Galactic Medal of Honor

V

When Don Mathers reported for duty following his standard three weeks leave of absence, it was to find a message to report to Commodore Walt Bernklau.

It hadn’t been the easiest three weeks he had ever spent. His mind had been in a state of agitation. As a matter of fact, he had never actually given Demming and Rostoff a definite answer. Had there been any way of substituting someone else to “discover” and “destroy” the Kraden cruiser without doubt they would have done it, and had Don Mathers eliminated so that he couldn’t expose the scheme. Don had no doubt that both of them had men on their payrolls who would do anything, literally, up to and including murder. But the thing was, nobody but Don Mathers would do. The derelict Kraden spaceship was drifting in his sector. Only he would normally discover it. It had been a far-out fluke that the two interplanetary magnates and Deming’s secretary had come across the cruiser on their way between Io and Earth. No, it was either Don Mathers or nobody.

But he burned hot and cold. The stakes were so damnably high, but the risks went with them. There wasn’t the chance of an icicle on Mercury but that he would be shot if the scheme was revealed. Demming and Rostoff possibly might buy their way out; without doubt they had a number of politicians on their payrolls. But not a sub-lieutenant in the Space Service. They’d court-martial and shoot him before the week was out.

He dismissed the automated hovercab which had brought him out to the base, summoned one of the hovercarts and dialed the Space Command Headquarters of the Third Division.

He duplicated the route he had taken the last time he had reported to the commodore, duplicated the snappy salute to his commanding officer when he was finally before him.

The commodore, wearing his usual weary air, looked down into his desk screen. He said, “Sub-lieutenant Donald Mathers’ material, please.”

He scrutinized the screen for a time before looking up to say, “Since your report on your last aborted patrol, Lieutenant, I’ve had some second thoughts.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It occurs to me that you’re rather badly in need of a psych. I’ve gone over your record in some detail.”

Don said, trying to hide the desperation in his voice, “Sir, I’d like to avoid that, if I can.”

The other was impatient. He shifted his small body in his swivel chair and said, “Lieutenant, there is a good deal of superstitious nonsense about the effects of being psyched. Ninety-five percent of those who are thus treated have no negative results. Even those who react adversely usually recover eventually.”

Like hell they did, Don Mathers told himself. He had seen some of the walking zombies. Even those who supposedly successfully took the treatment were never again quite the same. Something was gone out of them. Oh, sure, they became dependable pilots again. If anything, more dependable, more efficient than those who had never been psyched. But something was gone out of them. He knew that elements in the upper echelons of the Space Service were advocating that every pilot in the fleet be given the treatment for the sake of added efficiency. But thus far the action hadn’t been taken. It was well known that the top brass, perfectly willing to psych lowly pilots, were not volunteering to go through the process themselves.

He said stiffly, “Sir, I would like the opportunity to prove that I don’t need a psych.”

The commodore was irritated. “Very well, Lieutenant. It is seldom ordered, though there are exceptions. Ordinarily, it is more or less of a voluntary thing taken on when a pilot realizes he has irrevocably shot his efficiency and patriotically wishes to return to top form.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well, Lieutenant Mathers. Carry on.” The commodore twisted his mouth in a grim smile. “From this patrol I do not expect you to return before your full three weeks, Mathers. Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.”

With a sinking relief in his stomach, Don turned and marched from the office. Out in the corridors, he let air from his lungs. That had been a close one.

He took his hovercart over to the officers’ quarters and changed into the coveralls which were universally worn in space. He left his papers and wrist chronometer in the locker. He went on back to the hovercart and took it out to the hangers to find that his V-102, his One Man Scout, had already been wheeled out. Several of the mechanics of his crew were giving it a last minute inspection.

He came up to the sergeant who was head of the crew and said, “How does she look, Wilkins?”

Sergeant Jerry Wilkins was an old hand. Theoretically, he could have retired but he was wedded to the job and as good a mechanic as any on the base. Wilkins could have taken apart and reassembled a One Man Scout in the dark.

Don was aware of the fact that the mechanic knew that nothing had been wrong with the V-102 on the last patrol and probably nothing on the preceding three aborted patrols. But the sergeant must have had a certain tolerance. He was too long in the Space Service not to be aware of the reality of space cafard and the fact that at one time or another there wasn’t a pilot who hadn’t been hit by it.

Wilkins was rubbing grease from his hands with a piece of waste. He said, with satisfaction, “Lieutenant, you won’t have no trouble with her this patrol. We’ve been working her over for the last three weeks. We’ve got her tuned like a chronometer.”

