Part 17 (2/2)

The Aldebaran, he knew, was west of Keegark; the _Northern Lights_, now fitted with a pair of 155-mm guns, in addition to her 90's, had just arrived at Kankad's. He had the _Aldebaran_ sent north along the crest of the mountain-range between the Hoork and Konk river-valleys, where she could cover both with her own radar and other detection-devices and exchange information with the _Sky-Spy_, and the _Gaucho_ sent in what looked like the right course to intercept the Boer-cla.s.s freighter from Keegark. The _Northern Lights_, also with screens tuned to the _Sky-Spy_, was sent to take over the Aldebaran's regular station. Finally, he called Skilk and had the _Northern Star_ sent south down the Hoork Valley.

After that, there was nothing to do but wait, and watch the screens.

Paula Quinton put in an appearance shortly after he had finished calling Skilk, pus.h.i.+ng a c.o.c.ktail-wagon on which their interrupted dinners had been placed. They finished eating, and drank coffee, and smoked. Most of the rest of his staff who were not busy on the bomb-project or at the s.h.i.+pyards or with the occupation of Konkrook drifted in; they all sat and stared from one to another of the screens, which told, in radar-patterns and direct vision and telescopic vision and heat and radiation detection, the story of what was going on to the north-east of them.

Keegark was dark, on the vision-screen; evidently King Orgzild had invented the blackout, too. Not that it did him any good; the radar-screen showed the city clearly, and it was just as clear on the radiation and heat screens. The Keegarkan s.h.i.+p was completely blacked out, but the radiations from her engines and the distinctive radiation-pattern of her contragravity-field showed clearly, and there was a speck that marked her position on the radar-screen. The same position was marked with a pin-point of light on the vision screen--some device on _Sky-Spy_, synchronized with the detectors, kept it focused there. The Company s.h.i.+ps and contragravity vehicles all were carrying topside lights, visible only from above, which flashed alternate red and blue to identify them.

Time crawled slowly around the clock-face on the wall, the sixty-five-second minutes of Ullr dragging like hours. The spots that marked the enemy s.h.i.+p and her hunters crawled, too; seen from the hundred-and-fifty-mile alt.i.tude of the _Sky-Spy_, even the six-hundred-mile speed of the _Gaucho_ was barely visible. They drank coffee till the stuff revolted them; they smoked until their throats and mouths were dry, they watched the screens until they thought that they would see them in their dreams forever. Then the _Gaucho_ reported radar-contact with the Keegarkan s.h.i.+p, which had begun to turn in a hairpin-shaped course and was coming south down the Konk Valley.

After that, the _Gaucho_ began reporting directly, and her topside identification-light went out.

”... doused our lights; we're down in the valley, alt.i.tude about a thousand feet. We're trying to get a glimpse of her against the sky,”

a voice came in. ”We're cutting in our forward TV-pick-up.” The voice repeated, several times, the wavelength, and somebody got an auxiliary screen tuned in. There was nothing visible in it but the darkness of the valley, the star-jeweled sky, and the loom of the East Konk Mountains. ”We still can't see her, but we ought to, any moment; radar shows her well above the mountains. Ah, there she is; she just obscured Beta Hydrae V; she's moving toward that big constellation to the east of it, the one they call Finnegan's Goat. Now she'll be right in the center of the screen; we're going straight for her. We're going to try to slow her down till _Aldebaran_ can get here....”

The enemy s.h.i.+p was vaguely visible, now, becoming clearer in the starlight. She was a Boer-cla.s.s freighter, all right. Probably the _Jan s.m.u.ts_; the _Oom Paul Kruger_ had last been reported at Bwork, and there was little chance that she had slipped into Keegark since the uprising had started. For all anybody knew, she could have been destroyed in the fighting before the Bwork Residency fell.

”All right, we have her spotted; we're going to open up on her,” the voice from the _Gaucho_ announced. ”She has two 90's to our one; we'll try to disable them, first.” The vision-screen lit with the indirect glare of the gun-flash, and the image in it jiggled violently as the s.h.i.+p shook to the recoil, then steadied again, with the enemy s.h.i.+p visible in the middle of it, growing larger and larger as the _Gaucho_ rushed toward her. The gun fired again and again, flooding the screen with momentary yellow light and disturbing the image as the recoil shook the gun-cutter. The enemy s.h.i.+p began firing in reply; the shots were all wide misses. Apparently the geek gun-crew didn't know how to synchronize the radar sights, and were ignorant of the correct setting for the proximity-fuzes. The _Gaucho's_ searchlights came on, bathing her quarry in light. It was the _Jan s.m.u.ts_; the name, and the figure-head-bust of the old soldier-philosopher, were plainly visible.

