Battle for the Stars

CHAPTER 18

The sky screamed light. The sun, Sol, its atoms ceaselessly riven and then reborn, shrieked raving energy, magnetism, electricity, light, radiant heat, a rage across the heavens, a cosmic storm, flinging up wild plumes and spindrift of violet calcium, of yellow sodium, of blue and green and red flame.

Over it, as over a limitless fiery ocean, hung the shoal of silver ships. Tossed and twitched by storms of radiation, wrenched by the claws of the titan magnetic field, scorched by the blaze of the star that sought to overcome their shielding, the ships of the Fifth fought to hold position. Their formation wavered, sagged, reformed and wavered again, and still they held together, fighting against the star.

The flagship, the Starsong, had it a little easier. It was much higher above the sun, far enough out from the storm of force so that its long-range radar functioned, at least partially. By that same token, it could be ranged by radar, while the squadron, though itself blind radarwise, could not be ranged.

Birrel sat in the communic-room of the Starsong, eating a sandwich. He did not want it, his stomach was tight with tension and he was not hungry at all, but he had learned long ago that if a commander showed excitement in a tight situation everyone under him would let his own excitement ride him. He chewed his sandwich and watched stolidly as Garstang and Venner hung over the big radar-screens that yielded an approximation of the results of long range radar information, in a form most quickly comprehended.

Garstang swore. “Out again."

The screens had suddenly all blazed a useless white, even the powerful rays that served them wrenched and cut by a sudden outburst of solar activity. The ship shuddered and rocked momentarily.

"There's nothing yet anyway,” said Birrel. He thought, My God, what a fake I am, I'm the most jumpy man in the squadron and I have to sit here and pretend. He wanted to jump up and run to the screens, but he forced himself to sit still and finish the sandwich. Already it was giving him a gut-ache.

He got up then and walked over to the screens. They had come back on again, but they did not show much.

One was ranged west and zenith. It showed a swarm of tiny flecks moving far outside the System of Sol, heading out in the direction of the star Saiph. It looked for all the world like a full naval squadron, with its scouts out screening it, its light cruisers flanking the central heavy columns. Birrel hoped it looked that way to the Orionids. Only the scouts were for real, the rest of that swarm was merchant ships, ore-freighters, everything the UW had been able to gather together and throw out as a dummy. If Orionid scouts got close enough to use short-range radar and detect the imposture, it was going to be their last flight.

He looked at another screen. That one plotted the rim of the asteroid belt, a blur of dots that were rock fragments, dust, pebbles, the streams of debris between Mars and Jupiter. Beyond the rim of that stony jungle, five ships moved slowly, behaving like a normal patrol. The remainder of the UW fleet was hidden among the asteroids and no radar could detect them there.

"Why don't they come?” fretted Garstang. “Do you suppose that captain had it wrong? That plans were changed?"

The screens suddenly blazed white again. The Starsong shuddered and heeled as the wave of solar electricity overloaded and affected relays in its control system. The automatic corrections in the circuits functioned almost instantly, and the fabric of the vessel stopped shivering.

Birrel shrugged. “We should soon know."

"It had better be soon,” muttered Garstang. “The boys can't sit on that star forever."

The storms of force that intermittently rocked the Starsong were bad enough. But on the squadron, hiding much closer to the solar corona, it must be rougher. A lot rougher. Brescnik had so far kept them together, but neither ships nor men could take that sort of thing for too long. Birrel, watching the screens with perfectly faked stolidity, prayed inwardly for the Orionids to come.

They did not. Time passed. He began to sweat. He did not think he could keep up this pretense of calm much longer.

Suddenly Venner caught Garstang's shoulder. “There!” he said. He leaned forward and pointed his forefinger at the screen.

Out of the depths toward Scorpio came a swarm of tiny flecks that might have been nothing more than bits of cosmic drift. They moved together, very fast. They swept in toward the System of Sol with a rush and they came almost exactly on the course that that red dagger in the chart had foretold. Two full squadrons of Solleremos’ fleet, on planetary approach.

The five UW ships on patrol, out beyond the Belt, abruptly wheeled around in perfect formation and moved out to meet them.

