Mission: Earth "Disaster" (9 page)

Heller put the tug quite close to the outermost ring and travelling with the rotation of the whole body at the same speed so that we appeared motionless except for the tiny movement of the stars beyond in the black sky. I was surprised that I could see star motion at all. This planet must be rotating on its axis more rapidly than Earth.

"Corky, turn your traction beams on. Full power. We're going to take too big a bite and then shed some if we have to cut it down in size."

"Bite of what?" I said.

"Ice," said Heller. "Those particles are ice. It will never miss a few billion tons."

"We came all the way out here for ice?" I said.

"Certainly. We could have gotten some from a comet if one had happened to be handy, but actually this is purer stuff. We don't want too many stones."

"What in Heavens' names are you going to do with it?" I said.

"Use it to tap the poles straight, of course," said Heller. "You don't want the poles drifting over water again. It would flood Earth."

"You mean you are adding water to stop flooding?" Good Gods, now I knew he was insane.

"A few billion tons of water is nothing. Water is awfully heavy stuff. What we're taking wouldn't even make a small mountain. Lock on, Corky."

The vibrations of the traction engines were added to the whine of gravity coils.

"Escape velocity is twenty-two miles per second," said Corky. "I recommend we do half a planetary rotation. That's five hours and seven minutes."

"All right," said Heller. "Carry on."

The Will-be Was time drives went on with a fearful initial roar in the center of the ship.

Heller was watching a rearward screen. At first there was very little change in the outermost ring, to which we were lying very close. Then I saw a hairline gap. As the seconds turned to minutes it began to widen.

Very, very fractionally, the planet face began to move rearward.

About fifteen minutes later, I said, "We're going to leave a hole in that ring."

"It'll fill in," said Heller. "Proportionately speaking, we're taking almost nothing."

He thought it was nothing. The whole sky behind us seemed to be filled with ice!

"Some astronomer on Earth is going to see this," I said.

"Oh, I doubt it. And if he did, he'd just think it was some new comet."

"Well, the last assassin ship is going to see it, and they'll know better."

"You worry too much," said Heller.

"I'm almost dead from worry," I said. "Why don't you let me lie down in a bunk and sleep?"

He ignored me.

Time ticked on. The vast amount of ice was creeping further and further from the ring and planet face. The Will-be Was drives droned and pounded.

The tug was right. It did take more than five hours to pull that huge mass free of Saturn's gravity and into space.

It was travelling faster and faster now, glaring white in the light of the distant sun, sharply outlined against the ink of space.

Heller and the tug calculated the course for Earth.

Whatever else was wrong and whatever else I had to solve, one fact was clear as terror to me. The assassin ship couldn't possibly miss us. And it was lying in wait.

The giant Will-be Was time drives thundered in the diminutive hull, the traction motors whined. Billions of tons of silvery ice were dragged for millions and millions of miles across the ink of space. Once during the voyage it had gotten up to half the speed of light. Then the tug had turned around and braked it for a while, reducing its speed. Now we were in front of it once more, the bulk of the distance behind us, travelling at a much slower velocity but still far out and beyond the orbit of Earth's moon. Heller was busy calculating things like Earth rotation and its coordinates in its orbit around the sun. He adjusted speed a couple of times and then seemed satisfied with the angle of approach.

Earth had ceased to be just another bright spot and was assuming shape. The shadow of its twilight zone was now becoming very plain.

Heller waited until we were about four times the orbit of the yellowish moon away from Earth and then put his clipboard down. We and the ice mass were travelling very fast.

"Check these figures, Corky," and he read them off. "How does that strike you?"

"Well, sir, it isn't going to strike ME. The mass will hit the north pole of the planet at an angle of thirty-three degrees in the direction southward on east longitude 36.5. By gyroscopic precession, it will tend to shift the spin of the internal core slightly and move the magnetic poles closer to the Earth's axis."

"And your conclusion on the effect of this?" said Heller.

"It will cure the tendency of the southern pole to wander over the water, thus melting the place and causing continental submergences. The liability is that it will probably hit some polar bears."

"Thank you. Please verify the approach again."

"Well, sir, I think it will require a final downward twitch of six million foot-pounds of thrust just before we disengage at the top of the planet's atmosphere. There will otherwise be a slight cushion effect. What about the polar bears, sir? Should I send out a warning?"

"They're extinct," said Heller. "There isn't any life worth mentioning at the north pole."

"Thank you, sir. I will amend my survey data. Sir, my 124th subbrain is reading red. There is some magnetic turbulence straight ahead about half a million miles from the planetary surface. It is on viewscreen thirteen."

There it was! A coil of disturbance.

THE ASSASSIN SHIP!

It was rising far above the Earth's surface to meet us!

"Blast," said Heller. "I didn't expect him this soon." He picked up a microphone. He spoke into it. "Calling Apparatus vessel."

There was no answer. He verified that he was on Apparatus intership frequency, limited range. "This is Tug One, the Prince Caucalsia, Exterior Division. I have a tow. I do not wish to be interfered with."

There was no answer.

Heller tried again, "Apparatus vessel, this is Jettero Heller, Grade X, Voltar Fleet, operating under orders of the Grand Council. You are directed to reverse your course and forgo interference with this tow."

No answer! And there should have been. We were returning to the planet, and leaving it was all they were supposed to prevent.

And then it dawned on me that that assassin pilot and his mate had also received orders to kill Heller!

The ship just kept on coming right up to meet us.

"Oh, blast!" said Heller. "I can't abandon this tow! That crazy idiot is going to cause a catastrophe!"

He had hung up the mike. He switched all controls to manual. I expected him to disengage from the ice mass so we could flee.

He didn't! The bullheaded idiot was going to go on with his project!

