XIII
The Company fleet hung off Keegark, at fifteen thousand feet, in abelt of calm air just below the seesawing currents from the warmingAntarctic and the cooling deserts of the Arctic. There was the_Procyon_, from the bridge of which von Schlichten watched themovements of the other ships and airboats and the distant horizon. The_Aldebaran_ was ten miles off, to the west, her metal sheathingglinting the red light of the evening sun. There was the _NorthernStar_, down from Skilk, a smaller and more distant twinkle ofreflected light to the north of _Aldebaran_. The _Northern Lights_ wasoff to the east, and between her and _Procyon_ was a fifth ship;turning the arm-mounted binoculars around, he could just make out, onher bow, the figure-head bust of a man in an ancient top-hat and afringe of chin-beard. She was the _Oom Paul Kruger_, captured by the_Procyon_ after a chase across the mountains north-east of Keegark theday before. And, remote from the other ships, to the south, a tinyspeck of blue-gray, almost invisible against the sky, and a smallertwinkle of reflected sunlight--a garbage-scow, unflatteringly butsomewhat aptly rechristened _Hildegarde Hernandez_, which had beenaltered as a bomb-carrier, and the gun-cutter _Elmoran_. With theglasses, he could see a bulky cylinder being handled off the scow andloaded onto the improvised bomb-catapult on the _Elmoran's_ stern.Shortly thereafter, the gun-cutter broke loose from the tender andbegan to approach the fleet.
"General, I must protest again against your doing this," Air-CommodoreHargreaves said. "There's simply no sense in it. That bomb can bedropped without your personal supervision aboard, sir, and you'reendangering yourself unnecessarily. That infernal-machine hasn't beentested or anything; it might even let go on the catapult when you tryto drop it. And we simply can't afford to lose you, now."
"No, what would become of us, if you go out there and blow yourself upwith that contraption?" Buhrmann supported him. "My God, I thought DonQuixote was a Spaniard, instead of a German!"
"Argentino," von Schlichten corrected. "And don't try to sell me thatIrreplaceable-Man, either. Them M'zangwe can replace me, Hid O'Learycan replace him, Barney Mordkovitz can replace him, and so on down towhere you make a second lieutenant out of some sergeant. We've beenall over this last evening. Admitted we can't take time for a longstring of test-shots, and admitted we have to use an untested weapon;I'm not sending men out under those circumstances and staying here onthis ship and watch them blow themselves up. If that bomb's our onlyhope, it's got to be dropped right, and I'm not going to take a chanceon having it dropped by a crew who think they've been sent out on asuicide mission. What happened to the _Gaucho_ when she blew the_Smuts_ up is too fresh in everybody's mind. But if I, who orderedthe mission, accompany it, they'll know I have some confidence thatthey'll come back alive."
* * * * *
"Well, I'm coming along, too, general," Kent Pickering spoke up. "Imade the damned thing, and I ought to be along when it's dropped, onthe principle that a restaurant-proprietor ought to be seen eating hisown food once in a while."
"I still don't see why we couldn't have made at least one test shot,first," Hans Meyerstein, the Banking Cartel man, objected.
"Well, I'll tell you why," Paula Quinton spoke up. "There's a goodchance that the geeks don't know we have a bomb of our own. They maybelieve that it was something invented on Niflheim for miningpurposes, and that we haven't realized its military application.There's more than a good chance that the loss of the _Jan Smuts_ hastemporarily demoralized them. Personally, I believe that both KingOrgzild and Prince Gorkrink were aboard her when she blew up. That'ssomething we'll never know, positively, of course. That ship andeverything and everybody in her were simply vaporized, and theparticles are registering on our geigers now. But I'm as sure as I amof anything about these geeks that one or both of them accompaniedher."
"Paula knows what she's talking about," King Kankad jabbered in theTakkad Sea language which they all understood. "Just like Von sayingthat he has to go on our cutter, to encourage the crew. They alwaysinsist that their kings and generals go into battle, particularly ifsomething important is to be done. They think the gods get angry ifthey don't."
"And we have to hit them now," von Schlichten said. "They still have acouple of bombs left. We haven't been able to locate them withdetectors, but those geeks Kankad's men caught on that commando-raid,last night, say that there were at least three of them made. We can'ttake a chance that some fanatic may load one into an aircar and make akamikaze-raid on Gongonk Island."
* * * * *
The _Elmoran_ ran alongside, with her Masai-warrior figure-head andthe black cylinder on her catapult aft. Somebody had painted, on thebomb: DIRE DAWN _by Hildegarde Hernandez. Compliments of the author toH. M. King Orgzild of Keegark._ A canvas-entubed gangway was run outto connect the ship with the cutter. Von Schlichten and Kent Pickeringwent down the ladder from the bridge, the others accompanying them.As he stepped into the gangway, Paula Quinton fell in behind him.
"Where do you think you're going?" he demanded.
