Stella Morrison leaned toward the screen. “Captain, would it be possible—for your men to—?”
“We’ll land by robot control,” he assured her. “None of my men will be on deck. No one will see you.”
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“Not at all.” Captain Davis saluted. “We’ll see you in about two hours then, Commander.”
“Let’s get everyone out onto the field,” Commander Morrison said. “They should remove their clothes here, I think, so there won’t be any objects on the field to come in contact with the ship.”
Hall looked at her face. “Isn’t it worth it to save our lives?”
Lieutenant Friendly bit his lips. “I won’t do it. I’ll stay here.”
“You have to come.”
“But, Major—”
Hall looked at his watch. “It’s 14:50. The ship will be here any minute. Get your clothes off and get out on the landing field.”
“Can’t I take anything at all?”
“Nothing. Not even your blaster… They’ll give us clothes inside the ship. Come on! Your life depends on this. Everyone else is doing it.”
Friendly tugged at his shirt reluctantly. “Well, I guess I’m acting silly.”
The vidscreen clicked. A robot voice announced shrilly: “Everyone out of the buildings at once! Everyone out of the buildings and on the field without delay! Everyone out of the buildings at once! Everyone—”
“So soon?” Hall ran to the window and lifted the metal blind. “I didn’t hear it land.”
Parked in the center of the landing field was a long gray cruiser, its hull pitted and dented from meteoric strikes. It lay motionless. There was no sign of life about it.
A crowd of naked people was already moving hesitantly across the field toward it, blinking in the bright sunlight.
“It’s here!” Hall started tearing off his shirt. “Let’s go!”
“Wait for me!”
“Then hurry.” Hall finished undressing. Both men hurried out into the corridor. Unclothed guards raced past them. They padded down the corridors through the long unit building, to the door. They ran downstairs, out onto the field. Warm sunlight beat down on them from the sky overhead. From all the unit buildings, naked men and women were pouring silently toward the ship.
“What a sight!” an officer said. “We’ll never be able to live it down.”
“But you’ll live, at least,” another said.
“Lawrence!”
Hall half turned.
“Please don’t look around. Keep on going. I’ll walk behind you.”
“How does it feel, Stella?” Hall asked.
“Unusual.”
“Is it worth it?”
“I suppose so.”
“Do you think anyone will believe us?”
“I doubt it,” she said. “I’m beginning to wonder myself.”
“Anyhow, we’ll get back alive.”
“I guess so.”
Hall looked up at the ramp being lowered from the ship in front of them. The first people were already beginning to scamper up the metal incline, into the ship, through the circular lock.
“Lawrence—”
There was a peculiar tremor in the Commander’s voice. “Lawrence, I’m—”
“You’re what?”
“I’m scared.”
“Scared!” He stopped. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she quavered.
People pushed against them from all sides. “Forget it. Carry-over from your early childhood.” He put his foot on the bottom of the ramp. “Up we go.”
“I want to go back!” There was panic in her voice. “I—”
Hall laughed. “It’s too late now, Stella.” He mounted the ramp, holding on to the rail. Around him, on all sides, men and women were pushing forward, carrying them up. They came to the lock. “Here we are.”
The man ahead of him disappeared.
Hall went inside after him, into the dark interior of the ship, into the silent blackness before him. The Commander followed.
At exactly 15:00 Captain Daniel Davis landed his ship in the center of the field. Relays slid the entrance lock open with a bang. Davis and the other
officers of the ship sat waiting in the control cabin, around the big control table.
“Well,” Captain Davis said, after a while. “Where are they?”
The officers became uneasy. “Maybe something’s wrong.”
“Maybe the whole damn thing’s a joke?”
They waited and waited.
But no one came.
Prize Ship
General Thomas Groves gazed glumly up at the battle maps on the wall. The thin black line, the iron ring around Ganymede, was still there. He waited a moment, vaguely hoping, but the line did not go away. At last he turned and made his way out of the chart wing, past the rows of desks.
At the door Major Siller stopped him. “What’s wrong, sir? No change in the war?”
“No change.”
“What’ll we do?”
“Come to terms. Their terms. We can’t let it drag on another month. Everybody knows that. They know that.”
“Licked by a little outfit like Ganymede.”
“If only we had more time. But we don’t. The ships must be out in deep-space again, right away. If we have to capitulate to get them out, then let’s do it. Ganymede!” He spat. “If we could only break them. But by that time—”
“By that time the colonies won’t exist.”
“We have to get our cradles back in our own hands,” Groves said grimly. “Even if it takes capitulation to do it.”
“No other way will do?”
“You find another way.” Groves pushed past Siller, out into corridor. “And if you find it, let me know.”
The war had been going on for two Terran months, with no sign of a break. The System Senate’s difficult position came from the fact that Ganymede was the jump-off point between the System and its precarious network of colonies at Proxima Centauri. All ships leaving the System for deep-space were launched from the immense space cradles on Ganymede. There were no other cradles. Ganymede had been agreed on as the jump-off point, and the cradles had been constructed there.
The Ganymedeans became rich, hauling freight and supplies in their tubby little ships. Over a period of time more and more Gany ships took to the sky, freighters and cruisers and patrol ships.
One day this odd fleet landed among the space cradles, killed and imprisoned the Terran and Martian guards, and proclaimed that Ganymede and the cradles were their property. If the Senate wanted to use the cradles they paid, and paid plenty. Twenty per cent of all freighted goods turned over to the Gany Emperor, left on the moon. And full Senate representation.
If the Senate fleet tried to take back the cradles by force the cradles would be destroyed. The Ganymedeans had already mined them with H-bombs. The Gany fleet surrounded the moon, a little ring of hard steel. If the Senate fleet tried to break through, seize the moon, it would be the end of the cradles. What could the System do?
And at Proxima, the colonies were starving.
“You’re certain we can’t launch ships into deep-space from regular fields,” a Martian Senator asked.
“Only Class-One ships have any chance to reach the colonies,” Commander James Carmichel said wearily. “A Class-One ship is ten times the size of a regular intra-system ship. A Class-One ship needs a cradle miles deep. Miles wide. You can’t launch a ship that size from a meadow.”
There was silence. The great Senate chambers were full, crowded to capacity with representatives from all the nine planets.
“The Proxima colonies won’t last another twenty days,” Doctor Basset testified. “That means we must get a ship on the way sometime next week. Otherwise, when we do get there we won’t find anyone alive.”
“When will the new Luna cradles be ready?”
“A month,” Carmichel answered.
“No sooner?”
“No.”
“Then apparently we’ll have to accept Ganymede’s terms.” The Senate Leader snorted with disgust. “Nine planets and one wretched little moon! How dare they want equal voice with the System members!”