“I hope this personnel shortage eases up pretty soon. Well, let me know when you have your ship and equipment lined up.”
“I will. Thanks.”
The wall went blank, and the colonel wiped a fine beading of perspiration from his brow and punched another call number. A voice promptly replied, “Personnel Monitor.”
“I’d like to know what personnel are available for assignment.”
“One moment . . . No personnel below the equivalent grade of colonel are currently on the Available List. There is a Colonel Valentine—”
“I’m Colonel Valentine.”
“Then this is of no assistance.”
“Correct. What about new recruits?”
“Only one new recruit is available at this location. One moment . . . This recruit has already been assigned, provisionally, to Operation New Vote.”
“How about . . . ah . . . recruits expected to arrive here in the near future?”
“I will check . . . Only three recruits are expected to arrive here in the near future. They are already assigned to Operation New Vote. If you wish to contact the operation commander—”
“Thanks. I’m in charge of that operation.”
“Ah. Then that is no help. In summary then, these are the total personnel at this location currently available and unassigned: zero.”
“O.K.,” said the colonel. “Thanks.”
He rapped out another call signal. A new voice replied.
“Ship Operations Monitor.”
“Give me a report, please, on the current confrontation between ourselves and the Space Force fleet commanded by General Larssen.”
The wall immediately lit, to show, hurtling past against a brilliant backdrop of stars, the rigidly-spaced array of a formidable fleet.
“General Larssen,” said the monitor, “has accepted the situation with an ill grace, and is withdrawing under imminent threat of attack by His Royal and Imperial Majesty, Vaughan the First, backed by the massed power of Imperial Trasimere, as symbolized by this dreadnought.”
“Mm-m-m,” said the colonel, scowling. It was all right to go along with this masquerade, so far as the outside was concerned. But to dish it out to their own people seemed like too much. “And when,” said the colonel dryly, “is His Royal and Imperial Majesty due to get here?”
“At any moment.”
The colonel came to his feet. “What bay?”
“Center Main Number One.”
“Thanks.”
He was out the hatch and running up the corridor in an instant. If he delayed, Intelligence would grab his men for a prolonged interrogation. It would be all he could do any-way to get Intelligence to settle for a memory simulation. And to do that, he had better be right on the spot when they got here.
He stopped at a door marked in glowing green letters, “Express,” pulled it open, jumped into the empty gray shaft within. “Center Main Bay Number One! Emergency! The Chief’s business!”
The walls blurred around him.
A cool voice spoke from a slim strip grille running along the length of the shaft.
“Relax your muscles. Physical resistance may create severe pain and bodily injury.”
The colonel relaxed, and closed his eyes to shut out the dizzying blur as the walls flashed past. More and more rapidly, his limp body bent and twisted at each curve of the shaft, his movements progressively more forced and violent, as if against his will he were being put through a course of strenuous calisthenics. And then the rapidity and force of these movements mounted until he felt as if he were being shoved through a winding twisting maze at top speed. Yet he felt no sense of forward motion at all. He concentrated on staying relaxed, his attention focused first on the muscles of this limb, then of that, as his body bowed and jerked like a marionette run by a madman.
Then the motions began to slow, and he allowed himself to open his eyes. He had time to remind himself not to use that phrase, “The Chief’s business” quite so lightheartedly the next time.
Then the door of the grav shaft opened up and spat him out, the words from the grille reaching him, “Center Main Bay Number One is straight ahead.”
He strode swiftly down the broad corridor, through a wide thick double door, and then there stretched out before him a space huge in itself, though small in relation to the size of the ship, in which rows of racks of various sizes stood nearly empty. Here and there a ship, itself of respectable size, nestled in a rack exactly fitted to it, a rack equally well-fitted holding it from above, so that no sudden acceleration or shift in gravitic field could tear the moored ship loose.
All this was familiar to the colonel, and he had also expected the score or so of men, some of them with Intelligence insignia, who stood a little back from the near end of the entrance, waiting. Nevertheless, something unusual in the air led him to look around uneasily.
To his right, in the surveillance shell projecting out beyond the near end of the membrane, half-a-dozen men operated big E-G machines. The men leaned back in their raised seats, guiding the snouts of the machines according to the image of a battered J-class ship on the wall before them, visible almost as clearly as if seen though a sheet of glass. These machines, no doubt, were only a part of Ahrens’ overpowering battery of emotional-field generators. The colonel frowned. Just as long as they were overpower-ing. He wasn’t eager to find himself in a battle of E-G machines, however weak the other side might be by comparison. Just let Ahrens pop them out of their ship in a wave of devotion and awe, and the colonel would have them on his team before there was time to say “Yes,” “No,” or “But,” and while Intelligence was still choked on its own outrage.
Alertly, he watched the image of the ship move forward, and then, from his viewpoint, it vanished. The E-G operators, receiving slightly different patterns of light from their viewpoints, raised the snouts of their machines an instant later, and threw the main switches to “Off” lest they unintentionally affect their own people. The nearest E-G operator now raised a fluorescent yellow-and-black paddle overhead. An answering wave from behind the rack told of the E-G machines concealed there, taking up the slack.
And that gave the colonel’s uneasiness a focus.
Had there been a gap between the coverage of one set of machines and the turning on of the others? And if so, why?
Then the nose of the J-ship appeared through the thick membrane, the membrane close against it at all points, so that no slightest detectable loss of air took place. The gradually appearing J-ship, though obviously battle-worn, blazed in gold and platinum, and now a dazzling set of three coats of arms flashed into view.
The colonel felt an unaccountable sense of awe.
He heard an indrawing of breath from the men waiting in the bay.
The glittering J-ship was now fully inside.
. . . And now the colonel was stricken with an urge to drop reverently to his knees.
III
Inside the J-Class Interstellar Patrol ship, Roberts, Hammell, and Morrissey had spent the last hour in that state of nerves induced by having their fate in the hands of others.
First, there had been the question whether Larssen would call their bluff and wipe them out, and then there had been the agonizing question in their minds about this huge dreadnought. But the voice of the symbiotic computer had answered their questions, and the reply from the dreadnought had seemed reassuring, and they had been content enough during the first part of the approach to the dreadnought.
More than content, they had been proud. Proud to serve with the legendary Interstellar Patrol. And more than proud, they had been humble. Humble because they really did not feel that they deserved the honor. And not only had they felt proud, and humble, but also determined. Determined to make the best of their good fortune, and do their best to deserve to be in the Interstellar Patrol. And so far, it was all right. So much emotion might naturally follow from what they had experienced. But then, not only did they feel proud, and humble, and determined, but as they entered the huge port of the dreadnought, they also felt awed, and impressed, and worshipful, and unworthy, and submissive, and obedient, and earnest, and loyal, and apologetic—and when the thing reached a certain pitch, there was an instant of sanity, and Roberts glanced at Hammell, and both men looked at Morrissey, who turned to look at the want-generator, and said, “It’s turned off.”
Roberts said, “Maybe ours is, but there’s one somewhere that isn’t.”
And before he fell blubbering on the deck in his humility, he managed to shake a supertranquilizer pill out of a small can, crumble it to bits, and swallow some.
A plate of thick glass seemed to descend, cutting him off from the rest of the universe. Outside this plate of thick glass, there was a sense as of mighty forces beating in vain against an unyielding barrier.