The Mysterious Planet

CHAPTER 8 Preparation for War

THOUGH NOTHING HAPPENED, the trip back was a nightmare. They didn’t bother with rest periods, and there was no conversation in the control cabin. Nobody had the heart to talk. Bob could imagine himself a primitive bushman who had dared make war on a modern world; now he was crawling back to his hut to lick his wounds—not daring to think and not knowing what had hit him.

It grew worse during the next few hours, as the numbness wore off and he began to think and feel the few moments of that horrible battle all over again. Then they had been simply ships exploding; but now came realization that men he had met all his life were simply dust among the stars, gone forever.

There was no consolation in knowing they had also destroyed more of the black ships than they had lost. That had happened only because they had struck when the other ships were unready. And it could never happen again.

Even the original question was unanswered. He didn’t know whether the forces of Planet X

would have attacked or not; perhaps their trick of turning the fleet had been an attack, and perhaps it had been only an attempt to settle things without war. But from now on, peace seemed impossible.

When they neared Outpost, Bob’s father ordered the other two ships ahead of him, and came in in the in-verted V that was the ancient symbol of the Fleet that they had failed. But the observers on Outpost must have already known that. Three ships out of twenty returning could never spell success.

There was no crowd waiting for them. The field was deserted, except for military police who were patrolling the borders to make sure no one got through. They landed in the spot reserved for them and went out. Across the field, Wallingford’s car waited for Commander Griffith, and patrol cars were lined up for the officers of the three ships. All would have to report in detail.

Bob got through it somehow without cracking. Perhaps it was because he was interviewed last and most of the details were already on record. Wallingford, Jergens, and five other men sat on the panel doing the quizzing. It was not a formal investigation—there was no question of guilt or fault in their defeat. But Jergens’ face had a smugness under his newly grown fear that showed the general attitude. If Bob’s father had let well enough alone, things would have been different! He was technically in the right, but he would be the black sheep of Outpost, in any event. Unconsciously, people would blame him for starting the war.

Beyond them in the room, a stenographer sat before the keys of the encoder, radioing all details back to Earth and Mars!

It was finally over as far as the officers were concerned. Bob was dismissed, and one of the patrol cars took him to the apartment. He hesitated outside the door, dreading the questioning that would follow. Then he opened it, and found he was wrong.

Juan and Jakes were as sunk in gloom as he was. Juan muttered something and went out to bring him sandwiches and some cold drink. He realized suddenly that he hadn’t eaten since the attack. For a moment he tried to shove it away, feeling no hunger.

Jakes scowled at him. “Hey, you eat that, Bob!

Maybe we’ll all be dead in another month, but you don’t need to starve ahead of time!”

There was no taste to the food, but somehow it made him feel better. Once started, Bob wolfed it down. “I thought you wanted war, Si,” he said bitterly.

“Me?” The other stared at him in shocked surprise. “Naw—I’d rather anything else. Just cause I figure we’re bound to have it and want to play it the safest way doesn’t mean I want it.

Why, even Dad doesn’t want war—and he could make plenty out of it. Nobody wants war!”

It seemed to be true, from the tone of the local newspaper and the carefully censored radio reports. Nobody wanted war—but the fear of the mysterious Planet X meant they could never avoid it now.

Bob’s father came in later. “Help me pack my things, Bob,” he requested.

Jakes sprang up before Bob could clear his throat. “You mean… They couldn’t sack you!”

Griffith smiled wearily. “No, nothing like that. I’ve been—promoted, is the word they used! I’m now on Wallingford’s staff here. It seems I’m the leading expert on Planet X and its ships, and he needs me. Either that, or he’s covering me against trouble from Grand Headquarters. But I’ve been assigned quarters there, so you boys will be on your own.”

“Meaning we can’t see you—is that it?” Bob asked.

“Something like that. You won’t be able to see anyone higher than a Senior Leftenant, I suppose.” Griffith began packing his few belongings, hiding his face, but his voice was almost resigned. “You’ll have to face it, Bob. For the first tune in nearly two hundred years, we’re at war. Most of us don’t know anything about that—but the real higher-ups haven’t stopped studying it, and we’ll have to learn to obey them. You boys have no right being on the inside from now on. You’ll still have freedom of the town and the old port, of course. But you’ll have to act like citizens, not like a private staff. Okay?”

