“You sure manual say all that, son?” Imray demanded. “This thing work?”
“Certainly it says it,” Quent snapped. “How do I know if it works?”
Sylla licked his chops.
“Thus, one could employ the thrust while concealed by this moon, and descend without power, avoiding detection because of the small size, and brake after one is below their horizon. One then approaches silently at ground level, on impellors—and when the enemy elevates himself, boom.” He sprang to the shaft. “Let us view this marvel!”
In the hold Quent showed them the old demount levers, long since obstructed by mail-pod racks.
“One wonders how orthagonal a trajectory this thing would endure,” said Svensk.
“Thermallium.” Quent shrugged. “If the delta didn’t come off.”
“Somebody going to get killed bad.” Imray peered suspiciously into the turret. “For engine I must talk Morgan. Pfoo!”
“You talked him into harassing me easily enough,” said Quent.
“No, that natural,” grunted Imray, hauling over to the speaker.
“Someday that spook will meet a Drake and find out who his enemies are,” said Pomeroy’s voice from the bridge. “They have a party in the city now. Looting. Gives us some time.”
“Allons,
the suits,” called Sylla from the ladder.
In an hour’s sweating hullwork they had uncoupled the turret and dogged it to the fin. The old sealant was vitrified but the assembly went in with surprising ease.
“That stuff will burn off,” said Quent. “What a contraption!”
“The aerodynamics of a rock,” Svensk murmured. “Podchutes, perhaps, could be attached to these holes? I suggest as many as possible.”
“The engine arrives!” Sylla popped out of the turret as the massive shape of Imray appeared around the
Rosenkrantz’s
stern, propelling a drive unit bundled in a working shield.
“Two gross nanocircuits must I get,” he grumbled as they all wrestled the inertia of the big unit. They brought it into line with the turret lock. Imray glanced in.
“You check how it steers, Syll?”
“That rather mystifying secondary panel on the rocket console,” said Svensk. “Perfectly obvious, once the power leads were exposed. I shall have no trouble.”
His long figure contorted as he groped for the leads to his thermal vest.
“Fou-t’en!”
Sylla slid between him and the turret. “Is this a swamp for overheated serpents to combat themselves in? Desist—you will be worse than the ants. It is I who go, of course.”
“So.” Imray turned on Quent, who was moving in on the other side. “You want go, too?”
Quent grabbed the lock. “I’m the obvious choice.”
“Good,” said Imray. “Look here.”
He tapped Quent on the shoulder with one oversized gauntlet and suddenly straightened his arm. Quent sailed backward into Sylla and Svensk. When the three sorted themselves out they saw that Imray had clambered into the turret, which he filled compactly.
“Close up engines, boys,” he blared jovially into their helmets. “Watch tight, is hot. Syll, you set me good course,
vernt?”
The three lieutenants glumly coupled the drive unit, bolted and thermofoamed the extra chutes, and piled back up to the bridge.
“Foxed you, didn’t he?” grinned Pomeroy. He sobered. “They’re still tearing up the chiefs house. We may have them figured all wrong.”
The screens showed Imray’s vehicle lurching past on a climbing course above the dark moonscape.
“Svensk, explain to him the navigation.” Sylla crouched over his console. “He must modify to azimuth thirty heading two eighteen or he will burst into their faces at once. Now I devise the settings for his burn-down.”
“Sure, sure,” said Imray’s voice. They saw his rocket module yaw to a new course. “Svenka, what I do with pink button?”
“Captain,” Svensk sighed, “if you will first observe the right-hand indicators—”
“At least the impellors work,” said Quent.
Pomeroy fretted: “This is all guesswork.”
Svensk was now relaying the burn configuration, which the ursinoid repeated docilely enough.
“At one-one-five on your dial, check visual to make sure you are well below their horizon. Do not use energy of any sort until you are two units past horizon. Captain, that is vital. After that you are on manual. Brake as hard as you can, observing the parameter limit display and—”
“After that I know,” interrupted Imray. “You take care ship. Now I go,
vernt?”
“You are now go,” said Sylla, motioning to Pomeroy.
“Gespro-oo—” trumpeted the voder before Pomeroy cut it.
“What does that mean?” asked Quent.
Tve never known,” said Svensk. “Some obscure mammalian ritual.”
“Our captain was formerly a torch gunner,” Sylla told Quent. “But perhaps you—”
“I’ve heard of them,” said Quent. “But I thought—”
“That’s right,” said Pomeroy. “Ninety-nine percent casualties. Flying bombs, that’s all. He can run that thing, once he gets down.”
