The compleat collected s.., p.3
The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 3
"He was given eight months to do the job. The first six went in brushing up on the language; even with his training this was a little difficult. He knew it already, of course, but the recordings he'd studied back home had been made and translated during the original Survey, and were sixty-odd years out of date. The remaining two months were spent in digging up and relaying to the mother ship as much information as was possible without actually landing. There was some spare time when that chore was finished, so he decided to risk a landing. This was strictly forbidden and very definitely contra-regs, of course, but he liked the look of the place and he wanted to pick up a few souvenirs.
"On the way down he side-swiped a mountain-top and flopped into a deep freshwater lake. The scoutship and everything in it was converted into finely-reduced junk, but he was able to walk away from it, though he had to use a spacesuit as the wreck was one hundred-odd feet under water."
MATHEWSON paused, thinking of Allen's long, hard struggle to adapt to the customs of a world of aliens, and his almost hopeless resolve to rejoin his friends, and the desperate battle to make sure the Woomera ship would be finished in time. He looked over at the civilians. They were watching him intently, taking it all in. Maybe they weren't believing any of it, but they were definitely interested. Ellison was agog. The Major was tapping his slightly yellowish teeth with his pencil, with the air of one waiting not too patiently for somebody to shut up and stop wasting his time. Before he could put the thought into words the Doctor continued quickly.
"He had to take the first ship. It would have been easier to wangle a passage on a later ascent, but the mother ship would have left for home by that time. As it was, there was a very close race against time. After he told me all about it that night we began work on the Drive that was to take him to Titan. It is a surprisingly simple affair, a little like the, as yet, theoretical Ion Drive we talk about sometimes, though that model was very inefficient since Terran makeshifts had to be used instead of the proper equipment. By this time he was the sole authority on everything electrical that went into the ship, so there was no difficulty in installing the thing. But some of the apparatus just couldn't be disguised as normal gear and had to be carried aboard a little before take-off. The plan was to ascend to the group of 'cargo' rockets which contained the basic equipment and skeleton structure for the spacestation, and join them in their six-hour Pole to Pole orbit. Then he had to round them up into a tight bunch and, using some of the parts they carried, finish the drive unit. The Drive completed he was to radio the base here and then blow for Titan. The whole business was to be finished in eight hours at most, but five would have been plenty of time." Mathewson looked across at the two N.C.O.'s at their screens, and ended worriedly, "I hope nothing has happened to him."
"Let's make this as simple as possible. You say 'Allen' came from another planet, had an accident, got stranded, and you gave him a spaceship to help him get home again." Turner was furious. He showed it by being mildly reproving and very, very sarcastic. "That was terribly generous of you. Giving a twelve million pound spaceship to an almost perfect stranger, and him not even an Earthman." The Major tsk, tsk'd and fell silent.
For the first time since the Doctor had been brought in Ellison spoke up. He addressed the Major. "You don't get it, sir." Apparently he'd forgotten completely that he was the official pilot; his voice was awed, his eyes shone joyously, "The gift of the ship will make a big impression on Allen's friends. It is a friendly act towards a highly advanced and probably extremely powerful race, one they can't ignore. And, the most important item, it will prove to them that we are civilized." Then he amended, "At least some of us are." A technician beside him vigorously nodded agreement.
"Oh, no! Not you, too." From the look on Major Turner's face he obviously thought they should both have been certified long ago, but before he could give the thought expression the sing-song voice of the sergeant at the receiver focused all attention on the incoming message.
"Capetown reporting in. Radar shows two distinct traces, means ship is definitely pulling away from station. Signal indicates separation of about seven five yards, with this distance steadily increasing though at a very slow rate. Seeing nil, Sun in the way. Ends."
In the silence that followed the report Doctor Mathewson could be heard whispering, "He's not dead. Did you hear that. He's moving. He's not dead." There was a terrific load off his mind.
The Major smiled wolfishly, "No, he's not dead, yet." He had everyone's attention now. When he went op his tone was neither bitingly sarcastic nor pitched high in anger, it was low, clear and under perfect control. It sounded briskly efficient and very, very tough.
"I know what Allen is, even though I don't know who he is specifically, and by this time you should know, too. I'm beginning to feel a little sorry for all of you. You people, and especially the Doctor, were completely taken in by a consummate actor and expert psychologist who sized you up to a T and pulled the principle of the Big Lie on you. It might have been anyone, but you, Mathewson, fell for it. I'll ask one question. Did you build and test any of this Ion Drive equipment yourself?"
The Doctor shook his head, "No, but I've got three notebooks filled with circuit diagrams and equations. Besides, he said it worked only in a vacuum."
