There was a pause. Then, "Eighty-six to Command.
Eighty-six to Command. Wilco and out."
The series of orders which began to blaze and sputter through the speakers were a.s.sembly and destination com- mands with the High Fleet manifesto for suspension of civil liberties on every one of the five planets of Sirius.
With this the forward surge of a third of a million naval craft could be felt. Banzo was run to cover. The hunters were coming up to the hounds.
Ole Doc made a rapid scan of his charts.
Banzo, code for the Star of s.p.a.ce had been located on the ground at Green Rivers, third habitable planet of Sirius, Arcton P Lateral being the one column removal in the Star Pilot lists for Sirius. Eighty-six had orders from Garth to blow the Star of s.p.a.ce out of the heavens if it attempted to take-off and to knock apart any merchant- man that tried to go to or from Green Rivers. The civil authority of the Sirius System, that being a satellite of the Earth government, had been suspended and Marines were probably right now swarming down upon Manford, the capital on the planet Wales, to pick up the reins of state.
The comptometer told Ole Doc he could be at the rendezvous mentioned within two hours either way of Garth"s arrival for they were now at two points of a triangle, not near but equidistance from Sirius. It all depended on the Morgue and she shortly began to put light leagues behind her in a way which made the galley a shambles and did nothing to improve the temper of Hip- pocrates.
He staggered up to control and said, peevishly: "Even if you find you ruined the bread."
"Get out of here," said Ole Doc. "I"ve got several thousand fast cruisers to beat and by all that"s holy, they"re going to be beaten!"
From the way they skimmed the edges of cl.u.s.ters and plowed through systems and dodged comets for the next eight days, even Hippocrates gathered that this was impor- tant enough to put on some effort. He took to going back to the fuel chambers and helping the auto-feeders. That would have been a short and unmerry death to any human but the deadly rays seemed to like him. Hippocrates liked them. They were part and parcel of machinery and ma- chinery, to him, was lovable. After all, wasn"t it only human?
So Ole Doc rode the controls with fire in his sleepless eyes, one ear glued to the channels which would tell him if anything serious would happen before he got there and one ear to the ticking meters which said if he kept stretching the Morgue out like this, she wouldn"t have a sound seam in her whole, ancient hull.
It worried him because he was outrunning the bulk of the signals he would receive in case something went wrong. After you go just so fast in s.p.a.ce, incoming stuff sounds like a j.a.panese record of a woman in hysterics played treble time, even when you are looping it off an ion beam.
On the seventh day they went through a s.p.a.ce mael- strom which almost chipped Hippocrates to pieces. This phenomenon was no more than an unleashed hurricane of magnetic energies, unplotted and unpredicted. Ole Doc kept the throttle all the way down and they came through.
All during the eighth day they wore out spare tubes trying to brake. About three-thirteen s.g.t., all the port tubes went out at once and they had a wild, tumbling hour in which they pa.s.sed Sirius as if it had been stabbed with a spur and then another two hours of limping while Hippocrates and Ole Doc clung to the outside plates and unjammed the fried rinds of metal which prevented rein- stallation of the new linings.
It was after the succeeding two before they were at the rendezvous point and it was a very spent crew of two which came up to find fully half of the navies of the galaxy a.s.sembled in an array which would not be seen for many another day.
A hundred thousand ships, more or less, were grip to grip in squadrons, suspended majestically in scattered but orderly formations all about the s.p.a.ce of Green Rivers.
An eye at a s.p.a.ceport could not grasp their infinity.
The light of the huge dumb-bell planet blazed from their
sides and made them so many jewels, for this was peace and metal was shined. Blinkers were flashing and lifeboat and gig lights were moving about until it looked, in the far distance, like a whole new galaxy had been born.
Orders were being rushed on a dozen admiralty bands.
Barges cruised to conferences. Fleet train vessels moved amongst the horde with supplies and new air.
It was an imposing sight. Here lay, side by side, navies which had within the last century been searing one anoth- er out of the darkness. Here were reunions of peoples who had long since forgotten any connection with Mother Earth.
It was a blinding, majestic array.
Ole Doc was indifferent to its majesty. He wanted the flagship of Garth.
Patrol craft, as the Morgue cruised by the drifting lines, came out to blare a surly warning and then sheered off from the gold colour of the hull without even trying to see the ray rods. Ole Doc, by naval etiquette, was ent.i.tled to priority in any anchorage. More than one s.p.a.ceman of the navy heaved a gusty and hopeful sigh of relief at the sight of that hull.
But the Morgue had proved a better vessel than the Tan- gier-Mcdrlicon which had Garth"s flag. In that the Tangier- Mairlicon was about one tenth the age of the Morgue, this was amazing. But the mighty, thousand-man vessel was not there. The radar did not catch her identification signal and Ole Doc"s flaring eye saw no blazing blue star of authority present.