We didn't even have a gun!

The assassin ship was coming very fast now on the screens. Heller flipped up the viewport covers. There the deadly vessel was! Slightly to our left. Very visible to the eye: he was so contemptuous that he hadn't even switched his silver coating off.

Except for turbulence, we ourselves must be invisible to him. But he had us spotted by the nearness of the tow behind us.

Heller reached for our overhead, adjusted a dial and threw a switch. He put a thumb on the firing panel. I couldn't imagine what he was doing. We didn't have a real cannon.

Abruptly, about a thousand yards ahead of us, another ship appeared!

It rattled me.

It looked just like Tug One!

The second barrel he had put up there!

It was obviously an electronic illusion projector, so common in Voltar celebrations and displays.

To the assassins, it must have looked like the tug had simply turned its silver coat on!

The deadly ship was off to our left. It was turning.

IT FIRED!

The shot was well above the illusion.

IT FIRED AGAIN!

The shot was below the illusion.

ANOTHER SHOT!

Flame burst right in the middle of the illusion tug!

Heller threw a switch.

The illusion vanished!

For a breathless span of time I thought we had gotten away with it.

If we had luck, the flying cannon would now turn away and depart for the planetary surface, thinking it had done its job. Please go, I prayed silently. Please be fooled and leave us alone.

Suddenly I realized what was wrong. He must have seen that no debris had resulted from the shot! Either he or his instruments thought that he had missed!

He was turning, and even though he was ten miles to our left, I could almost look down his cannon barrel. His instruments had found our turbulence again!

A FLASH!

The tug bucked.

WE WERE HIT!

Suddenly the Will-be Was main drives shrieked into a high whine. , . It was as if a slingshot had been released and we were the pellet!

We vaulted across the black sky in a sickening cartwheel.

Corky's voice: "Damage! Damage! Our traction engines are disabled! We have lost our tow!"

The planet's distant surface was hurtling up at us.

Heller's hand slapped the throttles of the main drives shut. He yanked the planetary auxiliaries wide open.

We were braking at full throttle!

The Earth steadied to the same size for three consecutive seconds and then again began to grow smaller.

Heller was cuffing the controls around.

We faced now toward the vast white bulk of the tow.

An explosion bloomed off to our right.

The assassin ship was firing.

It was now visible to the right of the tow.

With the auxiliaries, Heller jinked toward the explosion spot.

Another explosion flashed to our left.

"Blast him," said Heller. "He's a better gunner!" He was slewing to the left. I knew then that we were up against the lead assassin pilot. Yes, he was the better gunner. He was an expert at killing ships that sought to flee battle. This unarmed, unarmored tug would be nothing for him.

The flying cannon was near the hurtling mass of ice.

Heller made the tug leap far to the right.

A shot exploded just where we had been a split second before.

Heller dived. He hauled up suddenly. And just where we would have gone, fire bloomed!

"He's too good," said Heller. "And he's only firing at turbulence!"

We shifted skyward. The assassin ship was only a mile away. I saw its cannon wink.

Heller's hand closed on his firing pin.

An illusion of the tug appeared to the right of the flying cannon, between it and the ice tow.

The assassin ship turned toward it!

On other screens I could see that we were hurtling down at the top of Earth, the battle travelling at the dizzy speed of advance of that ice mass.

The cannon fired!

The shot went through the illusion and sprayed thousands of tons of ice about.

Heller maneuvered the tug.

The illusion seemed to be closing on the flying cannon.

The assassin pilot fired again. More ice tonnage flew.

The illusion seemed to be broadwise to the other vessel. It seemed to be closing with it sideways!

The flying cannon must have thought that all it had to do was push its muzzle against the tug and shoot.

It charged the illusion!

Heller twitched his controls.

The illusion must be blanking off the entire forward view of the assassin ship! But we were seeing it sidewise.

The flying cannon instruments and viewers must have been all involved with the illusion. He was depending on instruments and otherwise flying blind!

The assassin ship hurtled at its target!

Heller shifted the illusion to keep the assassin ship's nose headed at it and the instruments concentrated on it.

Suddenly I realized that the illusion was penetrating the edge of the ice mass!

The assassin ship made one more charge.

A HUGE GOUT OF ORANGE AND GREEN FIRE!

The flying cannon had plowed straight into the ice mass and exploded!

Ice and flaming chunks of debris made a sphere of their own, close beside the racing mass of frozen water.

Billions and billions of tons of ice were hurtling straight at Earth, out of control.

Oh, Lords," said Heller, "there it goes without its last correction!"

He was looking at the ice mass. Then he looked at the planetary surface. Through the viewports I could make out what must be Canada and Greenland and, over the curve, what must be Sweden, Finland and the north edge of European Russia.

"Quickly, Corky. Damage?"

"Nothing internal," the tug said. "The aft cable ends of the traction beams are totally fused. One mustn't even turn the traction motors back on or they'd explode."

"Time to repair?" said Heller anxiously.

"You don't have the tools aboard."

Heller watched the ice mass. I knew he must be considering some idiotic move like trying to butt it. Butt billions of tons of loose ice? We'd just get buried in it.

He looked at Earth again. "That's going to miss the north pole! Is there no way to give it downward deflection?"

"Bombs. We don't have bombs," said Corky. "My thirty-fourth subbrain says you could butt the planet. But this conflicts with my purpose to protect you from harm. All we would do is explode. The relative mass of our impact and the planet mass are incompatible. Correction. Incomparable. Sir, you are now approaching the mag-netosphere and have your pilot antiradiation plate open. Please dose it."

Heller didn't move. He was looking down at the top of Earth and the hurtling mass of ice. "Oh, Lords," he breathed.