Collected Fiction

by Theodore R. Cogswell

“Still,” he growled, “a thousand credits is something I could use right now. And maybe I’ll run into a couple of sitting ducks along the way.”

  “But the air foreman said you were to avoid any sort of aggressive action!”

  “What’s the matter, kid? Afraid you’ll get shot at?”

  She shook her head indignantly. “Of course not. It’s just that Hawkins considers the safe delivery of those crates to be extremely important. After all, he’s boss on this job.”

  Jack laughed. “Not mine; I got a contract. But we’ll see what cooks along the way. I’ve never been one to stick my neck out—that’s why I still got one.” He looked her up and down critically. “Women and flying don’t mix—but it’s too late at night to dig up a new gunner, and I feel uncomfortable between the shoulderblades with nobody covering my rear. Round up a ground crew, will you?”

  The girl hesitated a moment before she answered. “Be more trouble than it’s worth. We’d lose an hour by the time they got out of bed, dressed, and waited around for the coffee to get hot so they could have a couple of cups and a cigaret before they went to work.

  “We can handle the Hydra ourselves. She’s already fueled; all that we have to do is to roll her forward to the launching ramp and snap on the catapult connector. The whole business won’t take more than five minutes. If we get off now we can get almost to Largos before sun-up.”

  O’Hara thought for a moment and then nodded his assent.

  3

  ASIDE FROM the four interceptor pilots playing cards in the ready tent at the far end of the field, and the anti-aircraft crews standing by their guns in the pits, everybody at the base was sound asleep.

  “I’m going to be the most unpopular man in Portugal in about two minutes,” chuckled O’Hara as he gave the control lever of the hydraulic lift a slow turn and lowered the Hydra cautiously onto the take-off dolly. He was right—there was a close similarity between the smashing explosions of the banks of rockets that projected on each side of the four wheel catapult cart, and a stick of frag bombs marching across the runway toward quarters. By the time the base personnel were awake enough to realize what was up, most of them would be dressed in combat gear and running toward action stations.

  While Jack made a quick visual check of the Hydra, the girl climbed into the double cockpit where they sat back-to-back and began going over the lashings that held the unwieldy bulk of her Gatling sixty in safety position. Satisfied at last, he plugged the igniter cord into a slot in the belly of the ship, climbed into his seat, and slid the canopy foreward and secured it. After a quick check to be sure that his landing gear was up, and his wings set at maximum retraction, he turned to the little figure that sat behind him. “All set?” he shouted.

  Her helmeted head nodded.

  “Hang on to your guts, then. Here we go!” He braced his feet against the floorboards and pushed hard to see that the acceleration gear on his seat was in working order, took a deep breath, and then reached forward and punched the catapult igniter button.

  There was a sudden cracking roar from underneath the ship; then he was slammed back in his seat as the rockets on the dolly hurled it and the attached Hydra along the gleaming rails of the takeoff ramp. Faster they went, and faster. Jack was pinned back in his seat, helpless as if being crushed by a giant hand. There was a momentary blackout as the rails tilted upward and they roared skyward at a forty-five degree angle. And then with a barely perceptible jerk, the ramp was left behind. All the remaining rockets on the dolly let loose at once to give the Hydra one final tremendous boost; then the automatic disconnecters went into action, and the catapult cart dropped off to go arcing down through the darkness toward the half acre of deep sand that marked the end of its carefully plotted trajectory.

  ONCE THE intolerable pressure was released, O’Hara sagged against his safety belt for a moment; then, with a shake of his head to clear it, he grabbed hold of the control stick and kicked over the switch that would cut out the automatic controls. With one quick sweep of his head he assured himself that the moonlit sky was clear of aircraft and concentrated on his instruments. His eyes weighed the climbing altimeter needle against his dropping air speed. Just as he was about to stall out, he reached forward and fired his first bank of rockets. These were slower-burning than the ones on the cart and the pressure wasn’t nearly as bad as that applied during catapult takeoff. By the time he reached the top of his arc, his altimeter registered twenty-one thousand feet. Just as his ship was about to drop, he took hold of the controls of the wing extension gear and slowly, cautiously, began to crank out the great soaring wings that telescoped, one section inside the other, within the short stubby airfoils he used when flying under rocket power.

