PROTECTORS
by Malcolm Beckett


	The title `Captain of the Protector-Service Striker *Crom*' was an impressive one.  Albet Simps felt more like the Captain of an old-fashioned one-man submarine; a home-built one at that. There was no space for a Captain's cabin, in fact, no room for even a place that would be his alone to sit in.  He was simply the monkey who was there to make sure the arrow got fired at roughly the right time, at roughly the right target.
	He had not seen home in five years, and his skinny frame and slack, underworked muscles showed the effects of the condition of no-gravity in which he passed his existence when he was on patrol, as now.  His short leaves in the Moon base of the Protector Service were refreshing in some senses, but he was never able to recover the health and vigor he had once felt, and had become sure in the past few years that his deteriorating health would not allow him to see Earth again.  Not until he went there to be buried, at least.  He could not remember why he had joined up, now.  It sometimes seemed that the grey and white bulkheads of *Crom* were the only environment he had ever known, though he still knew better, somewhere deep inside him.  He was Captain for this month.  Willa would take over in three Earth days, and he was looking forward to being crew and purser and body-servant again for thirty days.  She would require menial service of him, as she always did, but the terrible responsibility of the cargo they carried, and of its correct dispatch in emergency conditions, would be hers for a bit, and he could relax and be as dependent as his tension required him to be.  Even now, he could feel the tug of his desire to be the doer of tasks rather than the decider.  When they had last coupled, she had noticed it too, and had crowed a little at his premature sexual passivity.  She would have tired of the subordinate role, of course, as, thirty-three days from now, would he, but her usurpation of the dominant role in `bed' had irritated him, although he had gone along with it.
	For five long years; since the two of them had been paired by the Council committee responsible for such things, they had alternated between Captain and captive, and at first it had been exciting.
	Now it sometimes felt like just one more chore, even when she aroused his sexual desire to heights he thought he had forgotten.
	"Touch me there until I tell you to stop," she would command, and he would do so, and be relieved of the decision, and, for a month, or three weeks, that would be what he wanted.
	Right now, he wanted to piss, but he had to track the missile he had just sent after the odd asteroid, or comet, or whatever it was.  "Who ever heard of an bright silver asteroid?" asked Willa, from just behind his right ear.
	He had no answer, so he just grunted.  They were not supposed to assess the things they might destroy or deflect, just make sure they could never strike the Earth in pieces of any dangerous size.  For all they knew, they could have blasted whole mines of desperately-needed raw materials to chunks the size of a fist, and never known it.
	"Want to swap now, and relieve the tension a bit early?"
	She always asked that, lately.  She really wanted the Command role.  She would be welcome to it soon, just a few days from now, but they both knew what would happen if he surrendered it now.  She would have what she thought she wanted, but *Crom* would thenceforth have only one properly-functioning crew-member, and even she could react badly to the extra dominance that would give her.
	Of course, she would acquire a new partner, and that would excite her, he was sure, but she might not be allowed to ship out with him.  She, too, required the rules that governed the interchange of position, and might be crippled if he allowed her to alter it.  Besides, it was against regs, and he and she were both wedded to regulations even more than to each other. 
	"Scratch my back," he ordered, and, automatically, she did, knowing the right spot to stimulate without being told.
	"Now track the bird for a while," he told her, "I'm going below."  He used pseudo-nautical terminology as often as he could, partly because it irritated Willa, and partly because it let him pretend he was somewhere on Earth with an unknown new woman, rather than out in the fringes of human-explored space with a flabby, skinny, wasted female version of himself, trying to pretend that he loved her when they fucked.
	"Aye Captain," she responded, and she did her duty, though she stuck out her tongue as he headed for what he called the `head', and she called the `open-air mini-crapper', when she was in charge.
	All functions were performed in the open in this vessel, for it was nothing but a huge, mobile missile-silo, with a small hamster-cage attached, and there was neither room nor any good technical reason for adding privacy facilities.
	She was watching while he urinated, he was sure, and caught his thoughts just in time to avoid an erection at the idea.
