Front matter (continued 2)

The one who had spoken peered bleakly at Kirk, and said, "Well. Like I said, we don't want strangers interfering with us. Do we, boys?"

The men nodded assent, and stalked toward their cars. Kirk turned away, defeated and furious. He'd have to try by himself—

Motors roared to life, and the cars started to go by him. A big red truck paused beside him, and Vinson reached down from it to haul him aboard.

"What are you standin' there for?" he cried to Kirk. "You said it might come any minute!"

Kirk, a little dazedly, scrambled up into the truck beside him. "You mean they're going back with me—"

"What did you think? Like Fred said, no blasted strangers from away outside are going to come sneaking in here!"

The truck roared away down the moonlit road, following the speeding cars back the way Kirk had come, waking hurrying echoes, raising a great cloud of dust to redden the moon.

Kirk thought, "I'll never understand these damned Earthmen—never!"

CHAPTER VIII

At three minutes and fourteen seconds before midnight a small, fast spacecraft with the insigne of the striding warrior on her bows dropped down out of the sky and landed in the brush-grown meadow at the edge of the Kirk woods. There was nothing anywhere in sight around it but the dark quiet mass of the trees, the patches of bramble and pale white blossoms of the Queen Anne's Lace. Across the meadow was the Kirk house, with a single lamp burning in it.

A hatch opened and a party of men came out, climbing down a collapsible ladder. There were fifteen of them, armed. They stood still, looking around and listening. Then they began to move toward the house, scrambling and stumbling among the briars and the tufts of bunch-grass, fanned out like skirmishers.

Kirk, lying behind a hazel bush in the fringe of the woods, waved one hand slowly in an outward arc, and there were several small rustlings in the brush to his left. He waited, feeling tense and prickly all over, sweating heavily, though the night was cooler now. He counted, slowly and carefully, moving his lips. Held tight in the crook of his arm was the heavy sono-beam device, snatched up from the house as they came past it. Vinson was beside him, and among the trees nearby were eight more men, waiting for Kirk's signal. Kirk could not see Vinson's face in the dark, but he could hear his breathing, quick and excited. He leaned his head close to the Earthman's, and whispered,

"Remember, keep down out of the way until you see me go in."

He raised up cautiously.

"All right. Now."

He began to creep rapidly toward the slash of light from the scout-ship's open hatch. The others came behind him. He was not used to this sort of stalking, and he made more noise than the other nine put together. He hoped no one would hear it.

From the direction of the house there came a sudden crackling of shocker-beams. Kirk flung himself forward, over the last few feet. Secrecy was a lost hope now, and all that mattered was getting the sono-beam projector into the open hatchway. The bloody thing weighed a ton when you carried it, but its heft was only relative. Against armor-plate and the strong double-hull of a space-ship it would be no more effective than a bullroarer.

There was a guard of two in the hatchway. They sprang to the lip of the opening, staring toward the house, their shockers lifted. Kirk yelled, "Get 'em!" Vinson and a man on the other side of him fired almost together. The guards came tumbling forward onto the ground. Kirk dodged between them and set the sono-projector on the edge of the hatch floor. He had to reach high to do it. The others, following his orders, were hugging the curve of the hull on either side of the ladder. Kirk slammed the stud full charge and wide open.

"They're coming back this way!" yelled Vinson. He was looking toward the house. Kirk craned his neck.

The shocker-flashes flickered like heat-lightning in the night. They moved back toward the ship—probably the fifteen men, or what was left of them, were retreating from the Orville men whom Kirk had stationed in the house and yard.

He said desperately, "Stop them, damn it, can't you stop them?" The sono-beam projector was sliding out of his hands, walking itself with its own vibration across the smooth-worn metal. He had to turn to hold it.

Inside the ship there was bedlam going on, a sound of things breaking and men's voices raised in inarticulate cries. A tall gray-haired man with a captain's stars on his shoulder-tabs came at a staggering run into the passage and dropped, and lay still. His hands quivered with the jarring of the floor.

Kirk shut off the projector and threw it away. He went up the ladder, and at the top he paused a second to look at what was happening in the meadow. The Orville men who had gone in behind the invaders had risen out of the brush. Their shockers flared in a line of ragged light amid the brambles and the white flowers. Then there was darkness and a sudden peace.

