“Must we give the SSSR notice that we will be flying over its territory?” Relhost asked.
“I am afraid so, superior sir,” Nesseref answered. “Permission is routine, but the Big Uglies are touchy about being informed of our flights. And we are required to treat their independent not-empires as if they were our equals.”
“I understand,” Reihost said with a sigh. “But the SSSR shares an ideology with the Chinese Big Uglies. The rebels will thus learn of our flight as soon as we launch, if they do not already know of it. They may well be waiting for us on our arrival.”
“Nothing to be done about that, superior sir,” Nesseref said. She radioed the blockhouse: “Are we cleared for launch?”
“You are, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” came the reply. Nesseref’s eye turrets swiveled, checking all the gauges one last time. Everything was as it should have been. She would have been astonished were it otherwise, but she did not want astonishment of that sort. Her fingerclaw stabbed at the launch control. The motor roared to life beneath her. Acceleration shoved her back in her seat.
It was, of course, only a suborbital hop, perhaps a quarter of the way around Tosev 3. After the motor cut off-precisely on schedule-they had a brief stretch of weightlessness before Nesseref would have to begin preparations for landing.
Relhost sighed. “Now to see what new horrible tricks the Big Uglies have devised to drive us mad. I commanded the attack on Chicago, over on the lesser continental mass, back during the first winter of the fighting. The conditions were terrible, and the American Big Uglies struck hard at our flanks. They threw us back. It was then that we really knew what a desperate struggle we would have before we could make this world our own.”
“We still have not made it our own.” Nesseref was perhaps less diplomatic than she might have been.
“No, we have not,” Rethost agreed. “But whatever else we do, we cannot allow a rebellious area to break away from our control. That would be an open invitation to Tosevites all over the planet to try to break away from us.”
“That is probably a truth.” Nesseref corrected herself before her high-ranking passenger could correct her: “No, that is certainly a truth.”
A Tosevite voice came from the radio receiver: “Shuttlecraft of the Race, this is Akmolinsk Control. Your trajectory is acceptable. You are warned not to maneuver over the territory of the peace-loving workers and peasants of the Soviet Union, or we shall be forced to respond vigorously to your aggression.”
“Acknowledged, Akmolinsk Control,” Nesseref said, and then turned off the transmitter with quite unnecessary violence. To Relhost, she added, “I grow very tired of the arrogance the Big Uglies display.”
“As do we all, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” the officer answered. “And they display less than they feel-in Akmolinsk, our name is cursed, as it is over much of the planet. They truly do believe they are our equals, as you said. Reeducating them will require generations: like their preposterous superstitions, their political ideologies have taken deep root among them. Sooner or later, though, we shall succeed.”
“May it be so,” Nesseref said. “And now, superior sir, if you will excuse me…” She examined the plot of the actual trajectory as measured against the planned one, and authorized the computer to make the small burns necessary to bring the one into conformity with the other. “We should be landing soon.”
As if to confirm that, a member of the Race came on the radio: “Shuttlecraft, we have you on radar. Trajectory for the shuttlecraft port outside Peking is acceptable.”
“How nice,” Nesseref said, acid in her voice. “The Big Uglies in the SSSR told me exactly the same thing.”
“Be glad they did,” answered the controller at the shuttlecraft port. “They can be most difficult, even dangerous, if your trajectory varies in any way from that which is planned. You will no doubt know this for yourself. But, speaking of dangerous, I will tell you something the Big Uglies in the SSSR did not: be extremely alert in your descent. Tosevite rebels are active in the area, and are equipped with missiles homing on radar and on the heat emissions of your engine as you brake for landing.”
“And what do I do if they launch one of these missiles at me?” Nesseref asked.
“You do the best you can, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” the controller answered. “In that case, you discover how good a pilot you truly are, and how well you have studied and practiced the manual overrides. Shuttlecraft computers are not programmed to operate on the assumption that something is trying to shoot them down.”
“Here on Tosev 3, they should be,” Nesseref said indignantly.
“As may be, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” the controller said. “Perhaps they will be, at some time in the future. For the present, good luck. Out.”
Relhost waggled an eye turret in an ironic way. “Good luck, Shuttlecraft Pilot.”
“I thank you so very much, superior sir,” Nesseref said.
Her own eye turrets went to the manual controls. Of course she’d put in endless simulator practice with them. But how seriously had she taken it? How well could she fly the shuttlecraft on her own? And, if something happened to her, who would take care of Orbit? Mordechai Anielewicz, perhaps? No. He had a beffel. The two animals wouldn’t get along. Nesseref hoped she wouldn’t have to find out the answers to any of her questions.
But, even as the computer activated the braking rocket for final descent into the shuttlecraft port, she kept an anxious eye turret on the radar screen. And so the controller’s shout of alarm in the radio was not a warning, only a distraction. “I can see it,” she snarled. “Now shut up.”
Her fingerclaw stabbed the manual override control. She didn’t adjust the burn right away, but eyed the radar and the displays around it for data on the missile’s performance. That was alarmingly good. Whatever she was going to do, she didn’t have long to do it.
Relhost said, “I suggest, Shuttlecraft Pilot, that you do not waste time.”
“You shut up, too,” Nesseref hissed, a moment later absently adding, “superior sir.”
She would have only one chance. She saw as much. If she maneuvered too soon, that cursed missile would follow and knock her down. If she maneuvered too late, she wouldn’t get the chance to maneuver at all. She checked her fuel gauge. She would worry about that later, too. Now…
Now her fingerclaw hit the motor control, giving her maximum thrust and, in effect, relaunching her. The missile had only begun to pull up when it burst a little below the shuttlecraft. Shrapnel fragments pattered off her ship. Some of them didn’t patter off-some pierced it. Alarm lights came on.
Nesseref gave control back to the computer. She hoped she had enough fuel to brake again. If she didn’t, the Big Uglies who’d launched the missile would win even if they hadn’t disabled her. She also hoped with all her liver that they had no more missiles to launch. She’d been lucky once-she thought she’d been lucky. She doubted she could manage it twice.
“Well done,” Relhost said.
“I hope so,” Nesseref answered. Fuel alarms weren’t hissing at top volume, so maybe she would be able to get down in one piece. She went on, “You had better help suppress these rebels, superior sir. Otherwise, I will be very disappointed in you.” She granted herself the luxury of an emphatic cough.
When David Goldfarb came into the office of the Saskatchewan River Widget Works, Ltd., he found Hal Walsh there before him. That was nothing out of the ordinary; he often thought Walsh lived at the office. The music blaring out of a skelkwank- disk player was a different matter. It was a song by a quartet of shaven-headed young Englishmen who called themselves, perhaps from their appearance, the Beetles.
As far as David was concerned, they made noise, not music. His boss, most of a generation younger, loved it. So did a lot of people Walsh’s age; the Beetles were, in Goldfarb’s biased opinion, much more popular than they had any business being. Walsh was singing along at the top of his lungs when Goldfarb walked in.