Operation ares, p.7
Operation Ares, page 7
The woods had clothed a little ridge. He topped it and sped down the other side, knowing that it would protect him from any further shooting until the militiamen reached the crest themselves. Through the trees he could now see the silver bulk of the plane.
An amplified voice, a public address system but a very good one, had begun to boom over the frozen landscape. He caught a few words, Americans . . . Mars , . . endeavor „ . . But he was too busy running to listen.
There ... Alongside the plane (or whatever it was) a loudspeaker stood on skinny metal legs. Beside it a tall young man in shorts was talking into a hand microphone. John shouted, “Hey! Hey there!’' and the Martian stopped speaking and looked for him. “Here, over here!" he yelled. “Have you got any weapons? We can set them all free."
“Thats what I'm trying to do," the Martian said. His voice was mild, but he inadvertently spoke into his microphone so that his voice was amplified, then realizing what had happened jerked his hand away from his face.
Winded, John pulled up short in front of him and gestured toward the ridge. "Whole column of prisoners over there." he gasped.
“I know, I saw you from the LBV. Did you overpower your guards?”
Still gasping for breath the teacher shook his head.
“Now is a favorable time to free yourselves, prisoners. Several of you are already free. It is mathematically demonstrable that over short distances the more numerous group of combatants will have a low casualty rate in assaulting where the proportions in opposition are as one to five or greater.” Other prisoners, the other runners he had heard, were beginning to cluster around them, most of them familiar faces to which he could not put names. “You’re never going to get them to rush the guards that way,” he said. “Don’t you have any weapons? We’re going to need them in a minute.” The Martian looked startled.
One of the convicts who had just come up panted, “You a real Martian? C'mon, let’s get the bastards.”
“If the prisoners would only . .. That is a forced labor unit, isn’t it?”
“They’ll never do it like this,” John Castle snapped. “Is that propaganda setup self-powered?”
The Martian nodded, offering the microphone. John snatched at it, grabbing a leg of the tripod with his other hand. It was fairly heavy and very ungainly, but two prisoners picked up the other legs and moved forward with them obediently. “If you’ve got anything in there that’ll shoot, get it and come on." John said hurriedly. “Maybe if we can get this to where we can see them we can do some good.”
One of the men who were helping with the tripod asked breathlessly, “What do you think's happenin' over there?” It was (unexpectedly) old Stennis.
John told him, “I don't know but nobody else is coming over the ridge. That looks bad.”
The third man said, “Maybe we oughta just run for it." Stennis answered, “If there ain’t a lot of us they’ll just hunt us down,” before John could think of a reply; he felt grateful. Some of the other men were following them; but others, he felt certain, had already disappeared into the brush.
Into the mike he said, “Those militiamen and peaceguards who surrender prior to the first of our air strikes will not—we repeat, will not—be turned over to their former prisoners for punishment. You have our word” That ought to give them something to think about.
The young Martian had come up behind them now; he was carrying something that looked like a cross between a rifle and a motion picture camera with a zoom lens. Covering the face of the microphone with his palm, John asked, “Is there any real chance of making an air strike with that thing of yours?*
“The Lifting Body Vehicle? No, it’s not armed.”
The third tripod carrier said bitterly, “Then why the hell’d you bring it?”
The young Martian looked pleased. “Because of this planet’s thick atmosphere; they won’t work on Mars, of course, but they were developed for the Apollo program way back, and they’re just the thing tor Landing from an orbiter here. We dug out the old records.”
They had reached the crest of the ridge, but their view was still far from ideal. On the road and in the fields to either side men could be seen milling around. After staring for a moment the Martian asked. “What are they doing?”
John Castle said grimly, “Well, the man in charge’s only an actor, but if he’s got any sense he's rounded up the prisoners who didn’t stray too far and he's organizing the peaceguards to hold them while he comes after us with his militia. Will that thing actually shoot?”
“The rifle laser? Certainly."
“Okay, see the truck down there? Follow the way my arm’s pointing.”
"I see it.”
“Then knock it out. Destroy it if you can.”
The Martian stared at him in disbelief. “But someone could be killed.”
“I sincerely hope so!”
“It could even be one of your comrades; a fellow member of the labor force.”
“That would be better than nothing, but if it’ll make you feel better I’ll broadcast a warning. Shoot as soon as I’m through.” Into the microphone he said, “Prisoners, leave the area of the truck. We are going to destroy it.”
The Martian had raised the strange-looking weapon to his shoulder in a way that was reassuringly competent. John Castle did not see him pull a trigger, and the laser rifle produced no. sound, but a tree on the line between the Martian and the truck in the valley suddenly smoked, then erupted in flames. “Shift to your left,” the teacher said urgently, “and try it again.”
“It will take two hundred and ninety-seven seconds for the capacitors to charge again.”
“What!”
The Martian was apologetic.
A rifle bullet glanced off a tree somewhere near them and went yelling off into the chill air.
