Giant Series 01 - Inherit the Stars

by Inherit the Stars [lit]

  word that is written in the pay book and in the entry you've just

  read. Implication: X is a Lunarian name for Earth's Moon."

  Hunt thought hard for a while.

  "He arrived at Seltar, too, didn't he?" he said at last. "So if he

  knew where he was being sent as early as that, and you're certain

  he was being sent to the Moon, and he got where he was supposed to

  go. . . that rules out the other possibifity that occurred to me.

  There's no way he could have been scheduled for Luna but rerouted

  somewhere else at the last minute without the entry in the pay book

  being changed, is there?"

  Maddson shook his head. "No way. Why'd you want to make up things

  like that anyhow?"

  "Because I'm looking for ways to get around what comes later. It

  gets crazy."

  Maddson looked at Hunt curiously but suppressed his question. Hunt

  looked down at the papers again.

  "Days Three and Four describe news reports of the fighting on

  Minerva. Obviously a large-scale conflict had already broken out

  there. It looks as if nuclear weapons were being used by then-that

  bit near the end of Day Four, for instance: It looks like the

  Lambians have succeeded in confusing the (sky nets?) over Paverol-

  That's a Cerian town, isn't it? Over half the city vaporized

  instantly. That doesn't sound like a limited skirmish. What's a sky

  net-some kind of electronic defense screen?"

  "Probably," Maddson agreed.

  "Day Five he spent helping to load the ships. From the descriptions

  of the vehicles and equipment, it sounds as if they were embarking

  a large military force of some kind." Hunt scanned rapidly down the

  next sheet. "Ah, yes-this is where he mentions Seltar. We're going

  with the Fourteenth Brigade to join the Annihilator emplacement at

  Seltar. There's something crazy about this Annihilator. But we'll

  come back to that in a minute.

  "Day Seven. Embarked four hours ago as scheduled. Still sitting

  here. Takeoff delayed, since whole area under heavy missile attack.

  Hills inland all on fire. Launching pits intact but situation

  overhead confused. Unneutralized Lambian satellites still covering

  our flight path.

  "Later. Received clearance for takeoff suddenly, and the whole

  flight was away in minutes. Didn't delay in planetary orbit at all-

  still not very healthy-so set course at once. Two ships reported

  lost on the way up. Koriel is taking bets on how many ships from

  our flight touch down on Luna. We're flying inside a tight defense

  screen but must stand out clearly on Lambian search radars. There's

  a bit about Koriel ifirting with one of the girls from a signals

  unit-quite a character, this Koriel, wasn't he . . . ? More

  war news received en route. . . Now-this is the part I meant." Hunt

  found the entry with his finger.

  "Day Eight. In Lunar orbit at last!" He laid the sheet down on the

  table and looked from one linguist to the other. "In Lunar orbit at

  last.' Now, you tell me: Exactly how did that ship travel from

  Minerva to our Moon in under two of our days? Either there is some

  form of propulsion that UNSA ought to be finding out about, or

  we've been very wrong about Lunarian technology all along. But it

  doesn't fit. If they could do that, they didn't have any problem

  about developing space flight; they were way ahead of us. But I

  don't believe it-everything says they had a problem."

  Maddson made a show of helplessness. He knew it was crazy. Hunt

  looked inquiringly at Maddson's assistant, who merely shrugged and

  pulled a face.

  "You're sure he means Lunar orbit-our Moon?"

  "We're sure." Maddson was sure.

  "And there's no doubt about the date he shipped out?" Hunt

  persisted.

  "The embarkation date is stamped in the pay book, and it checks

  with the date of the entry that says he shipped out. And don't

  forget the wording on Day-where was it?-here, Day Seven. 'Embarked

  four hours ago as scheduled'- See, 'as scheduled.' No suggestion of

  a change in timetable."

  "And how certain is the date he reached Luna?" asked Hunt.

  "Well that's a little more difficult. Just going by the dates of

  the notes, they're one Lunarian day apart, all right. Now, it's

  possible that he used a Minervan time scale on Minerva, but

  switched to some local system when he got to Luna. If so, it's a

  big coincidence that they tally like they do, but"-he

  shrugged-"it's possible. The thing that bothers me about that idea,

  though, is the absence of any entries between the ship-out date and

  the arrival-at-Luna date. Charlie seems to have written his diary

  regularly. If the voyage took months, like you're saying it should

  have, it looks funny to me that there's nothing at all between

  those dates. It's not as if he'd have been short of free time."

  Hunt reflected for a few moments on these possibilities. Then he

  said, "There's worse to come. Let's press on for now." He picked up

  the notes and resumed:

  "Landed at last, five hours ago. (Expletive) what a mess! The

  landscape below as we came in on the (approach run?) was glow-

  ing red in places all around Seltar for miles. There were lakes of

  molten rock, bright orange, some with walls of rocks plunging

  straight into them where whole mountains ha1'e been blown away. The

  base is covered deep in dust, and some of the surface installations

  have been crushed by flying debris. The defenses are holding out,

  but the outer perimeter is (torn to shreds?). Most

  important-~unreadable] diameter dish of the Annihilator is intact

  and it is operational. The last group of ships in our flight was

  wiped out by an enemy strike coming in from deep space. Koriel has

  been collecting on all sides."

