'It is well known that the range of an airors is limited by its life support system,' said Belle Resall, to open the discussion. 'What do they hope to accomplish by killing themselves?'
That was the way Murichon had felt when he first realized that Lex and his alien friends were leading a strike force of airorses into deep space, but then he'd prowled the deserted sheds in the desert and found the converted airorses. He had one wheeled into the council room.
The vehicle was recognizable as a standard Blink-built airors but certain things had been done. The dome had been enlarged and armored to withstand the most deadly space radiations. The air regeneration unit was beefed up. Murichon opened the dome and pointed out features, space to store a considerable ration of dehydrated food, large tanks for water.
'As you can see,' Murichon said, 'the boys have not been idly playing tag out there in the sands. As this model indicates, they've successfully extended the range of an airors. We estimate that by living on short rations they can take one of the altered models all the way to mother Earth, if that's what they have in mind.'
'And weapons?' asked a grizzled Ranger official.
'None,' Murichon said.
'None?' asked Belle Resall. 'Then why?'
'Unless you consider this pod, on the left underside, a weapon,' Murichon said. 'We've tried to figure out why they installed it and the best we can guess is that it was built to carry an explosive charge in the range of fifty pounds of expand.' He looked at Belle, who was asking a question with her eyebrows.
'Expand is a charge used by miners,' he explained. 'Fifty pounds of it would take out about half of Dallas City. What it would do to, say, an Empire Middle guard cruiser can be imagined.'
Murichon detached the pod and held it in both hands. He showed it to the group, wordless.
'All right,' Belle said. 'They've extended the range of the airors by adding to the life support system. If I understand all I know about power, the blink generator in an airors is equal to that of a small destroyer. That means they can go almost anywhere they want to go in the galaxy. They've added a detachable pod to carry an explosive charge. Does this mean they're going to attack Empire on airorses, head on?'
'I think not,' said ex-President Andy Gar, in civilian clothing. 'I know that boy. I've had a few talks with his friends, that Empire fleeter Wal, the others. They're not suicidal.'
'We have this to consider,' said old man Blink, Billy Bob's father, who had narrowly escaped being President. 'The alterations were evidently done under the direction of my boy, Billy Bob. He's got a head on him.' The old man smiled proudly. He was allowed his moment, for Blinks were and had always been one of the prime raw materials of Texican greatness. 'He's been coming down to the plant of late studying the captured Empire gear we're testing. He was especially interested in the range and sensitivity of Empire detection equipment. I think they're planning to do something in regard to that fleet which is building up out there and I think it's based on the sensitivity of the detection instruments. Empire has been fighting a stagnant war for a few hundred years, fighting it by a formula. They're geared to detect the ships of the Cassiopeian fleet. The instruments are good, don't doubt that, but they're calibrated to size. They'll spot a Cassiopeian Vandy at incredible distances, but when the size falls much below Vandy volume—'
'I think I see,' Belle said. 'Then an airors, even one of these beefed-up models, would be too small to make much of an impression on Empire detection instruments.'
'Exactly,' Murichon said. 'I think they're going to try to sneak in past the scouts and plant charges on Empire ships.'
'Damned fools,' Belle said quietly, not angry. She felt a tightening in her chest, pure fear for two thousand Texas boys out there in deep space on a fool's errand. And she visualized the national period of mourning when the casualty reports were delivered back by a few survivors.
Actually, the plan was more complicated than the council had guessed.
While the council deliberated and mourned in advance, 'Professor Emily Lancing was piloting an arc from San Ann to Dallas City, the homer tuned to the new house built outside the city on Lexington Burns's land. She felt a bit of reluctance about her errand, but since she'd been in on the plan from the first she felt she had a duty to carry out Lex's request. She had thought about having her husband make the trip, but she'd promised and she felt, after thinking it over, that the news would be more endurable coming from a sympathetic woman.
And Riddent Burns was a lot of woman, woman at her finest, big, strong, fat in the belly with life, a new Texican forming in there, causing her trim waist to expand and grow. She was one of those fortunate women to whom pregnancy is a blessing, smoothing any hint of roughness from her skin, adding a color to her face, bringing out that almost supernatural beauty which some women possess when they are building life within their bodies.
It was the nature of their relationship that there were no secrets, so she knew Emily Lancing and knew of the tender scene which had once occurred between Emily and her husband. Being a sensible girl, she recognized love when she felt it being lavished on her, and she knew that Lex loved her above all women and, rather than feeling resentment toward the older woman, she felt a sense of warmness, for Emily had done a nice thing for her husband at a difficult time. Therefore, when she answered the door and faced Emily Lancing, she smiled with genuine pleasure and led the lady into the fine, huge main room and plied her with good things, hiding her curiosity about the unexpected visit. However, her curiosity was not to be strained, for Emily, with a cup of good Earth-type coffee on her knee, looked at her, smiled uncertainly and said, 'I came because I have something to tell you.'
'About Lex,' Riddent said. 'I thought so. He's doing something dangerous, isn't he?'
'Yes,' Emily said, admiring Riddent's control. 'You mustn't be angry with him. He didn't want to worry you until, as he said, it was time to worry. He asked me to tell you after he was gone.'
'Where?' Riddent asked, her heart beating a bit burpily, but calm on the exterior.
'Into Empire,' Emily said.
'He'll come back,' Riddent said, smiling.
'Of course.'
'I don't think I want to know any more,' Riddent said. 'I think I'd rather not know because if I know then I'll worry more, I think. As it is, I will just pretend that he's on some simple spying mission or something—'
'Everything possible has been done to make it a successful mission,' Emily said. 'There is danger, of course, but if advance planning can eliminate danger, then it has been done. Lex is a brave and fine man, girl.'
'Yes,' Riddent said. 'More coffee?'
'Thank you, no.' She rose. 'If you feel, later, that you'd like to talk about it, please call.'
'Yes,' Riddent said. She had known. He had been strangely possessive of her the previous evening, before leaving in the dead of night, holding her, taking her with great passion while being careful of the baby. And there had been all of those trips into the desert. At first she'd been angry, thinking that he was leaving her merely to play games with his comrades, but then, noting his seriousness, she'd come to believe that something special was happening.
'I won't worry,' she said, walking toward the door with Emily, 'but when can I stop worrying?'
Emily smiled. 'Three weeks from this morning.'
Three weeks. Three eternal weeks. During the third week the baby kicked for the first time, a strong, male kick which caught her by surprise and made her gasp, then laugh happily. She patted her distended stomach and said, 'Easy there, you little beggar.' And then she cried, for she wanted, so much, for Lex to be there, to place his big, rough hand on her skin and feel his son beginning those life-preliminary exercises.
Emily Lancing had been working on the micro-electronic techniques revealed by the two instruments which had come to Texas inside the skulls of Lex and Arden Wal. Texican spies had been searching for more indications of a hidden Empire technology and had come up with nothing. The mind monitors were, it seemed, the most closely guarded secret in Empire. After a few weeks the instruments themselves held no more secrets, could be duplicated easily on Texas, had there been a need. Thus, when Lex had come to her some weeks past, the building of a monitor to monitor she monitors was a simple thing and with some little burning of midnight oil a way had been found to make the monitors operative through the simple connection of electrodes to shaved spots outside the skull, rather than inside the bone structure. Thus, when the two-thousand-man fleet of converted airorses left Texas, one man in a hundred wore, or would wear at the proper time, Empire monitors. They were all of the local broadcast type found inside Wall's head, the type which, it was predicted, were to be found inside the heads of all top commanders in the Empire fleet. That was an example of the advance planning about which he'd hinted to Riddent.
