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20: Schemes

No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

—Ancient military maxim

COUNTDOWN: H PLUS 180 HOURS

The engineers who built Message Bearer must have considered the communal mudroom expendable. They had located it just inside the hull. This had its advantages.

Under spin, a srupk's depth of mud formed a shell inside the hull; it would shield the ship from an unexpected attack. Mud boiling from a rent would freeze in place, a plug to hold air.

The mudroom was under full spin gravity. Winterhome's mass and surface gravity had been established by telescopic studies, a year before the ship reached the ringed giant. For sixteen years, since birth in many cases, the communal mudroom had taught fithp to move under Winterhome gravity. Warriors bound for the surface would have at least that advantage.

It was the biggest room aboard Message Bearer, covering an eighth of the hull surface of the life support region. From the middle it curved out of sight in both directions. The mud was good sticky-wet homeworld dirt below, with nearly clear water floating on top. Fathisteh-tulk remembered the ceiling as oppressively close, and bare. It was still close, but not oppressively so. Generations of spaceborn had decorated it with painted friezes.

Above his head was a full-sized representation of a thuktun: a weathered granite rectangle covered with script and with a centered representation of a thuktun, which was covered with script and a representation of a thuktun, which . . . Fathisteh-tulk wondered if the priest Fistarteh-thuktun had ever seen this part of the ceiling. Such a thuktun would be a legendary thing. The thuktunthp spoke of every subject a fi' could imagine, but none spoke of the thuktunthp themselves, nor of their makers.

Fathisteh-tulk was the only sleeper in a crowd of spaceborn.

"It's not that we don't trust planets," the gangling warrior said. "We trust one planet, the Homeworld, the world on which you were born, sir. We trust other worlds to obey other rules."

"Mating seasons," Fathisteh-tulk said, half listening.

He filled his mouth and sprayed water at a spaceborn female, barely mature, who had been avoiding him. This social barrier between spaceborn and sleepers had to be broken, even if done one fi' at a time. There was power in Fathisteh-tulk's lungs. She preened in the spray, then (belatedly, but as protocol required) sprayed him back. She was just able to reach him.

The gangling warrior—Rashinggith? something like that—was still talking. "Exactly! The target world orbits in about seven eighths of a Homeworld year. After three generations in space, we still follow a mating season of one year; and the sleepers, because they were wakened at the wrong time—"

"I know. During your mating season we feel a discomfort, an itch we can't wet."

"It's the same with us. So, will both mating seasons be skewed on the target planet?" The spaceborn dissidents did not obey the custom established by the Herdmaster. They would not call the target world Winterhome. "Suppose some of us adjust and some do not? A few generations on the target world and we could all be mildly in heat all the time. Woo!"

"Two mating seasons a year might be fun. If it comes, it will come whether we land or not."

"And that's only one possible problem. There are bound to be parasites we never adjusted to—"

A voice bellowed through the room. "Tulk!"

"I am summoned," Fathisteh-tulk said, and he moved toward the voice of his mate, answering with a cheerful "Tulk!"

Moving among sleepers now, spraying muddy water to greet friends, he passed beneath an older frieze. The time was mating season, by the state of the foreground plants and the activities of half-seen fithp among the trees. He had worked on this bas-relief himself. He was pleased to see that it had been kept up, repainted.

But these next ones were recent. Here a swath of jet black powdered with white points, and a small pattern of concentric rings: the Winterhome sun, repeatedly outlined as it grew larger over the decades. There the ringed storm-ball with its company of moons, and the raggedly curved horizon of the Foot, with a mining party around a digit ship tanker—

"Tulk!"

He stopped his dawdling.

She waited impatiently at the exit. Smaller than the average female, Chowpeentulk was turning massive with the increase in her unborn child. She said, "Come. We must discuss."

The platform elevator lifted them into a corridor. Fathisteh-tulk said, "We are halfway between Winterhome and the Foot. What can be urgent?"

"You were among dissidents!"

"So I was. Dissidence isn't forbidden."

