He simply enjoyed it. It was certainly cooler now.
Out of habit he scanned his screens. Some blips! He looked through the screen for a visual check. Four objects in orbit was what should be there. No, there were five. One new object was approaching the four old ones, all brighter and steadier than stars. About four hundred miles up.
The last thing he was going to do was go up and “visit” them. Unknown ships there; he was flying a relatively untried ship here. He had no support.
And even if this old relic could fly clear to the moon and back, he needed no additional incidents at this time, thank you.
But maybe he could get some better pictures. Stormy's, taken in daylight, had been fuzzy with ultraviolet. He threw his plane up to a height of two hundred miles and closer to the objects, his attention mainly on putting the recorders on standby.
What was that? A flash from the new fifth ship? Yes. Another flash? Were they shooting at him?
Ready to take evasive action, he suddenly saw a wild flurry of flashes coming from one of the four objects and a splash of light on the fifth. Hey! The fifth ship was shooting at one of the original four and that one was firing back!
He quickly battered away at the old controls and closed the distance to about a hundred fifty miles. He was so intent on getting his recorders working he didn't realize he was shooting in toward those ships at hypersonic maximum.
Astonishing! The fifth ship and one of the original four were really having at it. Blast streaks were sheets of blue-green and red between them. Orange splashes of hits!
Abruptly he realized they were getting awfully big in his viewscreens. A Psychlo-numbered digital was rolling up the narrowing distance. Seventy-five miles.
An instant before he pressed the console for a reverse role and drive, the firing among the ships ceased abruptly.
Jonnie put his old wreck into a full power fall and got out of there. That was not his war. He didn't even know whether he had working guns.
At about a hundred miles above the Earth's surface he eased off. He was about fifty miles up when he was flying level again.
He looked back. They were not firing now. Just sitting up there. The fifth ship seemed to have closed in on the others.
Jonnie shook his head at himself. This was not the time to be doing crazy, reckless things. He had almost done exactly what he had warned Stormy not to do– go visiting.
The old relic he was flying had become heated from air friction. It was built to take it but he had come up for a cool breath of air and now the flight deck was hot. If he'd really wanted to go up there he would have taken just an ordinary battle plane, making sure its gaskets were tight around the doors. And making sure its guns were loaded and working. Sir Robert would not have been proud of him!
Another blip on his viewscreens. Down low at about a hundred thousand feet of altitude. Coming on a route from Scotland? America over the pole?
Warm cabin or no cabin, he streaked down to intercept and identify. He flipped on his local command channel, and just as he did so a voice from the nearby plane came through:
“Don't shoot! I’ll marry your daughter!” It was Dunneldeen.
Jonnie laughed. It was the first time he had laughed since returning from America.
He spun the old relic around and flashed after Dunneldeen as the Scot roared down toward the minesite.
Chapter 4
The small gray man in his small gray cabin was sighing patiently. Well, not too patiently. His indigestion had not improved at all, and now this.
Things were distressing enough without the military people getting into fights among themselves. But it was a military matter, not political, not economic, and not strategic, so he was perforce out of it, a mere observer.
He now had four faces on his separate viewscreens. And if it kept on going this way, he'd have to ask his communications officer to break more screens out of stores and put them in on a rack. It made one's office so cluttered.
The face of the Tolnep half-captain was quite angry-looking and he kept adjusting his glasses in an agitated way. “But I don't care if you surprised to see me here. I have no advices at all that our nations are at war!”
The Hawvin's face was the light violet Hawvins got when they were very provoked. The square helmet was crushed down on his oval head, bending his ear antennae. His untoothed but blade-gummed mouth was distorted in the lifted attitude of biting. “How would you know who was at war and who wasn't at war! You cannot be less than five months out from any base!”
The Hockner super-lieutenant who commanded the star-shaped craft looked a little supercilious with his monocle and excessive amount of gold braid. The long, noseless face portrayed what passed for disdain among his people in the Duraleb System.
The Bolbod was just plain plug-ugly, as they always were, bigger than Psychlos but sort of shapeless. One wondered how they ever handled anything at all– their “hands” were always clenched into fists. The high sweater neck almost met the bill of his exaggerated cap. The Bolbods considered insignia beneath their dignity but the small gray man knew he was Gang Leader Poundon, commanding the cylinder-shaped spacecraft. He certainly had a low opinion of all the rest as effete degenerates.
“All right!” snapped the Tolnep. “Are our races at war or aren't they?”
The Hawvin said, “I don't have any information that they are or aren't! But that doesn't mean that they aren't. It would not be the first time a Hawvin ship came peacefully onto station only to be raked by a sneaking Tolnep.”
“Your Excellency!” snapped the Tolnep, suddenly including the small gray man. “Do you have any information that the Tolneps and Hawvins are at war?”
It was a military matter but this could fringe on the political.
“The courier ship that met me here did not mention it,” he said tiredly. Maybe one of the crew had some different brand of indigestion tablets.
No, he didn't think they would. Mello-gest was all that was sold these days. He wished they'd stop wrangling.
“You see!” hissed the Tolnep half-captain. “No war exists. Yet you come in here denting my plates in an unprovoked assault-”
“Did I really dent your plates?” said the Hawvin, abruptly interested.
“Here,” said the Hockner super-lieutenant. “Here now. You are both completely off the subject of the strange interceptor. If you two fellows want to draw off somewhere and batter away at each other, that's your business, isn't it? But who and what was that interceptor?”
The Bolbod snorted, “Couldn't be anything but Psychlo."
“I know, old fellow,” said the Hockner, adjusting his monocle, “but I’ve looked
It up and it isn't listed under Psychlo military craft.” He held a recognition book to the screen: “Known Types of Psychlo War Craft.” It was of course in Psychlo. All of them spoke Psychlo and the whole of their cross-communication was in Psychlo, since they didn't speak each others' native tongues. “It isn't listed here.”
The Hawvin was glad to drop the subject of his attack on the Tolnep, no matter how surprised he'd been to find a Tolnep ship here. I've never seen one like it.”
The Bolbod was more practical. “Why did it veer away the moment you stopped shooting?”
They pondered that for a while. Then the Hockner adjusted his monocle and said, “I rather think I have it! He supposed that our attention would be distracted and that this,” he snorted, " 'battle' would knock out some of us and he'd be able to mop up the damaged remainder.”