The People of the Wind Read online

  Hours built into days while the fleets, in their hugely scattered divisions, felt for and sought each other’s throats.

  Consider: at a linear acceleration of one Terran gravity, a vessel can, from a “standing start,” cover one astronomical unit — about 149 million kilometers — in a bit under fifty hours. At the end of that period, she has gained 1060 kilometers pet second of velocity. In twice the time, she will move at twice the speed and will have spanned four times the distance. No matter what power is conferred by thermonuclear engines, no matter what maneuverability comes from a gravity thrust which reacts directly against that fabric of relationships we call space, one does not quickly alter quantities on this order of magnitude.

  Then, too, there is the sheer vastness of even interplanetary reaches. A sphere one a.u. in radius has the volume of some thirteen million million Terras; to multiply this radius by ten is to multiply the volume by a thousand. No matter how sensitive the instruments, one does not quickly scan those deeps, nor ever do it with much accuracy beyond one’s immediate neighborhood, nor know where a detached object is now if signals are limited to light speed. As the maddeningly incomplete, hoard of data grows, not just the parameters of battle calculations change; the equations do. One discovers he has lost hours in travel which has turned out to be useless or worse, and must lose hours or days more in trying to remedy matters. But then, explosively fast, will come a near enough approach at nearly enough matched velocities for a combat which may well be finished in seconds.

  “Number Seven, launch!” warned the dispatcher robot, and flung Hooting Star out to battle.

  Her engines took hold: A thrum went through the bones of Philippe Rochefort where he sat harnessed in the pilot chair. Above his instrument panel, over his helmet and past either shoulder, viewscreens fitted a quarter globe with suns. Laura, radiance stopped down lest it blind him, shone among them as a minikin disk between two nacreous wings of zodiacal light.

  His radar alarm whistled and lit up, swiveling an arrow inside a clear ball. His heart sprang. He couldn’t help glancing that way. And he caught a glimpse of the cylinder which hurtled toward Ansa’s great flank.

  During a launch, the negagrav screen in that area of the mother vessel is necessarily turned off. Nothing is there to repulse a torpedo. If the thing makes contact and detonates — In vacuum, several kilotons are not quite so appallingly destructive as in air or water; and a capital ship is armored and compartmented against concussion and heat, thickly shielded to cut down what hard radiation gets inside. Nevertheless she will be badly hurt, perhaps crippled, and men will be blown apart, cooked alive, shrieking their wish to die…

  An energy beam flashed. An instant’s incandescence followed. Sensors gave their findings to the appropriate computer. Within a millisecond of the burst, a “Cleared” note warbled. One of Wa Chaou’s guns had caught the torpedo square on.

  “Well done!” Rochefort cried over the intercom. “Good show, Watch Out!” He rotated his detectors in search of the boat which must have been sufficiently close to loose that missile. Registry. Lockon. Hooting Star surged forward. Ansa dwindled among the constellations. “Give me an estimated time to come in range, Abdullah,” Rochefort said.

  “He seems aware of us,” Helu’s voice answered, stone-calm. “Depends on whether he’ll try to get away or close in… Um-m, yes, he’s skiting for cover.” (I would too, for fair, Rochefort thought, when a heavy cruiser’s spitting boats. That’s a brave skipper who sneaked this near.) “We can intercept in about ten minutes, assuming he’s at his top acceleration. But I don’t think anybody else will be able to help us, and if we wait for them, hell escape.”

  “We’re not waiting,” Rochefort decided. He lasered his intentions back to the squadron control office aboard ship and got an okay. Meanwhile he wished his sweat were not breaking out wet and sour. He wasn’t afraid, though; his pulse beat high but steady and never before had he seen the stars with such clarity and exactness. It was good to know he had the inborn courage for Academy psych-training to develop.

  “If you win,” SC said, “make for—” a string of numbers which the machines memorized — “and act at discretion. We’ve identified a light battleship there. We and Ganymede between us will try saturating its defenses. Good luck.”