"Along with you," she replied. "I'm your adjutant, I believe."
"You definitely are not going along. Personally, I don't believethere's any danger, but I'm not having you run any unnecessaryrisks...."
"Von, I don't know much about the way Terrans think, except aboutfighting and about making things," Kankad told him. "And I don't knowanything at all about the kind of Terrans who have young. But Ibelieve this is something important to Paula. Let her go with you,because if you go alone and don't come back I don't think she willever be happy again."
He looked at Kankad curiously, wondering, as he had so often before,just what went on inside that lizard-skull. Then he looked at Paula,and, after a moment, he nodded.
"All right, colonel; objection withdrawn," he said.
Aboard the _Elmoran_, they gave the bomb a last-minute inspection andchecked the catapult and the bomb-sight, and then went up on thebridge.
"Ready for the bombing mission, sir?" the skipper, a Lieutenant (j.g.)Morrison, asked.
"Ready if you are, Lieutenant. Carry on; we're just passengers."
"Thank you, sir. We'd thought of going in over the city at about fivethousand for a target-check, turning when we're half way back to themountains, and coming back for our bombing-run at fifteen thousand. Isthat all right, sir?"
Von Schlichten nodded. "You're the skipper, lieutenant. You'd bettermake sure, though, that as soon as the bomb-off signal is flashed,your engineer hits his auxiliary rocket-propulsion button. We want tobe about fifteen miles from where that thing goes off."
The lieutenant (j.g.) muttered something that sounded unmilitarilylike, "You ain't foolin', brother!"
"No, I'm not," von Schlichten agreed. "I saw the _Jan Smuts_ on theTV-screen."
* * * * *
The _Elmoran_ pointed her bow, and the long blade of the figure-headwarrior's spear, toward Keegark. The city grew out of the ground-mist,a particolored blur at the delta of the dry Hoork River, and then acolor-splashed triangle between the river and the bay and the hills onthe landward side, and then it took shape, cross-ruled with streetsand granulated with buildings. As they came in, von Schlichten, whohad approached it from the air many times before, could distinguishthe landmarks--the site of King Orgzild's nitroglycerine plant, now acrater surrounded by a quarter-mile radius of ruins; the Residency,another crater since Rodolfo MacKinnon had blown it up under him; thesmashed _Christian De Wett_ at the Company docks; King Orgzild'spalace, fire-stained and with a hole blown in one corner by the_Aldebaran's_ bombs.... Then they were past the city and over opencountry.
"I wish we had some idea where the rest of those bombs are stored,sir," Lieutenant Morrison said. "We don't seem to have gotten anythingsignificant when we flew reconnaissance with the radiation detectors."
"No; about all that was picked up was the main power-plant, and theradiation-escape from there was normal," Pickering agreed. "The bombsthemselves wouldn't be detectable, ex
cept to the extent that, say, anuclear-conversion engine for an airboat would be. They probably havethem underground, somewhere, well shielded."
"Those prisoners Kankad's commandos dragged in only knew that theywere in the city somewhere," von Schlichten considered. "How aboutmidway between the Palace and the Residency for our ground-zero,lieutenant? That looks like the center of the city."
The cutter turned and started back, having risen another ten thousandfeet. Morrison passed the word to the bombardier. The city, with thesea beyond it now, came rushing at them, and von Schlichten, standingat the front of the bridge, discovered that he had his arm aroundPaula's waist and was holding her a little more closely than wasmilitary. He made no attempt to release her, however.
"There's nothing to worry about, really," he was assuring her."Pickering's boys built this thing according to the best principles ofengineering, and the stuff they got out of that big-economy-sizeshilling-shocker all checked mathematically...."
The red light on the bridge flashed, and the intercom shouted "_Bomboff!_" He forced Paula down on the bridge deck and crouched besideher.
"Cover your eyes," he warned. "You remember what the flash was like inthe screen, when the _Jon Smuts_ blew up. And we didn't get the worstof it; the pickup on the _Gaucho_ was knocked out too soon."
He kept on lecturing her about gamma-rays and ultraviolet rays andX-rays and cosmic rays, trying to keep making some sort of intelligentsounds while they clung together and waited, and, with the other halfof his mind, trying not to think of everything that could go wrongwith that jerry-built improvisation they had just dumped onto Keegark.If it didn't blow, and the geeks found it, they'd know that anotherone would be along shortly, and....
* * * * *
An invisible hand caught the gun-cutter and hurled her end-over-end,sending von Schlichten and Paula sprawling at full length on the deck,still clinging to one another. There was a blast of almost palpablesound, and a sensation of heat that penetrated even the airtightsuperstructure of the _Elmoran_. An instant later, there was another,and another, similar shock. Two more bombs had gone off behind them,in Keegark; that meant that they had found King Orgzild's remainingnuclear armament. There were shattering sounds of breaking glass, andheavy thumps that told of structural damage to the cutter, and hoarseshouts, and lurid cursing as Morrison and his airmen struggled withthe controls. The cutter began losing altitude, but she was back on areasonably even keel. Von Schlichten rose, helping Paula to her feet,and found that they had been kissing one another passionately. Theywere still in each other's arms when the pitching and rolling of thecutter ceased and somebody tapped him on the shoulder.
