Collected Fiction

by Theodore R. Cogswell

  “Not without the crates.” Jack started to protest but then realized that she had possession of the Weber again.

  THE WHISTLING sound grew louder, and suddenly they were over the field, three stubby winged rocket interceptors with guns winking in their sharp noses. With one instinctive lunge Jack grabbed the girl and rolled under the damaged ground engine. There was a sound of crescendoing thunder as the fighters roared over, guns hammering; and then they were gone.

  For the first time in his life Jack found himself more concerned about the condition of a woman than he was about his ship. The girl was pressed closely against him, sobbing convulsively. His arms tightened around her and his lips brushed across the top of her curly head. He wanted to soothe her but he didn’t know the proper words. Instead he said gruffly, “Snap out of it, kid. Rocket interceptors are no good on ground strafe jobs; they go too fast. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  As he rolled out from under the truck and ran over to check his Hydra, he could still hear the planes in the distance. They were swinging around, preparatory to making another pass. One of the four men was sprawled out beside the Hydra, blood pumping from a great hole in his chest, but the other three were still working. They hadn’t run for cover when the planes came over. Just as Jack got to them they finished. One of them jerked his thumb skyward abruptly and then they ran off in the direction of the firing.

  Jack checked his rocket tubes quickly and then grunted his satisfaction when he saw that new fuel inserts had been put in to replace the ones he had expended. He turned back to the truck. The girl had crawled out from underneath and was looking around in a dazed fashion. He grabbed her by the arm and boosted her up into the gunner’s seat. Then he climbed up into his own. In the distance the sound of the interceptors grew rapidly louder.

  “Strap in tight,” he yelled. “I’m going to try a stall blast-off.” With one quick motion he ran his wings out to maximum extension, and then cut in a single tube. The Hydra began to roll forward under the easy thrust, picking up speed slowly. When he was doing thirty, Jack hauled back gently on his stick. Under the lift of its great wings, the Hydra soared lightly into the air, climbing at a steep angle. Behind him he heard the hum of gears as the girl swung the heavy Gatling multi-barreled sixty up into firing position.

  “Here they come!” she shouted and a second later the Hydra shuddered to the thudding Pom Pom Pom of the Gatling, as she opened up on the interceptors that were streaking toward them. Jack was only a hundred feet up but he didn’t dare wait any longer. He pulled the nose of his ship straight up and simultaneously threw his wing retractor control onto Emergency In and set off a full bank of rear rockets. It was a tricky maneuver. If the rocket thrust didn’t build up fast enough, he would fall out of his stall and spin into the ground; on the other hand, if speed built up too fast while his gliding wings were not yet fully retracted, the mounting air pressure would rip them off.

  A sigh of relief whistled past his tight lips as the wings clicked in and the Hydra roared skyward at the end of a spouting pillar of flame, a sigh that was suddenly cut off as the three interceptors arced in on him, guns flaming. Jack had to sit and take it; he couldn’t waste rocket thrust on defensive maneuvering. He needed altitude, lots of it, and he needed it fast. If they didn’t get him on this pass, he’d be ready for them on the next.

  HE HUNCHED his shoulders as they closed in, waiting for the slamming of steel-jacketed slugs into his back. And then they were past, two on one side and one on the other. As they banked sharply in order to swing around and get on his tail, Jack swore sharply. They had the red painted noses that identified all Rommell fighters, but in addition each wing carried something new and alien—the crossed daggers of the Spanish Corperate State. The girl had been right. As he turned to speak to her, he spotted the interceptors boring in again.

  “Five o’clock high,” he shouted and made a quick check of his altimeter. This time he had the altitude he needed to move around in, but he could still use a bit more. The others had five thousand feet on him. He kicked on an additional bank of rockets and clawed toward the early morning sky. His fingers moved expertly as he charged his nose guns and twisted the rheostat for the electric sight image on his windshield.

