Tales of the Flying Mountains (11 page)

Hulse snorted. “What's the significance of this farce?”

“I said the autopilots were switched off at the moment, as far as heading for the target is concerned. But each of those switches is coupled to two other units. One is simply the sensor box. If you withdraw beyond a certain distance, the switches will close. That is, the 'pilots will be turned on if you try to go beyond range of the beams now locked onto you. The other unit we've installed in every boat is an ordinary two-for-a-dollar radiation meter. If a nuclear weapon goes off anywhere within a couple of thousand kilometers the switches will also close. In either of these cases, the scoopships will dive on you.

“You might knock out a few with missiles, before they strike. Undoubtedly you can punch holes in them with laser guns. But that won't do any good, except when you're lucky enough to hit a vital part. Nobody's aboard to be killed. Not even much gas will be lost, in so short a time.

“So to summarize, chum, if that rogue missile explodes, your ship will be struck by ten to twenty scoopships, each crammed full of concentrated Jovian air. They'll pierce that thin hull of yours, but since they're already pumped full beyond the margin of safety, the impact will split them open and the gas will whoosh out. Do you know what Jovian air does to substances like magnesium?

“You can probably save your crew, take to the boats and reach a Commission base. But your nice battleship will be
ganz kaput
. Is your game worth that candle?”

“You're totally insane! Releasing such a thing—”

“Oh, not permanently. There's one more switch on each boat, connected to the meteoroid evasion unit and controlled by a small battery. When those batteries run down, in about twenty hours, the 'pilots will be turned off completely. Then we can spot the scoopships by radar and pick 'em up. And you'll be free to leave.”

“Do you think for one instant that your fantastic claim of acting legally will stand up in court?”

“No, probably not. But it won't have to. Obviously you can't make anybody swallow your yarn if a
second
missile gets loose. And as for the first one, since it's failed in its purpose, your bosses aren't going to want the matter publicized. It'd embarrass them no end, and serve no purpose except revenge on Jimmy and me—which there's no point in taking, since the Sword would still be privately owned. You check with Earth, Admiral, before shooting off your mouth. They'll tell you that both parties to this quarrel had better forget about legal action. Both would lose.

“So I'm afraid your only choice is to find that missile before it goes off.”

“And yours? What are your alternatives?” Hulse had gone gray in the face, but he still spoke stoutly.

Blades grinned at him. “None whatsoever. We've burned our bridges. We can't do anything about those scoopships now, so it's no use trying to scare us or arrest us or whatever else may occur to you. What we've done is establish an automatic deterrent.”

“Against an, an attempt … at sabotage … that exists only in your imagination!”

Blades shrugged. “That argument isn't relevant any longer. I do believe the missile was released deliberately. We wouldn't have done what we did otherwise. But there's no longer any point in making charges and denials. You'd just better retrieve the thing.”

Hulse squared his shoulders. “How do I know you're telling the truth?”

“Well, you can send a man to the station. He'll find the scooters lying gutted. Send another man over here to the
Pallas
. He'll find the scoopships gone. I also took a few photographs of the autopilots being installed and the ships being cast adrift. Go right ahead. However, may I remind you that the fewer people who have an inkling of this little intrigue, the better for all concerned.”

Hulse opened his mouth, shut it again, stared from side to side, and finally slumped the barest bit. “Very well,” he said, biting off the words syllable by syllable. “I can't risk a ship of the line. Of course, since the rogue is still farther away than your deterrent allows the
Altair
to go, we shall have to wait in space a while.”

“I don't mind.”

“I shall report the full story to my superiors at home … but unofficially.”

“Good. I'd like them to know that we asterites have teeth.”

“Signing off, then.”

Chung stirred. “Wait a bit,” he said. “We have one of your people aboard, Lieutenant Ziska. Can you send a gig for her?”

“She didn't collaborate with us,” Blades added. “You can see the evidence of her loyalty, all over my mug.”

“Good girl!” Hulse exclaimed savagely. “Yes, I'll send a boat. Signing off.”

