A major grumbled, "It doesn"t make much sense, sir. You know the marshal. It"s probably a fake. If we have any superiority at all, it"s our artillery."
"And the old fox wouldn"t want to join the issue on the plains, down near the river," a colonel added. "It"s his game to keep up into the mountains with his cavalry and light infantry. He"s got Jack Alshuler"s cavalry. Most experienced veterans in the field."
"I know who he"s got," Haer growled in irritation. "Stop reminding me. Where in the devil is Balt?"
"Coming up, sir," Balt Haer said. He had entered only moments ago, a sheaf of signals in his hand. "Why didn"t they make that date 1910, instead of 1900? With radio, we could speed up communications--"
His father interrupted testily. "Better still, why not make it 1945? Then we could speed up to the point where we could polish ourselves off. What have you got?"
Balt Haer said, his face in sulk, "Some of my lads based in West Hurley report concentrations of Cogswell"s infantry and artillery near Ashokan reservoir."
"Nonsense," somebody snapped. "We"d have him."
The younger Haer slapped his swagger stick against his bare leg and kilt. "Possibly it"s a feint," he admitted.
"How much were they able to observe?" his father demanded.
"Not much. They were driven off by a superior squadron. The Hovercraft forces are screening everything they do with heavy cavalry units. I told you we needed more--"
"I don"t need your advice at this point," his father snapped. The older Haer went back to the map, scowling still. "I don"t see what he expects to do, working out of Saugerties."
A voice behind them said, "Sir, may I have your permission--"
Half of the a.s.sembled officers turned to look at the newcomer.
Balt Haer snapped, "Captain Mauser. Why aren"t you with your lads?"
"Turned them over to my second in command, sir," Joe Mauser said. He was standing to attention, looking at Baron Haer.
The Baron glowered at him. "What is the meaning of this cavalier intrusion, captain? Certainly, you must have your orders. Are you under the illusion that you are part of my staff?"
"No, sir," Joe Mauser clipped. "I came to report that I am ready to put into execution--"
"The great plan!" Balt Haer e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. He laughed brittlely. "The second day of the fracas, and n.o.body really knows where old Cogswell is, or what he plans to do. And here comes the captain with his secret plan."
Joe looked at him. He said, evenly, "Yes, sir."
The Baron"s face had gone dark, as much in anger at his son, as with the upstart cavalry captain. He began to growl ominously, "Captain Mauser, rejoin your command and obey your orders."
Joe Mauser"s facial expression indicated that he had expected this. He kept his voice level however, even under the chuckling scorn of his immediate superior, Balt Haer.
He said, "Sir, I will be able to tell you where Marshal Cogswell is, and every troop at his command."
For a moment there was silence, all but a stunned silence. Then the major who had suggested the Saugerties field command headquarters were a fake, blurted a curt laugh.
"This is no time for levity, captain," Balt Haer clipped. "Get to your command."
A colonel said, "Just a moment, sir. I"ve fought with Joe Mauser before. He"s a good man."
"Not that good," someone else huffed. "Does he claim to be clairvoyant?"
Joe Mauser said flatly. "Have a semaph.o.r.e man posted here this afternoon. I"ll be back at that time." He spun on his heel and left them.
Balt Haer rushed to the door after him, shouting, "Captain! That"s an order! Return--"
But the other was obviously gone. Enraged, the younger Haer began to shrill commands to a noncom in the way of organizing a pursuit.
His father called wearily, "That"s enough, Balt. Mauser has evidently taken leave of his senses. We made the initial mistake of encouraging this idea he had, or thought he had."
"We?" his son snapped in return. "I had nothing to do with it."
"All right, all right. Let"s tighten up, here. Now, what other information have your scouts come up with?"
IX.
At the Kingston airport, Joe Mauser rejoined Max Mainz, his face drawn now.
"Everything go all right?" the little man said anxiously.
"I don"t know," Joe said. "I still couldn"t tell them the story. Old Cogswell is as quick as a coyote. We pull this little caper today, and he"ll be ready to meet it tomorrow."
He looked at the two-place sailplane which sat on the tarmac. "Everything all set?"
"Far as I know," Max said. He looked at the motorless aircraft. "You sure you been checked out on these things, captain?"
"Yes," Joe said. "I bought this particular soaring glider more than a year ago, and I"ve put almost a thousand hours in it. Now, where"s the pilot of that light plane?"