“He will be out of the moon’s shadow and into their sensor field in fifteen seconds,” said Svensk. “One trusts he remembers to deactivate
everything”
Pomeroy switched up. They heard Imray humming as he tore planet-ward at full burner. Sylla began chopping futile cut-power signals. The humming rumbled on. Pomeroy squeezed his eyes, Sylla chopped harder. Svensk sat motionless.
The rumble cut off.
“No more emissions. His course appears adequate,” said Svensk. “I suggest we retire to a maximally shielded position and signal Farbase.”
“Impellors, Mr. Morgan,” said Quent.
When Sylla put up his fist Quent followed it until they reached a deep crater which would block the scatter of their star-to-star caller.
“If we’re in luck,” said Pomeroy, “Farbase can get their tea kettle here in three days, plus or minus a week. All they have is a ferry for picking up pieces. Bound to be pieces—of somebody.” He sighed. “Let’s get back where we can hear ‘em.”
They tiptoed back-to the horizon. The Drakes below them gave no sign of detecting the approach of Imray’s meteor. Neither did they reveal any intent to use their ship to fire on the town. As the moon on which the
Rosenkrantz
was riding sank below the horizon of the field they were obliged to leave it and maneuver into full sun-blast. Quent’s eyes burned; he was becoming aware that he had scarcely slept for a week.
“If only we could give one little burn planetward,” Sylla chafed. “How soon, my scientific serpent?”
“With their drive off—well—they would be able to read ship-sized burst from our present orbit for at least another hundred degrees of planetary rotation,” said Svensk. “Don’t you agree, Quent?”
Quent nodded wearily. “And that A.E.V. has about double our acceleration and six times our rocket range and can turn inside us. We wouldn’t have a prayer.” He had said it twice before.
The lutroid spat dryly and put his elbows on his console. Pomeroy sat, hands cupped over his earphones, motionless.
“Emission,” said Svensk suddenly. “Imray is down and braking.”
“That damn ship hasn’t even budged,” Pomeroy said. “I can still hear them yakking to the shore party. We’re all wrong.”
“Still braking. It just occurs to me, there was space for two more chutes.”
“He requires rather two more gravity webs,” said Sylla. “He is mad.”
“Torchers,” said Pomeroy.
“There is some distortion for which I cannot compensate,” Svensk complained. “He is very close to their horizon—ah—I believe he has managed to deflect.”
“That ship isn’t going anywhere,” Pomeroy fumed.
“If I could suppress this wretched bias,” said Svensk. “He is on impellors now, I think. But moving very erratically.”
“He finds perhaps a ravine.” Sylla was kneading his console.
“Toward the field again,” said Svensk. “Much too near. One fears that he is omitting to wait for them to lift.”
“The old maniac will sail right onto their screens,” Pomeroy groaned.
“While we sit here,” Sylla muttered.
“If he’s in that canyon in back of the field,” said Quent, “he might sneak under their shield. Provided they weren’t looking. It’s a fairly broad target. Can he—”
Sylla’s head had snapped around.
“He understands to shoot,” he told Quent.
“Can I rely on that, Mr. Sylla?” Quent met the lutroid’s yellow stare.
“Accelerating on the same line,” Svensk announced. “Dismal.”
“Got it!” Pomeroy shouted. “Secure locks—but there isn’t time. Up, you bastards! Up!”
“How long before he cuts their line of sight, Mr. Svensk?”
“This detestable—at ground level, maximum two minutes. Much too close. They’re bound to spot him.”
“Over to me on manual, Mr. Sylla,” said Quent. “If you can get to the wrecking lasers it’ll help the display. Ready, Mr. Morgan?”
The lutroid shot over him and down the shaft.
“Stay braced and warn Appleby!” Quent yelled after him, coding for drive. “If Imray can hit what he shoots at, this’ll distract them. If not—”
He rammed home the lever and they pitched in their webs. As the screens faded out the planet bloomed up and swirled crazily.
“We’re in their sensors now,” gasped Svensk. “I believe—”
“They’re lifting.” Pomeroy was plastered on his board. “They see us.”
Quent bent the
Rosenkrantz
into an atmosphere-grazing turn. Pomeroy was struggling to move a switch. The bridge filled with Drake voices, reverberating lashback. A siren honked.
The voder cut off. For a flash Quent thought his eardrums had gone but as acceleration topped out he heard the others fill their lungs.
