by Bob Shaw
He went back into the living room, worked through the throng, crossed the lobby and entered his study. Christine and Efimov looked momentarily surprised to see him, then Efimov began to smile.
“We thought perhaps you had gone to bed, colonel. Christine tells me you never enjoy yourself much at parties.”
“What do you want, darl?” Christine said irritably. “Pavel and I were discussing his fee for this afternoon.”
“If you two young things want to be alone,” Fortune said shortly, ‘go somewhere else. I’ve work to do in here.”
Efimov continued to smile but his eyes flicked briefly in the direction of Fortune’s desk. Fortune followed his glance. The top drawer was open, the key he had left upstairs in his uniform trousers protruding from the lock. Fortune inhaled headily, aware that Christine and he had finally arrived at crisis point.
“Come on, Pavel.” Christine pulled at Efimov’s sleeve. “I need another drink.”
“Not so fast,” Fortune snapped, spinning her round by the shoulder. “What were you doing at my desk?”
Christine stared coldly at him for a moment then her familiar features flowed into strangeness. “Take your hand away,” she screamed. “You want to be told? All right, I’ll tell you, you selfish, fat, useless … I was telling Pavel how you treat me and he couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe how much of our money, my money, you’ve been paying to that horrible little Geissler. Who do you think you are, anyway? Having satellites tracked! Hiring computers! Why don’t you … ?”
Efimov drew her back a pace and stepped in front, looking at Fortune with contempt and a kind of satisfaction.
“You get out of here,” Fortune warned. “I refuse to fight for Christine. She isn’t property. But you’ve been in my desk, and that’s different.”
“You’d be foolish to descend to violence, colonel. Not after training for so long on chocolate bars.” Efimov dropped his long body into a professional-looking crouch and Fortune remembered he was a boxing instructor at the Hostel gymnasium.
Christine moved behind Efimov, heading for the door. Fortune lunged after her and saw Efimov throwing a fast, hooking left. He deliberately took the blow, smothering it in the great plaque of fat across his ribs, then he caught Efimov’s wrist with both hands and leaned back, swinging the other man like a hammer. Efimov’s feet pattered on the floor as he sped backwards into the wall. He was completely winded as he rebounded but Fortune punched him under the ribs anyway.
“What have you done?” Christine knelt beside the crumpled man.
Fortune got down and opened one of Efimov’s eyelids. He touched the eyeball and there was a violent fluttering reaction. “He’s all right,” Fortune said, wondering what happened next.
“Pavel wants me to marry him, you know. He wants me to go away with him,” Christine seemed to be talking to nobody but herself.
“Christine …’ Fortune began to speak, but the telephone on his desk rang fiercely. He picked up the handset and heard a male voice ask for him. He recognised the voice of his adjutant, Major Baillie.
“Fortune speaking,” he said flatly.
“Oh, hello sir,” Baillie replied with uncharacteristic excitement. “I thought you ought to know at the earliest possible moment. We’ve just had confirmation from UNO Northern Command. Nesster ship 1753 is definitely going to land in our sector.”
“Thanks for calling me, Brett. I’ll be right there.” Fortune set the phone down. He had been wondering what happened next. Now he knew.
The Unit swung over smoothly to a state of Red Alert, and Fortune found himself slipping instinctively into the lethal complexities of his job.
The preceding Yellow Alert had lasted three days, from the moment the Lunar radar bases had predicted that Nesster ship 1753 was going to touch down in one of the three north-west Atlantic sectors. As the great black cylinder spiralled in past the orbit of the Moon the variable factors, based on observation of all its precursors, were gradually eliminated until Northern Command knew exactly when and roughly where it would land. At that point, Sector N186—shown on ordinary maps as Iceland—was brought to full alert and preparations were made for the big kill, forty hours in the future.
Fortune’s command consisted of five hundred combatants, two hundred air and ground crew for the Unit’s fifteen vertical takeoff transports, and three hundred assorted technicians, clerks, storemen, cooks, batmen, drivers, etc. This meant that for every man who actually fought he had one in support, which was a pretty good ratio for a modern technical army. But, streamlined as the Unit’s organisation was, poising it for the hammer blow involved a great deal of work.
Fortune had been a long time on his feet when he drove back home along the road leading south to Hafnarfjordr. The early afternoon sun reached down across serried kingdoms of white cloud and sheep gleamed like pebbles scattered on the hillsides. It was a day on which Nessters simply could not be real—and yet, he reflected, on the afternoon of the following day approximately eight hundred of them would spill out of their ship right on this island. They would die, but it made them no less real. There was no alternative but to kill them, but it made the slaughter no less unpleasant. Fortune would not have to touch a single weapon, but his guilt was no less.
