Space Tug Part 17

He watched his direction indicator and the small graphic indicators telling of the drones. The sky outside the ports was dark purple. The launching cage responded sluggishly. Its open end came around toward the east. It wobbled and wavered. It touched the due-east point. Joe stabbed the firing-b.u.t.ton.

Nothing happened. He hadn't expected it. The seven ships had to keep in formation. They had to start off on one course--with a slight spread as a safety measure--and at one time. So the firing-circuits were keyed to relays in series. Only when all seven firing-keys were down at the same time would any of the jatos fire. Then all would blast together.

The pilots in the c.o.c.kpit-bubbles of the pushpots had an extraordinary view of the scene. At something over twelve miles height, seven aggregations of clumsy black things clung to frameworks of steel, pushing valorously. Far below there were clouds and there was Earth.

There was a horizon, which wavered and tilted. The pushpots struggled with seeming lack of purpose. One of the seven seemed to drop below the others. They pointed vaguely this way and that--all of them. But gradually they seemed to arrive at an uncertain unanimity.

Joe pushed the firing-b.u.t.ton again as his own ship touched the due-east mark. Again nothing happened. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Haney pressing down both b.u.t.tons. The Chief's finger lifted. Mike pushed down one b.u.t.ton and held off the other.

Roarings and howlings of pushpots. Wobblings and heart-breaking clumsinesses of the drone-ships. They hung in the sky while the pushpots used up their fuel.

"We've got to make it soon," said Joe grimly. "We've got forty seconds.

Or we'll have to go down and try again."

There was a clock dial with a red sweep-hand which moved steadily and ominously toward a deadline time for firing. Up to that deadline, the pushpots could let the ships back down to Earth without crashing them.

After it, they'd run out of fuel before a landing could be made.

The deadline came closer and closer. Joe snapped:

"Take a degree leeway. We've got ten seconds."

He had the manned ship nearly steady. He held down the firing-b.u.t.ton, holding aim by infinitesimal movements of the controls. Haney pushed both hands down, raised one, pushed again. The Chief had one finger down. Mike had both firing b.u.t.tons depressed.... The Chief pushed down his second b.u.t.ton, quietly.

There was a monstrous impact. Every jato in every pushpot about every launching cage fired at once. Joe felt himself flung back into his acceleration chair. Six gravities. He began the horrible fight to stay alive, while the blood tried to drain from the conscious forepart of his brain, and while every b.u.t.ton of his garments pressed noticeably against him, and objects in his pockets pushed. The sides of his mouth dragged back, and his cheeks sagged, and his tongue strove to sink back into his throat and strangle him.

It was very bad. It seemed to last for centuries.

Then the jatos burned out. There was that ghastly feeling of lunging forward to weightlessness. One instant, Joe's body weighed half a ton.

The next instant, it weighed less than a dust grain. His head throbbed twice as if his skull were about to split open and let his brains run out. But these things he had experienced before.

There were pantings in the cabin about him. The ship fell. It happened to be going up, but the sensation and the fact was free fall. Joe had been through this before, too. He gasped for breath and croaked, "Drones?"

"Right," said Haney.

Mike panted anxiously, "Four's off course. I'll fix it."

The Chief grunted guttural Mohawk. His hands stirred on the panel for remote control of the drones he had to handle.

"Crazy!" he growled. "Got it now, Joe. Fire when ready."

"Okay, Mike?"

A half-second pause.

"Okay!"

Joe pressed the firing-b.u.t.ton for the take-off rockets. And he was slammed back into his acceleration chair again. But this was three gravities only. Pressed heavily against the acceleration cushions, he could perform the navigation for the fleet. He did. The mother-ship had to steer a true course, regardless of the vagaries of its rockets. The drones had simply to be kept in formation with it. The second task was simpler. But Joe was relieved, this time, of the need to report back instrument-readings. A telemetering device took care of that.

