Short fiction complete, p.17
Short Fiction Complete, page 17
Then Jenny came through, and Peter Kumalo and his stave-and-reed desk appeared in the space between Mason’s desk and the door.
His face was grave.
“I was going to call you, Danial,” Kumalo said. “It has started.” Mason bowed his head. “What have you heard?”
“Jan Christian Smuts Dome felt the bomb,” Kumalo said. “It was not damaged but they felt it. Some of their ships were in McKinley Dome when it was destroyed, and one that was going there was also lost. And instructions come to me from Johannesburg that the war has started; I am to alert my detect-and-destroy units; we might be attacked.” He looked unhappy. “I am sorry my country makes war on your country.”
Mason gestured a demurral; no apology was needed. “Any word on how many got out?” he asked.
“John Msimangu said to tell you almost all the children and women are safe—all but those who chose to stay with their men. And most of the married men are also safe. But I have no numbers. There has been no count. Jan Christian Smuts Dome is very crowded.”
“Well, give thanks for the ones that were saved,” Mason said. “Any preference for when you make the next move?”
“When it is best for your purpose, we will do it,” Kumalo assured him.
“Better make it soon,” Mason decided. He glanced at his watch. It said 9:15. What time have you got there?”
Kumalo glanced away, to a clock Mason could not see. “It is one thirty-five,” he said.
He saw the puzzled look on Mason’s face. “We keep Johannesburg time,” he explained.
Mason comprehended, nodded, and smiled. “We’ll have to change that,” he said. Then he was all business again. “All right—pass the word: African domes take the step at two o’clock. We’ll be, maybe, a couple of hours behind you.”
“As you wish, Danial.”
“If we get bombed, you’re on your own,” Mason said. “Do what you think’s best.”
“I will do it at two,” Kumalo said. He made a sign. “Go well, my friend,” he said.
“Stay well,” Mason nodded. “Stay well—Peter. Good luck.”
Kumalo was gone.
“Joe’s chewing the wire, boss,” Jenny reported.
“Let him through,” Mason said.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Jenny said, and let him through.
“Chief,” Joe Kramer blurted.
“What’s the idea? The first I hear, you’re blatting it all over the dome.” Mason cut short the complaint. “Have your men reported in?”
“All but one,” Kramer said. “And he’s sick. But all kinds of trouble could have come up. You should’ve tipped me off.”
“Did any trouble develop?”
“Well, no,” Kramer admitted. “The boys say it’s just like you’d stuck spigots in everybody and took the blood out. You never saw such a bunch of funks in your life.”
“Well, if there wasn’t any damage done,” Mason suggested, “suppose we get on with the business. Have you got your ten-squad picked?”
“Picked and itching,” Kramer assured. “And the rest of the boys are on post. As far as me and the boys are concerned, you can push the button any time.”
“Good,” Mason said. “Better get the ten-squad staked out. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“We’ll be waiting for you,” Kramer said.
“Stay out of sight,” Mason reminded him. “And remember, I don’t want any bloodshed if we can help it.”
“I still think a burp gun’s a good idea,” Kramer said.
When Kramer had signed off, Mason said to Jenny, “You listened?”
“Uh-huh,” she answered. “Sounds like you can go ahead any time.”
“So far as Joe’s concerned,” Mason said, nodding absently although there was no one to see him nod. “I’d like to wait until my people hear the news from Panama, though, if it doesn’t take too long coming.”
“I don’t see why you have to wait, boss,” Jenny said. “Joe says they’re ripe right now.”
“I’d like them to know this isn’t just something I made up, Jenny,” Mason said. “I’ve done a very terrible thing—I’ve crushed and stamped the spirit right out of my people, just so they’ll let me do a thing they’d never ordinarily let me do. Is that right, Jenny?”
“Sure it is, boss. You’ve got to do it.”
“Thanks, Jenny,” he said humbly. “But—No . . . it isn’t right. It’s just the only thing that will save us.”
As he was leaving, Jenny stopped him in her office.
It was Krumbein calling from the cable room.
Mason slipped into Jenny’s chair to take the call. The chair was too small for him, and it was hard. He couldn’t understand how she could stand it.
“We got a cable for that Navy jerk,” Krumbein said.
“What does it say?” Mason tried to find a comfortable way to sit on the chair, but there wasn’t any comfortable way.
