centuries.
Since the Herkimer affair they had been very careful with the Intelligence Wing. Once it was almost abolished for good; a few years of operation of the fleet practically blind, with no ground laid for them or information of enemy movements, proved that to be impractical. But they did what they could to keep the spies within bounds. It was an actually heartbreaking situation to the executives of the Wing. But you can't keep the voyeur instinct down; that was what they were chosen for and that was how they operated.
Take this affair on Magdeburg's 83. It was an insignificant outer planet very far away from New Metropole. Yet the filtering of rumors brought it into the brilliant limelight of the Wing. The body of the fleet could not move less than a mile-long battlewagon at one time; the Wing—
personified by Commander Bartok —dispatched tiny, trim Babe MacNeice. She returned with the information that a hitherto trusted colonial officer had decided to play Napoleon and was secretly fortifying the planet.
In the last analysis, lives were saved. The single cruiser could send a landing party and take the trusted colonial officer back to Earth for trial; surely a preferable alternative to a minor war with the propaganda-inflamed ophidians that were native to the planet.
Wing executives did not speak—in private—of their love for the body of the fleet. They held to the stubborn conviction that there was nothing dumber than a flagship commander, nothing less beautiful than a flagship.
2
At about that time, things were popping on the lineship Stupendous, two million miles off the orbit of Venus. On it was jammed the entire Headquarters Wing of the All Earth and Colonies navy. In the very heart of the ship, inside almost a cubic mile of defensive and offensive power, was Wing Commander Fitzjames, by virtue of his command Admiral of the Fleet.
'Not a murmur,' he said to his confidential secretary, a man named Voss. 'Not a murmur from the crew.' He lolled back in his chair and breathed easier under his chestful of medals.
'They don't know,' said Voss. 'When they find out—!'
'Stick to your shorthand, son,' snapped the Admiral. 'When they find out, they'll keep on carrying out orders very much the way they always have. They're picked men on this ship. Now take this down: General Order to all lineship Commanders. By authority of the Admiral you are empowered to govern any and all citizens and subjects of All Earth. An emergency has arisen which makes it absolutely necessary to eliminate opposition to this program. Your direct superior is your Wing Commander, who is responsible only to ranking members of the Headquarters Wing. A list of proscribed persons will follow.'
The Admiral lit a cigar with an unsteady hand. 'Code that,' he said.
'Send it in twenty minutes.'
'Anything else?' asked the secretary. 'How about the Wing Commanders? Are you coming clean with them?'.
Fitzjames stared at the metal ceiling. 'Take this: Confidential Memorandum to Wing Commanders. From Admiral of the Fleet Fitzjames. You are hereby notified that the Headquarters Wing of the.
fleet has voted to take over power from the hands of the Executive Committee of All Earth. You are on your honor as officers and gentlemen to support this move by your brothers in arms. You will continue to patrol your regular sectors, having dispatched details to attend to the physical acts of taking power. No planet must be left under a Colonial Governor acting by right of a charter from the Exec All Earth. Details follow. Report to Stupendous immediately in code. We are seizing Venus as a base.'
'Right,' said. Voss. 'So go ahead and seize it.'
'We're on our way,' said the Admiral heavily.
Depending on where you were to see the affair, the seizing of Venus was either a trivial or a Jovian episode. From space, for example, all there was to see was the bulk of the lineship slipping its length into the clouds above the dawnstar and vanishing from sight. But from the city of Astarte, principal freight port of the planet, it was vastly impressive.
Above the towers and loading peaks of the yards there appeared the most gigantic of all the spaceships in the universe, covering the town like a roof over its roofs.
There were a couple of smoke-bombs dropped into the streets and a few old-fashioned radios exploded under the power of the monster ship's sending tubes that announced that the city was taken and would be hostage for the rest of the planet's good behavior. Landing parties went down by lighter ships to establish order and arrange several necktie parties in which the Colonial Governor had the stellar role, minor parts being taken by his subordinates and clerks. Venusian natives were warned off the streets; henceforth none but the Earthborn could show their faces by daylight. Plans were announced to transport the verminous natives to the Darkside District. All this took exactly six hours, Earth time.
A brief resume of the life of Alexander Hertford III, Captain of the Fleet and Commander of Patrol Wing Twenty-Three, would include many revealing facts relative to the situation of the moment.
As he lay comfortably sprawled on a divan aboard his lineship Excalibur, a capital fighting vessel of standard offensive and defensive equipment, he was a fine figure of a man in his uniform of purple and gold. The collar was open, which, with his tumbled curls hanging over his brow in the manner of an ancient Irish glib, gave him a dashing, devil-may-care expression. At least Miss Beverly deWinder thought so, for she was smoothing those tumbled curls and smiling maternally.
Leaving the commander's ship—which was stationed off Rigel—for a moment, we take a brief survey of his career. He was thirty years old, and his grandfather, the first of his name, was also in the Navy. His father was not as bright as his grandfather, but appointments were easily got from the sentimental All Earth Exec, which wished to breed a race of fighting men, true, loyal and hard as nails. Alexander Hertford II just got through Prep Wing and Training Wing by the skin of his teeth, lived on a lineship and died at his post quelling an uprising among the outer planets of Alpha Centauri.
The third of the name was definitely dull. However, by virtue of the anonymous genius who invented the Auto- Cram and peddled them to students, he got through with what could easily be mistaken for flying colors, won his commission, saw service and was promoted to a Wing Command.
Life in Prep Wing and Training Wing was Spartan in the extreme.
Tradition was extensively cultivated; for example, it was legitimate to steal anything edible and criminal to steal anything drinkable. Another of the blunders of the career-molding branch of the Navy was the policy of rigidly excluding females from the lives of the boys and men for the duration of the course. Thus it was no more than natural that after graduating they got their romance in heavy doses.
The end-product of this was sprawling off Rigel when a discreet tapping sounded on the door of the Commander's lounge.
'I'll see, sweetie,' said Miss deWinder, who was a good-hearted girl.
She took the slip of paper that poked through the slot and carried it to Alexander Hertford III.
He opened it and read.
'Damn,' said Alexander Hertford III.
'Wassa matta, sweetie pie? Did bad ol' Admiral sen' sweetie pie away Porn li'l Bevvie-wevvie?'
Sweetie pie opened a closet whose inner face was a mirror and adjusted his collar and hair. As he cocked his cap at the right fraction of an angle, he said: 'Nothing to worry about. You just sit tight. I may not be back for a few days—we're seeing action again.' He reread the slip of paper.
'Damn,' he marveled again. 'When we used to talk about it around the mess-tables I never thought it'd come in my time. But here it is. Beverly, sweet, the Navy's taking over. Your lover-boy isn't a flying policeman anymore.' He buckled on his belt and opened the lap of the handgun holster. There was a look of strain on his dumb, handsome face. 'From now on,' he said, 'your lover-boy is ruler, and no questions asked, over Cosmic Sector Twenty-Three, with full power of life and death.'
Miss deWinder echoed after him, fascinated: 'And no questions asked
…'
The decode clerk at Intelligence Wing read off the message he had just received and set into English. Working
