Greenies

'Sir,' he tried again, 'this flickering is right in the orbital plain that a Henry captain would use to observe our operations on Ganymede. It's basically the same inclination that we use when we spy on Callisto. When you couple that with the spectrum being the same as that of a Henry's maneuvering thrusters, the index of suspicion raises up. If I could get my array more focused in that direction I might be able to...'

'Your opinion has been noted, Ingram,' he interrupted coldly. 'And it's been filed for what its worth. Carry on.'

'Yes sir,' Ingram said, his voice still neutral. He went back to watching his screen.

'And why don't you pay more attention to the 0 mark 180 area?' Braxton suggested. 'That's where the Dolphin is going to be coming from. If they detect us before we get them the captain's gonna have your ass.' It was an age-old competition between Owl crews relieving each other on station to see who could detect whom first. The losing crew owed beers and bong hits to the winners the first time they found themselves in port together.

'I'm watching it, sir,' Ingram told him. 'No sign yet.'

'If I have to buy that asshole Stinson on Dolphin a bong hit, I'm gonna take it out of your ass, greenie, you hear me?'

'I hear you, sir,' he said, suppressing a sigh.

Dolphin did not show up over the next two hours, but several more times Ingram saw the flickering in the low infrared spectrum, each time from a slightly different bearing. He continued to watch that area closely, looking for anything else that might give a hint towards what was out there. Eventually, just as the captain came floating in from his quarters to take the con, he got it. The tiniest flash of blue, indicating a lower level in the spectrum, appeared just beside the white for a moment. It quickly faded away and did not reappear, but it had been there, he was sure of it. 'Con, detection,' he said again. 'I'm getting more flickers in the lower spectrums from 151 mark 70.'

'Another puddle of piss, Ingram?' Braxton said with a sigh. 'I thought I told you to give that a rest. You're supposed to be looking for Dolphin.'

'What's this?' said the captain, who was still hovering in the air next to the command chair. 'Flickers in the lower spectrum?'

'Ingram is getting heat shine off of a damn urine dump or something and trying to convince us that he sees a Henry out there,' Braxton explained.

'That bearing places it in the high orbital plain,' the captain said. 'Are you sure...'

'Stan, I looked at it when he first reported it,' Braxton said. 'It's nothing.'

'Sir,' Ingram said, looking directly at the captain, who, though he was as prejudiced against those of Martian birth as any other Earthling, could at least admit that they were occasionally useful for something, 'I just got a reading in the lower spectrum. That's the same spectrum as a Henry venting waste heat. I really think we should maneuver to bring the sensors to bear.'

The captain looked from his XO to his greenie detection tech for a moment. Finally he pushed off of the chair and floated gracefully across the bridge to hover just over Ingram's shoulder. 'Show me what you got,' he told him.

'Stan,' Braxton said, rolling his eyes upward, 'there aren't any Henry's out there. I told you, I looked at his contact when he first reported it. It's nothing. Dolphin is going to be here any minute now and I for one don't want to pay for any buds back at Triad.'

'Let me just take a look,' the captain told him soothingly. 'You're probably right but I'd like to just see what we're dealing with here. Ingram's not too bad at this technician shit.' He considered for a moment. 'For a greenie anyway.'

Ingram let the insult slide off his back. It was something that he had a lot of experience with. He pointed to the screen where the tiny flicks of white were still occasionally showing themselves. He then had the computer replay the brief episode of blue. The captain watched all of this carefully, scowling as he absorbed it.

'Hmm,' the captain said. 'My green friend, it's probably nothing more than a few scraps of metal from an ancient booster or something, but it's definitely worth a closer look.' He looked up at the other stations on the bridge. 'Helm, roll us to 331 mark 70. Keep those thrusters at absolute minimum. Assume there's a Henry out there until we prove otherwise.'

'Aye sir,' the young helmsman responded, his fingers going to the controls.

While Braxton shook his head in disgust at the lack of attention being paid to the approach lane of the Dolphin, the maneuvering thrusters on the outside of the ship fired with minute blasts of burned hydrogen gas, slowly rolling the ship around on its axis so that the sensor arrays could point towards the contact.

'331mark 70, sir,' the helmsman reported a minute later. 'Holding steady.'

'Thank you, helm,' the captain said, still looking over Ingram's shoulder at the display. 'Well, Ingram?' he asked. 'Where's your contact now?'

'Focusing, sir,' he replied, adjusting the gain on his terminal. After a moment, his efforts paid off. A few light blue lines appeared.

'Well look at that,' the captain said wonderingly.

'What is it?' Braxton asked.

'Solid contact in the low infrared spectrum,' Ingram reported. 'Just a hint, but there.'

Braxton switched his display over to get a duplicate view. He frowned at what he was seeing. 'That's not very much of a hit,' he said. 'It could just be a sensor anomaly.'

'It's the same spectrum as a Henry's hot spot near the plasma outlets,' Ingram said.

'And it's definitely enough of a hit to investigate. Helm, get ready to move us a little. Let's see if we can get a range on this thing.'

'Yes sir,' the helmsman said.

'Ingram, designate a contact for that thing and put it on the big screen.'

'Yes sir,' he said, his fingers moving over his terminal. 'We'll call it Sierra 21. It's now on the screen as an unknown, bearing only contact.'

The captain pushed off of Ingram's chair and drifted back over to his own. 'I've got the con,' he told Braxton, hovering above him as the XO unstrapped himself and floated over to his own chair. Once he seated himself and strapped in he turned on the ship's intercom system. 'All personnel,' he said, his voice being amplified throughout the ship. 'General quarters, prepare for acceleration and contact prosecution.'

The general quarters alarm blared and on all decks men dropped what they were doing and stowed any loose items that were in their vicinity. Kitchen crews put away their knives and forks and pressure cookers. Cleaning crews (all of whom were Martians) stowed their rags and spray bottles. Everyone on board reached into small fanny packs that they wore around their waists and pulled out emergency decompression suits, which they unfolded and slipped on. In the event of a hull breach, these suits would automatically inflate and allow the person to survive for a short time in the vacuum that would result. Once in their suits, everyone propelled themselves as quickly as possible to their GQ station. The engine crewmen all assumed their stations in the reactor room. The torpedo room crews passed through a security access hatch and into the room where Mermaid's twelve thermonuclear torpedoes were stored. Two additional crewmen floated up to the bridge and assumed secondary terminals where they could control the four eighty millimeter anti-ship lasers and the two ten millimeter anti- torpedo/fighter lasers.

'All stations report manned and ready, captain,' Braxton said three minutes after general quarters had been called.

'Very good,' he replied, obviously a little perturbed about the slow response but keeping it to himself. 'Helm,' he said, 'sound acceleration alarm and initiate a point one zero G burn. Heading 100 mark 50.

'Aye aye sir,' the helmsman said, activated his maneuvering thrusters and sounding the acceleration alarm. Once the ship was pointed in the proper direction — a task that the computer oversaw rather than the human instructing it — the main engines began their burn. It was of course, not actually a burn since the method of propulsion was a fusion reaction acting against a propellant of liquid hydrogen, but the term, which was as old as space flight itself, remained in use.

Fusion engines did not produce significant acceleration. Their advantage over chemical rockets was not how fast they could burn but how long they could burn. Fusion power allowed a ship to build up velocity over a period of