Keith Laumer: Thunderhead

Broadly’s face twitched. “This vessel is at full emergency gain,” he growled. “No Djann has ever outrun a Fleet unit in a straightaway run.”

“This one is… sir.”

The commodore’s eyes bore into Aaron’s. “Remain on duty until further notice,” he said, and switched off. Aaron smiled crookedly and buzzed the message deck.

“He backed down,” he said to Pryor. “We’ve got a worried commodore on board.”

“I don’t understand it myself,” Pryor said. “How the hell is that can outgaining us?”

“He’s not,” Aaron said complacently. “From a standing start, we’d overhaul him in short order. But he got the jump on us by a couple of minutes, after he lobbed the fish into us. If we’d been able to close the gap in the first half hour or so, we’d have had him; but at trans-L velocities, you can get some strange effects. One of them is that our vectors become asymptotic. We’re closing on him—but we’ll never overtake him.”

Pryor whistled. “Broadly could be busted for this fiasco.”

“Uh-huh,” Aaron grinned. “Could be—unless the bandit stops off somewhere for a quick one…”

After Aaron rang off, Pryor turned to study the position repeater screen. On it Malthusa was represented by a bright point at the center, the fleeing Djann craft by a red dot above.

“Charlie,” Pryor called the NCOIC. “That garbled TX we picked up last watch; where did you R and D it?”

“Right about here, Lieutenant.” The NCO flicked a switch and turned knobs; a green dot appeared near the upper edge of the screen.

“Hey,” he said. “It looks like maybe our bandit’s headed out his way.”

“You picked him up on the Y band; have you tried to raise him again?”

“Yeah, but nothing doing, Lieutenant. It was just a fluke—”

“Get a Y beam on him, Charlie. Focus it down to a cat’s whisker and work a pattern over a one-degree radius centered around his MPP until you get an echo.”

“If you say so, sir—but—”

“I do say so, Charlie! Find that transmitter, and the drinks are on me!”

Flat against the windswept rockface, Carnaby clung with his fingertips to a tenuous hold, feeling with one booted toe for a purchase higher up. A flake of stone broke away, and for a moment he hung by the fingers of his right hand, his feet dangling over emptiness; then, swinging his right leg far out, he hooked a knob with his knee, caught a rocky rib with his free hand, pulled himself up to a more secure rest. He clung, his cheek against the iron-cold stone; out across the vast expanse of featureless grayish-tan plain, the gleaming whipped-cream shape of the next core rose ten miles to the south. A wonderful view up here—of nothing. Funny to think it could be his last. H was out of condition. It had been too long since his last climb.

But that wasn’t the way to think. He had a job to do—the first in twenty-one years. For a moment, ghostly recollections rose up before him: the trim Academy lawns, the spit-and-polish of inspection, the crisp feel of the new uniform, the glitter of the silver comet as Anne had pinned it on…

That was no good either. What counted was here: the station up above. One more push, and he’d be there. He rested for another half minute, then pulled himself up and forward, onto the relatively mild slope of the final approach to the crest. Fifty yards above, the dull-gleaming plastron-coated dome of the beacon station squatted against the exposed rock, looking no different than it had five years earlier.

Ten minutes later he was at the door, flicking the combination latch dial with cold-numbed fingers. Tumblers clicked, and the panel slid aside. The heating system, automatically reacting to his entrance, started up with a busy hum to bring the interior temperature up to comfort level. He pulled off his gauntlets, ran his hands over his face, rasping the stubble there. There was coffee in the side table, he remembered. Fumblingly, with stiff fingers, he got out the dispenser, twisted the control cap, poured out a steaming mug, gulped it down. It was hot and bitter. The grateful warmth of it made him think of Terry, waiting down below in the chill of the half-ruined hut.

“No time to waste,” he muttered to himself. He stamped up and down the room, swinging his arms to warm himself, then seated himself at the console, flicked keys with a trained ease rendered only slightly rusty by the years of disuse. He referred to an index, found the input instructions for code gamma eight, set up the boards, flipped in the pulse lever. Under his feet, he felt the faint vibration as the power pack buried in the rock stored its output for ten microseconds, fired it in a single millisecond burst, stored and pulsed again. Dim instrument lights winked on, indicating normal readings all across the board.

Carnaby glanced at the wall clock. He had been here ten minutes now. It would take another quarter hour to comply with the manual’s instructions—but to hell with that gobbledygook. He’d put the beacon on the air; this time the Navy would have to settle for that. It would be pushing it to get back to the boy and pack him down to the village by nightfall as it was. Poor kid; he’d wanted to help so badly…

“That’s correct, sir,” Pryor said crisply. “I haven’t picked up any comeback on my pulse, but I’ll definitely identify the echo as coming from a JN type installation.”

Commodore Broadly nodded curtly. “However, inasmuch as your instruments indicate that this station is not linked in with a net capable of setting up a defensive field, it’s of no use to us.” The commodore looked at Pryor, waiting.

“I think perhaps there’s a way, sir,” Pryor said. “The Djann are known to have strong tribal feelings. They’d never pass up what they thought was an SOS from one of their own. Now, suppose we signal this JN station to switch over to the Djann frequencies and beam one of their own signal patterns at them. They just might stop to take a look … ”

“By God,” Broadly looked at the signal lieutenant, “if he doesn’t, he’s not human!”

“You like the idea, sir?” Pryor grinned.

“A little rough on the beacon station if they reach it before we do, eh, Lieutenant? I imagine our friends the Djann will be a trifle upset when they learn they’ve been duped.”

“Oh…” Pryor looked blank. “I guess I hadn’t thought of that, sir.”

“Never mind,” Broadly said briskly, “the loss of a minor installation such as this is a reasonable exchange for an armed vessel of the enemy.”

“Well…”

“Lieutenant, if I had a few more officers aboard who employed their energies in something other than assembling statistics proving we’re beaten, this cruise might have made a record for itself—” Broadly cut himself off, remembering the degree of aloofness due very junior officers—even juniors who may have raked some very hot chestnuts out of the fire.

“Carry on, Lieutenant,” he said. “If this works out, I think I can promise you a very favorable endorsement on your next ER.”

As Pryor’s pleased grin winked off the screen, the commodore flipped up the red line key, snapped a brusque request at the bored log room yeoman.

“This will make Old Carbuncle sing another tune,” he remarked almost gaily to the exec, standing by with a harassed expression.

“Maybe you’d better go slow, Ned,” the latter cautioned, gauging his senior’s mood. “It might be as well to get a definite confirmation on this installation’s capabilities before we go on record—”

Broadly turned abruptly to the screen as it chimed. “Admiral, as I reported, I’ve picked up one of our forward beacon towers,” Broadly’s hearty voice addressed the screen from which the grim visage of the task force commander eyed him. “I’m taking steps to complete the intercept; steps which are, if I may say so, rather ingenious—”