Between Planets

XVIII Little David

Don let his mouth drop open and left it that way. To his credit, while he had thought about it, he had never given it the slightest serious consideration; he was not conceited enough to think that he would be allowed to hitch a ride, just to suit his personal wishes, on this trip.

Phipps went on, "Frankly, I'm doing it to get rid of you, to put you on ice, safe from the Federation's inquisitors, until it no longer matters. But I think I can justify it. We want to train as many as the Little David can carry on this trip as cadres for more ships. But my choice is limited-most of our group here are too old, or they are near-sighted, narrow-chested -young geniuses suitable only for laboratories. You are young, you are healthy, your reflexes are fast-I know! -and you are space-wise from babyhood. True, you are not a qualified shiphandler, but that won't matter too much; these ships will be new to everyone. Mr. Harvey, how would you like to go to Mars and return as `Captain Harvey,' master of your own ship-a ship strong enough to strike at these Federation vermin orbiting around Venus?

"Or executive officer, at least," Phipps qualified, reflecting that in a two-man ship Don could hardly be less.

Like it? He'd love it! Don's tongue got twisted trying to accept too quickly. Then almost at once he was struck by a cold thought; Phipps saw from his expression that something was wrong. "What's the matter?" Phipps said sharply. "Are you afraid?"

"Afraid?" Don looked annoyed. "Of course I'll be afraid! I've been afraid so many times that I am no longer scared to be afraid again. That's not the trouble."

"What is it, then? Speak up!"

"It's just this-I'm still on active duty. I can't go gallivanting off a hundred million miles or so. Properly speaking, it would be desertion. Why, when they laid hands on me, they'd probably hang me first and ask questions afterwards."

Phipps relaxed. "Oh. Perhaps that can be managed. You let me worry about it."

It could be managed. It was only three days later that Don received new orders, written this time, and delivered by devious means that he could only guess at. They read:

To: Harvey, Donald J., Sergeant-Specialist 1/c Via: Channels

1. You are assigned to special temporary duty of indefinite duration.

2. You will travel as necessary to carry out this duty.

3. This assignment is deemed in the best interests of the Republic. When, in your opinion, your duties are completed, you will report to the nearest competent authority and request transportation to enable you to report in person to the Chief of Staff.

4. For the duration of this duty you are brevetted to the rank of sublieutenant.

J. S. Busby, Wing Colonel (brevet)

For the Commanding General

First Endorsement:

1. Delivered (via courier)

Henry Marsten, Captain (brevet) Commanding 16th Gondola Combat Team

Clipped to the orders was a scrawled note which read:

P.S. Dear "Lieutenant,"

These are the silliest orders I have ever had to endorse.

What the devil have you been up to? Did you marry one of the dragons? Or did you catch a Big Brass with his finger off his number? Anyway, have fun-and good huntingl

Marsten

Don tucked the orders and the note into his pocket. Every now and then he would reach in and touch them.

The days trickled away; the dotted line got ever closer to Mars: and the whole group got more and more jumpy. Another date was posted on the mess hall wall, a date by which the Little David must be ready-if they were to arrive in time.

The calendar marked that deadline the day the ship was finally manned. At raise-ship-minus-twenty-minutes Don was still in Sir Isaac's study, his baggage (such as it was) already aboard. Saying goodbye to Sir Isaac, he discovered, was rather more difficult than he had expected it to be. His head was not cluttered with ideas about "father images" and the like; he was simply aware that this dragon was all the family he had, much more so than that remote pair on the planet where he was headed.

He was almost relieved when a glance at his watch told him that he was late. "Got to run," he said. "Nineteen minutes."

"Yes, my dear Donald. Your short-lived race must always live in frantic haste."

"Well-g'bye."

"Farewell, Mist on the Waters."

He stopped outside Sir Isaac's study to blow his nose and pull himself together. Isobel stepped out from behind a massive pillar. "Don-I wanted to say goodbye to you."

"Huh? Sure, sure-but aren't you coming out to see `raise ship'?"

"No."

"Well, as you like, but I've got to hurry, Grandma."

"I told you to stop calling me 'Grandma'!"

"So you fibbed about your age. So you're stuck with it-Grandma."

"Don, you stubborn beast! Don-you come back. You understand me?"

"Why, sure! We'll be back in jig time."

"See that you do! You're not bright enough to take care of yourself. Well-Open sky!" She grabbed him by both ears and kissed him quickly, then ran away.

