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.
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 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.