Birrel's mouth was dry. Runnels of sweat crept down his temples, down his body. The palms of his hands were clammy.

The Starsong rocked again and Garstang uttered an oath. The radar was out again, the screens were blank. Then they cleared.

The five UW ships had not gone far out. Suddenly they wheeled again, seemingly abandoning formation. But Birrel knew they were running a firing pattern and his fists clenched tight. The five leaped in formation again and cracked on speed and ran back toward the Belt.

One in the great swarm of flecks, one of the Orionid cruisers, vanished silently from the screen.

Garstang shouted, and, as though at a signal, the screen went out again.

Birrel ran his uniform sleeve over his face, and kept still. There were so few of the UW ships, and so many of the others, something more than double the strength of his own squadron. Far below, Earth lay naked, stripped, utterly without defense. Birrel thought of Lyllin, and the old house with the dusty road in front of it. He thought of the dark woods and the meadow where they had fought in the night, and curiously enough he thought of the cat. Insolent little beast…

He waited for the screens to clear, and watched.

A number of Orionid ships detached themselves from the main fleet and raced after the UW patrol. They were much faster, they could only be light cruisers, S-4s. The long arm of Solleremos was reaching swiftly now, and one of the UW ships winked off the screen. The other four reached the Belt.

The Orionid advance plunged in after them.

"Now,” whispered Garstang. “Now — now—"

The eight Orionid light cruisers apparently detailed to mop up this patrol sped down a deceptively open “lead” through the asteroid drift. The lead pinched out in a culde-sac of radar-specks that were actually wildly gyrating rocks. The Orion cruisers did a fast about, practically on each other's heels, but, before they were finished, the four UW ships and nearly a dozen others appeared from nowhere all around them, coming into view on the screen as they left the radar shelter of the asteroids they had perilously hugged.

"Hit them,” muttered Garstang. “Oh, hell, get onto it and hit them!"

They hit them. Of a sudden, in quick succession, two of the UW ships and five of the Orionids vanished off the screen.

"That hurt them,” said Birrel, and unclenched his fists. “They're hooked."

Garstang turned and looked at him and then picked up the mike of the intercom. He did not speak into it, he looked at Birrel and waited. Birrel bent forward, his eyes on the screen.

Down there in the Asteroid Belt, the trap had been sprung. And now the Orionids knew they had the whole UW fleet, such as it was, to deal with — a force too small to stop them, but too formidable to leave on their flank and rear. All depended on their movements now. If they had been fooled by the dummy Fifth that had gone out, they would move one way and, if they had not, they would move another.

An anguish grew in Birrel as the swarm of specks that were the main body of the Orionid squadrons came on. The stratagem had been too transparent, too clumsy. He should have known that and yet he had talked Laney and Charteris into it, and—

He held his breath. The swarm of flecks was changing pattern, and altering course. The heavy central columns of the Orionid squadrons were forming into a cone-shaped formation that moved toward the UW ships which hovered, in apparent doubt, above the fringes of the drift. The heavy cone moved in to make contacts with its cloud of scouts driving furiously all around it like a thinner, larger outer cone.

Garstang was looking at him, almost pleadingly. No, thought Birrel. Not yet. Not quite yet.

He waited until the van scouts of the Orionids were five times missile-range from the drift. Then he nodded to Garstang.

"Commander to Vice-Commander,” said Garstang rapidly. “Rejoin!"

The Fifth rejoined its flagship fast, glad to get farther from the glare and danger of Sol, and soon the ships came onto visual screens as well as radar.

Down there, at the fringe of the Belt, contact had been made. Dots were vanishing, faster and faster. Birrel's throat was dry. Nobody had ever fought a fleet action before, there had been individual cruiser-skirmishes out on the vague, stellar frontiers, but nothing like this. There was no precedent and the action-plan he had prepared could prove utterly foolish. Throw away your doubts and worries, he thought, you've hooked yourself now and there is only one thing you can do, so you might just as well be heroic about it.

He said, “All right, let's go down,” and the Fifth Lyra swooped out of the sun.