The Invaders Plan (28 page)

I could muster no real arguments. So I simply drew in my breath and prepared to shout "NO!" He must have heard the breath intake. Before the word I was forming could come out, he said, "Soltan, you know and I know that we must not put secrets of the Apparatus before unauthorized personnel." It was a stripped, naked, totally unclothed threat. We were on Fleet territory. He was amongst friends. With a shock I realized he knew one tightly guarded Apparatus secret – the existence of Spiteos. He undoubtedly knew nothing else but that was enough! Something inside me seemed to break. I really
had
lost control. But just for now, Heller, I said to myself, just for now; when we're back in Apparatus territory, and certainly when I get you off this planet, watch out; you're going to pay for this!

I closed my mouth.

Seemingly oblivious of this byplay, Commander Crup and Atty were muttering together in a kind of huddle.

Commander Crup looked at Heller sadly. "Jet, I'm too fond of you to let you have this ship." My hopes soared!

"Jet, my boy," continued the old commander, tapping the Grand Council order, "you know and we know that you'll not be pulling any heavy loads: you'll be running any ship you get as just a mission ship. You certainly won't be going to some other galaxy. You'll be working in this one. And
Tug One
will develop more energy than you can use or waste and
boom!,
there you'll go just like
Tug Two
did. So don't waste any time in pleading. We know you." Heller smiled a disarming smile, "And what would you say if I told you I had invented a way to bleed off the excess energy?" My hopes fell.

"You mean," said Crup, "that you'd undertake to remodel the vessel before you left?"

"I would certainly promise to remodel it," said Heller.

Wait, wait, wait, I cried silently. This would take time!

Crup looked at old Atty. Then they both shrugged.

"But there is another hitch," said Crup.

My hopes rocketed up.

"Ordinarily," the commander continued, but this time looking at me, "if Jet wanted this ship he could simply sign for it and fly it away. In this case, he can't." I was eager to hear his next words.

"For some reason or other," said Crup, tapping the Grand Council orders, "the directive that the mission be undertaken assigns it to the Exterior Division. I can't imagine how the Exterior Division also got a Fleet man. ..."

"They probably didn't have nobody who knew how to run a spaceship," sneered old Atty. "Certainly nobody like Jet."

"... but in any event," continued Crup, "I cannot transfer a unit of the Emergency Fleet Reserve to the Exterior Division, much less its 'drunks.' Their Lordships in the Fleet would have my head." Relief! I had been rescued!

"However . . ." said Crup, getting some papers out of his case.

My hopes faltered.

He found what he was looking for. ". . . we quite routinely sell supernumerary spaceships to commercial companies engaging in peaceful interplanetary traffic. We simply strip out their guns and sensitive equipment and transfer ownership. Any transaction that can be done with commercial companies can be done with the Exterior Division.
Tug One
has no guns or sensitive battle equipment so . . ." He had a list. "The price of constructing
Tug One
was four million credits . . . the refit done on her by Admiral Wince was about two million credits . . . that's six million in round figures." My hopes rose. We only had an allocation of three million total. Six was way, way out of our price range.

Crup was pulling a finger down a column of figures. "But, of course, a resale figure wouldn't be that high." I held my breath. Please, please and please now give a figure in excess of three million.

"Ah," said Crup. "Here's a note about
Tug One:
Due to the Fleet having in excess of two thousand service tugs of the normal type, and if any purchaser will undertake upon the sales papers not to hold the Fleet responsible if this vessel blows up, the resale price is hereby fixed at a half a million credits.

My hopes crashed with a loss of all hands. "Perfectly agreeable," said Heller. "You sure you will remodel?" said Crup. "Absolutely," said Heller.

"Good," said Crup and he began to scribble and copy numbers and add conditions to a fatal paper that would transfer
Tug One
from the Fleet to the Exterior Division. But just before he asked for my identoplate he spoke again. "I don't think you can take it today. You don't have any engineer for her." There was not even a flicker of life in the dead ashes of my hopes.

