The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (36 page)

"Good idea," said Krogson thoughtfully.
"There's too much at stake to have anything to go wrong. Select an
equivalent target, and we'll make a pass."

The fleet was now passing over a towering mountain chain.

"How about that bald spot down there?" said the
Exec, pointing to a rocky expanse that jutted out from the side of one of the
towering peaks.

"Good enough," said Krogson.

"All ships on central control!" reported the
gunnery officer.

"On target!" repeated the tech on the tracking
screen. "One. Two. Three. Four-"

Kurt stood by the front observation port watching the ground
far below sweep by. He had been listening intently, but what had been said
didn't make sense. There had been something about
batteries—
the term
was alien to him—and something about the garrison. He decided to ask the
commander what it was all about, but the intent-ness with which Krogson was
watching the tracking screen deterred him. Instead he gazed moodily down at the
mountains below him.

"Five. Six. Seven. Ready. FIRE!"

A savage shudder ran through the great ship as her
ground-pointed batteries blasted in unison. Seconds went by and then suddenly
the rocky expanse on the shoulder of the mountain directly below twinkled as
blinding flashes of actinic light danced across it. Then as Kurt watched, great
masses of rock and earth moved slowly skyward from the center of the spurting
nests of tangled flame. Still slowly, as if buoyed up by the thin mountain air,
the debris began to fall back again until it was lost from sight in quick
rising mushrooms of jet-black smoke. Kurt turned and looked back toward
Commander Krogson.
Batteries
must be the things that had torn the
mountains below apart. And
garrison—
there was only one garrison!

"I ordered fleet fire," barked Krogson. "This
ship was the only one that cut loose. What happened?"

"Just a second, sir," said the executive officer,
"I'll try and find out." He was busy for a minute on the intercom
system. "The other ships were ready, sir," he reported finally.
"Their guns were all switched over to our control, but no impulse came
through. Central fire control must be on the blink!" He gestured toward a
complex bank of equipment that occupied one entire corner of the control room.

Commander Krogson said a few appropriate words. When he
reached the point where he was beginning to repeat himself, he paused and stood
in frozen silence for a good thirty seconds.

"Would you mind getting a fire control tech in here to
fix that obscenity bank?" he asked in a voice that put everyone's teeth on
edge.

The other seemed to have something to say, but he was having
trouble getting it out.

"Well?" said Krogson.

"Prime Base grabbed our last one two weeks ago. There
isn't another left with the fleet."

"Doesn't look like much to me," said Kurt as he
strolled over to examine the bank of equipment.

"Get away from there!" roared the commander.
"We've got enough trouble without you making things worse."

Kurt ignored him and began to open inspection ports.

"Guard!" yelled Krogson. "Throw that man out
of here!"

Ozaki interrupted timidly. "Beg pardon, commander, but
he can fix it if anybody can."

Krogson whirled on the flight officer. "How do you
know?"

Ozaki caught himself just in time. If he talked too much, he
was likely to lose the scout that Kurt had fixed for him.

"Because he . . . eh . . . talks like a tech," he
concluded lamely.

Krogson looked at Kurt dubiously. "I guess there's no
harm in giving it a trial," he said finally. "Give him a set of tools
and turn him loose. Maybe for once a miracle will happen."

"First," said Kurt, "111 need the wiring
diagrams for this thing."

"Get them!" barked the commander and an orderly
scuttled out of the control, headed aft.

"Next you'll have to give me a general idea of what
it's supposed to do," continued Kurt.

Krogson turned to the gunnery officer. "You'd better
handle this."

When the orderly returned with the circuit diagrams, they
were spread out on the plotting table and the two men bent over them.

"Got it!" said Kurt at last and sauntered over to
the control bank. Twenty minutes later he sauntered back again.

"She's all right now," he said pleasandy.

The gunner officer quickly scanned his testing board. Not a
single red trouble light was on. He turned to Commander Krogson in amazement.

"I don't know how he did it, sir, but the circuits are
all clear now."

