Gold Star

explore man had ever wasted his life and his resources to kill his fellows. But the ancient history of the race was full of war. Before the space age there'd been constant war on old Earth, and almost a final war. The nuclear weapons were ready and primed on both sides when the government of the old United States made the most significant diplomatic move in man's history and shared the secret of the blink drive with its enemies. After that, for a couple of hundred years, everyone was too busy playing with the new toy, exploring space, claiming new planets in the name of some old Earth government, to fight. «The history books say that they used the old rockets because there wasn't enough gold to build that many blink generators,» Jan said. «It was pretty wasteful. All that gold going up in radioactive cinders.» It was slightly ironic, when you thought about it. The crying need was living room, a vent for old Earth's teeming billions of people, and the first blink space efforts were mining efforts, men going out to find gold on airless planets and asteroids so that more blink generators could be built to send more ships out to search for more gold, but, at last, the supply had met demand and the settlement ships began to blink outward to the life- zone planets discovered during the gold rush. There were over two hundred populated planets at the time of the last war. Nationalism had been, after all, taken into deep space, and the planets of the Zede II group were, for some reason, low in gold. The planets of the U.P. group, made up, roughly, of settlers from the English-speaking portions of old Earth, had plenty of gold. And so the last war was fought for that yellow metal which had been the reason for much of man's strife on the home planet. A war for planets of gold. A war which saw the destruction of five U.P. worlds before an aroused civilization rose up, reached far down to the bottom of its reserves, and brought fiery death to twelve worlds, six billion people. It was not something any man could speak of with pride. The winners—there were no losers alive—said it was justified and necessary. After all, it was the Zede II group of worlds which had developed the first planet buster, and had used it. For one last time man met death with overwhelming, devastating, total death, and then it was over and for a thousand years English had been the official language of space. And it was English which Pete heard as he sent the old 47 streaking fire through the atmosphere, bringing her down to thirty thousand feet at the maximum atmospheric speed. As he had thought, there were secondary batteries of surface-to-air missiles. They came streaking up on solid-fuel trails of fire to follow the speeding 47 harmlessly off into near space. He had no way of controlling, of leading, those short-range surface missiles. They had enough power to break out of the gravity well, but near space around the planet would be littered with them. It became more and more apparent to Pete that no living intelligence was behind the array of weapons. The short-range rockets came in salvos, emerging from buried silos at only four points on the three continents. Each of those points, recorded on his visuals, was a fortified emplacement ringed with vacant silos for the huge, spacegoing missiles and for the smaller, short-range missiles. Pete's stomach was acid after a few hours of playing tag with death which traveled with the speed of exploding combustibles. He took a breath. He tried to raise the Lady Sandy on the voice communicator and got no answer. He figured they were off looking for Rimfire. Well, it was safe now. «Maybe we ought to go out and get her,» he said to Jan. «It should be safe now.» It was obvious that the short-range missiles remaining could not threaten Rimfire at half a million miles out in space. He decided to make one more sweep through the atmosphere. He sent the 47 blasting down, down, leveled off at twenty thousand feet., He was recording as he flew directly toward a fortified emplacement on the large continent. «No rockets,» Jan said. «We've cleaned them out.» He was busy with the 47. She wasn't designed to be an atmospheric yacht. She was buffeting and leaping in the disturbed air. «Looks like concrete and metal,» he said, as the fortified equipment came into view. This particular emplacement was in desert country. It squatted low to the rocky, red ground, a dark, shadowy solidity below them, magnified on the viewers to show— «Good Lord,» he yelped, as the dark spots on the side of the fortification nearest them glowed white-hot. He jerked the 47 up, added power although she was beginning to glow with the heat of her passage through air. He felt her rock, bounce, leap. «Laser cannon,» he said. The 47 was gaining altitude fast when the beam caught her stern and almost sent her tumbling. Pete regained control and yelled, «Damage check, Jan.» He knew she was hurt. Hell, the 47 wasn't a warship. Why hadn't he done as he should have done, gone on after the Rimfire? What had he done? «Hull damage,» Jan said, her voice high and frightened. «We're losing pressure.» She was hurt badly. The flux drive was sputtering, and she was threatening to fall off on her side and start tumbling. His fingers flew over the keys as he punched in blink coordinates for the nearest blink beacon. The airtight hatches would close automatically. Once he was safely out in space he could see about the damage, maybe repair it, at least send out a Mayday to the Lady Sandy. He'd really blown it this time. He punched the button