The Collected Novels of E. E. Smith. E. E. Smith
cocked forty-fives at the ready, and fitted his right eye into a cup. Unlike fingerprints, retinal patterns cannot be imitated, duplicated, or altered; any imposter would have died instantly, without arrest or question. For every man who belonged aboard that rocket had been checked and tested—how he had been checked and tested!—since one spy, in any one of those Technos' chairs, could wreak damage untellable.
The port snapped open. Kinnison climbed a ladder into the large, but crowded, Operations Room.
"Hi, Teddy!" a yell arose.
"Hi, Walt! Hi-ya, Red! What-ho, Baldy!" and so on. These men were friends of old.
"Where are they?" he demanded. "Is our stuff getting away? Lemme take a peek at the Ball!"
"I'll say it is! O.K., Ted, squeeze in here!"
He squeezed in. It was not a ball, but a hemisphere, slightly oblate and centered approximately by the North Pole. A multitude of red dots moved slowly—a hundred miles upon that map was a small distance—northward over Canada; a closer-packed, less numerous group of yellowish-greens, already on the American side of the Pole, was coming south.
As had been expected, the Americans had more missiles than did the enemy. The other belief, that America had more adequate defenses and better-trained, more highly skilled defenders, would soon be put to test.
A string of blue lights blazed across the continent, from Nome through Skagway and Wallaston and Churchill and Kaniapiskau to Belle Isle; America's First Line of Defense. Regulars all. Ambers almost blanketed those blues; their combat rockets were already grabbing altitude. The Second Line, from Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver across to Halifax, also showed solid green, with some flashes of amber. Part Regulars; part National Guard.
Chicago was in the Third Line, all National Guard, extending from San Francisco to New York. Green—alert and operating. So were the Fourth, the Fifth, and the Sixth. Operation Bullfinch was clicking; on schedule to the second.
A bell clanged; the men sprang to their stations and strapped down. Every chair was occupied. Combat Rocket Number One Oh Six Eight Five, full-powered by the disintegrating nuclei of unstable isotopes, took off with a whooshing roar which even her thick walls could not mute.
The Technos, crushed down into their form-fitting cushions by three G's of acceleration, clenched their teeth and took it.
Higher! Faster! The rocket shivered and trembled as it hit the wall at the velocity of sound, but it did not pause.
Higher! Faster! Higher! Fifty miles high. One hundred ... five hundred ... a thousand ... fifteen hundred ... two thousand! Half a radius—the designated altitude at which the Chicago Contingent would go into action.
Acceleration was cut to zero. The Technos, breathing deeply in relief, donned peculiarly-goggled helmets and set up their panels.
Kinnison stared into his plate with everything he could put into his optic nerve. This was not like the Ball, in which the lights were electronically placed, automatically controlled, clear, sharp, and steady. This was radar. A radar considerably different from that of 1948, of course, and greatly improved, but still pitifully inadequate in dealing with objects separated by hundreds of miles and traveling at velocities of thousands of miles per hour!
Nor was this like the practice cruises, in which the targets had been harmless barrels or equally harmless dirigible rockets. This was the real thing; the targets today would be lethal objects indeed. Practice gunnery, with only a place in the Proficiency List at stake, had been exciting enough: this was too exciting—much too exciting—for the keenness of brain and the quickness and steadiness of eye and of hand so soon to be required.
A target? Or was it? Yes—three or four of them!
"Target One—Zone Ten," a quiet voice spoke into Kinnison's ear and one of the white specks upon his plate turned yellowish green. The same words, the same lights, were heard and seen by the eleven other Technos of Sector A, of which Kinnison, by virtue of standing at the top of his Combat Rocket's Proficiency List, was Sector Chief. He knew that the voice was that of Sector A's Fire Control Officer, whose duty it was to determine, from courses, velocities, and all other data to be had from ground and lofty observers, the order in which his Sector's targets should be eliminated. And Sector A, an imaginary but sharply-defined cone, was in normal maneuvering the hottest part of the sky. Fire Control's "Zone Ten" had informed him that the object was at extreme range and hence there would be plenty of time. Nevertheless:
"Lawrence—two! Doyle—one! Drummond—stand by with three!" he snapped, at the first word.
In the instant of hearing his name each Techno stabbed down a series of studs and there flowed into his ears a rapid stream of figures—the up-to-the-second data from every point of observation as to every element of motion of his target. He punched the figures into his calculator, which would correct automatically for the motion of his own vessel—glanced once at the printed solution of the problem—tramped down upon a pedal once, twice, or three times, depending upon the number of projectiles he had been directed to handle.
Kinnison had ordered Lawrence, a better shot than Doyle, to launch two torpedoes; neither of which, at such long range, was expected to strike its mark. His second, however, should come close; so close that the instantaneous data sent back to both screens—and to Kinnison's—by the torpedo itself would make the target a sitting duck for Doyle, the less proficient follower.
Drummond, Kinnison's Number Three, would not launch his missiles unless Doyle missed. Nor could both Drummond and Harper, Kinnison's Number Two, be "out" at once. One of the two had to be "in" at all times, to take Kinnison's place in charge of the Sector if the Chief were ordered out. For while Kinnison could order either Harper or Drummond on target, he could not send himself. He could go out only when ordered to do so by Fire Control: Sector Chiefs were reserved for emergency use only.
"Target Two—Zone Nine," Fire Control said.
"Carney, two. French, one. Day, stand by with three!" Kinnison ordered.
"Damn it—missed!" This from Doyle. "Buck fever—no end."
"O.K., boy—that's why we're starting so soon. I'm shaking like a vibrator myself. We'll get over it...."
The point of light which represented Target One bulged slightly and went out. Drummond had connected and was back "in".
"Target Three—Zone Eight. Four—eight," Fire Control remarked.
"Target Three—Higgins and Green; Harper stand by. Four—Case and Santos: Lawrence."
After a minute or two of actual combat the Technos of Sector A began to steady down. Stand-by men were no longer required and were no longer assigned.
"Target Forty-one—six," said Fire Control; and:
"Lawrence, two. Doyle, two," ordered Kinnison. This was routine enough, but in a moment:
"Ted!" Lawrence snapped. "Missed—wide—both barrels. Forty-one's dodging—manned or directed—coming like hell—watch it, Doyle—WATCH IT!"
"Kinnison, take it!" Fire Control barked, voice now neither low nor steady, and without waiting to see whether Doyle would hit or miss. "It's in Zone Three already—collision course!"
"Harper! Take over!"
Kinnison got the data, solved the equations, launched five torpedoes at fifty gravities of acceleration. One ... two—three-four-five; the last three as close together as they could fly without setting off their proximity fuzes.
Communications and mathematics and the electronic brains of calculating machines had done all that they could do; the rest was up to human skill, to the perfection of co-ordination and the speed of reaction of human mind, nerve, and muscle.
Kinnison's glance darted from plate to panel to computer-tape to meter to galvanometer and back to plate; his left hand moved in tiny arcs the knobs whose rotation varied the intensities of two mutually perpendicular components of his torpedoes' drives. He listened attentively to the reports of triangulating observers, now giving