Krogson stared at Kurt with a look of new respect in his
eyes. "What were you down there, chief maintenance tech?"

Kurt laughed. "Me? I was never chief anything. I spent
most of my time on hunting detail."

The commander digested that in silence for a moment.
"Then how did you become so familiar with fire-control gear?"

"Studied it in school like everyone else does. There
wasn't anything much wrong with that thing anyway except a couple of sticking
relays."

"Excuse me, sir," interrupted the executive
officer, "but should we make another trial run?"

"Are you sure the bank is in working order?"

"Positive, sir!"

"Then we'd better make straight for that base. If this
boy here is a fair example of what they have down there, their defenses may be
too tough for us to crack if we give them a chance to get set up!"

Kurt gave a slight start which he quickly controlled. Then
he had guessed right! Slowly and casually he began to sidle toward the
semicircular bank of controls that stood before the great tracking screen.

"Where do you think you're going!" barked Krogson.

Kurt froze. His pulses were pounding within him, but he kept
his voice light and casual.

"No place," he said innocently.

"Get over against the bulkhead and keep out of the
way!" snapped the commander. "We've got a job of work coming
up."

Kurt injected a note of bewilderment into his voice.

"What kind of work?"

Krogson's voice softened and a look approaching pity came
into his eyes. "It's just as well you don't know about it until it's over,"
he said gruffly.

"There she is!" sang out the navigator, pointing
to a tiny brown projection that jutted up out of the green jungle in the far
distance. "We're about three minutes out, sir. You can take over at any
time now."

The fleet gunnery officer's fingers moved quickly over the
keys that welded the fleet into a single instrument of destruction, keyed and
ready to blast a barrage of ravening thunderbolts of molecular disruption down
at the defenseless garrison at a single touch on the master fire-control
button.

"Whenever you're ready, sir," he said
deferentially to Krogson as he vacated the controls. A hush fell over the
control room as the great tracking screen brightened and showed the compact
bundle of white dots that marked the fleet crawling slowly toward the green
triangle of the target area.

"Get the prisoner out of here," said Krogson.
"There's no reason why he should have to watch what's about to
happen."

The guard that stood beside Kurt grabbed his arm and shoved
him toward the door.

There was a sudden explosion of fists as Kurt erupted into
action. In a blur of continuous movement, he streaked toward the gunnery
control panel. He was halfway across the control room before the pole-axed
guard hit the floor. There was a second of stunned amazement, and then before
anyone could move to stop him, he stood beside the controls, one hand poised
tensely above the master stud that controlled the combined fire of the fleet.

"Hold it!" he shouted as the moment of paralysis
broke and several of the officers started toward him menacingly. "One
move, and I'll blast the whole fleet into scrap!"

They stopped in shocked silence, looking to Commander
Krogson for guidance.

"Almost on target, sir," called the tech on the
tracking screen.

Krogson stalked menacingly toward Kurt. "Get away from
those controls!" he snarled. "You aren't going to blow anything to
anything. All that you can do is let off a premature blast. If you are trying
to alert your base, it's no use. We can be on a return sweep before they have time
to get ready for us."

Kurt shook his head calmly. "Wouldn't do you any
good," he said. "Take a look at the gun ports on the other ships. I
made a couple of minor changes while I was working on the control bank."

"Quit bluffing," said Krogson.

"I'm not bluffing," said Kurt quietly. "Take
a look. It won't cost you anything."

"On target!" called the tracking tech.

"Order the fleet to circle for another sweep,"
snapped Krogson over his shoulder as he stalked toward the forward observation
port. There was something in Kurt's tone that had impressed him more than he
liked to admit. He squinted out toward the nearest ship. Suddenly his face
blanched!

"The gunports! They're closed!"

Kurt gave a whistle of relief. "I had my fingers
crossed," he said pleasantly. "You didn't give me enough time with
the wiring diagrams for me to be sure that cutting out that circuit would do
the trick. Now . . . guess what the results would be if I should happen to push
down on this stud."