Krumbein read the cable. “Subcruiser Quito and two subdestroyers being rushed to your defense. Will reach you afternoon of 27th.”
Mason’s respect for Jenny had increased considerably. He wished he could feel rested. He wished he could be comfortable. Having been on the Moon took a lot out of a man.
“That’s two days away, isn’t it?” Krumbein said.
“Lot of help they’d be,” Mason muttered.
“Should I let the old buzzard have it?” Krumbein asked.
“Go ahead,” Mason told him. “It ought to loosen him in his boots a little.”
Gratefully, he got up from Jenny’s chair.
Wilmington Dome perched on the spur of a mountain two miles under the sea. Beneath it, the mine tunneled deeply into the rock.
All around it, cables snaked out like nerve threads from a ganglion. Some were communication cables, linking Wilmington to other domes and to the mainland. Others went only a little way.
On the mountain’s crest, two skeletal towers rose. One was the sonar beacon which guided ships in to the dome. It was silent now.
The other was also a sonar, but it was the one by which men in the dome could watch ships approach and, if necessary, communicate with them.
Far above the dome, on the weather-swept surface, the radar raft tossed and tugged at its three anchor lines. It was a part of the world-spanning system which watched the flight of planes, and knew it the instant something was wrong.
Ringed around the dome—some of them as far as ten miles away—torpedo and rocket emplacements pointed their prongs upward, armed to strike at a signal from the dome. They could not stop a determined attack, but they could make it costly.
Determined that things would never come to that, Mason approached the battle control station. Joe Kramer leaned out of a compartment and motioned him inside.
In addition to Kramer, there were ten men in the chamber. Company police. They had pistols clipped to their waistbands, and one man had a knife, but there wasn’t a burp gun in sight.
“All ready here?” Mason asked.
The men nodded. They looked ready. They were sober, capable-looking men.
“Just say the word,” Kramer grinned.
“Wait till I call you in,” Mason said.
“What if something goes wrong?” Kramer hazarded. “We never did settle that out.”
“We’ll settle it out right now,” Mason said. “I don’t think anything will, but if you see something has—yes, move in. Otherwise . . . What time have you got?”
Kramer looked at his watch. “Twenty to ten.”
Mason checked his own watch. Then he said, “If I haven’t called you by half past, take over. Something will have gone wrong.”
“Got you,” Kramer said.
Mason spent several minutes looking around the battle control station, getting to know the place. He hadn’t been down there since it had gone into service, and although he had studied plans and diagrams carefully, there was nothing like knowing the place first hand.
The room was medium-sized, but long and narrow. Rows of tall, switch- and dial-studded panels lined the long walls. They were set at an angle to the walls, like saw teeth, set so that the men who stood at ease facing them were also facing the far end of the room.
Two men, near the door, had guns. They were guards.
Powell was at the far end, seated at a console on a raised platform. His back was to the room. In front of him, the wall was a green-glowing screen marked off in concentric circles which radiated from the center. Between Powell’s console and the screen, set down in a pit below the level of the floor—like an orchestra—the radar-sonar operators sat at their control boards.
The room was quiet. The men were crisp efficiency. They waited, as deadly as steel.
After one brief tour of the room, Mason retreated back almost to the door. He stood just in front of the two guards. Powell had told him to stand there, where he was out of the way.
It was a nasty set-up. Powell was at one end and the two armed guards were at the other. Mason hadn’t expected the guards. Powell was the man to get, but the guards would stop him if he tried.
A weary weakness filled his body. He would have to fall back on Joe’s men after all. He wished they weren’t carrying guns.
The PA system hummed and came alive.
News Bulletin! it boomed. News Bulletin!
There was no speaker in the room, but it leaked through the calls and through the door which Mason had left ajar when he came in.
The waiting was over. He could go ahead now.
Another voice broke from the speakers.
This is Panama, it declared. President Goyartuga has just announced that ships of the South African Navy have bombed and destroyed McKinley Dome. The bombing took place—
“Contact!” one of the sonar men called out, sharp and clear.
On the green tinted screen, a red spot appeared in the upper left quadrant. It was high, and just inside the outermost circle.
Powell looked up. “Track it.”
President Goyartuga has called a meeting of his top advisors, including representatives of all major parties . . .
“On track!” another sonar man sang out.
Powell still watched the red spot. “Continue search,” he ordered. “There may be more of them. Units one, two, three, and five, lock into the track.”
