CHAPTER XI
The New Boss
We had ultrophoned our arrival and the Big Boss himself, surrounded bythe Council, was on hand to welcome us and learn our news. In turn wewere informed that during the night a band of raiding Bad Bloods,disguised under the insignia of the Altoonas, a gang some distance tothe west of us, had destroyed several of our camps before our people hadrallied and driven them off. Their purpose, evidently, had been toembroil us with the Altoonas, but fortunately, one of our exchangesrecognized the Bad Blood leader, who had been slain.
The Big Boss had mobilized the full raiding force of the Gang, and wason the point of heading an expedition for the extermination of the BadBloods.
I looked around the grim circle of the sub-bosses, and realized the fateof America, at this moment, lay in their hands. Their temper demandedthe immediate expenditure of our full effort in revenging ourselves forthis raid. But the strategic exigencies, to my mind, quite clearlydemanded the instant and absolute extermination of the Sinsings. Itmight be only a matter of hours, for all we knew, before these degradedpeople would barter clues to the American ultronic secrets to the Hans.
"How large a force have we?" I asked Hart.
"Every man and maid who can be spared," he replied. "That gives us sevenhundred married and unmarried men, and three hundred girls, more thanthe entire Bad Blood Gang. Every one is equipped with belts,ultrophones, rocket guns and swords, and all fighting mad."
I meditated how I might put the matter to these determined men, and wasvaguely conscious that they were awaiting my words.
Finally I began to speak. I do not remember to this day just what Isaid. I talked calmly, with due regard for their passion, but with deepconviction. I went over the information we had collected, point bypoint, building my case logically, and painting a lurid picture of thedanger impending in that half-alliance between the Sinsings and the Hansof Nu-yok. I became impassioned, culminating, I believe, with a vow toproceed single-handed against the hereditary enemies of our race, "ifthe Wyomings were blindly set on placing a gang feud ahead of honor andduty and the hopes of all America."
As I concluded, a great calm came over me, as of one detached. I hadfelt much the same way during several crises in the First World War. Igazed from face to face, striving to read their expressions, and in amood to make good my threat without any further heroics, if the decisionwas against me.
But it was Hart who sensed the temper of the Council more quickly than Idid, and looked beyond it into the future.
He arose from the tree trunk on which he had been sitting.
"That settles it," he said, looking around the ring. "I have felt thisthing coming on for some time now. I'm sure the Council agrees with methat there is among us a man more capable than I, to boss the WyomingGang, despite his handicap of having had all too short a time in whichto familiarize himself with our modern ways and facilities. Whatever Ican do to support his effective leadership, at any cost, I pledge myselfto do."
As he concluded, he advanced to where I stood, and taking from his headthe green-crested helmet that constituted his badge of office, to mysurprise he placed it in my mechanically extended hand.
The roar of approval that went up from the Council members left medazed. Somebody ultrophoned the news to the rest of the Gang, and eventhough the earflaps of my helmet were turned up, I could hear the cheerswith which my invisible followers greeted me, from near and distanthillsides, camps and plants.
My first move was to make sure that the Phone Boss, in communicatingthis news to the members of the Gang, had not re-broadcast my talk normentioned my plan of shifting the attack from the Bad Bloods to theSinsings. I was relieved by his assurance that he had not, for it wouldhave wrecked the whole plan. Everything depended upon our ability tosurprise the Sinsings.
So I pledged the Council and my companions to secrecy, and allowed it tobe believed that we were about to take to the air and the trees againstthe Bad Bloods.
That outfit must have been badly scared, the way they were "burning" theether with ultrophone alibis and propaganda for the benefit of the moredistant gangs. It was their old game, and the only method by which theyhad avoided extermination long ago from their immediate neighbors--theseappeals to the spirit of American brotherhood, addressed to gangs toofar away to have had the sort of experience with them that had fallen toour lot.