Krogson had a momentary vision of several hundred shells
ramming their sensitive noses against the thick chrome steel of the closed gun
ports.

"Don't bother trying to talk," said Kurt, noticing
the violent contractions of the commander's Adam's apple. "You'd better
save your breath for my colonel."

"Who?" demanded Krogson.

"My colonel," repeated Kurt. "We'd better
head back and pick him up. Can you make these ships hang in one place or do
they have to keep moving fast to stay up?"

The commander clamped his jaws together sullenly and said
nothing.

Kurt made a tentative move toward the firing stud.

"Easy!" yelled the gunnery officer in alarm.
"That thing has hair-trigger action!"

"Well?" said Kurt to Krogson.

"We can hover," grunted the other.

"Then take up a position a little to one side of the
plateau." Kurt brushed the surface of the firing stud with a casual
finger. "If you make me push this, I don't want a lot of scrap iron
falling down on the battalion. Somebody might get hurt."

As the fleet came to rest above the plateau, the call light
on the communication panel began to flash again.

"Answer it," ordered Kurt, "but watch what
you say."

Krogson walked over and snapped on the screen.

"Communications, sir."

"Well?"

"It's that message we called you about earlier. We've
finally got the decoder working—sort of, that is." His voice faltered and
then stopped.

"What does it say?" demanded Krogson impatiently.

"We still don't know," admitted the tech
miserably. "It's being decoded all right, but it's coming out in a North
Vegan dialect that nobody down here can understand. I guess there's still
something wrong with the selector. All that we can figure out is that the
message has something to do with General Carr and the Lord Protector."

"Want me to go down and fix it?" interrupted Kurt
in an innocent voice.

Krogson whirled toward him, his hamlike hands clenching and
unclenching in impotent rage.

"Anything wrong, sir?" asked the technician on the
screen.

Kurt raised a significant eyebrow to the commander.

"Of course not," growled Krogson. "Go find
somebody to translate that message and don't bother me until it's done."

A new face appeared on the screen.

"Excuse me for interrupting sir, but translation won't
be necessary. We just got a flash from Detection that they've spotted the ship
that sent it. It's a small scout heading in on emergency drive. She should be
here in a matter of minutes."

Krogson flipped off the screen impatiently. "Whatever
it is, it's sure to be more trouble," he said to nobody in particular.
Suddenly he became aware that the fleet was no longer in motion.
"Well," he said sourly to Kurt, "we're here. What now?"

"Send a ship down to the garrison and bring Colonel
Harris back up here so that you and he can work this thing out between you.
Tell him that Dixon is up here and has everything under control."

Krogson turned to the executive officer. "All
right," he said, "do what he says." The other saluted and
started toward the door.

"Just a second," said Kurt. "If you have any
idea of telling the boys outside to cut the transmission leads from fire
control, I wouldn't advise it. It's a rather lengthy process, and the minute a
trouble light blinks on that board, up we go! Now on your way!"

XIV

Lieutenant Colonel Blick, acting commander of the 427th
Light Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial Space Marines, stood at his office
window and scowled down upon the whole civilized world, all twenty-six square
kilometers of it. It had been a hard day. Three separate delegations of mothers
had descended upon him demanding that he reopen the Tech Schools for the sake
of their sanity. The recruits had been roaming the company streets in bands
composed of equal numbers of small boys and large dogs creating havoc wherever
they went. He tried to cheer himself up by thinking of his forthcoming triumph
when he in the guise of the Inspector General would float magnificently down
from the skies and once and for all put the seal of final authority upon the
new order. The only trouble was that he was beginning to have a sneaking
suspicion that maybe that new order wasn't all that he had planned it to be. As
he thought of his own six banshees screaming through quarters, his suspicion
deepened almost to certainty.

He wandered back to his desk and slumped behind it gloomily.
He couldn't backwater now, his pride was at stake. He glanced at the water
clock on his desk, and then rose reluctantly and started toward the door. It
was time to get into battle armor and get ready for the inspection.