by E. C. Tubb
But the Rebels were warned. We couldn’t catch all their scouts and the disturbance our Line was making in Cth would register on any detector within twenty parsecs. So they would be waiting to meet us. But that was to be expected. There is no such thing as surprise in a major action.
We went on until we began to run into major opposition. Half a dozen scouts were caught in englobements at half a dozen different places along the periphery as they came in contact with the Rebels’ covering forces. And that was that. The advance halted waiting for the Line to come up, and a host of small actions took place as the forward screening forces collided. Chase was in the control chair, hanging in the blackness of the infra band on the edge of normal space. But we weren’t flicking in and out of threespace like some of the others. We had a probe out and the main buffeting was taken by the duralloy tube with its tiny converter at its bulbous tip. With consummate pilotage Chase was holding us in infra. It was a queasy sensation, hanging halfway between normalcy and chaos, and I had to admire his skill. The infra band was black as ink and hot as the hinges of hell—and since the edges of threespace and Cth are not as knife sharp as they are further up in the Cth components, we bucked and shuddered on the border, but avoided the bone-crushing slams and gut-wrenching twists that less skillful skippers were giving their ships as they flicked back and forth between threespace and Cth. Our scouting line must have been a peculiar sight to a threespace observer with the thousand or so scouts flickering in and out of sight across a huge hemisphere of space.
And then we saw them. Our probe picked up the flicker of enemy scouts.
“Action imminent,” Chase said drily. “Stand by.”
I clapped the other control helmet over my head and dropped into the Exec’s chair. A quick check showed the crew at their stations, the torpedo hatches clear, the antiradiation shields up and the ship in fighting trim. I stole a quick glance at Chase. Sweat stood out on his gray forehead. His lips were drawn back into a thin line, showing his teeth. His face was tense, but whether with fear or excitement I didn’t know.
“Stand by,” he said, and then we hit threespace, just as the enormous cone of the Rebel Line flicked into sight. The enemy line had taken the field, and under the comparatively slow speeds of threespace was rushing forward to meet our Line which had emerged a few minutes ago. Our launchers flamed as we sent a salvo of torpedoes whistling toward the Rebel fleet marking perhaps the opening shots of the main battle. We twisted back into Cth as one of the scanner men doubled over with agony, heaving his guts out into a disposal cone. I felt sorry for him. The tension, the racking agony of our motion, and the fact that he was probably in his first major battle had all combined to take him for the count. He grinned greenly at me and turned back to his dials and instruments. Good man!
“Target—range one eight zero four, azimuth two four oh, elevation one oh seven,” the rangefinder reported. “Mass four.” Mass four:—a cruiser.
“Stand by,” Chase said. “All turrets prepare to fire.” And he took us down. We slammed into threespace and our turrets flamed. To our left rear and above hung the mass of an enemy cruiser, her screens glowing on standby as she drove forward to her place in the line. We had caught her by surprise, a thousand to one shot, and our torpedoes were on their way before her detectors spotted us. We didn’t stay to see what happened, but the probe showed an enormous fireball which blazed briefly in the blackness, shooting out globs of scintillating molten metal that cooled and disappeared as we watched.
“Scratch one cruiser,” someone in fire control yelped.
* * * *
The effect on morale was electric. In that instant all doubts of Chase’s ability disappeared. All except mine. One lucky shot isn’t a battle, and I guess Chase figured the same way because his hands were shaking as he jockeyed us along on the edge of Cth. He looked like he wanted to vomit.
“Take it easy, skipper,” I said.
“Mind your own business, Marsden—and I’ll mind mine,” Chase snapped. “Stand by,” he ordered, and we dove into threespace again—loosed another salvo at another Reb, and flicked out of sight. And that was the way it went for hour after hour until we pulled out, our last torpedo fired and the crew on the ragged edge of exhaustion. Somehow, by some miracle compounded of luck and good pilotage, we were unmarked. And Chase, despite his twitching face and shaking hands, was one hell of a combat skipper! I didn’t wonder about him any more. He had the guts all right. But it was a different sort of courage from the icy contempt for danger that marked Andy Royce. Even so, I couldn’t help thinking that I was glad to be riding with Chase. We drove to the rear, heading for the supply train, our ammunition expended, while behind us the battlewagons and cruisers were hammering each other to metal pulp.