"Come on!" Kirk shouted, his voice carrying far across the meadow. Then he ran down the passage, with Vinson and the other eight pounding at his heels. The gray-haired captain did not move as they went by.

And it was almost easy. Seven, eight, nine, of the crew lay sprawled in the main passage or in doorways opening from it, unconscious. The communications man was still making vague pawing motions at his dials, but the motions were only reflex and the equipment was jarred to fragments of splintered glass and plastic. In the small, compact bridge, best protected by intervening bulkheads, the two junior officers and three crewmen were still conscious but too dazed to offer resistance.

"Well," said Vinson, breathing hard, his eyes shining. "We did all right."

"We did fine," said Kirk, grinning. The other eight grinned, too, nodding their heads at each other and at him. They had fought together and won together, and now they were all comrades, men of Orville, men of Earth. It was a good feeling, Kirk discovered. A very good feeling.

Some of the men came in from the meadow. The fifteen from the scout were all taken. The Orville men had suffered some casualties in the way of burns and shock, but no fatalities.

"Good," said Kirk. He looked at the Orionids. "Where can we put 'em for safekeeping?"

Vinson said, "The local jail is pretty small, but I guess we could pack them in."

"It won't be for long," said Kirk. "The high brass will take them off your hands in a hurry."

"We'll see to it," said Vinson. "I guess you'll want to call New York. And don't worry about the women, I'll stop by the house and let them know we're okay."

"Thanks," said Kirk. He went out across the meadow to the house, and put in his call to Charteris.

After that things happened with desperate speed. A fleet of air-cars descended on Orville and the Kirk house. Charteris was with them. He inspected the Orion scout, conferred briefly with his aides, and then spoke to Kirk.

"I suppose I should apologize, Commander," he said, rather stiffly, "but I'm not going to. In our position we have no choice but to suspect any force too strong for us to deal with easily."

"I don't care about anything," said Kirk, "except to get my squadron off the ground before Orion strikes."

Charteris nodded. "Your squadron is being fitted for action now. I suggest we return to New York at once to confer with Admiral Laney and decide strategy."

The next few hours were hectic ones. Orders, preparations, requisitions, arguments. And Kirk found himself up against a totally unexpected stumbling-block—the stiff-necked, stubborn pride of Earth.

"We recognize perfectly," Admiral Laney said frostily, "our position as a fifth-rate naval power, but we have never yet run from battle and we don't intend to start doing it now."

"But against Orion Sector's two crack squadrons—"

"We're grateful for the presence of the Fifth Lyra," said Laney, "but our own ships will bear the brunt of the attack."

"Sir," said Kirk, and he meant it, "I would be proud to fight under you. But facts are facts. I think you understand that the Fifth Lyra has a certain pride too. But we're not going to bear the brunt of any attack where we know in advance we're outnumbered two to one. In short, if you meet Solleremos head on, you meet him alone."

"Now here," he went on, turning to the huge depth-chart of the Solar System, "was my thought. We know from the vera-ray examination of the captain of that Orion scout, that the scout's take-off was literally to be the signal for the attack. They didn't dare risk a radio message, even in code, that might be intercepted. So the course of take-off, on the exact coordinates of the hidden fleet, was to serve as a message. They could spot this by ultra-wave scanner, using relays at previously-arranged points in deep space. So, we have the coordinates—"

He wrote them down on the chart.

"Carried to point of convergence, that would put the Orion fleet about there—far off this chart, of course, but roughly south-east of the star Saiph. They will presumably attack along this line—" He drew one, bold and red, a dagger pointed at Earth's heart.

"Roughly nadir-point zero six, from our viewpoint," said Laney. "Well?"

"Here," said Kirk, "you seem to have a natural sort of chevaux-de-frise, to borrow an ancient term."

He pointed to a blurred and speckled area lying between Mars and Jupiter.

"The Asteroid Belt," said Laney. "Yes. We know our way around in it, but anyone else would find it hard going." His eyes brightened. "Plenty of places for ambush. Yes, I see what you're driving at. If we could entangle their superior forces in the drift—"

"Exactly. Bait them in there, harry them all you can. Now, then. They'll be expecting to catch the Fifth Lyra on the ground. As far as they know, Tauncer succeeded and all is well. So perhaps they won't be too watchful. We'll be up here hiding above the Sun, screened by it from their radar. When you have them hooked—"

He made a downward slashing motion with his hand.

