"But I don't--anything else, any other details? Is this--?"
"It's as true as the leaves on your shoulders, Major. And that's all
there is, so far. Grady will be in with anything else when and if it
should come. Well? What are you thinking?"
"Thinking? If this damned thing isn't some criminal joke, there's no
thinking to it, Colonel. We just _go_, period. I'll get--"
"Just a minute. Did you try to find us on there? What do you make of
that?"
"A mistake. Some clerical mistake, that's all. What else could be made
of it? On an order like this?"
Steele shifted in his swivel-seat, and a neglected spring squawked its
protest. "Suppose," he began slowly, "it was a mistake, Major. But
Taylor put his name to it anyway, just the way it is. Now, do you think
he'd be _likely_ to miss such an error?"
* * * * *
Zukow hesitated, a scowl corrugating his wide forehead. "No I don't
think so, but whether he was likely to or not hasn't anything to do
with it. The mistake was made--he didn't catch it, but he signed it,
sent it, and it means us like all the rest of 'em, period!"
"I think he caught it, Major."
"What do you--"
"I mean just that. He caught it. _And still signed it!_"
"Colonel, don't be crazy! With a gun in his back--"
"Just the point. The people holding the gun would of course have
grabbed the records as a check against Taylor's written command.
It's the only way they'd have of knowing what was what. They'd do
all they could to make sure they were given the complete works, of
course, but ultimately, they'd have to trust Taylor--trust his fear of
their terrible power and staggering advantage. Only--let's say there
_was_ a mistake. One way for it to be caught. Taylor--he'd know at a
glance--the one man who would. And he still signed it!"
"Nuts, Colonel, nuts! What you are suggesting is absolute nonsense.
With the lives of billions of people in the balance, you mean he'd--"
"Leave it up to us."
"With only twenty J-88s? With a planetful of people in the balance.
Sir, do you think Taylor's a lunatic or something?"
Steele groped for an answer that would take the cold logic out of
Zukow's questions. The exec had to be wrong. There must be an answer.
"Zukow," he heard himself saying at last, "there were only three of
our craft out today--all behind the Big Boy, and I've ordered them
in--damped, and clammed up. I've grounded the rest. And if we don't get
anything from communications within the next couple of hours, like a
Notification of Error and Correction--"
"You must be out of your head, Colonel." Zukow stood up, towered over
the big desk. Veins in his wide forehead stood out redly, accentuating
the growing color in his stiffened face. "In a couple of hours we go
into eclipse! Not for long, but while we are, we won't be _able_ to
pick up anything. Suppose _then_ the notification comes? While we're
working out some crazy plan still thinking Taylor was trying to pull a
cute one? Do you think we can take a gamble like that? Do you think we
have the _right_ to take a gamble like that?"
"As it is," Steele replied slowly, "our people are to be slaves. For
all we know, forever."
"A little dramatic, aren't you?"
"Would you call it a situation to be taken lightly?"
The other straightened, said nothing.
"Major, Taylor was taking a shot in the dark. We're a fantastically
slim hope--but we're the _only_ one he's got!"
"And I think that right now you are a greater enemy to Earth than all
her Invaders!"
"'Liberty or death,' Major, that's what Taylor was saying to us when
he knowingly put his signature to a fluke error!"
"Oh for God's sake Colonel, come off it! It sounds just jim-dandy but
you haven't even got a plan! Infinity to zero, those are your odds! And
if I thought you were seriously considering _not_ going in. I'd--"
"Yes, Major, you'd what?"
The door opened. It was Grady. There was a communication folder in his
hand.
Silently, Steele took the folder. There was an expectant look on
Zukow's flushed face as his superior read the brief message. Then
Steele looked up.
"No," he said. "It's not a Notification of Error and Correction. Simply
a follow-up directive ordering all recalled craft to navigate the
final ten thousand miles of their Earth-approaches in intervals of not
less than twenty minutes each. Seems the Invaders have their entire
headquarters and supply set-up in a mother-ship circling Earth--and
they aren't taking any chances."
"Under these conditions, then--"
"As far as we are concerned, Major, the conditions are the same!"
For a moment Zukow stood immobile, his dark eyes snapping down to lock
with Steele's. But the colonel's did not flinch. And then the Major
pivoted, and left Steele suddenly alone in the small office.
* * * * *
He had hardly completed the all-units bulletin when the call-buzzer
from Operations sounded. Within the next hour his six hundred men, his
twenty small J-88 Lancers would be loaded to the fins with all the arms
they could carry, and then....
Fleetingly, the thought nagged at him. Was Zukow a coward--or right?
Twenty tiny J-88s balanced against the lives of four billion people....
Yet there would be surprise, and the over-confidence of a powerful
victor after an easy conquest. And more, there would be the will of a
small band of men.
