Ben Bova - Test of Fire

“I’d better radio him right away and let him know I’m all right,” she said.

The commander nodded curtly and took them to the radio room. The equipment looked old and impossibly bulky to Alec. He stood at the doorway beside the glowering commander and looked over the power generator and its connections while Angela got the radio operator to put her in touch with headquarters.

At last she pulled off the headphones and looked up to Alec and the commander. “He’s already out in the field with Will Russo. They’ll send a rider out to tell him that I’m okay.”

“Good,” the commander said. “I suppose you’ll be spending the night here.” He made it sound like a cross between a challenge and a complaint.

“Yes, I’d rather not travel in the dark.”

The commander gave Angela his own bunk, set into a curtained niche cut into one end of the bunker’s main room. He showed Alec a cot among a dozen others in a separate room, connected to the main room by a low, narrow tunnel some two dozen paces long.

They ate in the main room with the commander and six other men. Everyone seemed to know Angela well, but no one questioned her in the slightest about what had happened in the village.

After the meal they went their separate ways. Alec stretched out on his bunk and actually fell asleep, almost at once. His last thought was that this bunker was like home, in the settlement.

He awoke to the sound of snoring. The room was dark. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the faint glow coming from the tunnel entrance. Most of the cots were occupied now by sleeping men, and in the darkness Alec thought that the form next to him was the commander himself.

Carefully, noiselessly, Alec got up and reached into the bag he had slipped under the cot. The radio felt solid and reassuring in his hands. He ducked into the tunnel and went slowly to the main room. It was empty and lit only by a single bare electric bulb hanging from a wire overhead.

The power generator hummed softly, bringing a smile to Alec’s lips. Pulling a wrinkled, weathered, hand-scribbled timetable from his shirt pocket, he checked the numbers carefully. Another half hour before the satellite could possibly be above the horizon.

After a moment’s hesitation, Alec quickly climbed the earthen steps and poked his head out of the bunker’s only entrance. Four men were standing by the pallisade, slumped with boredom or hunched against the cold, looking outward into the night. Two more sat by the fire, talking to each other in low, serious tones.

Alec ducked back inside. Angela was sleeping behind the curtain that partitioned off the commander’s cubicle. He nodded. Everything’s as good as it’s going to be.

He went swiftly to the unattended radio room and jammed the makeshift wooden door shut, as tightly as he could. There was no way to lock it. He put the transceiver down on the operator’s desk and spent the next few minutes connecting it properly to the antiquated power supply. Then he sat at the desk, slipped the single earphone over his head and swung the tiny microphone next to his lips. He waited an eternity to hear the satellite’s automatic beacon beep out against the steady hiss and sputter of cosmic static.

The eternity ended at last.

“Hello, hello,” he called as loudly as he dared.

“Come in satellite station. Answer. This is Alec Douglas.”

Another eternity, seconds long, and then, “Alec… Alec! Is it really you?”

“Yes. Can you hear me all right?”

“Faint but clear. Go ahead.”

Alec gave his approximate position, then said, “Get the Council to send the strongest force they can put together down here as soon as possible. Within the week, at most. We can locate the fissionables and take them if we move quickly. Tell my mother that one quick, decisive stroke can win everything for us. Airdrop me electric power supplies, weapons and ammunition. I’ll find it if you can drop it within ten kilometers of me.”

“All right, but…”

“No buts! I want a strong force down here as fast as the Council can put it together. Men, weapons, trucks…”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” said the voice from the satellite. “Kobol’s already landed a force of a hundred men—almost two weeks ago. Trucks, lasers, rockets, everything. It took five shuttle flights to get them all on the ground!”

“Kobol! Two weeks ago? Where? Where did he land?”

“Far south of you…”

“Oak Ridge?”

“No, further south. Someplace called Florida, I think.”

Alec sat in the harsh light of the overhead bulb, stunned.

“Hey, Alec… you still there?”

He nodded, then realized that it was a meaningless gesture. “Yes… Listen. Get this message through to my mother. Tell her I’m within a few hours’ striking distance of Douglas’ headquarters and the fissionables. Tell her to shuttle Kobol’s forces here. Order him here! Remind him that I’m still the commander of this mission, by order of the Council.”

“Yes sir.” The voice went formal.

“All right. And get a power supply to me right away. Tear one out of the bulkheads up there if you have to; but it’s vital that I re-establish communications within twenty-four hours and I can’t do it without a power supply.”

“Will do!”

Alec signed off. For many long minutes he sat there, his mind whirling, wondering what Kobol was doing and why. But he was too tired to think straight. Slowly he disconnected the transceiver, then stealthily edged the door back to its open position and stepped into the bunker’s main room.

Douglas was sitting at the table in the center of the room, making the bunker look crowded with his bulk. Angela stood beside him, staring at Alec in cold fury.

“You made it through the summer, I see,”

Douglas said. He was smiling, but there was no humor in his voice.

For a stunned moment Alec didn’t know what to say or do.

Douglas seemed to enjoy his surprise. “Do you really think you’ve been out of my sight for one minute since you landed on Earth?” He spread his massive hands in an all-inclusive gesture. “From the minute you touched down at Oak Ridge you’ve been under surveillance. I’ve been impressed. You learn very quickly. There were only three or four times when I was tempted to step in and help you.”

“You haven’t lifted a finger,” Alec snapped. “We fought our way here on our own.”

“That’s right,” Douglas agreed. “You spent the summer working out an experiment—in survival.

The experiment was a success. You survived. You even helped us to polish off some of those raider bands.” He laughed, and the underground bunker seemed to shake with it. “Lord, they’d get their attention all focused on your pitiful little gang and start licking their chops. Then Will would swoop in and clobber them. It was sweet.”

“Glad to have been of help to you.”

Douglas’s laugh faded to a cocky grin. “I’ve never turned down help from any quarter. I’m not too proud to accept your help.”

“As long as you can have things your way.”

“Of course.”

Still standing at the doorway to the radio room, Alec asked, “And what do you plan to do with my pitiful little gang now?”

“Will’s going to speak to them in the morning. Offer them a chance to join us. Most of them will, I expect. The rest will be escorted out of my territory, politely but firmly. Maybe they can work their way south again and link up with Kobol.”

Douglas scratched at his iron-gray beard. “We, ah… overheard your radio conversation on the monitor in my jeep.”

“We,” Alec echoed, looking at Angela. She refused to meet his gaze. For the first time, anger began to seep in and replace the shock that had numbed him.