  The voice clipped off. The boat ran, faster every second until the ballistics meters advised deceleration. Rochefort heeded and tapped out the needful orders. Utterly irrelevant passed through his head the memory of an instructor’s lecture. “Living pilots, gunners, all personnel, are meant to make decisions. Machines execute most of those decisions, set and steer courses, lay and fire guns, faster and more precisely than nerve or muscle. Machines, consciousness-level computers, could also be built to decide. They have been, in the past. But while their logical abilities might be far in excess of yours and mine, they always lacked a certain totality, call it intuition or insight or what you will. Furthermore, they were too expensive to use in war in any numbers. You, gentlemen, are multipurpose computers who have a reason to fight and survive. Your kind is abundantly available and, apart from programming, can be produced in nine months by unskilled labor.” Rochefort remembered telling lower classmen that it was three demerits if you didn’t laugh at the hoary joke.

  “Range,” Helu said.

  Energy beams stabbed. The scattered, wasted photons which burned along their paths were the barest fraction of the power within.

  One touched Hooting Star. The boat’s automata veered her before it could penetrate her thin plating. That was a roar of sidewise thrust. The interior fields couldn’t entirely compensate for the sudden high acceleration. Rochefort was crammed back against his harness till it creaked, while weight underfoot shifted dizzyingly.

  It passed. Normal one-gee-down returned. They were alive. They didn’t even seem to need a patchplate; if they had been pierced, the hole was small enough for self-sealing. And yonder in naked-eye sight was the enemy!

  With hands and voice, Rochefort told his boat to drive straight at that shark shape. It swelled monstrously fast. Two beams lanced from it and struck. Rochefort held his vector constant. He was hoping Wa Chaou would thus be able to get a fix on their sources and knock them out before they could do serious damage. Flash! Flash! Brightness blanked. “Oh, glorious! Ready torps.”

  The Ythrian drew nearer till the human could see a painted insigne, a wheel whose spokes were flower petals. That’s right, they put personal badges on their lesser craft, same as we give unofficial names. Wonder what that’n means. He’d been told that some of their speedsters carried ball guns. But hard objects cast in your path weren’t too dangerous till relative velocities got into the tens of KPS…

  She fired a torpedo. Wa Chaou wrecked it almost in its tube. Hooting Star’s slammed home.

  The explosion was at such close quarters that its fiery gases filled the Terran’s screen. A fragment struck her. She shivered and belled. Then she was past, alone in clean space. Her opponent was a cloud which puffed outward till it grew invisible, a few seared chunks of metal and possibly bone cooling off to become meteoroids, falling away aft, gone from sight in seconds.

  “If you will pardon the expression,” Rochefort said shakily, “yahoo!”

  “That was a near one,” Helu said. “We’d better ask for antirad boosters when we get back.”

  “Uh-huh. Right now, though, we’ve unfinished business.” Rochefort instructed the boat to change vectors.

  “No fears, after the way you chaps conducted yourselves.” They were not yet at the scene when joyful broadcasts and another brief blossoming told them that a hornet swarm of boats and missiles had stung the enemy battleship to death.

  VIII

  Slowly those volumes of space wherein the war was being fought contracted and neared each other. At no time were vessels ranked. Besides being unfeasible to maintain, formations tight and rigid would have invited a nuclear barrage. At most, a squadron of small craft might travel in loose echelon for a wh
ile. If two major units of a flotilla came within a hundred kilometers, it was reckoned close. However, the time lag of communication dropped toward zero, the reliability of detection swooped upward, deadly encounters grew ever more frequent.

  It became possible to know fairly well what the opponent had in play and where. It became possible to devise and guide a campaign.

  Cajal remarked in a tape report to Saracoglu: “If every Ythrian system were as strong as Laura, we might need the whole Imperial Navy to break them. Here they possess, or did possess, approximately half the number of hulls that I do — which is to say, a sixth the number we deemed adequate for handling the entire Domain. Of course, that doesn’t mean their actual strength is in proportion. By our standards, they are weak in heavy craft. But their destroyers, still more their corvettes and torpedo boats, make an astonishing total. I am very glad that no other enemy sun, besides Quetlan itself, remotely compares with Laura.

  “Nevertheless, we are making satisfactory progress. In groundling language — a technical summary will be appended for you — we can say that about half of what remains to them is falling back on Avalon. We intend to follow them there, dispose of them, and thus have the planet at our mercy.