A single-engined sports plane was attached to the glider by a fifty-foot nylon rope. Even as Joe spoke, a youngster poked his head from the plane"s window and grinned back at them. "Ready?" he yelled.
"Come on, Max," Joe said. "Let"s pull the canopy off this thing. We don"t want it in the way while you"re semaphoring."
A figure was approaching them from the Administration Building. A uniformed man, and somehow familiar.
"A moment, Captain Mauser!"
Joe placed him now. The Sov-world representative he"d met at Balt Haer"s table in the Upper bar a couple of days ago. What was his name? Colonel Arpad. Lajos Arpad.
The Hungarian approached and looked at the sailplane in interest. "As a representative of my government, a military attache checking upon possible violations of the Universal Disarmament Pact, may I request what you are about to do, captain?"
Joe Mauser looked at him emptily. "How did you know I was here and what I was doing?"
The Sov colonel smiled gently. "It was by suggestion of Marshal Cogswell. He is a great man for detail. It disturbed him that an ... what did he call it? ... an old pro like yourself should join with Vacuum Tube Transport, rather than Continental Hovercraft. He didn"t think it made sense and suggested that possibly you had in mind some scheme that would utilize weapons of a post 1900 period in your efforts to bring success to Baron Haer"s forces. So I have investigated, Captain Mauser."
"And the marshal knows about this sail plane?" Joe Mauser"s face was blank.
"I didn"t say that. So far as I know, he doesn"t."
"Then, Colonel Arpad, with your permission, I"ll be taking off."
The Hungarian said, "With what end in mind, captain?"
"Using this glider as a reconnaissance aircraft."
"Captain, I warn you! Aircraft were not in use in warfare until--"
But Joe Mauser cut him off, equally briskly. "Aircraft were first used in combat by Pancho Villa"s forces a few years previous to World War I. They were also used in the Balkan Wars of about the same period. But those were powered craft. This is a glider, invented and in use before the year 1900 and hence open to utilization."
The Hungarian clipped, "But the Wright Brothers didn"t fly even gliders until--"
Joe looked him full in the face. "But you of the Sov-world do not admit that the Wrights were the first to fly, do you?"
The Hungarian closed his mouth, abruptly.
Joe said evenly, "But even if Ivan Ivanovitch, or whatever you claim his name was, didn"t invent flight of heavier than air craft, the glider was flown variously before 1900, including Otto Lilienthal in the 1890s, and was designed as far back as Leonardo da Vinci."
The Sov-world colonel stared at him for a long moment, then gave an inane giggle. He stepped back and flicked Joe Mauser a salute. "Very well, captain. As a matter of routine, I shall report this use of an aircraft for reconnaissance purposes, and undoubtedly a commission will meet to investigate the propriety of the departure. Meanwhile, good luck!"
Joe returned the salute and swung a leg over the c.o.c.kpit"s side. Max was already in the front seat, his semaph.o.r.e flags, maps and binoculars on his lap. He had been staring in dismay at the Sov officer, now was relieved that Joe had evidently pulled it off.
Joe waved to the plane ahead. Two mechanics had come up to steady the wings for the initial ten or fifteen feet of the motorless craft"s pa.s.sage over the ground behind the towing craft.
Joe said to Max, "did you explain to the pilot that under no circ.u.mstances was he to pa.s.s over the line of the military reservation, that we"d cut before we reached that point?"
"Yes, sir," Max said nervously. He"d flown before, on the commercial lines, but he"d never been in a glider.
They began lurching across the field, slowly, then gathering speed. And as the sailplane took speed, it took grace. After it had been pulled a hundred feet or so, Joe eased back the stick and it slipped gently into the air, four or five feet off the ground. The towing airplane was still taxiing, but with its tow airborne it picked up speed quickly. Another two hundred feet and it, too, was in the air and beginning to climb. The glider behind held it to a speed of sixty miles or so.
At ten thousand feet, the plane leveled off and the pilot"s head swiveled to look back at them. Joe Mauser waved to him and dropped the release lever which ejected the nylon rope from the glider"s nose. The plane dove away, trailing the rope behind it. Joe knew that the plane pilot would later drop it over the airport where it could easily be retrieved.
In the direction of Mount Overlook he could see c.u.mulus clouds and the dark turbulence which meant strong updraft. He headed in that direction.