I chuckled. Here was another good reason for the shift in my plans. Werewe actually to undertake the exterminations of the Bad Bloods at once,it would have been a hard job to convince some of the gangs that we hadnot been precipitate and unjustified. Jealousies and prejudices existed.There were gangs which would give the benefit of the doubt to the BadBloods, rather than to ourselves, and the issue was now hopelesslybeclouded with the clever lies that were being broadcast in an unceasingstream.
But the extermination of the Sinsings would be another thing. In thefirst place, there would be no warning of our action until it was allover, I hoped. In the second place, we would have indisputable proof, inthe form of their rep-ray ships and other paraphernalia, of theirtraffic with the Hans; and the state of American prejudice, at the timeof which I write held trafficking with the Hans a far more heinous thingthan even a vicious gang feud.
I called an executive session of the Council at once. I wanted toinventory our military resources.
I created a new office on the spot, that of "Control Boss," andappointed Ned Garlin to the post, turning over his former responsibilityas Plants Boss to his assistant. I needed someone, I felt, to tie in therecords of the various functional activities of the campaign, and takeover from me the task of keeping the records of them up to the minute.
I received reports from the bosses of the ultrophone unit, and those offood, transportation, fighting gear, chemistry, electronic activity andelectrophone intelligence, ultroscopes, air patrol and contact guard.
My ideas for the campaign, of course, were somewhat tinged with my 20thCentury experience, and I found myself faced with the task of workingout a staff organization that was a composite of the best and mosteasily applied principles of business and military efficiency, as I knewthem from the viewpoint of immediate practicality.
What I wanted was an organization that would be specialized,functionally, not as that indicated above, but from the angles of:intelligence as to the Sinsings' activities; intelligence as to Hanactivities; perfection of communication with my own units; co-operationof field command; and perfect mobilization of emergency supplies andresources.
It took several hours of hard work with the Council to map out the plan.First we assigned functional experts and equipment to each "Division" inaccordance with its needs. Then these in turn were reassigned by the newDivision Bosses to the Field Commands as needed, or as Independent orHeadquarters Units. The two intelligence divisions were named the Whiteand the Yellow, indicating that one specialized on the American enemyand the other on the Mongolians.
The division in charge of our own communications, the assignment ofultrophone frequencies and strengths, and the maintenance of operatorsand equipment, I called "Communications."
I named Bill Hearn to the post of Field Boss, in charge of the main orundetached fighting units, and to the Resources Division, I assigned allresponsibility for what few aircraft we had; and all transportation andsupply problems, I assigned to "Resources." The functional bosses stayedwith this division.
We finally completed our organization with the assignment of liaisonrepresentatives among the various divisions as needed.
Thus I had a "Headquarters Staff" composed of the Division Bosses whoreported directly to Ned Garlin as Control Boss, or to Wilma as mypersonal assistant. And each of the Division Bosses had a small staff ofhis own.
In the final summing up of our personnel and resources, I found we hadroughly a thousand "troops," of whom some three hundred and fifty were,in what I called the Service Divisions, the rest being in Bill Hearn'sField Division. This latter number, however, was cut down somewhat byt
he assignment of numerous small units to detached service. Altogether,the actual available fighting force, I figured, would number about fivehundred, by the time we actually went into action.
We had only six small swoopers, but I had an ingenious plan in my mind,as the result of our little raid on Nu-yok, that would make thissufficient, since the reserves of inertron blocks were larger than Iexpected to find them. The Resources Division, by packing its supplycases a bit tight, or by slipping in extra blocks of inertron, was ableto reduce each to a weight of a few ounces. These easily could befloated and towed by the swoopers in any quantity. Hitched to ultronlines, it would be a virtual impossibility for them to break loose.
The entire personnel, of course, was supplied with jumpers, and if eachman and girl was careful to adjust balances properly, the entire numbercould also be towed along through the air, grasping wires of ultron,swinging below the swoopers, or stringing out behind them.
There would be nothing tiring about this, because the strain would be nogreater than that of carrying a one or two pound weight in the hand,except for air friction at high speeds. But to make doubly sure that weshould lose none of our personnel, I gave strict orders that the beltsand tow lines should be equipped with rings and hooks.
