself traveling back to Moon Base as passenger in a supply ship. When the transport touched down he got a lift in the ground-car over to Base, passed through the lock and was let loose among the maze of corridors and passages which burrowed into the side of the mountain.
He got a lift on a trolley along one of the main passages down as farts stores, and here he drew his kit, and changed from operational rig into uniform—a neat, almost-new, well-pressed black uniform, with the scarlet and yellow rocket flare above the breast pocket.
The stores N.C.O. watched him pull on his cap and give it a tilt to one side.
“All set to give the girls a treat, sir?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Sergeant. I’ve got to report to one of the big shots. This visit is business.”
“Whatever it is, I expect you’ll get a couple of days over at Moon City, sir,” the sergeant opined.
“I hope so. Meantime, I must find Admiral Dickenson, I.C. Fighter Personnel. How do I get to him?”
“He’ll be at Staff Headquarters. Go into the main corridor and thumb a lift on any trolley with a red circle on its front. Don’t take a yellow circle, else you’ll find yourself down in the dungeons among maintenance and we’ll have to send out search parties for you.”
Jason did as advised, and presently found himself at Staff Headquarters. He slid open a door marked Admiral Dickenson — Personnel, and came face to face with a young woman operating a typewriter —one of these good-looking, impeccably groomed, self-assured young women who invariably get jobs as personnel assistants to staff officers.
She for her part saw a medium-sized, rather thin, blue-eyed young man with fair wavy hair. For almost the first time in her life she had the experience of meeting a junior officer who looked neither bold nor shy, who neither called her Gorgeous nor Sis nor Babe. As a matter of fact, all Jason said was “I’m reporting to Admiral Dickenson—the name’s Jason.”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” she said, with more warmth than she generally extended to junior officers. “Go right in.”
Jason went through the inner door and saluted the man at the desk. “Lieutenant Jason, sir,” he announced.
Dickenson put down his pen and leaned back in his chair.
“Take a seat, Jason,” he said, watching the young man appraisingly.
Jason sat down. He crossed one leg over the other and clasped his hands round his knee. Dickenson noted that he remained in that position without changing, entirely at his ease; no fidgeting, no twiddling of fingers or twitching of uniform. He looked the grim, hard-faced old admiral straight in the eye.
“Ha!” the old man grunted. “I’ve been looking up your record, Jason. I’ve selected you as a suitable officer to carry out a special task.” He paused to lift a questioning eyebrow at Jason.
“Thank you, sir,” Jason said. “I’ll try not to disappoint you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Dickenson barked. “This isn’t the sort of thing one says thank you for. The first thing to be said about this job is that it’s strictly a matter of volunteering. You don’t have to take it if you feel disinclined. If you refuse, the fact won’t be noted in your records. You understand that?”
“Yes, sir.” His hands were still lightly clasped over his knee.
“The second thing is this—a whole lot of time, money and thought has been spent preparing this project and, therefore, if you know any reason why you might be unsuited to carry out your part, you must refuse the job. That’s an order. It’s the only order I shall give you in connection with this business. Now,” he continued, lifting the desk phone, “not to prolong the mystery, I’ll take you to see the project, rather than just talk about it—Hello!” he barked into the telephone, “Get me Admiral Hayes… Hello, Hayes, I’ve got Jason here. I’m taking him down to the hangar to show him round. Like to meet me there?… Good!”
He cradled the phone. “Come along,” he said.
The old man loped out of the room like a tiger. Jason, less acclimatised to Moon gravity, followed him more cautiously.
They went a good way along the main corridor then descended to a lower level by sliding down a pole. They passed into a huge ship-servicing hangar. Row upon row of scout ships, types Jason had come to know out in space, stood in lines. Mechanics swarmed over them. The place was full of the noise of riveting and the sizzle and snap of electric welding arcs. As Jason looked around an overalled man pushed past, carrying on his shou
lder a complete motor assembly, a load which back on Earth he could never have lifted off the ground.
“Atomics and fuel tanks are installed elsewhere,” Dickenson explained. “That job has to be carried out under safety precautions. This way.”
He led the way diagonally across the hangar, ducking under a fuselage, and stepping over. stacks of rods and girders. They passed through a door into a smaller room.
