“Who’s being heroic now, Rod?” Samms asked, quietly. “Use your brain. And then come down here, Where you belong.”
And Kinnison, after a long moment of rebellious thought and with as much grace as he could muster, came down. Down not only to the Patrol’s familiar offices, but down into the deepest crypts beneath them. He was glum enough, and bitter, at first: but he found much to do. Grand Fleet Headquarters-his headquarters-was being organized, and the best efforts of the best minds and of the best technologists of three worlds were being devoted to the task of strengthening the already extremely strong defenses of THE HILL. And in a very short time the plates of GFHQ showed that Admiral Clayton and Lieutenant-Admiral Schweikert were doing a very nice job.
All of the really heavy stuff was of Earth, the Mother Planet, and was already in place; as , were the less numerous and much lighter contingents of Mars, of Venus, and of Jove. And the fleets of the outlying solar systems–;utters, scouts, and a few light cruisers-were neither maintaining fleet formation nor laying course for Sol. Instead, each individual vessel was blasting at maximum for the position in space in which it would form one unit of a formation englobing at a distance of light-years the entire Solarian System, and each of those hurtling hundreds of ships was literally combing all circumambient space with its furiously-driven detector beams.
“Nice.” Kinnison turned to Samms, now beside him at the master plate. “Couldn’t have done any better myself.”
“After you get it made, what are you going to do with it in case nothing happens?”
Samms was still somewhat skeptical. “How long can you make a drill last?”
“Until all the ensigns have long gray whiskers if I have to, but don’t worry-if we have time to get the preliminary globe made I’ll be the surprisedest man in the system.”
And Kinnison was not-surprised; before full englobement was accomplished, a loud-speaker gave tongue.
“Flagship Chicago to Grand Fleet Headquarters!” it blatted, sharply. “The Black Fleet has been detected. RA twelve hours, declination plus twenty degrees, distance about thirty light-years . . .”
Kinnison started to say something; then, by main force, shut himself up. He wanted intensely to take over, to tell the boys out there exactly what to do, but he couldn’t. He was now a Big Shot-damn the luck! He could be and must be responsible for broad policy and for general strategy, but, once those vitally important decisions had been made, the actual work would have to be done by others. He didn’t like it-but there it was. Those flashing thoughts took only an instant of time.
“. . . which is such extreme range that no estimate of strength or composition can be made at present. We will keep you informed.”
“Acknowledge,” be ordered Randolph; who, wearing now the five silver bars of major, was his Chief Communications Officer. “No instructions.”
He turned to his plate. Clayton hadn’t had to be told to pull in his light stuff; it was all pelting hell-for-leather for Sol and Tellus. Three general plans of battle had been mapped out by Staff. Each had its advantages-and its disadvantages. Operation Acorn-long distances-would be fought at, say, twelve light-years. It would keep everything, particularly the big stuff, away from the Hill, and would make automatics useless . . . unless some got past, or unless the automatics were coming in on a sneak course, or unless several other things-in any one of which cases what a Godawful shellacking the Hill would take!
He grinned wryly at Samms, who had been following his thought, and quoted: “A vast hemisphere of lambent violet flame, through which neither material substance nor destructive ray can pass.”
“Well, that dedicatory statement, while perhaps a bit florid, was strictly true at the time-before the days of allotropic iron and of polycyclic drills. Now I’ll quote one: ‘Nothing is permanent except change’.”
“Uh-huh,” and Kinnison returned to his thinking. Operation Adack. Middle distance. Uh-uh. He didn’t like it any better now than he had before, even though some of the Big Brains of Staff thought it the ideal solution. A compromise. All of the disadvantages of both of the others, and none of the advantages of either. It still stunk, and unless the Black fleet had an utterly fantastic composition Operation Adack was out.
And Virgil Samms, quietly smoking a cigarette, smiled inwardly. Rod the Rock could scarcely be expected to be in favor of any sort of compromise.
