_"And that is why you will take us to Earth, Lieutenant,"
barked the Ihelian warrior. "We do not want your arms or
your men. What we must ask for is--ten thousand women."_
* * * * *
Mason was nervous. It was the nervousness of cold apprehension, not
simply that which had become indigenous to his high-strung make-up. He
was, in his way, afraid; afraid that he'd again come up with a wrong
answer.
[Illustration]
He'd brought the tiny Scout too close to the Rim. Facing the facts
squarely, he knew, even as he fingered the stud that would wrench them
out of their R-curve, that he'd not just come too close. He'd overshot
entirely. Pardonable, perhaps, from the view-point of the corps of
scientists safely ensconced in their ponderous Mark VII Explorer some
fifteen light-days behind. But not according to the g-n manual.
According to it, he'd placed the Scout and her small crew in a
"situation of avoidable risk," and it would make a doubtful record
look that much worse.
[Illustration]
The next time he'd out-argue Cain with his rank if he had to. Cain was
big enough to grab things with his brawny fists and twist them into
whatever shape he wanted when the things were tangible, solid,
resisting. But R-Space was something else again. Nobody knew what it
did beyond the Rim.
He materialized the Scout into E-Space, listened for trouble from her
computers, but they chuckled softly on, keeping track of where they
were, where they'd been, and how they'd get home.
It was as though nothing had happened. But Lieutenant Lansing Mason
was still nervous, his slender fingers steady enough, but as cold as
the alien dark outside the ship they controlled.
"You look a little shot again, skipper!" Cain said, grinning like a
Martian desert cat. "What's the matter, Space goblins got you again?"
A retort started at Mason's taut lips, but his third officer was
already speaking.
"Here's a dope sheet from the comps, if anybody's interested in
knowing just where outside the Rim we are," she said. "I make it just
a shade inside the outermost fringes of the Large Magellanic Cloud."
Sergeant Judith Kent's voice had its almost habitually preoccupied
tone, as though the words she said were hardly more than incidental to
a host of more important thoughts running swiftly behind her wide-set,
deep gray eyes. They were serious eyes, and in their way matched the
solemn set of her small features and the crisp, military cut of her
black hair and severe uniform.
"Our little boss-man knows where we are, all right!" Cain said.
Mason gave Cain's six-feet-two a quick glance, wondering as he always
wondered why the big redhead's shoulders always seemed too broad for
the Warrant Officer's stripes on them. "Sergeant Kent's right," he
said. "Here's her comp-sheet. You can look for yourself. Fringe,
Magellanic. And look at that while you can--" he jabbed a forefinger
at the main scanner, its screen studded with unfamiliarly close
constellations--"because we're on our way back. Set up a return on the
comps, will you, Sergeant?" For all his tenseness his voice was low,
and the words it formed were even and swift.
"Hell, Lance, this is the sort of stuff the brain trust pays us
bonuses for."
"Not out here they don't. R-drive when you're ready, Sergeant!"
Cain turned from the deep control bank and gave his full attention to
the scanner as the slender, efficient girl started feeding a tape of
reversal co-ordinates into the computers.
Mason waited the few necessary seconds, pushed disarranged dark hair
out of his eyes and felt the clammy dampness on his forehead, and
wished silently to himself that opportunists like Cain were kept where
they belonged--on the Slam-Bang Run out of Callisto. That's where the
money was. That's where a Warrant like Cain ought to be.
"Ready, sir," he heard Judith saying quietly.
"Hey, skipper!" There was a sudden urgency in Cain's voice, and the
equally sudden racket of an MPD alarm going off. Cain was gesturing at
the scanner, stubby finger tracing a slewing pip of light. The alarm
stopped, and Judith's cool voice was relaying information. "About a
thousand miles," she was saying, "mass, approximately three hundred
tons. Speed--"
* * * * *
But Mason wasn't listening. He was watching the pip of light as Cain
got the scanner's directional going, tracked it. Suddenly there were
others coming as though to meet it, and it swerved violently,
obviously in flight. And now there were more yet, this time from the
starboard quadrant of the screen.
"Radiation reading, Sergeant!" Mason clipped out.
While the two men watched, Judith read back the cryptic information
interpolated by the ship's mass-proximity detector.
"That's not all engine junk!" Cain exclaimed as she finished.
"We don't know what drive they've got," Mason answered. "Could be
anything--"
"Nuts! You wouldn't get that much from an old-fashioned ion-blast,
skipper! That's a shooting war, that's what it is!" There was a
glitter in Cain's narrowed brown eyes; a new edge on his heavy voice.
"Which side do we take, boss-man?"
"No side at all," Mason said, hardly moving his lips. "We're getting
the hell out of here."
"Look, Lance. We've got a crew of ten--we've got a couple of m-guns
aboard because we're a Scout. No telling how one of those outfits may
show their gratitude if we pitch in, help their side out. That's what
we're out here for, isn't it? Dig up new stuff for the double-domes to
sink their slide-rules into? Think of the bonus, skipper! Hell, this
is made to order--"
Mason turned a quick glance to the girl, but her face told him
nothing. It never did when things like this came up between himself
and Cain. And it was something he knew he had no right to expect. But
he was tired ... too damn much Space, and there was nothing else he
knew how to do.
But this time Cain had a point. Aliens--extra-galactic, even if almost
neighbors--and his help one way or the other could mean an engraved
invitation, a key to the city.
He turned back to the screen, watched as the careening pips massed,
mixed, whirled in an insensate jumble. He didn't want any more
mistakes. They'd ground him for good, tell him he'd had his limit of
Space, and park him on one of the rest-planets with a pension for the
rest of his life.
No, he had to think, and quickly.
Earth had only too recently gotten an entire history of wars out of
her system. Perhaps for good, this time. And that was it; that was his
answer. Better keep his nose clean--
"For God's sake, skipper," Cain snapped. "Come out of it! This is a
natural, we'll clean up!"
"Sergeant Kent! R-drive!"
There was a moment's sensation of nothingness as the Scout made the
Euclidean-Riemannian Transition; the scanner paled and the segment of
the universe it framed twisted, changed.
Cain didn't say anything. He glowered, and Mason could feel the big
man's contempt. But he didn't have time for it.
This time there wouldn't be any error. This time he'd be a step ahead
of the situation and stay there. "Scratch those reversal co-ordinates,
Sergeant! Set up to diverge thirty degrees!"