  It took him ten minutes before they were fully out, great tapered gull-like wings that extended a good seventy feet on each side of his stubby fuselage—ten minutes in which his speed dropped from an original rocketing six hundred to a gentle soaring sixty.

  Silently the Hydra drifted through the night, its spreading wings sensitive to the slightest updraft, lazily wheeling in the general direction of Largos. As Jack’s fingers delicately moved the controls, automatically seeking every favorable current of air and hanging on to it as long as possible, he turned his head and called to his gunner, “Better unlimber your Gatling. If one of Rommell’s ground stations spots us, an interceptor may come up to see if he can’t get himself a scalp for breakfast.”

  She didn’t answer for a minute; when she did, her voice was muffled and had a suspicious quaver to it. Jack looked back at her sharply. She had one hand over her mouth and seemed to be trying to restrain an abdominal heaving.

  He let out a snort of disgust and turned back to the controls. It was bad enough that the Airfighters Union let women qualify for combat ratings, but when they issued a ticket to a female who couldn’t even take an ordinary catapult takeoff . . . He sat grumbling to himself as the Hydra floated down through the darkness toward Largos.

  The air was good for soaring that night. Only once over a long flat plain did he drop low enough so that he had to expend a tail rocket to recover altitude. The rest of the trip he slid easily from updraft to updraft, alternately gliding down and spiraling up. It was slow traveling, but it was a free ride; and in case of emergency, the bunched rockets in the tail of the Hydra contained all the speed he could possibly use.

  THE SUN was almost up when he finally spotted Largos in the distance. “There’s the strip,” said his gunner, pointing to a plateau a few miles north of the town. “We’re to land on a red flare. There will be a yellow one to give us a sixty second notice.”

  “That’s no good,” said Jack. “I can’t get down that fast unless I retract and dive in. On a strip that short I’d have to use rocket power for braking, and I can’t spare any. We’re going to need every tube we have to get us to Lanares.”

  “There will be fuel inserts waiting for us down there,” she said briefly. Jack shrugged and began to check the ground below.

  Largos was several miles away; but he could make out enough in the early morning light to cause him to blink in amazement, and swing the Hydra over for a closer look. Just to the east of the town, almost hidden in a long winding valley, he could make out the jutting fingers of high smokestacks; then, as he drifted closer, the whiteness of block after block of new concrete buildings. At the far end, a fast mountain stream roared down a large tunnel and disappeared into the industrial cluster, emerging at the far end slow-running and muddied. On the surrounding mountains themselves there were scars of new excavations and fans of dumped waste spreading down from the trestles that came out of dark tunnel mouths.

  He let out a low whistle. “Didn’t know this country was good for anything but goats,” he said. He looked quickly back at his gunner. She was staring down at the great operation below as if it were a nest of scorpions.

  “Hey, there—what’s the matter, kid?”

  She didn’t answer. He shrugged and swung over the edge of the win
ding valley to take advantage of an updraft. As the Hydra slid into it and lifted slowly upward, he looked down again and said curiously, “Funny I haven’t heard about this. You’d think an operation that big—especially in a country as backward as Spain—would be splashed all over the papers. There must be a lot of foreign capital involved.”

  “There is,” said the girl bitterly. “We’d better get in position to make a landing; the one-minute flare should go up any time now.”

  Jack circled back toward the white ribbon of the landing strip. He gave a tired yawn and was just fumbling in the pocket of his flight jacket for his pipe when there was a sudden distant rattle of small arms fire from the direction of the great factory. He swung around, startled, and then banked the Hydra over sharply so he could see what was going on.