“Their shield does appear to have collapsed,” said Svensk. “I can’t be positive in this—*
“He got ‘em” Pomeroy yelled. “Power’s gone! Wait—they’re coming back on emergency. Listen to ‘em cry!”
Noises blared from the Drake ship.
“Where’s Imray?” Quent threw in the retros and they pitched again. Sylla came scrambling out of the shaft, hanging onto Imray’s chair.
“Where is he?”
“I can’t at the moment,” Svensk protested. “The resultants—”
“Listen.” Pomeroy tuned the uproar to ululating wails. “The Denebian national anthem.” He flopped back in his seat, grinning. “Might as well go get him—that ship’s dead in the dirt. He cracked one up their landleg socket while they were gawking at us. Must have been bloody under ‘em!”
Quent jolted to a thump on his back. Sylla climbed down, grinning. Svensk arched his neck—his bony beak was not adapted for expression.
“Is he all right?” called Appleby’s voice. “I fixed some hot jam truffles.”
“So that was the anomaly,” said Svensk. “Incredible. The nutritive drive of the Human female.”
“Bloody good, too,” said Pomeroy. He jerked to his board. “Holy Space—”
“What is it?”
“The
Jasper
just hailed us,” he told them. “She’s coming by. Five minutes earlier and we’d all been up the pipe.”
He sagged again and reached for his bulb.
“By the Path!” Imray howled on the voder. “You pick me up or I
sprücher
you too.”
Quent was clumsy with exhaustion by the time they got the rocket module stowed and the hot drive unit back to Morgan. He gave a perfunctory glance at the wrecker ports and then followed the others to the bridge, where Pomeroy was watching the grounded Drakes.
“I take over, son.” Imray sprawled in his command chair, rolling his hide luxuriously. “Watch tight. Bad mess they get loose before Farbase come.” He chomped a jam tart.
“Are you all ready for the bad news?” Pomeroy wheeled around to face them. “Remember that
Gal News
man we ducked at Farbase? He’s on the shuttle. Coming here.”
Imray choked.
“Wants to interview you.” Pomeroy pointed at Quent. “And Appleby, too.”
Quent shut his eyes. “He can—why won’t they let me alone?” Absently he fingered the laser by his console.
“Admiral Quent’s son in battle with Drake pirates,” Pomeroy grinned sourly, “while Admiral Coatesworth’s fiancee cheers? His board’s all lit up.”
“This rather cooks it,” said Svensk. Sylla was drumming his claws.
They all looked at Quent.
“What you tell him, son?”
“Tell ‘em,” Quent muttered exhaustedly. “Why, I’ll tell ‘em the ship stinks and your computer is full of mush—and the engineroom is a fugnest—” his voice rose—“infested by a spook who has you so terrorized you have to bribe him to move the ship. And my fellow officers are a set of primitive jokers captained by a maniac who has to resort to physical force—and the only Humans who can stand the ship are an unshaven alcoholic and a madwoman who buggers the sensors with fudge machines and underwear, and—Heysu Caristo!” He rubbed his neck. “My first ship. Look, I’m going to sack out, alright?” He pushed off for the ladder.
“You tell them that?” Imray demanded, beaming. “Flying fugnest?”
“Hell no, why should I? It’s not true.”
He pulled to the shaft and rammed into Imray’s hard paw.
“Son, you got to.”
“Huh?”
“Tell them can’t stand. Want new job. Must!” Imray was shaking them both for emphasis.
“Wait—one—minute.” Quent disengaged himself. “That’s exactly what you were putting me on to think, wasn’t it? But why?” He frowned around at them. “Why? I mean, hell, I’m
for
integration.”
“Precisely the problem,” said Svensk.
Imray whacked his thigh exasperatedly.
“Who you think build this boat?”
“Well, it’s a Human design—”
“Human fix up. Is build by Svenka people, original. Was part their navy. Space Force say, indefinite loan. Little boats, you never hear. Space Force come along, make treaty. Suck up little boats. Even ants they got some type space boat,
vernt,
Svenka?”
“More of a pod, I believe.” Svensk crossed his long legs.
“Something, anyway. Son, you think like your father say, all en-aitch people want integrate with Space Force?”
“Well, uh,” said Quent. “The Gal Equality party.”
“Sure, sure.” Imray nodded. “Some en-aitch people want be officer big starship, is fact. Also fact, en-aitch people want have say in Gal Council. But is different here.”
He leaned back, folded his arms.