and the 47 kept on straining. «Jan, quick, systems check on the generator.» Her hands were shaking as she punched buttons and then, «Electrical outage, Pete. Generator controls are not functional.» The 47 strained and grunted on the damaged flux drive, and she was losing altitude. Her speed had carried her out of range of the laser cannon on the fortification, but she was going down. They were losing air fast, and one of the airtight hatches was jammed near the generator room. «Honey, we're going to have to land,» he said, even as he felt the ship begin to lose altitude. He had to fight her down, using all the skill he had. He hadn't flown manual in atmosphere since cadet days, and he was sweating, his stomach churning, as the red sand of the desert came up to meet them at a frightening speed. He read the flux power gauge. It was falling. He let the 47 continue to go down fast, then, at the last moment, gave the flux drive all the power it had left, and the 47 settled, in clouds of blown sand, to make a landing which Jan couldn't even feel. The 47's air testers reported Earth standard minus a few tiny points. The air out there was good, breathable. But Pete wasn't ready to go outside. He killed the flux and grabbed an instrument-tool kit and opened the hatch going back to the power room. She'd been hit aft of the generator, thank God. The hull had a hole about two feet in diameter. The generator was intact. The reason for the lack of response to Pete's blink order was evident—the main control cable housing had been burned by the laser beam which had holed the hull. Now and then a stray rock holed a ship. Each ship had some hull-patching material on board. The hole could be fixed. He examined the control cable. The cable's housing was burned through, and half a dozen wires had been charred. Insulation had been burned off three or four. The air coming in through the hull was sweet, fresh. They were breathing it. There was a slight risk of some airborne germ or virus, but it was only slight. Man seemed to carry his own germs with him to new planets, not find new germs waiting for him. «How bad is it?» Jan asked. «Bad enough, but I think I can fix it in a couple of days.» He led her back into the control room, and hit the communicator. « Lady Sandy, Lady Sandy.» he said. «This is a Mayday. Come in, Lady Sandy.» When he received no answer to his voice communications signal, he sent Blinkstat Maydays vectoring out to cover the area of space visible from their location. There was no answer. «They must be on the opposite side of the planet,» he said. «I want you to keep sending, Jan, while I go to work. It'll take me a couple of days by myself. If we had Lady Sandy's help we'd be flying again in less than half the time.» He was welding the first seal on the hull patch when Jan called him on the ship's internal communications. «You'd better come up here, Pete.» A small cloud of dust was moving toward them. It came from the direction of the fortification. Pete turned the ship's visuals on it, and it leaped into the screen. It was a tracked, armored vehicle, and it was moving toward them at almost fifty miles per hour. Pete turned off the visuals, his fingers going crazy on his skull. It seemed to Jan that he made a quick decision, for he ran to the captain's safe, twirled the combination dial, and reached in. His hand came out filled with a weapon. «I think we'd better get off the ship,» he said. The APSAF which he held in his hand would be, against an armored vehicle, about as effective as throwing rocks. He took Jan's hand, and they ran, keeping the ship between them and the approaching vehicle, to an outcrop of rock about fifty yards away. They did not have long to wait. The sound of an internal-combustion engine, the squeaking of unoiled treads, came clearly to them, and the dust cloud rose high from just beyond the 47. Pete held his breath. He expected the vehicle to open fire, expected to see the 47 either fly apart or start melting in the blaze of a laser cannon. Instead, he saw the rusted, pockmarked nose of the armored vehicle coming slowly around the 47's stern. There was a look of extreme age about the armored vehicle. As it circled the 47, twin muzzles swiveled to remain trained on the ship. It repeated the maneuver twice without firing, came around the stern for the third time, weapons swiveling. And then it stopped. The grunting, popping internal-combustion engine coughed, and was still. The squeaking of the treads ceased. The dust settled. The muzzles of the weapons did not move. The vehicle was between them and the 47. It sat there with its rusty, pockmarked armor, silent, deadly. The sun was hot in the desert. Pete estimated a temperature of at least 110 degrees. They couldn't stay there forever. The armored vehicle could. It had been around for a thousand years. Pete risked a movement, and nothing happened. He picked up a small rock and threw it off to one side. It hit other rocks and bounced. The vehicle did not move. He threw another rock, this time to bounce off the vehicle's top. Nothing. «Stay here,» he whispered. «If anything happens, just lie low.» He left the rocks in a crouch, ready to dive for cover if the weapons swiveled toward him. The armored vehicle was lifeless. He yelled. He threw rocks. Then, with a shrug and a heart which was beating too fast, he walked toward the vehicle. He put his hand on the sun-heated metal. Up close the ravages of a thousand years of weather were evident. He climbed up onto the treads, his hands smarting with the heat. He made his way atop,