“Good,” Don said. “I’ve been beginning to think I was hexed.” He knew that the other knew he was lying, but you had to make the effort.

He was a bit behind time, due to his interview with the commodore but Don didn’t allow that to hurry him. He circled the V-102, the sergeant walking behind. Care was the essence, making the difference between getting back to where he started or blowing the ultra-hot little One Man Scout. He checked, checked, checked. Then he got in and settled down into the pilot seat. Once you were space borne in a One Man Scout there was no way of getting out until you returned to base. The larger craft, yes, the Monitors and even the smaller cruisers had lifeboats, but not a One Man Scout. If something happened to you in deep space, you were dead, period.

Now, automatically, he went over the procedure that was second nature to him. He began checking in one corner of the cockpit and went around it, missing nothing. Every switch, every meter, every screen, the cooling rheostats and the cabin pressurization, every gauge.

He said finally to Wilkins, through the hatch, “All right, Sergeant, let’s get this beetle into space.” He closed the hatch, dogged it down, knowing the sergeant was doing the same outside.

He could envision the ground crew driving up the lift and shortly the V-102 was being hoisted up onto it. He could feel the slow-moving vehicle trudging him over to the shuttlecraft and then the V-102 being lifted up into the cradle.

He switched on his communication screen. Lieutenant Risseeuw was piloting the shuttle. “Cheers, Jan,” Don said, “what spins?”

Jan Risseeuw said, “Hi, Don. Heard you’ve had trouble the last few patrols.”

“Yeah,” Don said, keeping his voice glum. “A regular jinx. If I don’t snap out of this, they’ll fire me and I’ll have to take a job being a Tri-Di star, or something.”

“Ha,” die other said. “All set down there?”

“Take her away,” Don said.

He knew damn good and well that Jan, as much so as his sergeant mechanic, knew as did every pilot on the base that Don Mathers was running scared, aborting patrol after patrol. And nobody could possibly like it. Fellow pilots tried to take care of their own, but the Space Service just wasn’t large enough to run sufficient patrols. More spacecraft were being poured into the skies, but there still weren’t enough. When Don Mathers was taking his three weeks leave of absence, after each patrol, his sector was empty. Command tried to cover by having his adjoining sectors manned during that period, in the same way as when he was on patrol while the adjoining pilots were on leave; but it still left a hole. And particularly did it leave a hole when a One Man Scout returned from a supposed three week patrol in just several days.

But that wasn’t his worry now.

Jan lifted and Don Mathers sunk back into his acceleration chair. This was the part he, and every other pilot, particularly hated, the initial lift into space. Among other things, this was where most of the danger was. If you were going to blow, four times out of five it was when you were lifting off, getting into initial orbit.

As always, they went up fast, out into the zone where it was safe for him to activate his nuclear engines. Out where Earth was no longer in danger, even if he blew.

Don said into the screen, “How’s Greta?”

“She’s all right,” Jan told him. “Going to drop her kid in about two weeks.”

“How many does that make?”

“Four.”

“Fifty years ago they could have jailed you.”

“That was before the Kradens. Now we need every human being we can get. When this planetary engineering really gets under way, we can populate Luna, Mars, and the Jupiter satellites, maybe even some of the others.”

“That’s the dream,” Don said. “Read the other day that they’ve located several asteroids that are solid ice. What they want to do is chivy them over and drop them onto Mars to melt”

“Sounds pretty far out. I’d hate to be under it when one of them dropped. But if they could swing it, it’d be something. I suppose you’d have as much water as a good-sized lake.”

Don said, “I was pretty well holed up this last three weeks. Anything new happened during that tune?”

“Not much. Marty Cantone reported he saw a Kraden over in his sector. Just a quick spotting and then it was gone.”

“Did he?”

Don could hear the other’s yawn. “Naw. When he got in, he was shaking with cafard. That boy ought to take the psych treatment.”

Don said carefully, “I ran into a guy the other day, a technician on the Luna radio telescopes, who claims there aren’t any Kradens. His theory is that they came that one time, half a century ago, found we were hostile, and took off and haven’t returned.”

Jan grunted. “He might be right. I’ve never spotted one of the bastards.”

“How could you, in a shuttle?”

Jan said, “I was in the Two Man Scouts for a couple of years. They pulled me out. Too susceptible to space cafard. They decided that not even a psych job would help for any length of time. Well, here we are, Don. Ready for the drop?”

“All set. See you, Jan. Give my regards to Greta.”

“Luck,” the shuttle pilot said.

Don could feel his craft falling away. For the moment, he was in free fall. His practiced hands darted about the cockpit, firing up his nuclear engines.