Don stared after her, rubbing his mouth. Girls, he reflected, were much odder than dragons. Probably another race entirely. He hurried on down to the take-off point. The entire colony seemed to be there and he was the last of the crew to arrive, winning thereby a dirty look from Captain Rhodes, skipper of the Little David. Rhodes, once of Interplanet and now of the Middle Guard, had appeared three days ago; he had not been inclined to talk and had spent the whole time with Conrad. Don touched the pocket and wondered if Rhodes carried orders that read as oddly as his.

The Little David had been dragged up on shore, where she rested in skids. No catapult would be needed for her take-off, nor was any available: the three shuttle catapults on Venus were all in the hands of the Federation forces. The ship had been concealed by a screen of boughs; these were now cut back, giving her open sky, room to lift.

Don looked at her, thinking that she looked more like an oversized and unusually ugly concrete mixer than a space ship. The roots of her amputated wings stubbed out sadly to port and starboard. Her needle nose had been trimmed off and replaced by a bulbous special radar housing. She was scarred here and there by the marks of cutting torches where modifications had been done hastily and with no attempt to pretty up, smooth out, and make ship-shape after the surgery.

Her rocket tubes were gone and the space formerly occupied by rocket fuel tanks now held an atomic power pile, while a major part of what had been her passenger space was now taken up by a massive bulkhead, the antiradiation shield to protect the crew from the deadly emanations of the pile. All over her outer surface, disfiguring what had been sleek streamlines, were bulging discoids-"antennas" Conrad had called them, antennas used to strain the very shape of space. They did not look much like antennas to Don.

The Little David carried a crew of nine, Rhodes, Conrad, Harvey, and six others, all young and all on "makeelearnee"-except Roger Conrad who carried the undignified title of "Gadget Officer," that being shorter than "Officer in Charge of Special Appliances." She carried one passenger, Old Malath. He was not in sight and Don did not look for him; the after part of the remaining cabin space had been sealed off for his use and airconditioned thin, dry, and cold.

All were aboard, the lock was sealed, and Don sat down. Despite the space taken up by the new equipment enough passenger seats had been left in the little ship to accommodate them. Captain Rhodes settled himself in his control seat and barked, "Acceleration stations! Fasten beltsl" Don did so.

Rhodes turned to Conrad who was still standing. Conrad said conversationally, "About two minutes, gentlemen. Since we had no time for a test run, this will be a very interesting experiment. Any of three things can happen.

He paused.

Rhodes snapped, "Yes? Go on!"

"First, nothing might happen. We might bog down on a slight theoretical oversight. Second, it might work. And third-it might blow up." He grinned. "Anyone want to place a small bet?"

Nobody answered. He glanced down and said, "Okay, Captain-twist her tail!"

It seemed to Don that it had suddenly become night and that they had gone immediately into free fall. His stomach, long used to the fairly high gravity of Venus, lurched and complained. Conrad, not strapped down, was floating, anchored by one hand to his control board. "Sorry, gentlemen!" he said. "Slight oversight. Now let's adjust this locus to Mars normal, as an accommodation to our passenger." He fiddled with his dials.

Don's stomach went abruptly back into place as a quite satisfactory weight of more than one-third g took over. Conrad said, "Very well, Captain, you can let them unstrap."

Someone behind Don said, "What's the matter? Didn't it work?"

Conrad said, "Oh, yes, it worked. In fact we have been accelerating at about-" He stopped to study his dials. "-twenty gravities ever since we left the atmosphere."

The ship remained surrounded by darkness, cut off from the rest of the universe by what was inadequately described as a "discontinuity," save for a few minutes every other watch when Conrad cut the field to enable Captain Rhodes to see out and thereby take direct star sights. During these periods they were in free fall and the stars shone sharp through the ports. Then the darkness again would close in and the Little David would revert to a little world of its own.

Captain Rhodes showed a persisting tendency to swear softly to himself after each fix and to work his calculations through at least three times.

In between times Conrad conducted "gadget class" for as many hours each day as he could stand it. Don found most of the explanations as baffling as the one Conrad had given Phipps. "I just don't get it, Rog," he confessed after their instructor had been over the same point three times.

Conrad shrugged and grinned. "Don't let it throw you. By the time you have helped install the equipment in your own ship, you'll know it the way your foot knows your shoe. Meantime, let's run through it again."

Aside from instructions there was nothing to do and the ship was too small and too crowded in any case. A card game ran almost continuously. Don had very little money to start with; very soon he had none and was no longer part of the game. He slept and he thought.

Phipps had been right, he decided; travel at this speed would change things-people would go planet-jumping as casually as they now went from continent to continent on Earth. It would be like-well, like the change from sailing ships to trans-ocean rockets, only the change would be overnight, instead of spread over three centuries.