The men at the front-rank panels went to work—one on the right-hand side and the first three on the left.
. . . Members of the armed forces on leave have been recalled. Civil Defense regulations are now in force. All citizens are requested . . .
On the screen, four blue spots appeared, one by one. They were close to the center, one to the right of the north-south axis, the other three on the left.
The red spot didn’t seem to move.
“Flash them an IFF,” Powell ordered. His eyes didn’t leave the screen. “Unit seven lock in.”
. . . Only yesterday that the South African delegation led by Tiklosche Van Vliet returned to Johannesburg after being refused their demand that the manganese-rich ore deposit near McKinley Dome be surrendered to South Africa’s Jan Christian Smuts Dome—
“Mason! Can’t you shut that thing off?” Powell snapped impatiently.
Mason didn’t answer. He turned and nodded to the stiff-faced guards and passed between them to the door. He looked outside. The corridor was empty and dimly lighted. Leaving the door open, Mason turned back into the room.
“No IFF response,” one of the sonar men sang out.
“Give it to them again,” Powell ordered.
Mason heard a small sound in the doorway. He didn’t turn to see. He threw himself at one of the guards.
. . . Goyartuga has called a special session of the Grand Assembly to meet tomorrow morning. He will ask approval for his Proclamation of War. In the meantime, a Navy source close to the President says that all Naval units have been ordered to attack and destroy South African craft wherever they are found—
Joe Kramer got up from the other guard. He snatched up the guard’s gun. The guard was out cold.
Mason’s guard was still conscious, but he was thoroughly occupied with a broken arm. Mason got to his knees—started slowly to rise.
Kramer’s men were moving purposefully past him. They hadn’t drawn their guns. The way they marched double-time down the length of the room made it unnecessary.
The Navy men, turned from their panels, flat-footedly let them come. They let Kramer’s men crowd them down toward the end of the room like sheep.
Powell was standing up from his console, staring down at the confusion.
“Mason!” he demanded. “What’s going on here?”
Mason got to his feet. He clipped the guard’s gun to his sash. Slowly, he started toward the far end of the room. He was amazed how much the ten-second struggle with the guard had taken out of him.
“Mason!” Powell insisted. “Answer me!”
Kramer was already halfway there. “Come down off of there,” he said loudly.
Suddenly, Powell understood.
“This is treason!” he blustered. “Treason!”
He spun back to the console, looked up at the screen, and reached for the control board.
“Don’t touch it!” Mason shouted desperately. “You’ll just get us bombed. It won’t do any good.”
Powell froze for the one necessary instant while Kramer ploughed through the crowd in front of the platform and bounded up behind him. The big man wrapped his arms around Powell.
Powell struggled, but it wasn’t much use. “Relax, pop,” Kramer advised.
“This is treason!” Powell raged. “I’ll see you hang! Treason!”
Mason pushed through the crowd. No one tried to stop him. The Navy men were as docile as cattle.
He stepped up on the platform. “Not treason,” he said mildly. “Rebellion. We’re declaring our independence from the American Union.”
He turned to look down over the crowd. Kramer’s men had the sailors herded tightly together at the foot of the platform.
“Get them out of here,” he ordered. “Put them on ice.”
Kramer’s men herded them back toward the door. They went unprotestingly. Mason saw the two guards pulled to their feet and walked outside.
He turned back to Powell. The commander was still struggling in Kramer’s arms, trying uselessly to get free. Kramer wore a big, self-confident grin.
“You, too,” Mason told Powell, nodding toward the departing crowd. “I’m sorry—there’s nothing personal in this. It won’t look good in your record, but I can’t help that. At least you’ll be alive, so your record will mean something.”
Kramer released the man and gave him a shove. Powell stumbled down off the platform. “You heard him, pop,” Kramer said. “Get going.”
Powell got to his feet and came back, arms flapping ineffectually, like a fighting cock. He tried to get past Kramer to the console. Kramer stopped him with a fist in the belly that doubled him over.
Kramer gave him a shove that sent him backwards off the platform. He bumped on the deckplates and lay, doubled up, contorted with spasms, on his side.
“Schwartz. Gallegos,” Kramer called.
Two of Kramer’s men turned back.
“Drag this thing out,” Kramer ordered.
“Carry him,” Mason countermanded. “Be easy on him. And call down a doctor to look at him. The man with the broken arm, too.”