Under way, he turned to his navigation, flicking this, touching that, checking dials and gauges, getting the coordinates of his sector A22-K223 into the computer. He flicked his acceleration over to 2 Gs and felt himself pressed back into the acceleration chair.

Don Mathers was an old hand. He reached into his kit and brought forth a vacuum bottle. It supposedly contained fruit juice, and didn’t. He took a deep swig from it and then turned to his mini-tapes and selected one, a revival of an old-old two dimensional movie, Gone With the Wind and relaxed. He enjoyed the old films, totally unbelievable though they were.

It was a far cry from the early days of the space age when with rocket engines you lifted off from Earth and headed for, say, Luna. You reached your escape velocity and from then on, until it was time to start braking, you coasted. No more, with the coming of nuclear powered engines. Now you could continue to accelerate until you reached almost to your destination. Aside from the speed, you also avoided the misery of free fall. Once arrived in his sector, he’d drop it down to one G. It was a bit on the complicated side, but the double domes had worked it out over the years.

Maximilian Rostoff had evidently been a space pilot in his youth. When he and Demming had spotted the drifting Kraden derelict he had not only gotten a fix on it but had determined its course and speed and now Don had little difficulty in locating the Miro Class cruiser.

And there it was all right, drifting comparatively slowly, inertia maintaining the speed that it must have been under when it was hit and the crew killed.

He had never seen a Kraden spaceship before, though, like every other cadet, when he was at the Space Academy he had pored over the photographs and video-tapes taken during the initial battle between the Kradens and Earthmen. There could be no doubt of its extraterrestrial origin. Earth spaceships, even the Monitors which were assembled in space, were still built, for unknown reasons so far as he was concerned, to resemble overgrown torpedoes. The Kradens were built every which way and sometimes basically resembled a box.

The Miro Class cruisers looked more or less like a rectangular box. The only manner in which you could tell if they were coming or going was that there was a control area in the prow, a blister. Or, at least, that’s what the Earthling technicians had decided it was, and were probably wrong, Don thought.

He braked to the speed of the other ship and then used his directional jets to circle it. It was even larger than an Earth Monitor and must have been one hell of a fighting machine in its day. If it had been a warcraft. According to Thor Bjornsen, it might have been a colonizing ship, or a merchantman.

Had he done a more thorough job of his patrol, the last time—hell, for the last half dozen times—he should have stumbled upon it himself. In actuality, largely he had kept himself doped up on soma during those few days he had remained in space, keeping himself only alert enough to be able to make his routine reports. Anything to fight off the space cafard.

He circled it again. If he had spotted it on his last patrol there was no doubt that he would have at first reported it as an active enemy cruiser. Demming and Rostoff had been right. The Kraden ship looked untouched by battle.

That is, if you approached it from starboard and slightly abaft the beam. From that angle, in particular, it looked untouched.

Demming and Rostoff had mentioned going inside and finding repulsive looking alien corpses. On the face of it, it had probably been Rostoff alone who made the spacewalk between the automated space yacht they were in and the extraterrestrial ship. Demming couldn’t have gotten into a spacesuit, even had he wanted to. And even though he’d had constructed a special one to fit his bulk, Don doubted that the fat slob would have exerted himself to that point—no matter what the potential profitable possibilities.

He imagined that Maximilian Rostoff had warped the space yacht up against the alien craft and had then donned a spacesuit and crossed over to explore it. Don wasn’t going to be able to do the equivalent. His One Man Scout boasted no spacesuit nor was there any manner of exit and entry, once in space. He would have liked to explore the interior, as Rostoff had done, but there was simply no way.

In actuality, until this point he had made no decisions. He was still in a position to report in to the base, to reveal that he had located a derelict Kraden cruiser. Undoubtedly, it would do him a lot of good. The engineers would fall all over themselves. It might even win him a promotion. Eric Hansen had been bounced up to full lieutenant just on the strength of having seen a Kraden—and he wasn’t even positive of that.

Surely, this discovery would take the commodore off his neck, at least for the time. It would also mean that as soon as he had made the report he would be ordered to return to base. They’d want to question him in detail. He wouldn’t have to stay out the full three weeks, which he dreaded.

But that wasn’t all of it. Once the initial excitement was over, and he had been a several week news item, he’d be back in the same spot as before. He’d be sent out again, and when he panicked, under cafard, sooner or later the commodore would lower the boom on him. Psych.

