19--?
"Theodore K. Kinnison!" a crisp, clear voice snapped from the speaker of
an apparently cold, ordinary-enough-looking radio-television set.
A burly young man caught his breath sharply as he leaped to the
instrument and pressed an inconspicuous button.
"Theodore K. Kinnison acknowledging!" The plate remained dark, but he
knew that he was being scanned.
"Operation Bullfinch!" the speaker blatted.
Kinnison gulped. "Operation Bullfinch--Off!" he managed to say.
"Off!"
He pushed the button again and turned to face the tall, trim
honey-blonde who stood tensely poised in the archway. Her eyes were wide
and protesting; both hands clutched at her throat.
"Uh-huh, sweets, they're coming--over the Pole," he gritted. "Two hours,
more or less."
"Oh, Ted!" She threw herself into his arms. They kissed, then broke
away.
The man picked up two large suitcases, already packed--everything else,
including food and water, had been in the car for weeks--and made
strides. The girl rushed after him, not bothering even to close the door
of the apartment, scooping up _en passant_ a leggy boy of four and a
chubby, curly-haired girl of two or thereabouts. They ran across the
lawn toward a big, low-slung sedan.
"Sure you got your caffeine tablets?" he demanded as they ran.
"Uh-huh."
"You'll need 'em. Drive like the devil--_stay ahead_! You can--this heap
has got the legs of a centipede and you've got plenty of gas and oil.
Eleven hundred miles from anywhere and a population of one-tenth per
square mile--you'll be safe there if anybody is."
"It isn't us I'm worried about--it's you!" she panted. "Technos' wives
get a few minutes' notice ahead of the H-blast--I'll be ahead of the
rush and I'll stay ahead. It's you, Ted--_you_!"
"Don't worry, keed. That popcycle of mine has got legs, too, and there
won't be so much traffic, the way I'm going."
"Oh, blast! I didn't mean that, and you know it!"
They were at the car. While he jammed the two bags into an
exactly-fitting space, she tossed the children into the front seat, slid
lithely under the wheel, and started the engine.
"I know you didn't, sweetheart. I'll be back." He kissed her and the
little girl, the while shaking hands with his son. "Kidlets, you and
mother are going out to visit Grand-dad Kinnison, like we told you all
about. Lots of fun. I'll be along later. Now, Lady Lead-Foot, scram--and
shovel on the coal!"
The heavy vehicle backed and swung; gravel flew as the accelerator-pedal
hit the floor.
Kinnison galloped across the alley and opened the door of a small
garage, revealing a long, squat motorcycle. Two deft passes of his hands
and two of his three spotlights were no longer white--one flashed a
brilliant purple, the other a searing blue. He dropped a perforated
metal box into a hanger and flipped a switch--a peculiarly-toned siren
began its ululating shriek. He took the alley turn at an angle of
forty-five degrees; burned the pavement toward Diversey.
The light was red. No matter--everybody had stopped--that siren could be
heard for miles. He barreled into the intersection; his step-plate
ground the concrete as he made a screaming left turn.
A siren--creeping up from behind. City tone. Two red spots--city cop--so
soon--good! He cut his gun a trifle, the other bike came alongside.
"Is this IT?" the uniformed rider yelled, over the coughing thunder of
the competing exhausts.
"Yes!" Kinnison yelled back. "Clear Diversey to the Outer Drive, and the
Drive south to Gary and north to Waukegan. Snap it up!"
The white-and-black motorcycle slowed; shot over toward the curb. The
officer reached for his microphone.
Kinnison sped on. At Cicero Avenue, although he had a green light,
traffic was so heavy that he had to slow down; at Pulaski two policemen
waved him through a red. Beyond Sacramento nothing moved on wheels.
Seventy ... seventy five ... he took the bridge at eighty, both wheels
in air for forty feet. Eighty five ... ninety ... that was about all he
could do and keep the heap on so rough a road. Also, he did not have
Diversey all to himself any more; blue-and-purple-flashing bikes were
coming in from every side-street. He slowed to a conservative fifty and
went into close formation with the other riders.