And sure enough, old Atty said, "But he'll just need somebody to run the auxiliaries. They're simple! If you'll give me the rest of the day off, Commander, I'm his man!" He cackled. "Just so long as he don't ask me to turn on the Will-be Was main engines and just sticks to the planetary drives, I'll chief engineer for him! Today only." I am extremely well trained at hiding my feelings. I was certain that I had permitted no slightest trace of my reactions to show on my face. So I could not account for the possible malice in old Atty's voice as he turned to me and said, "I got a wife, kids, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren but I'm a lot too young to die at the throttles of time drives!" An idiot remark. It seemed to amuse him out of all proportion. He went tearing off to steal some spare fuel rods from a nearby ship.

Crup had to joggle me twice. He was holding out the completed documents.

With a feeling I was putting my own seal on my own death warrant, I pushed my identoplate against the paper.

Tug One
had just become the mission ship for Mission Earth! And there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing. Not right here anyway.

Heller was over by my airbus. My driver appeared to have breakfasted well on supplies in back. He was looking at Heller with a keen eagerness while the combat engineer gave him some very exact instructions. What was Heller telling him? Apparently there was something not entirely clear for Heller whipped out a notebook and wrote something very rapidly on it, tore out the sheet and handed it over. I was about to interrupt what might be a violation of security but before I reached them, Heller handed him some money. My driver, without even asking permission from me, took off. Oh, well. I'd grill him later.

The Commander had gotten on the old watchman's triwheeler. Heller went over and they shook hands and I heard the tail end of Crup's farewell. ". . . if you know what you're doing. Remember you promised to fix her up. Well, if I never see you again, good luck anyway." I shuddered. Crup backed the triwheeler to a safe distance and sat there to watch our departure.

Heller sort of hazed me into the ship the way they do animals that have gotten out of the pasture. He got me up the ladders and into the flight deck. There was still only his own beamlight and the dust motes made it look like muddy water. I could hear old Atty banging and swearing in the auxiliary engine room just below us. He seemed to be having a lot of trouble and must be using a sledgehammer to fix it.

There were two gravity flight chairs; Heller pressed me gently down into one of them. The dust clouds absolutely geysered. "Now this is the star navigator's seat you're in and we won't be going to any stars just yet. I'll be sitting right over there in the local maneuvering seat. We don't have time to unseal the ports and all the view-screens are around the other seat, but don't worry just because you can't see anything." He was buckling clasp-straps around me. The dust was horrible. I began to cough and tried to sit up to cough better but he just shoved me back. "Now this is a tug," he said when he had finished. "A tug is the quickest maneuvering ship ever built. Don't lift your head out of those pads or you could snap your neck. A tug can move sideways, up, down, back and forward in the flash of an eye. They have to be able to, so as to position themselves around battleships. So
don't
lift your head! Even on auxiliary drives, these things can be deadly fast. Understand?" All I understood was that I was choking to death on dust.

If he was so careful to tuck me in, how come he simply went over and perched on the edge of the local maneuvering chair?

The banging still went on in the nearest engine room. Then old Atty yelled, "You got power there yet?" Heller took his finger and ran it along a huge line of switches like a musician makes a run up the keyboard of an instrument. "Everything on. No lights!" More swearing from the engine room. Then, "(Bleep) it, Jet, we'll just have to run her on emergency lighting!" A feeble glow came on. The dust flying around made it look like green soup.

"I got the (bleeped) rods in," shouted Atty. Two more huge bangs. "I think the throttles will move now.

Let me get strapped down here where I can reach 'em." A long spell of coughing: must be dusty down there, too!

Jet said, "Let me see. Been three years since I touched a tug's controls." He was perched on the edge of the chair looking at what must be two thousand switches. He yelled, "You all set, Atty?"

"Set as I'll ever be."

"Give me power and local control." There was a shudder throughout the tug as Atty engaged the engines.

Heller looked thoughtfully over the array. "Hey, the viewscreens came on. What do you know." He hit a switch.

My hair rose. The inference was that he had been about to fly this blind!

But for all my fears,
Tug One
rose smoothly into the sky. I felt Heller fumbling at my tunic pocket. He was fishing out my identoplate. He cleared us for the Apparatus base and transmitted my identoplate and I felt him putting it back in my pocket.

I should have known he was up to something else but at the time, frankly, I was too scared of this tug and too choked with dust. Later I would realize that all he had to do at this moment was to fly to a Fleet base, turn me in and expose the whole Apparatus. But it wasn't until much later in that day that I found out he had his own personal plans.