"Tulk, I think it will be, soon. The dissidents claim that the War for Winterhome is unnecessary. I remind you that we are fighting that war now. Will you persuade warriors not to fight, even as they struggle with the prey? Need I remind you that Fookerteh is even now on the ground of Winterhome, and that he is the favorite of K'turfookeph?"

"I've said little. Mostly I listen. What I hear makes sense. We reached the ringed gasball with the ship depleted of virtually every necessity. Within three years Message Bearer was resupplied. We could have left then if we had not needed the Foot, or we could have stayed as long as we liked."

Fathisteh-tulk had not bred her when mating season followed the Awakening. This was common enough, even expected, among males who had lost status. Chowpeentulk remembered that she had been almost relieved. Her next child would not be of fighting age during the War for Winterhome

The Traveler Herd had reached the ringed gasball and were at work on the Foot when her season came again. Again her mate was impotent. Perhaps she had treated him badly then. She remembered her own irritability well enough.

The next season he had recovered; and the season after that had borne fruit. Her mate's status as the Herdmaster's Advisor had been enough; he had recovered his self-respect. She had been slow to recognize the other change in him.

Fathisteh-tulk was still talking. "Space holds most of the resources we need, and no prey to be robbed. We—"

"Tulk! Have you forgotten what it is like to wallow in natural mud beneath an open sky? To take natural prey? The difference between a shower and rain?"

He hesitated. "No."

"Then what is this nonsense?"

"I've talked to spaceborn. They don't remember. They don't miss it. Tulk, we've started the war, and that is well. But if we have to back off, we know the natives can't follow us. We should be prepared for this. A generation hence we may be trading with them, nitrogen for refined metals—"

"Trading? With fragile, misshapen things that look like they would fall over any moment?"

"Isn't that better than enslaving them into the Traveler Herd? We would then be living with them. Can you picture them as our equals, generations from now? That is the fate of successful slaves."

He laughed as she flinched from that picture. "It won't hurt to keep those now in power a little unbalanced. I want to keep their minds working. The dissidents are doing something worthwhile."

That dangerous, destructive humor. She simply hadn't noticed in time.

Fathisteh-tulk was not mad, exactly. Not suicidal. He would never hurt the Traveler Tribe or his family or their cause. But political interactions just didn't mean anything to him anymore. Nor did his mate's authority in matters of family. In the twelve years that passed between her first and second pregnancies, he had lost his sense of these nuances too.

"We are at war," she said. "When a herd moves it must not scatter to the winds."

"It may be a needless war. Certainly these think so."

"Let them do their work without your support. You're damaging the position of all sleepers. The first step is docility."

"We have not joined a new tribe. Our tribe was captured from within. Tulk, it may be that I am wrong. I intend to find out."

"How?"

But that he would not tell her.

* * *

Jenny led the way inside. The large conference room was filled with sound, although there weren't more than a couple of dozen people in the room. Knots of people, mixed groups of science fiction writers, uniformed officers, and civilian defense analysts stood at blackboards, others around tables. Viewscreens had been set up to show what was displayed on the big situation-room screens. It reminded Jenny of the newsroom at JPL during the Saturn encounter.

There's Ed. One of the officers was her brother-in-law, Ed Gillespie. She'd heard about his arrival, but she'd been too busy to see him. There'd been nothing useful in his report on the mission to deliver Congressman Dawson to Kosmograd, and Jenny had no time for social visits.

Jack Clybourne came in after Jenny. He looked nervously at the crowd in the room. "Seems all right," he said.

But he watches everyone just the same. Jenny advanced into the room. "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States."

She got a reaction to that. All the military people jumped to attention. The science-fiction writers stared curiously; then those sitting down remembered their manners and stood. The babble quieted, although there was an undertone of whispered conversation.

The President came in with Admiral Carrell and General Toland. He looked blankly at the large room with its disorderly crowd.

"Carry on," Admiral Carell said. "Well, Major? It's your show."

"Yes, sir." Jenny led the way to the blackboard where Ed Gillespie stood with the group of writers who'd been chosen as spokespeople. Anson, of course. He doesn't look very strong. Dr. Curtis. Joe Ransom. I guess Sherry Atkinson was too shy—

By the time the President arrived the writers were talking to each other, but they fell silent when he reached them, The President nodded to Ed Gillespie. "Glad to see you, General." He turned to let Jenny introduce him to the writers.

