The Chosen

beat Libert and the Chosen. It didn't necessarily work that way, but desperate men weren't the best logicians.

Gerard cleared his throat 'And it will be even more difficult if they can continue to use Land dirigibles to shift troops and supplies at will behind their lines.'

'They can as long as they can keep our planes from punching through,' Jeffrey said. 'Those gasbags are sitting targets for fighters, but we don't have the numbers or the range to penetrate their own fighter screens.

Gerard's bulldog face grew longer. 'Then they will be able to shift faster than I can-what is that expression you used?'

Jeffrey sighed. 'They can get inside your decision curve. I just hope things are going better back home.'

* * *

Admiral Arthur Cunningham was a big, thickset man, with graying blond hair. Right now his face and bull neck were turning red with throttled rage, and he pulled at his walrus mustache as he stared at the ship model in the center of the glossy ebony table.

The hull was a large merchant variety, an eight-thousand-ton bulk carrier of the type used to ferry manganese ore from the Southern Islands under Santander protectorate. The top had been sliced off and replaced with a long flat rectangular surface; the funnels ran up into an island on the port side, and a section had lowered like an elevator to show rows of biplanes in the huge hold below the flight deck.

'Its an abortion,' Cunningham said.

'It's what we need for scouting,' Maurice Farr corrected.

The rings on his sleeves and the epaulets on his shoulders marked him as a rear admiral, and kept Cunningham superficially respectful. Nobody could mistake his expression, or the meaning in the look he shot John Hosten where he sat beside his father.

'Farr, I'm surprised. I expect politicians to act this way.' From his tone, he also expected them to have sexual intercourse with sheep. 'You're a navy man and the son of a navy man. Why are you doing this?'

'We work for politicians, Cunningham-there's a little thing called the Constitution that more or less tells us to. And in this instance, the politicians are right. We need aerial scouting if we're going to match the Land's fleet; otherwise they'll be able to lead us around like a bull with a ring in its nose.'

'We need airships with decent open-sea range, not flying toys on this abortion of a so-called ship!' Cunningham said, his voice rising toward a bellow and his fist making the coffee cups rattle.

John spoke: 'We've tried, Admiral Cunningham. Here.'

He pulled glossy photographs from an envelope and slid them across the table. 'You see the results.'

The frame spread across a hillside was just recognizable as a dirigible's, after the fire.

'The Land is too far ahead of us on the learning curve with lighter-than-air craft. They've got the diesels, the hull design, and most of all, plenty of experienced construction teams and crews. We can't match them, not at acceptable cost, not with everything else we're trying to do. And land-based aircraft just don't have the range to give cover and reconnaissance to a fleet at sea. Hence, we need the. . aircraft carriers, we're calling them.'

'Your shipyards need the contracts, you mean,' Cunningham said bluntly. 'Farr, this is diverting effort from capital ships.'

Farr shook his head. 'Look, Arthur, you know very well the bottleneck there is the heavy guns and the armor- rolling capacity.'

Cunningham rose and settled his gold-crusted cap. 'If you will excuse, me, sir-' he began.

'Admiral Cunningham, sit down!' Farr barked.

After a moment's glaring test of wills, the other man obeyed. 'Admiral Cunningham, your objections are noted. You will now cooperate fully in carrying out the decisions of the Minister of Marine and the Naval Staff, or you will tender your resignation immediately. Is that clear?'

Twenty minutes later John Hosten sank back in his chair, shaking his head as he looked at the door that Cunningham had carefully not slammed behind him.

'I hope there aren't too many more like him, Dad,' he said.

Maurice Farr sighed. His close-cut hair and mustache were gray now, but he looked as trim as he had when he stood on the docks of Oathtaking nearly two decades before.

'I'm afraid there are quite a few,' he said. 'A lot of the officers are convinced that this is being forced on the navy by politicians-and Highlander politicians from the east, at that, with their industrialist friends.' He smiled. 'They're right, aren't they?'

'But-' John began, then caught the look in his stepfather's eye. 'You can still get me going, can't you?'

Farr laughed. 'You take everything a bit too seriously, son,' he said. 'Don't worry; Artie Cunningham would rather eat his young than resign just before the first big naval war in a generation. If he has to swallow that'-he nodded at the model of the aircraft carrier that filled the center of the big table-'he'll swallow it, for the sake of the battlewagons.'

Farr lit a cigarette. 'He's not stupid, just rather specialized,' he went on. 'I can understand him; I'm a cannon-and-armorplate sailor myself. But I don't like operating blind.' He stared at the model. 'I do hope this concept's as workable as you and Jeffrey say. It looks good on paper, certainly, but I don't like ordering straight from the drawing board.'

'Dad, I'm as sure as if I'd seen them fight battles myself.'

pearl harbor, Center said helpfully. the pursuit of the bismark. taranto. midway-

Great, and how do I tell Dad that? John replied. Hastily: That was a rhetorical question.

Maurice Farr rose and began stacking papers in his briefcase. 'No rest for the wicked-I've got to get back to HQ and deal with more bumpf. God, for a fleet command.'

'Not long, I think, Dad,' John said.

A long moment after his stepfather had left John heard the door behind him open.

'Touching,' a voice said in Landisch.

'English,' John said sharply. 'Tradecraft.'

'Oh, indeed.'

The man-he was dressed in Santander civilian clothes, with a well-known yachting club's pattern of cravat- came and sat not far from John. He looked at a duplicate set of the airshipwreck photos.

'What caused this?'

'The design was overweight and underpowered; they took out a section in the center and enlarged it to take an extra gasbag. The bag chafed against the bolts internally, and they had a terrible problem with leaks. Probably they nosed in on that hill in the dark, or there was a fire from static discharge, or both.'

'Sloppy,' the Chosen officer said, tucking the pictures away. He nodded to the model of the aircraft carrier. 'Will this work?'

'Probably, after a fashion. I can't turn down all the good ideas, you know-not and keep my standing with the military and defense industries.'

'Indeed.'

'I suppose we'll have to build them, too. Dirigibles are so vulnerable to heavier-than-air pursuit planes.'

'Perhaps,' the intelligence officer said. 'And perhaps not.'

* * *

'Straight and level, straight and level, damn your eyes,' Horst Raske said, in a tone that was as close to a prayer as one of the Chosen was likely to get.

The bridge of the Grey Tiger was vibrating itself, very slightly, despite the skilled hands on the wheels and controls set about the U-shaped space. Through the vast semicircle of clear window they could see the teardrop shape of the experimental airship carrier Orca as she quivered in the clear air over the Land's central plateau, a hundred miles north of Copernik. The craft was huge, nearly a thousand feet from nose to stern, with beautiful swept control fins in an X at the rear, its smooth sheet-aluminum hull showing it to be one of the new metalclads.

Underneath it a small biplane fighter was making another run, first matching speeds with the dirigible, then edging upwards. A strong metal loop was fastened to the biplane's upper wing, and a long trapezoidal hook mechanism dangled below the airship's belly. The fighter swayed and dipped as it rose into the buffeting wake of the huge dirigible, then again as it hit the prop-wash of the six bellowing high-speed diesels. It rose sharply, and the