Hartnett turned to his aide. "Reach me that space-bag, will you Ward?
That's the one. Fish out Code Book 6589 and the A chart. That's the
deal."
* * * * *
Hartnett's staff and all of the _Darkside's_ officers not actually
on watch assembled in the wardroom on the Commodore's orders. The
Flotilla had already come about and was heading sunward, its steady
acceleration of 3 Gs aided by gravity. Already, Greys had been packed
away in deference to the rising temperature, and all hands were clad in
fiberglass shorts and jumpers.
The assembled officers rose when the Commodore entered the room and he
waved them back to their seats, taking a chair at the head of the mess
table.
"Mr. Scott," he began without preamble, "What do you know about the new
Cat superdreadnaughts?"
"Very little, sir. I have heard that they are the biggest thing
in space ... although I don't believe they have more than one in
service right now. The other two of that class were photographed by a
photo-recon skeeter out of the _Gorgon_ a week before we lifted ship. I
saw the prints."
"What about armament?" asked the Flotilla Gunnery Officer, Wilson.
Scott shrugged. "We know very little about that. Mr. Horowitz could
tell you more. I understand they mount some kind of new cyclotronic
rifles."
"That's correct, sir," replied Horowitz. "I don't know exactly how the
things work, but I could guess that they detonate the heavy metals used
for fuel in atomic powered vessels."
"Range?" asked Lieutenant Orsov laconically.
"No information ... but I would be willing to guess that it is not more
than fifty miles no matter how tight their beam. There would be far too
great a voltage loss."
"Mr. Blake," said Hartnett, "How good are you on the skeeter-boat?"
Blake looked perplexed, but he answered with some pride that he was
considered quite passable.
"I'll bear that out, sir," said Scott drily. "Mr. Blake is something of
a hotshot pilot."
"Good enough," returned Hartnett. "We'll see when we near Station 9."
He looked over at Blake. "Do you think you can land a skeeter there and
take off three passengers without arousing the Cats?"
"A skeeter is only meant for three people, sir, and four would be quite
an overload," protested Blake.
"It will have to be done. If we try to land a ship there, every Cat in
the quadrant will be on our necks. It's either the skeeter, or ..." he
shrugged expressively.
"If we strip the boat down and remove all unnecessary mass it should
do," suggested Orsov. "What do you think, Blake?"
Blake gulped. To strip the skeeter would mean removing all armor and
guns. "I ... uh...." He squared his shoulders and grinned sheepishly.
"It would," he declared finally.
"Good," said the Commodore.
"Just where is this Station 9, sir?" asked Morse.
Hartnett ignored the question, but by way of answer, he turned to his
Flotilla Astrogator, Thorne and asked: "Do you remember the analysis of
Oberon's surface, Thorne?"
"Vaguely. All four of the Uranian satellites are composed mainly of
pitchblende and similar ores. Heavy metals. Very dense. I happen to
remember because it's one of the coincidences of astronomy that the
planet itself was given the name Uranus before the discovery that the
whole of its system was lousy with uranium ores."
"What else can you tell us about it?"
"Well, Oberon is small ... about 800 miles in diameter. Ariel and
Titania are about 1,000 and 600 respectively, and Umbriel is the baby
at about 400 miles. Much of Terra's uranium was brought in from Titania
back in the days of U-235 bombs and so forth. They are abandoned now."
"Gentlemen," said Hartnett, facing the others seriously. "There are ten
Martian cruisers and a superdreadnaught in the vicinity of Oberon and
Ariel ... you may have guessed by this time that our mysterious Station
9 is on Oberon. My orders are to rescue the three technicians and
destroy their samples of Isotope X-R, which is, I understand, a very
unstable Isotope of plutonium.
"If we could ... in some way ... destroy the bulk of the Cat strength
in the Uranus system, it would be a great step forward toward the
successful conclusion of this war that is still young enough to have
killed relatively few people."
Scott looked around at his officers and read plain astonishment on
their faces. To talk of destroying such a Martian fleet with four tiny
ships was madness!
"The rescue of the Station personnel will be handled by Mr. Blake and
the skeeter-boat. And ... if the plan I have works out properly, the
destruction of the enemy fleet will be handled by ... one ship alone."
He looked around the table with the vaguest suggestion of a grin on his
leathery face. He nodded his head at Scott. "You're quite right, Mr.
Scott, the _Artemis_."
* * * * *
Scott paced furiously up and down the steel deck of the dark Control.
Chavez sat before the panels, his saturnine face wreathed in demon-like
curls of blue smoke from the short, black, Mexican cheroot he smoked so
lovingly.
"You should have heard him!" exclaimed Scott, "Standing there and
calmly telling us that we are going to destroy the Cat fleet with the
_Artemis_! Booby trap 'em, he says! Chav, I tell you he's gone looney!"