Tulan Part 3

One of the basic tenets of s.p.a.ce maneuver was this: if two fleets were drawing together, with radar contact, neither (barring interference from factors such as the sun or planets) could escape the other; for if one applied acceleration in any direction the other could simply match it (human endurance being the limitation) and maintain the original relative closing speed.

When the enemy commander discovered Tulan's armada loafing ahead of him, he'd been accelerating for about ten hours and had a velocity of a million miles per hour, while Tulan was going the same direction but at half the speed. The quarry began decelerating immediately, knowing it could get back to Luhin with time enough to land.

Tulan didn't quite match the deceleration, preferring to waste a few hours and lessen the strain on his crews. He let the gap close slowly.

He could tell almost the precise instant when the other jaw of his trap was discovered, for Plot, Communications, and Intelligence all jerked up their heads and looked at him. He grinned at them. What they'd picked up would be an enemy beam from Luhin, recklessly sweeping s.p.a.ce to find the Coar fleet and warn it of the onrushing Group Three.

The enemy commander reacted fast. It was obvious he'd never beat Group Three to Luhin, and he made no futile attempts at dodging, but reversed drives and accelerated toward the nearest enemy, which was Tulan. Tulan was not surprised at that either, for though Coar's fleets had bungled the war miserably, when cornered they'd always fought and died like men.

He matched their acceleration to hold down the relative speeds. The swift pa.s.sing clash would be brief at best. He formed his forces into an arrangement he'd schemed up long ago but never used: a flat disc of lighter ships out in front, masking a doughnut-shaped ma.s.s behind. He maneuvered laterally to keep the doughnut centered on the line of approach.

Roboscouts appeared and blossomed briefly as they died. The fuzzy patch of light on the screens swelled, then began to resolve into individual points. The first missiles arrived. Intricate patterns of incandescence formed and vanished as fire-control systems locked wits.

A sudden, brilliantly planned salvo came streaking in, saturating the defenses along its path. Ships in Tulan's secondary formation swerved frantically, but one darting, corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g missile homed on a Heavy, and for an instant there were two suns.

Tulan, missing Jezef's smooth help, was caught up in the daze and strain of battle now. He punched b.u.t.tons and shouted orders as he played the fleet to match the enemy's subtle swerving. Another heavy salvo came in, but the computers had its sources pinpointed now, and it was contained. These first few seconds favored the enemy, who was only fighting the light shield in front of Tulan's formation.

Now the swelling ma.s.s of blips streaked apart in the viewers and s.p.a.ce lit up with the fire and interception. Two ships met head on; at such velocities it was like a nuclear blast.

Then Coar's ships crashed through the shield and into the center of the doughnut. Ringed, outgunned, outpredicted, they hit such a concentration of missiles that it might as well have been a solid wall. Ships disintegrated as if on a common fuse; the ones that didn't take direct hits needed none, in that debris-filled stretch of h.e.l.l.

Tulan's flagship rocked in the wave of expanding hot ga.s.ses. There was a jolt as some piece of junk hit her; if she hadn't already been under crushing acceleration away from the inferno she'd have been holed.

From a safer distance the path of destruction was a bright slash across s.p.a.ce, growing into the distance with its momentum. It was annihilation, too awful for triumph; there was only horror in it. Tulan knew that with this overwhelming tactic he'd written a new text-book for action against an inferior fleet. He hoped it would never be printed. Sweating and weak, he slumped in his straps and was ill.

While brief repairs and re-arming were under way, he sent scouts spiraling out to pick up any radio beams from Sennech or Teyr. There were none. The telescopes showed Sennech's albedo down to a fraction of normal; that, he supposed, would indicate smoke in the atmosphere. He wavered, wondering whether he should detach more ships to send out there. Reason and training told him to stick to the key objective, which was Coar's surrender. He waited only for Group Three to achieve a converging course, then started around the sun again.

They didn't encounter even a roboscout. He crossed the sun, curved into Coar's...o...b..t, matched speeds, and coasted along a million miles ahead of the planet, sending light sorties in to feel out any ambushes. Still there was no sign of fight, so he went in closer where the enemy could get a good look at his strength. Finally he took a small group in boldly over the fourth planet's Capitol and sent a challenge.

The answer was odd. "This is Acting President Kliu. What are your intentions?"

Tulan realized he was holding his breath. He let it out and looked around the silent command room, meeting the intent eyes of his staff. He had an unreal feeling; this couldn't be the climax, the consummation--this simple exchange over the radio. He lifted the microphone slowly. "This is Admiral Tulan, commanding the Fleets of Sennech. I demand your immediate and unconditional surrender."

There was something in the reply that might have been dry amus.e.m.e.nt: "Oh; by all means; but I hope you're not going to insist upon an elaborate ceremony. Right now we don't give a d.a.m.n about the war; we're worried about the race."