“There!” Dickenson exclaimed, “What’d you make of that?” A single ship occupied the center of the room, set high up in the trestles. The ship was short and stubby, and it was colored a deep scarlet.
“A Jacko ship!” Jason exclaimed. “So we’ve captured a Jacko ship at last!”
Dickenson shook his head. “This was made right here in these workshops. Look there!”
He waved a hand to draw attention to the array of drawings, diagrams and blown-up photographs on the walls.
“As near as we can manage it, however,” he went on, “this is a Jacko ship. Perhaps it’s a little better than a Jacko ship; it’ll accelerate harder, and carry more fuel. We’ve been working on this for more than a year, and a lot of thought and time and money has been put into it. Can you guess what we mean to do with it, Jason?”
“No, sir. Had it been just a mock-up. I’d have guessed it was intended for training, for familiarization, but you say it’s a real ship.”
“It’s certainly no mock-up.” The admiral clicked open his cigarette case. “Smoke?” he invited. He himself lit up and perched on the end of a work bench.
“D’you know where the Jackoes come from, Jason?”
“No, sir. All I know is the usual theories; that they come across from Alpha Centauri; or that they come from one of the big planets, Jupiter or Neptune or Saturn; or there’s the theory about the big mother ship hanging around outside the orbit of Neptune. According to this all the little scouts we don’t manage to kill go back to the mother ship to get themselves patched up and rearmed.”
“What d’you think of these notions?”
“I can see serious objections to each one of them, sir. The trip across from Alpha Centauri is no afternoon excursion; it’s feasible only if the little beasts have a much longer life-span than ourselves, or can put themselves into a state of suspended animation. And even if one of these things is true, why do they bother? What do they hope to get out of it?”
“What about the Neptune or Saturn theory?”
“Their ships aren’t able to lift off a high-gravity planet, that’s certain—of course our own scouts can’t take off from Earth either, I know, but even so in our case the gravitational difficulties are not insuperable.”
“And what d’you think of the mother ship idea?”
“Well, I see it this way—there’s a whole race of Jackoes somewhere, living and eating and sleeping and breeding. They build a lot of ships, or at any rate they service and repair and maintain a lot of ships; all that amount of life and activity can’t possibly be explained by the mother ship theory. No ship, however large, could carry that amount of life.”
“All quite sound reasoning,” Admiral Dickenson agreed. “And to tell you the truth, not one of us has any better ideas on the subject than you have. But we’re going to find out.”
“Yes, sir?” Jason asked politely.
“Here’s how we’re going to do it. Somebody, yourself if you choose to volunteer, is going to take this ship out to the asteroids in company with a squadron of our own ships. Sooner or later out there you’ll meet up with a pack of Jackoes—do I have to tell you any more?”
“I get the idea now all right,” Jason agreed. “In the mix-up our imitation Jacko ship attaches itself to the Jacko squadron and goes along home with them. But I can see a lot of difficulties.”
“I’d like to know what difficulties you see.”
Jason had no inhibitions, no shyness; he was able to speak calmly and frankly even to high senior officers.
“First,” he said, “the difficulty of killing an enemy ship and substituting this one unnoticed. It’s a trick we can only try once.”
“That’s a problem of maneuvers—it’s got to be worked out between yourself and the squadron detailed to act with you.”
“Very well,” Jason nodded, accepting the point. “Next difficulty—the jackoes have radio; I’ve heard them often enough chattering to each other. Now I’m to join their formation and ride this ship back home with them. Some Jacko might possibly think it odd if one of their pals stayed speechless for maybe so long as a week.”
“As to that,” Dickenson said, “here’s Admiral Hayes, who’s responsible for the technical side of this project. Hayes, this is Lieutenant Jason. He’s being considered as a possible pilot for the ship. Show him our answer to the problem of radio conversations between our man and the Jacko squadron.”
“It hasn’t taken you long to spot the snags,” Hayes commented. “Come up on top and I’ll show you our answer to that one.”
Hayes leapt the twenty feet up onto a platform which extended above the ship. Jason followed.
“That projection there,” the former explained, “that’s the root of the radio antenna. Now see that dirty long groove across the hull? What would you say had been the cause of that?”