He gave the controls to Hippocrates who, though this was nervous going, navy people knowing or caring no more about the rules of the road than they did, was well qualified to take them in to a safe position.
Ole Doc was satisfied that the Star of s.p.a.ce had not left Green Rivers, just as he was certain that he would be boarded and stopped if he tried to land on that planet.
He gave the sphere near them a pitying glance before he lay down in his cabin. It looked like a very pleasant planet. There would be no help for it whatever if the Star of s.p.a.ce had spread its death across its face.
Tuning up a speaker on the command channel reserved for Garth in all this babble, Ole Doc stretched out for a good sleep. The last he heard was a junior officer, officer of the deck on some cruiser trying to make headway over the control visagraph with a very snide Hippocrates.
Garth arrived full of purpose and blowing cigar smoke like a steam turbine. The voice which awoke Ole Doc was so thick with authority that it must have carried through a vacuum by itself without benefit of radio waves.
"Admirals of all Fleets, attend on the flag at sixteen- thirty hours." There was a click and that was all. Galactic Admiral Garth had spoken.
Ole Doc dressed with leisure, having bathed in hot water-a practice on which Hippocrates frowned since it would have dissolved the little slave in a splash had he neglected to grease himself up first. Ole Doc pulled out a new cape, a presentation cape from Omphides on the event of his having solved a small problem for them in that system. It had a great display of jagged flashes done across it which, besides furnishing the symbol of ray rods rampant in solid gold, had actual ray reservoirs in the design which purified the air around and about. His old helmet had numerous scratches across it but that couldn"t be helped. His boots were a bit scuffed despite all Hippoc- rates could do for them. When he thought of what those admirals would be wearing-suddenly he put the presenta- tion cape back and got out his old one. In a very few minutes he entered his lifeboat and went across to the Tangier-Mairlicon, leaving the Morgue tethered to vac- uum.
The officer of the deck, a commander, had been having his eyes dazzled enough that day, what with the flood of gold lace coming through the side, and his marines and sideboys were nearly spent with standing to. The chief warrant bos"n saw the flashing gold but he could not spot the uniform. The O.O.D. saw the strange being coming up with this new "officer" and hurriedly grabbed a book of traditions, customs and courtesy throughout the galaxies.
Hippocrates had been there to run the lifeboat back but when he saw all these crossbelts and naked swords he became frightened. "I wait," he said.
"Return to the ship," said Ole Doc.
"You watch the adrenalin!" said Hippocrates, not dar- ing to disobey.
The chief warrant bos"n took a breath and hoped he would pipe whatever was proper on his whistle and then, breath still sucked in, stared and blew not at all. It was the first time in his life he had ever seen a Soldier of Light and for the first time that day he was impressed.
"Belay the honors," said Ole Doc to the now stammer- ing commander. "I want to attend this conference."
The commander gave him a Marine for a guide and then, on second thought, gave him two more. When the group had gone on, the O.O.D. turned wonderingly back to his book of courtesy.
"It won"t be there, commander," said the chief warrant bos"n, for he had known the commander as a midshipman and ever afterward treated him with a hint of it the way old s.p.a.cemen will. "That"s a Soldier of Light."
"It isn"t here," said the commander.
"Neither," said the old chief warrant, "is G.o.d."
Ole Doc entered the admiral"s quarters just as Garth"s fist was coming down to smite a point into his palm. The fist halted, Garth stared. Twenty-six admirals stared.
"I see," said Ole Doc, ignoring the chair his guide had stiffly pulled up for him, "that it takes a very large weight of naval metal to sterilize one poor liner today."
They regarded him in confused silence, recognizing the gold gorget, startled by the obvious youth of this man who stood before them, failing to recognize the arts which kept him young, failing also to grasp just why they were con- fused. But admirals or not they had been young once.
They had heard the legends and tales. Some of them felt like guilty children.
"Down there on Green Rivers," said Ole Doc, "is a fragment of a ship. She is in trouble. Any still alive aboard her have a right to life."
Garth caught his breath. "How did you know," he roared, "where to find this fleet?" He could get to the roots of things, Garth. That was why he was a galactic admiral and the rest here his juniors even if his seniors in age.
"I cracked your code," said Ole Doc. "It was not a very hard code to crack, I might caution you. But then one does not need much of a code to fool one battered liner with a cargo of sick and dead."
Garth"s blue jowl trembled. "Our medical men have already investigated. The disease cannot be cured. It is unknown. Nothing like it has ever been known. Do you know what has happened down there?"
Ole Doc didn"t.
"Two men escaped from your precious liner five min- utes after it landed. This morning there were fifty cases of that disease near Piedmont! There were nine cases in