  “The rest of their fleet is disengaging, piecemeal, and retreating spaceward. Doubtless they mean to scatter themselves throughout the uninhabitable planets, moons, and asteroids of the system, where they must have bases, and carry on hit-and-run war. This should prove more nuisance than menace, and once we are in occupation their government will recall them. Probably larger vessels, which have hyperdrive, will seek to go reinforce elsewhere: again, not unduly important.

  “I am not underestimating these people. They fight skillfully and doggedly. They must expect to use planetary defenses in conjunction with those ships moving toward the home world. God grant, more for their sakes than ours, most especially for the sakes of innocent females and children of both races, God grant their leaders see reason and capitulate before we hurt them too badly.”

  The half disk of Avalon shone sapphire swirled with silver, small and dear among the stars. Morgana was coming around the dark side. Ferune remembered night flights beneath it with Wharr, and murmured, “O moon of my delight that knows no wane—”

  “Hoy?” said Daniel Holm’s face in the screen.

  “Nothing. My mind drifted.” Ferune drew breath. “We’ve skimpy time. They’re coming in fast I want to make certain you’ve found no serious objection to the battle plan as detailed.”

  The laser beam took a few seconds to flicker between flagship and headquarters. Ferune went back to his memories.

  “I bugger well do!” Holm growled. “I already told you. You’ve brought Hell Rock too close in. Prime target.”

  “And I told you,” Ferune answered, “we no longer need her command capabilities.” I wish we did, but our losses have been too cruel. “We do need her firepower and, yes, her attraction for the enemy. That’s why I never counted on getting her away to Quetlan. There she’d be just one more unit. Here she’s the keystone of our configuration. If things break well, she will survive. I know the scheme is not guaranteed, but it was the best my staff, computers, and self could produce on what you also knew beforehand would be short notice. To argue, or modify much, at this late hour is to deserve disaster.”

  Silence. Morgana rose further from Avalon as the ship moved.

  “Well…” Holm slumped. He had lost weight till his cheekbones stood forth like ridges in upland desert. “I s’pose.”

  “Uncle, a report of initial contact,” Ferune’s aide said.

  “Already?” The First Marchwarden of Avalon turned to the comscreen. “You heard, Daniel Holm? Fair winds forever.” He cut the circuit before the man could reply. “Now,” he told the aide, “I want a recomputation of the optimum orbit for this ship. Project the Terran’s best moves… from their viewpoint, in the light of what information we have… and adjust ours accordingly.”

  Space sparkled with fireworks. Not every explosion, nor most, signified a hit; but they were thickening.

  Three Stars slammed from her cruiser. At once her detectors reported an object. Analysis followed within seconds — a Terran Meteor, possible to intercept, no nearby companions. “Quarry!” Vodan sang out. “Five minutes to range.”

  A yell went through the hull. Two weeks and worse of maneuver, cooped in metal save for rare, short hours when the flotilla dipped into combat, had been heavy chains to lift.

  His new vector pointed straight at Avalon. The planet waxed; he flew toward Eyath. He had no doubts about his victory. Three Stars was well blooded. She was necessarily larger than her Imperial counterpart — Ythrian requirements for room — and therefore had a trifle less acceleration. But her firepower could on that account be made greater, and had been.

  Vodan took feet off perch and hung in his harness. He spread his wings. Slowly he beat them, pumping his blood full of oxygen, his body full of strength and swiftness. It tingled, it sang. He heard a rustling aft as his four crewfolk did likewise. Stars gleamed above and around him.

  Three representations occupied Daniel Holm’s office and, now, his mind. A map of Avalon indicated the ground installations. The majority were camouflaged and, he hoped, he would have prayed if he believed, were unknown to the enemy. Around a holographic; .world globe, variegated motes swung in multitudinous orbits. Many stations had been established a few days ago, after being transported to their launch sites from underground automated factories which were also supposed to be secret. Finally a display tank indicated what was known of the shifting ships out yonder.

  Holm longed for a cigar, but his mouth was too withered by too much smoke in the near past. Crock, how I could use a drink! he thought. Neither might that be; the sole allowable drugs were those which kept him alert without exacting too high a metabolic price.

