Battle for the Stars

CHAPTER 17

No missile had been fired.

The scouts of the Fifth had taken off, and later the light cruisers, and the deadly launchers that ringed New York spaceport had remained silent. Now the scouts were well outside the system of Sol, quartering like restless hounds, while the light cruisers moved, in tight formation and at reduced speed, beyond the big ball of poison-and-ice that was called Saturn, all of them waiting for orders.

Birrel was beginning to think that there would be no orders for anyone, if the argument went on much longer. He had been in this room high in the UW tower for almost an hour, expostulating, pleading, reasoning, and he had got nowhere. He was tired. His head still ached and his side was still half-numb. He was not sleepy, pills had taken care of that, but he felt sore and worn out. He was beginning to have a conviction that Earthmen were foredoomed by their own pigheadedness, and that it would bloody well serve them right.

He looked along the table and saw hard unfriendliness and distrust in every face. Not only in the faces of Charteris and Mallinson but also in those of old Admiral Laney and his staff. He could understand politicians being stupid enough to sit around a table and gabble, even in a crisis like this. He could not understand naval officers doing such a thing. No wonder, he thought, bitterly, that the United Worlds had failed to maintain its sway, if this was the way it had faced up to crises.

"The answer, again, is no,” Charteris said stonily. “The Fifth Lyra will act under UW command, or it will not act at all."

"It's not a question of command,” said Birrel. “It's a question of strategy."

"We will determine the strategy,” Charteris said.

Birrel pushed his chair back and got up from the table. He repressed the things he wanted to say. He turned his back on them and went over to the window and looked out, fighting for self-control. If he blew his stack now, they were all in trouble.

It was two-forty-five in the morning, but the streets of the old city still glowed with vari-colored light, stretching away beneath the UW tower like a vast gridiron of gleaming lines. The pleasure places would be jammed again with the crowds that had flocked here for the commemoration. They had not the faintest idea what this commemoration was going to be like. Not one word of the situation had gone out in the newscasts.

Just as well, Birrel thought. These Earth folk would not believe it anyway, they were so armored in obstinate pride. They thought of their world as the start of everything, the fountainhead, and they resented the fact that the outer worlds had fallen away, they disliked the Sectors. But they had never dreamed that one of the Sectors might turn against them, any more than a father dreams that his children may turn and attack him. Well, in a way, it was a true analogy. That thought took some of the rage out of Birrel and he turned back to the hostile, silent group around the table.

He went past them to the big depth-chart of the Solar system and its immediate stellar environs, which filled the whole end of the room. Sol and its planets and the nearer stars were perfectly projected, so that, when Birrel stepped into the chart, he was like a giant shouldering through the galaxy.

There was a line of red light in the chart, beginning out in the direction of Scorpio and extended toward Sol. The captured Orionid captain of the scout had talked, under the probe. The big computers two floors down had taken the coordinates he had yielded, and had extrapolated from them to show the approximate course of the two squadrons that were coming. The red line was like a dagger pointed at Earth's heart.

"They've made a long circle around,” Birrel said. “They're coming in from directly opposite the direction of Orion, the least expected direction—"

Admiral Laney interrupted. “We've gone over that. We'll meet them. But this is the UW's fight and your squadron will obey UW orders, if it goes with us."

Birrel looked into the old admiral's frosty eyes and said, and meant it, “Sir, I would be proud to fight under you. But facts are facts. The UW fleet, no matter how long and honorable its history, cannot meet and match an Orionid squadron. This is a fact. Another fact is that there are few miracles in warfare. If your fleet and the Fifth meet the Orionids head-on, the odds are that we'll lose. I am just as proud of the Fifth Lyra as you are of your fleet and its traditions, but I still say we'll lose. We've only one chance to even the odds and that is surprise."

"Surprise, in these days of long-range radar?” said an officer incredulously.

"It can be done,” Birrel said steadily. “It has been done, more than once, out in the fringe-clusters between the Sectors."

He turned around to the depth-chart again and pointed to a blurred and speckled area lying between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

"Here you seem to have a natural chevaux-de-frise, to borrow an ancient term. I'd like to make use of it. Do you know your way around in it?"