They nodded. War was a mysterious word, but they knew that it kept things from being normal, and they weren’t too surprised.

“I’ll drop by now and then, when I get a chance. And you all will go on drawing salaries according to your rank, so you’ll get by.” He put bis bag on the floor, and drew himself up.

“Attention!”

Juan and Jakes were a little awkward about it, but they managed to come to a ragged attention, together with Bob. Griffith saluted in the almost forgotten formality of the old Navy.

“All right. As you were.” He picked up the bag and went out.

Bob knew it had been his way of avoiding an awkward scene, but also a reminder that they were now only two phony ensigns and a phony Junior Leftenant, and that they had better learn to act the part.

When he was gone, Jakes stomped about restlessly, muttering; Juan slumped back on the floor. And Bob stood foolishly, without an idea of what to do. Then he shrugged, and slumped off to bed. He heard the others muttering something about another visit to Smedley’s observatory, and then heard them turning in. Apparently they felt he wanted to be alone, since Juan went into Jakes’s room.

From outside came the sound of lorries driving through the streets and the booming of a public radio that was endlessly recounting the “vicious attack on peaceful ships by the war forces of Planet X.” He grumbled and covered his head with a pillow, but it was a long time before he slept.

Jakes came in from outside right after breakfast the next morning, and threw a card on the table. “Got a job,” he announced. “Filing down flanges over in the repair shops. They’re looking for help.”

“Any help?” Bob asked, with a sudden revival of his infrequent respect for the older boy.

“They don’t ask questions about age, if you can bur off the flanges. How about you, Juan?”

The Ionian nodded quickly, echoing their feelings.

“Of course. Can we only sit here and twiddle the thumbs? We start when?”

They started at once, it seemed. Workers were being sent from the moons of Saturn as quickly as possible, any workers who could follow orders, together with tremendous quantities of supplies. But Outpost, which had only been a small frontier base, was shorthanded, and would be after they arrived. Plans called for domes to cover the whole area of the little moon. From now on, it would have to be built up to a strength that could safely hold off the possible invading forces of X, and throw forces out to battle on its own.

The work was dull, but that somehow helped. The routine didn’t keep them from thinking, but tension was lessened by useful occupation. At the same tune, from the shops they heard more of what went on, and saw more of the activities on the field than they would have remaining in the apartment.

The Infleet landed during one of their lunch hours. The blue and gold of Venus, Mercury and Earth were unmistakable. They came dropping from space, spreading even further, until the last ones began to disappear from sight over the horizon. Lorries with airtight bodies ran out to pull off the men, and a constant line of supply trucks began running by the shops where the boys worked. There were more ships on Outpost now than had ever been based at one time on any major planet!

And back in the huge factories of Earth, more were coming off the assembly lines, just as a constant supply of lithium bombs were being made. It was on those that most of the hopes of the Fleet were based. If a few ships could penetrate the lines of the Planet X fleet, and get through to X itself, they might be able to eliminate the whole world.

Meantime, speculation ran high about the absence of attack from Planet X. The more optimistic claimed that this meant that X might have superior ships, but so few that they had to stick to their own planet. The pessimistic claimed that they were waiting for all ships to be based on Outpost, and would then sail in and wipe out all the other planets.

Two weeks after the ill-fated mission to Planet X, the sirens went off wildly in the middle of a work period. Ships were finally sighted and identified as the enemy! The three boys were forced into the stuffy shelter which would be no protection at all if a real attack came, but which gave some feeling of safety to the civilians. They could not make out details from the garbled radio reports at the time, but the crisis was soon over.

Later, they found that three black ships had cruised over, and that ten Wings of battleships had gone up after them. The black ships had waited around, and then simply put on a burst of speed that carried them almost instantly out of sight, down toward Neptune. There was some question as to whether a lithium bomb had destroyed one of them before it disappeared, but it had probably gotten away safely.

Bob and the other two discussed the situation all that night, but there was no real meat for talk. And the next day was their day off, which left them nothing to do. Bob tried to call his father, but found he was in conference with the staff. He went out to take in a show, and gave that up; with the new workers and the whole Navy here, seats were available only on some kind of a black market at prices far beyond his reach.

