Kurt gave a slight start which he quickly controlled. Then he had guessed right! Slowly and casually he began to sidle toward the semicircular bank of controls that stood before the great tracking screen.
“Where do you think you’re going!” barked Krogson.
Kurt froze. His pulses were pounding within him but he kept his voice light and casual.
“No place,” he said innocently.
“Get over against the bulkhead and keep out of the way!” snapped the commander. “We’ve got a job of work coming up.”
Kurt injected a note of bewilderment into his voice.
“What kind of work?”
Krogson’s voice softened and a look approaching pity came into his eyes. “It’s just as well you don’t know about it until it’s over,” he said gruffly.
“There she is!” sang out the navigator, pointing to a tiny brown projection that jutted up out of the green jungle in the far distance. “We’re about three minutes out, sir. You can take over at any time now.”
The fleet gunnery officer’s fingers moved quickly over the keys that welded the fleet into a single instrument of destruction, keyed and ready to blast a barrage of ravening thunderbolts of molecular disruption down at the defenseless garrison at a single touch on the master fire-control button.
“Whenever you’re ready, sir,” he said deferentially to Krogson as he vacated the controls. A hush fell over the control room as the great tracking screen brightened and showed the compact bundle of white dots that marked the fleet crawling slowly toward the green triangle of the target area.
“Get the prisoner out of here,” said Krogson. “There’s no reason why he should have to watch what’s about to happen.”
The guard that stood beside Kurt grabbed his arm and shoved him toward the door.
There was a sudden explosion of fists’ as Kurt erupted into action. In a blur of continuous movement he streaked toward the gunnery control panel. He was halfway across the control room before the pole axed guard hit the floor. There was a second of stunned amazement, and then before anyone could move to stop him, he stood beside the controls, one hand poised tensely above the master stud that controlled the combined fire of the fleet.
“Hold it!” he shouted as the moment of paralysis broke and several of the officers started toward him menacingly. “One move and I’ll blast the whole fleet into scrap!”
They stopped in shocked silence, looking to Commander Krogson for guidance.
“Almost on target, sir,” called the tech on the tracking screen.
Krogson stalked menacingly toward Kurt. “Get away from those controls!” he snarled. “You aren’t going to blow anything to anything. All that you can do is let off a premature blast. If you are trying to alert your base, it’s no use. We can be on a return sweep before they have time to get ready for us.”
Kurt shook his head calmly. “Wouldn’t do you any good,” he said. “Take a look at the gun ports on the other ships. I made a couple of minor changes while I was working on the control bank.”
“Quit bluffing,” said Krogson.
“I’m not bluffing,” said Kurt quietly. “Take a look. It won’t cost you anything.”
“On target!” called the tracking tech.
“Order the fleet to circle for another sweep,” snapped Krogson over his shoulder as he stalked toward the forward observation port. There was something in Kurt’s tone that had impressed him more than he liked to admit. He squinted out toward the nearest ship. Suddenly his face blanched!
“The gun ports! They’re still closed!”
Kurt gave a-whistle of relief. “I had my fingers crossed,” he said pleasantly. “You didn’t give me enough time with the wiring diagrams for me to be sure that cutting out that circuit would do the trick. Now . . . guess what the results would be if I should happen to push down on this stud.”
Krogson had a momentary vision of several hundred shells ramming their sensitive noses against the thick chrome steel of the closed gun ports.
“Don’t bother trying to talk,” said Kurt, noticing the violent contractions of the commander’s Adam’s apple. “You’d better save your breath for my colonel.”
“Who?” demanded Krogson.
“My colonel,” repeated Kurt. “We’d better head back and pick him up. Can you make these ships hang in one place or do they have to keep moving fast to stay up?”
The commander clamped his jaws together sullenly and said nothing.
Kurt made a tentative move toward the firing stud.
“Easy!” yelled the gunnery officer in alarm. “That thing has hair-trigger action!”
“Well?” said Kurt to Krogson.
“We can hover,” grunted the other.
“Then take up a position a little to one side of the plateau.” Kurt brushed the surface of the firing stud with a casual finger. “If you make me push this, I don’t want a lot of scrap iron falling down on the battalion. Somebody might get hurt.”
As the fleet came to rest above the plateau, the call light on the communication panel began to flash again.
“Answer it,” ordered Kurt, “but watch what you say.”
Krogson walked over and snapped on the screen.
“Communications, sir.”
“Well?”
“It’s that message we called you about earlier. We’ve finally got the decoder working—sort of, that is.” His voice faltered and then stopped.
“What does it say?” demanded Krogson impatiently.
“We still don’t know,” admitted the tech miserably. “It’s being decoded all right but it’s coming out in a North Vegan dialect that nobody down here can understand. I guess there’s still something wrong with the selector. All that we can figure out is that the message has something to do with General Carr and the Lord Protector.”
“Want me to go down and fix it?” interrupted Kurt in an innocent voice.
Krogson whirled toward him, his hamlike hands clinching and unclinching in impotent rage.
“Anything wrong, sir?” asked the technician on the screen.
