Fragonard's eyes bulged, became large as saucers. He tried to swallow something much larger than his throat, but the latter was constricted by the peculiar way his collar was twisted within Barbousse's huge fist. "Of course," he choked.
"M-My ssignal ratings, too," Fronz piped up hurriedly. "Always glad to help out anywhere we can."
Barbousse nodded silently, returning Fragonard none too gently to his feet. "My apologies for the interruption, Lieutenant," he said, regaining his position behind Brim.
"Er, yes," Brim mumbled, struggling to stifle a smile. He looked over the heads of the assembled Blue Capes to the huge machines lying cold and silent in a forlorn pile of—unless he could start them—space junk. He counted heads for a moment, frowned, and scratched his head, listening to renewed artillery fire in the distance. "All right," he said to the two ratings, "we've got eight of these monsters to operate. That means teams of three each. Count off your people, Fronze—two in a control cab. One of yours in each turret, Fragonard. Understand?"
"Aye, sir," Fragonard answered, his face a picture of concentration, "but twenty-two people only crews seven of those big thumpers."
Brim nodded his head. "That's right," he said. "Barbousse and I crew the eighth. And you run the turret for us. Does that fit with your previous views on the proper division of labor?"
Fragonard peered at Barbousse for only a moment, then he nodded. "Absolutely, Lieutenant," he said, grinning. "Besides, I'm a very good gunner—and a very bad wrestler."
Brim sat uncomfortably upright in the cold, stiff-backed control seat, a dark instrument panel staring balefully at him in the afternoon glare. The distant artillery duels had recessed for a moment, birds sang in the background, and heavy vehicles rumbled somewhere on a crowded highway. His mind drifted to Ursis and Borodov—most likely off at a hunting dacha on one of the Lo'Sodeskayan planets, happily drinking Logish meem and hunting the great two-headed mountain wolves which shared—and ravaged—many areas of the Bears' home worlds. Bears would know how to start this hulking bucket of bolts!
He shook his head enviously as another flight of distant starships thundered across the sky at the edge of space. Little more than a metacycle remained before his own part of the operation was expected to move out. And the thrice-xaxtdamned fieldpiece that fell to his own lot to drive was canted at a perfectly sickening angle to the horizon. It made him dizzy every time he looked outside. Drumming his fingers on the console, he gazed in helpless disgust at the bewildering array of controls.
For the hundredth time, he considered the large red button that occupied a prominent place on his lower starboard instrument quadrant. Its center ring displayed the Vertrucht symbol for 'begin," but Brim was not about to blow himself to atoms by that sort of simpleminded error. In the League's crazy vocabulary, the word "detonate" started with the same symbol. He grumpily looked outside at the other seven inert forms, also canted at uncomfortable angles. In the last—precious—forty-five cycles, he had managed to accomplish nothing, and no spare time was virtually gone—along with his options. He shrugged to himself, squeezed his eyes closed, gritted his teeth and mashed the button, waiting anxiously for the explosion that would snuff out his life.
Instead, he was greeted by bird-punctuated silence broken now and then by heavy breathing—his and that of his two companions.
Cautiously opening his eyes, he found himself confronted by nothing more threatening than all the lights on the vehicle blazing out as if it were the blackest darkness outside. That and a newly operational instrument panel. Moreover, one of its readouts, CL-2 intensity (all CL-2 readouts looked more or less the same), was already starting to rise. He watched it for a few cycles, then smiled. Normal. Even at its present rate, he estimated it would take about fifteen cycles to reach operating parameters.
He showed the button to Barbousse and Fragonard, then sent them out to help power up the other machines. "By the time you get back," he called down the ladder after them, "maybe I'll have the next step figured out."
As he expected, the remaining controls and readouts were all more or less incomprehensible, except for a big pulse limiter—anybody could recognize one of those. And to its left, a primitive linear slide control was mounted in the panel. It looked a lot like an adjustable thrust sink—common cost-conscious substitute for antigravity brakes on many large military vehicles built for the League. The slide itself was pushed all the way to the top of its slot, where the highest index numbers were. An "on" position, probably, but he couldn't be sure, so he kept hands off while he studied further.
He frowned. Most heavy ground equipment operated by ducting energy from a pulse limiter into a gravity-defraction transmitter. The latter acted as a simplified antigravity generator, providing lift and directional thrust through a simple logic-lens arrangement. It couldn't fly, of course, any more than a traveling case could fly. Antigravity technology guaranteed no more than vectored thrust to really fly, one needed a lot more major systems than one could economically cram into a ground vehicle.
Grimacing, he pondered the correct amount of energy to gate from the pulse limiter—how much CL-2 was good? Or bad? It was still building steadily, according to the readout in front of him—but to what?
He considered the possibility he had just sent Barbousse and Fragonard on a mission to blow up the other seven vehicles in his tenuous command, then shook his head. If that was the way things were going to turn out, then so be it! He had to start somewhere. He returned his concentration to the controls.
Ah! There, low in the left-hand quadrant of the center console, his eye caught a primitive sort of phase converter-regulating mechanism for just about every pulse limiter he'd ever seen. Of course, the ones in his experience were also installed on heavy mining equipment—and were never set at more than half conductance. This one indicated a full three-quarters, and even a little more. He grimaced. He knew he could fine-tune the device by thumbing a notched wheel under its mounting, but if he set the converter too high, it could severely spike the defraction transmitter when that device came on line—and then he'd never get it started. He could also get a runaway power plant, he remembered with a shudder, and decided to leave everything set as it was for the time being.
He narrowed his eyes. To the left of the converter, he recognized a strange-looking resonance-choke readout, which indicated a pulse average of zero. Probably all right, as he recalled; these units ran with really low pulse pressure. But if the reading slid into negative values, he knew he would have to consider dumping the CL2 pressure to start all over again—and he didn't have time for anything like that. Then he noticed the choke was switched to "off." That explained zero pressure at the readout—but didn't do much to relieve his growing sense of apprehension.
"Lieutenant," a voice called out, breaking into his concentration, "we've got 'em all turned on now."
Brim looked up to see Fragonard's face peek over the door coaming from the boarding ladder. He checked the other seven machines—each was blazing with unnecessary lights—and, happily, nothing untoward seemed to have resulted from punching the big red power buttons. "No problems?" he asked.
"None, sir," Fragonard declared.
"Good," Brim said offhandedly, "because the next thing you'll have to do is teach those same people how to run them."