In the quiet of the rear area it was hardly believable that a major battle was going on ahead of us. We raised the “Amphitrite,” identified ourselves, and put in a request for supply.
“Lay aboard,” “Amphitrite” signalled back. “How’s the war going?”
“Don’t know. We’ve been too busy,” our signalman replied.
“I’ll bet—you’re ‘Lachesis,’ aren’t you?”
“Affirmative.”
“How’d you lose your ammo? Jettison it?”
“Stow that, you unprintable obscenity,” Haskins replied. “We’re a fighting ship.”
“Amphitrite” chuckled nastily. “That I’ll believe when I see it!”
“Communications,” Chase snapped. “This isn’t a social call. Get our heading and approach instructions.” He sounded as schoolmasterish as ever, but there was a sickly smile on his face, and the gray-green look was gone.
“Morale seems a little better, doesn’t it, Marsden?” he said to me as the “Amphitrite” flicked out into threespace and we followed.
I nodded. “Yes, sir,” I agreed. “Quite a little.”
Our cargo hatches snapped open and we cuddled up against “Amphitrite’s” bulging belly while our crew and the supply echelon worked like demons to transfer ammunition. We had fifty torpedoes aboard when the I.F.F. detector shrilled alarm.
Three hundred feet above us the “Amphitrite’s” main battery let loose a salvo at three Rebel scouts that had flickered into being less than fifty miles away. Their launchers flared with a glow that lighted the blackness of space.
“Stand by!” Chase yelled as he threw the converter on.
“Hatches!” I screamed as we shimmered and vanished.
Somehow we got most of them closed, losing only the crew on number two port turret which was still buttoning up as we slipped over into the infra band. I ordered the turret sealed. Cth had already ruined the unshielded sighting mechanisms and I had already seen what happened to men caught in Cth unprotected. I had no desire to see it again—or let our crew see it if it could be avoided. A human body turned inside out isn’t the most wholesome of sights.
“How did they get through?” Chase muttered as we put out our probe.
“I don’t know—maybe someone wasn’t looking.”
“What’s it like down there?” Chase asked. “See anything?”
“‘Amphitrite’s’ still there,” I said.
“She’s what?”
“Still there,” I repeated. “And she’s in trouble.”
“She’s big. She can take it—but—”
“Here, you look,” I said, flipping the probe switch.
“My God!” Chase muttered—as he took one look at the supply ship lying dead in space, her protective batteries flaming. She had gotten one of the Rebel scouts but the other two had her bracketed and were pouring fire against her dim screens.
“She can’t keep this up,” I said. “She’s been hulled—and it looks like her power’s taken it.”
“Action imminent,” Chase ordered, and the rangefinder took up his chant.
We came storming out of Cth right on top of one of the Rebel scouts. A violent shock raced through the ship, slamming me against my web. The rebound sent
us a good two miles away before our starboard battery flamed. The enemy scout, disabled by the shock, stunned and unable to maneuver took the entire salvo amidships and disappeared in a puff of flame.
The second Rebel disappeared and we did too. She was back in Cth looking for a better chance at the “Amphitrite.” The big ship was wallowing like a wounded whale, half of one section torn away, her armor dented, and her tubes firing erratically.
We took one long look and jumped back into Cth. But not before Haskins beamed a message to the supply ship. “Now you’ve seen it, you damned storekeeper,” he gloated. “What do you think?” “Amphitrite” didn’t answer.
“Probe out,” Chase ordered, neglecting, I noticed, to comment on the signalman’s act.
* * * *
I pushed the proper buttons but nothing happened. I pushed again and then turned on the scanners. The one aft of the probe was half covered with a twisted mass of metal tubing that had once been our probe. We must have smashed it when we rammed. Quickly I shifted to the auxiliary probe, but the crumpled mass had jammed the hatch. It wouldn’t open.
“No probes, sir,” I announced.
