“Line up on that ship and give them our last one,” Harcourt ordered.
“No, wait!” Billy shouted. “Theirs did lock on our ship! It’s coming straight toward us!”
“Well, good,” Harcourt sighed. “Then ours might still lock onto them.”
“It did,” Billy reported. “Now, how do we get rid of theirs?”
“Flip! Harry!” Harcourt called. “A silver florin for the one who gets it first!”
“Mine!” Flip caroled, and, “What’s a florin?” Harry asked, as the ship shuddered with the out-of-phase double blast again.
Once more, Billy’s face glowed orange. “Got it!”
“My florin,” Flip said immediately.
“What are you talking about?” Harry demanded. “That was my shot! Any dunce could see it!”
“I’m not just any dunce…”
“Okay, okay,” Harcourt sighed, “a florin for each of you. What about our missile, Bil…”
Then he saw the yellow glow on Billy’s face and sighed with happiness. “Ah. Score!”
“Hit,” Billy confirmed. “The whole raider. Gone.”
For a moment, depression seized Harcourt. A dozen lives, maybe more, snuffed out in a moment… brave men, probably, or at least bold creatures…
Then the whole ship shuddered, and the dull sound of an explosion echoed through the hull.
“Sorry, Captain, I couldn’t see it closing!” Billy cried. “The glare from the raider going up…”
“They launched one more just before they died,” Harcourt snapped. “Sound off by stations!”
“Sentry here!” Billy called.
“Astrogator here!”
“Damage Control working!”
“First Officer here.”
“Gun Turret One here!”
“Gun Turret Two!”
“Tail Gunner here!”
“Engineer alive and feisty!”
Harcourt exhaled with relief. “We’re all okay, then. How’s the ship, Chief?” And, with a hint of anticipation: “Is it something essential?”
“Yeah, you could say that.” Coriander was studying her board. “It’s the oxygen fusion reactor.”
A cheer rattled the intercom and blasted off the bridge walls.
“A hit, a palpable hit!” Grounder sang.
“O2 generation is shot!” Flip whooped.
“Can’t stay on picket duty now!” Lorraine warbled.
“Gotta go to repair base.” Coriander nodded with full conviction. “Can’t stay out in space now, Captain. We’re stuck with the oxygen we’ve got in the system already. Sure, we can recycle it for two weeks, maybe a month—but after that, we’re dead. Nope, gotta go to base.”
“What a pity,” Harcourt sighed. “Only two years on station. And here I thought we’d set a new record. Oh, well, I suppose we’ll have to console ourselves with R & R.”
His mind filled with visions of supple bodies, low lights, soft music, wine, real food…
And fresh air!
Stars shifted in the vision port, and Harcourt knew they had completed the last jump to Xanadu. He smiled in anticipation of a sandy beach under a clear sky. “Tell them we’re coming, Number One.”
“Yes, sir.” Grounder pressed a switch. “CS Johnny Greene to Xanadu Base. Come in, Xanadu.”
Harcourt pressed “All stations.”
“Gunners and engineer to the bridge.” He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep them away from the first sight of the paradise that awaited them, so he made it official. For himself, he stared at the port, trying vainly to pick out the star that was Xanadu. The jump point was one and a third AU’s from the planet, which wasn’t much larger than Terra, so of course it appeared as a star—but not yet a discernible disc.
The planet had been named for its climate. It was mostly water, with a few archipelagos. The largest island, of course, held the Fleet repair base. The second largest held the main R & R station, and vacationing spacehands dispersed from there to their own secluded lazy places on the smaller islands—if they wanted to be alone. If they didn’t, the main station had casinos, restaurants, holo palaces, golf links, tennis courts, a shoreline that was one long beach where the surf rolled in perfect tubular waves, and a temperature that always ranged between sixty and eighty degrees Fahrenheit—all the amenities for a few weeks of sybaritic luxury before the tired spacedogs had to return to the lines. It may not have been Paradise, but it was close enough for Government workers.
The gunners crowded in through the hatch with Lorraine, the engineer, between them. Harcourt looked at his crew and saw the same glassy-eyed smile of anticipation on all their faces.
“Xanadu Base to CS Johnny Greene.”
Grounder looked up, eyes glinting. “Johnny Greene here. Do you have a landing assignment for us?”
“’Fraid not, Johnny Greene. We have a message, instead—orders. Do not land on Xanadu. Repeat, do not land.”
Grounder stared in shock.
Then she recovered. “Fleet base, our oxygen generation plant is shot—literally and figuratively. We have enough O2 for a week’s breathing, no more.”
“We know, Johnny Greene, but orders are orders, and a week is enough breathing space.”
“Let me double-check that supply with Damage Control, Xanadu.” Grounder looked up at Coriander. “Chief?”
“Yeah, it’ll last that long,” Coriander grated. “They better have a damn good reason!”
“Damn good,” Harcourt seconded. “Relay that up here, Number One.”
Grounder hit the switch with a look of relief.
“Yeah, we have a week’s oxygen left,” Harcourt growled. “Captain Macmillan Harcourt here. We’ve been standing picket duty for two years, and my crew is going crazy for some R & R while their ship is being repaired. What’s the problem, Xanadu?”
“Only orders, Captain Harcourt—signed by Admiral Banbridge.”
Harcourt stiffened. That was coming from awfully high up. Why was Banbridge concerning himself with a lowly corvette?
“Orders are to divert to Hilo Base,” Xanadu said.
“Hilo Base?” Harcourt turned to the astrogator. “Where’s that, Barney?”
Barney scanned the chart on his screen, shook his head. “Nothing I ever heard of, Captain. I’ll scan.” He punched the name into the computer.
Harcourt decided to help him a little. “Coordinates for Hilo Base, please, Xanadu?”
“It’s not on any of our charts,” Barney reported.
“Thirty-two degrees right ascension, seventy-two degrees east,” Xanadu replied. “Sixteen light-years outward.”
“Thirty-two, seventy-two, sixteen,” Barney echoed, punching the numbers into his computer.
Then tension on the bridge fairly thrummed. Everybody stared at the astrogator.
“Yeah, it’s there.” Barney shook his head. “I wouldn’t call that much of a world, Captain. Says it has a couple of big lakes, though, and an inland sea. Plus a couple of R & R domes.”
The crew let out one massive groan.
“Well, there goes our month on the beaches,” Grounder sighed.
“They can’t do this to us!” Flip erupted. “Two years on picket duty, two years!”
Grounder killed the audio pickup in a hurry.
“Two years!” Flip yelled. “We never griped, we never complained, we never said, ‘The hell with this!’ and headed for home! Two years! Fifty-three fights, our ship getting shot away piece by piece! We put up with the stink, we put up with the smoke, we patched and finagled and made things work somehow! We earned this leave, damn it!”
Everybody stared straight ahead, shaken. It was only the second time in two years that they had heard Flip raise his voice in anger. The first time had been right after their premier encounter with a Kilrathi raider, when a near miss had burned off the brand-new paint job on Flip’s beloved ship. The rest of the time, he had always been cheerful to the point of being nauseating, always joking, always laughing. To hear him flare up shook them worse than Banbridge’s orders.