A Question of Courage Part 3

I nodded. "Yes, sir," I agreed. "Quite a little."

Our cargo hatches snapped open and we cuddled up against "Amphitrite's"

bulging belly while our crew and the supply echelon worked like demons to transfer ammunition. We had fifty torpedoes aboard when the I.F.F.

detector shrilled alarm.

Three hundred feet above us the "Amphitrite's" main battery let loose a salvo at three Rebel scouts that had flickered into being less than fifty miles away. Their launchers flared with a glow that lighted the blackness of s.p.a.ce.

"Stand by!" Chase yelled as he threw the converter on.

"Hatches!" I screamed as we shimmered and vanished.

Somehow we got most of them closed, losing only the crew on number two port turret which was still b.u.t.toning up as we slipped over into the infra band. I ordered the turret sealed. Cth had already ruined the unshielded sighting mechanisms and I had already seen what happened to men caught in Cth unprotected. I had no desire to see it again--or let our crew see it if it could be avoided. A human body turned inside out isn't the most wholesome of sights.

"How did _they_ get through?" Chase muttered as we put out our probe.

"I don't know--maybe someone wasn't looking."

"What's it like down there?" Chase asked. "See anything?"

"'Amphitrite's' still there," I said.

"She's _what_?"

"Still there," I repeated. "And she's in trouble."

"She's big. She can take it--but--"

"Here, you look," I said, flipping the probe switch.

"My G.o.d!" Chase muttered--as he took one look at the supply ship lying dead in s.p.a.ce, her protective batteries flaming. She had gotten one of the Rebel scouts but the other two had her bracketed and were pouring fire against her dim screens.

"She can't keep this up," I said. "She's been hulled--and it looks like her power's taken it."

"Action imminent," Chase ordered, and the rangefinder took up his chant.

We came storming out of Cth right on top of one of the Rebel scouts. A violent shock raced through the ship, slamming me against my web. The rebound sent us a good two miles away before our starboard battery flamed. The enemy scout, disabled by the shock, stunned and unable to maneuver took the entire salvo amidships and disappeared in a puff of flame.

The second Rebel disappeared and we did too. She was back in Cth looking for a better chance at the "Amphitrite." The big ship was wallowing like a wounded whale, half of one section torn away, her armor dented, and her tubes firing erratically.

We took one long look and jumped back into Cth. But not before Haskins beamed a message to the supply ship. "Now you've seen it, you d.a.m.ned storekeeper," he gloated. "What do you think?" "Amphitrite" didn't answer.

"Probe out," Chase ordered, neglecting, I noticed, to comment on the signalman's act.

I pushed the proper b.u.t.tons but nothing happened. I pushed again and then turned on the scanners. The one aft of the probe was half covered with a twisted ma.s.s of metal tubing that had once been our probe. We must have smashed it when we rammed. Quickly I shifted to the auxiliary probe, but the crumpled ma.s.s had jammed the hatch. It wouldn't open.

"No probes, sir," I announced.

"d.a.m.n," Chase said. "Well, we'll have to do without them. Hold tight, we're going down."

We flicked into threes.p.a.ce just in time to see a volcano of fire erupt from "Amphitrite's" side and the metallic flick of the Rebel scout slipping back into Cth.

"What's your situation, 'Amphitrite'?" our signal asked.

"Not good," the faint answer came back. "They've got us in the power room and our acc.u.mulators aren't going to stand this load very long.

That last salvo went through our screens, but our armor stopped it. But if the screens go down--"

Our batteries flared at the Rebel as he again came into sight. He didn't wait, but flicked right back into Cth without firing a shot. Pollard was on the ball.

"Brave lad, that Reb," Chase said. There was a sneer in his voice.

For the moment it was stalemate. The Reb wasn't going to come into close range with a warship of equal power to his own adding her metal to the "Amphitrite's," but he could play cat and mouse with us, drawing our fire until we had used up our torpedoes, and then come in to finish the supply ship. Or he could hara.s.s us with long range fire. Or he could go away.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

It was certain he wouldn't do the last, and he'd be a fool if he did the second. "Amphitrite" could set up a mine screen that would take care of any long range stuff,--and we could dodge it. His probe was still working and he had undoubtedly seen ours crushed against our hull. If he hadn't he was blind--and that wasn't a Rebel characteristic. We could hyper, of course, but we were blind up there in Cth. His best was to keep needling us, and take the chance that we'd run out of torps.

"What's our munition?" Chase asked almost as an echo to my thought. I switched over to Pollard.

"Thirty mark sevens," Pollard said, "and a little small arms."

"One good salvo," Chase said, thoughtfully.

The Rebel flashed in and out again, and we let go a burst.

"Twenty, now," I said.

Chase didn't hear me. He was busy talking to Allyn on damage control.

"You can't cut it, hey?--All right--disengage the converter on the auxiliary probe and break out that roll of duralloy cable in the stores--Pollard! don't fire over one torp at a time when that lad shows up. Load the other launchers with blanks. Make him think we're shooting.

We have to keep him hopping. Now listen to me--Yes, Allyn, I mean you.

Fasten that converter onto the cable and stand by. We're going to make a probe." Chase turned to me.

"You were Exec with Royce," he said. "You should know how to fight a ship."

"What are you planning to do?" I asked.

"We can't hold that Rebel off. Maybe with ammunition we could, but there's less than a salvo aboard and he has the advantage of position.

We can't be sure he won't try to take us in spite of 'Amphitrite's'

support and if he does finish us, 'Amphitrite's' a dead duck." The "Lachesis" quivered as the port turrets belched flame. "That leaves nineteen torpedoes," he said. "In Cth we're safe enough but we're helpless without a probe. Yet we can only get into attack position from Cth. That leaves us only one thing to do--improvise a probe."

"And how do you do that?" I asked.

"Put a man out on a line--with the converter from the auxiliary. Give him a command helmet and have him talk the ship in."

"But that's suicide!"

"No, Marsden, not suicide--just something necessary. A necessary sacrifice, like this whole d.a.m.ned war! I don't believe in killing men.

It makes me sick. But I kill if I have to, and sacrifice if I must." His face twisted and the gray-green look came back. "There are over a thousand men on the 'Amphitrite,' and a vital cargo of munitions. One life, I think, is fair trade for a thousand, just as a few hundred thousand is fair trade for a race." The words were schoolmasterish and would have been dead wrong coming from anyone except Chase. But he gave them an air of reasonable inevitability. And for a moment I forgot that he was cold-bloodedly planning someone's death. For a moment I felt the spirit of sacrifice that made heroes out of ordinary people.