  He would rather have avoided them, but they were between him and Lanares. He checked for cumulus clouds. There was one above and ahead; he made a quick estimate of its distance and then grunted in satisfaction.

  They came in one at a time, not bothering to leave a man above. Overconfident—he hoped. He waited for the last split second, judging his distance, waiting until he felt the other pilot was about to touch his trigger buttons. He waited, waited . . .

  Suddenly he yanked the stick back hard and over to the left: The Hydra snapped over on its side and reversed direction. The other plane shot by underneath him. It was a single seater, they all were. He had that advantage. Even though they were faster, the firepower of the Hydra was greater. The girl behind him, with her heavy Gatling, was invaluable. With three against one it would be impossible to keep them off his tail; but his tail had a sting in it.

  The rocket interceptor that had made the first pass was banking hard, way in the distance, trying to turn tighter and tighter in order to get back at him. The other two had completed their turns, and, still above him, were preparing for their passes.

  He was in a tight spot, and suddenly he found himself worrying about the girl in the gunner’s seat behind him. His lips tightened and he fought again for altitude. This far, he’d seen no indication that he had the advantage in either speed or maneuverability. And, though the Spanish pilots obviously didn’t have his skill and experience, the three to one odds more than made up for that.

  As the other two began coming in, he made a quick calculation and then fired an emergency bank. In seconds he began to feel the shock wave begin to hum. He was doing over seven hundred miles now. He darted a glance over his shoulder. They were still after him and pulling up rapidly. He couldn’t outrun them.

  THERE ARE two places to hide in the sky—only two. One is in the sun and the other is in a cloud. Jack’s Hydra was specially designed for the latter. He made a quick estimate of the distance between him and the cumulus cloud he was trying to reach, and decided that with luck he was going to make it. If he could, and they wanted to stick around, he’d show them what a Hydra was good for. If his timing was right, that was, and if they were as eager to get him as they seemed to be.

  For a moment he was afraid he was going to have to use one of his few remaining banks of rockets to make it in time, but he slipped into the white nothingness just before the Spanish ships got within firing range. He checked his instruments carefully and then put the Hydra into a sharp climb. He was almost at stalling speed when he came up through the rolling top of the cloud into the early morning sunlight. One of the Spanish fighters was circling up above waiting for him. He just grinned and shoved his nose down again; let it wait until it was too late—this was his element. He dropped a couple of hundred feet down into the thick white vapor, leveled off, and slowly began to extend his great soaring wings. He began to whistle tunelessly as the Hydra circled slowly in the heart of the cloud.

  He turned to the girl behind him. She was busy fitting a new ammo drum into the Gatling. “How far from Largos did you say that Rommell air strip was?” he asked.

  “Just a second.” There was a click as the drum slipped into place. “About five minutes interceptor time. Why?”

  He looked at his watch and then made a quick mental calculation. Five minutes over. The passes must have taken up three. And seven or eight minutes since take off. “About four more minutes should do it,” he said with savage satisfaction.

  “Do what?”

  “Set those interceptors up for me. They’re only good for twenty minutes in the air. They’re supposed to be used strictly for local, defense and aren’t equipped with soaring wings. They’ll never make it back to their base now; they were too anxious to get me. That
means they’ll have to land at the Largos strip to refuel.”

  “We’re safe then?” she said in relief.

  He sat watching his chronometer. “We are now,” he said at last. “Let’s go!” Before she could answer he hit the wing retraction control and kicked the Hydra over into a steep dive.

  “Where are you going?” the girl behind him shouted. “We’ve got to get those crates to Lanares.”

  “Later,” he growled. “I’ve got a little score to settle first. And don’t start waving that popgun of yours around, or banging me on the head again. You may be able to land this crate but you’d never be able to nurse it all the way to the coast yourself. You just tend to your Gatling and let me handle things my own way.”

  WHEN THEY broke out of the bottom of the cloud, Jack saw one of the interceptors almost directly below, out of fuel and in a steep glide toward Largos. The tense minutes of maneuvering had taken them miles away from the little town. A second ship was off to the left a mile or so and much lower.

