Part 26 (2/2)

”And that 'habit-forming-drug' objection isn't insuperable, darling,”

Temple said. ”If the younger generations start weakening we'll fix the Omans. I wouldn't want to wipe them out entirely, but ...”

”But how do we settle priority, Doctor Hilton?” a girl called out; a tall, striking, brunette laboratory technician whose name Hilton needed a second to recall. ”By pulling straws or hair? Or by shooting dice or each other or what?”

”Thanks, Betty, you've got a point. Sandy c.u.mmings and department heads first, then a.s.sistants. Then you girls, in alphabetical order, each with her own husband or fiance.”

”And my name is Ames. Oh, goody!”

”Larry, please tell them to ...”

”I already have, sir. We are set up to handle four at once.”

”Good boy. So scat, all of you, and get back to work--except Sandy, Bill, Alex, and Teddy. You four go with Larry.”

Since the new sense was not peyondix, Hilton had started calling it ”perception” and the others adopted the term as a matter of course.

Hilton could use that sense for what seemed like years--and actually was whole minutes--at a time without fatigue or strain. He could not, however, nor could the Omans, give his tremendous power to anyone else.

As he had said, he could do a certain amount of reworking; but the amount of improvement possible to make depended entirely upon what there was to work on. Thus, Temple could cover about six hundred light-years.

It developed later that the others of the Big Eight could cover from one hundred up to four hundred or so. The other department heads and a.s.sistants turned out to be still weaker, and not one of the rank and file ever became able to cover more than a single planet.

This sense was not exactly telepathy; at least not what Hilton had always thought telepathy would be. If anything, however, it was more.

It was a lumping together of all five known human senses--and half a dozen unknown ones called, collectively, ”intuition”--into one super-sense that was all-inclusive and all-informative. If he ever could learn exactly what it was and exactly what it did and how it did it ...

but he'd better chip-chop the wool-gathering and get back onto the job.

The Stretts had licked the old Masters very easily, and intended to wipe out the Omans and the humans. They had no doubt at all as to their ability to do it. Maybe they could. If the Masters hadn't made some progress that the Omans didn't know about, they probably could. That was the first thing to find out. As soon as they'd been converted he'd call in all the experts and they'd go through the Masters' records like a dose of salts through a hillbilly schoolma'am.

At that point in Hilton's cogitations Sawtelle came in.

He had come down in his gig, to confer with Hilton as to the newly beefed-up fleet. Instead of being glum and pessimistic and foreboding, he was chipper and enthusiastic. They had rebuilt a thousand Oman s.h.i.+ps.

By combining Oman and Terran science, and adding everything the First Team had been able to reduce to practise, they had hyped up the power by a good fifteen per cent. Seven hundred of those s.h.i.+ps, and all his men, were now arrayed in defense around Ardry. Three hundred, manned by Omans, were around Fuel Bin.

”Why?” Hilton asked. ”It's Fuel Bin they've been attacking.”

”Uh-uh. Minor objective,” the captain demurred, positively. ”The real attack will be here at you; the headquarters and the brains. Then Fuel Bin will be duck soup. But the thing that pleased me most is the control. Man, you never imagined such control! No admiral in history ever had such control of ten s.h.i.+ps as I have of seven hundred. Those Omans spread orders so fast that I don't even finish thinking one and it's being executed. And no misunderstandings, no slips. For instance, this last batch--fifteen skeletons. Far out; they're getting cagy. I just thought 'Box 'em in and slug 'em' and--In! Across! Out! Socko!

Pffft! Just like that and just that fast. None of 'em had time to light a beam. n.o.body before ever even _dreamed_ of such control!”

”That's great, and I like it ... and you're only a captain. How many s.h.i.+ps can Five-Jet Admiral Gordon put into s.p.a.ce?”

”That depends on what you call s.h.i.+ps. Superdreadnoughts, _Perseus_ cla.s.s, six. First-line battles.h.i.+ps, twenty-nine. Second-line, smaller and some pretty old, seventy-three. Counting everything armed that will hold air, something over two hundred.”

”I thought it was something like that. How would you like to be Five-Jet Admiral Sawtelle of the Ardrian Navy?”

”I wouldn't. I'm Terran Navy. But you knew that and you know me.

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