He flipped up the buzzer-switch, and the Operations lieutenant appeared
on his small desk viewer.
"Yes, lieutenant? Did your group have some difficulty in understanding
my bulletin?"
"No, sir. We're getting things Space-shape at our end right now. But,
sir--you said that twenty craft were to be prepared."
"Yes that's correct. All of them."
"But there will be only nineteen, sir. Major Zukow blasted off nearly
a half-hour before your announcement, in a completely unarmed J-88
and--he said--on your authorization."
For a moment Steele said nothing. His mind seethed, yet he understood.
"Very well, lieutenant. You will stand by for a second bulletin."
The young officer's face faded from the screen, and Steele tried to
think. Obvious, of course, but he wondered how much Zukow could be
blamed. A frightened man. A coward, perhaps, doing what he thought was
right.
But it was _not_ right!
And they must now act swiftly. For if the enemy were warned in
sufficient time....
Infinity to zero, Zukow had said, were his odds. Perhaps.
But there would be nineteen J-88s, armed to the fins....
* * * * *
They had kept Zukow waiting three hours after he landed. He had
immediately been placed under guard upon setting the unarmed Lancer
down at National Spaceport, and they had not believed him until his
shouts of protest had been overheard by one of their officers. It had
almost been for nothing--
But now they were taking him to the Pentagon; into Taylor's own suite
of offices.
And Taylor was there. A different-looking Taylor than Zukow
remembered--no longer the bulky, solid-looking figure. Wan, drawn, as
were those few of his staff working with him under the orders of the
alien commander.
It was the alien who spoke. Taylor sat white and silent.
"My officers inform me that you have attempted to convince them of an
impossible story, Earthman," he said. He was man-like, only taller. His
head was bald and like a fleshless skull, and there was the glitter of
a strong intelligence behind the widely-spaced double-lidded red eyes.
And Zukow repeated his story. Shamefully, fearfully, he told it. And
as he did, new color flushed Taylor's lined face, then subsided to the
whiteness of helpless anger.
"Your story will be checked carefully," the alien commander said in a
slurred, yet fluent English. "If it is true--"
And that was all he said. There was a sudden flurry of movement, and
General Taylor had wrested a weapon from the alien's belt. He squeezed
its trigger in quick, desperate spasms, squeezed, squeezed....
Zukow lay headless on the floor. Zukow--the alien commander, and his
guards.
"Hide them! We've got to hide them!" Taylor was yelling at his
paralyzed aides. "If Steele can pull it off--can wreck that hellish
mother-ship of theirs, they'll be cut off down here--done for! Come on
for God's sake help me!"
They sprang into action then.
And with the weapons from the slain aliens, waited silently behind the
bolted office door.
Taylor's wasted frame was tensed. Minutes ... hours ... or death in
seconds, perhaps. They could only wait.
* * * * *
They came out of the Sun.
Nineteen flat, finned, stream-lined shapes, orange flame gouting from
them as from the lips of Hell itself, hurtling headlong with some
terrible vengeance glowing in their overheated tubes.
Then Space was suddenly gaping holes of searing color, bursting
soundlessly as the nineteen became seventeen, fourteen, twelve.
The twelve became ten, and it was as though the bowels of the Sun
itself had erupted to the right and to the left of them, and everywhere
before and behind them.
Eight of them completed the first pass, and already there were yawning
holes in the gleaming hide of their enemy.
They turned, came on again. Their torpedo-tubes sparkled, and five full
salvos struck. The alien mother-ship spilled white flame from a gaping
rupture in her flank, and three ships were left to close a second time.
Then two flat, finned, stream-lined shapes did not pull from their
pass. They hurtled, instead, headlong into the wounded juggernaut's
very heart.
Drunkenly, and with almost deliberate slowness, it split in two, a
slain thing, spewing its broken structure and shattered creatures with
crazy abandon toward the great blue seas of Earth beneath.
One now there was, its flag-ship insigne half-scorched from its
twisted, battered hull. Yet it hurtled through the blackness of Space
toward the planet below it, the flush of victory shimmering in its
overheated tubes.
* * * * *
There was little to be said. General Taylor stood at the side of the
white hospital bed, and Colonel Geofferey Steele, his head swathed in
bandages, looked questioningly up at him.
"General, did Major Zukow--"
Taylor's mouth was grim. "He reached us--and the aliens. But we ...
managed to take care of the situation ... to give you time." The
General's features softened. "You and your crew--a magnificent job.
Earth is proud--"
"We were lucky, sir," Steele attempted a grin. "Tried hard not to make
any mistakes...."
Taylor smiled then, his laughter an emotional release they had both
been seeking. "I--occasionally overlook mistakes!" he said.
And then the two men laughed together. For a long time.