The take-off rockets blasted and blasted and blasted. The mere matter of staying alive grew very tedious. The ordeal seemed to last for centuries. Actually it could be measured only in minutes. But it seemed millennia before the headphones said, staccato fashion: "_You are on course and will reach speed in fourteen seconds. I will count for you._"

"Relays for rocket release," panted Joe. "Throw 'em over!"

Three hands moved to obey. Joe could release the drive rockets on all seven ships at will.

The voice counted:

"_Ten ... nine ... eight ... seven ... six ... five ... four ... three ... two ... one ... cut!_"

Joe pressed the master-key. The remnants of the solid-fuel take-off rockets let go. They flashed off into nothingness at unbelievable speed, consuming themselves as they went.

There was again no weight.

This time there was no resting. No eager gazing out the cabin ports. Now they weren't curious. They'd had over a month in s.p.a.ce, and something like sixteen days back on Earth, and now they were back in s.p.a.ce again.

Mike and Haney and the Chief worked doggedly at their control boards.

The radar bowls outside the cabin shifted and moved and quivered. The six drone ships showed on the screens. But they also had telemetering apparatus. They faithfully reported their condition and the direction in which their bows pointed. The radars plotted their position with relation to each other and the mother-ship.

Presently Joe cast a glance out of a port and saw that the dark line of sunset was almost below. The take-off had been timed to get the ships into Earth's shadow above the area from which war rockets were most likely to rise. It wouldn't prevent bombing, of course. But there was a gadget....

Joe spoke into the microphone: "Reporting everything all right so far.

But you know it."

The voice from solid ground said, "_Report acknowledged._"

The ships went on and on and on. The Chief muttered to himself and made very minute adjustments of the movement of one of his drones. Mike fussed with his. Haney regarded the controls of his drones with a profound calm.

Nothing happened, except that they seemed to be falling into a bottomless pit and their stomach-muscles knotted and cramped in purely reflex response to the sensation. Even that grew tedious.

The headphones said, "_You will enter Earth's shadow in three minutes.

Prepare for combat._"

Joe said drily, "We're to prepare for combat."

The Chief growled. "I'd like to do just that!"

The phrasing, of course, was intentional--in case enemy ears were listening. Actually, the small fleet was to use a variant on the tin can shield which protected the Platform. It would be most effective if visual observation was impossible. The fleet was seven ships in very ragged formation. Most improbably, after the long three-gravity acceleration, they were still within a fifty-mile globe of s.p.a.ce. Number Four loitered behind, but was being brought up by judicious bursts of steering-rocket fire. Number Two was some distance ahead. The others were simply scattered. They went floating on like a group of meteors.

Out the ports, two of them were visible. The others might be picked out by the naked eye--but it wasn't likely.

Drone Two, far ahead and clearly visible, turned from a shining steel speck to a reddish pin-point of light. The red color deepened. It winked out. The sunlight in the ports of the mother-ship turned red. Then it blacked out.

"Shoot the ghosts," said Joe.

The three drone-handlers pushed their b.u.t.tons. Nothing happened that anybody could see. Actually, though, a small gadget outside the hull began to cough rhythmically. Similar devices on the drones coughed, too.

They were small, multiple-barreled guns. Rifle sh.e.l.ls fired two-pound missiles at random targets in emptiness. They wouldn't damage anything they hit. They'd go varying distances, explode and shoot small lead shot ahead to check their missile-velocity, and then emit dense ma.s.ses of aluminum foil. There was no air resistance. The shredded foil would continue to move through emptiness at the same rate as the convoy-fleet.

The seven ships had fired a total of eighty-four such objects away into the blackness of Earth's shadow. There were, then, seven ships and eighty-four ma.s.ses of aluminum foil moving through emptiness. They could not be seen by telescopes.

And radars could not tell ships from ma.s.ses of aluminum foil.

If enemy radars came probing upward, they reported ninety-one s.p.a.ce ships in ragged but coherent formation, soaring through emptiness toward the Platform. And a fleet like that was too strong to attack.