“You heard me. We’re not going to Vega III. We’re not going anywhere remotely near it.”
“But the dispatch bulletin—”
Peter snorted. “I know what the bulletin said. Routine run to Vega III for a final check on the new colony site. That’s what’s going out on all the news tapes, too, but it doesn’t happen to be true. I’ve been keeping my eyes open, and if this ship goes to Vega III I’ll eat those reader-tapes right off the spool.”
“Where do you think we’re going, then?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone else on board does, either, except the skipper and the navigator, and they’re not telling. The navigator gave me a three-hour lecture on Koenig drive navigation this afternoon while he was setting up the coordinates, but he didn’t set them up for Vega or any place near Vega. He must have thought I didn’t know anything about interstellar navigation.”
“Maybe you don’t,” Lars said bluntly.
This hit a raw spot. “Look, he didn’t even put the ship in the right Sector! I could assemble and disassemble this ship’s navigation controls in my sleep, and I know those coordinates are fishy. But that’s not all, by a long way. Why all the secrecy? Colonial Security has had this ship under constant surveillance for a week. They’ve got agents all over the place. Special ID checks on all the crewmen. They’ve practically locked us in here since we came aboard. Why all the precautions if this is just a routine run to Vega III?”
Lars shook his head. “Maybe they’ve uncovered a sabotage attempt or something.”
“I doubt it. Nobody sabotages Colonial Service ships any more. And that wouldn’t explain the other things. Like all those questions Commander Fox was asking.”
“Questions?”
“About how we feel about the possibility of meeting up with intelligent aliens on some star system somewhere.”
Lars felt a chill go through him. He had heard that this was Walter Fox’s pet theme, that somewhere in the Universe intelligent aliens must exist, and that sometime, somewhere, men would encounter them. It was not a pleasant thought. There was enough danger and death to face in exploring unknown star systems without meeting hostile members of an alien race. It had taken the Colonial Service many years to quiet such fears, to convince colonists from Earth that there were no such aliens. And yet—
Peter grinned at him. “Shake you up. a little?” “It’s nonsense,” Lars snapped. “You’re making a big case out of nothing at all.”
“Oh, there’s nothing glaring about it, just little things. And one thing I forgot to mention that isn’t so little. The cargo we have aboard. It seems to be something very special, triple Security guard all the time it was being loaded. Some of the crates were very small and very heavy—weighed tons. And one of them broke open on the gantry coming up. The Security boys covered it in a hurry, but I happened to get a quick look.” The half smile formed on Peter’s lips. “Whatever was inside was wrapped in a lead blanket six inches thick. Now, what do you suppose a Star Ship could be carrying that would require shielding like that?”
The wall-speaker interrupted them with a series of squawks and squeals. Then Mr. Lorry’s voice flooded the compartment:
“All hands listen with care. The SS Ganymede will blast off in fifteen minutes. All hands strap down and wait for the broken signal. That will indicate the one-minute count-down. We will accelerate for one hundred and ten seconds on chemical thrust, then for seven minutes and twenty seconds on atomic thrust before the Koenig drive is activated. You will be uncomfortable, but this discomfort will pass. In each locker is a supply of amphetamine alkaloid to reduce the sensations of discomfort. You are advised to take two capsules now and a final capsule when the signal begins.” ,
The speaker went dead with a click. Lars and Peter stared at each other for a moment. They knew what to do. Throughout Academy there had been blastoff drills, landing drills, and drills to cover almost any kind of in-space emergency. But now for an instant they stood rooted to the floor.
Then Lars was scrambling into the upper acceleration cot. Thickly padded straps closed around his arms, shoulders, hips and legs as he gulped the green capsules and waited, listening to the steady thrum-thrum-thrum of the idling motors far below.
It seemed like hours before the wall-speaker began a broken signal in a slow monotonous rhythm. Beep—beep—beep— The lights flickered and went out, and still they waited.
Suddenly Lars realized that he was frightened. Sweat stood out on his forehead; every muscle in his body was tense. This was no jaunt to the Moon, no quick run to Mars or Titan. This was a Star-jump, the moment he had waited for since he was a little boy watching the flare of rockets rising from the southern sky. His mind was whirling with wonder and excitement. To the stars, he thought, and the thought echoed back in the darkness with a sharp chill of apprehension: To what star?
Vega?
Or somewhere else?
Suddenly the thrum-thrum-thrum rose in pitch, growing rapidly faster, louder. At first Lars thought he was suddenly sleepy as he sank back into the soft bunk padding. His body was heavy, his eyelids sagged, his face— But it wasn’t sleep. A huge, unbearable feathery weight was pressing him down, crushing him, smothering him. He could hardly draw air into his lungs.
There was a shift, a jolt, as the pressure eased momentarily, then slammed him harder yet. We’re aloft, he thought wildly. On atomics now. Too late to go back. He felt the powerful thrust of the engines driving through him until his whole body was vibrating with the ship.
Minutes passed. The pressure grew. He tried to move his head, but it was pressed with the terrible weight of acceleration against the headrest. I can’t breathe, he thought. How long—?
Then, suddenly, the pressure was gone and a new sensation replaced it. He felt himself growing big, huge, mammoth as the room and bunk around him seemed to shrink away. He had a sensation of falling steeply, giddily away, away from himself, away from everything. A rhythmic vibrato had begun, deep within his body and mind, growing faster, shaking him, frightening and deadly in its intensity. He tried to scream, but no sound came from his throat, only the silent vibration growing stronger every instant.
And then he knew what it was: the Koenig drive, thrusting the ship out into space with incredible speed, peeling light years away, shearing out beyond the bounds of light-speed and dimension, ramming the ship through a distortoin of space itself.
To the stars—
They were aloft. Outside was nothingness. For two months their ship would be enclosed in a protective cocoon of energy, shielding them from forces beyond it that could wrench them into shapeless atoms. They were in space, en route at last.
As Lars sank back into the darkness of first-stage reaction to the drive, the thought drifted hazily through his mind. To where? If not Vega, what star? For what purpose? With what strange cargo in the hold, wrapped snugly in six inch blankets of lead What conceivable cargo—
Vaguely the thought drifted from his grasp as he tried to find an answer, then slammed back sharply into focus. His eyes flew open and he stared into the darkness.
He knew the answer. There was only one thing the cargo could be. The ship was carrying bombs. Thermonuclear bombs, outlawed on Earth for centuries.
But why?
As he sank helplessly into sleep, no answer came to that question.