Tomorrow Lies in Ambush

…And Isles Where Good Men Lie

Lt. Col. John Fortune spat out a piece of chocolate wrapping paper and swung round in his swivel chair. Half a million miles beyond the orbit of the Moon the cylindrical bulk of Nesster spaceship Number 1753 carried out a similar rotation….

Still spitting noisily, Fortune pushed himself up and walked heavily to the window. Half a million miles beyond the orbit of the Moon the ship made a minute course correction….

It was determined to land in Fortune’s lap.

Or that was the way it seemed as he stared out across the Icelandic airfield on which United Nations Planetary Defence Unit N186 was based. It was a cold October afternoon and over the plateau the clouds were seahorses of frozen grey steel, moving across the sky with senseless clockwork precision. In the distant centre of the field a silver tactical transport rose vertically and drifted away, the punishing roar of its multiple lift jets animating the floor under Fortune’s feet.

He had been intensely aware of Nesster ship 1753 since the moment, a week previously, the sweeping fans of the Lunar deep radar had shown it to be cruising north of the Line. He had promptly developed a suspicion that this one, this single out-of-line ship, was heading straight for his sector, and since then he had been able to feel it boring down through the sky towards him. When he walked or drove or changed position in any way he felt Number 1753 swing its blunt nose on to new bearings with the intent passion of a rifleman seeking the moment of maximum vulnerability. Which was crazy, Fortune told himself, because if anybody was going to be alarmed it ought to be the Nessters on board that ship.

Lt. Griffin, the Unit’s information officer, came in from the adjutant’s office and saluted, his neat golden head almost luminescent in the gloom. He glanced reproachfully at the top three buttons of Fortune’s trousers which Fortune had undone to ease the after-lunch pressure around his middle.

“We’re almost ready to begin, sir,” Griffin said. “We’ve got eight reporters and six cameramen.” There was the faintest possible emphasis on the last word, which was Griffin’s way of saying, smarten yourself up, slob, you’re supposed to look like a hero.

Fortune fingered his staining shirt buttons. “What is it about the public relations business,” he asked conversationally, ‘which makes it attract people who are completely hopeless in private relations?”

Griffin’s blond eyebrows moved an eighth of an inch upwards, which for him was a violent display of emotion. ‘Being purely an information officer,” he said, making a fine distinction which was lost on Fortune, “I’m not qualified to say much about public relations practitioners, but I suppose one is likely to encounter misfits in all walks of life, sir,” His gaze travelled significantly round the drab green walls of Fortune’s office then he walked out quickly.

A slob and then a misfit. Fortune pulled in his stomach angrily and did up the buttons. I must lose weight, he thought in sudden desperation, no more starch for a whole month.

From the outer office came sounds of Griffin organising his little group of local pressmen who were out to make the most of the possibility of Iceland’s first Nesster landing. The country’s first landing would be a big sensation, but the fact that the Col. Fortune would be there to handle it was an out-and-out gift—the legendary Captain Johnny back in action again after a lapse of four years, complete with piratical name and swashbuckling reputation. Yes, if it came off it would be a newsman’s dream, and Fortune wanted nothing to do with it. He had done his share of defending the planet against the invaders during that first incredible year of 1983, but there was a limit to the amount of guilt he was prepared to accept.

Griffin herded the pressmen in from the adjutant’s office. The reporters sat on the chairs which had been borrowed from other offices for the occasion and the cameramen moved to strategic corners.

“Gentlemen,” Griffin began, “I don’t think there is any need for me to introduce Lt. Col. Fortune, so we’ll get started right away. The colonel will outline the situation very briefly and afterwards you may ask any questions that occur to you.” There was a quiet murmur of assent and Fortune realised that four years of obscurity had made no difference at all to his reputation. The newsmen were impressed by him.

“The first thing I must stress,” Fortune said, ‘is that Nesster ship 1753 may not land in Iceland at all. There is, in fact, only a one-in-three chance of this happening. Preliminary computations based on reports from the Lunar radar bases indicate that the South Greenland and South Baffin Island Sectors are equally likely touchdown areas.

“The second point I want to bring out is that even if 1753 does select this sector, the chances of it putting down on top of a town or village are so small as to be negligible. I know you have all heard of towns being flattened, but it has only occurred in places like parts of Africa and Japan where the buildings were of a type which would not show up well on whatever radar system the Nessters use. A Nesster ship is huge and massive but, like any other space or aircraft, it needs a flat piece of ground on which to land. It will even avoid a properly constructed cowshed.” Fortune smiled momentarily and was answered by appreciative grins from the group.

“In any case, no matter where the ship lands, we’ll be waiting for it—and we have considerable experience in this type of work.” There were more appreciative grins and Fortune knew he was going over well, opening up in response to their admiration. Slob, misfit—and traitor.

“Why did you come to Iceland, Colonel Fortune?” The reporter from the Visir made no apology for deviating from the main subject of the conference.

“I guess I started to feel sorry for those Nessters.” There were outright laughs at that one and even Lt. Griffin smiled thinly. Fortune felt his shirt begin to stick to his shoulders with perspiration.

“The Captain Johnny series on television is said to be accurately based on your early exploits against the Nessters, Colonel. Was it really like that?”

“Well, for one thing, I don’t remember all those pretty girls.” This is just fine, Fortune thought. The ship up there has swung in closer, thousands of miles closer, and all I have done is turn into a quick-fire comedian. A five-year exposure to history was all it had taken to change him from a normal young engineering graduate to a fat sweating clown….

Looking back on it, he was not sure when he had begun to realise the truth about the Nessters. At first there had been no time to think. The big ships had begun to land at random points across the Earth and each one poured out several hundred black scaly nightmares whose bacteria-laden breath was usually enough to kill any nearby human who was not properly masked. The Nessters were unarmed—if the word could be applied to fifteen-foot-long armoured bulldozers—but they made formidable opponents, and many men became heroes. John Fortune, an infantry lieutenant doing a two-year stint with the UNO Independents, was one of the first to discover the techniques of killing Nessters. He was involved in several spectacular actions, he was photogenic, he had a romantic, buccaneering name. He was, within a matter of months, Captain Johnny—the man of the moment.