"Mr. President, this is Robert Anson. He's the senior man among the writers."

"Mr. President," Anson said formally. He introduced the others.

"David Coffey," the President said. "Major Crichton says you've got something for me."

"Yes, sir," Anson said. "Thank you for coming. I'll not waste more time in pleasantries. First. It now seems clear that their objective is conquest, either of the Earth or of a substantial part of it. The evidence says they want it all."

"What evidence is that?" the President asked. He sounded curious, rather than demanding.

"They chose to attack the United States," Anson said. "Clearly the strongest nation on Earth."

"But—"

Anson fell silent at the interruption, but when the President didn't say anything else, he continued. "Clearly the strongest nation, at least as seen from space. Roads, dams, cities, cultivated lands, harbors, electronic emissions—all would indicate that the United States is the dominant nation." Anson looked around as if for contradictions, but no one said anything. "Yet they chose to land here, and according to all the intelligence reports we have, they're setting up a perimeter defense. As if they intend to stay."

"We'll see about that," General Toland muttered.

Anson raised an eyebrow.

Toland looked around nervously. "We're planning a big attack," he said. "In about two hours."

"With what?" Dr. Curtis demanded.

Toland looked at the writer with disapproval.

"It will be a large assault," the President said. "Mr. Anson, I agree that they intend to stay. Do they have a choice? I don't see how they can expect to launch enough ships to get their people off the Earth."

"Lasers," Curtis said.

They all looked at him. He shrugged and pointed to Anson. "Sorry, it's Bob's turn."

"We'll let Dr. Curtis explain in a moment," Anson said. "We agree then that they've come to stay. Despite their early successes, I would be greatly surprised if they expected this first effort to succeed. Eventually we'll win, throw them out of Kansas. Surely they expect that. Therefore, they plan other attempts. One supposes they will make certain preparations for those attempts."

"What might they do?" the President asked.

Anson turned to Joe Ransom. "Mr. Ransom will address that."

"They've already used kinetic energy weapons," Ransom said. "It's clear that any ship capable of crossing interstellar space will have a very powerful engine. Mr. President, I think they'll drop a Dinosaur Killer."

The President looked puzzled, but Joe Ransom was only hitting his stride. "An asteroid some nine kilometers across very probably killed the dinosaurs and wiped out most of the life on Earth at the time. There's a layer of dead clay that corresponds to that era, and we find asteroidal material in ita all over the world—but skip the evidence; it almost doesn't matter. What matters is that the aliens have already thrown rocks, and they've got the power to move a small asteroid. We've got the mathematics to work out the results. The effects will be global, and very bad."

There's an understatement, Jenny thought. Jack's scared too. Well, we ought to be.

"Depending on how large, and where it strikes, an asteroid could do just about anything." Anson said. "Tidal waves may destroy many coastal cities. Cloud cover: we could get weeks or months of endless night and endless rain. It could trigger a new ice age."

"You can't be sure they'll hit us with an asteroid," the President said.

"It's the way to bet. I wish we could guess how big it will be."

"Mr. President," Anson said. "They obviously have the ability to do it. They've been out in space for fifteen years. Surely they've thought of it."

"I see." Coffey nodded seriously.

"Is there anything we can do about it?" Admiral Carrell demanded. "Could we deflect it?"

"How? They shoot down anything we send up," Curtis said.

"So what do we do?" Admiral Carrell asked.

Anson turned to the other writer. "Dr. Curtis has given that some thought. Wade—"

"We'll never beat them while they own space," Curtis said. "As long as they control space, they can find junk to hit us with. One Dinosaur Killer after another."

Blunt son of a bitch, Jenny thought.

"We can't stop them from bombarding us with asteroids until we can take control of space again, and we'll never get space away from them while they have that mother ship," Curtis continued.

"Perfect naval doctrine," Admiral Carrell said. "But a navy needs ships, Dr. Curtis!"