  This was his game, the high floating, spiraling like a hawk, and then the sudden plummeting dive. Down he went, down, faster and faster. The other pilot suddenly saw him and fell off on one wing. Jack grinned mirthlessly as his right thumb felt for the firing button. He touched it, softly, gently, and his nose guns flamed. He caught a quick flash of the white face of the Spanish pilot staring back at him; then his guns found their mark and the interceptor seem to crumple in midair. He kicked left rudder as he flashed past it and went hurtling down on the second plane.

  He didn’t have the speed he had had before but he still had enough to close in like a hawk on a chicken. When the Spanish plane saw it couldn’t get away, it zoomed toward him, firing as it came. There was a moment of thunder as the Hydra’s guns raked the other ship; then it shuddered, fell off on one wing, and went spinning toward the ground. Jack banked sharply and looked around for the third interceptor. He finally spotted it but it was too far away to go after. He pointed his nose up and held it until his flying speed was low enough to let him get his wings out. When he was finally floating safely he stretched and then relaxed in his seat.

  “Got away,” he said. “But, two isn’t a bad morning’s work.” He paused as a sudden unhappy thought suddenly came to mind. There was nothing in his contract about getting paid for combat outside the small designated area that had been cleared of civilians and turned over to the companies. “Or at least it would be at regular rates. Do you think Fancy Pants will authorize payment on those?”

  The girl didn’t answer.

  “Well?” he demanded, swinging around in his seat. She was slumped limply against her safety belt and there was a jagged hole in the canopy beside her. One of the interceptor’s desperate bursts had struck home. Jack pulled her toward him as far as he could and made a quick check. A little trickle of blood was running from a shallow cut in her forehead, but that seemed to be all. He let out a sigh of relief. It was only a crease.

  He eased her back in her seat and turned back to his controls. A quick check of his tube indicators confirmed what he already knew, he had only two banks of rockets left—and Lanares was five hundred kilometers away.

  He’d better hang on to those charges, he decided. There were mountains most of the way and with luck he’d be able to find enough thermals to take him through; but overloaded as he was, he’d better have something in reserve for an emergency.

  5

  THE SHORTEST course was straight over Largos and the sprawling industrial plant just beyond it, but he circled cautiously to the left. There were machine guns down there and at five thousand feet they could be dangerous.

  His glide path was so flat that the Hydra seemed barely to be moving. He scanned the sky constantly, searching for the ships that he was sure would arrive before too long. He wasn’t doing more than fifty, but there was nothing he could do about that until the terrain made some good updrafts available.

  The Hydra was down to six thousand when he saw them, six ships like his own boring in from the west under full rocket power. One hand snapped automatically toward the wing retractor controls and the other grabbed for the ignitor switch that would set off one of his two remaining banks of rockets—and then he hesitated. They were coming from the wrong direction to be from a Rommell base. He grabbed his binoculars and looked through them. A moment later, the ships were close enough for him to make out the color of their nose patches. They were green and the lead ship had a bright red stripe running along the leading edge of the wing. Jack let out a whoop of delighted relief and snapped on his transmitter.

  “Hi, Fancy Pants,” he shouted into his microphone. “I never thought the day would come when I was glad to see you—but it has. Hang around for a while and give me some cover, will you? Rommell is operating off the reservation and some of his boys seem to want my hide.”

  He switched over to receive and waited. A second later the air foreman growled a reply. “Get back to Largos and land at once! That’s an order.”

  “But you already gave me an order to haul a couple of crates to Lanares. What are you trying to pull off, anyway? You send me off on what’s supposed to be a routine mission and the first thing I know I’m all tangled up in a small-sized shooting war. This isn’t any thousand credit job!”

  “I never gave you any such order,” barked Hawkins’ voice from the speaker.

  “The hell you didn’t,” snapped Jack. “I’ve got an operational memo right here in my pocket with your signature on it.”