  He stared at the tank. Yeh. They’re sure anxious to nail our flagship. Really converging on her.

  He sought the window. While Gray still lay shadowy, the first dawnlight was picking out houses and making the waters sheen. Above, the sky arched purple, its stars blurred by the negagrav screens. They had to keep changing pattern, to give adequate coverage while allowing air circulation. That stirred up restless little winds, cold and a bit damp. But on the whole the country reached serene. The storms were beyond the sky and inside the flesh.

  Holm was alone, more alone than ever in his life, though the forces of a world awaited his bidding. It would have to be his; the computers could merely advise. He guessed that he felt like an infantryman preparing to charge.

  “There!” Rochefort shouted.

  He saw a moving point of light in a viewscreen set to top magnification. It grew as he watched, a needle, a spindle, a toy, a lean sharp-snouted hunter on whose flank shone three golden stars.

  The vectors were almost identical. The boats neared more slowly than they rushed toward the planet. Odd, Rochefort thought, how close Ansa’s come without meeting any opposition. Are they just going to offer token resistance? I’d hate to kill somebody for a token. Avalon was utterly beautiful. He was approaching in such wise that on his left the great disk had full daylight — azure, turquoise, indigo, a thousand different blues beneath the intercurving purity of cloud, a land mass glimpsed green and brown, and tawny. On his right was darkness, but moonlight shimmered mysteriously across oceans and weather.

  Wa Chaou sent a probe of lightning. No result showed. The range was extreme. It wouldn’t stay thus for long. Now Rochefort needed no magnification to see the hostile hull. In those screens it was as yet a glint. But it slid across the stellar background, and it was more constant than the fireballs twinkling around.

  Space blazed for a thousand kilometers around that giant spheroid which was Hell Rock. She did not try to dodge; given her mass, that was futile. She orbited her world. The enemy ships plunged in, shot, went by and maneuvered to return. They were many, she was one, save for a cloud of attendant Meteors and Comets. Her firepow
er, though, was awesome; still more were her instrumental and computer capabilities. She had not been damaged. When a section of screen must be turned off to launch a pack of missiles, auxiliary energy weapons intercepted whatever. Was directed at the vulnerable spot.

  Rays had smitten. But none could be held steady through an interval. Sufficient to get past those heavy plates. Bombs whose yield was lethal radiation exploded along the limits of her defense. But the gamma quanta and neutrons were drunk down by layer upon layer of interior shielding. The last of them, straggling to those deep inner sections where organic creatures toiled, were so few that ordinary medication nullified their effects.

  She had teen built in space and would never touch ground. A planetoid in her own right, she blasted ship after ship that dared come against her.

  Cajal’s Supernova was stronger. But Valenderay must not be risked. The whole purpose of all that armament and armor was to protect the command of a fleet. When word reached him, he studied the display tank. “We’re wasting lesser craft. She eats them,” he said, chiefly to himself. “I hate to send capital vessels in. The enemy seems to have much more defensive stuff than we looked for, and it’s bound to open up on us soon. But that close, speed and maneuverability don’t count for what they should. We must have sheer force to take that monster out; and we must do that before we can pose any serious threat to the planet.” He tugged his beard. “S-s-so… between them, Persei, Ursa Minor, Regulus, Jupiter, and attendants should be able to do the job… fast enough and at enough of a distance that they can also cope with whatever the planet may throw.”

  Tactical computers ratified and expanded his decision. He issued the orders.

  Vodan saw a torpedo go past “Hai, good!” he cried. Had he applied a few megadynes less of decelerative force, that warhead would have connected. The missile braked and came about tracking, but one of his gunners destroyed it.

  The Terran boat crawled ahead, off on the left and low. Vodan’s instruments reported she was exerting more sideways than forward thrust. The pilot must mean to cross the Ythrian bows, bare kilometers ahead, loose a cloud of radar window, and hope the concerted fire of his beam guns would penetrate before the other could range him. Since Ythrians, unlike Terrans, did not fight wearing spacesuits — how could anybody not go insane after more than a few hours in those vile, confining things? — a large hole in a compartment killed them.