That’s what decided him. If he was psyched, it would come out that it hadn’t really been him who had discovered the Kraden but Demming and Rostoff. If he lived to be psyched. He had no doubts at all but that the two interplanetary tycoons would put musclemen after him the moment he revealed the Miro Class cruiser to Space Command as a drifting derelict. They’d have to take steps to eliminate him, or they’d be in the soup when their scheme came out.

He dropped back into the exact position he had decided upon, took another long swig out of his vacuum bottle, then flicked the switch on his screen.

A base lieutenant’s face illuminated it. He yawned and looked questioningly at Don Mathers. He said, “Mathers, your routine report isn’t due for another six hours. Don’t tell me you’re having engine trouble again. The commodore told me—”

Don said, allowing a touch of excitement in his voice, “Mathers, Scout V-102, Sector A22-K223——”

“Yeah, yeah,” the other said, still yawning. “I know who the hell you are and where you are.”

Don said excitedly, “I’ve spotted a Kraden cruiser, Miro Class, I think.”

The lieutenant flashed into movement. He slapped a button before him. The screen in Don’s One Man Scout blinked a moment and then Commodore Walt Bernklau was there.

He snapped, “Mathers, you aren’t in space cafard, are you?”

“No, sir! It’s a Kraden all right!”

The screen flickered again. Then it was halved. Besides the commodore, a gray haired fleet admiral looked up from the papers on his desk.

“Yes?” he said impatiently.

Don Mathers rapped, “Miro Class Kraden in section A22-K223, sir. I’m lying about two hundred kilometers off. Undetected thus far—I think. Otherwise he would have blasted me out of space. He hasn’t fired on me… yet, at least.”

The admiral was already doing things with his hands. Two subalterns came within range of his screen, took orders, dashed off. The admiral was rapidly firing commands into two other screens. After a moment, he looked up at Don Mathers again.

“Hang on, Lieutenant. Keep him under observation as long as you can. Don’t get any closer. We don’t want him to spot you. What are your exact coordinates?”

Don gave them to him and waited.

The commodore, still on his half of the screen, said, suspiciously, “You’re sure about this, Mathers?”

“Yes, sir!”

Within a minute, the Admiral returned to him. “Let’s take a look at it, Lieutenant.”

Don Mathers adjusted the screen to relay the Kraden cruiser. His palms were moist now, but everything was going to plan. He wished the hell he could have another drink.

The admiral said in excitement, “Miro Class, all right. Don’t get too close, Lieutenant. You’re well within range. They’ll blast you to hell and gone. We’re sending up three full squadrons of Monitors. The first one should be there within an hour. Just hang on.”

“Yes, sir,” Don said. An hour. He was glad to know that. He didn’t have much time in which to operate.

He let it go another five minutes, then he said, “Sir, they’re increasing speed.” He had flicked off the scanning of the Kraden. He couldn’t afford to have them spot any of the damage, though that was unlikely at this angle.

“Damn,” the admiral said, then rapidly fired some more into his other screens, barking one order after another.

Don said, letting his voice go very flat, “I’m going in, sir. They’re putting on speed. In another five minutes they’ll be underway to the point where I won’t be able to follow, and neither will anybody else. They’ll get completely clear, and the Almighty Ultimate only knows where they’re headed. Possibly to hit Earth itself.”

The admiral looked up, startled. The commodore’s eyes widened.

The admiral rasped, “Don’t be a fool.”

“They’ll get away, sir,” Don said, trying to make his face look determined. Knowing that the others could see his every motion, Don Mathers hit the cocking handle of his flakflak gun with the heel of his right hand.

The admiral snapped, “Let it go, you ass. You wouldn’t last a second.” Then, his voice higher, “That’s an order, Lieutenant!”

“Yes, sir,” Don Mathers said.

He flicked off his screen and grimaced sourly. He took up his vacuum bottle and finished the contents, then descended on the Kraden ship, his flakflak gun beaming it. He was going to have to expend every erg of energy in his One Man Scout to burn the other ship to the point where his attack would look authentic, and to eliminate all signs of previous action.

He swept it from prow to stern, taking particular care to fire all over the area where the extraterrestrial spaceship had taken its original hits. He raked it up and down until it was little more than a molten hulk.

And then, his offensive powers exhausted, he snapped his communications back on. The face of the commodore of the first squadron of his supposed reinforcements faded onto his screen.

The other, his face young, considering his rank, snapped, “Commodore Franco, Officer Commanding Task Force Three. How do things stand, Lieutenant? Is he still under observation?”

Don said, calmly, clearly, “Yes, sir. I think I’ve finished him, but perhaps you’d better approach with care.”

“You’ve what!”

“Yes, sir.”