“How charming of you. I will need but one psi call.”
I set it up with the communication centre who were on to the operator on Blodgett like a flash and a line hooked through seconds later to Angelina. “Hello, my sweet,” I said. “Guess where we are going for our holiday?”
Five
“It’s a fine ship, Dad,” Bolivar said, running his eyes appreciatively over the varied controls of the L. C. Gnasher.
“I hope so. Those grinder class cruisers are supposed to be the best in space.”
“Central fire controls and all, wow,” James said, thumbing a button before I could stop him.
“You didn’t have to blast that hunk of space rock, it wasn’t doing you any harm,” I complained, switching the gun controls to my pilot’s position before he could cause any more trouble.
“Boys will be boys,” Angelina said, looking on with motherly pride.
“Well, they can be boys with their own pocket money. Do you know how many thousands of credits it costs every time those energy cannon are fired?”
“No, nor do I care.” She raised one delicate eyebrow. “And since when have you cared, Slippery Jim, plunderer of the public pocket?”
I muttered something and turned back to the instrument displays. Did I really care? Or was it just fatherly reflex? No—it was authority! “I’m in charge here,” I grated in my best spacedog voice. “I’m captain and the crew can but obey.”
“Shall we all walk the plank, dear?” Angelina asked in her most unreasonable tones. I changed the subject.
“Look. If you will all kindly sit over there I will order up a bottle of champagne and a chocolate cake and we will relax a bit before this mission begins and I start cracking the whip.”
“You’ve already told us the whole deal, Dad,” James said. “And could you make that a strawberry shortcake?”
“I know you all know all about what has happened and where we are going, but just what we will do when we get there is yet to be determined.”
“I’m sure you will tell us in due time, dear. And isn’t it a little early in the day for champagne?”
I punched busily at the catering controls and fought to organize my thoughts. All chiefs and no indians in this outfit. I must be firm.
“Now hear this. Order of the day. We blast off in exactly fifteen minutes. We will proceed with all due dispatch to the position in space determined by the spacewarp leech. We will emerge from spacewarp for exactly one point five seconds which will be enough time to make instrument readings of the surrounding volume of space. We will then automatically return to our last position and analyze our findings. We will then act upon them. Understood?”
“You’re so masterful,” Angelina murmured, then sipped at her champagne. There was no way of telling from her tone of voice just what she had meant by this remark. I ignored it.
“Then forward. Bolivar, I see by your school record that you had good marks in navigation…”
“I had to. We were chained to the desks without food until we passed the test.”
“Details, details—that is all behind you now. Set up a course to our target area and let me review it before you actuate. James, you will program the computer to take the readings we will need upon arrival and get us out of there in the second and a half we will have.”
“And what shall I do, my love?”
“Open the other bottle, my sweet, and we will look on with pride while our offspring work.”
And work they did, with no complaints, and each did a fine job. There were no games now. This was reality and survival and they threw themselves into it with gusto. I checked and rechecked the results but could find no faults.
“A gold star for both of you. Take a double portion of cake each.”
“It rots the teeth, Dad. We would like some champagne instead.”
“Of course. In time for a toast. Here’s to success.”
We clinked glasses and sipped and I leaned across and pressed the flight button. We were off. Like all voyages there was absolutely nothing to do once the computer had been programmed. The twins prowled the ship with tech manuals until they had learned every detail of her operation. Angelina and I found far more interesting things to do and the days tiptoed by on little golden feet. Until the alarm pinged and we were ready for the last spacewarp. Once again we assembled in the control room.
“Dad, did you know we have two patrol boats aboard?” Boliver asked.
“I did, and fine little craft they are. Get ready for the quick look as planned. After we suit up in combat armor.”
“Why?” James asked.
“Because you have been ordered to do so,” Angelina said and there was a steel edge to her voice. “Plus a moment’s rational thought would have given you the answer without asking.”
Thus reinforced, I felt my authority was firm and said no more while we all suited up. The combat suits, armored and armed spacesuits, would keep us alive if anything nasty was waiting at the other end.
Nothing was. We arrived, all of the instruments buzzed and clicked—and we were back to our starting point a hundred light years’ distant. I made everyone stay armored up in case we had been followed, but we had not been. After a half an hour we climbed out of the suits and ran the results of our investigations.
“Nothing really close,” Angelina said, scanning the printout. “But there is a star system just two light years’ distant.”
“Then that’s our next target,” I said. “The plan is this. We are going to stay right here a nice distance from whatever is out there. But we’ll send a spyeye to chart the system, look for inhabited planets, scout them as well, and send back continuous reports to a satellite receiver in orbit nearby. The satellite will be programmed to return here the instant anything happens to the spyeye. All right?”
“Can I program the spyeye?” Bolivar asked, speaking an instant ahead of his brother. Volunteers! My heart warmed and I gave them their assignments. Within minutes the machines were launched and, once they were on their way, we sat down to dinner. We were just about finished with the meal when the satellite announced its return.
