Part 30 (1/2)

”You'd better cancel it, Sandy. Give us a couple of months, and _maybe_ we can answer a few elementary questions.”

Now inside the Hall, all the teams, from Astronomy to Zoology, went efficiently to work. Everyone now knew what to look for, how to find it, and how to study it.

”The First Team doesn't need you now too much, does it, Jarve?” Sawtelle asked.

”Not particularly. In fact, I was just going to get back onto my own job.”

”Not yet. I want to talk to you,” and the two went into a long discussion of naval affairs.

XI

The Stretts' fuel-supply line had been cut long since. Many Strett cargo-carriers had been destroyed. The enemy would of course have a very heavy reserve of fuel on hand. But there was no way of knowing how large it was, how many wars.h.i.+ps it could supply, or how long it would last.

Two facts were, however, unquestionable. First, the Stretts were building a fleet that in their minds would be invincible. Second, they would attack Ardane as soon as that fleet could be made ready. The unanswerable question was: how long would that take?

”So we want to get every s.h.i.+p we have. How many? Five thousand? Ten?

Fifteen? We want them converted to maximum possible power as soon as we possibly can,” Sawtelle said. ”And I want to get out there with my boys to handle things.”

”You aren't going to. Neither you nor your boys are expendable.

Particularly you.” Jaw hard-set, Hilton studied the situation for minutes. ”No. What we'll do is take your Oman, Kedy. We'll re-set the Guide to drive into him everything you and the military Masters ever knew about arms, armament, strategy, tactics and so on. And we'll add everything I know of coordination, synthesis, and perception. That ought to make him at least a junior-grade military genius.”

”You can play _that_ in spades. I wish you could do it to me.”

”I can--if you'll take the full Oman transformation. Nothing else can stand the punishment.”

”I know. No, I don't want to be a genius that badly.”

”Check. And we'll take the resultant Kedy and make nine duplicates of him. Each one will learn from and profit by the mistakes made by preceding numbers and will a.s.sume command the instant his preceding number is killed.”

”Oh, you expect, then...?”

”Expect? No. I know it d.a.m.n well, and so do you. That's why we Ardans will all stay aground. Why the Kedys' first job will be to make the heavy stuff in and around Ardane as heavy as it can be made. Why it'll all be on twenty-four-hour alert. Then they can put as many thousands of Omans as you please to work at modernizing all the Oman s.h.i.+ps you want and doing anything else you say. Check?”

Sawtelle thought for a couple of minutes. ”A few details, is all. But that can be ironed out as we go along.”

Both men worked then, almost unremittingly for six solid days; at the end of which time both drew tremendous sighs of relief. They had done everything possible for them to do. The defense of Ardvor was now rolling at fullest speed toward its gigantic objective.

Then captain and director, in two Oman s.h.i.+ps with fifty men and a thousand Omans, leaped the world-girdling ocean to the mining operation of the Stretts. There they found business strictly as usual. The strippers still stripped; the mining mechs still roared and snarled their inchwise ways along their geometrically perfect terraces; the little carriers still skittered busily between the various miners and the storage silos. The fact that there was enough concentrate on hand to last a world for a hundred years made no difference at all to these automatics; a crew of erector-mechs was building new silos as fast as existing ones were being filled.

Since the men now understood everything that was going on, it was a simple matter for them to stop the whole Strett operation in its tracks. Then every man and every Oman leaped to his a.s.signed job. Three days later, all the mechs went back to work. Now, however, they were working for the Ardans.

The miners, instead of concentrate, now emitted vastly larger streams of Navy-Standard pelleted uranexite. The carriers, instead of one-gallon cans, carried five-ton drums. The silos were immensely larger--thirty feet in diameter and towering two hundred feet into the air. The silos were not, however, being used as yet. One of the two Oman s.h.i.+ps had been converted into a fuel-tanker and its yawning holds were being filled first.

The _Orion_ went back to Ardane and an eight-day wait began. For the first time in over seven months Hilton found time actually to loaf; and he and Temple, lolling on the beach or hiking in the mountains, enjoyed themselves and each other to the full.

All too soon, however, the heavily laden tanker appeared in the sky over Ardane. The _Orion_ joined it; and the two s.h.i.+ps slipped into sub-s.p.a.ce for Earth.