Except for the whistling of wind, there is complete silence in a soaring glider. Max Mainz began to call back to his superior, was taken back by the volume, and dropped his voice. He said, "Look, captain. What keeps it up?"
Joe grinned. He liked the buoyance of glider flying, the nearest approach of man to the bird, and thus far everything was going well. He told Max, "An airplane plows through the air currents, a glider rides on top of them."
"Yeah, but suppose the current is going down?"
"Then we avoid it. This sailplane only has a gliding angle ratio of one to twenty-five, but it"s a workhorse with a payload of some four hundred pounds. A really high performance glider can have a ratio of as much as one to forty."
Joe had found a strong updraft where a wind ran up the side of a mountain. He banked, went into a circling turn. The gauge indicated they were climbing at the rate of eight meters per second, nearly fifteen hundred feet a minute.
Max hadn"t got the rundown on the theory of the glider. That was obvious in his expression.
Joe Mauser, even while searching the ground below keenly, went into it further. "A wind up against a mountain will give an updraft, storm clouds will, even a newly plowed field in a bright sun. So you go from one of these to the next."
"Yeah, great, but when you"re between," Max protested.
"Then, when you have a one to twenty-five ratio, you go twenty-five feet forward for each one you drop. If you started a mile high, you could go twenty-five miles before you touched ground." He cut himself off quickly. "Look, what"s that, down there? Get your gla.s.ses on it."
Max caught his excitement. His binoculars were tight to his eyes. "Sojers. Cavalry. They sure ain"t ours. They must be Hovercraft lads. And look, field artillery."
Joe Mauser was piloting with his left hand, his right smoothing out a chart on his lap. He growled, "What are they doing there? That"s at least a full brigade of cavalry. Here, let me have those gla.s.ses."
With his knees gripping the stick, he went into a slow circle, as he stared down at the column of men. "Jack Alshuler," he whistled in surprise. "The marshal"s crack heavy cavalry. And several batteries of artillery." He swung the gla.s.ses in a wider scope and the whistle turned into a hiss of comprehension. "They"re doing a complete circle of the reservation. They"re going to hit the Baron from the direction of Phoenicia."
X.
Marshal Stonewall Cogswell directed his old fashioned telescope in the direction his chief of staff indicated.
"What is it?" he grunted.
"It"s an airplane, sir."
"Over a military reservation with a fracas in progress?"
"Yes, sir." The other put his gla.s.ses back on the circling object. "Then what is it, sir? Certainly not a free balloon."
"Balloons," the marshal snorted, as though to himself. "Legal to use. The Union forces had them toward the end of the Civil War. But practically useless in a fracas of movement."
They were standing before the former resort hotel which housed the marshal"s headquarters. Other staff members were streaming from the building, and one of the ever-present Telly reporting crews were hurriedly setting up cameras.
The marshal turned and barked, "Does anybody know what in Zen that confounded thing, circling up there, is?"
Baron Zwerdling, the aging Category Transport magnate, head of Continental Hovercraft, hobbled onto the wooden veranda and stared with the others. "An airplane," he croaked. "Haer"s gone too far this time. Too far, too far. This will strip him. Strip him, understand." Then he added, "Why doesn"t it make any noise?"
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Warren stood next to his commanding officer. "It looks like a glider, sir."
Cogswell glowered at him. "A what?"
"A glider, sir. It"s a sport not particularly popular these days."
"What keeps it up, confound it?"
Paul Warren looked at him. "The same thing that keeps a hawk up, an albatross, a gull--"
"A vulture, you mean," Cogswell snarled. He watched it for another long moment, his face working. He whirled on his chief of artillery. "Jed, can you bring that thing down?"
The other had been viewing the craft through field binoculars, his face as shocked as the rest of them. Now he faced his chief, and lowered the gla.s.ses, shaking his head. "Not with the artillery of pre-1900. No, sir."
"What can you do?" Cogswell barked.
The artillery man was shaking his head. "We could mount some Maxim guns on wagon wheels, or something. Keep him from coming low."
"He doesn"t have to come low," Cogswell growled unhappily. He spun on Lieutenant Colonel Warren again. "When were they invented?" He jerked his thumb upward. "Those things."
Warren was twisting his face in memory. "Some time about the turn of the century."