He shook his head sadly. “Joe,” he said. “You shouldn’t have done it.”
The men bent and lifted Powell. They were inept, but they tried to be gentle. They straggled with their burden to the door.
Kramer nudged Mason. “What about them?”
He nodded to the men in the pit between the console and the screen.
They had left their instruments. They stood looking up at Mason and Kramer.
Leaderless, they didn’t know what to do.
Mason leaned over the console. “Back to your posts,” he ordered. “I want to see what that ship out there is doing.”
“Why should we?” one of them snarled defiantly.
“Because I think you want to know, too,” Mason said calmly. “And because your lives may depend on it.”
“Is that a threat?” the same man demanded.
“No,” Mason answered reasonably. “But that ship out there is. Your commander and I didn’t agree on how to deal with it, but it will have to be dealt with. Now get back to work—ail of you.”
The man who had been doing the talking spat deliberately on the deck. He smeared the spit under his heel and looked up at Mason. Mason met his eyes steadily.
The man shrugged and sat down at his post.
The other men, with no other leader to turn to, returned to their posts. They were uneasy, but they didn’t know what else to do.
Mason looked up at the screen. The red spot didn’t seem to have moved. The ship it signified was still a long way out—it would have to move quite a distance before the movement would show on the screen.
He turned back to Kramer.
“You shouldn’t have been so rough on him,” he said.
“Who?” Kramer said. “That old rooster?”
Mason nodded. “He’s an old man,” he said sharply. “You could have hurt him pretty bad.”
“Hell!” Kramer complained. “He was going to shoot off something. I couldn’t let him do that, could I?”
“You could have stopped him without almost killing him,” Mason snapped.
He changed the subject. “When your men are through locking up the prisoners, send them after the relief crews.”
“O.K., Chief,” Kramer said. He stepped down off the platform and stumped out.
Mason sat down at the console. The control panel was divided into four sections. Red lights gleamed over five sets of switches in the upper division—one on the right and four on the left. The panel was a very easy one to understand.
If he had to, he could operate it.
He looked up. The red spot was still where it had been—or maybe it had crept a little in from the edge. Toward the dome. He couldn’t be sure.
He searched the panel from one end to the other for the controls of a phone. Surprisingly, there were none. The console should have had a phone built into it. Nothing even remotely resembling a desk was built without its phone.
His face was grave.
“I was going to call you, Danial,” Kumalo said. “It has started.” Mason bowed his head. “What have you heard?”
“Jan Christian Smuts Dome felt the bomb,” Kumalo said. “It was not damaged but they felt it. Some of their ships were in McKinley Dome when it was destroyed, and one that was going there was also lost. And instructions come to me from Johannesburg that the war has started; I am to alert my detect-and-destroy units; we might be attacked.” He looked unhappy. “I am sorry my country makes war on your country.”
Mason gestured a demurral; no apology was needed. “Any word on how many got out?” he asked.
“John Msimangu said to tell you almost all the children and women are safe—all but those who chose to stay with their men. And most of the married men are also safe. But I have no numbers. There has been no count. Jan Christian Smuts Dome is very crowded.”
“Well, give thanks for the ones that were saved,” Mason said. “Any preference for when you make the next move?”
“When it is best for your purpose, we will do it,” Kumalo assured him.
“Better make it soon,” Mason decided. He glanced at his watch. It said 9:15. What time have you got there?”
Kumalo glanced away, to a clock Mason could not see. “It is one thirty-five,” he said.
He saw the puzzled look on Mason’s face. “We keep Johannesburg time,” he explained.
Mason comprehended, nodded, and smiled. “We’ll have to change that,” he said. Then he was all business again. “All right—pass the word: African domes take the step at two o’clock. We’ll be, maybe, a couple of hours behind you.”
“As you wish, Danial.”
“If we get bombed, you’re on your own,” Mason said. “Do what you think’s best.”
“I will do it at two,” Kumalo said. He made a sign. “Go well, my friend,” he said.
“Stay well,” Mason nodded. “Stay well—Peter. Good luck.”
Kumalo was gone.
“Joe’s chewing the wire, boss,” Jenny reported.
“Let him through,” Mason said.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Jenny said, and let him through.
“Chief,” Joe Kramer blurted.
“What’s the idea? The first I hear, you’re blatting it all over the dome.” Mason cut short the complaint. “Have your men reported in?”