"The Asteroid Belt?” said Laney. “Yes, we know it."

"If you could bait the Orionids in there, entangle them, in the drift—” Birrel began.

The old admiral interrupted. “Do you suppose that they're that simple? To follow us in there, knowing that the Fifth Lyra is, somewhere on their flank?"

"They won't know that, if we can work it right,” Birrel said earnestly. He left the chart and came back to the table. “The Fifth's heavy cruisers will take off. Presently long-range radar will show the whole Fifth heading outside this system toward Orion as though to intercept a possible direct attack from that direction."

"But—"

"But it won't be the Fifth they range,” Birrel continued. “An equal number of ships — merchant-freighters, ore-tubs, anything you can grab together fast, will assemble beyond your fifth planet and move out impersonating the Fifth. Long-range radar can't tell the difference. And half of our fast scouts will go with this dummy squadron to keep Orionid scouts from getting close enough to use short-range radar."

Charteris looked at Laney, a question.

It might be done,” said Laney. “The dummy squadron, I mean. Let's have the rest of it."

"Simple,” said Birrel. “Your UW fleet baits the Orionids so that at least a significant portion of their strength is tangled in the drift. The Fifth Lyra…” he strode back to the chart, his hand plunging in just above the gleaming globe of Sol, “will be lying up here, effectively masked from radar. When you have them hooked—"

He made a downward, slashing motion with his hand.

Charteris looked again at the admiral. “Well?"

Laney grudgingly admitted, “It might work."

"Do you formally recommend it as a plan of defensive action?"

Laney did not equivocate now. “Yes."

"Very well,” said Charteris, and Birrel began to breathe a little more easily, and then he heard Charteris saying, “But the Council ruling still applies, the Fifth Lyra will be under your direct command, Admiral."

Birrel gave up. He had done his best to convince them and it had not been good enough, and that was that. But then he heard Laney saying to the chairman, “No. In an operation like this, the Fifth Lyra will have to have independent command. You just can't coordinate such a strike by prearranged order, and direct communication with the Lyrans won't be possible in their radar-hide."

Charteris looked dubious. “If you say so…"

"I do say so."

Charteris stood up. “I have to have full Council approval for this. They're waiting."

He went out. Birrel looked at Laney, but the admiral's eyes were as hard and unfriendly as they had been and he did not say “Thanks” as he had intended.

"The Council will approve,” Laney said brusquely. “I suggest we get down to working it out."

Two hours later, Birrel rode with Garstang in a fast car that took them through the city, heading for the spaceport. The canyoned streets were dark and quiet now, the old metropolis slept. There was little traffic and the car hummed between the dark towers toward the river, waking echoes.

Birrel still could not quite believe that this was it, the start of the long-feared clash between Lyra and Orion. Both Sectors were so far away that their stars were mere points of light in the sky of this ancient, sleeping city. And again he thought that even when things you expected happened, they never happened in the way you expected.

He was tired and he was getting sleepy as the pills wore off, but he had to snap out of it when they reached the spaceport. The looming black bulls of the big cruisers were alive. Men went up and down the gangways, orders were bawled over the sound of cars that dashed between the ships.

In the bridge of the Starsong, he went over it with Brescnik and Hallet, the third in command.

"That's about it,” he finished. “Anything?"

Brescnik showed his teeth in a mirthless smile. “Only that your choice of an ambush hide is going to make it plenty interesting, even before things begin."

Birrel stood up. “It will. Lift out when you get the word from UW's staff, they'll time it with the dummy squadron's movements. I'm going to get some sleep."

Northward, the fields around Orville brightened with a new day. In the meadow, behind the Vinson house, Lyllin stood, shivering a little in the slight chill, looking to the south and listening. A flitter buzzed across the sky to the west, but there was nothing else. Then a far-off roll of thunder crossed the sky. She knew that thunder and what made it. She listened, as one thunder-roll after another pulsed and muttered.

She had had one short call from Birrel. Wait there, I'll come back. Now the muttering thunder in the south seemed like the receding footsteps of everything she had ever loved, passing out over the distant hills.

She turned slowly, and went back into the house.