	Yes, he sighed inwardly, he was certainly ready to let her take over.  He was wanting her to spy on him sexually, rather than the other way 'round, and that was another sign he recognized that he was not feeling like a Commander, or like any sort of dominant person at all.
	"How's she flying?" he called up the tube-corridor to her.
	"Straight, at least.  Maybe on target, too.  We'll know if it'll strike in...about fifteen minutes, I think.
	"Put Tracking on Auto, and come to bed." He tried to put a note of tough command in his voice, because sometimes she like that, but he was really pleading to be held, and loved, and comforted, and she would know it, and be less loving than she could, just to assert her coming dominance.  Maybe retirement would be possible after the next sortie, and he'd never have to look at her or touch her or need her again.
	He headed for the sack they called their bed, and was surprised to find himself eager, after all these times.
	Willa Mant left her post slowly.  She was not at all eager to be submissive today, but she had to.  Regulations.  Three days from now, he'd be her slave, if she wanted, and that was stimulating enough to make her at least undress on the way.
	The switch was long overdue, this time, she thought, as she assumed the position she thought he would like.  Next time, or the time after that, she'd make him beg before she gave in to the pig.
	And the two loneliest people in the worlds or out of them managed to find some comfort in each other after all.  And perhaps some love as well.
	The bird flew true this time.  It was aimed for the dusty- silver object that was, in fact, on collision-course with Earth, and its automatic guidance was not so rusty that it would throw it completely off course, as had happened to *Crom*'s sister- vessel, *Vengeance,* only last year.  But the course-correcting rockets were old, too, and the course of the huge weapon deviated just a trifle from the pattern the computer on Earth had laid down for it.  The strike was off-center.  Never mind, the thing's new course had deviated enough that most of the mathematicians and astronomers of the Protection Intelligence Committee thought it would eventually strike the Sun, or at least be captured in an inner-System orbit.
	The bright silver stuff must have been a film of some sort, the bright heads of Humanity decided, because the thing was much smaller now, and looked dusty-black on the final closeup photos taken by a reconnaissance flyby two months later.
	Two years after that, the silver covering had reappeared, and the last time the Preventive Service had an official look at the thing, they thought they must have erred in their original calculation of its new orbit, for it was locked into a satellite configuration with Venus.  The Solar System now had two planets with single Moons.  Nobody paid that very much attention, though. 

There were always new threats, real or potential, to be avoided, and what went on at Venus was just too expensive to investigate.
	Mating was more of a struggle than joyful play.  Over quickly, it was the sudden eruption of lust in two rather testy mink, rather than a loving human expression of love or lust.  A reflex act, performed in weightlessness as part of the dominance- submission cycle that Command loved too much to examine very closely.  It worked, they said.  By that they usually meant that it kept the bright young officers out in space until they burned out, and were no threat to those above them on the ladder.
	Willa and Albet had been exceptional.  They still might be, but they were locked into a rigorous alternation of roles that neither could see for long enough to break it.
	"You got that funny asteroid in the 'scope?"
	"Yes."  Her reply was slow, almost lazy.  Three days to changeover.  He'd better assert himself.  If he lost the Captaincy to her now, they'd be ruined as a team.
	He shot down the short tube of the crew-pod, landing with grace he did not know he had on the worn pad at the end, and deflected his course in to the little space they called "Navigation," or, "The Observatory," depending on what they were doing in there at the time.
	"Brace, crewman!"
	She swam slowly into a position that somewhat resembled an "at attention" stance.  Or would have had she been doing anything but vomiting.
	"Oh, shit, Willa, I'm sorry...."  Albet grabbed a double- handful of her sick-soaked suit, and eased her into the "corridor," and thence to the sack.
	"You been like this for long, Baby?"
	"Thirty years, more or less."  The effect of her sarcasm was lost in a second spew that splashed off Albet.  He barely noticed.
	"All right.  Settle if you can.  I'll get the medikit."
	"What you gonna treat me for?  Got a diagnosis, Doc?"
	His temper broke for just a second, and he found himself at her throat, quite literally.  Slowly, carefully, he forced himself away from her, slid out into the corridor and broke open the hatch behind which they kept their pitiful supply of medicaments.
