Battlefield Earth (78 page)

     Since his return to the African minesite, Jonnie had had trouble getting to sleep at night. He would roll and toss on the oversized Psychlo bed in the underground room he now used, uncomfortable in the overly hot and humid dark, going over and over again the steps and planning of recent past events, spotting where he had gone wrong in this and where he should have done something else in that. The life of a boy seemed far too much to pay for the information they had to have.

Sir Robert was not here. He remained in Scotland organizing a perimeter antiaircraft defense for Edinburgh. MacKendrick was not here. He had taken a trip home to see to the movement of his underground hospital to more suitable quarters now available and to check up on how his assistant there was getting along.

Colonel Ivan was in Russia.

Stormalong had been detained here, for they were afraid some revenge might be taken upon him for lending his clothes and identity to the recent enterprise. Finding himself at loose ends, the Norwegian had kept himself busy inventorying the “flying hardware”- a name he had gotten from somewhere or invented for planes.

Through Stormalong’s efforts Jonnie had begun to divine the true character of his African base. Because it shipped very little bulk ore- they had roasted the tungsten down on the site- it had had none of the bulk ore carriers, a fact which made it necessary to truck out fuel and breathe-gas from the branch minesite in the Ituri Forest. But this African central did have a great many other types of planes which had led Stormalong to conclude that the base had also had a defense function. From some old Psychlo manuals they had found, it seemed that in event of attack upon the minesite near Denver, this African base had the function of launching a counterattack to take an enemy by surprise. And this is exactly what these Psychlos had been engaged upon when annihilated.

It greatly intrigued Stormalong to find several types of flying hardware he had never seen before and which weren’t listed in current Psychlo manuals. They were not battlecraft as such, however. They were dual-purpose machines brought in to perform a specific task, and then, that task done- rather typical of company policy- they had simply been dollied to the back of the hangar and forgotten. Too costly or too much trouble to return them to Psychlo.

According to flight logs still with them they had been used to “mine out” an enormous amount of material which was found in orbit around this planet, a circumstance unusual in Psychlo experience. Some of the metals in these objects were priceless, being very scarce elsewhere, and the company had taken the unusual step of sending in some machines.

If properly gasketed in its doors, due to its teleportation motors which had no dependence upon air for lift, any common battle plane could fly to the moon and back without too much trouble. But they were not equipped to mine in space. You couldn’t take objects in and out of a battle plane while flying in a vacuum. So some factory on Psychlo or on a planet controlled by the Psychlos had converted some very heavy duty, armored, marine attack planes. With atmosphere locks and remote control grapplers, they could fly alongside some object in space, seize on to it, and put it in the hold. Some scraps of such recovered objects were still in the holds of these things, bits which had broken off, like nameplates. One said “NASA” and Stormalong tried to look it up in planetary lists and couldn’t find it. Therefore he had to conclude it had once been a local something.

Jonnie had looked at the old relics with some indifference. The gaskets on the doors were deteriorated- you can’t expect a gasket to last for eleven hundred years and still be airtight, he pointed out. Every hinge and ball joint in their cranes and doors was too stiff to operate properly. There were even some spider nests in them and the spiders had dined, for countless generations, on another breed of insect that had dined upon the upholstery. The things were a mess. Jonnie had been more interested in another craft which mounted a blast cannon.

But Stormalong, having some idle and recently trained mechanics and three spare pilots on his hands and full shops available, had put these relics in operating condition. He had even painted a burning torch on either side of its nose which he said was a symbol of freedom. Stormalong had a lot of artistic style in him, Jonnie had to admit. But he privately hoped the symbol didn’t forecast the thing going down in flames.

Not detecting the expected amount of enthusiasm, Stormalong had smugly pointed out, “Do you have anything else that could go up and visit those things orbiting four hundred miles up there?”

For some days now there had been four bright objects in orbit. First there had been one, then two, and now four.

“Visit them!” Jonnie had said, aghast. “This thing doesn’t even have guns anymore!”

“We put them back,” said Stormalong. “And every screen and instrument in it works now. There were spares.”

“You better test fly it,” said Jonnie, “with a jet backpack close to hand!”

“I did,” said Stormalong. “Yesterday. The console buttons are a bit old-fashioned but it flies great.”

“Well, don’t go flying up to those objects!” said Jonnie.

“Oh, I didn’t,” said Stormalong. “I just took pictures of them.”

He had them. One was a big craft with a diamond-shaped bridge and a lot of blast-gun snouts. One was a cylinder with a control deck in the front, flat end. One was a thing which looked like a five-pointed star with a sort of gun on each star point. And the fourth was a sphere with a ring around it.

“Hey,” said Jonnie, “that answers the description, the last one, of the small gray man’s ship, the one you did, but didn’t, crash into.”

“Precisely,” said Stormalong. “We’re under surveillance.”

Jonnie had known they were under surveillance. No enemy had a monopoly on that. They had shifted their own drone pattern and control to Cornwall and there were repeaters here. Twelve drones, flying slow around the globe, were passing the American minesite every few hours. They were also recording the objects in orbit, though not so well for drones were basically down-looking. No, a potential enemy had no monopoly. And ground defenses were also alert. But it was minimal defense and Jonnie knew it.