It was not until the techniques of killing became comparatively easy, comparatively safe, that he had begun to ask questions. Why did the Nesster ships land one at a time at scattered points? Why did the drive engines of each ship run wild soon after landing, forcing the Nessters to abandon their shelter regardless of how hostile conditions outside were? In fact, why was a race with the technological prowess of the Nessters making such a painful, pitiful mess of taking over an unprepared planet?

The answer, when he found it, hurt. Captain Johnny, Earth’s super-soldier, had made his name slaughtering unarmed families of immigrants.

Scientific intelligence teams had gradually uncovered the story. The big cylindrical ships displayed meteor erosion which indicated that they had been travelling for not less than six hundred years. They were fully automated—they had to be, because the generations of Nessters who had lived and died during the journey would have had no idea of how to handle them at landfall. The truth was that, in spite of being ugly, black and deadly, the Nessters were innocents walking blindly to the slaughter.

And the thing which destroyed Fortune was the discovery that the truth made no difference. The Nessters simply were … unacceptable.

“How does your wife like living in Iceland, colonel?”

“My wife likes it here very much,” Fortune said carefully, aware of a brief feather-flick of apprehension which felt strange because it had nothing to do with the Nessters. If the papers got to know about Christine there could be an explosion of publicity which could blast Fortune out of his cosy Iceland command.

He had engineered the appointment to Sector N186 because it was one of the least likely to draw Nesster landings. It was a place where he could throw another log on the fire, serve tea and close bright curtains across the windows to shut out the darkness. There had been nothing else for him to do, for Earth was not going to stop killing Nessters and the Nessters were not going to stop arriving. One ship had been landing every twenty-two hours for five years and still the caravan stretched right out beyond the Solar System, beyond the farthest reach of Earth’s deep space probes.

Estimates of how long the daily landings could continue varied considerably—the lowest figure was fifty years; the highest was in the region of twelve centuries. A few people on Earth were worried sick about the Nesster problem, but far more were putting their sons into the army. It was, as far as soldiers were concerned, a big, beautiful sellers’ market.

As the pressmen dispersed at the end of the conference Fortune opened the right-hand drawer of his desk. In it was a shallow cardboard box, presented to him every month by a confectionery company, containing several dozen chocolate soldiers wrapped in brilliant foil. Slanted across the chest of each in yellow-limned red letters was the name, Captain Johnny.

“I think it went very well, sir,” Griffin commented, returning from the adjutant’s office. “They haven’t forgotten about you.”

“Some people have good memories,” Fortune grunted ungraciously. Within the drawer, almost of its own accord, his hand moved along the top rank of chocolate soldiers, methodically snapping their necks,

At six o’clock Fortune rang his home and was answered by an unfamiliar male voice which stated the number of his phone in precise, neutrally accented English.

Suddenly Fortune felt very tired. “I want to speak to Mrs Fortune.”

“Just a moment, colonel,” the voice replied efficiently. There was a cotton-wool silence, like that caused by a hand blocking a telephone’s mouthpiece, then the sound of Christine laughing.

“Hello, darl,” she said. “What is it? I hope you aren’t going to be late for the party.”

“Purely as a matter of interest—who was that?”

“Don’t be silly, darl,” Christine said. “You remember Pavel very well. You’ve met him at lots of functions. He came early to help me with the preparations for the evening.” Fortune remembered. Pavel Efimov was a Ukrainian who ran the International Hostel which had been set up in Reykjavik for the benefit of UNO personnel associated with the Unit. His willingness to use a free afternoon helping with Christine’s party explained why she had been spending so much time at the Hostel over the last three months. Or was it the other way round?

“Ah, yes,” Fortune said. “I’ll be a little late this evening, Christine—I want to go over to Bill Geissler’s place for a while.”

“Do you have to, darl?”

“Yes, Christine. It’s quite important. Tell Peter I’ll be late and not to wait up for me.”

Christine sniffed audibly and hung up without another word. Fortune shrugged and threaded his way out through the offices of the headquarters block. A cold, dark wind slapped aimlessly at him as he walked past the greenly lit hangars and workshops of the Unit. He switched on the heater as soon as he had closed the bubble of his staff copter, relaxing in the gusts of rubber-smelling warmth until the tower cleared him for takeoff. At eight hundred feet he headed south-west across the trembling lights of Hafnarfjordr and followed the coastline for thirty miles before angling down on the familiar lights of Bill Geissler’s works shining in the rolling blackness like a scimitar.

On the ground he walked towards Geissler’s office, noting that the big gun was out of its housing and probing almost vertically into the sky, which meant Geissler Orbital Deliveries was getting ready to put a package into orbit. Geissler was the only real-life genius Fortune had ever known and he looked nothing like the part. He was a stocky little man with ridged black hair and the hard, swarthy face of a Mexican bandit. Three years before he had bought a section of land on the south-west tip of Iceland, moved in with two common law wives and an ex-naval sixteen-inch gun, set up a workshop and since then had supported his menage a trois by placing instrument capsules in orbit. He specialised in polar and near-polar orbits for a number of universities and new governments scattered across the globe.

Geissler was seated at his glass-topped desk making pencil marks on a dark grey punched tape. “Come in, John. I didn’t expect you. What’s the matter? You getting this 1753?”

“I think so, Bill. It’s a one-in-three shot, but I have a feeling about this one.”

“So have I, pal—and I’m never wrong. You’d better clear a space in your backyard for it.” He snorted and pushed the coils of punched tape away. In the workshop beyond the glass wall of the little office an electric welder briefly drenched its surroundings in needles of violent brilliance.

Fortune unbuttoned his coat and sat down. “Have you had time to … ?”

Geissler thrust out his hand like a traffic cop. “What have you forgotten, John?”

“Nothing. Oh, that! What the hell’s the use of my asking you these things when I don’t know if your answer is right?”

“Ask me anyway. You know I like the practice.”

“All right, all right. What is …’ Fortune began picking numbers at random,‘… 973827 times 426458?”

Geissler’s eyes darkened momentarily. “It’s 415,296,314,766. Try another one.”

“Can you get a message to Mars?” Fortune spoke angrily, feeling the Nesster ship drumming down an invisible wire attached to the top of his head.