“All but one,” Kramer said. “And he’s sick. But all kinds of trouble could have come up. You should’ve tipped me off.”
“Did any trouble develop?”
“Well, no,” Kramer admitted. “The boys say it’s just like you’d stuck spigots in everybody and took the blood out. You never saw such a bunch of funks in your life.”
“Well, if there wasn’t any damage done,” Mason suggested, “suppose we get on with the business. Have you got your ten-squad picked?”
“Picked and itching,” Kramer assured. “And the rest of the boys are on post. As far as me and the boys are concerned, you can push the button any time.”
“Good,” Mason said. “Better get the ten-squad staked out. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“We’ll be waiting for you,” Kramer said.
“Stay out of sight,” Mason reminded him. “And remember, I don’t want any bloodshed if we can help it.”
“I still think a burp gun’s a good idea,” Kramer said.
When Kramer had signed off, Mason said to Jenny, “You listened?”
“Uh-huh,” she answered. “Sounds like you can go ahead any time.”
“So far as Joe’s concerned,” Mason said, nodding absently although there was no one to see him nod. “I’d like to wait until my people hear the news from Panama, though, if it doesn’t take too long coming.”
“I don’t see why you have to wait, boss,” Jenny said. “Joe says they’re ripe right now.”
“I’d like them to know this isn’t just something I made up, Jenny,” Mason said. “I’ve done a very terrible thing—I’ve crushed and stamped the spirit right out of my people, just so they’ll let me do a thing they’d never ordinarily let me do. Is that right, Jenny?”
“Sure it is, boss. You’ve got to do it.”
“Thanks, Jenny,” he said humbly. “But—No . . . it isn’t right. It’s just the only thing that will save us.”
As he was leaving, Jenny stopped him in her office.
It was Krumbein calling from the cable room.
Mason slipped into Jenny’s chair to take the call. The chair was too small for him, and it was hard. He couldn’t understand how she could stand it.
“We got a cable for that Navy jerk,” Krumbein said.
“What does it say?” Mason tried to find a comfortable way to sit on the chair, but there wasn’t any comfortable way.
Krumbein read the cable. “Subcruiser Quito and two subdestroyers being rushed to your defense. Will reach you afternoon of 27th.”
Mason’s respect for Jenny had increased considerably. He wished he could feel rested. He wished he could be comfortable. Having been on the Moon took a lot out of a man.
“That’s two days away, isn’t it?” Krumbein said.
“Lot of help they’d be,” Mason muttered.
“Should I let the old buzzard have it?” Krumbein asked.
“Go ahead,” Mason told him. “It ought to loosen him in his boots a little.”
Gratefully, he got up from Jenny’s chair.
Wilmington Dome perched on the spur of a mountain two miles under the sea. Beneath it, the mine tunneled deeply into the rock.
All around it, cables snaked out like nerve threads from a ganglion. Some were communication cables, linking Wilmington to other domes and to the mainland. Others went only a little way.
On the mountain’s crest, two skeletal towers rose. One was the sonar beacon which guided ships in to the dome. It was silent now.
The other was also a sonar, but it was the one by which men in the dome could watch ships approach and, if necessary, communicate with them.
Far above the dome, on the weather-swept surface, the radar raft tossed and tugged at its three anchor lines. It was a part of the world-spanning system which watched the flight of planes, and knew it the instant something was wrong.
Ringed around the dome—some of them as far as ten miles away—torpedo and rocket emplacements pointed their prongs upward, armed to strike at a signal from the dome. They could not stop a determined attack, but they could make it costly.
Determined that things would never come to that, Mason approached the battle control station. Joe Kramer leaned out of a compartment and motioned him inside.
In addition to Kramer, there were ten men in the chamber. Company police. They had pistols clipped to their waistbands, and one man had a knife, but there wasn’t a burp gun in sight.
“All ready here?” Mason asked.
The men nodded. They looked ready. They were sober, capable-looking men.
“Just say the word,” Kramer grinned.
“Wait till I call you in,” Mason said.
“What if something goes wrong?” Kramer hazarded. “We never did settle that out.”
“We’ll settle it out right now,” Mason said. “I don’t think anything will, but if you see something has—yes, move in. Otherwise . . . What time have you got?”
Kramer looked at his watch. “Twenty to ten.”
Mason checked his own watch. Then he said, “If I haven’t called you by half past, take over. Something will have gone wrong.”
“Got you,” Kramer said.