The screen blanked. Chung and Blades let out a long, ragged breath. They sat a while trembling before Chung muttered, “That skunk as good as admitted everything.”

“Sure,” said Blades. “But we won't have any more trouble from him.”

Chung stubbed out his cigarette. Poise was returning to both men. “There could be other attempts, though, in the next few years.” He scowled. “I think we should arm the station. A couple of laser guns, if nothing else. We can say it's for protection in case of war. But it'll make our own government handle us more carefully, too.”

“Well, you can approach the Commission about it.” Blades yawned and stretched, trying to loosen his muscles. “Better get a lot of other owners and supervisors to sign your petition, though.” The next order of business came to his mind. He rose. “Why don't you go tell Adam the good news?”

“Where are you bound?”

“To let Ellen know the fight is over.”

“Is it, as far as she's concerned?”

“That's what I'm about to find out. Hope I won't need an armored escort.” Blades went from the cubicle, past the watchful radioman, and down the deserted passage-way beyond.

The cabin given her lay at the end, locked from outside. The key hung magnetically on the bulkhead. Blades unlocked the door and tapped it with his knuckles.

“Who's there?” she called.

“Me,” he said. “May I come in?”

“If you must,” she said freezingly.

He opened the door and stepped through. The overhead light shimmered off her hair and limned her figure with shadows. His heart bumped. “You, uh, you can come out now,” he faltered. “Everything's okay.”

She said nothing, only regarded him from glacier-blue eyes.

“No harm's been done, except to me and Sparks, and we're not mad,” he groped. “Shall we forget the whole episode?”

“If you wish.”

“Ellen,” he pleaded, “I had to do what seemed right to me.”

“So did I.”

He couldn't find any more words.

“I assume that I'll be returned to my own ship,” she said. He nodded. “Then, if you will excuse me, I had best make myself as presentable as I can. Good day, Mr. Blades.”

“What's good about it?” he snarled, and slammed the door on his way out.

Avis stood outside the jampacked saloon. She saw him coming and ran to meet him. He made swab-0 with his fingers and joy blazed from her. “Mike,” she cried. “I'm so happy!”

The only gentlemanly thing to do was hug her. His spirits lifted a bit as he did. She made a nice armful. Not bad-looking, either.

Interlude 2

“Well, says Amspaugh. “So that's the inside story. How very interesting. I never heard it before.”

“No; obviously it never got into any official record,” Missy replies. “The only announcement made was that there'd been a near accident, that the station tried to improvise countermissiles out of scoopships, but that the quick action of NASS
Altair
was what saved the situation. Her captain was commended. I don't believe he ever got a further promotion, though.”

“Why didn't you publicize the facts afterwards?” Lindgren wonders. “When the revolution began, that is. It would've made good propaganda.”

“Nonsense,” Missy says. “Too much else had happened since then. Besides, neither Mike nor Jimmy nor I wanted to do any cheap emotion-fanning. We knew the asterites weren't little pink-bottomed angels, nor the people back sunward a crew of devils. There were rights and wrongs on both sides. We did what we could in the war, and hated every minute of it, and when it was over we broke out two cases of champagne and invited as many Earthlings as we could get to the party. They had a lot of love to carry home for us.”

Again a stillness falls. She takes a long swallow from her glass and sits looking out at the stars.

“Yes,” Lindgren says finally, “I guess that was the worst, fighting against our kin.”

“Well, I was better off in that respect than some,” Missy admits. “I'd made my commitment so long before the trouble that my ties were nearly all out in the Belt. Twenty years is time enough to grow new roots, which is what it took before the revolution happened.”

“I suppose the ideal—the lost American ideal of personal freedom—needed that length of time to grow,” Conchita says.

Missy starts, then laughs. “My dear,” she replies, “I assure you the revolution was by and large not
for
anything grand; it was
against
excessive taxes and regulations. If transport hadn't improved and commerce expanded as it did, why, we might always have had too few bureaucrats and examiners and such-like nuisances to exasperate us till we rebelled.” She draws pensively on her cigar. “Furthermore, I wish you'd stop thinking of my generation, the one that founded the Republic, as a set of glittering heroes. We weren't exclusively the rock rats Colin spoke of. But a lot of us were—oh, my, what I could tell you about some of my fellow fighters for liberation!—and the rest were all too human in their own fashions.”