"Orion," Curtis said. "Old bang-bang."

The President looked puzzled, and Jenny thought Curtis looked pleased as he turned to the blackboard. Not too often a writer gets to lecture to the President of the United States.

"Take a big metal plate," Curtis said. "Big and thick. Make it a hemisphere, but it could even be flat. Put a large ship, say the size of a battleship, on top of it. You want a really good shock absorber system between the plate and the ship.

"Now put an atom bomb underneath and light it off. I guarantee you that sucker will move." He sketched as he talked. "You keep throwing atom bombs underneath the ship. It puts several million pounds into orbit. In fact, the more mass you've got, the smoother the ride."

Admiral Carrell looked thoughtful. "And once in space—"

"The tactics are simple," Curtis said. "Get into space, find the mother ship, and go for it. Throw everything we have at it. Ram if we have to."

"Hard on the crew," the President said.

"You'll have plenty of volunteers, sir," Ed Gillespie said. "The whole astronaut corps for starters."

True enough. Most of them had friends at Moon Base. Odd, they did use nuclear weapons there, but nowhere on Earth.

"Is this—Orion—feasible?" Admiral Carrell asked.

Curtis nodded. "Yes. The concept was studied back in the sixties. Chemical explosive test models were flown. It was abandoned after the Treaty of Moscow banned atmospheric nuclear detonations. As far as I know, though, Michael is the only quick and dirty way we have to get a battleship into space."

"Michael?" the President asked.

"Sorry, sir. We've already given it a code name. The Archangel Michael cast Satan out of Heaven."

"Appropriate enough name. However, our immediate problem is to get them out of Kansas . . ."

"That does no good," Curtis said. "As long as they own space, they can land whenever and wherever they want, and there's damned little we can do about it. Mr. President, we have to get to work on Michael now."

The President looked thoughtful. "Perhaps I agree." He turned to Ed Gillespie. "General, we're pretty shorthanded here. I believe you're presently without an assignment?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. I want you to head up the team for Project Archangel. Look into feasibility, armament, who you need for a design team, where you'd build it, how long it would take. Report to Admiral Carrell when you know something. Perhaps these gentlemen can help you." He looked to the writers.

"Sure," Curtis said. "One thing, though—"

"Yes?"

"We could use my partner. Nat Reynolds. Last I heard, he was in Kansas City."

"Combat area," General Toland said.

"Nat's pretty agile, though. He may have got away. And he's just the right kind of crazy," Curtis said earnestly.

"Major Crichton can see to that," the President said. "Now, to return to something you said earlier. Lasers?"

"Yes, sir," Curtis said "I believe they'll use lasers to launch their ships from the ground."

"Why?"

"Why wouldn't they? They've got good lasers, much better than we have, and it's certainly simple enough if you've got lasers and power."

"I asked the wrong question," Coffey said. "How?"

Curtis looked smug again. He sketched. "If you fire a laser up the back end of a rocket—a standard rocket-motor bell shape, but thick—you get much the same effect as if you carried rocket fuel aboard, but there's a lot more payload, because you can leave your power source on the ground. Your working mass, your exhaust, is air and vaporized rocket motor, hotter than hell, with a terrific exhaust velocity. It uses a lot of power, but it'll sure work. Pity we never built one."

"Where would they get the power?" the President asked. "They've blown up all our dams. They can't just plug into a wall socket."

Curtis pointed to a photograph pinned to his blackboard. It showed a strange, winged object, fuzzily seen against the background of space.

"Ransom found that picture, among a lot of them Major Crichton's people gave us to look at," he said. "Joe—"

Ransom shrugged. "An amateur astronomer brought that in to the intelligence people. I don't know how he talked the guards into getting it inside, but I ended up with it. It looks like they're deploying big solar grids, way up in geosynchronous orbit."

"We looked into building those," the President said.

"Sure," Curtis said dryly. "But Space Power Satellites were rejected. Too costly, and too vulnerable to attack."

"They're vulnerable?"

"Not to anything we have now," Curtis said. "To attack something in space you've got to be able to get at space."