“Damn,” Chase said. “Well, we’ll have to do without them. Hold tight, we’re going down.”
We flicked into threespace just in time to see a volcano of fire erupt from “Amphitrite’s” side and the metallic flick of the Rebel scout slipping back into Cth.
“What’s your situation, ‘Amphitrite’?” our signal asked.
“Not good,” the faint answer came back. “They’ve got us in the power room and our accumulators aren’t going to stand this load very long. That last salvo went through our screens, but our armor stopped it. But if the screens go down—”
Our batteries flared at the Rebel as he again came into sight. He didn’t wait, but flicked right back into Cth without firing a shot. Pollard was on the ball.
“Brave lad, that Reb,” Chase said. There was a sneer in his voice.
For the moment it was stalemate. The Reb wasn’t going to come into close range with a warship of equal power to his own adding her metal to the “Amphitrite’s,” but he could play cat and mouse with us, drawing our fire until we had used up our torpedoes, and then come in to finish the supply ship. Or he could harass us with long range fire. Or he could go away.
It was certain he wouldn’t do the last, and he’d be a fool if he did the second. “Amphitrite” could set up a mine screen that would take care of any long range stuff,—and we could dodge it. His probe was still working and he had undoubtedly seen ours crushed against our hull. If he hadn’t he was blind—and that wasn’t a Rebel characteristic. We could hyper, of course, but we were blind up there in Cth. His best was to keep needling us, and take the chance that we’d run out of torps.
“What’s our munition?” Chase asked almost as an echo to my thought. I switched over to Pollard.
“Thirty mark sevens,” Pollard said, “and a little small arms.”
“One good salvo,” Chase said, thoughtfully.
The Rebel flashed in and out again, and we let go a burst.
“Twenty, now,” I said.
Chase didn’t hear me. He was busy talking to Allyn on damage control. “You can’t cut it, hey?—All right—disengage the converter on the auxiliary probe and break out that roll of duralloy cable in the stores—Pollard! don’t fire over one torp at a time when that lad shows up. Load the other launchers with blanks. Make him think we’re shooting. We have to keep him hopping. Now listen to me—Yes, Allyn, I mean you. Fasten that converter onto the cable and stand by. We’re going to make a probe.” Chase turned to me.
“You were Exec with Royce,” he said. “You should know how to fight a ship.”
“What are you planning to do?” I asked.
“We can’t hold that Rebel off. Maybe with ammunition we could, but there’s less than a salvo aboard and he has the advantage of position. We can’t be sure he won’t try to take us in spite of ‘Amphitrite’s’ support and if he does finish us, ‘Amphitrite’s’ a dead duck.” The “Lachesis” quivered as the port turrets belched flame. “That leaves nineteen torpedoes,” he said. “In Cth we’re safe enough but we’re helpless without a probe. Yet we can only get into attack position from Cth. That leaves us only one thing to do—improvise a probe.”
“And how do you do that?” I asked.
“Put a man out on a line—with the converter from the auxiliary. Give him a command helmet and have him talk the ship in.”
“But that’s suicide!”
“No, Marsden, not suicide—just something necessary. A necessary sacrifice, like this whole damned war! I don’t believe in killing men. It makes me sick. But I kill if I have to, and sacrifice if I must.” His face twisted and the gray-green look came back. “There are over a thousand men on the ‘Amphitrite,’ and a vital cargo of munitions. One life, I think, is fair trade for a thousand, just as a few hundred thousand is fair trade for a race.” The words were schoolmasterish and would have been dead wrong coming from anyone except Chase. But he gave them an air of reasonable inevitability. And for a moment I forgot that he was cold-bloodedly planning someone’s death. For a moment I felt the spirit of sacrifice that made heroes out of ordinary people.
* * * *
“Look, skipper,” I said. “How about letting me do it?” I could have kicked myself a moment later, but the words were out before I could stop them. He had me acting noble, and that trait isn’t one of my strong suits.
He smiled. “You know, Marsden,” he said, “I was expecting that.” His voice was oddly soft. “Thanks.” Then it became dry and impersonal. “Request denied,” he said. “This is my party.”
