Irving Lande - Slingshot

“Got a bogey at three o’clock high. Range about six hundred miles.” Johnson spoke casually, but his voice in the intercom was thin with tension.

Captain Paul Coulter, commanding Space Fighter 308, 58th Squadron, 33rd Fighter Wing, glanced up out of his canopy in the direction indicated, and smiled to himself at the instinctive reaction. Nothing there but the familiar starry backdrop, the moon far down to the left. If the light wasn’t right, a ship might be invisible at half a mile. He squeezed the throttle mike button. “Any IFF?”

“No IFF.”

“O.K., let me know as soon as you have his course.” Coulter squashed out his cigar and began his cockpit check, grinning without humor as he noticed that his breathing had deepened and his palms were moist on the controls. He looked down to make sure his radio was snug in its pocket on his leg; checked the thigh harness of his emergency rocket, wrapped in its thick belly pad; checked the paired tanks of oxygen behind him, hanging level from his shoulders into their niche in the “cradle.” He flipped his helmet closed, locked it, and opened it again. He tossed a sardonic salute at the photograph of a young lady who graced the side of the cockpit. “Wish us luck, sugar.” He pressed the mike button again.

“You got anything yet, Johnny?”

“He’s going our way, Paul. Have it exact in a minute.”

Coulter scanned the full arch of sky visible through the curving panels of the dome, thinking the turgid thoughts that always came when action was near. His chest was full of the familiar weakness—not fear exactly, but a tight, helpless feeling that grew and grew with the waiting.

His eyes and hands were busy in the familiar procedure, readying the ship for combat, checking and re-checking the details that could mean life and death, but his mind watched disembodied, yearning back to earth.

Sylvia always came back first. Inviting smile and outstretched hands. Nyloned knees, pink sweater, and that clinging, clinging white silk skirt. A whirling montage of laughing, challenging eyes and tossing sky-black hair and soft arms tightening around his neck.

Then Jean, cool and self-possessed and slightly disapproving, with warmth and humor peeping through from underneath when she smiled. A lazy, crinkly kind of smile, like Christmas lights going on one by one. He wished he’d acted more grown up that night they watched the rain dance at the pueblo. For the hundredth time, he went over what he remembered of their last date, seeing the gleam of her shoulder, and the angry disappointment in her eyes; hearing again his awkward apologies. She was a nice kid. Silently his mouth formed the words. “You’re a nice kid.”

I think she loves me. She was just mad because I got drunk.

The tension of approaching combat suddenly blended with the memory, welling up into a rush of tenderness and affection. He whispered her name, and suddenly he knew that if he got back he was going to ask her to marry him.

He thought of his father, rocking on the porch of the Pennsylvania farm, pipe in his mouth, the weathered old face serene, as he puffed and listened to the radio beside him. He wished he’d written him last night, instead of joining the usual beer and bull session in the wardroom. He wished—. He wished.

“I’ve got him, Paul. He’s got two point seven miles of RV on us. Take thirty degrees high on two point one o’clock for course to IP.”

Automatically he turned the control wheel to the right and eased it back. The gyros recorded the turn to course.

“Hold 4 G’s for one six five seconds, then coast two minutes for initial point five hundred miles on his tail.”

“Right, Johnny. One sixty-five, then two minutes.” He set the timer, advanced the throttle to 4 G’s, and stepped back an inch as the acceleration took him snugly into the cradle. The Return-To-Station-Fuel and Relative-Velocity-To-Station gauges did their usual double takes on a change of course, as the ship computer recorded the new information. He liked those two gauges—the two old ladies.

Mrs. RSF kept track of how much more fuel they had than they needed to get home. When they were moving away from station, she dropped in alarmed little jumps, but when they were headed home, she inched along in serene contentment, or if they were coasting, sneaked triumphantly back up the dial.

Mrs. RVS started to get jittery at about ten mps away from home, and above fifteen, she was trembling steadily. He didn’t blame the old ladies for worrying. With one hour of fuel at 5 G’s, you didn’t fire a single squirt unless there was a good reason for it. Most of their time on a mission was spent free wheeling, in the anxiety-laden boredom that fighting men have always known.

Wish the Red was coming in across our course. It would have taken less fuel, and the chase wouldn’t have taken them so far out. But then they’d probably have been spotted, and lost the precious element of surprise.

He blessed the advantage of better radar. In this crazy “war,” so like the dogfights of the first world war, the better than two hundred mile edge of American radar was more often than not the margin of victory. The American crews were a little sharper, a little better trained, but with their stripped down ships, and midget crewmen, with no personal safety equipment, the Reds could accelerate longer and faster, and go farther out. You had to get the jump on them, or it was just too bad.

The second hand hit forty-five in its third cycle, and he stood loose in the cradle as the power died.

Sixty-two combat missions but the government says there’s no war. His mind wandered back over eight years in the service. Intelligence tests. Physical tests. Psychological tests. Six months of emotional adjustment in the screep. Primary training. Basic and advanced training. The pride and excitement of being chosen for space fighters. By the time he graduated, the United States and Russia each had several satellite stations operating, but in 1979, the United States had won the race for a permanent station on the Moon. What a grind it had been, bringing in the supplies.

A year later the Moon station had “blown up.” No warning. No survivors. Just a brand-new medium-sized crater. And six months later, the new station, almost completed, went up again. The diplomats had buzzed like hornets, with accusations and threats, but nothing could be proven—there were bombs stored at the station. The implication was clear enough. There wasn’t going to be any Moon station until one government ruled Earth. Or until the United States and Russia figured out a way to get along with each other. And so far, getting along with Russia was like trying to get along with an octopus.

Of course there were rumors that the psych warfare boys had some gimmick cooked up, to turn the U.S.S.R. upside down in a revolution, the next time power changed hands, but he’d been hearing that one for years. Still, with four new dictators over there in the last eleven years, there was always a chance.

Anyway, he was just a space jockey, doing his job in this screwball fight out here in the empty reaches. Back on Earth, there was no war. The statesmen talked, held conferences, played international chess as ever. Neither side bothered the other’s satellites, though naturally they were on permanent alert. There just wasn’t going to be any Moon station for a while. Nobody knew what there might be on the Moon, but if one side couldn’t have it, then the other side wasn’t going to have it either.