"That suits me," said Laney. He shook hands with Kirk solemnly. Then he turned to Charteris and the others who were gathered with anxious face? in the conference room. "I think we may as well get started."

Charteris sighed. He picked up the intercom and spoke into it briefly.

Northward, the fields around Orville were brightening with a new day. In the meadow behind the Kirk house the briars and the Queen Anne's Lace were beaten down by the passage of men and trucks. They were all gone now except for one truck with massive electronic equipment, pulled back to a safe distance from the Orion scout. The necessary changes had been made in the ship's control system. Now the crew of the truck waited for a signal from the house.

It came.

The truck crew went to work, activating the remote-control relays, setting up a locked-in series of coordinates. Then the firing key was pressed.

With every semblance of life, the Orion scout took off on its destined course—a Judas goat, empty and silent, with no living thing inside its hull.

Standing on the steps of the Vinson's house, Lyllin watched it rise and vanish in the blue air. She had had one short call from Kirk. Wait there. I'll come back. Now the small dying thunder of the scout-ship's flight seemed like the receding footsteps of everything she had ever loved, passing over the distant hills.

She turned slowly and went back into the house.

CHAPTER IX

The sky screamed light, beneath them. The Sun, its atoms ceaselessly riven and then reborn, shrieked raving energy, magnetism, electricity, light, radiant heat, a rage across the heavens, a cosmic storm flinging up wild plumes and spindrift of violet calcium, of yellow sodium, of blue and red and purple.

Over it, as over a limitless fiery ocean, hung the shoal of silver ships. Tossed and twitched by storms of radiation, wrenched by the mighty claws of the titan magnetic field, scorched by the blaze of the star, they fought to hold position. Their formation wavered, sagged, re-formed and wavered again, and still they held together.

On the bridge of the Starsong, clutching a stanchion as the deck heeled and shuddered under him, Kirk stood with Garstang watching the screens.

"Not a sign!" said Garstang in his ear. "And we can't sit up here forever!"

The rim of the Asteroid Belt showed on one screen, a jagged wheeling of rock fragments, dust and pebbles and little naked worlds, black on their shadow-sides flashing like heliographs where they caught the light. Beyond them was space, very deep, very dark, very empty, looking toward Orion and his pendant sword.

In that deep emptiness out there, five ships moved slowly. Earth ships, behaving like a normal patrol. The remainder of Earth's fleet was hidden among the asteroids. Even the searching rays that fed the screen could not see them.

Suddenly Garstang caught Kirk's shoulder. "There!" he said. He leaned forward and pointed his blunt forefinger at the screen.

Out of the depths toward the star Saiph came a swarm of tiny flecks that might have been nothing more than bits of cosmic drift, except that they moved together and very fast. They swept in toward the Solar System with a gathering rush, growing, picking up the sunlight on their polished sides. Two full squadrons of Solleremos' fleet, on planetary approach.

The five Earth ships out there wheeled in perfect formation and went on out to meet them.

Kirk's mouth was dry. Runnels of sweat crept down his temples, down his body. The palms of his hands were clammy.

"Screen's gone again," he said, and swore.

The screens blazed useless white, even the powerful rays that served them wrenched and cut by an outburst of solar electricity. Then they cleared again.

The Earth ships had not gone far out. Suddenly they wheeled again, abandoning formation now. Spurts of light came from their launching tubes in quick rotation, each ship firing as she bore on the target. Then they cracked on speed and ran for the Belt.

One of the Orionid cruisers burst into a great flame and was gone.

Garstang shouted, and as though at a signal the screen went out again.

Kirk ran his uniform sleeve over his face, and kept still. There were so few of the Earth ships, and so many of the others, something more than double the strength of his own squadron. Far below, Earth lay naked, stripped, utterly without defense. Kirk thought of Lyllin, and the Vinson house with the dusty road in front of it. He thought of the woods and the meadow where they had fought in the night, and curiously enough he thought of the cat. Insolent little beast....

He waited for the screen to clear, and watched.

A number of Orion ships detached themselves from the main fleet and raced after the Earth ships. They were much faster. The long aim of Solleremos was reaching swiftly now, and one of the Earth cruisers winked out with a brave, brief burst of flame. The other four reached the Belt.

The Orionids plunged in after them.