He came out of the embrace and looked around. It was Lieutenant (j.g.)Morrison.
"What the devil, lieutenant?" he demanded.
"Sorry to interrupt, sir, but we're starting back to _Procyon_. Andhere; you'll want this, I suppose." He held out a glass disc. "I neverexpected to see it, but at that it took three A-bombs to blow youloose from your monocle."
"Oh, that?" Von Schlichten took his trade mark and set it in his eye."I didn't lose it," he lied. "I just jettisoned it. Don't you know,lieutenant, that no gentleman ever wears a monocle while he's kissinga lady?"
He looked around. They were at about eight hundred to a thousand feetabove the water, with a stiff following wind away from the explosionarea. The 90-mm gun, forward, must have been knocked loose and carriedaway; it was gone, and so was the TV-pickup and the radar. Something,probably the gun, had slammed against the front of the bridge--themetal skeleton was bent in, and the armor-glass had been knocked out.The cutter was vibrating properly, so the contragravity-field had notbeen disturbed, and her jets were firing.
"It was the second and third bombs that did the damage, sir," Morrisonwas saying. "We'd have gone through the effects of our own bomb withnothing more than a bad shaking--of course, on contragravity, we'reweightless relative to the air-mass, but she was built to stand thewinds in the high latitudes. But the two geek bombs caught us offbalance...."
"You don't need to apologize, lieutenant. You and your crew behavedsplendidly, lieutenant-commander; best traditions, and all that sortof thing. It was a pleasure, commander; hope to be aboard with youagain, captain."
They found Kent Pickering at the rear of the bridge, and joined him,looking astern. Even von Schlichten, who had seen H-bombs andBethe-cycle bombs, was impressed. Keegark was completely obliteratedunder an outward-rolling cloud of smoke and dust that spread out forfive miles at the bottom of the towering column.
* * * * *
There had been a hundred and fifty thousand people in that city, evenif their faces were the faces of lizards and they had four arms andquartz-speckled skins. What fraction of them were now alive, he couldnot guess. He had to remind himself that they were the people who hadburned Eric Blount and Hendrik Lemoyne alive; that two of the threebombs that had contributed to that column of boiling smoke had beenmade in Keegark, by Keegarkans, and that, with a few casual factorsaltered, he was seeing what would have happened to Konkrook. Perhapsevery Terran felt a superstitious dread of nuclear energy turned tothe purposes of war; small wonder, after what they had done on theirown world.
For one thing, he thought grimly, the next geek who picks up the ideaof soaking a Terran in thermoconcentrate and setting fire to him willdrop it again like a hot potato. And the next geek potentate who triesto organize an anti-Terran conspiracy, or the next crazycaravan-driver who preaches _znidd suddabit_, will be lynched on thespot. But this must be the last nuclear bomb used on Ullr....
Drunkard's morning-after resolution! he told himself contemptuously.The next time, it will come easier, and easier still the time afterthat. After you drop the first bomb, there is no turning back, anymore than there had been after Hiroshima, four-hundred-and-fifty-oddyears ago. Why, he had even been considering just where, against themountains back of Bwork, he would drop a demonstration bomb as aprelude to a surrender demand.
You either went on to the inevitable catastrophe, or you realized, intime, that nuclear armament and nationalism cannot exist together onthe same planet, and it is easier to banish a habit of thought than apiece of knowledge. Ullr was not ready for membership in the TerranFederation; then its people must bow to the Terran Pax. The Kraganswould help--as proconsuls, administrators, now, instead ofmercenaries. And there must be manned orbital stations, and theResidencies must be moved outside the cities, away from possibleblast-areas. And Sid Harrington's idea of encouraging the natives toown their contragravity-ships must be shelved, for a long time tocome. Maybe, in time....
Kankad had a good idea, at that; a most meritorious idea. He was soldon it, already, and he doubted if it would take much salesmanship withPaula, either. Already, she was clinging to his arm with obviouspossessiveness. Maybe their grandchildren, and the Kankad of thattime, would see Ullr a civilized member of the Federation....
They paused, as the gun-cutter nuzzled up to the _Procyon_ and thecanvas-entubed gangway was run out and made fast, looking back at thefearful thing that had sprouted from where Keegark had been.
"You know," Paula was saying, echoing his earlier thought, "but forthe female pornographer, that would have been Konkrook."
He nodded. "Yes. I hope you won't mind, but there will always be aplace in my heart for Hildegarde."
Then they turned their backs upon the abomination of Keegark'sdesolation and went up the gangway together, looking very little likea general and his adjutant.
* * * * *
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