“We can go over to the observatory,” Jakes suggested. “Old Smedley called me up yesterday. He can’t find anyone else to play chess with, with this war going on.”

Juan stood up promptly and began getting ready, but Bob shook his head. He’d remembered that a letter to his mother was long overdue, and this was the best tune to write it. He pulled out his typewriter as soon as the other two were gone, put in a sheet of paper—and stopped.

Plenty had happened, but she already would know everything permitted by the censors. He’d already described his work in the repair shop. And there was liter-ally nothing to say. For the first time, he realized that war was not only frightful; to the man just outside it, it was dull and monotonous!

Maybe that was why war had become unpopular until this new alien world had frightened people into it again. In the old days, men had fought almost hand to hand, and there had been at least the excitement of any good private fight; also, people had been able to get the full picture, and know what was going on. It was almost like a football game. But with advancing technology, an individual became just a dumb cog in a machine so big, he couldn’t begin to understand or take any great personal credit. And war lost its neurotic zest.

For want of anything else, he began writing about this idea to his mother, along with the few little personal items he could remember. He stopped to look out into the street and see countless men and women hanging around, having nothing to do once their period of work was over, and he fitted their boredom into his letter.

Then he got up and tore it up. If he ever sent that, his mother would feel sure he was sick and would start worrying twice as much as she would if he didn’t write at all.

He went out and bought one of the expensive tissue copies of the Martian Chronicle, and tried to read it, since he hadn’t seen more than the little local Post. But much of the news was meaningless to him. He hadn’t followed the current wrangles of the Federation Congress over policy enough to know what they were arguing about.

The editorial pages interested him more. Again he found the curious mixture of fear and eagerness to strike at Planet X and get the suspense over with, and the general dissatisfaction with having to be mixed up in anything as out-of-date as warfare.

Prices were going up on some things. Transportation between planets was being limited.

Mars and Earth were blacking out their cities at night. And piracy had increased.

That should have been expected. There were always some people who took advantage of trouble. Another item caught his eye.

Then Bob whistled. It seemed that Simon’s father was in trouble; Simon had given the Academy an assignment to his invention of the acceleration seat, and the elder Jakes had patented it without any right to do so. Apparently Simon had been honest in his surprise at his father’s actions, and really had been doing the right thing all along.

Bob struggled. He was almost beginning to like the clumsy Jakes, but Simon was such a mixture that there was no way to tell what would come up next. He could do things that required real sacrifice without expecting any credit; and then he could turn around and ruin all his efforts by some stupid and boorish gesture.

Bob went back to try to write a letter, just as the two others came into the apartment. He glanced up to give a casual greeting, and then stopped. Something had obviously happened. The two were no longer bored, and Juan was practically bubbling with excitement.

“You didn’t beat Smedley that badly,” Bob guessed.

Jakes shook his head. “He beat me—he always does. But Juan slipped in and used his telescope. Not the big one, but the fifteen-inch one with the electronic amplifier. And he found something!”

“On Neptune’s side of us… a little moon it was, maybe three miles big—half a million miles away. And I didn’t tell Smedley, because Simon wanted you to know first, too.” Juan’s English had a stronger accent than usual.

Bob grinned in puzzlement. “Nothing new about that. Neptune has quite a few of those tiny moons between us and Triton.”

Juan nodded. “That I know. But not with the wreck of a Planet X ship upon them. And this one I saw. It was turning around, but I saw it clearly. Lying on a bunch of big white rocks was a black thing, big at both

ends, narrow in the middle. And shouldn’t I know a ship like that when I see it?”

“Juan came back just when the game was over,” Jakes added. “I saw something was up, so we got out fast. As soon as Juan told me about it, we came here on the double.”

Bob blinked, slowly digesting this information. If they could get their hands on one of those mysterious ships, and learn how they operated…

“How badly broken up, or could you see?” he asked. It would do little good to have only mangled pieces of a ship left over after a lithium bomb had hit.

But Juan shook his head. “Not broken. It was all there, Bob. A whole black ship, just waiting for us.”