Stepsons of Terra

17.

The alarm came early on a spring morning, a year after Ewing had returned to Corwin. It was a warm, muggy morning. A soft rain was falling, automatically energizing the deflectors on the roof of Ewing’s home; their polarizing cells kept the rain from tattooing on the flat roof. Ewing lay in uneasy sleep.

The phone rang. He stirred, turned over, buried his face in the pillow. He was dreaming of a figure limned briefly in a white flare of jet exhaust on Valloin Spacefield. The phone continued to ring.

Groggily, Ewing felt a hand shaking him. A voice—Laira’s voice—was saying, “Wake up, Baird! There’s a call for youl Wake up!”

Reluctantly, he came awake. The wall clock said 0430. He rubbed his eyes, crawled out of the bed, groped his way across the room to the phone extension. He choked back a yawn.

“Ewing here. What is it?”

The sharp, high-pitched tones of Premier Davidson cut into his sleep-drugged mind. “Baird, the Klodni are on their way!”

He was fully awake now. “What?”

“We just got word from the scout network,” Davidson said. “The main Klodni attacking fleet left Borgman about four hours ago, and they’re heading for Corwin. The reports say there are at least five hundred ships in the first wave.”

“When are they expected to reach this area?”

“We have conflicting estimates on that. It isn’t easy to compute super-light velocities. But on the basis of what we know, I’d say they’ll be within firing range of Corwin in not less than ten nor more than eighteen hours, Baird.”

Ewing nodded. “All right. Have the special ship serviced for immediate blast-off. I’ll drive right out to the spaceport and pick it up there.”

“Baird—”

“What is it?” Ewing asked impatiently.

“Don’t you think—well, that some younger man should handle this job? I don’t mean that you’re old, but you have a wife, a son—and it’s risky. One man against five hundred ships? It’s suicide, Baird.”

The word triggered dormant associations in Ewing, and he winced. Doggedly he said, ‘The Council has approved what I’m doing. This is no time to train someone else. We’ve been over this ground before.”

He dressed rapidly, wearing, for sentiment’s sake, the blue-and-gold uniform of the Corwin Space Force, in which he had served the mandatory two-year term a dozen years before. The uniform was tight, but still fitted.

While Laira fixed a meal he stood by a window, looking outward at the gray, swirling, pre-dawn mists. He had lived so long in the shadow of the Klodni advance that he found it hard to believe the day had actually come.

He ate moodily, scarcely tasting the food as he swallowed it, saying nothing.

Laira said, “I’m frightened, Baird.”

“Frightened?” He chuckled. “Of what?”

She did not seem amused. “Of the Klodni. Of this crazy thing you’re going to do.” After a moment she added, “But you don’t seem afraid, Baird. And I guess that’s all that matters.”

“I’m not,” he said truthfully. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. The Klodni won’t even be able to see me. There isn’t a mass-detector in the universe sensitive enough to spot a one-man ship a couple of light-years away. The mass is insignificant; and there’ll be too much background noise coming out of the fleet itself.”

Besides, he added silently, how can I be afraid of these Klodni?

They were not even human. They were faceless, mindless brutes, a murdering ant-horde marching through the worlds out of some fierce inner compulsion to slay. They were dangerous, but not frightening.

Fright had to be reserved for the real enemies—the human beings who turned against other humans, who played a double game of trust and betrayal. There was cause to respect the strength of the Klodni, but not to dread them for it. Dread was more appropriate applied to Rollun Firnik and his kind, Ewing thought.

When he had eaten, he stopped off briefly in Blade’s bedroom to take a last look at the sleeping boy. He did not wake him. He merely looked in, smiled, and closed the door.

“Maybe you should wake him up and say good-bye,” Laira suggested hesitantly.

Ewing shook his head. “It’s too early. He needs his sleep at his age. Anyway, when I get back I guess I’ll be a hero. He’ll like that.”