  THE FIGHTING seemed to be concentrated around the high gate where the winding road that led down to the old town entered the plant. He heard the girl behind him swearing softly to herself but he didn’t turn; he was too absorbed in watching the gun fight below. The firing suddenly increased in volume as machine guns began to open up from positions along the walls. Then a crashing explosion came from the direction of the gates, and a large land engine roared out onto the road and went careening down the highway toward the town. A hail of flickering tracer fire hosed after it. It swerved suddenly as if the driver or some vital mechanism had been hit and almost went off the road. Somehow it fought its way back and got around a bend in the road that gave it temporary protection from the persuing fire. The vehicle was under control again, but it wasn’t moving with its former speed. Jack snatched his binoculars from the rack beside him and peered down. With the aid of the glasses he could make out plumes of vapor spurting from the driving mechanism of the engine. Some of its steam tubes had obviously been punctured by the machine gun fire.

  The firing back at the plant was dying down. When Jack swung his glasses in the direction of the blasted gate, he could make out tiny figures retreating into the safety of the hills.

  A tap on his shoulder made him jump slightly. He had been so absorbed in the fight that he had momentarily forgotten both his mission and the girl behind him.

  “There’s the flare!” she said tensely, pointing to the left. Jack turned and saw an amber light rising slowly in the sky. “We’d better get started down; we haven’t got much time to spare. Something slipped up somewhere.”

  Her voice broke the spell of combat. Jack made a quick estimate of the scene below and shook his head violently. “I don’t know what’s going on down there,” he snapped, “but I’m not going to get mixed up in it unless I get specific orders from base!”

  “You’ve got your orders!” she said angrily. “Now get down there!”

  Jack shook his head again. “My orders were to pick up a couple of crates, not to get mixed up in a gun fight between some crazy civilians.”

  “Those aren’t civilians.”

  His voice was cold with disbelief. “Are you trying to tell me that any of the companies would engage in an open fight like that outside a designated area? They’d be read out of the industry in nothing flat.”

  She let out a short bitter laugh. “That plant is defended by a unit of the new Spanish Regular Army.”

  It was Jack’s turn to laugh. He burst into a howl of derision. “Regular Army! You’re a hundred years behind the times, kid. The last time a government tried to train and equip its own forces was back in the 1860’s, when those penny-pinching New England industrialists decided it would be cheaper to conscript a gang of plow-boys to fight against the Confederacy than it would be to hire some trained troops from Europe.”

  He chuckled. “They wouldn’t listen to their own generals. Not until the Swiss Guards marched into Boston, that is, and then it was too late.” He reached forward and switched on his transmitter. “I’m going to call into base and see if I can find out what’s up.”

  “Want to bet?”

  Jack turned in surprise and found himself looking into the ugly muzzle of a Weber Duobore. He tensed, poised for a sudden lunge, but there was something in the way she held the weapon that made him think better of it. Before he could say anything a red star shell arced up from the landing strip. “That’s our signal,” she snapped. “Get down there!”

  He hesitated.

  “I’m not the pilot you are,” she continued, “but if you force me to kill you, I’m perfectly capable of taking this ship in myself.”

  Jack looked back at her again and then gave a shrug of submission. “I’m not going to argue with a Weber. Glide or rocket landing?”

  “Rocket,” she said. “We’ve got to get in and out fast.”

  JACK NODDED as he pushed his stick forward and hit his wing retractor at the same time. As the great soaring surfaces came in, each section telescoped smoothly into the next until nothing remained to support the Hydra but a short stubby air-foil projecting a few feet on each side. With ninety-five percent of its support gone, the plane dropped like a rock. Jack tensed when the air speed indicator hit five hundred and then suddenly, without warning, jerked the control stick back into his belly. The blackout was instantaneous. The difference was that Jack was used to it and the girl wasn’t. As he came out he twisted and grabbed the Weber from her limp fingers, then turned and punched the stud on his transmitter that would tune him in on the Marshall and Smith band.

  “O’Hara calling M and S Temporary Base One,” he said rapidly and then quickly repeated the call. The base operator answered immediately. “Come in, O’Hara.”