Kurt raised a significant eyebrow to the commander.
“Of course not,” growled Krogson.
“Go find somebody to translate that message and don’t bother me until it’s done.”
A new face appeared on the screen.
“Excuse me for interrupting, sir, but translation won’t be necessary. We just got a flash from Detection that they’ve spotted the ship that sent it. It’s a small scout heading in on emergency drive. She should be here in a matter of minutes.”
Krogson flipped off the screen impatiently. “Whatever it is, it’s sure to be more trouble,” he said to nobody in particular. Suddenly he became aware that the fleet was no longer in motion. “Well,” he said sourly to Kurt, “we’re here. What now?”
“Send a ship down to the garrison and bring Colonel Harris back up here so that you and he can work this thing out between you. Tell him that Dixon is up here and has everything under control.”
Krogson turned to the executive officer. “All right,” he said, “do what he says.” The other saluted and started toward the door.
“Just a second,” said Kurt, “if you have any idea of telling the boys outside to cut the transmission leads from fire control, I wouldn’t advise it. It’s a rather lengthy process and the minute a trouble light blinks on that board, up we go! Now on your way!”
XIV.
Lieutenant Colonel Blick, acting commander of the 427th Light Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial Space Marines stood at his office window and scowled down upon the whole civilized world, all twenty-six square kilometers of it. It had been a hard day. Three separate delegations of mothers had descended upon him demanding that he reopen the Tech Schools for the sake of their sanity. The recruits had been roaming the company streets in bands composed of equal numbers of small boys and large dogs creating havoc wherever they went. He tried to cheer himself up by thinking of his forthcoming triumph
when he in the guise of the Inspector General would float magnificently down from the skies and once and for all put the seal of final authority upon the new order. The only trouble was that he was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that maybe that new order wasn’t all that he had planned it to be. As he thought of his own six banshees screaming through quarters, his suspicion deepened almost to certainty.
He wandered back to his desk and slumped behind it gloomily. He couldn’t backwater now, his pride was at stake. He glanced at the water clock on his desk, and then rose reluctantly and started toward the door. It was time to get into battle armor and get ready for the inspection.
As he reached the door, there was a sudden slap of running sandals down the hall. A second later Major Kane burst into the office, his face white and terrified.
“Colonel,” he gasped, “the I.G.’s here!”
“Nonsense,” said Blick. “I’m the I.G. now!”
“Oh yeah?” whimpered Kane. “Go look out the window. He’s here and he’s brought the whole Imperial fleet with him!”
Blick dashed to the window and looked up. High above, so high that he could see them only as silver specks, hung hundreds of ships.
“Headquarters does exist!” he gasped.
He stood stunned. What to do . . . what to do . . . what to do—The question swirled around in his brain until he was dizzy. He looked to Kane for advice but the other was as bewildered as he was.
“Don’t stand there, man,” he stormed. “Do something!”
“Yes, sir,” said Kane. “What?”
Blick thought for a long silent moment. The answer was obvious but there was a short, fierce inner struggle before he could bring himself to accept it.
“Get Colonel Harris up here at once. He’ll know what we should do.”
A stubborn look came across Kane’s face. “We’re running things now,” he said angrily.
Blick’s face hardened and he let out a roar that shook the walls. “Listen, you pup, when you get an order you follow it. Now get!”
Forty seconds later Colonel Harris stormed into the office. “What kind of a mess have you got us into this time?” he demanded.
“Look up there, sir,” said Blick, leading him to the window.
Colonel Harris snapped back into command as if he’d never left it.
“Major Kane!” he shouted.
Kane popped into the office like a frightened rabbit.
“Evacuate the garrison at once! I want everyone off the plateau and into the jungle immediately. Get litters for the sick and the veterans who can’t walk and take them to the hunting camps. Start the rest moving north as soon as you can.”
“Really, sir,” protested Kane, looking to Blick for a cue.
“You heard the colonel,” barked Blick. “On your way!” Kane bolted.
Colonel Harris turned to Blick and said in a frosty voice: “I appreciate your help, colonel, but I feel perfectly competent to enforce my own orders.”
“Sorry, sir,” said the other meekly. “It won’t happen again.”
Harris smiled. “O.K., Jimmie,” he said, “let’s forget it. We’ve got work to do!”
XV.
It seemed to Kurt as if time was standing still. His nerves were screwed up to the breaking point and although he maintained an air of outward composure for the benefit of those in the control room of the flagship, it took all his will power to keep the hand that was resting over the firing stud from quivering. One slip and they’d be on him. Actually it was only a matter of minutes between the time the scout was dispatched to the garrison below and the time it returned, but to him it seemed as if hours had passed before the familiar form of his commanding officer strode briskly into the control room.
Colonel Harris came to a halt just inside the door and swept the room with a keen penetrating gaze.
“What’s up, son?” he asked Kurt.
“I’m not quite sure. All that I know is that they’re here to blast the garrison. As long as I’ve got control of this,” he indicated the firing stud, “I’m top dog, but you’d better work something out in a hurry.”
The look of strain on Kurt’s face was enough for the colonel.