Tonight he couldn’t sleep at all. Dunneldeen was overdue with the first recordings of Terl’s activities, and Jonnie didn’t even know yet whether they would get recordings. Radio chatter about their project was forbidden. He was in the dark.

He got up restlessly at last and paced about. Then he went outside the compound. Hot, muggy. A lion was roaring down by the lake. The sky was overcast. Suddenly he was overcome with the desire for some cool air and a look at stars.

There were a couple of battle planes on standby, ready for a scramble if needed, but they were defense items. The ancient relic Stormalong had repaired was near at hand, a dull green in the glow of compound lights. On impulse, wanting only to do something besides brood, he went in to the duty officer and told him where he was going and got a mask and flight suit.

True enough the controls were a bit old-fashioned. The lift-balance buttons were bigger and in a different place. The gun trips had been moved to make way for the crane controls. But so what? He put on a jet backpack, strapped himself in, closed all the windows tight, and vaulted the old wreck skyward.

He burst through the overcast and there were the stars. Jonnie could always get a thrill from flying. Since that first enchanting day he had been aloft, he had never lost it. The black sky and bright stars, half a moon, some snow-capped peaks close by shoving their crowns up through the overcast and into the night sky. Jonnie felt some of his tension ease away.

He simply enjoyed it. It was certainly cooler now.

Out of habit he scanned his screens. Some blips! He looked through the screen for a visual check. Four objects in orbit was what should be there. No, there were five. One new object was approaching the four old ones, all brighter and steadier than stars. About four hundred miles up.

The last thing he was going to do was go up and “visit” them. Unknown ships there; he was flying a relatively untried ship here. He had no support.

And even if this old relic could fly clear to the moon and back, he needed no additional incidents at this time, thank you.

But maybe he could get some better pictures. Stormy’s, taken in daylight, had been fuzzy with ultraviolet. He threw his plane up to a height of two hundred miles and closer to the objects, his attention mainly on putting the recorders on standby.

What was that? A flash from the new fifth ship? Yes. Another flash? Were they shooting at him?

Ready to take evasive action, he suddenly saw a wild flurry of flashes coming from one of the four objects and a splash of light on the fifth. Hey! The fifth ship was shooting at one of the original four and that one was firing back!

He quickly battered away at the old controls and closed the distance to about a hundred fifty miles. He was so intent on getting his recorders working he didn’t realize he was shooting in toward those ships at hypersonic maximum.

Astonishing! The fifth ship and one of the original four were really having at it. Blast streaks were sheets of blue-green and red between them. Orange splashes of hits!

Abruptly he realized they were getting awfully big in his viewscreens. A Psychlo-numbered digital was rolling up the narrowing distance. Seventy-five miles.

An instant before he pressed the console for a reverse role and drive, the firing among the ships ceased abruptly.

Jonnie put his old wreck into a full power fall and got out of there. That was not his war. He didn’t even know whether he had working guns.

At about a hundred miles above the Earth’s surface he eased off. He was about fifty miles up when he was flying level again.

He looked back. They were not firing now. Just sitting up there. The fifth ship seemed to have closed in on the others.

Jonnie shook his head at himself. This was not the time to be doing crazy, reckless things. He had almost done exactly what he had warned Stormy not to do- go visiting.

The old relic he was flying had become heated from air friction. It was built to take it but he had come up for a cool breath of air and now the flight deck was hot. If he’d really wanted to go up there he would have taken just an ordinary battle plane, making sure its gaskets were tight around the doors. And making sure its guns were loaded and working. Sir Robert would not have been proud of him!

Another blip on his viewscreens. Down low at about a hundred thousand feet of altitude. Coming on a route from Scotland? America over the pole?

Warm cabin or no cabin, he streaked down to intercept and identify. He flipped on his local command channel, and just as he did so a voice from the nearby plane came through:

“Don’t shoot! I’ll marry your daughter!” It was Dunneldeen.

Jonnie laughed. It was the first time he had laughed since returning from America.

He spun the old relic around and flashed after Dunneldeen as the Scot roared down toward the minesite.

     The small gray man in his small gray cabin was sighing patiently. Well, not too patiently. His indigestion had not improved at all, and now this.

Things were distressing enough without the military people getting into fights among themselves. But it was a military matter, not political, not economic, and not strategic, so he was perforce out of it, a mere observer.

He now had four faces on his separate viewscreens. And if it kept on going this way, he’d have to ask his communications officer to break more screens out of stores and put them in on a rack. It made one’s office so cluttered.

The face of the Tolnep half-captain was quite angry-looking and he kept adjusting his glasses in an agitated way. “But I don’t care if you surprised to see me here. I have no advices at all that our nations are at war!”

The Hawvin’s face was the light violet Hawvins got when they were very provoked. The square helmet was crushed down on his oval head, bending his ear antennae. His untoothed but blade-gummed mouth was distorted in the lifted attitude of biting. “How would you know who was at war and who wasn’t at war! You cannot be less than five months out from any base!”