“You included?” Orloff jests.

“Why, certainly,” she smiles. “My folks were aghast at my conduct. I only needed six months after the
Altair
incident to think things out, resign my commission, and catch the next Belt-bound ship. In their eyes, I was a brazen hussy, sacrificing a good and honorable career to boot—and you know, they were right. But you don't think I'd have let a man like Mike get away, do you?”

Say It with Flowers

Whiskey Johnny
was eighteen hours out of Sam's when her radar registered another ship. There was no doubt about that. A natural object, a meteoroid or asteroid tumbling through the Belt, even a comet falling inward from near-infinity, could never have had such a vector as the computer printed out. And the vessel could hardly be anything but North American: hostile.

The pilot uttered expert obscenities. They bounced around his ears, in the tiny, thrumming cockpit where he sat. He punched for distance and velocity at closest approach, as if the keys under his fingers were noses in a barroom battle. The answer was unpleasantly small. However, that assumed he himself continued acceleration. If he went free … yes, better. The enemy craft—a big one, the radar said—was itself under power, so it would gain speed with respect to him.…

To reduce his detectability, he cut the Emetts and throttled his nuclear generator down to a minimum. The scoopship yielded to the pull of the sun, shrunken and brilliant to starboard. Her path did not curve much. She had already built up enough velocity to swing in a flat hyperbola that would take her out of the Solar System were it not modified. But she was, now, in free fall.

So was her pilot, since he had shut off the internal field generators. He floated in his seat harness, in a quiet so deep and sudden that he heard the blood beat through his own veins. A fan came on automatically, to keep fresh air moving past him, but that whirr only emphasized the silence. He peered out the inertrans canopy as if to see the patrolling warship from Earth. Of course he couldn't, at those distances. Stars crowded the blackness, unwinking and winter-cold; the Milky Way girdled the universe with diamond dust; Jupiter blazed enormous, not many astronomical units to port.

No asteroids were visible to the naked eye. Those clustered in the vicinity of Sam's lay far behind. Pallas, where
Whiskey Johnny
was bound, lay hours ahead, even at the high acceleration of which a scoopship was capable. As for the rest of the Belt—well, there are thousands of worldlets, millions of meteoroids, but space is huge and they spread thinly.

The pilot fished a cigar from his breast pocket. Presently the cockpit air was as thick as that of Venus, and nearly as poisonous. He didn't mind. He had spent half of his forty Earth-years digging and building on raw rocks where only the tough could hope to survive. His face was so craggy that the assorted scars looked natural. Half open, his frayed old zipskin revealed a chest like a barrel; through the hair showed an enormous tattoo in enormously bad taste, a comet which was also a flag. The naked woman who danced on his right biceps was probably in worse taste yet. His left forearm was shaven, which indicated that the design of roses and lilies inked into its skin was very recent. Some people never grow up.

He puffed hard. It was a strain, waiting. He tried to think of matters more pleasant than the war. Like, say, that bender he went on back at Sam's, shortly before he started on this mission. Trouble was, the wingding had been too good. Several girls … yeah … and then afterward Billy Kirk showed up with a bottle in either fist … and then everything was blank, until he woke with volcanoes in his head and those silly posies on his arm.
Why
had he elected that design?

Well, there'd be a doctor at Pallas who could take it off for him. And plenty of booze and wild, wild women. The colonists had fleet enough to defend their capital and its supply lines. Otherwise they could only hold strong points like Sam's. But they were scattered through millions of kilometers, on hundreds of asteroids; their ships were manned with deadly skill; little by little, they wore down their one-time masters. Meanwhile, on Earth, their diplomats intrigued in various capitals. Other nations would bring pressure to bear on North America. Eventually the Republic would be free to shape its own destiny.