Geissler looked dubious. “I could, but I hate to think what it would cost. Private research organisations—that includes me, by the way—can buy time on the Cripple Creek dish but they charge about twenty thousand kroner, say five thousand dollars, a minute at the present orbital positions, and if you want a reply the rate would be about twice that. Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?”

Fortune nodded. “Yes. It can’t wait. I want them to run a check on our five suspects.”

“Well, even if I condense the orbital data to the limit the transmission is bound to take at least three minutes, that’s sixty thousand kroner. The reply won’t take as long, of course, but I think there will be a minimum charge for a Mars-Earth transmission, possibly another twenty thousand.” Geissler’s brown eyes narrowed in almost physical pain—he was a business man as well as a genius. “That’s big money for squirting a few electrons into the sky. If you could wait another month I think I can eliminate four of the suspects.”

“I can’t wait.”

‘But eighty thousand kroner! I know you made plenty out of the Captain Johnny thing, John, but you’re bound to go broke at this rate. All the work you’re getting me to do, and now this Mars transmission, should be financed by UNO money. I’m going to make some coffee. Think it over.”

Waiting for the coffee, Fortune thought it over. He remembered how he had felt when the theory had first been propounded that the Nesster caravan was homing on Earth by means of signals from a scout satellite. It was easy to visualise the great train of fully automatic ships nearing the Solar System, the leader dispatching an advance probe into orbit around each planet, and the probe circling Earth suddenly emitting the signal which meant, yes—this world will support life. It was exactly what had always been done by tramps who put chalk marks on the gate posts of friendly houses. So, all that was necessary was to rub out this particular chalk mark with an orbital interceptor and the tramps would stop coming to the door.

High-level action had been taken to check the theory, but there were snags—not the least of which was the fact that in 1983 the number of man-made objects tumbling round the Earth was in the region of fifty thousand. Only a fraction of these were useful satellites, the bulk being made up of bits and pieces of the vehicles which had placed them in orbit. Some of the more complicated experiments had been known to release as many as fifty sections of rocket motor casing and ejection mechanisms in one mission, which was why even by the later Sixties the number had risen well past the one thousand mark.

The profusion of sky litter had made it impossible simply to pin-point an alien satellite, so a series of capsules were thrown into distant, minutely precessive orbits to pick up possible transmissions to the Nessters. They had been given the inevitable tag, in this case PULP—for Precessive Unmanned Listening Posts. When these drew a complete blank the scout satellite theory was officially discarded and the main research effort put back into the, as yet unsuccessful, efforts to devise a deep space interceptor which could beat the meteor screens surrounding the Nesster ships.

Fortune’s pre-Army years in the unfashionable field of sub-millimetre tight beam radiation had given him a few private doubts about the efficacy of Project PULP, but there was no arguing with fifty thousand orbiting pieces of scrap metal. Then one night he had met Geissler, the prodigy, in a bar in Reykjavik….

The concept of instinctive mathematics had been new to Fortune, but according to Geissler everybody had the facility to some extent. It showed up in good gamblers as ‘luck’; it showed up in even the most mediocre chess player, who could defeat any computer ever conceived because the machine would have had to spend its time methodically checking out whole regions of moves which are perfectly logical but which the man instinctively knows are not good enough. Geissler claimed the difference between him and anybody else was purely one of degree, but he had guaranteed that with access to the Unit’s computing equipment he could find the Nesster satellite—if it existed—in a year.

And Fortune had hired him on the spot.

“Sorry there’s nothing to eat,” Geissler said, setting the coffee on his desk. “Unless you want to come over to the house and have dinner with us. Jenny and Avis would be glad of an extra man to even up the score.”

“Have one of these.” Fortune pulled out three Captain Johnny bars with sagging heads held in place by foil only.

“No thanks. Why do you eat those things all the time, John? All that weight you carry around….”

“Outside every thin man,” Fortune replied, munching comfortably, ‘there’s a fat man trying to get in. Now about this signal to Mars. We don’t need to explain what’s happening, do we? The Army objects strongly to Unit commanders who go in to research.”

“No, that part is all right. If the scout satellite theory is correct we can make two assumptions—firstly, one of our five suspects is of Nesster origin; secondly, every planet in the Solar System will have an identical satellite; in a predictable orbit corresponding to one of our five. I can send five sets of orbital elements to the Mars observatory and legitimately have them checked out—I could easily be doing some work on one of the dozens of old Mars probes.”

“Will it take long?”

“No reason why it should. The scientific colony has been established for over a year now so they might even have the information on file. No it won’t take long. I’ll call you.”

Fortune drained his coffee and stood up, buttoning his overcoat. “Sorry I can’t stay for dinner. Christine’s having one of her parties.” He laughed briefly. “I think this is Nietzche’s birthday.”

They stood for a moment at the door watching three technicians in parkas wheel a gleaming miniature rocket out of the workshop towards the gun which would blast it up into near-vacuum before its motor was ignited.

“That’s the third-cis-lunar shot this year for the University of Nicaragua,” Geissler said with satisfaction. “It’s costing them plenty too—even with off-the-shelf vehicles. I’d forgotten about Christine and Nietzche, John. It’s funny, isn’t it? You must have been a reasonable facsimile; of a superman when she married you.”

Fortune remembered, too late, that Geissler’s intuitive faculty was not merely some kind of mathematical abstraction. He slammed the smaller man’s back with a vague idea of short-circuiting the mental contact. “You don’t know what you’ve just said, Bill.”

He walked back to his staff copter, aware that more time had passed and the rendezvous with Nesster ship 1753 was closer. A sudden spasm of hunger made him grope for a chocolate bar, but his pocket was empty and the sense of disappointment was so keen that Fortune became alarmed. Let’s get this thing out into the open, he planned. My subconscious mind reasons: children eat candy, so if I eat candy I’ll be a child, and if I’m a child the Nesster problem doesn’t exist. However, my conscious mind isn’t so stupid—it knows I can’t grow down towards babyhood, so I’m going to snap out of it and be a normal adult again. That’s it settled then. I feel better already….

