The Chosen

observers on the Grey Tigers bridge sucked in their breaths, certain it would crash into the thin structure of the airship's belly.

Instead it pulled nose-up, almost stalling, then slipped into contact with the hook. A cable locked the mechanism shut, and it moved smoothly backwards with the aircraft pivoting and jerking on the hook-and-ring connection. The rise stopped with the biplane just below the entrance hatch intended for it,

'What?' Professor Director Gunter Porschmidt spoke with his usual quick, slightly angry tone. Some of the white-coated assistants around him moved away a little. 'What? Why do they wait?'

Gerta Hosten replied. 'Because, Herr Professor, the plane will only fit into the entrance hatch if aligned precisely with the airship's keel. . and it is difficult to get it to point that way traveling at ninety miles per hour.'

Porschmidt blinked at her. 'Oh. Yes, yes, make a note.' One of the assistants scribbled busily.

Tiny human figures on ropes dropped out of the airship's belly. Laboriously, they fixed rope tackle to the biplane's wings and body, and the trapeze swung it up once more. On the second try-the first crumpled a wing against the side of the hatch-they got it through. Porschmidt beamed, and there was a discreet murmur of applause from the Research Council officials with him.

'Good, good,' the chief scientist said. 'But perhaps we should assign a better pilot to the next series of tests?'

'The pilot is Eva Sommers,' Gerta said. 'Her reflexes were among the ten best ever recorded in the Test of Life; she has fifteen kills to her credit from the war down in the Union and is currently the Air Council's best test pilot.'

'Oh.' Porschmidt shrugged. 'Well, the purpose of operational testing is to improve the product.'

'Herr Professor?'

'Yes?'

'While this is undoubtedly a great technical achievement,' Gerta said, 'given our current quality control problems, don't you think-'

He made a dismissive gesture. 'The Chosen Council told me to design a device which would give us greater heavier-than-air scouting capacity than the enemy's new ship-borne aeroplanes. Production is not my department.'

Horst Raske waited until they had left his bridge before putting a hand to his forehead and sighing.

'Well, this proves one thing conclusively,' Gerta said, watching the Orca turn away.

'What?'

'That the Chosen are still Visager's supreme toymakers,' she added.

'Brigadier, I do not think that is funny.'

'It isn't. Porschmidt falling out a hatchway without a parachute at six thousand feet, that would be funny.'

'If only the man were an incompetent!'

'If he were an incompetent, he wouldn't have passed the Test of Life,' Gerta said. 'Unfortunately, that is no guarantee that he will not be wrong-just that he'll be plausibly, brilliantly wrong with ideas that sound wonderful and are just a tantalizing inch beyond realization.'

Raske shuddered. 'I hope some of his ideas work out better than that.' He nodded towards the disappearing airship. 'When I think of the conventional models we could have made for the same expenditure of money and skilled manpower. . and you're right, quality control has fallen off appallingly.'

'A complete waste of-' Gerta stopped, struck. 'Wait a minute. The problem there is hull turbulence, right?'

Raske looked at her. 'Yes. No way to eliminate it, that I can see. An airship pushes aside a lot of air, and that's all there is to it.'

'But fifty, sixty feet down there's less problem?'

'Of course-but you can't put the hook gear that far down. The leverage would snap it off at the first strain.'

'Yes, but why do we want to hoist the plane aboard the airship's cargo bay?'

She began to talk. Raske listened, his face gradually losing its hangdog expression.

'Now why can't Porschmidt come up with ideas like that?' he asked.

'Oh, some of Porschmidt's brainchildren work well enough, better than I expected.' Gerta said. She smiled. 'As our friends to the south will soon find out.'

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

'A great difference from the beginning of the war, n'est pas?' General Gerard said with melancholy pride.

Many of the soldiers trudging along the sides of the dusty road cheered as the car carrying Gerard and Jeffrey went by. They were almost all Unionaise on this front, not Freedom Brigades, so they were probably cheering the local officer-although Jeffrey was popular enough.

And they do shape a lot better, Jeffrey thought. For one thing, they were all in uniform and almost all had plain bowl-shaped steel helmets, and they all had the Table of Organization and Equipment gear besides. More importantly, they were moving in coherent groups and not getting tangled up or scattering across the countryside. Infantry marching on either side, horse-drawn guns and mule-drawn wagons and ambulances towards the middle, and a fair number of Santander-made trucks, Ferrins, and big squarish Appelthwaits. Occasionally an airplane would pass by overhead, drawing no more than a few curious stares; the men were accustomed to the notion that they had their own air service, these days.

The air was thick with dust and the animal-dung-and-gasoline stink of troops on the move. Around them the central plateau stretched in rolling immensity, with the snowpeaks of the Monts du Nora growing ever closer on the northeast horizon. The grainfields were long since reaped, sere yellow stubble against reddish-yellow earth, with dust smoking off it now and then. Widely spaced vineyards of trained vines looking like bushy cups covered many of the hillsides, and there was an occasional grove of fruit trees or cork oaks. The people all lived in the big clumped villages, looking like heaps of spilled sugar cubes with their flat-roofed houses of whitewashed adobe. The peasants came out to cheer the Loyalist armies; Jeffrey suspected that prudence would make them cheer the Nationalists almost as loudly. Not that the government wasn't more popular than the rebel generals, who brought the landlords back in their train wherever they conquered, but Unionvil's anticlerical policies weren't very popular outside the cities, either.

'Everyone seems to be expecting a military picnic,' Jeffrey said, leaning back in the rear seat of the big staff car.

It was Santander-made, of course; a model that wealthy men bought, or wealthy private schools. Six- wheeled, with a collapsible top, and two rows of leather-cushioned seats in the rear. Gerard had had the original seats replaced with narrower, harder models, plus communications gear and maps, with a pintle-mounted twin machine gun set between the driver's compartment and the passengers. Henri Trudeau stood behind the grips of the weapons, carefully scanning the sky.

'Morale is good,' Gerard acknowledged. 'The men know they've gotten a lot better, these past two years.'

'You've done a good job,' Jeffrey said.

'And you, my friend. Those suggestions for an accelerated officer-training system helped very much.'

Ninety-day wonders, courtesy of Raj and Center, Jeffrey thought. Center had a lot of records of sudden mobilizations for large-scale warfare.

'Well, combat is the best way to identify potential leaders,' Jeffrey said. 'It's sort of expensive as a sorting process, but it works.'

Henri spoke unexpectedly. 'Things wouldn't be going this well if you hadn't got those anarchist batards killed off right at the start, sir.'