“I’ve got a flight to catch,” Dom said.
“There’s time,” J.J. said, looking at his watch. “Dom, when you get back, I want you to take charge of the security forces on the moon. Start a system of rotating teams, the membership changing each day at random. If they’re planning something there it might help break up their organization.”
“Will do.”
J.J. looked thoughtful. “You know, if we could just feed the world we’d break the radicals in five years. There’s a certain strength in what has often been called the average man. All he wants to do is live a peaceful and good life with enough food on the table to feed his family, good programs on the tube, a few luxuries. You know when this mess really started? It started when the shortage of petroleum took the citizen’s automobile away from him. That is the dominant factor in our current troubles. The automobile gave a man freedom. When he was at the wheel of his own vehicle, he could feel that he was in control of his own fate. He had freedom of movement. In his car, he was isolated from the world, freed of his worries. That’s when the discontent began, when the oil ran out. That left room for the nuts, the people who have such overwhelming egos that they think they’re more capable of running things than anyone else. They don’t care how many people starve, how many are killed. They just want to give orders. They want to instill fear in others. We’ve had them on Earth since the earliest recorded history, since Sargon the Conqueror, of old Ur. The power types. A kid reads two books and thinks he knows how to run the world. The idealists, the nuts, the sadists, the out-and-out psychos. They’re joined by shiftless malcontents who are interested only in loot and plunder. If we could feed the world there’d be support against them. We could use the common decency of mankind to overcome the Sargon complex and then man would be unstoppable.”
Dom arrived on the moon hours after two Earthfirsters died in a soundless explosion while trying to smuggle explosives into the shuttle area. He put J.J.’s orders into effect. Things were quiet for days. Kennedy was nearing completion.
The big boom came on a Sunday morning. It came in the form of a small freighter which had been Earthside for repairs. The incident demonstrated the most frightening penetration to date, for the small nuclear bomb aboard the freighter must have been placed there at Canaveral base.
The ship approached the lunar base on schedule, in contact with control, and veered off at the last minute to accelerate into a suicidal collision course with the Kennedy as she orbited, huge and vulnerable. A missile from the surface got the freighter while she was still far enough away so that the explosion did no damage to Kennedy. The flash lit the surface of the moon and blinded a few workers who happened to be watching the freighter.
The near miss inspired Dom. He knew that it was going to give J.J. a bad moment, for he did not want to risk compromising his plan through communications which could be intercepted. He stopped all flights from the moon to Earth and sent down the news that radical terrorists had destroyed an experimental ship, the John F. Kennedy. The news was greeted with public cheers and private gloom on Earth, and it brought J.J. on the next ship. He looked ten years older.
“How bad is it?” he asked, when Dom met him at the landing pad.
“J.J., I hated to do it to you,” Dom said. “She’s all right and untouched.”
J.J. used choice parts of a vocabulary built from years of service and, having let off steam, took a drink and whooped in relief. He had to admit that it was a good idea. Now there would be no further attempts on the Kennedy from Earthside and they merely had to control the underground members on the moon. He delayed sending down a one-man courier ship to give the correct story to top DOSE brass.
No calls were allowed to go out to Earth. Travel was frozen. Marine guards stood watch over all communications facilities, their individual members shifted in random patterns.
A ship carrying the two remaining crew members was allowed to land. Dom’s first choices had checked out. The engineer, Paul Jensen, was short, dark, a silent man in his fifties. Ellen Overman, life-systems specialist, was in her thirties, a tiny woman, small in every respect, but perfectly proportioned, dark-haired, brown eyes, a beautiful woman; she was talkative and thrilled at being a part of the project.
J.J. sent down word that the Firsters had destroyed the moon’s water supplies, built up over a period of many years and constantly recycled. A fleet of tankers began to arrive, supposedly to replenish the moon’s water supply, but actually to fill the Kennedy’s hold with water. It was against all common sense to take an untested ship into space with a full cargo, but as Dom continued to point out, she would work or she wouldn’t, and if she couldn’t carry a load of water she couldn’t go down into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The water would be a valuable bonus in the operation. Taking it to Mars would add only a few days to the trip, since the planets were in the proper configuration, and it would be a boon to dry Mars. The Kennedy’s cargo would represent a year’s supply of water for the planet.
Neil Walters pronounced the Kennedy as ready as she’d ever be without extensive in-flight testing. He, too, disliked carrying a full cargo, but he shrugged and said, “What the hell?” If she could fly at all the weight of the water was insignificant. She had enough power to lift a hundred times the weight without strain. If she failed, it would not be for lack of power.
J.J. called a briefing in his quarters. He was in field uniform. He had two comets on his collar.
Dom saw the new insignia. “Congratulations, admiral.”
“Just a belated recognition of ability, Flash,” J.J. said. “When we bring home the bacon I’m going to see to it that you get one of these little doodads.” He tapped a comet insignia.
“You’re all heart,” Dom said, remembering that it was J.J. who had refused his last chance at promotion because he’d happened to take a swing at a stupid and inefficient one-comet admiral.
“Meantime, you’re promoted to captain,” J.J. said. “You deserve it and the Kennedy deserves it. I wouldn’t want her to be commanded by a mere commander.”
The others arrived one by one. J.J. went through the chain of command aboard ship, although all were familiar with it already. Dom was in overall command. Neil was flying captain. J.J. was third in command, second to Neil in flying matters, to Dom in matters of ship’s operation and safety. When the briefing was completed, J.J. made a little speech. He concluded by saying that things looked good.
“We’ll announce the truth when we’re in space,” he said. “Right now the rads think their lousy suicides blew up the Kennedy. We’ve announced major cutbacks in the space program to give them another victory and, we hope, keep them quiet until we get back. We turned a billion and a half dollars back into the general fund. That made a big splash.”
“So we’re burning our bridges behind us,” Doris said.
“Exactly,” J.J. said grimly. “We bring home the bacon or we forget the space program. If we come back without it we’ll be cut down to the Mars fertilizer run, and that won’t last long before we’ll be forced to pull all the ships home and close down the Mars base. But it had to be done. We think they were on the verge of armed revolt, and we weren’t sure we could win. Now we’ve poured some oil on the troubled waters. They’ll think they have unlimited time now. And well come back with something which will knock them on their asses and have the whole world on our side.”