The H-blast--the city-wide warning for the planned and supposedly
orderly evacuation of all Chicago--sounded, but Kinnison did not hear
it.
Across the Park, edging over to the left so that the boys going south
would have room to make the turn--even such riders as those need _some_
room to make a turn at fifty miles per hour!
Under the viaduct--biting brakes and squealing tires at that sharp,
narrow, right-angle left turn--north on the wide, smooth Drive!
That highway was made for speed. So were those machines. Each rider, as
he got into the flat, lay down along his tank, tucked his chin behind
the cross-bar, and twisted both throttles out against their stops. They
were in a hurry. They had a long way to go; and if they did not get
there in time to stop those trans-polar atomic missiles, all hell would
be out for noon.
Why was all this necessary? This organization, this haste, this
split-second timing, this city-wide exhibition of insane hippodrome
riding? Why were not all these motorcycle-racers stationed permanently
at their posts, so as to be ready for any emergency? Because America,
being a democracy, could not strike first, but had to wait--wait in
instant readiness--until she was actually attacked. Because every good
Techno in America had his assigned place in some American Defense Plan;
of which Operation Bullfinch was only one. Because, without the presence
of those Technos at their every-day jobs, all ordinary technological
work in America would perforce have stopped.
A branch road curved away to the right. Scarcely slowing down, Kinnison
bulleted into the turn and through an open, heavily-guarded gate. Here
his mount and his lights were passwords enough: the real test would come
later. He approached a towering structure of alloy--jammed on his
brakes--stopped beside a soldier who, as soon as Kinnison jumped off,
mounted the motorcycle and drove it away.
Kinnison dashed up to an apparently blank wall, turned his back upon
four commissioned officers holding cocked forty-fives at the ready, and
fitted his right eye into a cup. Unlike fingerprints, retinal patterns
cannot be imitated, duplicated, or altered; any imposter would have died
instantly, without arrest or question. For every man who belonged
aboard that rocket had been checked and tested--_how_ he had been
checked and tested!--since one spy, in any one of those Technos' chairs,
could wreak damage untellable.
The port snapped open. Kinnison climbed a ladder into the large, but
crowded, Operations Room.
"Hi, Teddy!" a yell arose.
"Hi, Walt! Hi-ya, Red! What-ho, Baldy!" and so on. These men were
friends of old.
"Where are they?" he demanded. "Is our stuff getting away? Lemme take a
peek at the Ball!"
"I'll say it is! O.K., Ted, squeeze in here!"
He squeezed in. It was not a ball, but a hemisphere, slightly oblate and
centered approximately by the North Pole. A multitude of red dots moved
slowly--a hundred miles upon that map was a small distance--northward
over Canada; a closer-packed, less numerous group of yellowish-greens,
already on the American side of the Pole, was coming south.
As had been expected, the Americans had more missiles than did the
enemy. The other belief, that America had more adequate defenses and
better-trained, more highly skilled defenders, would soon be put to
test.
A string of blue lights blazed across the continent, from Nome through
Skagway and Wallaston and Churchill and Kaniapiskau to Belle Isle;
America's First Line of Defense. Regulars all. Ambers almost blanketed
those blues; their combat rockets were already grabbing altitude. The
Second Line, from Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver across to Halifax,
also showed solid green, with some flashes of amber. Part Regulars; part
National Guard.
Chicago was in the Third Line, all National Guard, extending from San
Francisco to New York. Green--alert and operating. So were the Fourth,
the Fifth, and the Sixth. Operation Bullfinch was clicking; on schedule
to the second.
A bell clanged; the men sprang to their stations and strapped down.
Every chair was occupied. Combat Rocket Number One Oh Six Eight Five,
full-powered by the disintegrating nuclei of unstable isotopes, took off
with a whooshing roar which even her thick walls could not mute.
The Technos, crushed down into their form-fitting cushions by three G's
of acceleration, clenched their teeth and took it.
Higher! Faster! The rocket shivered and trembled as it hit the wall at
the velocity of sound, but it did not pause.
