“No place,” he said innocently.
“Get over against the bulkhead and keep out of the way!” snapped the commander. “We’ve got a job of work coming up.”
Kurt injected a note of bewilderment into his voice.
“What kind of work?”
Krogson’s voice softened and a look approaching pity came into his eyes. “It’s just as well you don’t know about it until it’s over,” he said gruffly.
“There she is!” sang out the navigator, pointing to a tiny brown projection that jutted up out of the green jungle in the far distance. “We’re about three minutes out, sir. You can take over at any time now.”
The fleet gunnery officer’s fingers moved quickly over the keys that welded the fleet into a single instrument of destruction, keyed and ready to blast a barrage of ravening thunderbolts of molecular disruption down at the defenseless garrison at a single touch on the master fire-control button.
“Whenever you’re ready, sir,” he said deferentially to Krogson as he vacated the controls. A hush fell over the control room as the great tracking screen brightened and showed the compact bundle of white dots that marked the fleet crawling slowly toward the green triangle of the target area.
“Get the prisoner out of here,” said Krogson. “There’s no reason why he should have to watch what’s about to happen.”
The guard that stood beside Kurt grabbed his arm and shoved him toward the door.
There was a sudden explosion of fists as Kurt erupted into action. In a blur of continuous movement, he streaked toward the gunnery control panel. He was halfway across the control room before the pole-axed guard hit the floor. There was a second of stunned amazement, and then before anyone could move to stop him, he stood beside the controls, one hand poised tensely above the master stud that controlled the combined fire of the fleet.
“Hold it!” he shouted as the moment of paralysis broke and several of the officers started toward him menacingly. “One move, and I’ll blast the whole fleet into scrap!”
They stopped in shocked silence, looking to Commander Krogson for guidance.
“Almost on target, sir,” called the tech on the tracking screen.
Krogson stalked menacingly toward Kurt. “Get away from those controls!” he snarled. “You aren’t going to blow anything to anything. All that you can do is let off a premature blast. If you are trying to alert your base, it’s no use. We can be on a return sweep before they have time to get ready for us.”
Kurt shook his head calmly. “Wouldn’t do you any good,” he said. “Take a look at the gun ports on the other ships. I made a couple of minor changes while I was working on the control bank.”
“Quit bluffing,” said Krogson.
“I’m not bluffing,” said Kurt quietly. “Take a look. It won’t cost you anything.”
“On target!” called the tracking tech.
“Order the fleet to circle for another sweep,” snapped Krogson over his shoulder as he stalked toward the forward observation port. There was something in Kurt’s tone that had impressed him more than he liked to admit. He squinted out toward the nearest ship. Suddenly his face blanched!
“The gunports! They’re closed!”
Kurt gave a whistle of relief. “I had my fingers crossed,” he said pleasantly. “You didn’t give me enough time with the wiring diagrams for me to be sure that cutting out that circuit would do the trick. Now… guess what the results would be if I should happen to push down on this stud.”
Krogson had a momentary vision of several hundred shells ramming their sensitive noses against the thick chrome steel of the closed gun ports.
“Don’t bother trying to talk,” said Kurt, noticing the violent contractions of the commander’s Adam’s apple. “You’d better save your breath for my colonel.”
“Who?” demanded Krogson.
“My colonel,” repeated Kurt. “We’d better head back and pick him up. Can you make these ships hang in one place or do they have to keep moving fast to stay up?”
The commander clamped his jaws together sullenly and said nothing.
Kurt made a tentative move toward the firing stud.
“Easy!” yelled the gunnery officer in alarm. “That thing has hair-trigger action!”
“Well?” said Kurt to Krogson.
“We can hover,” grunted the other.
“Then take up a position a little to one side of the plateau.” Kurt brushed the surface of the firing stud with a casual finger. “If you make me push this, I don’t want a lot of scrap iron falling down on the battalion. Somebody might get hurt.”
As the fleet came to rest above the plateau, the call light on the communication panel began to flash again.
“Answer it,” ordered Kurt, “but watch what you say.”
Krogson walked over and snapped on the screen.
“Communications, sir.”
“Well?”
“It’s that message we called you about earlier. We’ve finally got the decoder working—sort of, that is.” His voice faltered and then stopped.
“What does it say?” demanded Krogson impatiently.
“We still don’t know,” admitted the tech miserably. “It’s being decoded all right, but it’s coming out in a North Vegan dialect that nobody down here can understand. I guess there’s still something wrong with the selector. All that we can figure out is that the message has something to do with General Carr and the Lord Protector.”
“Want me to go down and fix it?” interrupted Kurt in an innocent voice.
Krogson whirled toward him, his hamlike hands clenching and unclenching in impotent rage.
“Anything wrong, sir?” asked the technician on the screen.
Kurt raised a significant eyebrow to the commander.
“Of course not,” growled Krogson. “Go find somebody to translate that message and don’t bother me until it’s done.”
A new face appeared on the screen.
“Excuse me for interrupting sir, but translation won’t be necessary. We just got a flash from Detection that they’ve spotted the ship that sent it. It’s a small scout heading in on emergency drive. She should be here in a matter of minutes.”
Krogson flipped off the screen impatiently. “Whatever it is, it’s sure to be more trouble,” he said to nobody in particular. Suddenly he became aware that the fleet was no longer in motion. “Well,” he said sourly to Kurt, “we’re here. What now?”
“Send a ship down to the garrison and bring Colonel Harris back up here so that you and he can work this thing out between you. Tell him that Dixon is up here and has everything under control.”
Krogson turned to the executive officer. “All right,” he said, “do what he says.” The other saluted and started toward the door.
“Just a second,” said Kurt. “If you have any idea of telling the boys outside to cut the transmission leads from fire control, I wouldn’t advise it. It’s a rather lengthy process, and the minute a trouble light blinks on that board, up we go! Now on your way!”
XIV
Lieutenant Colonel Blick, acting commander of the 427th Light Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial Space Marines, stood at his office window and scowled down upon the whole civilized world, all twenty-six square kilometers of it. It had been a hard day. Three separate delegations of mothers had descended upon him demanding that he reopen the Tech Schools for the sake of their sanity. The recruits had been roaming the company streets in bands composed of equal numbers of small boys and large dogs creating havoc wherever they went. He tried to
