“What about leaving your chin wide open?” Colman ~ asked. “Isn’t there anything in the rules about that?”
“Depends who you are. For D Company all things are relative.”
“Ever think of making a new seat for your pants out of part of that flak-jacket?” Colman asked after a pause. “You’re probably gonna need it.”
“Ah, who gives a shit?” Sirocco looked Up. “Anyhow, won’t be much longer before we find out.”
Colman followed his gaze. An armored VIP carrier bearing a general’s insignia on its nose was angling toward them. Colman shifted his M32 to the other shoulder and straightened up to watch. “Smarten it up,” he called to the rest of Third Platoon, who were smoking, talking, and lounging in groups by the stream and around the bunker. The cigarettes were ground out under the heavy soles of combat boots, the chattering died away, and the groups shuffled themselves into tidier ranks.
“On what did you base your analysis of the situational display, Sergeant?” Sirocco asked, speaking in a clipped, high-pitched voice mimicking the formal tones of Colonel Wesserman, who was General Portney’s aide. He injected a note of suspicion and accusation into the voice. “Was Corporal Swyley instrumental in the formulation of your tactical evaluation?” The question was bound to arise; the image analysis routines run at Brigade would have yielded nothing to justify the attack.
“No, sir,” Colman replied stiffly, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead. “Corporal Swyley was manning the compack. He would not have been assigned to ELINT analysis. He’s color-blind.”
“Then how do you explain your extraordinary conclusions?”
;’I suppose we just guessed lucky, sir.”
Sirocco sighed. “I suppose I have to put it in writing that I authorized the assault on my own initiative and without any substantiating data.” He cocked his head at Colman. “Happen to know anyone around here who makes a good pair of pants?”
Ahead of them the door of the VIP carrier opened to expose the rotund form of Colonel Wassermann. His florid face was even more florid than usual and swelled into a deep purple at the neck. He seemed to be choking with suppressed fury.
“I guess he doesn’t have a nose for the sweet smell of success,” Colman murmured as they watched.
Sirocco twirled one side of his moustache pensively for a second or two. “Success is like a fart,” he said. “Only your own smells nice.”
CHAPTER TWO
A SUDDEN CHANGE in the colors and format of one of the displays being presented around him in the monitor room of the Drive Control Subcenter caught Bernard Fallows’s eye and dismissed other thoughts from his mind. The display was one of several associated with Number 5 Group of the Primary Fuel Delivery System and related to one of the batteries of enormous hydrogen-feed boost pumps located in the tail section of the vessel, five miles from where Fallows was sitting.
“What’s happening on Five-E, Horace?” he asked the empty room around him.
“Low-level trend projection,” the subcenter executive computer replied through a small grille set to one side of Fallow’s console. “Booster vee-sub-three’s looking as if it’s going to start running hot again. Correlation integral sixty-seven, check function positive, expansion index eight-zero.”
“Reading at index six?”
“Insignificant.”
Fallows took in the rest of the information from the screen. The changes that the computers had detected were tiny–the merest beginnings of a trend which, if it continued at the present rate, wouldn’t approach anything serious for a month or more. With only another three months to go before the ship reached Chiron there was no cause for alarm since the rest of the pump-group had enough design margin to make up the difference even without the backup. But even so, there was little doubt that Merrick would insist on the primary’s being stripped down to have its bearings reground, alignment rechecked, and rotor rebalanced again. They had been through that routine twice already in the three months that the main drive had been firing. That meant another week of working in near-zero g and klutzing around in heavy-duty protective suits on the wrong side of the stern radiation shield. “Bloody pump,” Fallows muttered sourly.
“Since a pump is not an organic system, I presume the expression is an expletive,” Horace observed chattily.