The only trouble was that he was still hungry and in the darkness the staff copter’s bulbous, glassy head and tapering tail suddenly resembled the shape of the primordial tadpole. Fortune accepted that he could not become a helpless, blameless baby again and yet he was strangely satisfied at the prospect of being carried upwards into the receptive convexities of the clouds.

The house was glowing like a Chinese lantern. Fortune walked up through the swarmed cars in his driveway, noticing that one of them had knocked a miniature rowan tree askew. It looked as though Christine’s party would be a success.

Using his key he got into the lobby without being noticed, went upstairs and, grunting with the effort, quickly changed out of his uniform into slacks, open-necked silk shirt and sweater. In his son’s bedroom he tiptoed around putting toys away then crouched beside the bed for a moment, looking closely into the sleeping three-year-old face with a kind of warm astonishment.

There were about twenty people having drinks in the orange-lit living room, filling the place with the aggressive yet slightly shamefaced atmosphere of a party in its early stages. His wife and Pavel Efimov were talking seriously in a corner. Christine Fortune was a tall brunette with a hard, snaky body and a knack of looking, even when fully dressed, as though she was not wearing enough clothes. She brought Fortune a drink.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, accepting the misty glass.

Christine glanced at his casuals with traces of anger—as far as she was concerned the uniform was just about all that remained of him.

“I see you’ve changed, darl. I didn’t hear you go upstairs.”

“I’ve-still got my ident disc on—if that will help.”

“Don’t try to be funny, darl,” she replied. “You haven’t got the equipment. Now come and meet our guests.” Fortune ambled softly round the room with her, being introduced. The people were much the same as always attended Christine’s little gatherings; writers who never wrote, artists who never painted, unknown celebrities. Most of them were properly impressed at meeting Captain Johnny in the flesh and he felt a responsive change in Christine. She hugged his left arm with both of hers, proudly possessive, and in spite of everything he enjoyed the contact. When they had completed the circuit he stopped by the portable bar and poured another drink.

“Tell me,” he said quietly, ‘is there anybody here, apart from ourselves, who was born on this side of the Curtain?”

Christine laughed delightedly. “Come up to date, van Winkle. The cold war has been over for years. That’s one thing we have to thank the Nessters for—people just don’t think that way any more. How passé can one be?”

Fortune frowned into his glass, feeling himself forced into heavy dourness by her amusement. “Things don’t change so easily. If the landings were to stop tomorrow most of this lot would hop the first East-bound jet.” He took a long drink, staring over the rim at Efimov who was approaching through the orange twilight of the room.

“Good evening, colonel,” Efimov said, positioning himself close to Christine. He was as tall as Fortune, but with the flat, rangy body of a tennis champion.

“Oh, there you are, Pavel,” Christine said, leaning into him slightly. “Johnny’s worried in case I’m going to get him investigated,”

Efimov put an arm round her waist and smiled easily, challengingly. “Surely not! One has only to look at the colonel to see he is not the sort of man to become involved with the cloak and dagger.”

Fortune felt his heart begin a slow, peaceful pounding which stirred the hair on his temples. Christine had had two previous boyfriends, both of whom had been almost pathetically grateful for Fortune’s disinterest, but this man was of a different type. I Perhaps Christine had deliberately chosen him for that reason.

“Quite right,” Fortune replied calmly, aware of Christine’s eyes. “I never thought much of the dagger as a weapon. If I had to choose from a medieval armoury I think I’d go for something like a mace.”

“Too crude and unwieldy,” Efimov commented predictably. “I’d prefer a …”

“… rapier,” Fortune finished for him. “Yes, I thought you would—it has such connotations of romance. What do you think, Christine? How would Air. Efimov look in a curly wig and wading boots?” He laughed unpleasantly, wondering why he was taking the trouble. Insulting humans was hardly likely to be regarded by Christine as an acceptable substitute for the heroic slaughtering of poison breathing monsters from another world.

Efimov’s face hardened and he changed the subject. “Did you I hear the news about today’s landing, colonel? The ship came down in Loch Ness in Scotland, only a few miles from the position of the original landing. We had another complete victory, of course, but it was quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”

Fortune nodded, suddenly realising it had been over nine hours since his last proper meal. He looked over the array of canapes and impaled savouries on the side table then went in to the comparative silence of the kitchen and made coffee and ham sandwiches. When the coffee was ready he ignored the piles of disposable tableware in the cupboard and lifted his old-fashioned delph cup from its hook, only to have it deposit a furtive little secretion of cold water in his hand. Christine refused to wash or dry the delph properly when perfectly good throw-away dishes were available. Muttering furiously, Fortune cleaned the cup, sat down to eat then decided to check his bank account to see what the Mars transmission would do to it.

He went back into the living room, worked through the throng, crossed the lobby and entered his study. Christine and Efimov looked momentarily surprised to see him, then Efimov began to smile.

“We thought perhaps you had gone to bed, colonel. Christine tells me you never enjoy yourself much at parties.”

“What do you want, darl?” Christine said irritably. “Pavel and I were discussing his fee for this afternoon.”

“If you two young things want to be alone,” Fortune said shortly, ‘go somewhere else. I’ve work to do in here.”

Efimov continued to smile but his eyes flicked briefly in the direction of Fortune’s desk. Fortune followed his glance. The top drawer was open, the key he had left upstairs in his uniform trousers protruding from the lock. Fortune inhaled headily, aware that Christine and he had finally arrived at crisis point.

“Come on, Pavel.” Christine pulled at Efimov’s sleeve. “I need another drink.”

“Not so fast,” Fortune snapped, spinning her round by the shoulder. “What were you doing at my desk?”

Christine stared coldly at him for a moment then her familiar features flowed into strangeness. “Take your hand away,” she screamed. “You want to be told? All right, I’ll tell you, you selfish, fat, useless … I was telling Pavel how you treat me and he couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe how much of our money, my money, you’ve been paying to that horrible little Geissler. Who do you think you are, anyway? Having satellites tracked! Hiring computers! Why don’t you … ?”

Efimov drew her back a pace and stepped in front, looking at Fortune with contempt and a kind of satisfaction.

“You get out of here,” Fortune warned. “I refuse to fight for Christine. She isn’t property. But you’ve been in my desk, and that’s different.”

