Read Ebook: Preview of Peril by Coppel Alfred Houlihan Raymond F Illustrator

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Ebook has 149 lines and 11030 words, and 3 pages

PREVIEW OF PERIL

With a flag officer on board the easy life of an informal vessel would vanish and something of the formality of a big ship would take its place. The officers and crew would feel themselves under the scrutiny of higher authority no matter how hard the Commodore tried not to interfere with the working of the ship. And it naturally followed that the ship's commander would lose some of the joy in his independent command. Thus a happy ship would become a tight one ... QED. It was a situation as old as ships and men.

So there was little joy to be seen in the faces of Commander Scott and his officers when Commodore Hartnett stepped through the valve followed by his staff. Nor was their anything about Hartnett's appearance to suggest that they had been anything but right about the manner in which Flotilla Blue Three would be handled throughout the coming patrol. The Commodore was a model of military correctness, a martinet moulded in two Martian Wars and twenty years in space to a steely hardness that was disconcerting.

There wasn't a man on board who hadn't heard of Hartnett, of course. A gambler in combat, he had always managed to come out ahead of the game. His record was the record of practically every major achievement of the Force. Most of it could be read from the four rows of ribbons under his Command Pilot's sunburst.

There was the pale blue of the Terran Honor Medal that he'd won by ramming a Martian dreadnaught of the Diemos class with his crippled corvette off Io in the first Cat war. There was the red bar of the DSM received for leading the first deep-space expedition to reach Ariel and Oberon in the Uranian system ... that, before Blake had been born. And the rainbow colored ribbon of the old UN patrol, the First Martian Victory Medal, the Venerian Exploratory Medal, the Spatial Cross; four rows of them ending up with the General Service and Martian Occupation Ribbon.

All the way out to Luna Base from Hamilton Spaceport, the crew of the flagship had been muttering about the "damned brass-hat" who was going to disrupt the pleasant life of their beloved ship with his unwanted, high-ranking, stinking, presence, but the iron-hard reality of the man and the aura of confidence that emanated from him as he stood on the steel deck of the Control, spiked their guns too quickly. From the moments Hartnett stepped aboard, reflected Commander Scott bitterly, the ship tightened up. From here on in it was Hartnett's ship and there wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it.

"That Hartnett will take over your ship, Scott," Morrow had told him. "He can't help it. From the moment he steps aboard, it'll be his baby." And Hartnett was a gambler....

Scott presented his officers to the Commodore almost jealously, starting with the Executive, Lieutenant Commander Chavez and Lieutenant Horowitz, the Tactical Physicist; and ending up with Ensign Blake, the Junior Gunnery Officer, who was startled from his nervous fidgeting by the sound of his name.

"A reservist," was Hartnett's only comment, and though it was said in a friendly tone, Blake flushed furiously and wondered if it stuck like straw out of his ears.

"Mr. Blake is the Charles Blake who won the New York to Ley City amateur skeeter-boat race last year, Sir," explained Scott.

The Commodore nodded vaguely, his eyes wandering over the burnished chrome and steel of the Control panels. "Good sport, small ship racing, Mr. Blake," he commented.

Blake's cherubic face burst into smiles. "The best sir!"

Hartnett's men were presented to the ship's commander more as a formality than anything else, as he had met them before. Thorne, a full Commander, was Flotilla Astrogator, Wilson and Orsov, Lieutenants, were Flotilla Gunnery Officers, James, a jaygee, was Flotilla Signals Officer, and Ensign Ward, a thin boy about Blake's age, was the Commodore's Aide. He sported his single silver augilette proudly.

They didn't seem a bad lot, reflected Scott grudgingly. Maybe they wouldn't get in the way too much.

"We can lift ship as soon as convenient, Mr. Scott," said Hartnett, issuing his first order.

"Aye, sir."

Hartnett turned to his staff. "Get yourselves below and sort yourselves out. Try not to take up too much room." As they vanished down the ramp, he turned to take a seat at the visiplates.

Scott was taking a time check from the Tower Control, and the signalmen were relaying the lift-ship order to the three other ships of Blue Three. Outside on the airless field, the amber warning lights were spinning on the Tower mast, warning the spacesuited maintenance crews away from the blast pits.

At best, she could stand no more than 5 Terran Gs and the rest of the Flotilla would be forced to keep to her reduced speed throughout the cruise. Her armament was lighter and her armor thinner than it should be. In fact, she was strictly Cat meat if she should ever be forced to stand and fight. And if they intercepted any Cats, that is exactly what she would have to do, since she was the only ship of Blue Three that could not outrun any comparable Martian ship.

He slipped into his G-Suit and plugged the lines into an outlet on the side of his chair. The second hand swept up the face of the dial, and Scott hit the firing studs. Far below, Jetman Collins removed the dampers from the main blast chambers.

The takeoff was strictly routine for the Luna Base personnel. The four ships of the Flotilla rose from the pits on their long tails of radioactive flame, setting the outside Geiger counters to clucking wildly and outlining in vivid relief the three dreadnaughts that lay in their careening berths and the dozen or so smaller ships on the line. Under 3 Terran Gs of acceleration, Flotilla Blue Three was soon lost in the ebony sky. For just an instant there was the vaguest suggestion of four racing shadows on the blue-green disk of the gibbous Terra that hung low in the heavens, and then nothing. The airless silence of Luna Base continued unbroken.