Maybe he would go back to Earth someday; Earth had its points-horseback riding, for instance. He wondered if Lazy still remembered him?

He'd like to teach Isobel to ride a horse. He'd like to see her face when she first laid eyes on a horse!

One thing he knew: he would not stay on Earth, even if he did go back. Nor would he stay on Venus-nor on Mars. He knew now where he belonged-in space, where he was born. Any planet was merely a hotel to him; space was his home.

Maybe he would go out in the Pathfinder, out to the stars. He had a sneaking hunch that, if they came through this stunt alive, a member of the original crew of the Little David would be able to wangle it to be chosen for the Long Trip. Of course, the Pathfinder was limited to married couples only, but that was not an obstacle. He was certain that he would be married in time to qualify although he could not remember clearly just when he had come by that knowledge. And Isobel was the whither-thou-goest sort; she wouldn't hold him back. The Pathfinder would not leave right away in any case; they would wait to change over to the Horst-Milne-Conrad drive, once they knew about it.

In any event he meant to stir around a bit, do some traveling, once the war was over. They would surely have to transfer him to the High Guard when he got back, then High Guard experience would stand him in good stead when he was a discharged veteran. Come to think about it, maybe he was already in the High Guard, so to speak.

McMasters had certainly been right; there was just one way to get to Mars-in a spacing task force.

He looked around him. The inevitable card game was still in progress and two of his mates were shooting dice on the deckplates, the cubes spinning lazily in the low paragravity field. Conrad had opened up his chair and was stretched out asleep, his mouth open. He decided that it certainly did not look like a world-saving task force; the place had more the air of an unmade bed.

They were due to "come out" on the eleventh day, within easy free fall of Mars, and-if all guesses had been rightclose by the Federation task force, making almost a photo finish with those ships. "Gadget class" gave way to drill at battle stations. Rhodes picked Art Frankel, who had had some shiphandling experience, as his co-pilot; Conrad was assisted by Franklyn Chiang, a physicist like himself. Of the other four, two were on radio, two on radar. ;Don's battle station was a saddle amidships, back of the pilots' chairs-the "dead man's" seat. Here he guarded a springloaded demolition switch, a type of switch known through the centuries as a "dead-man" switch for the contrary reason that it operated only if its operator were dead.

At first drill Conrad got the others squared away, then came back to Don's station. "You savvy what you are to do, Don?"

"Sure. I throw this switch to arm the bomb, then I hang onto the dead-man switch."

"No, no! Grab the dead-man switch first-then close the arming switch"

"Yes, sure. I just said it backwards."

"Be sure you don't do it backwards! Just remember this, Lieutenant: if you let go, everything does."

"Okay. Say, Rog, this thing triggers an A-bomb-right?"

"Wrong. We should waste so much money! But the load of H.E. in there is plenty for a little can like this, I assure you. So, anxious as we are to blow up this packet rather than let it be captured, don't let go of that switch otherwise. If you feel a need to scratch, rise above it."

Captain Rhodes came aft and with a motion of his head sent Conrad forward. He spoke to Don in a low voice, such that his words did not reach the others. "Harvey, are you satisfied with this assignment? You don't mind it?"

"No, I don't mind," Don answered. "I know the others all have more technical training than I have. This is my speed."

"That's not what I mean," the Captain corrected. "You could fill any of the other seats, except mine and Dr. Conrad's. I want to be sure you can do this job."

"I don't see why not. Grab onto this switch, and then close that one-and hang on for dear life. It sure doesn't take any higher mathematics to do that."

"That's still not what I mean. I don't know you, Harvey. I understand you have had combat experience. These others haven't-which is why you have this job. Those who do know you think you can do it. I'm not worried that you might forget to hang on; what I want to know is this: if it becomes necessary to let go of that switch, can you do it?"

Don answered almost at once-but not before there had been time for him to think of several things-Dr. Jefferson, who had almost certainly suicided, not simply died-Old Charlie with his mouth quivering but his cleaver hand steady and sure-and an undying voice ringing through the fog, "Venus and Freedom!".

"Guess I can if I have to."

"Good. I'm by no means sure that I could. I'm depending on you, sir, if worse comes to worst, not to let my ship be captured." He went forward.

Tension mounted, tempers got edgy. They had no way to be sure that they would come out near the Federation task force; that force might be using something other than what was assumed to be the maximum-performance orbit. They could not even be certain that the Federation forces were not already on Mars, already in command and difficult to dislodge. The Little David's laboratory miracles were designed for ship-to-ship encounter in space, not for mopping up on the surface of a planet.