“You’d be foolish to descend to violence, colonel. Not after training for so long on chocolate bars.” Efimov dropped his long body into a professional-looking crouch and Fortune remembered he was a boxing instructor at the Hostel gymnasium.

Christine moved behind Efimov, heading for the door. Fortune lunged after her and saw Efimov throwing a fast, hooking left. He deliberately took the blow, smothering it in the great plaque of fat across his ribs, then he caught Efimov’s wrist with both hands and leaned back, swinging the other man like a hammer. Efimov’s feet pattered on the floor as he sped backwards into the wall. He was completely winded as he rebounded but Fortune punched him under the ribs anyway.

“What have you done?” Christine knelt beside the crumpled man.

Fortune got down and opened one of Efimov’s eyelids. He touched the eyeball and there was a violent fluttering reaction. “He’s all right,” Fortune said, wondering what happened next.

“Pavel wants me to marry him, you know. He wants me to go away with him,” Christine seemed to be talking to nobody but herself.

“Christine …’ Fortune began to speak, but the telephone on his desk rang fiercely. He picked up the handset and heard a male voice ask for him. He recognised the voice of his adjutant, Major Baillie.

“Fortune speaking,” he said flatly.

“Oh, hello sir,” Baillie replied with uncharacteristic excitement. “I thought you ought to know at the earliest possible moment. We’ve just had confirmation from UNO Northern Command. Nesster ship 1753 is definitely going to land in our sector.”

“Thanks for calling me, Brett. I’ll be right there.” Fortune set the phone down. He had been wondering what happened next. Now he knew.

The Unit swung over smoothly to a state of Red Alert, and Fortune found himself slipping instinctively into the lethal complexities of his job.

The preceding Yellow Alert had lasted three days, from the moment the Lunar radar bases had predicted that Nesster ship 1753 was going to touch down in one of the three north-west Atlantic sectors. As the great black cylinder spiralled in past the orbit of the Moon the variable factors, based on observation of all its precursors, were gradually eliminated until Northern Command knew exactly when and roughly where it would land. At that point, Sector N186—shown on ordinary maps as Iceland—was brought to full alert and preparations were made for the big kill, forty hours in the future.

Fortune’s command consisted of five hundred combatants, two hundred air and ground crew for the Unit’s fifteen vertical takeoff transports, and three hundred assorted technicians, clerks, storemen, cooks, batmen, drivers, etc. This meant that for every man who actually fought he had one in support, which was a pretty good ratio for a modern technical army. But, streamlined as the Unit’s organisation was, poising it for the hammer blow involved a great deal of work.

Fortune had been a long time on his feet when he drove back home along the road leading south to Hafnarfjordr. The early afternoon sun reached down across serried kingdoms of white cloud and sheep gleamed like pebbles scattered on the hillsides. It was a day on which Nessters simply could not be real—and yet, he reflected, on the afternoon of the following day approximately eight hundred of them would spill out of their ship right on this island. They would die, but it made them no less real. There was no alternative but to kill them, but it made the slaughter no less unpleasant. Fortune would not have to touch a single weapon, but his guilt was no less.

When he swung the big car into his drive Peter was kicking a bright pink ball in the garden, which meant Christine was still there. Fortune was relieved. He had not seen her since the debacle in his study the previous evening and half expected to find the house empty. Christine and he were not making out too well but he felt that the family unit was still important. Even the Nessters had family groups, and tried to preserve them when …

Fortune brought the heel of his hand down on the car’s horn lever, soaking himself in the blast of sound. Tomorrow was going to be bad, too bad to think about except when it was absolutely necessary, He went into the house, waving to Peter, and found Christine in the living room She was smoking a black cigarette and cleaning her typewriter with a toothbrush, brown eyes slitted with smoke and distaste.

“Peter threw his porage into it this morning,” she explained. “I don’t think he’ll ever get to like it.”

The normalcy felt good. Fortune wanted to dive into the day before yesterday and close it round him. “Did Bill Geissler call?”

“No. Was he supposed to?”

“In a way.”

“Well, he didn’t.”

Fortune stared out of the long window to where a lucky kick of Peter’s had sent the pink ball up high, spinning it lazily in the air like a soap bubble. “I’m sorry about last night….”

“Don’t apologise, please. I’ve forgotten it already.”

“Some of the papers in my desk …’

Christine raised her head and gave him a long, honest look of dislike. “I know about your desk, darling. Nobody is allowed to touch your desk.”

“People aren’t property, Christine,” he said hopelessly. “We can talk later. I’m too tired now. I’m going to bed for a few hours.” Fortune skimmed his braided cap viciously into a chair and stamped out of the room. Passing through the lobby he stopped abruptly, staring into his study at the telephone. Christine was left-handed; and it was one of his most triumphant little secrets that she never seemed to realise she set the handset down the opposite way to right-handed people. The phone was facing the wrong way now and, playing the hunch, he dialled Geissler’s number.

“For God’s sake, John, where have you been?” Geissler shouted. “Did you not get my message?”

Fortune swallowed hard. “You know what Christine’s like. She forgets things.”

“Like hell she does. Anyway, I’ve got news for you. It was suspect number four, the pure polar orbiting job. Mars has one in a perfectly corresponding orbit. They didn’t even have to check, the data was all on file up there.”

Fortune’s forehead was ice cold. “Number four! That’s one of the satellites officially ascribed to Russia, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is. It’s bound to be, but if you looked it up in the Russian records, you’d find it ascribed to the States or Britain or France….”

“Bill, stop talking. I’ve a new proposition for you. How much to shoot it down?”

There was a long silence before Geissler spoke. His voice was gentle. “I know what you want, John, but there isn’t any need now. You can go to UNO with this….”

“That would take weeks—I’m talking about tonight.”

“It’s illegal.”

“To shoot down a Nesster satellite? Or are you not sure?”

“Sure, I’m sure.”

“Or maybe you can’t do it?”

“You needn’t try to needle me, Fatso. It won’t work. If I ever did something like this it would be for the publicity.”

There’ll be plenty of that, Fortune thought as panic geysered through his system. I’ve got to back out right now while there’s still time. “That’s more like it,” he said aloud. “Start getting things ready right now. I’ll be over as soon as I can get there.”