That left Operation Affick. Close up. It had three tremendous advantages. First, the Hill’s own offensive weapons -as long as they lasted. Second, the new Rodebush-Bergenholm fields. Third, no sneak attack could be made without detection and interception. It had one tremendous disadvantage; some stuff, and probably a lot of it, would get through. Automatics, robots, guided missiles equipped with superspeed drives, with polycyclic drills, and with atomic warheads strong enough to shake the whole world.
But with those new fields, shaking the world wouldn’t be enough; in order to get deep enough to reach Virgil Samms they would damn near have to destroy the world. Could anybody build a bomb that powerful? He didn’t think so. Earth technology was supreme throughout all known space; of Earth technologists the North Americans were, and always had been, tops. Grant that the Black Fleet was, basically, North American. Grant further that they had a man as good as Adlington-or that they could spy-ray Adlington’s brain and laboratories and shops-a tall order. Adlington himself was several months away from a world-wrecker, unless he could put one a hundred miles down before detonation, which simply was not feasible. He turned to Samms.
“It’ll be Affick, Virge, unless they’ve got a composition that is radically different from anything I ever saw put into space.”
“So? I can’t say that I am very much surprised.”
The calm statement and the equally calm reply were beautifully characteristic of the two men. Kinnison had not asked, nor had Samms offered, advice. Kinnison, after weighing -the facts, made his decision. Samms, calmly certain that the decision was the best that could be made upon the data available, accepted it without question or criticism.
“We’ve still got a minute or two,” Kinnison remarked. “Don’t quite know what to make of their line of approach. Coma Berenices: I don’t know of anything at all out that way, do you? They could have detoured, though.”
“No, I don’t.” Samms frowned in thought. “Probably a detour.”
“Check.” Kinnison turned to Randolph. “Tell them ‘to report whatever they know; we can’t wait any . . :’
As he was speaking the report came in.
The Black Fleet was of more or less normal make-up; considerably larger than the
North American contingent, but decidedly inferior to the Patrol’s present Grand Fleet.
Either three or four capital ships . . .
“And we’ve got six!” Kinnison said, exultantly. “Our own two, Asia’s Himalaya, Africa’s Johannesburg, South America’s Bolivar, and Europe’s Europa.”
. . . Battle cruisers and heavy cruisers, about in the usual proportions; but an unusually high ratio of scouts and -light cruisers. There were either two or three large ships which could not be classified definitely at that distance; longrange observers were going out to study them.
“Tell Clayton,” Kinnison instructed Randolph, “that it is to be Operation Affick, and for him to fly at it.”
“Report continued,” the speaker came to life again. “There are three capital ships, apparently of approximately the Chicago class, but tear-drop-shaped instead of spherical
. . .”
“Ouch!” Kinnison flashed a thought at Samms. “I don’t like that. They can both fight and run.”
“. . . The battle cruisers are also tear-drops. The small vessels are torpedo-shaped. There are three of the large ships, which we are still not able to classify definitely. They are spherical in shape, and very large, but do not seem to be either armed or screened, and are apparently carrierspossibly of automatics. We are now making contact-off!”
Instead of looking at the plates before them, the two Lensmen went en rapport with Clayton, so that they could see everything be saw. The stupendous Cone of Battle had long since been formed; the word to fire was given in a measured two-second call. Every firing officer in every Patrol ship touched his stud in the same split second. And from the gargantuan mouth of the Cone there spewed a milesthick column of energy so raw, so stark, so incomprehensibly violent that it must have been seen to be even dimly appreciated. It simply cannot be described.
Its prototype, Triplanetary’s Cylinder of Annihilation, had been a highly effective weapon indeed. The offensive beams of the fish-shaped Nevian cruisers of the void were even more powerful. The Cleveland-Rodebush projectors, developed aboard the original Boise on the long Nevian way, were stronger still. The composite beam projected by this fleet of the Galactic Patrol, however, was the sublimation and quintessence of each of these, redesigned and redesigned by scientists and engineers of ever-increasing knowledge, rebuilt and rebuilt by technologists of ever-increasing skill.