Higher! Faster! Higher! Fifty miles high. One hundred ... five hundred
... a thousand ... fifteen hundred ... two thousand! Half a radius--the
designated altitude at which the Chicago Contingent would go into
action.
Acceleration was cut to zero. The Technos, breathing deeply in relief,
donned peculiarly-goggled helmets and set up their panels.
Kinnison stared into his plate with everything he could put into his
optic nerve. This was not like the Ball, in which the lights were
electronically placed, automatically controlled, clear, sharp, and
steady. This was radar. A radar considerably different from that of
1948, of course, and greatly improved, but still pitifully inadequate in
dealing with objects separated by hundreds of miles and traveling at
velocities of thousands of miles per hour!
Nor was this like the practice cruises, in which the targets had been
harmless barrels or equally harmless dirigible rockets. This was the
real thing; the targets today would be lethal objects indeed. Practice
gunnery, with only a place in the Proficiency List at stake, had been
exciting enough: this was too exciting--_much_ too exciting--for the
keenness of brain and the quickness and steadiness of eye and of hand so
soon to be required.
A target? Or was it? Yes--three or four of them!
"Target One--Zone Ten," a quiet voice spoke into Kinnison's ear and one
of the white specks upon his plate turned yellowish green. The same
words, the same lights, were heard and seen by the eleven other Technos
of Sector A, of which Kinnison, by virtue of standing at the top of his
Combat Rocket's Proficiency List, was Sector Chief. He knew that the
voice was that of Sector A's Fire Control Officer, whose duty it was to
determine, from courses, velocities, and all other data to be had from
ground and lofty observers, the order in which his Sector's targets
should be eliminated. And Sector A, an imaginary but sharply-defined
cone, was in normal maneuvering the hottest part of the sky. Fire
Control's "Zone Ten" had informed him that the object was at extreme
range and hence there would be plenty of time. Nevertheless:
"Lawrence--two! Doyle--one! Drummond--stand by with three!" he snapped,
at the first word.
In the instant of hearing his name each Techno stabbed down a series of
studs and there flowed into his ears a rapid stream of figures--the
up-to-the-second data from every point of observation as to every
element of motion of his target. He punched the figures into his
calculator, which would correct automatically for the motion of his own
vessel--glanced once at the printed solution of the problem--tramped
down upon a pedal once, twice, or three times, depending upon the
number of projectiles he had been directed to handle.
Kinnison had ordered Lawrence, a better shot than Doyle, to launch two
torpedoes; neither of which, at such long range, was expected to strike
its mark. His second, however, should come close; so close that the
instantaneous data sent back to both screens--and to Kinnison's--by the
torpedo itself would make the target a sitting duck for Doyle, the less
proficient follower.
Drummond, Kinnison's Number Three, would not launch his missiles unless
Doyle missed. Nor could both Drummond and Harper, Kinnison's Number Two,
be "out" at once. One of the two had to be "in" at all times, to take
Kinnison's place in charge of the Sector if the Chief were ordered out.
For while Kinnison could order either Harper or Drummond on target, he
could not send himself. He could go out only when ordered to do so by
Fire Control: Sector Chiefs were reserved for emergency use only.
"Target Two--Zone Nine," Fire Control said.
"Carney, two. French, one. Day, stand by with three!" Kinnison ordered.
"Damn it--missed!" This from Doyle. "Buck fever--no end."
"O.K., boy--that's why we're starting so soon. I'm shaking like a
vibrator myself. We'll get over it...."
The point of light which represented Target One bulged slightly and went
out. Drummond had connected and was back "in".
"Target Three--Zone Eight. Four--eight," Fire Control remarked.
"Target Three--Higgins and Green; Harper stand by. Four--Case and
Santos: Lawrence."
After a minute or two of actual combat the Technos of Sector A began to
steady down. Stand-by men were no longer required and were no longer
assigned.
"Target Forty-one--six," said Fire Control; and:
"Lawrence, two. Doyle, two," ordered Kinnison. This was routine enough,
but in a moment:
"Ted!" Lawrence snapped. "Missed--wide--both barrels. Forty-one's
dodging--manned or directed--coming like hell--watch it, Doyle--WATCH
IT!"