“That’s nearly five minutes," John Castle said bitterly. “You'd better make that next shot a good one."
“Well, you see we didn’t really come here to fight. We feel that if we can take our case to the people they’ll see the logic of our position.”
John Castle was about to answer him when a rattle of fire cut him off. Instinctively they all ducked. “What was that?”
the Martian asked worriedly.
“The machine gun. They had it on the truck, but they must have gotten it off before we got up here. You’ve never heard one before, have you?”
The Martian shook his head.
"I haven’t either, not since I was a child and my father used to take me to the range.” He noticed that the Martian was watching a tiny red jewel-light on the laser rifle’s stock, and pointed to it. “That the signal?”
“Yes, when that goes off the capacitors are fully charged and accepting no more current I think it’s about ready; shall I try for the truck again?”
“No. I only asked you to shoot at it before because I thought it likely they still had the machine gun in there. Now we have to locate it; I wish it would fire again.”
Steams said, “Well, by God I don’t!” and even the Martian smiled.
Into the microphone John said, “Men, are you going to let four dumb peacies hold you together like cattle until the Martian air strikes come in and kill you all?” A long burst of machine-gun fire cut off the sound of his voice. It stopped suddenly and indistinctly, far to their left, he could hear someone wrestling the bolt to clear what was probably a burst cartridge.
“I wouldn’t talk like that,” old Stennis said quietly. ‘They’ll know it’s you. Make out you’re Martian.”
“What do I care if they know who l am?”
Stennis spat, “Listen, I was up to Quentin in eighty-three when they had the big riots. There was some that was right in the thick* but the guards never knowed it. When the thing was put down they got back in their cells and there wasn’t never nothing did to them.”
“We’re not going to be put down,” John said. Two rifle shots whisked by, close together. Before John could stop him the Martian had his laser rifle up; halfway down the slope another fire started.
"I saw him!” the Martian said excitedly.
“So did I, but you didn’t have to waste your shot on him,” John said. “Come on, now we have to get out of here." He looked around for the third man who had helped with the tripod, but he was gone.
“He was standing up, shooting at us!”
“So you set another bush on fire. You’d better grab that other leg if you want to save this thing. We're going back down the hill—that laser gun may have looked great on the Martian flats but it’s not worth a constitutional dollar in these woods.”
“What are we going to do, then?” The Martian’s face was already drawn under the strain of struggling with the tripod.
“Could a passenger fire from the open door when that lifting body plane of yours is airborne?”
The Martian shook his head. “Wind pressure on the door would be too great; besides to stay up I’d have to be going too fast for you to hit anything.”
The machine gun was rattling now, apparently cleared, but its fire was still directed toward the crest of the ridge.
“But you could get another man in the plane? How about two7”
This time the Martian’s head-shake was decisive. “One would have to be sitting in my lap, just about, and I’m not certain I could take off from here with the added weight.”
John Castle frowned for a moment, then came to a decision. “Here’s what we’ll do, then. Let’s set this tripod down right here; we’re far enough away from the ridge already and I don’t think we want to get out into the open with it where it can be easily seen. You stay here with it. Ill take the laser gun, and Stennis and I will try to outflank the militia and knock out the machine gun. If we can do that, it will probably take the heart out of the militia and there’s a chance you might actually accomplish something with a propaganda appeal.”
The Martian accepted the microphone he had given up a few minutes before and crouched in the winter-killed brush with it, looking nervously from John Castle to his plane and then back to the teacher. “Shouldn’t he,” he gestured toward Stennis, “stay with me since he won't have a weapon?”
John shook his head. “If I’m hit he can use this, and if we get the machine gun he can arm himself ” The second time the Martian had fired the laser rifle he had located the tiny switch on the underside of the stock. Now, taking the clumsy weapon into his own hands, he checked it again.
“That’s it,” the young Martian said. He grinned unexpectedly. “Lots of luck.”
“We're gonna need it,” Stennis said. Half-crouching, he followed the teacher, who was already moving among the trees that formed the skirt of the wood.
The Martian suddenly found himself alone, listening to the faint crackling the two made as they moved through the brush and to the occasional shots of the other Earthmen, who were still shooting blindly at the ridge line.
There was a new burst of firing, somehow sounding more purposeful than the others. He stiffened. From the end of the ridge, where the enemy must be, he heard shouts. Smoke from the fires started by the laser rifle had drifted over that area, making it difficult to see what was happening. It seemed probable, though, that the two friendly Earthmen would welcome a distraction. He whispered into the microphone and his voice went booming among the trees: “Soldiers of the illegitimate government, lay down your arms. This is your last opportunity”
The quick-firing missile projector sounded. It was not destroyed, then.
As he tried to locate it, new flames spurted up in the same area. That would be the blond Earthman’s shot, and he too had missed. There was another uneven flurry of rifle fire. “Lay down your armshe said again.