When he swung the big car into his drive Peter was kicking a bright pink ball in the garden, which meant Christine was still there. Fortune was relieved. He had not seen her since the debacle in his study the previous evening and half expected to find the house empty. Christine and he were not making out too well but he felt that the family unit was still important. Even the Nessters had family groups, and tried to preserve them when …
Fortune brought the heel of his hand down on the car’s horn lever, soaking himself in the blast of sound. Tomorrow was going to be bad, too bad to think about except when it was absolutely necessary, He went into the house, waving to Peter, and found Christine in the living room She was smoking a black cigarette and cleaning her typewriter with a toothbrush, brown eyes slitted with smoke and distaste.
“Peter threw his porage into it this morning,” she explained. “I don’t think he’ll ever get to like it.”
The normalcy felt good. Fortune wanted to dive into the day before yesterday and close it round him. “Did Bill Geissler call?”
“No. Was he supposed to?”
“In a way.”
“Well, he didn’t.”
Fortune stared out of the long window to where a lucky kick of Peter’s had sent the pink ball up high, spinning it lazily in the air like a soap bubble. “I’m sorry about last night….”
“Don’t apologise, please. I’ve forgotten it already.”
“Some of the papers in my desk …’
Christine raised her head and gave him a long, honest look of dislike. “I know about your desk, darling. Nobody is allowed to touch your desk.”
“People aren’t property, Christine,” he said hopelessly. “We can talk later. I’m too tired now. I’m going to bed for a few hours.” Fortune skimmed his braided cap viciously into a chair and stamped out of the room. Passing through the lobby he stopped abruptly, staring into his study at the telephone. Christine was left-handed; and it was one of his most triumphant little secrets that she never seemed to realise she set the handset down the opposite way to right-handed people. The phone was facing the wrong way now and, playing the hunch, he dialled Geissler’s number.
“For God’s sake, John, where have you been?” Geissler shouted. “Did you not get my message?”
Fortune swallowed hard. “You know what Christine’s like. She forgets things.”
“Like hell she does. Anyway, I’ve got news for you. It was suspect number four, the pure polar orbiting job. Mars has one in a perfectly corresponding orbit. They didn’t even have to check, the data was all on file up there.”
Fortune’s forehead was ice cold. “Number four! That’s one of the satellites officially ascribed to Russia, isn’t it?”
“Of course it
is. It’s bound to be, but if you looked it up in the Russian records, you’d find it ascribed to the States or Britain or France….”
‘Bill, stop talking. I’ve a new proposition for you. How much to shoot it down?”
There was a long silence before Geissler spoke. His voice was gentle. “I know what you want, John, but there isn’t any need now. You can go to UNO with this….”
“That would take weeks—I’m talking about tonight.”
“It’s illegal.”
“To shoot down a Nesster satellite? Or are you not sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure.”
“Or maybe you can’t do it?”
“You needn’t try to needle me, Fatso. It won’t work. If I ever did something like this it would be for the publicity.”
There’ll be plenty of that, Fortune thought as panic geysered through his system. I’ve got to back out right now while there’s still time. “That’s more like it,” he said aloud. “Start getting things ready right now. I’ll be over as soon as I can get there.”
He set the phone down and looked up to see Christine standing in the doorway looking strangely small, defeated. “You always were impatient, John—it’s the only thing about you that hasn’t changed. You’ve been trying to eat yourself to death, but that takes too long….”
“You don’t understand this, Christine.”
“The thing I don’t understand is why—if you can’t face the action tomorrow—don’t you do something less damaging to Peter and me? Shooting yourself in the foot is the usual thing, isn’t it?”
“You’re so far away from me that words just couldn’t get there, Chris. Why can you not see it? Nessters are …’
‘… people,” Christine cut in. “Nobody can talk to you, John. You don’t communicate. Nessters are people. People aren’t property. It’s a syllogism that goes nowhere.”
Fortune moved forward and took her awkwardly by the shoulders. He drew her in and she came submissively but twisted her head away from the kiss.
“Really, darling,” she said coldly, ‘that only helps on television. I’m not going to let you go through with this, you know.”
“I know it hasn’t been working out,” he said desperately, ‘but if we ever had anything—you’ve got to give me the next few hours.”
Fortune walked away from her quickly, automatically retrieved his cap, and plunged out into the cool, impartial brightness of the afternoon. As the big car broadsided, with turbine howling, out on to the road he risked a backwards glance through the rowan trees. Christine’s yellow dress glowed dimly in the window of his study. She was standing at the telephone.
Geissler Orbital Deliveries’ main stock-in-trade was an obsolete sixteen-inch coastal defence gun which, as had always been customary for the gun-launching of research projectiles, had been smooth-bored out by an extra half inch. For some missions eight-inch diameter missiles were used, their fins fitting snugly into the gun barrel. These were centred by plastic packing pieces and a circular steel pusher plate trapped the propellant gases underneath them in the barrel, enabling muzzle velocities of over five thousand feet a second to be obtained. Other missions used full-diameter projectiles with fins which flipped out after they had cleared the barrel. In all cases the projectiles’ motors ignited near apogee, efficiently boosting the package into orbit after the denser air strata had been left behind. The system was cheap and reliable, and although accelerations of thousands of gravities were experienced techniques had been developed permitting a wide range of experiments to stand the pace.