"Kinnison, take it!" Fire Control barked, voice now neither low nor
steady, and without waiting to see whether Doyle would hit or miss.
"It's in Zone Three already--collision course!"
"Harper! Take over!"
Kinnison got the data, solved the equations, launched five torpedoes at
fifty gravities of acceleration. One ... two--three-four-five; the last
three as close together as they could fly without setting off their
proximity fuzes.
Communications and mathematics and the electronic brains of calculating
machines had done all that they could do; the rest was up to human
skill, to the perfection of co-ordination and the speed of reaction of
human mind, nerve, and muscle.
Kinnison's glance darted from plate to panel to computer-tape to meter
to galvanometer and back to plate; his left hand moved in tiny arcs the
knobs whose rotation varied the intensities of two mutually
perpendicular components of his torpedoes' drives. He listened
attentively to the reports of triangulating observers, now giving him
data covering his own missiles, as well as the target object. The
fingers of his right hand punched almost constantly the keys of his
computer; he corrected almost constantly his torpedoes' course.
"Up a hair," he decided. "Left about a point."
The target moved away from its predicted path.
Down two--left three--down a hair--_Right_! The thing was almost through
Zone Two; was blasting into Zone One.
He thought for a second that his first torp was going to connect. It
almost did--only a last-instant, full-powered side thrust enabled the
target to evade it. Two numbers flashed white upon his plate; his actual
error, exact to the foot of distance and to the degree on the clock,
measured and transmitted back to his board by instruments in his
torpedo.
Working with instantaneous and exact data, and because the enemy had so
little time in which to act, Kinnison's second projectile made a very
near miss indeed. His third was a graze; so close that its proximity
fuze functioned, detonating the cyclonite-packed war-head. Kinnison knew
that his third went off, because the error-figures vanished, almost in
the instant of their coming into being, as its detecting and
transmitting instruments were destroyed. That one detonation might have
been enough; but Kinnison had had one glimpse of his error--how small it
was!--and had a fraction of a second of time. Hence Four and Five
slammed home; dead center. Whatever that target had been, it was no
longer a threat.
"Kinnison, in," he reported briefly to Fire Control, and took over from
Harper the direction of the activities of Sector A.
The battle went on. Kinnison sent Harper and Drummond out time after
time. He himself was given three more targets. The first wave of the
enemy--what was left of it--passed. Sector A went into action, again at
extreme range, upon the second. Its remains, too, plunged downward and
onward toward the distant ground.
The third wave was really tough. Not that it was actually any worse than
the first two had been, but the CR10685 was no longer getting the data
which her Technos ought to have to do a good job; and every man aboard
her knew why. Some enemy stuff had got through, of course; and the
observatories, both on the ground and above it--the eye of the whole
American Defense--had suffered heavily.
Nevertheless, Kinnison and his fellows were not too perturbed. Such a
condition was not entirely unexpected. They were now veterans; they had
been tried and had not been found wanting. They had come unscathed
through a bath of fire the like of which the world had never before
known. Give them any kind of computation at all--or no computation at
all except old CR10685's own radar and their own torps, of which they
still had plenty--and they could and would take care of anything that
could be thrown at them.
The third wave passed. Targets became fewer and fewer. Action slowed
down ... stopped.
The Technos, even the Sector Chiefs, knew nothing whatever of the
progress of the battle as a whole. They did not know where their rocket
was, or whether it was going north, east, south, or west. They knew when
it was going up or down only by the "seats of their pants." They did not
even know the nature of the targets they destroyed, since upon their
plates all targets looked alike--small, bright, greenish-yellow spots.
Hence:
"Give us the dope, Pete, if we've got a minute to spare," Kinnison
begged of his Fire Control Officer. "You know more than we do--give!"
"It's coming in now," came the prompt reply. "Six of those targets that
did such fancy dodging were atomics, aimed at the Lines. Five were
dirigibles, with our number on 'em. You fellows did a swell job. Very
little of their stuff got through--not enough, they say, to do much
damage to a country as big as the U.S.A. On the other hand, they stopped
scarcely any of ours--they apparently didn't have anything to compare
with you Technos.