The tug's communication system worked and he had a mild argument with the Apparatus base concerning the readiness of a trundle dolly to land on. Once more he had out my identoplate and he got his way.

We got there so quickly that he had to skyhang a couple minutes until they had the trundle dolly in position. Then I felt us plummeting down. We must have been quite high. It made me feel queasy. It sent dust up in clouds! I began to choke. And then I thought, oh, wait until I get you on the ground in Apparatus territory: you'll certainly hear about this day's work, Jettero Heller. And I had no more than thought that than I became painfully sick at my stomach. I wasn't throwing up but almost.

We were down!

Heller unbuckled me. He swung down the ladder and out. I followed him slowly and painfully. I emerged into the midmorning sunlight. We were at the Apparatus base all right. There loomed
Tug One
on the trundle dolly in all its awful ugliness.

Heller had the ear of the landing master and the signal sticks began to wag. The trundle dolly rolled ponderously back through the door of the hangar, going under cover.
Tug One's
weight was so great it made the dolly sag.

I was still coughing and wheezing and trying not to actually vomit. I didn't follow closely what was going on for a while. I just leaned up against the window of the inside hangar office and tried to get myself back together. If this was a sample of
Tug One
travel, I wondered sadly how we would ever get to Earth – with me still alive, that is!

But Heller was all bounce. You would have thought he had just been presented with a feudal dukedom. He got the trundle dolly under the crane and then got the crane master to engage his hook just right into the big steel loops on
Tug One's
back and with Heller's careful supervision, lifted the ship into the air. What a strong crane!

They got the trundle dolly out from under it and Heller showed them where to put some steadying chocks to make a cradle. And then with a swoop the crane laid
Tug One
on its belly into the chocks. She was now in normal flight position, horizontal, a common enough practice. The crane disengaged.

The hangar chief went over to Heller. Like all Apparatus personnel he was not a very pleasant fellow – mostly scars and bluster. "You're taking up one of the best places in the hangar," he said.

"I want a cleaning team," said Heller. "A very big one, all the men you've got."

"A what?" roared the hangar chief. Believe me, the last thing they had in the Apparatus was a cleaning team.

"I want it finished by midafternoon," said Heller.

The hangar chief looked like he was going to slug Heller. It was obvious that he was thinking, who the blazes is this bird in a racing suit, giving me my orders, me! here in my own hangar.

Heller said, "What did you say your name was?" The hangar chief roared, "Stipe, that's who! And I ..." Heller reached out to shake his hand.

The hangar chief took it, probably intending to do an arm-pull-hit routine. He suddenly froze. As he let go of Heller's hand he looked down and I caught a flash of gold paper.

The strangest look came over Stipe's face. Then he turned his palm to see the denomination. He looked up and if I have ever seen a person beam, he beamed!

"Say, you'll want your water and sewage and power hoses, won't you. A cleaning team, you say. Well, fellow, we never ain't had one before but we're going to have one now!" And he rushed off bawling for foremen and work gangs.

My driver staggered in, carrying some bundles and cans. "Here they are Officer Heller. Fleet cleaning supplies. I'll go get the rags!" He dumped his load and ran back to the airbus.

Old Atty had been standing around, watching the sudden scurry, so unlike the Apparatus. He went over to Heller and Heller thanked him and they embraced.

The old spacer came over to me. "I get the idea you're going off some place with Jet. There's something you ought to know. Jet's a dear boy. Everybody loves him. But he's really quite mad, you know. Speed. It's like food and drink to him. I think of him every now and then – you've not much to do as a watchman – and while there's a lot of smiles in remembering things he has done, there's always a bit of a worry, too. I'm getting old. I got a feeling I'll never see Jet alive again.
Tug One
is a killer." He fixed me with his swimming old eyes and punctuated every word with a piercing flash. "You hold him down. You make him keep that throttle just a little bit shut. You make sure
Tug One
don't kill him. Because, Officer Gris – yes, I saw your name on those orders and saw also you're a 'drunk' – if anything happens to Jettero Heller that can be laid to your account, there's a lot of us will find and kill you, Officer Gris." It was so illogical! It was so unjust! It was
I
who had tried to prevent Heller from getting that ship! The old spacer might be in his dotage and his wits might be adrift but there was no mistaking the menace in his voice. In some intuitive way, did he sense I was Heller's enemy?