  “Then somebody forged it. Now stop arguing and get back to Largos.”

  Jack grumbled, shrugged, and then swung the Hydra around in a great half circle. Just as he did so the six M and S ships came whistling by and zoomed up in a steep climb. As they slowed, their gliding wings came slowly out and soon they were all wheeling slowly three thousand feet above him. Jack swung around and looked angerly at the little figure who was strapped in the seat behind him. She was going to have a lot of explaining to do when she finally recovered consciousness. As he scowled at her, she let out a little moan and her eyelids quivered. He reached back with one arm, grabbed her by the front of her baggy flying suit, and shook her roughly. “All right,” he barked. “Snap out of it!”

  HER EYES slowly opened and she looked at him with a dazed expression on her face. “What happened?” she muttered. “Where are we?”

  “The answer to the first is that you got creased—to the second, that we’re on our way back to Largos to return those crates to whomever you swiped them from. And now I want some answers—start talking!”

  She shook her head to clear it and then looked over his shoulder. Her face went white when she saw the town dead ahead. “No,” she whispered, “You can’t; you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “You can say that again,” he said sharply. “I’ve been running blind ever since I pulled out of bed last night. And I’m getting tired of it. I told you to start talking!”

  “There isn’t time,” she said desperately. “Please, Jack, get out of here while you still can!”

  “I couldn’t if I wanted to,” he said brusquely, jerking his thumb in the direction of the covering M and S planes, “and I don’t want to. I’m in trouble enough now. Any more funny business and Hawkins will turn me over to the Commies with a recommendation that they revoke my combat license. And knowing Fancy Pants, I know he’d just love a chance like that.”

  “So they’re in on it too,” she said.

  “Who’s in on what?”

  “Marshall and Smith. I knew Rommell was in on the deal, but we didn’t know that you people were.”

  “In on what deal?” said Jack in exasperation. She was finally talking but it wasn’t making any sense. “What are you talking about, anyway?”

  “What do you think M and S planes are doing on the wrong side of the border, protecting a Spanish Government installation?”

  “Why . . .” Jack stammered to a stop. Now that he thought about it, it didn’t make much sense. If t
here was any defending to do, it was Rommell’s job; they had the Spanish contract. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally, “but it’s none of my business. I’m just a hired hand.”

  “Would you think it was your business if I told you that Spain was about to take off on the glory road?”

  “What?”

  “She has big ideas. She’s thinking how every other country in the world would make a nice province.”

  Jack’s booming laughter filled the cramped cockpit. “She can start any time she wants—but there are twenty contractors as big as M and S and Rommell combined who would make a nice little thing out of stopping her. France, for example, could hire six men for every one that Spain could afford.”

  “For the first time numbers don’t make any difference. Not with what the Spanish have now!” There was a long silence and then she added quietly. “They’ve got atomic energy. The first two packages of concentrated hell to come off the production line of that plant down there are in your bomb bay now.”

  “What!”

  “There’s an atomic bomb in each of those crates.”

  JACK STARED back at her with an incredulous expression on his face. “You’re crazy. Every big contractor in the world has tried his hand at producing one at one time or another; it was always a waste of time and energy.”

  “No contractor can afford the capital investment that is required. But a country could—even a country as poor as Spain.”

  “But what’s the point?” he said. “Governments have no use for weapons. That’s contractor’s business!”

  “Not any more it isn’t. When that plant down there gets in full production, military contractors will be as obsolete as knights in armor. With the monopoly they’ll have, and Rommell and M and S converted into the nucleus of a national army, there won’t be a company or a contractor that can stand up against them. They had a world empire once, and they haven’t forgotten. The scrap with Portugal was deliberately set up to give them a chance to demonstrate to the world what they are able to do when they want to. And if none of this has any effect on you, you might be moved by the news that one of the babies you have in your bomb bay was scheduled to be dropped on Lisbon tomorrow night.”