Keith Laumer: Thunderhead

“Commodore—at full emergency without warning, there’ll be men injured, even killed—”

“Carry out my commands, Captain, or I’ll find someone who will!” the commodore’s bellow cut off the exec. “I’ll show that filthy, sneaking pack of spiders what it means to challenge a Terran fighting ship!”

On the power deck, Chief Powerman Joe Arena wiped the cut on his forehead, stared at the bloody rag, hurled it aside with a curse.

“All right, you one-legged deck apes!” he roared. “You heard it! We’re going after the bandit, full gate—and if we melt our linings down to slag, I’ll have every man of you sign a statement of charges that’ll take your grandchildren two hundred years to pay off!”

In the near-darkness of the Place of Observation aboard the Djann vessel, the ocular complex of the One-Who-Commands glowed with a dim red sheen as he studied the apparently black surface of the sensitive plate. “The death watcher has eaten our energy weapon,” he communicated to his three link brothers. “Now our dooms are in the palps of the fate spinner.”

“The death watcher of the water beings might have passed us by,” the One-Who-Anticipates signaled. “It was an act of rashness to hurl the weapon at it.”

“It will make a mighty song,” the One-Who-Records thrummed his resonator plates, tried a melancholy bass chord.

“But what egg-carrier will exude the brood-nourishing honeys of strength and sagacity in response to these powerful rhymes, if the stimulus to their creation leads us to quick extinction?” the One-Who-Refutes queried.

“In their own brief existence, these harmonies find their justification,” the One-Who-Records attested.

“The death watcher shakes himself,” the One-Who-Commands stated. “Now he turns in pursuit.”

The One-Who-Records emitted a booming tone. “Gone are the great suns of Djann,” he sang. “Lost are the fair worlds that knew their youth. But the spark of their existence glows still!”

“Now we fall outward, toward the Great Awesomeness,” the One-Who-Anticipates commented. “Only the blackness will know your song.”

“Draw in your energies from that-which-is-extraneous,” the One-Who-Commands ordered. “Focus the full poignancy of your intellects on the urgency of our need for haste. All else is vain, now. Neither singer nor song will survive the vengeance of the death watcher if he outstrips our swift flight!”

“Though Djann and water being perish, my poem is eternal,” the One-Who-Records emitted a stirring assonance. “Fly, Djann! Pursue, death watcher! Let the suns observe how we comport ourselves in this hour!”

“Exhort the remote nebulosities to attend our plight, if you must,” the One-Who-Refutes commented. “But link your energies to ours or all is lost.”

Silent now, the Djann privateer fled outward toward the Rim.

Carnaby awoke, lay in darkness listening to the wheezing of Terry Sickle’s breath. The boy didn’t sound good. Carnaby sat up, suppressing a grunt at the stiffness of his limbs. The icy air seemed stale. He moved to the entry, lifted the polyon flap. A cascade of powdery snow poured in. Beyond the opening a faint glow filtered down through banked snow.

He turned back to Terry as the latter coughed deeply, again and again.

“Looks like the snow’s quit,” Carnaby said. “It’s drifted pretty bad, but there’s no wind now. How are you feeling, Terry?”

“Not so good, Lieutenant,” Sickle said weakly. He breathed heavily, in and out. “I don’t know what’s got into me. Feel hot and cold at the same time.”

Carnaby stripped off his glove, put his hand on Sickle’s forehead. It was scalding hot.

“You just rest easy here for a while, Terry. There’s a couple more cans of stew, and plenty of water. I’ll make it up to the top as quickly as I can. Soon as I get back, we’ll go down together. With luck, I’ll have you to Doc Link’s house by dark.”

“I guess… I guess I should have done like Doc said,” Terry’s voice was a thin whisper.

“What do you mean?”

“I been taking these hyposprays. Two a day. He said I better not miss one, but heck, I been feeling real good lately—”

“What kind of shots, Terry?” Carnaby’s voice was tight.

“I don’t know. Heck, Lieutenant, I’m no invalid! Or…” his voice trailed off.

“You should have told me, Terry.”

“Gosh, Lieutenant—don’t worry about me! I didn’t mean nothing! Hell, I feel…” he broke off to cough deeply, rackingly.

“I’ll get you back, Terry—but I’ve got to go up first,” Carnaby said. “You understand that, don’t you?”

Terry nodded. “A man’s got to do his job, Lieutenant. I’ll be waiting… for you… when you get back.”

“Listen to me carefully, Terry.” Carnaby’s voice was low. “If I’m not back by this time tomorrow, you’ll have to make it back down by yourself. You understand? Don’t wait for me.”

“Sure, Lieutenant, I’ll just rest awhile. Then I’ll be OK.”

“Sooner I get started the sooner I’ll be back.” Carnaby took a can from the pack, opened it, handed it to Terry. The boy shook his head.

“You eat it, Lieutenant. You need your strength. I don’t feel like I… could eat anything anyway.”

“Terry, I don’t want to have to pry your mouth open and pour it in.”

“All right… but open one for yourself too…”

“All right, Terry.”

Sickle’s hand trembled as he spooned the stew to his mouth. He ate half of the contents of the can, then leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes. “That’s all… I want…”

“All right, Terry. You get some rest now. I’ll be back before you know it.” Carnaby crawled out through the opening, pushed his way up through loosely drifted snow. The cold struck his face like a spiked club. He turned the suit control up another notch, noticing as he did that the left side seemed to be cooler than the right.

The near-vertical rise of the final crown of the peak thrust up from the drift, dazzling white in the morning sun. Carnaby examined the rockface for twenty feet on either side of the hut, picked a spot where a deep crack angled upward, started the last leg of the climb.

On the message deck, Lieutenant Pryor frowned into the screen from which the saturnine features of Captain Aaron gazed back sourly.

“The commodore’s going to be unhappy about this,” Pryor said. “If you’re sure your extrapolation is accurate—”

“It’s as good as the data I got from Plotting,” Aaron snapped. “The bogie’s over the make-or-break line; we’ll never catch him now. You know your trans-Einsteinian physics as well as I do.”

“I never heard of the Djann having anything capable of that kind of acceleration,” Pryor protested.

“You have now.” Aaron switched off and keyed command deck, passed his report to the exec, then sat back with a resigned expression to await the reaction.

Less than a minute later, Commodore Broadly’s irate face snapped onto the screen.

“You’re the originator of this report?” he growled.

“I did the extrapolation,” Aaron stared back at his commanding officer.

“You’re relieved for incompetence,” Broadly said in a tone as harsh as a handsaw.

“Yessir,” Aaron said. His face was pale, but he returned the commodore’s stare. “But my input data and comps are a matter of record. I’ll stand by them.”

Broadly’s face darkened. “Are you telling me these spiders can spit in our faces and skip off, scot-free?”

“All I’m saying, sir, is that the present acceleration ratios will keep the target ahead of us, no matter what we do.”