He set the phone down and looked up to see Christine standing in the doorway looking strangely small, defeated. “You always were impatient, John—it’s the only thing about you that hasn’t changed. You’ve been trying to eat yourself to death, but that takes too long….”

“You don’t understand this, Christine.”

“The thing I don’t understand is why—if you can’t face the action tomorrow—don’t you do something less damaging to Peter and me? Shooting yourself in the foot is the usual thing, isn’t it?”

“You’re so far away from me that words just couldn’t get there, Chris. Why can you not see it? Nessters are …”

“… people,” Christine cut in. “Nobody can talk to you, John. You don’t communicate. Nessters are people. People aren’t property. It’s a syllogism that goes nowhere.”

Fortune moved forward and took her awkwardly by the shoulders. He drew her in and she came submissively but twisted her head away from the kiss.

“Really, darling,” she said coldly, ‘that only helps on television. I’m not going to let you go through with this, you know.”

“I know it hasn’t been working out,” he said desperately, ‘but if we ever had anything—you’ve got to give me the next few hours.”

Fortune walked away from her quickly, automatically retrieved his cap, and plunged out into the cool, impartial brightness of the afternoon. As the big car broadsided, with turbine howling, out on to the road he risked a backwards glance through the rowan trees. Christine’s yellow dress glowed dimly in the window of his study. She was standing at the telephone.

Geissler Orbital Deliveries’ main stock-in-trade was an obsolete sixteen-inch coastal defence gun which, as had always been customary for the gun-launching of research projectiles, had been smooth-bored out by an extra half inch. For some missions eight-inch diameter missiles were used, their fins fitting snugly into the gun barrel. These were centred by plastic packing pieces and a circular steel pusher plate trapped the propellant gases underneath them in the barrel, enabling muzzle velocities of over five thousand feet a second to be obtained. Other missions used full-diameter projectiles with fins which flipped out after they had cleared the barrel. In all cases the projectiles’ motors ignited near apogee, efficiently boosting the package into orbit after the denser air strata had been left behind. The system was cheap and reliable, and although accelerations of thousands of gravities were experienced techniques had been developed permitting a wide range of experiments to stand the pace.

Fortune stood uneasily in Geissler’s clinical-looking payload assembly laboratory. There were no pockets in the lint-free coverall Geissler had made him wear and with nowhere to put his hands he longed either to smoke or eat. Geissler stood beside him, similarly clad, his dark bandit’s face ploughed with worry as he watched two technicians carry out checks on the new package.

“I’m not an electronics man,” Geissler said, ‘but let’s assume that you’re right and that Project PULP simply failed to pick up transmissions from the Nesster satellite. Can you be certain that knocking it out will be enough? Perhaps each planet’s scout satellite beams either a ‘come in’ or a ‘stay out’, in which case termination of the ‘come in’ signal won’t be enough to stop the landings. The silence might be interpreted as transmitter failure or a meteor collision.”

Fortune shook his head. “In the first place, the ships are fully automated and self-contained so if they do any interpreting at all it certainly isn’t done on the basis of what happened to other ships that were years ahead in the line. It’s a simple response to the ‘come in’ signal. No signal, no response.”

“Yes, but it might not be enough to end that signal,” Geissler persisted. “Supposing, as I said, there’s a …”

“I don’t think there is a ‘stay out’ signal. It’s a question of reliability standards. Our own standards have improved tremendously in the last twenty-five years, but even now if we wanted to set up a similar scout satellite exercise we would have two signals. We couldn’t trust our own handiwork far enough to use a one-signal system in which a satellite going into orbit around an unsuitable planet simply remains quiet. The silence might be the result of a malfunctioning so we would demand a positive ‘stay out’ signal.

“But the Nessters don’t have reliability worries, not when they can build those ships. A one-signal system is the simplest and most logical for them. They don’t…”

“I’m convinced, I’m convinced!” Geissler shouted. “Don’t wear my ear out. Anyway, it’s less than two hours to the big bang—we’ll soon have the answer.”

Fortune peered out of the window, looking through his own reflection. A sharp, tiny moon was racing high and a blustery, rain-seeded wind had sprung up.

“Don’t worry about the weather,” Geissler said. “The missile will be clear of that stuff in a couple of seconds—this is where gun launching really pays off. And talking of paying …” The wall phone rang, he picked it up, listened in silence for a while then said, “Thank you, sweetie. I’ll tell him.” He set the phone back.

This one’s for me, Fortune told himself. Something I don’t want to happen is going to happen. He raised his eyebrows.

“That was Jenny calling from the house. She says there’s an army turbojeep pulling up to the main gate.”

Fortune went out through the laboratory’s clean-air lock into the main workshop and began unzipping the coverall. The idea was a difficult one for him to accept but, as far as the world at large was concerned, he was a deserter. It had not actually been desertion in the face of the enemy although in the special circumstances of the Nesster ‘invasion’ the point might be arguable. The puzzling thing was that they had got on to him so soon. He had quit the Unit’s headquarters at one thirty in the afternoon for a much needed sleep and had left the adjutant, Major Baillie, firmly in charge; and now—only seven hours later—an army vehicle had tracked him down to Geissler’s place.

Headquarters must have rung his home for an urgent decision and Christine had told them what she knew. Or perhaps she had taken the initiative and rung them. Both explanations were feasible and yet this vehicle drawing up ostentatiously in the night did not quite have the feel of Major Baillie about it. Baillie was a cautious man and Christine speaking to him would have put him in a delicate situation. He would have wanted to speak to Fortune by telephone or radio before ordering the arrest of a colonel—unless he had driven out personally to talk it over.

“What are you going to do, John?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll need a rifle. Your Swift will do.”

Geissler shook his head. “I’m in too far already. If I lend you one of my guns …’

Fortune pulled out a handful of bills and stuffed them into Geissler’s shirt pocket. “It isn’t your gun. I bought it from you weeks ago—now, get it!” They walked through the clutter of storage sheds and up the slight hill to where Geissler’s white bungalow looked out over the Atlantic. While Geissler went in for the rifle Fortune stood on the front steps looking at the distant line of floodlights which marked the fence. The gun site was at the end of a broad spit and the only land access to it was by a single gravel track. Geissler had strung a high steel fence from one side of the spit to the other, with a remotely-controlled gate where it intersected the track. It was half a mile from the bungalow to the gate but the sound of the waiting turbojeep’s horn was carried down on the wind, mixed with the uneasy sibilance of the surf.