So great was the efficiency of the fundamental organization anddiscipline of the Gang, that we got under way at nightfall.
One by one the swoopers eased into the air, each followed by its longtrain or "kite-tail" of humanity and supply cases hanging lightly fromits tow line. For convenience, the tow lines were made of an alloy ofultron which, unlike the metal itself, is visible.
At first these "tails" hung downward, but as the ships swung intoformation and headed eastward toward the Bad Blood territory, gatheringspeed, they began to string out behind. And swinging low from each shipon heavily weighted lines, ultroscope, ultrophone, and straight-visionobservers keenly scanned the countryside, while intelligence men in theswoopers above bent over their instrument boards and viewplates.
Leaving Control Boss Ned Garlin temporarily in charge of affairs, Wilmaand I dropped a weighted line from our ship, and slid down about halfway to the under lookouts, that is to say, about a thousand feet. Thesensation of floating swiftly through the air like this, in the absolutesecurity of one's confidence in the inertron belt, was one ofnever-ending delight to me.
We reascended into the swooper as the expedition approached theterritory of the Bad Bloods, and directed the preparations for thebombardment. It was part of my plan to appear to carry out the attack asoriginally planned.
About fifteen miles from their camps our ships came to a halt andmaintained their positions for a while with the idling blasts of theirrocket motors, to give the ultroscope operators a chance to make athorough examination of the territory below us, for it was veryimportant that this next step in our program should be carried out withall secrecy.
At length they reported the ground below us entirely clear of anyappearance of human occupation, and a gun unit of long-range specialistswas lowered with a dozen rocket guns, equipped with special automaticdevices that the Resources Division had developed at my request, a fewhours before our departure. These were aiming and timing devices. Aftercalculating the range, elevation and rocket charges carefully, the gunswere left, concealed in a ravine, and the men were hauled up into theship again. At the predetermined hour, those unmanned rocket guns wouldbegin automatically to bombard the Bad Bloods' hillsides, shifting theiraim and elevation slightly with each shot, as did many of our artillerypieces in the First World War.
In the meantime, we turned south about twenty miles, and grounded,waiting for the bombardment to begin before we attempted to sneak acrossthe Han ship lane. I was relying for security on the distraction thatthe bombardment might furnish the Han observers.
It was tense work waiting, but the affair went through as planned, oursquadron drifting across the route high enough to enable the ships'tails of troops and supply cases to clear the ground.
In crossing the second ship route, out along the Beaches of Jersey, wewere not so successful in escaping observation. A Han ship came speedingalong at a very low elevation. We caught it on our electronic locationand direction finders, and also located it with our ultroscopes, but itcame so fast and so low that I thought it best to remain where we hadgrounded the second time, and lie quiet, rather than get under way andcross in front of it.
The point was this. While the Hans had no such devices as ourultroscopes, with which we could see in the dark (within certainlimitations of course), and their electronic instruments would bevirtually useless in uncovering our presence, since all but naturalelectronic activities were carefully eliminated from our apparatus,except electrophone receivers (which are not easily spotted), the Hansdid have some very highly sensitive sound devices which operated withgreat efficiency in calm weather, so far as sounds emanating from theair were concerned. But the "ground roar" greatly confused their use ofthese instruments in the location of specific sounds floating up fromthe surface of the earth.
This ship must have caught some slight noise of ours, however, in itssensitive instruments, for we heard its electronic devices go into play,and picked up the routine report of the noise to its Base ShipCommander. But from the nature of the conversation, I judged they hadnot identified it, and were, in fact, more curious about the detonationsthey were picking up now from the Bad Blood lands some sixty miles or soto the west.
Immediately after this ship had shot by, we took the air again, andfollowing much the same route that I had taken the previous night,climbed in a long semi-circle out over the ocean, swung toward the northand finally the west. We set our course, however, for the Sinsings' landnorth of Nu-yok, instead of for the city itself.