Fortune stood uneasily in Geissler’s clinical-looking payload assembly laboratory. There were no pockets in the lint-free coverall Geissler had made him wear and with nowhere to put his hands he longed either to smoke or eat. Geissler stood beside him, similarly clad, his dark bandit’s face ploughed with worry as he watched two technicians carry out checks on the new package.
“I’m not an electronics man,” Geissler said, ‘but let’s assume that you’re right and that Project PULP simply failed to pick up transmissions from the Nesster satellite. Can you be certain that knocking it out will be enough? Perhaps each planet’s scout satellite beams either a ‘come in’ or a ‘stay out’, in which case termination of the ‘come in’ signal won’t be enough to stop the landings. The silence might be interpreted as transmitter failure or a meteor collision.”
Fortune shook his head. “In the first place, the ships are fully automated and self-contained so if they do any interpreting at all it certainly isn’t done on the basis of what happened to other ships that were years ahead in the line. It’s a simple response to the ‘come in’ signal. No signal, no response.”
“Yes, but it might not be enough to end that signal,” Geissler persisted. “Supposing, as I said, there’s a …’
“I don’t think there is a ‘stay out’ signal. It’s a question of reliability standards. Our own standards have improved tremendously in the last twenty-five years, but even now if we wanted to set up a similar scout satellite exercise we would have two signals. We couldn’t trust our own handiwork far enough to use a one-signal system in which a satellite going into orbit around an unsuitable planet simply remains quiet. The silence might be the result of a malfunctioning so we would demand a positive ‘stay out’ signal.
‘But the Nessters don’t have reliability worries, not when they can build those ships. A one-signal system is the simplest and most logical for them. They don’t…’
“I’m convinced, I’m convinced!” Geissler shouted. “Don’t wear my ear out. Anyway, it’s less than two hours to the big bang—we’ll soon have the answer.”
Fortune peered out of the window, looking through his own reflection. A sharp, tiny moon was racing high and a blustery, rain-seeded wind had sprung up.
“Don’t worry about the weather,” Geissler said. “The missile will be clear of that stuff in a couple of seconds—this is where gun launching really pays off. And talking of paying …’ The wall phone rang, he picked it up, listened in silence for a while then said, “Thank you, sweetie. I’ll tell him.” He set the phone back.
This one’s for me, Fortune told himself. Something I don’t want to happen is going to happen. He raised his eyebrows.
“That was Jenny calling from the house. She says there’s an army turbojeep pulling up to the main gate.”
Fortune went out through the laboratory’s clean-air lock into the main workshop and began unzipping the coverall. The idea was a difficult one for him to accept but, as far as the world at large was concerned, he was a deserter. It had not actually been desertion in the face of the enemy although in the special circumstances of the Nesster ‘invasion’ the point might be arguable. The puzzling thing was that they had got on to him so soon. He had quit the Unit’s headquarters at one thirty in the afternoon for a much needed sleep and had left the adjutant, Major Baillie, firmly in charge; and now—only seven hours later—an army vehicle had tracked him down to Geissler’s place.
Headquarters must have rung his home for an urgent decision and Christine had told them what she knew. Or perhaps she had taken the initiative and rung them. Both explanations were feasible and yet this vehicle drawing up ostentatiously in the night did not quite have the feel of Major Baillie about it. Baillie was a cautious man and Christine speaking to him would have put him in a delicate situation. He would have wanted to speak to Fortune by telephone or radio before ordering the arrest of a colonel—unless he had driven out personally to talk it over.
“What are you going to do, John?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll need a rifle. Your Swift will do.”
Geissler shook his head. “I’m in too far already. If I lend you one of my guns …’
Fortune pulled out a handful of bills and stuffed them into Geissler’s shirt pocket. “It isn’t your gun. I bought it from you weeks ago—now, get it!” They walked through the clutter of storage sheds and up the slight hill to where Geissler’s white bungalow looked out ove
r the Atlantic. While Geissler went in for the rifle Fortune stood on the front steps looking at the distant line of floodlights which marked the fence. The gun site was at the end of a broad spit and the only land access to it was by a single gravel track. Geissler had strung a high steel fence from one side of the spit to the other, with a remotely-controlled gate where it intersected the track. It was half a mile from the bungalow to the gate but the sound of the waiting turbojeep’s horn was carried down on the wind, mixed with the uneasy sibilance of the surf.
Geissler came out with the rifle and thrust it into Fortune’s hand. “The scope is zeroed at three hundred yards,” Geissler said glumly. “You’ll need to aim a couple of inches low for close work.”
“I don’t expect to use it,” Fortune assured him. “It’s just insurance. All you need to think about is zeroing on that satellite.” He slung the Swift on his shoulder and walked along the moonlit track, resisting the buffeting of the wind. As he entered the amber radiance of the floodlights a tall, slightly familiar figure in grey civilian clothes got out of the vehicle’s driving seat.