Navy here, seats were available only on some kind of a black market at prices far beyond his reach.
“We can go over to the observatory,” Jakes suggested. “Old Smedley called me up yesterday. He can’t find anyone else to play chess with, with this war going on.”
Juan stood up promptly and began getting ready, but Bob shook his head. He’d remembered that a letter to his mother was long overdue, and this was the best tune to write it. He pulled out his typewriter as soon as the other two were gone, put in a sheet of paper—and stopped.
Plenty had happened, but she already would know everything permitted by the censors. He’d already described his work in the repair shop. And there was liter-ally nothing to say. For the first time, he realized that war was not only frightful; to the man just outside it, it was dull and monotonous!
Maybe that was why war had become unpopular until this new alien world had frightened people into it again. In the old days, men had fought almost hand to hand, and there had been at least the excitement of any good private fight; also, people had been able to get the full picture, and know what was going on. It was almost like a football game. But with advancing technology, an individual became just a dumb cog in a machine so big, he couldn’t begin to understand or take any great personal credit. And war lost its neurotic zest.
For want of anything else, he began writing about this idea to his mother, along with the few little personal items he could remember. He stopped to look out into the street and see countless men and women hanging around, having nothing to do once their period of work was over, and he fitted their boredom into his letter.
Then he got up and tore it up. If he ever sent that, his mother would feel sure he was sick and would start worrying twice as much as she would if he didn’t write at all.
He went out and bought one of the expensive tissue copies of the Martian Chronicle, and tried to read it, since he hadn’t seen more than the little local Post. But much of the news was meaningless to him. He hadn’t followed the current wrangles of the Federation Congress over policy enough to know what they were arguing about.
The editorial pages interested him more. Again he found the curious mixture of fear and eagerness to strike at Planet X and get the suspense over with, and the general dissatisfaction with having to be mixed up in anything as out-of-date as warfare.
Prices were going up on some things. Transportation between planets was being limited.
Mars and Earth were blacking out their cities at night. And piracy had increased.
That should have been expected. There were always some people who took advantage of trouble. Another item caught his eye.
Then Bob whistled. It seemed that Simon’s father was in trouble; Simon had given the Academy an assignment to his invention of the acceleration seat, and the elder Jakes had patented it without any right to do so. Apparently Simon had been honest in his surprise at his father’s actions, and really had been doing the right thing all along.
Bob struggled. He was almost beginning to like the clumsy Jakes, but Simon was such a mixture that there was no way to tell what would come up next. He could do things that required real sacrifice without expecting any credit; and then he could turn around and ruin all his efforts by some stupid and boorish gesture.
Bob went back to try to write a letter, just as the two others came into the apartment. He glanced up to give a casual greeting, and then stopped. Something had obviously happened. The two were no longer bored, and Juan was practically bubbling with excitement.
“You didn’t beat Smedley that badly,” Bob guessed.
Jakes shook his head. “He beat me—he always does. But Juan slipped in and used his telescope. Not the big one, but the fifteen-inch one with the electronic amplifier. And he found something!”
“On Neptune’s side of us… a little moon it was, maybe three miles big—half a million miles away. And I didn’t tell Smedley, because Simon wanted you to know first, too.” Juan’s English had a stronger accent than usual.
Bob grinned in puzzlement. “Nothing new about that. Neptune has quite a few of those tiny moons between us and Triton.”
Juan nodded. “That I know. But not with the wreck of a Planet X ship upon them. And this one I saw. It was turning around, but I saw it clearly. Lying on a bunch of big white rocks was a black thing, big at both
ends, narrow in the middle. And shouldn’t I know a ship like that when I see it?”
“Juan came back just when the game was over,” Jakes added. “I saw something was up, so we got out fast. As soon as Juan told me about it, we came here on the double.”
Bob blinked, slowly digesting this information. If they could get their hands on one of those mysterious ships, and learn how they operated…
“How badly broken up, or could you see?” he asked. It would do little good to have only mangled pieces of a ship left over after a lithium bomb had hit.
But Juan shook his head. “Not broken. It was all there, Bob. A whole black ship, just waiting for us.”
CHAPTER 9
Flotsam of Space
CAPTURE OF A SHIP of the enemy might change the whole picture of the war. Earth scientists couldn’t produce the miracles that the Planet X race had, but, once having a ship in their hands, they probably could find out how the machinery worked. Then they would be ahead of the other side, since they’d have their own science, plus that of the aliens—which might prove a great deal more than either had alone.
It would take time, of course; even if they unraveled the secrets quickly, it would require tremendous effort and expense to start the new production and reach an effective level. But there might be ways of stalling for time, and of letting the aliens win hollow victories by carefully planned retreats.
Furthermore, the total population of the Solar Federation was over nineteen billion, which must be more manpower than any single planet could boast. And the total amount of minerals and wealth of resources was bound to be greater than Planet X could have.
Given an equal break on weapons, the Federation would win. And this looked like the break.
Bob wasted no more time on words. He went to the telephone, and began dialing headquarters. If he could get his father on the phone and have him reach Wallingford…
Jakes grabbed the phone from his hand. “You aren’t going to call in the Navy, are you, Bob? Hey, what’s wrong with you?”
“What else? This is military business, Si—and they’re set up to handle it. I want Dad to get this moving, before any time is wasted.”
“That’s just it—there’ll be a lot of wasted tune. They’ll have to check and recheck—and by now, the ship’s probably turned on the other side of the rock. Then they’ll have to screen men for good secrecy risks. Heck, by the time all the red tape is done with, the hull could be back here with scientists working on it.”
“How? Somebody has to go and bring it in,” Bob pointed out.
Jakes nodded quickly. “Sure—we do. We can be there and haul it back in a couple of hours or so. Land it on the other side, where they’re working on that improved proton gun; the scientists there can get right to work on it. We’d be back before the Admiral even made up his mind.”
“And what will we use to haul it?”
It was Juan who answered this time. “There is Simon’s ship, the Icarius. It is fast and strong enough to haul from that little world.”
“And we could be off Outpost before they even knew we were leaving,” Jakes added quickly. “Then, when we had it in tow and were almost back, we could radio our reason for leaving. They’d beef about our going, but they could see what we had from the ground, and they’d be plenty glad to let us land at the right place. We’d use a tight beam, and nobody around here would even know about it, if you’re worrying about secrecy.”
Bob was tempted. He knew that the proper thing was to turn it over to the authorities, but there was just enough truth in what Jakes was saying to make him hesitate. In handling a large Fleet, the commanding officers did have to run through a lot of red tape for even a simple mission; they couldn’t just call in a man and tell him to go and get such and such.
