“But how,” MacIntyre objected, “could you guess what was wrong without knowing the facts? That’s not logical.”
“It sure isn’t. Logic has to do with chains of individual facts. Intuition takes whole groups of facts at once. You can recognize a familiar pattern—like a familiar face—even though you don’t consciously know all the details. Sometimes it’s a mistake, but then you can often use logic as a check. With intuition you see it; with logic you check it.”
Connely, now that the excitement was over, was again feeling hungry and uncomfortable. “You don’t have any idea how this helmet works?”
“I think it’s a psionic circuit. That’s all I can tell you.” MacIntyre glared at the course-control manual and suddenly slammed it down. “The devil with it. I’d better fix that fuel line.”
As MacIntyre went out, Connely had a vague hunch that something was wrong. However, he was too busy trying to get out of the helmet. Psionics, he told himself, had to do with the interaction of devices and the human organism itself. Maybe mental attitude would affect the helmet. Connely tilted his head forward, and visualized, pleaded, urged, insisted, believed that the helmet would fall off.
With a thud the helmet fell to the deck.
For an instant Connely felt as if all his troubles and difficulties were over. Then he saw the familiar flashing yellow light on the new control panel.
The light told him that, like all the other pure machinelike devices on board, the M1-X IntruGrab (medium) was doing its duty with ironclad, black-and-white, absolutely indisputable logic.
But Connely did not belabor the point as, for the second time, he let MacIntyre loose.
STAR TIGER
Lieutenant General John Wilforce knew the saying that trouble comes when least expected. It occurred to him as he finished his shower and toweled briskly. He was still considering it as he slid between the cool sheets for his first full night’s sleep in six months.
Wilforce lay still, hearing the rumble of the automatic loaders that poured fuel, food, and ammunition into the flagship’s tanks and storerooms. In his mind’s eye, he could see the ships of his fleet. Most of them, like his own, were drawn close to the starlit framework of girders, drums, crates, and pressurized spheres that was Space Center 12. From these ships, thousands of his men were now streaming into the bars, game rooms, and psychosynth parlors of the Center, eager for a few hours of release and forgetfulness after the brutal months on Inferno.
Before letting himself fall asleep, Wilforce reviewed his precautions. He had detached a strong squadron of the fleet to reinforce the guard ships of the Center. Half the men in each ship now reloading at the Center were on board, ready for duty at a few minutes notice. Moreover, the latest reports showed no sign of trouble whatever, anywhere in his sector.
Satisfied that he had done his job, the general pulled the covers close around him, and fell sound asleep. Unnoticed as he slept, the hands of the clock on the communicator by his cot swung slowly around their dial until, in the early hours of the morning, a red light blinked on.
Wilforce woke with a hammering clang in his ears. He threw back the covers to see the communicator’s red warning light flash on and off. Then the screen flared into life:
CLASS A EMERGENCY!
CLASS A EMERGENCY!
CLASS A EMERGENCY!
Wilforce swung to the edge of the cot and hit the “Receive” stud. On the screen appeared a man with three stars at his collar and his shirt plastered to his skin with perspiration. Clouds of vapor rolled past behind him as he said: “General Wilforce?”
“Right here.” Wilforce snapped on the room light so he could be seen. He recognized the man now as Larssen, armed forces commander in a sector bordering his own.
Larssen, a note of strain in his voice, said, “General, are you still tied up on Inferno?”
“We just got back from it.”
Larssen hesitated barely an instant. Then he said, “A little over the border from you in my sector is a sun system called Bemus. There are colonies on the third planet, and they’ve been there better than ten years with no trouble. I also have a small rest camp on the planet. At last report, a month ago, everything was fine.”
Larssen paused, then said, “Three days ago, a destroyer of mine crash-landed on Bemus III. Every colony there has been smashed. All records, books, food, and clothing are gone. Weapons are strewn all over. There’s not a human being left. There are abundant tracks of animals entirely different from those native to the planet, but the animals themselves aren’t to be seen.”
Wilforce listened intently.
Larssen went on. “The detector network shows nothing approaching or leaving the planet. The result is, I don’t know what happened on Bemus III. Right now nearly everything I’ve got is tied up. Yet, if something can get past the detector network and wipe out a whole planet, I can’t ignore it. Can you help me?”
Wilforce said, “I’ll do everything I can.”
Larssen thanked him fervently, and promised to have his staff send immediately every scrap of information available about Bemus III. The screen blanked, and Wilforce punched a number on a vertical row of buttons to the left of the screen. The competent, slightly pudgy face of Rybalko, his chief-of-staff, appeared.
Wilforce said, “Did you hear that, Balky?”
“Yes, sir,” said Rybalko. “I heard it.”
“How long will it take us to load up?”
“Sir, to do it right will take another five days.”
Wilforce thought a moment. If he waited, the trouble, whatever it was, might have time to develop. If he immediately took his full fleet to Bemus, he might by sheer force crush the thing at its beginning. On the other hand, experience told him that he might find himself making gestures in empty space, and be forced back in a few weeks for lack of supplies. He made up his mind, and glanced at Rybalko.
“Balky, get a light task-force together to prowl around Bemus system. Load a D-transport with Pioneers to scour Bemus III and piece together what’s happened. Put a combat group on another D-transport to back up the Pioneers. Then get in touch with the destroyer that crash-landed on the planet. I’ll want to talk to the commanding officer.”
“Yes, sir.”
Wilforce got up, splashed cold water on his face, and got dressed.
The destroyer’s commanding officer turned out to be a spare major with craggy features.
Wilforce said, “Major, exactly where are you on the planet?”
The major held up a map. “Sir, we’re in the planet’s northern hemisphere here, about three hundred miles southwest of the rest camp. The terrain where we came down is a gently-rolling, dry, grassy plain. We’re at the point marked ‘X’ here on the map, about twenty-seven miles north of the big loop of this river.”
“What’s your situation right now?”
“Well, sir, we have plenty of supplies. An abundance of fresh meat. And we haven’t been threatened in any way. We’ve scoured the five-hundred mile radius of territory we can cover thoroughly with our light fliers, and we’ve let out Bats and Probes to scout farther out. We can’t find anything that looks dangerous—except that the colonies and rest camp have been totally wiped out.”
“Have you taken pictures?”
“Yes, sir. As soon as we realized what had happened, we started taking them. We’re getting ready to send you a batch on the trifac right now.”
“Good work. Now, how did you happen to crash-land on the planet in the first place?”
The major hesitated. “Sir, to be perfectly honest, I don’t know what happened. None of us knows. We were making a routine sweep through this part of the sector, and swung close to the planet because we couldn’t get any response from the communications center down at the rest camp. Then something hit the ship like a hundred tons of lead. The next thing we knew, the air was whistling out. Seams parted here and there the whole length of the ship, and we barely had time to get into suits. There was nothing on the detectors that could have caused it, but there we were just the same. I decided to set down on the planet to replenish the air and repair the ship. But we’d had even more damage than I realized. On the way down, several drive tubes blew their linings, and a gravitor broke loose from its mount. That was how we came to crash-land on the planet.”
“Do you have records of your detector readings?”
“Yes, sir. We can run the record tapes through the trifac if you’d like.”
Wilforce said, “Yes, do that, from the time you entered Bemus System till you landed on the planet.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How are your repairs coming?”
“We expect to have the seams sealed up, the gravitor mounted, and the tubes lined in about two weeks, sir. Straightening the frame will be a job for the yards at Main Base. But we should be able to get back all right.”