“Who’s in command here?” he demanded.
Krogson stepped forward and bowed stiffly. “Commander Conrad Krogson of War Base Three of the Galactic Protectorate.”
“Colonel Marcus Harris, 427th Light Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial Space Marines,” replied the other briskly. “Now that the formalities are out of the way, let’s get to work. Is there some place here where we can talk?”
Krogson gestured toward a small cubicle that opened off the control room. The two men entered and shut the door behind them.
A half hour went by without agreement. “There may be an answer somewhere,” Colonel Harris said finally, “but I can’t find it. We can’t surrender to you, and we can’t afford to have you surrender to us. We haven’t the food, facilities, or anything else to keep fifty thousand men under guard. If we turn you loose, there’s nothing to keep you from coming back to blast us—except your word, that is, and since it would obviously be given under duress, I’m afraid that we couldn’t attach much weight to it. It’s a nice problem. I wish we had more time to spend on it but unless you can come up with something workable during the next few minutes, I’m going to have to give Kurt orders to blow the fleet.”
Krogson’s mind was operating at a furious pace. One by one he snatched at possible solutions, and one by one he gave them up as he realized that they would never stand up under the scrutiny of the razor-sharp mind that sat opposite him.
“Look,” he burst out finally, “your empire is dead and our protectorate is about to fall apart. Give us a chance to come down and join you and we’ll chuck the past. We need each other and you know it!”
“I know we do,” said the colonel soberly, “and I rather think you are being honest with me. But we just can’t take the chance. There are too many of you for us to digest and if you should change your mind—” He threw up his hands in a helpless gesture.
“But I wouldn’t,” protested Krogson. “You’ve told me what your life is like down there and you know what kind of a rat race I’ve been caught up in. I’d welcome the chance to get out of it. All of us would!”
“You might to begin with,” said Harris, “but then you might start thinking what your Lord Protector would give to get his hands on several hundred trained technicians. No, commander,” he said, “we just couldn’t chance it.” He stretched his hand out to Krogson and the other after a second’s hesitation took it.
Commander Krogson had reached the end of the road and he knew it. The odd thing about it was that now he found himself there, he didn’t particularly mind. He sat and watched his own reactions with a sense of vague bewilderment. The strong drive for self-preservation that had kept him struggling ahead for so long was petering out and there was nothing to take its place. He was immersed in a strange feeling of emptiness and though a faint something within him said that he should go out fighting, it seemed pointless and without reason.
Suddenly the moment of quiet was broken. From the control room came a muffled sound of angry voices and scuffling feet. With one quick stride Colonel Harris reached the door and swung it open. He was almost bowled over by a small disheveled figure who darted past him into the cubicle. Close behind came several of the ship’s officers. As the figure came to a stop before Commander Krogson, he grabbed him and started to drag him back into the control room.
“Sorry, sir,” one of them said to Krogson, “but he came busting in demanding to see you at once. He wouldn’t tell us why and when we tried to stop him, he broke away.”
“Release him!” ordered the commander. He looked sternly at the little figure. “Well, Schninkle,” he said sternly, “what is it this time?”
“Didn’t you get my message?” quavered the little man.
Krogson snorted. “So it was you in that scout! I might have known it.
We got it all right but Communication still hasn’t got it figured out. What are you doing out here? You’re supposed to be back at base keeping knives out of my back!”
“It’s private, sir,” said Schninkle. “The rest of you clear out!” ordered Krogson. A second later, with the exception of Colonel Harris, the cubicle stood empty. Schninkle looked questioningly at the oddly uniformed officer.
“Couldn’t put him out if I wanted to,” said Krogson, “Now go ahead.” Schninkle closed the door carefully and then turned to the commander and said in a hushed voice, “There’s been a blowup at Prime Base. General Carr was hiding out there after all. He hit at noon yesterday. He had two-thirds of the Elite Guard secretly on his side and the Lord Protector didn’t have a chance. He tried to run but they chopped him down before he got out of atmosphere.”
Krogson digested the news in silence for a moment. “So the Lord Protector is dead.” He laughed bitterly. “Well, long live the Lord Protector!” He turned slowly to Colonel Harris. “I guess this lets us both off. Now that the heat’s off me, you’re safe. Call off your boy out there and we’ll make ourselves scarce. I’ve got to get back to the new Lord Protector to pay my respects. If some of my boys get to Carr first, I’m apt to be out of a job.”
Harris shook his head. “It isn’t as simple as that. Your new leader needs technicians as much as your old one did. I’m afraid we are still back where we started.”
As Krogson broke into an impatient denial, Schninkle interrupted him. “You can’t go back, commander. None of us can. Carr has the whole staff down on his ‘out’ list. He’s making a clean sweep of all possible competition. We’d all be under arrest now if he knew where we were!”
Krogson gave a slow whistle. “Doesn’t leave me much choice, does it?” he said to Colonel Harris. “If you don’t turn me loose I get blown up, if you do I get shot down.”
Schninkle looked puzzled. “What’s up, sir?” he asked.
Collected Fiction Page 7