I shivered inside. While I’m no coward, I didn’t relish the thought of slamming around at the end of a duralloy cable stretching into a nowhere where there was no inertia. A hair too heavy a hand on the throttle in Cth would crush the man on the end to a pulp. But he shouldn’t go either. It was his responsibility to command the ship.
“Who else is qualified?” Chase said answering the look on my face. “I know more about maneuver than any man aboard, and I’ll be controlling the ship until the last moment. Once I order the attack I’ll cut free, and you can pick me up later.”
“You won’t have time,” I protested.
“Just in case I don’t make it,” Chase continued, making the understatement of the war with a perfectly straight face, “take care of the crew. They’re a good bunch—just a bit too eager for the real Navy—but good. I’ve tried to make them into spacemen and they’ve resented me for it. I’ve tried to protect them and they’ve hated me—”
“They won’t now—” I interrupted.
“I’ve tried to make them a unit.” He went on as though I hadn’t said a thing. “Maybe I’ve tried too hard, but I’m responsible for every life aboard this ship.” He picked up his helmet. “Take command of the ship, Mr. Marsden,” he said, and strode out of the room. The “Lachesis” shuddered to the recoil from the port turrets. Eighteen torpedoes left, I thought.
We lowered Chase a full hundred feet on the thin strand of duralloy. He dangled under the ship, using his converter to keep the line taut.
“You hear me, skipper?” I asked.
“Clearly—and you?”
“Four-four. Hang on now—we’re going up.” I eased the “Lachesis” into Cth and hung like glue to the border. “How’s it going, skipper?”
“A bit rough but otherwise all right. Now steer right—easy now—aagh!”
“Skipper!”
“Okay, Marsden. You nearly pulled me in half—that’s all. You did fine. We’re in good position in relation to ‘Amphitrite.’ Now let’s get our signals straight. Front is the way we’re going now—base all my directions on that—got it?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Good, Marsden, throttle back and hang on your converters.”
I did as I was told.
“Ah—there she is—bear left a little. Hmm—she’s l
ooking for us—looks suspicious. Now she’s turning toward ‘Amphitrite.’ Guess she figures we are gone. She’s in position preparing to fire. Now! Drop out and fire—elevation zero, azimuth three sixty—Move!”
I moved. The “Lachesis” dropped like a stone. Chase was dead now. Nothing made of flesh could survive that punishment but we—we came out right on top of them, just like Chase had done to the other—except that we fired before we collided. And as with the other Rebel we gained complete surprise. Our eighteen torpedoes crashed home, her magazines exploded, and into that hell of molten and vaporized metal that had once been a Rebel scout we crashed a split second later. Two thousand miles per second relative is too fast for even an explosion to hurt much if there isn’t any solid material in the way, and we passed through only the outer edges of the blast, but even so, the vaporized metal scoured our starboard plating down to the insulation. It was like a giant emery wheel had passed across our flank. The shock slammed us out of control and we went tumbling in crazy gyrations across space for several minutes before I could flip the “Lachesis” into Cth, check the speed and motion, and get back into threespace.
* * * *
Chase was gone—and “Lachesis” was done. A week in drydock and she’d be as good as new, but she was no longer a fighting ship. She was a wreck. For us the battle was over—but somehow it didn’t make me happy. The “Amphitrite” hung off our port bow, a tiny silver dot in the distance, and as I watched two more silver dots winked into being beside her. Haskins reported the I.F.F. readings.
“They’re ours,” he said. “A couple of cruisers.”
“They should have been here ten minutes ago,” I replied bitterly. I couldn’t see very well. You can’t when emotion clogs your tubes. Chase—coward?—not him. He was man clear through—a better one than I’d ever be even if I lived out my two hundred years. I wondered if the crew knew what sort of man their skipper was. I turned up the command helmet. “Men—” I began, but I didn’t finish.
“We know,” the blended thoughts and voices came back at me. Sure they knew! Chase had been on command circuit too. It was enough to make you cry—the mixture of pride, sadness and shame that rang through the helmet. It seemed to echo and reecho for a long time before I shut it off.