Part 17 (2/2)

Three hands moved to obey. Joe could release the drive rockets on all seven s.h.i.+ps at will.

The voice counted:

”_Ten ... nine ... eight ... seven ... six ... five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... cut!_”

Joe pressed the master-key. The remnants of the solid-fuel take-off rockets let go. They flashed off into nothingness at unbelievable speed, consuming themselves as they went.

There was again no weight.

This time there was no resting. No eager gazing out the cabin ports. Now they weren't curious. They'd had over a month in s.p.a.ce, and something like sixteen days back on Earth, and now they were back in s.p.a.ce again.

Mike and Haney and the Chief worked doggedly at their control boards.

The radar bowls outside the cabin s.h.i.+fted and moved and quivered. The six drone s.h.i.+ps showed on the screens. But they also had telemetering apparatus. They faithfully reported their condition and the direction in which their bows pointed. The radars plotted their position with relation to each other and the mother-s.h.i.+p.

Presently Joe cast a glance out of a port and saw that the dark line of sunset was almost below. The take-off had been timed to get the s.h.i.+ps into Earth's shadow above the area from which war rockets were most likely to rise. It wouldn't prevent bombing, of course. But there was a gadget....

Joe spoke into the microphone: ”Reporting everything all right so far.

But you know it.”

The voice from solid ground said, ”_Report acknowledged._”

The s.h.i.+ps went on and on and on. The Chief muttered to himself and made very minute adjustments of the movement of one of his drones. Mike fussed with his. Haney regarded the controls of his drones with a profound calm.

Nothing happened, except that they seemed to be falling into a bottomless pit and their stomach-muscles knotted and cramped in purely reflex response to the sensation. Even that grew tedious.

The headphones said, ”_You will enter Earth's shadow in three minutes.

Prepare for combat._”

Joe said drily, ”We're to prepare for combat.”

The Chief growled. ”I'd like to do just that!”

The phrasing, of course, was intentional--in case enemy ears were listening. Actually, the small fleet was to use a variant on the tin can s.h.i.+eld which protected the Platform. It would be most effective if visual observation was impossible. The fleet was seven s.h.i.+ps in very ragged formation. Most improbably, after the long three-gravity acceleration, they were still within a fifty-mile globe of s.p.a.ce. Number Four loitered behind, but was being brought up by judicious bursts of steering-rocket fire. Number Two was some distance ahead. The others were simply scattered. They went floating on like a group of meteors.

Out the ports, two of them were visible. The others might be picked out by the naked eye--but it wasn't likely.

Drone Two, far ahead and clearly visible, turned from a s.h.i.+ning steel speck to a reddish pin-point of light. The red color deepened. It winked out. The sunlight in the ports of the mother-s.h.i.+p turned red. Then it blacked out.

”Shoot the ghosts,” said Joe.

The three drone-handlers pushed their b.u.t.tons. Nothing happened that anybody could see. Actually, though, a small gadget outside the hull began to cough rhythmically. Similar devices on the drones coughed, too.

They were small, multiple-barreled guns. Rifle sh.e.l.ls fired two-pound missiles at random targets in emptiness. They wouldn't damage anything they hit. They'd go varying distances, explode and shoot small lead shot ahead to check their missile-velocity, and then emit dense ma.s.ses of aluminum foil. There was no air resistance. The shredded foil would continue to move through emptiness at the same rate as the convoy-fleet.

The seven s.h.i.+ps had fired a total of eighty-four such objects away into the blackness of Earth's shadow. There were, then, seven s.h.i.+ps and eighty-four ma.s.ses of aluminum foil moving through emptiness. They could not be seen by telescopes.

And radars could not tell s.h.i.+ps from ma.s.ses of aluminum foil.

If enemy radars came probing upward, they reported ninety-one s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+ps in ragged but coherent formation, soaring through emptiness toward the Platform. And a fleet like that was too strong to attack.

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