Geissler came out with the rifle and thrust it into Fortune’s hand. “The scope is zeroed at three hundred yards,” Geissler said glumly. “You’ll need to aim a couple of inches low for close work.”

“I don’t expect to use it,” Fortune assured him. “It’s just insurance. All you need to think about is zeroing on that satellite.” He slung the Swift on his shoulder and walked along the moonlit track, resisting the buffeting of the wind. As he entered the amber radiance of the floodlights a tall, slightly familiar figure in grey civilian clothes got out of the vehicle’s driving seat.

It was Pavel Efimov.

Fortune’s first, wounded thought was—I needed you, Christine! Then, as his intellect reasserted itself—what the hell is going on here? He looked more closely at the green turbojeep and saw it was not one of the Unit’s fleet, but a semi-military job from the UNO hostel in Reykjavik.

“You again, Efimov? When do you start squawking, ‘Nevermore’?” Fortune made his voice sound bored, but he became aware of the buckle of the rifle sling cutting into his fingers and relaxed his grip. Time was needed, not action.

Efimov came forward, his lean face looking skeletal in the lurid brilliance, and held up a document. “I have here a copy of an injunction issued by the office of the District Magistrate. It was issued at the request of my embassy against Geissler Orbital Deliveries. It forbids the company to violate international law by launching an orbital vehicle without first filing full orbital data with the central reference authority in Berlin, and without giving eight days’ notice of the launching.”

“She told you then?”

Efimov permitted himself a faint smile. “We will leave personal relationships out of this matter, colonel. Please instruct Mr. Geissler to open the gate or I will be forced to break it down.”

Fortune shook his head. “Mr. Geissler is too busy to see anyone at the moment, but he’ll be happy to have a word with you in …’ he looked at his watch, ‘… ninety minutes from now.”

“This is a serious matter, colonel. Mr. Geissler’s business may be closed down permanently.”

“Should you not have police here to back you up?”

“They’ll be here,” Efimov announced confidently.

“What’s your interest in it, anyway, Efimov?”

“You forget, colonel, that I know exactly why this missile is being launched. The satellite concerned belongs to my country.”

“I can almost hear the balalaikas,” Fortune said, ‘but you must know as well as I do that the question of ownership is very much in debate.”

“The law is still the law,” Efimov replied, ‘regardless of who owns the satellite.” A note of something like primness had crept into his voice.

Very suddenly Fortune made an intuitive leap, understanding the other man so perfectly that for an instant he almost physically saw himself through Efimov’s eyes. “It isn’t easy with Christine—is it, Efimov? You’d never stand the pace with her, you know. She drinks jealousy the way you drink vodka. It’s because of her, isn’t it?”

“We will leave personal relationships aside, colonel. I am interested only in preventing an ill-considered action by Mr. Geissler—one which will do him a lot of harm.”

“It’s because of Christine,” Fortune elaborated. “I’ve no doubt that you really are some kind of cut-price agent—but you’re doing this because I’m Christine’s husband. You’re doing it because our little bit of quart and tierce last night didn’t work out the way you expected.”

Efimov took a deep breath and walked right up to the gate. “Are you going to get the gate opened, colonel? Or do I drive through it?”

Fortune unslung the Swift without speaking and bolted in the first cartridge.

“I don’t think you’d go as far as killing anyone, colonel.” Efimov went back to the vehicle and climbed in. A second later its turbine screamed up to maximum revolutions and gravel spattered from under the wheels as it hunched forward. Fortune sighted on the lower rim of the circular intake grille and squeezed off one shot. The vehicle bucked violently and slid to a halt as shattered blades chewed their way back through the turbine. demolishing the engine as they went. The air filled with kerosene fumes and Efimov leapt out of the cab.

“That was not very clever, colonel.” He seemed strangely unperturbed, almost pleased.

Fortune ejected the empty brass case which had caused such an astonishing amount of damage and bolted in the next round. He slapped the rifle uncertainly, wondering if he looked as stupid and childish as he felt. He had gone too far to think of turning back, and yet everything had gone subtly wrong. The line of amber lights running from nowhere to nowhere, the gate and the immobilised turbojeep made a meaningless setting for a pointless play. He lowered himself carefully on to a rain-slimed rock, ate some chocolate, and watched Efimov, who loitered contentedly on the track beyond the vehicle, occasionally kicking pebbles.

Behind Fortune, out at the end of the spit, the lights of the gun site shone brilliantly against the blackness of the ocean. There were still seventy-five minutes until the firing. As far as he could see things had reached a perfect impasse—yet Efimov looked like a man who was waiting patiently for something he expected to happen.

A few minutes later Fortune saw lights moving far back along the shore. The lights grew brighter until he made out the massive bulk of a police cruiser swaying along the track like a motor launch in rough water. Fortune assessed the new situation and his initial alarm subsided. Efimov had not been bluffing. He really had stirred up the civil police, but even if the police were armed they would still have a natural human aversion to walking through a gate defended by a madman equipped with a high-velocity rifle. And that, Fortune admitted, was exactly what he was. He lay down behind the rock, positioned his elbows comfortably and watched Efimov through the rifle sight.

The police cruiser halted fifty yards beyond the turbojeep and its lights died, the reflectors glowing redly for an instant. Efimov ran to it, climbed aboard and slammed the door after him. Fortune lay waiting, his finger tight on the trigger, but the minutes went by and nothing happened. He was beginning to relax, imagining Efimov haranguing reluctant policemen, when he noticed the cruiser’s radio mast which had been run up to its full height and was whipping gently in the wind.

Of course! The Unit’s headquarters staff had not known where he was and, up until half an hour ago, telling them would not have done much good—or harm, depending on one’s point of view. The Nesster landing was drawing near, but Fortune had left Major Baillie in full command was entitled to visit Geissler if he wanted. Any wild story of his having deserted would have produced no more than a few preliminary phone calls from the phlegmatic Baillie.