  “Give me Hawkins, Air Division, at once. This is an emergency!”

  A half a minute later he heard Hawkins’ sleepy voice. “This is Hawkins. Where in the hell are you and what’s the idea of bothering me at this hour of the morning?”

  “Where I’m supposed to be, at Largos. What kind of a mission did you send me on, anyway? There’s a king-size gang war going on underneath me right now. If you expect me to get mixed up in that, I want twenty-five hundred extra and a written assurance that I’m not doing anything that’s a serious violation of Commie regulations. I ain’t about to get my fighter’s license jerked for you or anybody else.”

  “Largos?” gasped the other, suddenly awake. “What are you doing over Largos?”

  “Getting ready to pick up a couple of crates—if we can get together on the price, that is.”

  There was a sudden burst of profanity from the cockpit speaker.

  “What’s the matter, Fancy Pants?” asked Jack curiously. “You sent me over here. What are you trying to pull off anyway?” The answer was lost as a spanner from the emergency kit in the rear cockpit descended forcably on the back of his head.

  4

  WHEN HE came to, he found himself stretched out on a hard-surfaced runway, his jacket neatly folded under his head for a pillow.

  Groaning, he pulled himself to a sitting position and looked groggily around. The Hydra was sitting a hundred yards away; beside it stood a steaming, bullet-riddled transport; and off in the direction of Largos he could hear the hammering of machine gun fire.

  He tried to get to his feet but he wasn’t up to it yet. He sat watching as a small knot of men pushed a handcart up to the rear of the damaged land engine, took two long wooden crates off it, and pushed them toward the Hydra. He didn’t see the girl for a minute; then he spotted her sitting in the front cockpit of his plane. The canopy was back and she was leaning out watching the approaching cart. When it was alongside the ship she shouted something and disappeared from sight. A moment later the doors of a small bomb bay slowly opened.

  A bomb bay wasn’t standard equipment for a Hydra, but Jack had had one installed. When fighting was slow he could always pick up a few thousand credits getting his opponents on the ground. It wasn’t too much to his liking, but he wasn’t in business for fun. Once, on the Icelandic invasion, he had caught eight Mitsuki, Ltd. ships on the ground, half-assembled; he had managed to get seven of them with one stick of frag bombs. It had been a lu
crative afternoon.

  The four men with the cart grunted and groaned getting the two crates into the bomb bay, but they finally made it. Jack tested his legs again, found they would hold him though they wore still a bit rubbery, and wobbled over to his ship. Just as he got there the girl climbed down from the cockpit.

  “Sorry I had to sap you,” she said apologetically, “but there wasn’t time for an argument. There still isn’t!” She gestured in the direction of the road that led from the strip to Largos. Machine guns were still chopping away in the near distance, but added to them now was the crump of heavy explosive.

  “What you’re hearing for the first time are the mortars of a national army in operation,” she said grimly. “Our men are trying to hold a road block but they won’t be able to stand up much longer against those.” She turned and barked sharply at the men who were trying to fit the two crates into place in the bomb bay. “Step on it! There’ll be fighters over in a minute and we’re sitting ducks down here.”

  Jack looked at her in bewilderment. His head ached too much for him to be properly resentful as yet. “What are you talking about? We’re way outside the designated combat area. No company ship would dare to attack us. Somebody would be sure to get his registration number and he’d have his license jerked before he had a chance to get back to base.”

  “Don’t be too sure of that,” she said somberly. “If we aren’t able to pull this job off, licenses aren’t going to mean much any more.” She looked uneasily up at the sky. “Rommell has a hidden base, no more than five minutes flying time from here; it’s being used to train pilots for the new Spanish Air Force. This row has been going on for a good eight.”

  Jack started to laugh and then stopped as his trained ears suddenly caught the whistle of rocket interceptors in the distance. He grabbed the girl’s arm and pointed. “Something’s coming in fast. Let’s get the hell out of here before we get clobbered.”