"Now," whispered Garstang. "Now, now—"

The eight Orionid cruisers, apparently detailed to mop up this patrol, sped down a deceptively open "lead" through the asteroid drift. The scanner beams swung to a better angle to follow them, and now the screen showed a closer view of that stony wilderness. The Earth ships had vanished. The lead pinched out in a cul-de-sac of wildly gyrating rocks. The Orion cruisers did a fast-about, practically on each others' heels, but before they were finished the four Earth ships and half a dozen others appeared from nowhere, all around them.

"Hit them," muttered Garstang. "Oh, hell, get onto it and hit them!"

They hit them. There was a quick holocaust of light-bursts and the Orionid cruisers in there were gone.

"That hurt them," said Garstang. "They're hooked—"

He turned and looked at Kirk. Kirk lifted his hand, his body bent slightly forward, his eyes intent upon the screen.

Out there in the Asteroid Belt, the trap was sprung. And now the Orionids knew they had the whole Earth fleet, such as it was, to deal with—a force too small to stop them, but too formidable to leave on their flank and rear. The squadrons altered course, curving in a long bow-shaped line toward the Earth ships that hovered, in apparent doubt, above the fringes of the drift.

Kirk brought his hand down in a slashing gesture. "Now!"

The Fifth Lyra swooped out of the sun.

Now.

Now is the moment, the one right time, there will not be another. Either you make it or you don't. Outnumbered, outmanned, and outgunned the element of surprise is all you've got.

The Sun falls behind, the edge of the Belt shifts and tilts and swings as you cut the plane of the ecliptic. Out of the furnace into the fire, at full drive.

The long line of the Orion ships is very beautiful, strung against the glittering emptiness of space.

The Starsong groans and quivers like a living thing. You can hear the beating of her heart, the pounding throb of power pushed to the limit, and beyond. Garstang, in the captain's place, has a face of iron, dark and still. Sweat shines on the edges of it. The men are quiet.

The Commander is afraid.

Ships, lives, men, a planet. Who would say Now! and not be afraid?

The Orion fleet springs at the viewports. The ships grow large, the intervals between them widen out. The Starsong flies at the point of a wedge shaped like an axe-blade. Behind her, on either side, the squadron follows in close formation.

In a tight, flat voice, the Commander says, "Prepare to engage."

The Fifth Lyra, the falling wedge, the axe-blade, hits the line of cruisers from above and cuts it in two.

Instantly the close-held wings fan out, driving the severed sections apart, opening the gap so wide it can never be closed again. Shells burst, little blinding suns, little fountains of hellfire, racking the ships, burning them, destroying them. But the wings sweep on. Part of the Orionid line is rolled up and driven into the drift of the Belt, where the Earth ships strike and strike again, and the proud cruisers with the polished sides become wreck and flotsam to join the cosmic debris in its endless journey around the Sun. The other section is driven outward into space, back toward Orion.

And the Starsong hunts down the Betelgeuse, flagship of Solleremos' fleet.

Kirk says, If we can get her, I think the rest will all go home. Fire One—

Fire Two.

The Betelgeuse answers, and space is drowned in a flaming cloud. The Starsong staggers and men are thrown down on the reeling iron deck. A red light flares on the telltale board. Somewhere deep in the ship's vitals the bulkhead doors slam shut, sealing off. The Starsong has a hole in her and some men have died, but she's still alive, still strong to move and strike.

Fire Three.

The Betelgeuse dives clear and her own tubes spout hellfire, a double flowering of death and destruction. The Starsong wrenches away, desperate, shaken, and once more the ports are filled with fire and a red light glimmers on the board.

Fire Four.

The Betelgeuse quivers strangely. With a dreamlike slowness two pieces of her appear out of the brilliance and the flame, bow and stern at odds with each other, going different ways. Then there is a white blinding flash, and she is gone.

And the Orion fleet, leaderless, surprised, mauled and clawed and wounded, is pulling out. One by one, in pairs, in little groups, they turn tail and streak for open space, and are gone.

The Fifth Lyra and the ships of Earth follow them, but not far. Space is empty, and in the ships there is a great silence, while the men breathe softly and look at nothing and feel that they are still alive. There is no light now but the light of the Sun and the distant stars. The Belt wheels on its way, and bits of riven metal that once were ships fall slowly toward it.

After a time, on the bridge of the Starsong, Garstang turned to Kirk. His face was sweating and wild, and his eyes had a dazed look. He said, "What now?"