In the sheathed Control Tower, the Operations Officer made ready to go off watch. He was thinking of a few drinks and a girl and maybe a thick steak down in Ley City. Wonderful place, Ley City ... even in wartime.

The door burst open, but it was not his relief. It was a breathless yeoman of signals. He held a sheaf of papers in his hand.

"Has Blue Three lifted, sir? Cryptographing sent me with this."

"Damn! They're well out by this time Reilly." He indicated the radar screen that showed four rapidly moving pips already heading into deep space.

The yeoman handed him the papers without a word.

"What kept you?" The officer demanded angrily.

Reilly looked at his superior reproachfully. "I made it from Crypto in forty seconds flat, sir. Couldn't come any faster!"

"Dammit! Now we'll have to put this on tight beam and scramble it. Intelligence suspects the Cats have cracked our cipher!"

He sat down at the scrambler and began to type.

"COMMODORE CLARE HARTNETT: ABOARD TRS DARKSIDE FLOTILLA BLUE THREE. PRIORITY MISSION. REPEAT. PRIORITY MISSION. SPATIAL INTELLIGENCE REPORTS LARGE QUANTITY ISOTOPE X-R REFERENCE 6589-3 CODE BOOK IN DANGER OF CAPTURE AT METALLURGICAL STATION 9 CHART REFERENCE A-5. PREVENT AT ALL COSTS. LARGE CONCENTRATION MARTIAN PHOBOS CLASS CRUISERS AND POSSIBLE SUPERDREADNAUGHT ARMED WITH CYCLOTRONICS IN VICINITY SEARCHING FOR STATION 9. REPEAT. X-R MUST NOT FALL INTO MARTIAN HANDS. DESTROY IF NECESSARY. FOR YOUR INFORMATION AND GUIDANCE INTELLIGENCE SUSPECTS CIPHER TWO HAS BEEN CRACKED BY MARTIAN CRYPTO. LUCK. DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE. SIGNED: TORAN LONG, CAPTAIN, SENIOR CONTROL, LUNA BASE. END MESSAGE."

Rising, he detached the roll of perforated tape from the scrambler and fed it into the tight beam transmitter. When the roll was consumed, Long dropped sullenly into a chair. His relief arrived, but all desire to partake of the joys of Ley City was gone. Like most of the old timers he admired Hartnett immensely, and he could not rid himself of the feeling that he was in some way responsible for sending the fabulous spaceman into sure destruction.

Against the ten known cruisers and the suspected superdreadnaught that were searching that quadrant for the illusive Station 9, the strength of Flotilla Blue Three was sadly inadequate.

If the message had arrived earlier, a dreadnaught or at least a couple of cruisers could have been despatched with Hartnett's force. But the impossibility of a rendezvous in space made it strictly the Commodore's baby now. Besides, Terra had no ships to spare. Hartnett would have to rescue the three technicians at the Station and destroy the Isotope X-R with no help.

Oh, why, he wondered, wouldn't Terrans learn? An ancient leader of Terra's nationalist era had said it perfectly for them. Speak softly, he had said, but carry a big stick! Why wouldn't they listen?

He shook his head and left the Control Tower wearily.

"What's eating him?" asked the relief.

"He's just sent Blue Three into the Uranus quadrant," replied Reilly.

The relief gave a low whistle and turned to look out over the earthlit moonscape. "Too bad."

Hartnett caught the Commander's eye as he worked at the control board.

"Sorry to crowd you like this, Mr. Scott," he said.

"It's nothing at all, sir. It's a pleasure to have you aboard." Even as he said it, Scott realized how stupid it must sound. Of course it crowded him to have Hartnett aboard and it annoyed him being the second ranking officer on his own ship.

Commodore Hartnett smiled at the Commander's words. There was hardly anything else he could say, poor devil. Rank has its privileges, he thought. But he said: "Glad you feel that way," and fell silent watching Scott and the Quartermaster guide the ship through the first stages of acceleration.

"The cabin will be in order, Mr. Scott," replied Hartnett casually, "My staff and I are all destroyer men."

Scott cursed himself for an idiot and mumbled an apology, but the Commodore had let the incident pass with a half hidden smile and was inspecting the orbital calculators at the far wing of the Control panel.

The voice of Lieutenant Morse, Astrogation Officer, saved Scott any further embarassment. The communicator buzzed and Scott closed the switch.

"Control here!" he snapped, a bit too crisply.

"Astrogation. We'll be at the boundary of our inner patrol zone at 2335 Sidereal, sir."

Scott looked over at Hartnett. "Any orders, sir?"

Striding down the ramp, the Commodore came to the main gun-deck and headed aft, past the banks of five inchers and torpedo tubes that lined the inner shell. The gun crews stood respectfully as he walked past them and returned young Blake's sharp salute. Hartnett restrained a smile and continued down to the cabin deck.

Ensign Ward was unpacking his gear as he came through the valve, and listening to a commercial broadcast on short wave that crackled and faded with the vagaries of Terra's faraway heavyside layer. The reports, pieced together, gave a fairly comprehensive picture of the fighting that was going on in the Uranian quadrant.

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