  Hunt laid the paper down and looked at Maddson. "Don," he said,

  "how much have you been able to piece together about this

  Annihilator thing?"

  "It was a kind of superweapon. There was more information in some

  of the other texts. Both sides had them, sited on Minerva itself

  and, from what you're reading right now, on Luna too." He added as

  an afterthought, "Maybe on other places as well."

  "Why on Luna? Any ideas?"

  "Our guess is that the Cerians and the Lambians must have dcveloped

  space-ifight technology further than we thought," Maddson said.

  "Perhaps both sides had selected Earth as their target destination

  for the big move, and they both sent advance parties to Luna to set

  up a bridgehead and. . . protect the investment."

  "Why not on Earth itself, then?"

  "I dunno."

  "Let's stick with it for now, anyway," Hunt said. "How much do we

  know about what these Annihilators were?"

  "From the description dish, apparently it was some kind of

  radiation projector. From other clues, they fired a high-energy

  photon beam probably produced by intense matter-antimatter

  reaction. If so, the term Annihilator is particularly apt; it

  carries a double meaning."

  "Okay." Hunt nodded. "That's what I thought. Now it goes silly." He

 
consulted his notes. "Day Nine they were getting organized and

  repairing battle damage. What about Day Ten, then, eh?" He resumed

  reading:

  "Day Ten. Annihilator used for the first time today. Three

  fifteen-minute blasts aimed at Calvares, Paneris, and Sellidorn.

  Now, they're all Lambian cities, right?

  "So they have this Annihilator emplacement, sitting on our Moon,

  happily picking off cities on the surface of Minerva?"

  "Looks like it," Maddson agreed. He didn't look very happy. "Well,

  I don't believe it," Hunt declared firmly. "I don't believe they

  had the ability to register a weapon that accurately over that

  distance, and even if they could, I don't believe they could have

  held the beam narrow enough not to have burned up the whole planet.

  And I don't believe the power density at that range could have been

  high enough to do any damage at all." He looked at Maddson

  imploringly. "Christ, if they had technology like that, they

  wouldn't have been trying to perfect interplanetary travel- they'd

  have been all over the bloody Galaxy!"

  Maddson gestured wide with his arms. "I just translate what the

  words tell me. You figure it out."

  "It goes completely daft in a minute," Hunt warned. "Where was I,

  now. . . ?"

  He continued to read aloud, describing the duel that developed

  between the Cerian Annihilator at Seltar and the last surviving

  Lambian emplacement on Minerva. With a weapon firing from far out

  in space and commanding the whole Minervan surface, the Cerians

  held the key that would decide the war. Destroying it was obviously

  the first priority of the Lambian forces and the prime objective of

  their own Annihilator on Minerva. The Annihilators required about

  one hour to recharge between firings, and Charlie's notes conveyed

  vividly the tension that built up in Seltar as they waited, knowing

  that an incoming blast could arrive at any second. All around

  Seltar the battle was building up to a frenzy as Lambian ground and

  space-borne forces hurled everything into knocking out Seltar

  before it could score on its distant target. The skill in operating

  the weapon lay in computing and compensating for the distortions

  induced in the aiming system by enemy electronic countermeasures.

  In one passage, Charlie detailed the effects of a near miss from

  Minerva that lasted for sixteen minutes, during which time it

  melted a range of mountains about fifteen miles from Seltar,

  including the Twenty-second and Nineteenth Armored Divisions and

  the Forty-fifth Tactical Missile Squadron that had been positioned

  there.

  "This is it," Hunt said, waving one of the sheets in the air.

  "Listen to this. We've got it! Four minutes ago we fired a

  concentrated burst at maximum power. The announcement has just come

  over the loudspeaker down here that it scored a direct hit.

  Everyone is laughing and clapping each other on the back. Some of

  the women are crying with relief. That," said Hunt, slapping the

  papers down on the table and slumping back in his chair with

  exasperation, "is bloody ridiculous! Within four minutes of firing

  they had confirmation of a hit! How? How in God's name could they

  have? We know that when Minerva and Earth were at their closest,

  the distance between them would have been one hundred fifty to one

  hundred sixty million miles. The radiation would have taken

  something like thirteen minutes to cover that distance, and there

  would have to be at least another thirteen minutes before anybody

  on Luna could possibly know about where it struck. So, even with

  the planets at their closest positions, they'd have needed at least

  twenty-six minutes to get that report. Charlie says they got it in

  under four! That is absolutely, one-hundred-percent impossible!