The Hockner super-lieutenant who commanded the star-shaped craft looked a little supercilious with his monocle and excessive amount of gold braid. The long, noseless face portrayed what passed for disdain among his people in the Duraleb System.

The Bolbod was just plain plug-ugly, as they always were, bigger than Psychlos but sort of shapeless. One wondered how they ever handled anything at all- their “hands” were always clenched into fists. The high sweater neck almost met the bill of his exaggerated cap. The Bolbods considered insignia beneath their dignity but the small gray man knew he was Gang Leader Poundon, commanding the cylinder-shaped spacecraft. He certainly had a low opinion of all the rest as effete degenerates.

“All right!” snapped the Tolnep. “Are our races at war or aren’t they?”

The Hawvin said, “I don’t have any information that they are or aren’t! But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t. It would not be the first time a Hawvin ship came peacefully onto station only to be raked by a sneaking Tolnep.”

“Your Excellency!” snapped the Tolnep, suddenly including the small gray man. “Do you have any information that the Tolneps and Hawvins are at war?”

It was a military matter but this could fringe on the political.

“The courier ship that met me here did not mention it,” he said tiredly. Maybe one of the crew had some different brand of indigestion tablets.

No, he didn’t think they would. Mello-gest was all that was sold these days. He wished they’d stop wrangling.

“You see!” hissed the Tolnep half-captain. “No war exists. Yet you come in here denting my plates in an unprovoked assault-”

“Did I really dent your plates?” said the Hawvin, abruptly interested.

“Here,” said the Hockner super-lieutenant. “Here now. You are both completely off the subject of the strange interceptor. If you two fellows want to draw off somewhere and batter away at each other, that’s your business, isn’t it? But who and what was that interceptor?”

The Bolbod snorted, “Couldn’t be anything but Psychlo.”

“I know, old fellow,” said the Hockner, adjusting his monocle, “but I’ve looked

It up and it isn’t listed under Psychlo military craft.” He held a recognition book to the screen: “Known Types of Psychlo War Craft.” It was of course in Psychlo. All of them spoke Psychlo and the whole of their cross-communication was in Psychlo, since they didn’t speak each others’ native tongues. “It isn’t listed here.”

The Hawvin was glad to drop the subject of his attack on the Tolnep, no matter how surprised he’d been to find a Tolnep ship here. I’ve never seen one like it.”

The Bolbod was more practical. “Why did it veer away the moment you stopped shooting?”

They pondered that for a while. Then the Hockner adjusted his monocle and said, “I rather think I have it! He supposed that our attention would be distracted and that this,” he snorted, ” ‘battle’ would knock out some of us and he’d be able to mop up the damaged remainder.”

They talked about this for a while. The small gray man listened politely to their military theories. It was none of his concern. They finally came to the conclusion that that was what it was all about. The interceptor had come up, ready to take advantage of the “battle” and destroy the remainder left over when they were in a damaged condition.

“I think they must be very clever,” said the Hockner. “Probably they have other interceptors here and they’re ready and waiting.”

“I could have eaten that one with one bite,” said the Hawvin.

“I could have knocked it out with one punch,” said the Bolbod. “If they were strong they would have come up here and smashed us up some days ago. I don’t think they’re Psychlos and I never before heard of any race that had that torch insignia. So I say they are very weak. I don’t know why we just don’t go down and wipe them out. As a combined force!”

A combined force was a brand-new idea. The three others had always considered Bolbods rather stupid, if strong, and they looked at him on their viewscreens with a dawning respect.

“We’ve never, any of us,” said the Hockner, “made any real dent in the Psychlos. But it does seem to me that they are not really Psychlos. Strange ship, strange insignia. So possibly it would just be an afternoon’s work to go down as a combined force-’

“Knock them out and divide the loot,” finished the Tolnep.

This was verging on the political. So the small gray man said, “And what if they are the one?”

This was what they were here to determine. They chewed it over. They finally came to a unanimous conclusion: they would operate as a combined force. Any newcomer would be invited. They would wait for the return of the courier ship the small gray man had sent out even though it might not return for months. If it brought news that the one had been found elsewhere, this “combined force” would go down, knock the planet out, and divide the loot among them to recompense them for their time. They didn’t lay out any system for dividing the loot for each had his own ideas of what would happen when that moment came. The plan was agreed to.

“What if something happens in the meanwhile to prove it is the one?” the small gray man asked. Violence, violence; all these military people ever thought about was violence and death.

Well, they decided, that was sort of political, and they would play it by ear. But also if it were the one, probably it ought to be knocked out so the same plan applied.

It was the first time the small gray man had ever seen independent commanders of traditionally hostile ships reach a firm agreement on something. But these were very unusual times.

When they clicked off their viewscreens, the small gray man reached for another pill of Mello-gest to help his indigestion and then put it back in the bottle.

He thought he’d go down and visit that old woman again. Maybe she had an antidote yarb tea.