“That was fast,” Angelina said.
“Too fast. If something got the spyeye I think they have some pretty good detection equipment. Let us see what it found out.”
I speeded up the recording until we got to the busy part. The star in the center of the screen rushed at us and became a burning sun in an instant. The figures on the second screen revealed that the system had four planets and that radiation consistent with communication and industrial activity was coming from four of them. The spyeye headed for the nearest world and skimmed low.
“My, oh my,” Angelina whispered, and I could only nod agreement.
The entire planet appeared to be a single fortress. Mouths of great guns gaped upwards from thick-walled fortresses; row after row of spaceships were lined up in apparently endless ranks. As the spyeye skimmed along countless war machines rolled up over the horizon. No bit of the planet’s natural surface seemed visible, just more and more machines of war.
“There, look,” I said “That looks just like the space whale that swallowed up the admirals and their satellite. And another of the same—and another.”
“I wonder if they’re friendly?” Angelina said, and was barely able to smile at her own joke. The boys were goggle-eyed and silent.
The end came quickly. Four sudden blips on the radar, closing at headlong speed—and the screen went blank.
“Not too friendly,” I said, and poured myself a drink with a none-too-steady hand. “Make a recording of what we discovered and get it started on a relay back to base. Route it by the nearest base with a psiman so a condensed report can get back soonest. Then I would like someone to suggest a next step for us. Once we have made the report of what we have discovered we are on our own again.”
“And expendable?” Bolivar asked.
“You’re catching on, son.”
“Great,” James sai
d. “On our own with orders from no one.”
I don’t know how much he meant it, but I was proud of my sons right then and there. “Any suggestions?” I asked. “Because. if not I have the glimmerings of a plan.”
“You’re the captain, dear,” Angelina said, and I think she meant it.
“Right. I don’t know if you noticed it on the readout, but that star system is filled with spatial debris. I suggest we find the right-sized hunk of rock and hollow it out and slip one of the patrol boats inside. If we shield it correctly there will be nothing to show that is different from the rest of the boulders floating around that system. Then ease it into orbit, check out the other planets, see if there are any satellites we can slip up on, generally get more information so we can plot out a plan of attack. There must be someplace we can get closer to that isn’t armed to the teeth like that first planet. Agreed?”
After some discussion—since no one could come up with a better plan—it was. We moved out in space drive, radar blipping, and within an hour had found a cloud of rocks and stone, meteoric iron and interstellar mountains, apparently in elliptic orbit about the nearest star. I eased up slowly to the mass, matching velocities and picking out the one we wanted.
“There,” I announced. “Right shape, right size, almost pure iron so it will shield the ship within. Angelina, take the helm and bring us in close. Bolivar, you and I will suit up and slip over there in the patrol boat. We can use its guns to drill the hole we need. James will do communications at this end Keep in touch with us and send over any special equipment we might need. It should be an easy job.”
It was. At minimum output the nose cannon on the patrol boat drilled neatly into the iron, sending out clouds of monatomic gas. When the hole looked deep enough I sealed my suit and went out to examine it for myself, drifting down the length of the silvery drill hole.
“Looks good,” I said when I emerged. “Bolivar, do you think you can ease her in, nose first, without breaking off too many pieces of that ship?”
“A piece of cake, Dad!”
He was as good as his word, and I stood to one side as the patrol boat slid silently by and vanished from sight. Now we could plant instrumentation on the surface, connect it through to the ship, cut another hunk of asteroid to plug the hole when we went in, arrange braces for the boat…
I was facing the Gnasher as I floated there, and she was clearly visible as she stood by two kilometers away at the edge of the spatial debris field. Her ports glowed cheerfully in the interstellar darkness and I looked forward to getting back and getting my feet up after a good day’s work.
Then the black form appeared, blotting out the stars. It was big and fast, very fast, and the mouthlike glowing opening appeared even as it rushed forward. Opening and engulfing the Gnasher and closing again—then vanishing. All in an instant while I could only stay mute in paralyzed silence.
Then it was gone. The ship, Angelina, James.
Gone.
Six
I have had my bad moments but this one, without a doubt, was just about bottom. I was frozen there, fists clenched, staring in horror at the spot where the ship had been but an instant before. Up until this time the sticky moments in my life had, for the most part, involved me and me alone. This solitary danger clears the mind wonderfully, and promotes the gushing of the adrenals when instant action is needed for survival. But now I wasn’t threatened or in danger, or possibly dead—but Angelina and James were. And there was nothing I could do.
I must have made some sound while thinking this, undoubtedly a nasty one, because Bolivar’s voice rang in my ears.
“Dad? What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
The tension broke and I dived for the ship, explaining what had happened as I shot into the airlock. He was white-faced but in control of himself when I appeared in the control compartment.
“What do we do?” he asked in a much subdued voice.
“I don’t know yet. Go after them of course—but where do we go? We need a plan…”
A high-pitched warble sounded from the communication equipment and I bulged my eyes in that direction.