Coffey looked around for support. Admiral Carrell shrugged. "It's true enough," he said. "They'll shoot down anything we send up long before it can get that high."

"So what can we do?"

"Archangel," Ed Gillespie said. "When we send something up, it needs to be big and powerful and well armed. I'll get on it."

"And meanwhile, they're throwing asteroids at us," the President said. "General, I think you'd better work fast." He turned to go.

"One more thing, Mr. President," Curtis said insistently.

"Yes?"

"Today's attack. I suppose you'll be sending in lots of armor."

The President looked puzzled.

"We'll do it right, Doctor," General Toland said. He turned to leave. "And I'd like to get at it."

"Thor," Curtis said.

Toland stopped. "What's that? It sounds like something I've heard of—"

"Project Thor was recommended by a strategy analysis group back in the eighties," Curtis said. "Flying crowbars." He sketched rapidly. "You take a big iron bar. Give it a rudimentary sensor, and a steerable vane for guidance. Put bundles of them in orbit. To use it, call it down from orbit, aimed at the area you're working on. It has a simple brain, just smart enough to recognize what a tank looks like from overhead. When it sees a tank silhouette, it steers toward it. Drop ten or twenty thousand of those over an armored division, and what happens?"

"Holy shit," Toland said.

"Are these feasible?" Admiral Carrell asked.

"Yes, sir," Anson said. "They can seek out ships as well as tanks—"

"But we never built them," Curtis said. "We were too cheap."

"We would not have them now in any case," Carrell said. "General, perhaps you should give some thought to camouflage for your tanks—"

"Or call off the attack until there's heavy cloud cover," Curtis said. "I'm not sure how well camouflage works. Another thing, look out for laser illumination. Thor could be built to home in that way."

"Yes. We use that method now," Toland said. His tone indicated triumph. These guys didn't know everything.

"Maybe we should delay the attack," the President said. General Toland glanced at his watch. "Too late. With our unreliable communications, some units would get the word and some wouldn't. The ones that didn't would go in alone, and they'd sure be slaughtered. On that score, we've got to get back up to Operations."

"Thank you, gentlemen," the President said.

As they left, Jenny heard Curtis muttering. "What do they do if it doesn't work? They'll have to call the Russians for help."

* * *

The sign read ELVIRA. It couldn't have been a large town to begin with, now it was deserted, except for some military vehicles.

There were soldiers in camouflage uniforms at the entrance to the Elvira Little League playing field. Brooks stopped the car.

"What?" In the backseat, Reynolds struggled to wakefulness. "Where are we?"

"Not far from Humboldt," Brooks said. He got out. Rosalee, half awake now, got out on the passenger side. Nat eased himself out from under Carol's head and arm and—wiggled out past the driver's seat. Carol stretched out in the backseat without waking.

Roger had seen people sleep like that after some disaster. In the dark of Carol North's mind, kinks were straightening out . . . or not. She would wake sane, or not.

"You can't park that here," one of the soldiers shouted.

He was a very young soldier and he looked afraid. There'd been an edge of panic in his voice, too.

Out beyond him the Little League field was covered with troops. They huddled around small fires. Plenty of soldiers. No tanks. No vehicles at all. Why? Further down the road and on the other side, in what had been a park, was a big tent with a bright red cross on it. Other tents had been put up next to it. There were stretchers outside the tents.

"A MASH unit," Nat Reynolds said. He kept his voice low. "Full up, from the stretchers outside. Roger, Rosalee, I think we better get out of here."

"Not yet." Brooks went up to the soldiers at the gate. He showed them his press card. "What happened, soldier?"

"Nothin'."

Roger pointed to the MASH. "Something did."

"Maybe. Look, you can't park that thing here. They shoot at vehicles. Maybe at cars! Move it, damn it, move it! Then think about going on foot!"

"In a second. Can you call an officer?"

The soldier thought about that for a moment. "Yeah." He shouted back into the camp. "Sarge, there's a guy here from the Washington Post wants to talk to the Lieutenant."

 

They went from the Lieutenant to the Colonel in one step. By then Rosalee was back in the car, but Nat wasn't. He found that odd, but he trailed along.