	There was stuff for pain, stuff for infection, stuff for allergies to the other stuff, but he found nothing at all for nausea.
	"Nothing here!" he bellowed.
	Weakly; "No.  I used it already."
	He returned to her side.  "How much?  How long?"
	"Long time.  I spit blood once, but that was over a month ago.  Albet, what the hell do you care?"
	She seemed serious.  This woman whom he had loved for aye and aye had thought he would not care that she was vomiting blood.
	In response, he just smiled.
	"Okay, I remember.  I think."  Willa's voice was still slow and weak, but there was a smile he hadn't seen in years.  How many years?  He was afraid to count.
	And for the first time in an age, the proximity-alarm sounded.
	He was at his command-post seconds before he realized that she would not be at hers -- and then she was.
	"You can't work like that."
	"Why not?  I can screw like this.  Captain."  But the force of hatred in her voice was not quite what it had been.  There was a soft edge of...something else he'd almost forgotten.
	"Give me a reading on the alarming object, Crew.  If you still remember how."
	"Wait...two of them.  One coming from the silver one we hit, and the other...."  She burst into laughter that had to be hysterical.  "Christ, Albie, it's our fucking relief!  We forgot."
	Every two years there was supposed to be a relief of all crews.  They'd missed the last one.  Or it had never come. Collision-protection was considered necessary.  Protection crews were not.  They had been expended, they'd feared, but had gone on working anyway.
	"Which is closer?"
	"The bogey, of course.  What the Hell did you expect of Command -- efficiency and good timing, too?"
	"We once had better timing than we have now."
	She looked at the speaker his voice had come from in amazement.  Then, softly, "We did, yes."
	"Okay, give me the numbers.  What's the bogey, and when does it get here?"
	"Dunno what it is.  Collision in...thirty hours and a bit."
	"And the relief?"
	"Forty.  What else?"
	He laughed.  She remembered that laugh.  Not too long before, he had laughed it when they met their first target together.  An eon ago.  but she smiled.
	"We could do this job once, Honey."  It was his turn to look astonished, but he, too, refrained from comment.
	Then, "Captain Simps?"
	"What?"  Suspicious, he allowed no trace of emotion into his tone.
	"Two things.  One, the bogey just altered its course.  Two, Merry Christmas."
	That they had been spaced on Boxing-Day, and that that was their `anniversary' as a team was a yearly joke, but she sounded as though she meant it, for a change.
	"Thank you, Willa."  The message sank in.  "Changed its course?  What the fuck do you mean, changed its course?  No natural object can do that."
	"Merry Christmas, Captain."
	And, once again, they were laughing together.  The hopeless timing of the fruition of their earliest dream together was..silly enough that they both saw the joke at the same time. Another small miracle of recovered intimacy.
	For the human race, all contacts had become dangerous ones. Two huge asteroid-strikes in two decades had created a sterling Protection Service.  Five decades of nothing special had ruined it.  Their own dream, the crew of *Crom*, had been to make Contact. And they would.  Disastrously and explosively, probably.  After all, they had fired first.
	"You think there was intelligence in there?" asked the (for now) Captain.
	"How else would this thing be headed for us?"
	"Fragmentation...misplaced charge in our missile...asymmetrical explosion...I dunno.  You think there's somebody inside...that?"
	"Want to wait and find out?"
	Decades of Service discipline said, "*No.*"  Albet, on an impulse he never fully understood, said, with considerable surprise i his voice, "You know...I think I do.  We'll hod our fire."
	It was the first non-reflexive decision he had ever made as a member of the Service.  Another generation would have called it a Command Decision.  Willa, sick and relying on the teachings of a decimated society, called it crazy.
	She turned a paler shade, and made a decision of her own.
	"Captain Simps.  As a senior officer of Protection, I declare to you that I have perceived in your behavior variations from the teachings and Standing Orders of the Service which force and permit me to relieve you of command.  I relieve you, Sir." She looked as astonished as did Albet at her words.
	"I note your finding, Crew Mant, and it is logged.  Where is another officer who will confirm or refute your conclusion."  For it took two.
	"There is no such officer aboard.  I therefore respectfully request that I be allowed to contact the relief vessel closing on us now, to seek advice and another qualified opinion in this matter."