“What is it?” Bolivar asked.
“A general psi-alarm. I’ve read about it in the training manuals but I never heard of it being used before.” I punched a course into the controls. “As you undoubtedly know, radio waves travel at the speed of light, so that a message transmitted from a station one hundred light years away would take a hundred years to reach us. Not the speediest form of communication. So most messages are carried in ships from point to point. This is also the only form of communication that is exempt from Einsteinian laws. Psi, which appears to be instantaneous. So the psimen can talk to one another, brain to brain, without a time lag. All of the good ones work for the League and most of these for Special Corps. There are electronic devices that can detect psi communication, but only at full strength and on a simple on-off basis. Every League ship is equipped with a detector like this, though they have never been used except in tests. To make them switch on every psiman alive broadcasts the same thought at the same time. The single word—trouble. When this psi-alarm is received every ship spacewarps to the nearest broadcast station to find out what is wrong. We’re on our way.”
“Mom and James…”
“Finding them will take some thought—and some help. And, call it a nagging hunch, but I have a feeling that this alarm is not unrelated to this present business we are involved in.”
Unhappily, I was right. We broke out near a repeater beacon and the recorded signal instantly blasted out of our radio.
“…return to base. All ships report for orders. Seventeen League planets have been attacked by alien forces in the past hour. Space war has opened on a number of fronts. Report for orders. All ships return to base. All ships…”
I had the course set even before the message had begun to repeat itself. To Corps Main Base. There was no place else to go. Resistance to the invaders would be organized by Inskipp and all of the available information would be there. I will not tell you how we felt as the days rolled by; Bolivar and I found the time bearable only by repeating that if outright destruction were planned the fire power we had seen could have easily demolished the admirals’ satellite and our ship. They wanted the people in them alive. They had to. We did not dare think why they wanted them. Just that they were prisoners someplace and that we would get there and free them.
I flew the ship by reflex as we broke out of spacewarp near the base. Slamming in at maximum G’s, reversing at the last possible moment, again at maximum reverse thrust, killing the controls as the magnetic grapples took hold, reaching the port while it was still opening. With Bolivar at my side all of the way. We went through the corridors at the same pace and into Inskipp’s office to find him sound asleep and snoring on his desk.
“Speak,” I commanded, and he opened a pair of the reddest eyes I have ever seen. Then groaned. “I should have known. The first time I have tried to sleep in four days and you appear. Do you know what…”
“I know that one of those space-whales swallowed my cruiser along with Angelina and James and we have been bucketing back here in a patrol boat for some time.”
He was on his feet swaying. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, we’ve been busy.” He staggered to a cabinet and gurgled dark liquid out of a crystal bottle into a glass, which he drained. I sniffed the bottle and gurgled myself the same amount.
“Explain,” I ordered. “What’s been going on?”
“Alien invasion—and let me tell you that they are good. Those space-whales are heavily armored battleships and we have never been able to dent one. We have nothing that can touch them in space. So all we can do is retreat. They’ve made no planetary landings yet that we know of, just bombardment from space, because our land based units are strong enough to keep them off. We don’t know how long this will last.”
“Then we are losing the war?“
“One hundred percent.“
&nb
sp; “How optimistic. You wouldn’t care to tell me who we are fighting?”
“Yes. Them, these!”
He flicked on the screen and stabbed the buttons and, in gorgeous color and three-dimensional reality a loathsome form hung before us. Tentacled, slimily green, clawed and greasy, with far too many eyes sticking out in odd directions, as well as a number of other appendages best left undescribed.
“Uggh,” Bolivar said, speaking for all of us.
“Well, if you don’t like that,” Inskipp growled, “how about this – or this.” The slide show of slugs clicked by, creature after creature, each one more loathsome—was it possible?—than the one before. Hideous sqwitchy things, united only in their repugnancy.
“Enough,” I finally shouted. “A reducing diet of nausea. I won’t eat for a week after this. Which one of them is the enemy?”
“All of them. Let Prof Coypu explain.”
The recording of the professor appeared on the screen, and was quite an improvement over the creepy-crawlies despite his gnashing teeth and lecture room manner.
“We have examined the captured specimens, dissecting the dead ones and brain-vacuuming the live ones for information. What we have discovered is rather disconcerting. There are a number of life forms involved, from different planetary systems. From what they say, and we have no reason to doubt them, they are involved on a holy crusade. Their single aim is to destroy mankind, wipe all representatives of our species from the galaxy.”
“Why?” I asked aloud.
“You will ask why,” the recorded Coypu continued. “A natural question. The answer is that they cannot bear looking at us. They consider us too loathsome to exist. There is much talk about not enough limbs, and we are too dry, our eyes don’t stick out on stalks, we secrete no nice slime, important guggy organs are missing. They consider us too disgusting to exist side by side with them.”
“They should talk!” Bolivar said.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” I advised him. “But I agree with you in any case. Now shut up and listen to the professor.”
The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You ssr-4 Page 4