  Don, how sure are you of those numbers?"

  "As sure as we are of any other Lunarian time units. If they're

  wrong, you might as well tear up that calendar you started out with

  and go all the way back to square one."

  Hunt stared at the page for a long time, as if by sheer power of

  concentration he could change the message contained in the neatly

  formatted sheets of typescript. There was only one thing that these

  figures could mean, and it put them right back to the beginning. At

  length he carried on:

  "The next bit tells how the whole Seltar area came under sustained

  bombardment. A detachment including Charlie and Koriel was sent out

  overland to man an emergency command post about eleven miles from

  Seltar Base. . . I'll skip the details of that .

  Yes, here's the next bit that worries me. Under Day Twelve: Set off

  on time in a small convoy of two scout cars and three tracked

  trucks. The journey was weird-miles of scorched rocks and glowing

  pits. We could feel the heat inside the truck. Hope the shielding

  was good. Our new home is a dome, and underneath it are levels

  going down about fifty feet. Army units dug in the hills all

  around. We have landline contact with Seltar, but they seem to have

  lost touch with Main HQ at Gorda. Probably means all longdistance

  landlines are out and our comsats are destroyed. Again no

  broadcasts from Minerva. Lots of garbled military traffic. They

  must have assumed (frequency priority?). Today was the first time

  above surface for many days. The face of Minerva looks

  dirty and blotchy. There," Hunt said. "When I first read that, I

  thought he was referring to a video transmission. But thinking

  about it, why would he say it that way in that context? Why right

  after 'the first time above surface for many days'? But he couldn't

  have seen any detail of Minerva from where he was, could he?"

  "Could have used a pretty ordinary telescope," Maddson's assistant

  suggested.

  "Could have, I suppose," Hunt reflected. "But you'd think there'd

  be more important things to worry about than star gazing in the

  middle of all that. Anyhow, he goes on: About two-thirds is blotted

  out by huge clouds of brown and gray, and coastal outlines are

  visible only in places. There is a strange red spot glowing

  through, somewhere just north of the equator, with black spreading

  out from it hour by hour. Koriel reckons it's a city on fire, but

  it must be a tremendous blaze to be visible through all that. We've

  been watching it move across all day as Minerva rotates. Huge

  explosions over the ridge where Seltar Base is."

  The narrative continued and confirmed that Seltar was totally

  destroyed as the fighting reached its climax. For two days the

  whole area was systematically pounded, but miraculously the

  underground parts of the dome remained intact, although the upper

  levels were blown away. Afterward the scattered survivors from the

  military units occupying the surrounding hills began straggling

  back, some in vehicles and many on foot, to the dome, which by this

  time was the only inhabitable place left for miles.

  The expected waves of victorious Lambian troopships and armored

  columns failed to materialize. From the regular pattern of
incoming

  salvos, the Cerian officers slowly realized that there was nothing

  left of the enemy army that had moved forward into the mountains

  around Seltar. In the fighting with the Cerian defenses, the

  Lambians had suffered immense losses and their survivors had pulled

  out, leaving missile batteries programmed to fire robot mode to

  cover their withdrawal.

  On Day Fifteen, Charlie wrote: Two more red spots on Minerva, one

  northeast of the first and the other well south. The first has

  elongated from northwest to southeast. The whole surface is now

  just a snags of dirty brown with huge areas of black mixing in with

  it. Nothing at all on radio or video from Minerva; everything

  blotted out by atmospherics.

  There was nothing further to be done at Seltar. The inhabitable

  parts of what had been the dome were packed with survivors and

  wounded; already many were having to live in the assortment of

  vehicles huddled around outside it. Supplies df food and oxygen,

  never intended for more than a small company, would give only a

  temporary respite. The only hope, slender as it was, lay in

  reaching HO Base at Gorda overland-a journey estimated to require

  twenty days.

  On Day Eighteen, the departure from the dome was recorded as

  follows: Formed up in two columns of vehicles. Ours moved out half

  an hour ahead of the second as a small advanced scouting group. We

  reached a ridge about three miles from the dome and could see the

  main column finish loading and begin lining up. That was when the

  missiles hit. The first salvo caught them all out in the open. They

  didn't have a chance. We trained our receivers on the area for a

  while, but there was nothing. The only way we'll ever get off this

  death furnace is if there are ships left at Gorda. As far as I

  know, there are 340 of us, including over a hundred girls. The

  column comprises five scout cars, eight tracked trucks, and ten

  heavy tanks. It will be a grim journey. Even Koriel isn't taking

  bets on how many get there.

  Minerva is just a black, smoky ball, difficult to pick out against

  the sky. Two of the red spots have joined up to form a line

  stretching at an angle across the equator. Must be hundreds of

  miles long. Another red line is growing to the north. Every now and

  then, parts of them glow orange through the smoke clouds for a few

  hours and then die down again. Must be a mess there.