"I thought so. There is no Ion Drive, no base on Titan and no extra-solar planet. You should be able to see that now. Another thing. He was to link up with the 'cargo' rockets in the six hour orbit and remain there for not more than eight hours, ostensibly to complete assembly of the 'drive'. Well, he's now been gone over two days, and I'm afraid to think what damage he has done to our equipment there. If he's smashed it, another five years will be needed to replace it and build the spacestation and global TV relay we had hoped to have in partial operation early next year. He was to leave that orbit, in fact, the last report shows he has already begun to, but he's not going to Titan. Instead he will return to Earth with a very valuable ship, and he won't land anywhere near here. That you can be sure of. However, he isn't going to get away with it. I can't be absolutely sure of the damage he's done the spacestation gear, so I'm waiting until the ship is a few miles away from it before I blast him. When he is a safe distance away from it a 'cargo' rocket with its payload replaced by a homing device and an adequate charge of HE on proximity fuse will be sent up on radio control. I can't allow that ship to fall into the wrong hands." He finished grimly, "Mister Allen has had it."
There was a stunned silence, broken by Mathewson, who gasped, "You can't do that. What about ...?" But he was drowned in the general hubbub. Somebody was shouting, "What about those gadgets?" at the top of his voice and another, just a little lower in volume was stating loudly, "He did talk funny. Remember that ti—," the rest was noisy but indecipherable. The Major hit the desk top a smash with his fist and yelled "Quiet!"
In easy stages the room grew quiet. Suddenly the sergeant at one of the radar screens leaned forward tensely, then clipped out "Got her now sir."
Turner nodded curtly in acknowledgment and addressed the civilians again. "The ship has just been picked on up radar. It is due to pass over this point in roughly fifteen minutes. Eleven minutes before that occurs we will launch the intercepter missile—" he looked at his watch, and outside there was a sudden whistling thunder that climbed and faded and died in the high blue sky—"There it goes."
Mathewson bowed his head. His shoulders sagged and he seemed to have grown suddenly old. The others too, were deathly silent, listening to the dying echoes of the take-off. What their thoughts were was anybody's guess, but they were sad ones, one could tell that from their faces. On the wall a hitherto unused speaker crackled loudly and burst into life.
"Allen calling base. Hope you can hear me. Doc.—Hi, there! Is the Major being nasty? On the level, I hope everything went off O.K. I'd have called you sooner but I had to break into the transmitter for parts for the Drive. There were breakages on the way up, that's why I've had to hang around so long. But everything's fine now and I'm on my way. Doc, I feel like dancing ... Bet Major Turner is having a fit at this moment, but you've got those notebooks so nobody'll mind me swiping this old rowboat of yours. But warn them that the experiments must be carried out in space. The field from the coils in the converter stage, especially in atmos—but you know all this, Doc., we've been through it before. I have to sign off now, this sender is strictly from breadcrumbs, I've got to keep spitting on one of the terminals to insure a good contact, so you can imagine what it's like. I'm going now Doc ... home." The metallic voice stopped. There was an awkward silence, then it said simply, "Thanks, Doc." The words seemed queerly distorted, due probably to atmospherics, or maybe emotion, then there was a sharp click and silence returned.
The first sergeant cleared his throat and said plaintively, "Sir, the target seems to be radiating strongly on this wavelength, I can't get a fix with this glare covering the ..."
He was interrupted by the other N.C.O., who seemed to have forgotten all the strict rules about the use of the emotionless sing-song when delivering messages. He was almost shouting, "Sir, Melbourne reporting in. Say radar's gone nuts, but seeing's fine. 'Scope shows ship is travelling in a sharp outward spiral at between four and six G's, fairly belting along, they say. They want to know how the h ... Oh, excuse me, sir ... how can we possible hit anything going that fast with the makeshift thing we sent after it? And why is the ship trailing what appears to be an incandescent searchlight beam forty-odd miles long? Asks what the bl ... er, is going on anyway?" Breathless, he waited for the reply.
The civilians were being very rowdy and obstreperous, so he couldn't hear the reply, which was just as well perhaps. It wasn't very polite.
The End
Crossfire
New Worlds - June 1953
They were just seven rather strange looking canisters—something new the enemy were using, no doubt. But the Bomb Disposal squad found them too hot to handle.
COTRELL sat on the loose earth at the crater's rim and watched the tank close up to point-blank range. It was one of the newest and deadliest models; a shell from its main gun could knock a hole through four-inch armour plate with no trouble at all. That main gun was already loaded, and was now pointed directly at Cotrell. They couldn't miss him.
But they couldn't hit him either.
No doubt they would reload and try again, and they would keep on trying. Just like the machine-gunners back of him, and the two light tanks and the scout car over there on the right. If persistence was a virtue, he though, then these guys would very shortly be saints. Such trouble they were going to in order to wipe out just three men, but he supposed, a little cynically, it was the principle of the thing.
Cotrell sighed and looked over at Nelson, who was lying propped on one elbow and watching everything with a show of interest that fooled nobody. He was scared stiff. Beside him Corporal Barnes lay flat on his back, breathing slowly and economically, the way they're supposed to do on wrecked submarines. He did this because the air in here was stale, almost unbreathable, and that was the proper thing to do. Barnes was very practical.
If only one of the shells would get through and end everything quickly, before the slow, painful death from suffocation that was so surely coming. Cotrell glared again at the four-foot silvery torpedo lying a few yards away which was the cause of all this mess and wished fervently that he'd never heard of it. But he knew if he had the choice to make again, he would go through with it in exactly the same manner. Those torpedos had turned out to be something rather special.