He caught the expression on her face, and added, “I am coming back. You could gamble our savings on it.”

Dawn streaked the sky by the time he reached Broughton Spacefield. He left his car with an attendant and went to the main administration building, where a grim-faced group of Corwin officials waited for him.

This is it, Ewing thought. If I don’t make it, Corwins finished.

A world’s destiny rode on the wild scheme of one man. It was a burden he did not relish carrying.

He greeted Davidson and the others a little stiffly; the tension was beginning to grip him now. Davidson handed him a portfolio.

“This is the flight chart of the Klodni armada,” the Premier explained. “We had the big computer extrapolate it. They’ll be overhead in nine hours and fifty minutes.”

Ewing shook his head. “You’re wrong. They won’t be overhead at all. I’m going to meet them at least a light-year from here, maybe further out if I can manage it. They won’t get any closer.”

He scanned the charts. Graphs of the Klodni force had been inked in.

“The computer says there are seven hundred seventy-five ships in the fleet,” Davidson said.

Ewing pointed to the formation. “It’s a pure wedge, isn’t it? A single flagship, followed by two ships, followed by a file of four, followed by eight. And right on out to here. That’s very interesting.”

“It’s a standard Klodni fighting formation,” said gravelvoiced Dr. Harmess of the Department of Military Science. “The flagship always leads and none of the others dares to break formation without order. Complete totalitarian discipline.”

Ewing smiled. “I’m glad to hear it.”

He checked his watch. Approximately ten hours from now, Klodni guns would be thundering down on a virtually defenseless Corwin. A fleet of seven hundred seventy-five dreadnoughts was an unstoppable armada. Corwin had perhaps a dozen ships, and not all of them in fighting trim despite vigorous last-minute work. No planet in the civilized galaxy could stand the burden of supporting a military force of nearly eight hundred first-line ships.

“All right,” he said after a moment’s silence. “I’m ready to leave.”

They led him across the damp, rain-soaked field to the well-guarded special hangar where Project X had been installed. Security guards smiled obligingly and stood to one side when they recognized Ewing and the Premier. Field attendants swung open the doors of the hangar, revealing the ship.

It was a thin black spear, hardly bigger than the vessel tliat had taken him to Earth and back. Inside, though’, there was no complex equipment for suspending animation. It its place, there now rested a tubular helical coil, whose tip projected micromillimeters from the skin of the ship. At the base of the coil was a complex control panel.

Ewing nodded in approval. The field attendants wheeled the ship out; gantry cranes tilted it to blasting angle and carried it to the blast-field.

A black ship against the blackness of space. The Klodni would never notice it, Ewing thought. He sensed the joy of battle springing up in him.

“I’ll leave immediately,” he said.

The actual blast-off was to be handled automatically. Ewing clambored aboard, settled himself in the cradle area, and let the spinnerettes weave him an unshatterable cradle of spidery foamweb. He switched on the vision-plate and saw the little group waiting tensely at the edge of the clear part of the field.

He did not envy them. Of necessity, he would have to maintain total radio silence until after the encounter. For half a day or more, they would wait, not knowing whether death would come to their world or not. It would be an uncomfortable day for them.

With an almost impulsive gesture Ewing tripped the blasting lever, and lay back as the ship raced upward. For the second time in his life he was leaving Corwin’s soil.

The ship arced upward in a wide hyperbolic orbit, while Ewing shuddered in his cradle and waited. Seconds later, the jets cut out. The rest of the journey would be carried out on warp-drive. That was less strenuous, at least.

The pre-plotted course carried him far from Corwin during the first two hours. A quick triangulation showed that he was almost one and a half light-years from the home world—a safe enough distance, he thought. He ceased forward thrust and put the ship in a closed million-mile orbit perpendicular to the expected line of attack of the Klodni. He waited.

Three hours slipped by before the first quiver of green appeared on his ship’s mass-detector. The line wavered uncertainly. Ewing resolved the fine focus and waited.