"We wait and see what," said Kirk. "Maybe nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Solleremos has missed his spring. I've an idea he may prefer to make like it all never happened, if we don't give any official news of this fight. I think Charteris will see it that way."

Charteris did. The battle couldn't be kept secret really, but Earth's authorities pretended that it had never happened. There was no profit in starting a full-fledged war, and there wouldn't be one if Solleremos had learned his lesson.

He had learned it, it seemed. From Orion there was a long silence. Then came a routine congratulation on the Commemoration. The Governor of Orion Sector, it appeared, was happy for Earth.

"The so-and-so must be raging, but he won't try that again," said Kirk.

To him, and to the Squadron, had come another message, from Ferdias. Well done. That was all. But from Ferdias, it was plenty.

And the Commemoration blazed, on Earth. The lights, the bands, the speeches, and then the fly-over—the battered mighty giants of the Fifth roaring across the sky with the even more battered Earth cruisers leading the way.

From its museum they had brought the first of all the space-ships, and everyone held their breath and kept fingers crossed while it lurched, coughed and wobbled up into the sky, and labored bravely around the planet, and by some miracle came down safe again.

And the great day was over.

Garstang, looking strange now in the black uniform of Earth, spoke earnestly to Kirk the day before the Fifth was to leave.

"You know you're pretty much a hero here now, Kirk. You'll be retiring from service in not too many years. Why don't you come back to Earth to live?"

"Why does everyone say, come back to Earth," Kirk complained. "Just because I had ancestors here I'm no Earthman!"

He added, "And whatever you do, don't mention that bright idea to Lyllin! I'm going up to Orville now to get her."

Garstang only smiled at him, a queer sort of smile.

Kirk drove up through the quiet roads, the green countryside. The golden sun was soft upon his face. The breeze held a faint, smoky tang of oncoming fall. Earth's fall—he'd heard about that.

Peaceful, beautiful—but it was no world for him! Come "back" to Earth, indeed! Why, he'd lived on many worlds and none of them had ever got that kind of sentimental hold on him. Though he could understand why people felt that way about this old place—

Hell, he must be getting sentimental himself! He put a curb on such thoughts and drove on. And when he drove into Orville, there were frantic handwavings from every street-corner, his name was shouted by the kids along the sidewalks.

Vinson came running out of his house to meet him when he pulled up.

"Your wife's over at your house," Vinson explained. He shook hands. He was vastly excited and proud. "You know what—the village is going to put up a plaque. With all our names on it. Just saying, 'They fought the Battle of Orville'. Nothing else, account of diplomacy."

Kirk said, "It deserves the plaque, that fight. If you chaps hadn't turned out that night—"

"Hear you're leaving tomorrow," Vinson went on. "Thought I'd keep your old place going better, while you're gone, by working the fields. I'll keep an eye on your house, too."

Kirk said, "What makes you think I'm coming back?"

Vinson said, puzzledly, "Why, you are, aren't you? I mean—you're an Orville boy—this is your real home—"

Kirk suppressed the impatient words he'd been about to utter. No use upsetting a nice guy. He said, "Oh, sure, I'll be back—"

He drove on to the old house. Lyllin sat on the porch. He saw, to his surprise, that on her lap there cozily reclined a large black cat.

Lyllin smiled. "I think I've been accepted. By the people here—and by Tom."

Tom yawned and looked with insolent green eyes at Kirk. "His sides are bulging," Kirk said. "You've been bribing the beggar with food."

She laughed. "I don't know how he'll like space-travel. But we'll be bringing him back some day."

"Will we?" said Kirk.

She looked up at him. "Joe Garstang was talking to me. You will be retiring from active service in a few years. And I like it here now, Kirk. I really do."

He said, loudly, "Why in the world must everyone assume that I want to come back to this place? Will you tell me that?"

"Don't you?"

He started to answer, then didn't. He looked out from the porch of the old house, at the sunset light sweeping the green valley, at the old trees beyond the fields, at everything that had somehow got a queer grip on him without his knowing it.

He said, "Well, I don't know. Maybe."

Lyllin smiled.

That night the Fifth went skyward in a great thundering that rolled louder and louder across the cities and the countryside. Great black bulks flying up fast across the glittering sky, roaring, bellowing, shouting a gigantic farewell down to the watching millions as they rushed out toward the stars.