But that had been the situation half an hour ago.

Since then, Fortune had menaced Efimov with a lethal weapon, written off an official UNO vehicle, and was lying behind a rock defying the civil police to come near him. On receiving that sort of information by radio Major Baillie would be obliged to take some kind of immediate action.

All at once, Fortune could feel the crushing bulk of Nesster ship 1753 bearing down on his exposed back, and now it was very close indeed. Swearing desperately, he put the scope’s cross-hairs on the base of the radio mast. The mast was badly illuminated, he kept losing it in the darkness and his hands were numb with the cold. He fired four shots before the steel mast vanished, and he knew it had been too late anyway. His watch showed that there were still fifty minutes to go.

The sentient bulk of the cruiser remained motionless after the loss of its radio antenna. Fortune had half-expected some kind of retaliation and he lay still, feeling the ground gradually suck the heat from his body, and tried to picture the scene at the base. The rain was quite heavy and the added hazard of the powerful gusting made it a bad night for flying, but in Baillie’s shoes he would have sent a helicopter to land behind the fence. A copter would resolve the situation immediately.

At zero minus thirty a siren blew out at the end of the spit and he looked over his shoulder. The gun barrel was reared up into the night sky, which meant that the missile and propellant were safely loaded. All that remained was to wait for the proper instant to loft the glittering sculpture of the rocket into its proper element, far above the squalid human tangle which had conceived it. Christine and he were finished—that much seemed obvious, but what would he do about Peter? Was it possible that the boy might grow up with Efimov as his father? More minutes went by and he saw Efimov’s face move behind the cruiser’s windscreen. They must be getting impatient in the cruiser, Fortune thought, perhaps Baillie isn’t going to act on the radio message. It had been a long time….

He heard the copter in the distance at zero minus eighteen.

It came in from the east, travelling low, and banked sharply over the gate with its flails punishing the quivering air. Fortune waited for it to come down near him, planning how he could cause the greatest delay, but it hesitated and began to drift off in the direction of the gun. That was bad—he had expected them to come solely for him, not to stop the firing which, although illegal, was not a military matter. Perhaps they had not been able to take in the ground situation from up there in their rain-spattered bubble. Fortune got to his feet and the aircraft pulled up with almost comical abruptness then sank down on to the grass. At the same instant the police cruiser’s lights came on again and its engine roared.

There still was sufficient time for Efimov to reach the gun.

Fortune saw an officer and rifle-carrying troopers drop from the big machine. He could not fire at his own men, yet they would be on him in a matter of seconds. His numbed legs gave way as he began to run, instinctively heading away from the gun site. As he pounded through the grass he concentrated on trying to lock his knees for support at each step, but it was like a difficult party trick and at first he progressed by a grotesque combination of kneeling and running. By the time he reached the gate Fortune was moving almost normally but, swinging over the top bar, his hand slid on the smooth galvanised tubing and he felt himself go over off balance and with no hope of recovery. Falling, he caught a frozen movie frame glimpse of the police cruiser disgorging men and a fragment of unrelated audio track which sounded like a woman calling his name.

He landed face down, rose spitting blood and swung off the track, forcing his legs to reach for new ground. Behind him he heard the troopers clear the gate efficiently and tried to speed up. Efimov, coming out of nowhere, hit him with a shoulder charge from the left, and he was almost glad to go down. Then he felt the soldiers pull them apart.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Efimov said politely. “Now if you will detain the colonel for a few minutes, I have some business with Mr. Geissler. There is not much time.”

The helmeted sergeant levelled his rifle at Efimov. “Stay where you are, friend.”

“Stand aside,” Efimov shouted incredulously. “I’ve got to get through that gate.”

“Don’t even think about it,” the sergeant advised, ‘until the major says it’s okay.” The rifle muzzle remained steady and the civil police stood back looking uncertain.

With one hand cupped over his shattered nose Fortune turned towards the gate and saw Major Baillie help a woman over. She was enveloped in an army greatcoat, but he recognised his wife. They skirted the fuming turbojeep and the cruiser then cut across the grass to join the group.

Baillie saluted Fortune smartly. “Everything all right, sir?”

Fortune nodded dumbly—everything was all wrong, completely crazy, and why was Christine there?

Efimov took the document from his overcoat pocket and waved it in Baillie’s face. “Major, you must instruct your goons to let me pass. In fact, they can probably help….”

“My goons, as you call them,” Baillie interrupted stiffly, ‘are obeying orders. Turn out your pockets.”

“You’re mad! Why should I?”

Baillie remained as imperturbable and correct as ever. ‘Because this afternoon you visited Colonel Fortune’s private residence and were seen by Mrs. Fortune removing from his telephone a recording device which you had placed there on a previous occasion for the apparent purpose of obtaining military information.”

Efimov looked ill. “All right. I admit planting the recorder, but what military secrets could I hope to get here? Did you not get my message? This man is illegally destroying a satellite belonging to …’

“Oh yes,” Baillie said affably. “I believe there was something about launching an unscheduled rocket. I’ll have the matter investigated at the earliest opportunity—probably at the beginning of the week.”

Fortune suddenly saw Baillie through new eyes. The emotionless major was unexpectedly but deliberately bending all kinds of regulations for his sake. Christine was right about me, he thought; I can’t communicate with people. Even more suddenly he remembered that Christine had come through on his side. He put his arm round her shoulders, wondering how soon the years of coldness could be bridged.

“You’ve made a hell of a mess of your face,” she said critically.

He grinned crookedly, painfully but contentedly. The communication business was not too difficult once you understood it.

Three hundred miles above the Earth’s north pole Geissler’s missile sought and found its mark.

The beautifully designed alien mechanism, which had been transmitting one millisecond pulses of intelligence every ninety-three minutes for five years, finally fell silent.

There was no disappointment on board Nesster ship 1753 as it changed course, for they had not known of the imminent landing and, in any case, had long since forgotten how they had lived before the Journey. Gently the great caravan of ships swung towards the next suitable star. The new leg of the Journey would take eight hundred years, but the Nessters were a patient race.

And they built very patient machines.