Her forward gun had been knocked out, and she was trying to swing about to get a field of fire for her stern-gun.

”We're going to give her a rocket-salvo,” the voice said. ”Watch this, now!”

The rockets leaped forward, from the topside racks, four and four and four and four, at half-second intervals. The first four hit the s.m.u.ts amids.h.i.+ps and low, exploding with a flare that grew before it could die away as the second four landed. n.o.body ever saw the third and fourth four land. The _Jan s.m.u.ts_ vanished in a blaze of light that blinded everybody in the room; when they could see again, after some thirty seconds, the screen was dark.

In the direct-vision screen from the _Sky-Spy_, the whole countryside of the Konk Valley, five hundred miles north of Konkrook, was lighted.

The heat and radiation detectors were going insane. And in the s.h.i.+fting confusion on the radar-screen, there was no trace either of the _Jan s.m.u.ts_ or the _Gaucho_.

”Well, the geeks did have an A-bomb,” Themistocles M'zangwe said, at length. ”I'd been trying to kid myself that we were just preparing against a million-to-one chance. I wonder how many more they have.”

”Paula, find out who was in command of the _Gaucho_; he'd be a junior-grade lieutenant. Fix up orders promoting him to navy captain, as of now. It's probably the only thing we can do for him, any more.

And promotions of the same order for everybody else aboard that cutter. Authority Carlos von Schlichten, acting Governor-General.” He picked up a phone. ”Get me Commander Prinsloo, on _Aldebaran_....”

He ordered Prinsloo to launch airboats and make a search; cautioned him to be careful of radiation, but to take no chances on any of the _Gaucho's_ complement being still alive and in need of help. While that was going on, the _Sky-Spy_ reported another s.h.i.+p coming over her horizon to the east, from the direction of Bwork. That would be the _Oom Paul Kruger_. Hargreaves had already learned of the advent of the second freighter. He was unwilling to take the _Procyon_ off her station until the _Aldebaran_ returned from the Konk Valley. In this, von Schlichten concurred.

Somebody suggested that a drink would be in order. They had just watched the all-but-certain death of three Terran officers, fifteen Terran airmen, and ten Kragans, but they had all been living in too close companions.h.i.+p with death in the past three days--or was it three centuries--to be too deeply affected. And they had also watched, at least for a day or so, the removal of the threat that had hung over their heads. And they had seen proof that they had a defense against King Orgzild's bombs.

They were still mixing c.o.c.ktails when Pickering phoned in.

”Some good news, general, from Operation 'Hildegarde.' We ought to have at least one bomb ready to drop by 1500 tomorrow; four or five more by next mid-night,” he said. ”We don't need to have cases cast.

We got our dimensions decided, and we find that there are a lot of big empty liquid-oxygen flasks, or tanks, rather, at the s.p.a.ceport, that'll accommodate everything--fissionables, explosive-charges, tampers, detonator, and all.”

”Well, go ahead with it. Make up a few of them; as many as you can between now and 2400 Sunday.” He thought for a moment. ”Don't waste time on those practice bombs I mentioned. We'll make a practice drop with a live bomb. And don't throw away the design for the cast case.

We may need that, later on.”

XIII

The Company fleet hung off Keegark, at fifteen thousand feet, in a belt of calm air just below the seesawing currents from the warming Antarctic and the cooling deserts of the Arctic. There was the _Procyon_, from the bridge of which von Schlichten watched the movements of the other s.h.i.+ps and airboats and the distant horizon. The _Aldebaran_ was ten miles off, to the west, her metal sheathing glinting the red light of the evening sun. There was the _Northern Star_, down from Skilk, a smaller and more distant twinkle of reflected light to the north of _Aldebaran_. The _Northern Lights_ was off to the east, and between her and _Procyon_ was a fifth s.h.i.+p; turning the arm-mounted binoculars around, he could just make out, on her bow, the figure-head bust of a man in an ancient top-hat and a fringe of chin-beard. She was the _Oom Paul Kruger_, captured by the _Procyon_ after a chase across the mountains north-east of Keegark the day before. And, remote from the other s.h.i.+ps, to the south, a tiny speck of blue-gray, almost invisible against the sky, and a smaller twinkle of reflected sunlight--a garbage-scow, unflatteringly but somewhat aptly rechristened _Hildegarde Hernandez_, which had been altered as a bomb-carrier, and the gun-cutter _Elmoran_. With the gla.s.ses, he could see a bulky cylinder being handled off the scow and loaded onto the improvised bomb-catapult on the _Elmoran's_ stern.

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