Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIV

In spite of the urgency of the situation, Persoff had to ask, “Where was he going to get that much water?”

“Callisto.”

“The Jovian moon? The ships would roast in Jupiter’s radiation belts.”

“No ships. He wanted to hit Venus with Callisto. Ion thrusters. For some reason he couldn’t get the UN interested in moving a planet almost as big as Mars past Earth’s orbit.”

Kershner made a noise Persoff would normally have considered medically alarming, and put his face on his control board. Persoff was trying not to grin himself. “I would think not.”

“No. Anyway, Smith should be happy to hear it works, if we can get the news to him.”

“He’s still alive?”

“Was when we left. He’s one of those people who does really well in low gee. Has some weird medical condition that prevents osteoporosis, actually has to have excess calcium cleaned out of his cells on a regular basis. I’ve heard it suggested that’s inherited from our Pak ancestors.”

Persoff was not about to get into that can of worms. “Thanks. So the survivors planted these trees. Good.”

“Trees? Good lord, that’s a lot of trees.-Sir, we didn’t damage any, did we?” Tokugawa sounded badly worried.

“No. You think they’re sacred or something?”

“The Galaxias complement were handpicked, so I doubt they’d have fallen that far back, but I’m sure they’re deeply revered.”

“Well, it’s not as if we have to cut them all down or something,” Persoff said. “Get some rest. I have to check on my ship.” He signed off and said, “Damage and system reports.”

“What do you mean, we have to cut them all down?”

McCabe, the strongest man aboard, and conceivably the strongest anywhere who wasn’t from Jinx, hunched in on himself as if expecting to be hit. “The only way we can get off this planet is a launch catapult, sir. The planer is fried, and a lot of the hull is unsound. What we have to do is cobble together something that’ll get a work crew up to that hulk in orbit and strip the accelerator field generator for parts. That should allow us to fix the planer up there. The thing is, we don’t have the resources to construct an aerodynamic vehicle in less than years. We have to go straight to space all at once. No room to launch on fusion drive, because the ram’s shot, so we’d have to use the singleships for thrust, and they’re so hot the backwash would slaughter everything for miles. And they can fuse protons, so we sure can’t launch from the water. So we have to slap something together and fling it up there and leave the main fusion plant on the ground.”

“How many years would an aerospace ship take?” Persoff said.

“That depends on how many local inhabitants there are, and how fast they can learn. If they’re as smart as the Shogun says-”

“Who?”

“Uh, Tokugawa, sir. It’s kind of a running joke in Supply.”

“Go on.”

“If they’re that smart, I’d say we can have an infrastructure in place in ten years. Otherwise we’re looking at a couple of generations while we get the population up.”

“And building a spaceship would be faster than that?”

“We’ve already got spaceships, sir,” McCabe said. “They’re just not built to fly inside an atmosphere. I was going to use three fighter drives to let the orbiter maneuver in space.-And then of course we’ll also have to reassemble the Yorktown .”

Persoff sighed. Then he frowned, looked straight up, and stared very hard at the ceiling, as if seeing through it. Slowly, he said, “How long would it take to install the hyperdrive in a ship that still has a working ram?” He looked at the storesmaster again.

McCabe gaped at him, then pulled out a flaptop, unrolled it, and began working the problem out. “We’d have to do hull and systems repairs to the hulk at the same time, but it’s still less than the time we’ll spend building the catapult,” he finally said. “Maybe ten percent of what it’ll take to refit our own ship. Which we could put aboard and repair there.”

“Get together with Curtis in Engineering and work out what you need to do.” When McCabe winced, Persoff said, “What’s wrong?”

“He yells all the time.”

“That’s because he won’t accept a transplant for his hearing problem. He was running the communications in Munchen during the Hollow Moon incident. The pulse, when it went up, blew out one eardrum. Stayed at his post with blood running down his neck and the gain turned up for the other ear, so it screwed that one up too. They patched the drum, but if he ever sounds like he’s really angry, just ask to see his medals. That should keep him distracted for about half an hour.”

“He’s that proud of them?”

“There’s that many. Since you’ve got clearance for this mission, I’ll authorize you to hear the story of what really happened. Don’t ask him unless you want to hear it all, and really don’t ask unless you want to know something you won’t ever be able to tell anyone. I had to learn it to assess his value for this mission, and I wish I hadn’t. Go see him now.”

McCabe saluted and left, looking thoughtful. He was the only crewman who still fully adhered to military courtesy after all this time. He didn’t ask anyone else to, and his response to those who’d made fun of him had always been, “Permission to speak freely?” Nobody granted it twice, because they never made fun of him again after granting it once. His lecture on the purpose and value of military courtesy was sensible, cogent, and, when you considered that it was delivered by a man who might well be able to rip your arm off, gradually terrifying as it developed its theme: military courtesy allows trained expert killers to work together in difficult conditions without unnecessary loss of personnel.

There were others who had resumed using it, but only around McCabe.

About ten percent of each end of the island was loose rocks, which, since it was volcanic rock and there were no volcanoes on the island, meant it had been put there. Persoff had set the ship down near the west end, about halfway between where the trees ended and the rocks began. The trees at this end of the rows were saplings, while those near the east end must have been planted almost as soon as the colonists had landed.

Nobody had sighted any humans on the island, and nobody could figure out why. After Tokugawa’s reaction, Persoff had no intention of starting to chop down trees until he’d talked to the locals, so he was planning parties to explore other islands and find some. They’d need cars and stunners, and the stunners were the bottleneck; not many had been included in the ship’s manifest, and regs required officers on watch to wear them. Curtis had built three more from spares for the ones they had, but Persoff had wanted to send out at least six parties. There were lots of islands.

The bad part of being a commanding officer was making everyone think you weren’t working hard. He was supposed to be relaxed and confident. One of the things that troubled him badly was the fact that all through the first night, the ship in orbit had been displaying lights. Bright ones. It wasn’t the power available that worried him, since the ship dated after the invention of both black magic and electronic batteries, and half of it was in unfiltered sunlight all the time. It was the fact that its beacon had stopped transmitting when the lights began. The ship was displaying a flexible response to circumstances. Not inconceivably it had recorded their landing site. It might well be charging its com laser.

Other than abandoning the ship and scattering to the four winds, there wasn’t a thing they could do about that.

After the first night, Persoff had left his exec, Thurston, in charge, and taken a car to East Point so he could fret over the preparations uninterrupted and without making everyone panicky.