	"Regretfully, Crew, I inform you that I have declared radio- silence due to the proximity of possibly-intelligent beings who might be a danger to the Service, and who might interpret your message as a sign that the Earth and the Service are not prepared to meet them on equal or better terms.  Denied."
	She stared at him.  "Where the hell would they have learned to speak Inglis?"
	"Hypothetically, for broadcasts on frequencies such as the one you proposed to use."
	"That's...crazy, Albet.  You are mad."
	An hour later, it had been reduced to a slanging-match, and neither sounded in the least like an officer of any sort of Service.
	"There could be life in there!  Who the Hell do you think you are, Willa, to decide that people, of our race or not, should die?"
	"If you were thinking at all with that pea-sized ganglion you call a brain, you'd see that A) there is no intelligence out there, and that, B) if there is, *it's retaliating!*  Albet, we shot first!"
	And an hour after that the Crew had cornered the Captain in behind the steel bulkhead that separated the tiny Navigation chamber from the rest of the vessel with a long carving knife in her hand, and the Captain was defending himself with clever defensive swings of a heavy skillet, and occasionally managing an offensive move or two as well.
	There was a standoff.  Willa could not get to the radio or firing-post, and Albet couldn't stop her any more permanently than he already had.  They only had one knife, and he was looking at the wrong end of it.
	For the next eight hours, their course went unmonitored, their radio unmanned and their navigational observations unmade. Then Albet got to the radio during a series of yo-yo manoeuvres up and down the narrow tube of the ship.  When he also made a destructive raid into the wiring of the firing-mechanism of the missile tube, he had, in effect, won.
	"Captain Mant.  I stand relieved."  He was two days early, but what the hell.
	And the new Captain, though she order him a thousand times into quarters-arrest; though she handcuff him to the outer airlock door and vent the air, would be able to do no more than that.  The first mutiny in the history of the Service (or can a Captain mutiny?) had achieved its objective.
	The putative intelligence drew closer.  So did the unarmed Service relief-Shuttle.  Nobody was going anywhere but to a common point.  They would rendezvous as predicted, but unProtected.
	When Captain Mant found the old piece of rope in a locker and tied her crew to the mini-crapper in the stern of he central tube of the vessel, having first secured his, if not cooperation,`then at least lack of resistance with a long three- quarter-inch bolt she had also found there, it made no difference except to her.  History was already written, and the forces of Mankind would meet the mass of a possible enemy intruder unarmed and but for the two of them, unforewarned.
	Twelve hours after that, the robot explorer from Alpha Centauri A turned on its mapping-scanner, and began its second sweep of the third planet from the Sun.  It had returned exactly one hundred of its years after its first reconnaissance of the Solar System to verify that signs of life on the planet were, in fact, signs of life, and not random variations in the surface- texture of the desert and semi-desert where trails and dirt roads had been spotted.  The silver-colored reflector that was a part of the drone itself shone with the light of many stars, and the people, what few of them there were, looked up to see a Star shining in their East once again.  But theirs was an underground culture since the ozone had been destroyed.  Less of their works could be seen on the surface than had been the case in ancient Arabia and Israel.  The signal sent by the drone said, in effect, "No."
	The relief crew arrived on schedule.  Mant and Simps were taken from *Crom* for the last time, both in manacles pending trial.  Soon after, *Crom* was decommissioned.  The searing proximity of the drone's scanner-beam had melted almost through one of the hull plates in the forward part of the ship, and she was judged unspaceworthy by the relief-crew, and set adrift, to fall into the Sun.
	The robot drone returned to the Mother-Ship, also a drone, moved inside, and both suffered the same fate as *Crom*.  The nuclear-warhead-tipped missile had done its job.
	Parting forever at the Service's private spaceport, the last crew of *Crom* were allowed a few supervised moments together. After all, before they went insane, Simps and Mant had been the best team there was.
	"Bye, Love," said Captain Mant.  She smiled almost warmly. "Merry Christmas."
	Albet first glared, then grimaced.  He turned away, then back.
	"You, too, Will.  Merry Christmas, Dear."