Conrad had another worry, one that he did not voice, that the ship's weapons might not work as planned. More than any of the rest he knew the weakness of depending on theoretical predictions. He knew how frequently the most brilliant computations were confounded by previously unsuspected natural laws. There was no substitute for test-and these weapons had not been tested. He lost his habitual grin and even got into a bad-tempered difference of opinion with Rhodes as to the calculated time of "coming out."

The difference of opinion was finally settled; a half hour later Rhodes said quietly, "It's almost time, gentlemen. Battle stations." He went to his own seat, strapped himself in, and snapped, "Report!"'

"Co-pilot."

"Radio!"

"Radar!"

"Special weapons ready."

"Dead man!" Don finished.

There was a long wait while the seconds oozed slowly away. Rhodes spoke quietly into a microphone, warning Malath to be ready for free fall, then called out, "Stand by!" Don took a tighter grip on the demolition switch.

Suddenly he was weightless; ahead of him and in the passenger ports on each side the stars burst into being. He could not see Mars and decided that it must be "under" the ship. The Sun was somewhere aft; it was not in his eyes. But his view ahead was excellent; the Little David, having begun life as a winged shuttle, had an airplane-type conning port in front of the piloting chairs. Don's position let him see as clearly as Rhodes and his co-pilot and much better than could the others.

"Radar?" inquired Rhodes.

"Take it easy, Skipper. Even the speed of light is-Oh, oh! Blips!"

"Co-ordinates and range!"

"Theta three five seven point two; phi minus zero point eight; range radius six eight oh."

"I'm feeding it in automatically," Conrad cut in sharply.

"Tracking?"

"Not yet."

"In range?"

"No. I think we should sit tight and close range as much as possible. They may not have seen us."

They had slowed their headlong flight earlier to permit maneuvering; nevertheless they were closing with the "blips" at more than ninety miles a second. Don strained his eyes to try to make out the ships, if such the radar reflections were. No use-his protoplasmic scanners were no match for electronic ones.

They stayed that way, nerves on edge and stomachs tight, and range steadily closing, until it seemed that the blips must not be the task force, perhaps were even some wandering uncharted asteroid-when the radio alarm, sweeping automatically the communication frequencies, clangingly broke the silence. "Get it!" shouted Rhodes.

"Coming up." There was a short wait. "They demanded that we identify. They're our babies, all right."

"Switch it over here." Rhodes turned to Conrad. "How about it?"

"I ought to be closer. Stall 'em!" Conrad's face was grey and wet with sweat.

Rhodes touched a key and spoke into his mike. "What ship are you? Identify yourself."

The answer was amplified through the horn - over the Captain's head. "Identify or be fired upon."

Rhodes glanced again at Conrad, who was too busy to look back. Rhodes spoke into the mike, "This is the destroyer Little David, commissioned privateer, Venus Republic. Surrender immediately."

Don strained his eyes again. It seemed to him that there were three new "stars" dead ahead.

The answer came back with hardly more than transmission delay. "Federation flagship Peacemaker to pirate ship Little David: surrender or be destroyed."

To Rhodes' inquiry Conrad turned a face contorted with uncertainty. "It's still pretty far. The track hunts on me. I might miss."

"No time! Go ahead!"

Don could see them now-ships, growing unbelievably. Then, most suddenly, one was a silver globe, then a second-and a third. A cluster of incredible, Gargantuan Christmas tree ornaments where had been three mighty warships, . they continued to swell, drew to the left and flashed past the ship... the "battle" was over.

Conrad sighed shakily. "That's all, Captain." He turned and said, "Don, you'd make us all feel easier if you'd open that arming switch. We're not going to need it."

Mars swam below them, ruddy and beautiful. Schiaparelli Station, I. T. & T.'s powerful interplanetary radio, had already had a silvery "hat" placed on it to guard the secret of their strike; Captain Rhodes had spoken with a lesser station, warning of their arrival. In less than an hour they would ground near da Thon-Malath himself had come out of his icebox, no longer sick and weary but pert as a cricket, willing to risk the warm, thick, moist air of the cabin for a view of home.

Don climbed back into his battle-station saddle for a better view. The fabulous canali were already plain to the eye; he could see them cutting through the soft greens and the dominant orange and brick red. It was winter in the south; the planet wore its south pole cap jauntily, like a chef's hat. The fancy reminded him of Old Charlie; he thought of him with gentle melancholy, memory softened by all that had gone between.

Mars at last... he'd be seeing his parents perhaps before the day was out-and give his father the ring. This was certainly not the way they had planned it.

Next time he would try not to take the long way round.