"We don't have facilities for the press," Colonel Jamison was saying. "In fact, Mr. Brooks, we don't have accommodations for civilians at all, and I don't see any reason why I should talk to you."

Brooks looked around the tent. It held two tables and a desk, a field telephone, and a canteen hanging from the center pole. "Colonel, I'm the only national press reporter here."

Jamison laughed. "And where are you going to publish?"

Roger gave him an answering chuckle. "Okay. I don't even know if my paper exists anymore! But surely the people have a right to some news coverage of this—"

Jamison spoke slowly, from exhaustion. "I've never been sure of that. Whatever happened to Loose lips sink ships? Okay, Mr. Brooks. I'm going to tell you what happened, but not for the reason you think."

"Then why?"

Jamison pointed to Nat Reynolds. "Your friend there."

Nat Reynolds looked up from the map he'd been studying. "What?"

"You're an important man, Mr. Reynolds," Colonel Jamison said. "We have a total of no fewer than forty messages from Colorado Springs, and one of them asks us to watch out for you. That's why Lieutenant Carper brought you to me. We're supposed to cooperate with you, and send you back to Cheyenne Mountain first chance we get. Now why is that?"

Reynolds thought it over, and smiled. "Wade."

The colonel waited.

"Dr. Wade Curtis. My partner. He must be working with the government. It follows that he's alive . . ." Reynolds looked back down at the map. "We're still a long way from Colorado if we can't go through Kansas."

"We can't," Jamison said. "God knows we can't."

"So what did happen?" Brooks asked.

Jamison sighed. "Nothing to brag about. This morning we were supposed to make a big push. Throw the goddam snouts all the way back to Emporia. Went pretty good at first. And then—"

"Then what?"

"Then they stamped us flat."

"A whole armored division?"

"Three divisions." Jamison shook his head as if to ward off the memory. "The tanks went in. Everything was fine. We saw some of those floating tanks they use, and we shot the shit out of them! Then these streaks fell out of the sky. Lines of fire, hundreds of them—parallel, slanting, like rain in a wind, they pointed at our tanks and the tanks exploded."

"Thor," Reynolds said, as if he were talking to himself. He looked up from the map. "That's what it was."

"You know what did that to us?"

"Yah. It wasn't just science fiction," Reynolds said wonderingly.

"Reynolds! What did they do to my men?"

"It's an orbital weapon system. They dropped meteors on you, Colonel. There wasn't anything you could do. Shall I explain?"

"Sure, but not just to me," Jamison said. "Marty! Marty, get on the line and see what's keeping Mr. Reynolds's transportation! They need him back at the Springs!"

 

The helicopter came an hour later.

Rosalee was over by the car, pacing, but Carol was awake and frightened. "What will happen to me? Nat, you can't leave me here—"

"No, of course not." Reynolds looked around helplessly for someone in charge. He shouted toward the chopper, and a uniformed woman came out, a major.

By God! "Jenny!" Roger Brooks called. "Jenny, it's me, Roger! Can you take me to the Springs?"

"Roger? Hi! No, there's not room."

"You have to make room," Reynolds shouted. "For Carol!"

Jenny shook her head. "Mr. Reynolds, we have several hundred miles to go. The fuel situation is critical. We can't carry extra weight."

Picture of a torn man, Brooks thought. So what will he do?

"Carol's not heavy," Reynolds said. "I'll leave my suitcase."

"No." Major Crichton was firm. "Mr. Reynolds, you'll endanger all of us if you insist. Believe me, your friend is safer here."

"Then why am I getting into that thing?" Reynolds demanded.

"Because the President of the United States told me to bring you," Jenny said. "Sergeant, help Mr. Reynolds aboard."

Reynolds spread his arms, broadcasting helplessness. "If they want me that bad—Sorry, Carol."

He let the Army sergeant assist him into the helicopter. Major Crichton climbed in after him. She turned in the doorway to wave; then the door closed and the engine revved up.

And now I've got five hundred miles to go, fuel for six hundred, and two women to worry about. "Come on, ladies," Roger said. "We'll just have to take the low road."

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