“A solid projectile from one of our guns grazed across the hull, made this diagonal groove, and clipped off the radio mast at the root. I see what you’re getting at,” Jason nodded.
“Any objections?” Hayes asked, smiling.
“A few small ones,” Jason told him. “Perhaps their ships have two independent radio systems—perhaps they have other nonelectronic means of communicating—perhaps their radio is effective after a fashion even with the antenna clipped off. All the same sir, I think these are small chances, well worth taking.”
They jumped back down on to the floor.
“Well, Jason,” Dickenson asked, “what d’you think of our project now?”
“Frankly, sir, I don’t think much of it as yet. I agree the ship has a considerable chance of joining up with the Jackoes and of going along with them undetected, but the chance of ever getting back with any information is smallish.”
“We have an answer to that too,” Hayes told him, stepping over to a bench. “This gadget here is a special camera which carries nearly a mile of film. Whenever the destination is reached, our pilot starts up the camera motor and films everything in sight.”
“But the information, whether it’s stored on this film or merely in the pilot’s brain, has got to be brought back,” Jason pointed out.
“Ah!” Hayes exclaimed enthusiastically. “But wait—whenever the filming’s done, as soon as the pilot thinks he’s collected every possible item of information, he moves this big switch here. A television eye then begins to scan the film and broadcast it back to us. We’ll have a ring of ships waiting to pick the stuff up. In addition, this scanning and broadcast can be done at high speed, so that what takes half an hour to film will be sent back to us in five minutes. What d’you think of that, eh?”
“So far as the success of the project is concerned, it’s the perfect answer,” Jason agreed dryly. “I can see one objection still, but it’s so minor that it’s hardly worth mentioning.”
Hayes’ enthusiasm was so open and childlike that Jason’s remark merely puzzled him. Admiral Dickenson, however, stepped into the breach.
“When the film’s been shot back, the pilot’s job is done and he can blast for home.”
“With every Jacko in every squadron of every Jacko fleet hot on his tail,” Jason added. “And how many millions of miles will he be from home?”
“Quite true,” Dickenson admitted. “I said it was a dangerous job… But there are one or two factors which favor the pilot. This is a very special, ship. It carries twice the usual load of fuel and it can accelerate a little harder and a little longer than any Jacko. Therefore, given even a small start you should be able to show them a clean pair of heels.”
“It’s unarmed?” J
ason asked.
Dickenson hesitated. “Yes. Remember the ship will be riding in close formation with an enemy squadron far some days. If we mounted a pair of Sandbatch cannon they’d give our gable away at once.”
“There’s something up there, looks like D-ray bellmouth,” Jason remarked, looking up at the bows of the ship.
“A dummy, “ Hayes explained. “You know the D-ray gives out a backlash of hard radiation; that’s a problem we haven’t managed to lick yet. Anyone using an unscreened D-ray is going to make himself a very sick man indeed. We calculate the pilot gets a better chance if we give him all possible speed and fuel.”
Jason was introduced to other details of the project, then Admiral Dickenson concluded: “I don’t want your decision now, Jason. What I want you to do is to draw some of your back pay from the accountant, take the train over to Moon City and have a little amusement. Give yourself time to think. Report back in twenty-four hours, with your decision.”
Jason saluted and went off.
“Better start looking for another volunteer,” Hayes told Dickenson ironically.
“Why so?” the other asked.
“You know the chances of getting back from this little expedition are about twenty to one against, and Jason has worked out the odds already. He spotted all the difficulties immediately and he’s sane and balanced, not a suicidal fanatic. You must look for someone less intelligent and more fanatical, Admiral.”
Admiral Dickenson scowled. “Sure the boy’s intelligent. This is no job for brute force or ignorance or fanaticism. Not only is he intelligent, but he’s calm, level-headed. Did you notice how still he stood—no twiddling his fingers or puffing nervously at cigarettes? He’s got no complexes; he’s polite all right, but not over-anxious to win my approve. No false humility either, no protesting he’s unfit for the job.”
“All of which seems to add up to just what I said. He’s intelligent, he’s no fanatic, he’s got no complexes—he’ll turn the job down.”