THEY HAD been first sighted by a returning patrol. Then a bomb-disposal unit had gone out to look them over and, if necessary, to pull their teeth. Six hours later the unit returned, the men wearing looks of extreme bewilderment and refusing even to mention the job to anybody at all. Nobody likes being called a liar, a drunk, or mentally deficient, so they clammed up and discussed it only among themselves. Their officer, on the other hand, wanted most desperately to talk about it. He grabbed a jeep and scorched off to see his CO. He kept muttering to himself as he rode; he was a very shaken man.
The C.O. listened to everything he had to say with quiet attention. One would never have guessed, by his expression at any rate, that he was believing perhaps one quarter of it all. In his most gentle and fatherly voice he told the near-hysterical officer to dismiss and take it easy for a bit; then he began to think. Eventually he decided to play it safe and refer the matter up. Maybe the enemy had a secret weapon after all.
In jig time a lordly Major from Weapon Research arrived. He took a handful of technicians and about every portable testing device known to science out to the scene of so much mental anguish to settle the matter for good. He was very thorough—his report later was easily half an inch thick—but he too was completely baffled. This worried him, because up until now at any rate, he thought he knew his stuff. There was only one thing to do. Very politely and through the proper channels, he too, screamed for help.
HELP ARRIVED in the persons of Lt. Colonel Richard Cotrell and Captain William Nelson. Cotrell was a tall, rangy individual with the characteristic lines of asceticism, or maybe ulcers, around his thin-lipped mouth. He spoke like a schoolteacher. Nelson was the small, nervously active type who seem in a perpetual state of extreme worry. He wore rimless glasses, but he never worried about anything, in fact, he had quite a sense of humour, which only goes to show. Both wore their uniforms with the awkward air of the civilian scientist who would much rather have flannels and a lab coat, for they weren't regulars, but had been roped in by the Army to do some very hush-hush research.
Cotrell asked for six experienced men to form an escort for their protection in case they were attacked, and to tote some of the equipment. He could have asked for a full company and got them with no trouble at all, but he thought a small force would stand a better chance of doing the job unobserved. And it was very necessary that they do it unobserved, for circumstances pointed to the fact that the enemy was unaware that several of their secret weapons were lying in No Man's land, defenceless against the prying instruments and keen minds of hostile scientists. Up to now, though, the things had proved to be anything but defenceless, and the 'keen minds of the scientists' had seemed something less than razor sharp, but the General was confident that Cotrell would find the answer. While he was finding it, however, just to be on the safe side, he was to maintain strict radio silence.
The General had also said he was a nice guy and a very important person to his department. He didn't want him leaving his brains lying on the ground somewhere, so remember to keep his head down—but find out what those blistering things were, and what the blue blazes they were meant to do. So far they didn't seem to do anything at all.
So Cotrell and Nelson, with their sweating, heavily-laden bodyguard, went crawling out to discover what the torpedos were and what they were supposed to do.
THE ORIGINAL discovery had been made in a little area of rocky, broken ground surrounded on all sides by flat near-desertlike country that was just the thing for tanks but gave very little cover for men trying to efface themselves. This rugged jumble of rocks had been used often by both sides as an advanced observation post, and as a place for raiding parties to take cover. But that had been long ago. Now the big guns of both sides had its range to a T. At frequent but irregular intervals, just on general principles, they would plaster it so the place wasn't popular any more. At the moment, however, it was peaceful.
Cotrell had no difficulty in finding the upturned enemy truck with the silver torpedoes scattered on the ground beside it, and the deep bomb-crater nearby that from which the previous investigators had worked. It was an old crater, with grass growing in patches on its walls and floors. As craters go, it was fairly comfortable. They began sorting out their gear while the escort distributed itself around them in a wide circle and began waiting for something to happen, all the while hoping, of course, that nothing would.
Then the two officers crawled up to the rim and took their first real look at things.
The enemy truck had been shot up from the air. It was lying on its side, burned out, a total wreck. The seven silvery objects lay close together about ten yards from the truck. There were also a few empty metal canisters lying among them, but these had been proved innocuous. The nearest torpedo gleamed brightly in the sunlight less than three yards from the crater's rim.
It was about four feet long, and made from some highly-polished metal that seemed to be a perfect reflector. The nose came to a smoothly-rounded point. The tail, which was bare of any of the usual guiding vanes or detonating devices, was also smoothly-rounded except for a small flat area at the extreme end. This was about the size of a penny and was painted black. There were no other surface markings.
WHEN THEY had studied it for a few minutes in silence Cotrell shook his head in puzzlement and shrugged fatalistically. "Better make a start, I suppose," he said, "You stay here and reach me the stuff while I take a closer look. Okay?" He scrambled up over the rim and lay flat beside the torpedo. At intervals he called for various items of equipment which were handed up to him. Test meters and other enigmatic devices made a growing pile around him on the ground, but he was getting strictly nowhere. He shook his head in bewilderment. One would almost think this ... this some thing or other was placed here for the sole purpose of driving technicians into nervous breakdowns. He gave up for the time being in disgust and slid back into the crater.