Someone was coming toward him, forcing a path through the crackling growth. He tensed himself to make a dash for the LBV. Then he saw them; it was the blond Earthman, and be was supporting the older man as the two of them stumbled forward. Blood was staining the older one's coat. He ran forward to help.
“Can you take him in the plane?" the blond man asked. “Get him to a doctor?"
He nodded taking the wounded man, who protested feebly. “What are you going to do?"
“Circle around the ridge there and try to come up behind the men the peaceguards are holding, then mix with them. I doubt if anybody was watching me close enough to identify me when I ran off, and with four men guarding three hundred it should be possible to slip back in."
They were at the LBV now; he climbed in, then with the Earthman's help pulled the wounded man in as gently as he could. The skin of his face was the same gray color as his stubble of beard.
“The machine gun's over there," the blond man said, gesturing. “You’d better try to cut away from it as soon as you’ve got enough altitude."
He nodded, his hand on the door handle. “You should go."
The blond man smiled briefly. “When you go up you’ll distract them for me." He tossed the laser rifle into the LVB, The Martian shut the door and waited a few seconds to give him time to get clear before he ignited the jets. The roar drowned out all other noises, so that he found himself suddenly returned to the familiar, with only the bleeding man he held and the outline of the trees in the viewscreen to remind him of his brief entry into the struggles of the home planet’s surface.
With the extra weight to consider he shoved the throttle fully forward on takeoff. The upper branches of the trees vanished under him. The Earthmen would be shooting at him. He banked hard, hoping to pick up the running figure of the blond man in his screen—but there was only a confusion of trees.
CHAPTER V
".... WHERE THE LION SLEEPS”
“Sit down, Castle,” the man in tweeds said. “Let me explain right now that I’m just as much a prisoner as you are. Does that surprise you?”
John Castle nodded. The miles he had walked since slipping back into the column after the Martian raid had not prepared him for this. That morning when he had been separated from the rest and packed aboard a truck with two dozen would-be PRESTmen like himself he had imagined they would be taken to some compound only slightly better than a prison camp. But the towering, glass-fronted building in which he now found himself had all the earmarks of a center of authority, and the man in tweeds looked like an administrator. He was well-fed and well-groomed, and his suit was better than ninety-nine percent of the free people in the nation could afford.
“Well, I am a prisoner. Seventeen years ago I was convicted of mail fraud. I still have three years to serve.”
“Really?” The teacher seated himself gingerly in one of the cleanly functional office chairs. “May I ask how long your sentence was?”
“I just told you, twenty years.”
“And you’ve gotten this position, but no time off? I was told that there was talk of denying it to PRESTmen, but I thought that was a new development.”
“I refused it,” the man in tweeds said smiling. “Even if they don’t do away with it there’s a good chance you’ll refuse yours too. Most of us do.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I know you’d like to get out of those filthy rags first and get yourself a bath, but the washing facilities here are overcrowded with all you new arrivals, so since you’re going to be in my bunch I thought we could have a little orientation meeting.
“All right, here I am; orient me. To start with, you could tell me where here is.”
“I take it you know you’re in New York?”
“That’s what I was told, yes.”
The man in tweeds smiled. “Never trust ’em, eh? Well you can trust me. Right this moment you are in New York, in the PREST Headquarters Building, and that crummy-looking water you see out the window is the East River. I personally am your new boss—the official term is Group Leader. Name’s Frank Colby.” He extended his hand and John rose to take it.
“John Castle.”
“Well.” The man in tweeds rubbed his hands together as
Soon as John released the one he had shaken, it was as though he had just completed a shrewd bargain. “Well, now that we’ve met formally may I ask what your degree’s in? We’re all college men in PREST, you know.”
“General Science.”
“You’re putting me on.”
John shook his head. “Afraid not.”
“Well, that is going to be a bit of a problem.” With the tips of his fingers Colby smoothed the strands of white hair at his temples, a gesture apparently indicative of distress. “Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not a bit prejudiced myself. But you take the average man—what you might call the man in the street—and tell him that and it’s going to be like you spit on the flag. An engineer or something like that's bad enough >»
“When you say the man in the street,” John interrupted, “do you mean the people with whom I’ll be working in PREST? Ot am I going to keep on with my prisoners?”
“Lord no!” Colby looked shocked. “Listen, you’ve got to be around here eight years or better before you get to work on prisoners. Just because you had it soft on the way up you shouldn’t expect it to keep on now that you’re here.”
When he had taken a bath and changed into new, clean clothing (a prestige-conferring business suit, although he noted wryly that the material was not nearly as good as Colby’s), he was introduced to the other members of the group in which he was to work. There were several B.A/s, a physical educationalist, an industrial artist, and a non-Newtonian naturopath. The naturopath, who seemed to have been assigned to serve as his sponsor, introduced him to the others as “John Castle, master of educational skills," and John sensed Colby's hand in this concealment of his scientific background, but he did not bother to correct it. He was too busy informing himself about the work in which he would be involved.
