C Kornbluth - His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction

Luckily—in a way—an officer of the Navy popped from a doorway armed to the teeth and charging them to surrender. This they gladly did as he stood off the mob with his weapons.

They found themselves at last in a lighter, one of the small boats connected to the Stupendous. In an off-hand way, as the boat left the ground, the officer said: "I recognized you, you know."

"Really?" asked Babe, frozen-faced.

"Not you," he hastily explained. "But Commander Bartok—I've seen his picture. Did you know you were proscribed, Commander?"

"I assumed so," answered the commander dryly. The officer—an ensign—was very young and callow. The hard lines were growing about his mouth, though. When he could call this "pacification" without laughing out loud, thought Bartok, he'd be a real Navy man.

"How's everything going?" asked the commander. "Would you know how the campaign's progressing in other parts?"

The ensign, seemingly delighted to converse on equal terms with a Wing Commander, even though a proscribed one, drew nearer—or as much nearer as he could, in the windowless, tiny, completely enclosed compartment that was the load-space of the lighter, and grinned:

"Some dashed mysterious things have been happening, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you johnnies in Intelligence were behind them."

He shifted uneasily beneath Bartok's steady, piercing stare. "You needn't look at me like that," he complained. "Even if it isn't true, it's the official non-official news—if you understand me." He chuckled.

Bartok moved swiftly then, clutching the ensign by the throat and bringing an elbow into his midriff. The ensign, not wholly taken by surprise, apparently, drew his gun and fired.

They dragged his bloody body—he had been shot in the face, and it had run all over the enclosed space—from the lighter a few minutes later.

Babe was having a hysterical attack and the ensign frantically signaled to the sailors who took in the boat to relieve him of her. The engineer of the little craft came from his cubbyhole in the bow and took her by the arm, led her away from the mess on the floor.

"Poor girl," said the ensign. "She must have loved him terribly."

To follow Babe MacNeice, after the first torrential outburst she was dry-eyed, but there was a catch in her voice when she spoke: "Where are you taking me?"

"To the O.D., lady. He'll route you."

The Officer of the Day decided that she was important enough to go directly to the Admiral.

In the super-sumptuous office of Fitzjames she thought at first that she was alone, but a snaky individual who had a knack of blending in with the furniture, as if he didn't want to be seen, coughed tentatively.

She eyed him up and down. "You," she said, "must be the Satanic Mr.

Voss."

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Indeed? How so?"

"It's no secret that you're the one who started the—the taking-over."

"I defy you to prove it," he snickered.

"You're a civilian. That's final and conclusive. There isn't one of these certifiable fatheads in uniform that'd have the guts to do what they've all been talking about for fifty years. You touched it off, and you see victory in your hands right this moment. Bartok is dead."

"No!" he spat. "Where?"

"Coming up here on a lighter. He rashly jumped the ensign who'd arrested us. He got his face blown off."

"So," grunted Voss. "The end of organized resistance to our program.

How did he manage, by the way, to blow up our ships with their own ammunition, or whatever really happened?"

"I don't know the details," she replied wearily. "We used glorified lantern-slides to project the simulacrum of a lineship; we could do that with about fifty one-man craft. It's a kind of formation flying. We turned back your shells by magnetic fields. Normally you could dodge them, because you keep ready to move whenever you fire the big guns. But we dubbed in a dummy shell—like the lantern-slide lineship—and you'd see that shell and there wouldn't be a thought in your heads until you were blown up. But you're onto that trick now. It only worked four times, I think. I was a lunatic to think that you could fight guns with brainwork and hope to win."

She collapsed limply into a chair and stared dully at the floor. "Bartok's dead. The communication system's wrecked. You can have your taking-over, Mr. Voss; we're licked."

"Hell!" said the Admiral. "Why can't I go out into the street if I want to?"

"Because," said Voss patiently, "you'd be shot down like a dog. You're going to speak from behind cover, and I'll post the best shots in the Navy all over just in case."

"Right," said the Admiral. "Then it's decided. I guess the old brain's clicking right along, eh?" He forced a laugh, and Voss responded with a meager smile.

Tapping on the door, Voss opened it on the young ensign who'd been boasting all over the ship of shooting down the insidious Bartok. He was being avoided by his friends now; he wouldn't let them get a word in about their own feats of clubbing and mayhem.

"What do you want?" thundered the Admiral. "I'm preparing my address to All Earth and Colonies!"

"Beg pardon, sir," said the ensign. "But I was wondering if I could be assigned to your guard of honor for the address. After all, sir, I did outwit Bartok."

"Since when," asked Voss coldly, "does outwitting consist of getting in a lucky shot?"

"Tut," grumbled the Admiral. "Let him have his way. Why not, Voss?"

"I was going to," said the secretary. "Report this evening."

"Thank you, sir. And—and—"

"Spit it out, kid. What do you want?" demanded Voss.

"About Miss MacNeice, sir. She seemed awfully broken up about what I did. How is she now?"

"Resting easy in Cell Eleven," said the Admiral. "Now go away."

"Thank you, sir," said the ensign, saluting as he closed the door.

"Good boy, that," said Voss. "It pays to have semi-fanatics like him in your train. They'll do the dirty work when nobody else will. Remember that, Fitzjames."

"I will, Voss," said the Admiral. "Now about this speech—"

The ensign was walking down one of the very long corridors of the ship, whistling cheerfully, oblivious to the superstition to the effect that it's the worst kind of luck to a ship; even worse than changing her name.

And in Cell Eleven—neat and comfortable, but a cell—Babe MacNeice was fiddling desperately with the communications control. Trust those bloody incompetents, she dryly thought, to leave a woman unsearched because a matron wasn't handy …

Then, by the most convenient of miracles, there was a little tone signal from the switchboard. "It works," she said in a hushed whisper. "It was bound to happen—nobody could try as hard as I've been trying and not get some kind of results."

She hissed into the tiny grid mouthpiece: "Hello—who's in?"

A male voice grumbled: "My God, woman, you've been long enough about it! I'm Casey, heading towards Spica because I can't think of anything else to do. My fuel's low, too."

"Keep going," she said. "When you get there, be prepared for anything at all. I'm not making promises, but there's a chance. And my God! What a chance! You get out now. I have some heavy coverage to do."

"Good luck, lady, whoever you are."

She smiled briefly and fiddled with the elaborate, but almost microscopically tiny, controls that directed the courses of the Intelligence Wing.

"Come in, anybody, in the Twenty-Third Cosmic Sector. Anybody at all.

This is MacNeice—urgent!"

"Not the famous Babe herself?" came a woman's voice dryly. "I'm listening, dearie."

"You locate on Aldebaran III, sister, in no more than ten hours. Keep under cover. Now get out. Aldebaran III has to be covered."

With an anxious note the voice asked: "Just a minute—how's Barty? I heard a rumor—"