There was more silence, and Tulan turned, uncertainly, looking at the bare spot where Jezef ought to be standing. He buzzed for Communications. "Connect me with Captain Rhu. Rhu; I'm advancing you in rank and leaving you in charge here. I'm going down to accept the surrender and find out what this man's talking about."

Kliu was gaunt and middle-aged, wearing, to Tulan's surprise, the gray of Coar's First Level of Science. He was neither abject nor hostile, agreeing impatiently to turn over the secret of Coar's weapon and to a.s.sist with a token occupation of the planet. Again Tulan had the unreal, let-down feeling, and judging by Kliu's amused expression, it showed.

Tulan sent couriers to get things started, then turned back to the scientist. "So you have had a change of government. What did you mean, about the race?"

Kliu watched him for a moment. "How much do you know about the weapon?"

"Very little. That it projects matter through hypers.p.a.ce and materializes it where you want it."

"Not exactly; the materialization is spontaneous. Ma.s.s somehow distorts hypers.p.a.ce, and when the projected matter has penetrated a certain distance into such distortion, it pops back into normal s.p.a.ce. The penetration depends mainly upon a sort of internal energy in the missile; you might think of it more as a voltage than as velocity.

You've made it very hard for us to get reports, but I understand we successfully placed stuff in Sennech's crust."

"Yes; causing volcanoes. Our scientists speculated that any kind of matter would do it."

"That's right. Actually, we were projecting weighed chunks of rock. When one bit of matter, even a single atom, finds itself materializing where another already is, unnatural elements may be formed, most of them unstable. That's what blew holes in your crust and let the magma out."

Tulan considered the military implications of the weapon for a few moments, then pulled his mind back. "I see; but what about the radiation? It wasn't more than a trace when I left."

Kliu looked away for a while before answering. "When we learned you'd defied your government, our own military got out of hand. They had a couple of days before the sun cut us off completely, and they began throwing stuff as soon as it could be dug and hauled to the projectors.

They used high energies to get it past the sun. As we realize now, a lot of it hit the planet deeper than at first, below the crust. Under such pressure a different set of fissionables was formed. Some of them burst out and poisoned the atmosphere, but most of them are still there." He leaned forward and eyed Tulan hard. "We've got to get an expedition out there to study things. Will you help?"

There was another of the palpable silences, and when he spoke Tulan's voice sounded unnatural. "I--yes; we'll help. Whatever you want. Is ...

Sennech finished?"

Kliu smiled tightly. "Sennech, for sure; and she may take the rest of us with her. n.o.body conceived what this might come to. A lot of those deep materializations produced pockets of dense fissionables, and they're converging toward the center under their own weight. When they get to a certain point, we'll have a fine monument to Man's ingenuity. A planet-size nova." He stood up. "I'll start organizing."

Tulan existed someway through the preparations, and when they were in s.p.a.ce again the solid familiarity of his ship helped. His staff was carrying on wonderfully; shielding him, he suspected, from considerable hostility. Discipline held up.

A technology that had spanned five orbits and probed beyond was at bay, and the expedition was tremendous. Hardly an art or science was unrepresented. If need be, whole ships could be built in s.p.a.ce.

A beam from Teyr as they pa.s.sed told of refugees by the hundreds of thousands, dumped in the wilderness with a few ships still trickling in.

Tulan would have traded everything he could command to hear a word of Jezef or the family, but Teyr wasn't concerned with individuals and he didn't ask.

Sennech was dull gray in the telescopes, showing, as they neared, flecks of fire. They went in fast, using her gravity to help them curve into a forced orbit as they strained to decelerate. Thermocouples gave readings close to the boiling point of water; that, probably, was the temperature of the lower air.

Roboscouts went down first, then, as conditions were ascertained, manned ships. Tulan took the flagship down once. Her coolers labored and her searchlights were swallowed in murk within a few feet. Sounds carried through the hull; the howl of great winds and the thumps of explosions.

Once a geyser of glowing lava spattered the ship.

Within hours the picture began to form. The surface was a boiling sea broken only by transient mountain peaks which tumbled down in quakes or were washed away by the incessant hot rain. It would have been hard to find a single trace of the civilization that had flourished scant hours before.

The slower job was learning, by countless readings and painful deduction, what was going on inside the planet. Tulan occupied himself with organizational tasks and clung to what dignity he could. After an eternity Kliu had time for him.

"She'll blow, all right," the scientist said, sinking tiredly into a seat. "Within half a year. Her year."

"Twenty thousand hours," Tulan said automatically. "How about the other planets?"

"Coar has one chance in a hundred, Teyr possibly one in ten."

Tulan had to keep talking. "The outer satellites. We can do a lot in that time."

Kliu shrugged. "A few thousand people, and who knows what will happen to them afterward? It's going to be a long time before the System's inhabitable again, if ever."