"But all hell seems to be busting loose, all over the world. Our east
and west coasts are both being attacked, they say; but are holding.
Operation Daisy and Operation Fairfield are clicking, just like we did.
Europe, they say, is going to hell--everybody is taking pot-shots at
everybody else. One report says that the South American nations are
bombing each other ... Asia, too ... nothing definite; as straight dope
comes in I'll relay it to you.
"We came through in very good shape, considering ... losses less than
anticipated, only seven percent. The First Line--as you know
already--took a God-awful shellacking; in fact, the Churchill-Belcher
section was practically wiped out, which was what lost us about all of
our Observation.... We are now just about over the southern end of
Hudson Bay, heading down and south to join in making a vertical Fleet
Formation ... no more waves coming, but they say to expect attacks from
low-flying combat rockets--there goes the alert! On your toes,
fellows--but there isn't a thing on Sector A's screen...."
There wasn't. Since the CR10685 was diving downward and southward, there
wouldn't be. Nevertheless, some observer aboard that rocket saw that
atomic missile coming. Some Fire Control Officer yelled orders; some
Technos did their best--and failed.
And such is the violence of nuclear fission; so utterly incomprehensible
is its speed, that Theodore K. Kinnison died without realizing that
anything whatever was happening to his ship or to him.
* * * * *
_Gharlane of Eddore looked upon ruined Earth, his handiwork, and found
it good. Knowing that it would be many of hundreds of Tellurian years
before that planet would again require his personal attention, he went
elsewhere; to Rigel Four, to Palain Seven, and to the solar system of
Velantia, where he found that his creatures the Overlords were not
progressing according to schedule. He spent quite a little time there,
then searched minutely and fruitlessly for evidence of inimical activity
within the Innermost Circle._
_And upon far Arisia a momentous decision was made: the time had come to
curb sharply the hitherto unhampered Eddorians._
"_We are ready, then, to war openly upon them?" Eukonidor asked,
somewhat doubtfully. "Again to cleanse the planet Tellus of dangerous
radioactives and of too-noxious forms of life is of course a simple
matter. From our protected areas in North America a strong but
democratic government can spread to cover the world. That government can
be extended easily enough to include Mars and Venus. But Gharlane, who
is to operate as Roger, who has already planted, in the Adepts of North
Polar Jupiter, the seeds of the Jovian Wars...._"
"_Your visualization is sound, youth. Think on._"
"_Those interplanetary wars are of course inevitable, and will serve to
strengthen and to unify the government of the Inner Planets ... provided
that Gharlane does not interfere.... Oh, I see. Gharlane will not at
first know; since a zone of compulsion will be held upon him. When he or
some Eddorian fusion perceives that compulsion and breaks it--at some
such time of high stress as the Nevian incident--it will be too late.
Our fusions will be operating. Roger will be allowed to perform only
such acts as will be for Civilization's eventual good. Nevia was
selected as Prime Operator because of its location in a small region of
the galaxy which is almost devoid of solid iron and because of its
watery nature; its aquatic forms of life being precisely those in which
the Eddorians are least interested. They will be given partial
neutralization of inertia; they will be able to attain velocities a few
times greater than that of light. That covers the situation, I think?_"
"_Very good, Eukonidor," the Elders approved. "A concise and accurate
summation._"
_Hundreds of Tellurian years passed. The aftermath. Reconstruction.
Advancement. One world--two worlds--three worlds--united, harmonious,
friendly. The Jovian Wars. A solid, unshakeable union._
_Nor did any Eddorian know that such fantastically rapid progress was
being made. Indeed, Gharlane knew, as he drove his immense ship of space
toward Sol, that he would find Tellus inhabited by peoples little above
savagery._
_And it should be noted in passing that not once, throughout all those
centuries, did a man named Kinnison marry a girl with red-bronze-auburn
hair and gold-flecked, tawny eyes._
BOOK THREE
TRIPLANETARY