The line broadened. And broadened. And broadened again.

The Klodni wedge was drawing near.

Ewing felt utterly calm, now that the waiting was over. Moving smoothly and unhurriedly, he proceeded to activate the time-transfer equipment. He yanked down on the main lever, and the control panel came to life; the snout of the helical core advanced nearly an inch from the skin of the ship, enough to insure a clear trajectory.

Working with one eye on the mass-detector and one on the transfer device’s control panel, Ewing computed the necessary strength of the field. The Klodni formation opened out geometrically: one ship leading, followed by two, with four in the third rank, eight in the fourth, sixteen in the fifth. Two massive ranks of about two hundred fifty ships each served as rearguard for the wedge, providing a double finishing-thrust for any attack. It was the width of these last two files that mattered most.

No doubt they were traveling in a three-dimensional array, but Ewing took no chances, and assumed that all two hundred and fifty were moving in a single parallel bar. He computed the maximum width of such a formation. He added twenty percent at each side, for safety. If only a dozen Klodni ships slipped through, Corwin still would face a siege of havoc.

Compiling his data, he fed it to the transfer machine and established the necessary coordinates. He punched out the activator signals. He studied the mass-detector; the Klodni fleet was less than an hour away, now.

He nodded in satisfaction as the last of his computations checked and canceled out. Here goes, he thought.

He tripped the actuator.

There was no apparent effect, no response except for a phase-shift on one of the meters aboard the ship. But Ewing knew there had been an effect. A gulf had opened in the heavens, an invisible gulf that radiated outward from his ship and sprawled across space.

A gulf he could control as a fisherman might a net—a net wide enough to hold seven hundred seventy-five alien vessels of war.

Ewing waited.

His tiny ship swung in its rigid orbit, round and round, carrying the deadly nothingness round with it. The Klodni fleet drew near. Ewing scratched out further computations. At no time, he thought, would he be closer to a Klodni ship than forty light-minutes. They would never pick him up at such a distance.

A minnow huddled in the dark, waiting to trap the whales.

The green line on the mass-detector broadened and became intense. Ewing shifted out of his locked orbit, placing the vessel on manual response. He readied his trap as the Klodni flagship moved serenely on through the void.

Now! he thought.

He cast his net.

The Klodni flagship moved on—and vanished! From Ewing’s vantage point it seemed as if the great vessel had simply been blotted out; the green wedge on the scope of his mass-detector was blunt-snouted now that the flagship was gone.

But to the ships behind it, nothing seemed amiss. Without breaking formation they followed on, and Ewing waited. The second rank vanished through the gulf, and the third, and the fourth.

Eighteen ships gone. Thirty-two. Sixty-four.

He held his breath as the hundred-twenty-eight-ship rank entered the cul-de-sac. Now for the test. He stared at the mass-detector intently as the two biggest Klodni formations moved toward him. Two hundred fifty ships each, the hammers of the Klodni forces—

Gone.

The mass-detector was utterly blank. There was not a Klodni ship anywhere within detectable range. Ewing felt limp with relief. He disconnected the transfer mechanism, clamping down knife-switches with frenzied zeal. The gulf was sealed, now. There was no possible way back for the trapped Klodni ships.

He could break radio silence now. He sent a brief, laconic message: “Klodni fleet destroyed. Am returning to home base.”

One man had wiped out an armada. He chuckled in relief of the crushing tension.

He wondered briefly how the puzzled Klodni would react when they found themselves in the midst of a trackless void, without stars, without planets. No doubt they would proceed on across space in search of some place to land, until their provisions became exhausted, their fuel disappeared, and death finally claimed them. Eventually, even their ships would crumble and disappear.

According to the best scientific theory, the stars of the galaxy were between five and six billion years old. The range of the Earther time-projector was nearly infinite.

Ewing had hurled the Klodni fleet five billion years into the past. He shuddered at the thought, and turned his tiny ship homeward, to Corwin.