Mason spent several minutes looking around the battle control station, getting to know the place. He hadn’t been down there since it had gone into service, and although he had studied plans and diagrams carefully, there was nothing like knowing the place first hand.
The room was medium-sized, but long and narrow. Rows of tall, switch- and dial-studded panels lined the long walls. They were set at an angle to the walls, like saw teeth, set so that the men who stood at ease facing them were also facing the far end of the room.
Two men, near the door, had guns. They were guards.
Powell was at the far end, seated at a console on a raised platform. His back was to the room. In front of him, the wall was a green-glowing screen marked off in concentric circles which radiated from the center. Between Powell’s console and the screen, set down in a pit below the level of the floor—like an orchestra—the radar-sonar operators sat at their control boards.
The room was quiet. The men were crisp efficiency. They waited, as deadly as steel.
After one brief tour of the room, Mason retreated back almost to the door. He stood just in front of the two guards. Powell had told him to stand there, where he was out of the way.
It was a nasty set-up. Powell was at one end and the two armed guards were at the other. Mason hadn’t expected the guards. Powell was the man to get, but the guards would stop him if he tried.
A weary weakness filled his body. He would have to fall back on Joe’s men after all. He wished they weren’t carrying guns.
The PA system hummed and came alive.
News Bulletin! it boomed. News Bulletin!
There was no speaker in the room, but it leaked through the calls and through the door which Mason had left ajar when he came in.
The waiting was over. He could go ahead now.
Another voice broke from the speakers.
This is Panama, it declared. President Goyartuga has just announced that ships of the South African Navy have bombed and destroyed McKinley Dome. The bombing took place—
“Contact!” one of the sonar men called out, sharp and clear.
On the green tinted screen, a red spot appeared in the upper left quadrant. It was high, and just inside the outermost circle.
Powell looked up. “Track it.”
President Goyartuga has called a meeting of his top advisors, including representatives of all major parties . . .
“On track!” another sonar man sang out.
Powell still watched the red spot. “Continue search,” he ordered. “There may be more of them. Units one, two, three, and five, lock into the track.”
The men at the front-rank panels went to work—one on the right-hand side and the first three on the left.
. . . Members of the armed forces on leave have been recalled. Civil Defense regulations are now in force. All citizens are requested . . .
On the screen, four blue spots appeared, one by one. They were close to the center, one to the right of the north-south axis, the other three on the left.
The red spot didn’t seem to move.
“Flash them an IFF,” Powell ordered. His eyes didn’t leave the screen. “Unit seven lock in.”
. . . Only yesterday that the South African delegation led by Tiklosche Van Vliet returned to Johannesburg after being refused their demand that the manganese-rich ore deposit near McKinley Dome be surrendered to South Africa’s Jan Christian Smuts Dome—
“Mason! Can’t you shut that thing off?” Powell snapped impatiently.
Mason didn’t answer. He turned and nodded to the stiff-faced guards and passed between them to the door. He looked outside. The corridor was empty and dimly lighted. Leaving the door open, Mason turned back into the room.
“No IFF response,” one of the sonar men sang out.
“Give it to them again,” Powell ordered.
Mason heard a small sound in the doorway. He didn’t turn to see. He threw himself at one of the guards.
. . . Goyartuga has called a special session of the Grand Assembly to meet tomorrow morning. He will ask approval for his Proclamation of War. In the meantime, a Navy source close to the President says that all Naval units have been ordered to attack and destroy South African craft wherever they are found—
Joe Kramer got up from the other guard. He snatched up the guard’s gun. The guard was out cold.
Mason’s guard was still conscious, but he was thoroughly occupied with a broken arm. Mason got to his knees—started slowly to rise.
Kramer’s men were moving purposefully past him. They hadn’t drawn their guns. The way they marched double-time down the length of the room made it unnecessary.
The Navy men, turned from their panels, flat-footedly let them come. They let Kramer’s men crowd them down toward the end of the room like sheep.
Powell was standing up from his console, staring down at the confusion.
“Mason!” he demanded. “What’s going on here?”
Mason got to his feet. He clipped the guard’s gun to his sash. Slowly, he started toward the far end of the room. He was amazed how much the ten-second struggle with the guard had taken out of him.
“Mason!” Powell insisted. “Answer me!”
Kramer was already halfway there. “Come down off of there,” he said loudly.
Suddenly, Powell understood.
“This is treason!” he blustered. “Treason!”
He spun back to the console, looked up at the screen, and reached for the control board.
“Don’t touch it!” Mason shouted desperately. “You’ll just get us bombed. It won’t do any good.”
Powell froze for the one necessary instant while Kramer ploughed through the crowd in front of the platform and bounded up behind him. The big man wrapped his arms around Powell.
Powell struggled, but it wasn’t much use. “Relax, pop,” Kramer advised.
“This is treason!” Powell raged. “I’ll see you hang! Treason!”
Mason pushed through the crowd. No one tried to stop him. The Navy men were as docile as cattle.
He stepped up on the platform. “Not treason,” he said mildly. “Rebellion. We’re declaring our independence from the American Union.”
He turned to look down over the crowd. Kramer’s men had the sailors herded tightly together at the foot of the platform.
“Get them out of here,” he ordered. “Put them on ice.”
Kramer’s men herded them back toward the door. They went unprotestingly. Mason saw the two guards pulled to their feet and walked outside.
He turned back to Powell. The commander was still struggling in Kramer’s arms, trying uselessly to get free. Kramer wore a big, self-confident grin.
“You, too,” Mason told Powell, nodding toward the departing crowd. “I’m sorry—there’s nothing personal in this. It won’t look good in your record, but I can’t help that. At least you’ll be alive, so your record will mean something.”
Kramer released the man and gave him a shove. Powell stumbled down off the platform. “You heard him, pop,” Kramer said. “Get going.”
Powell got to his feet and came back, arms flapping ineffectually, like a fighting cock. He tried to get past Kramer to the console. Kramer stopped him with a fist in the belly that doubled him over.
Kramer gave him a shove that sent him backwards off the platform. He bumped on the deckplates and lay, doubled up, contorted with spasms, on his side.
“Schwartz. Gallegos,” Kramer called.
Two of Kramer’s men turned back.
“Drag this thing out,” Kramer ordered.
“Carry him,” Mason countermanded. “Be easy on him. And call down a doctor to look at him. The man with the broken arm, too.”
He shook his head sadly. “Joe,” he said. “You shouldn’t have done it.”
The men bent and lifted Powell. They were inept, but they tried to be gentle. They straggled with their burden to the door.
Kramer nudged Mason. “What about them?”
He nodded to the men in the pit between the console and the screen.
They had left their instruments. They stood looking up at Mason and Kramer.
Leaderless, they didn’t know what to do.
Mason leaned over the console. “Back to your posts,” he ordered. “I want to see what that ship out there is doing.”
“Why should we?” one of them snarled defiantly.
“Because I think you want to know, too,” Mason said calmly. “And because your lives may depend on it.”
“Is that a threat?” the same man demanded.
“No,” Mason answered reasonably. “But that ship out there is. Your commander and I didn’t agree on how to deal with it, but it will have to be dealt with. Now get back to work—ail of you.”
The man who had been doing the talking spat deliberately on the deck. He smeared the spit under his heel and looked up at Mason. Mason met his eyes steadily.
The man shrugged and sat down at his post.
The other men, with no other leader to turn to, returned to their posts. They were uneasy, but they didn’t know what else to do.
Mason looked up at the screen. The red spot didn’t seem to have moved. The ship it signified was still a long way out—it would have to move quite a distance before the movement would show on the screen.
He turned back to Kramer.
“You shouldn’t have been so rough on him,” he said.
“Who?” Kramer said. “That old rooster?”
Mason nodded. “He’s an old man,” he said sharply. “You could have hurt him pretty bad.”
“Hell!” Kramer complained. “He was going to shoot off something. I couldn’t let him do that, could I?”
“You could have stopped him without almost killing him,” Mason snapped.
He changed the subject. “When your men are through locking up the prisoners, send them after the relief crews.”
“O.K., Chief,” Kramer said. He stepped down off the platform and stumped out.
Mason sat down at the console. The control panel was divided into four sections. Red lights gleamed over five sets of switches in the upper division—one on the right and four on the left. The panel was a very easy one to understand.
If he had to, he could operate it.
He looked up. The red spot was still where it had been—or maybe it had crept a little in from the edge. Toward the dome. He couldn’t be sure.
He searched the panel from one end to the other for the controls of a phone. Surprisingly, there were none. The console should have had a phone built into it. Nothing even remotely resembling a desk was built without its phone.
