“It’s a lure!” cried the super-lieutenant. “They want us to follow that northeast group!”
They watched, plotting the course of the northeast group. It would pass over this side of the pole and, unless it stopped before that, would wind up at that pagoda place in the southern hemisphere and at that speed would get there in about nine hours.
As if to confirm the Hockner's suspicions, the remaining four marine
attack planes and the rest of the air cover suddenly streaked away on a course slightly to the west of north. They were traveling at two thousand miles an hour.
A hasty extrapolation of their course gave their only possible destination as an ancient minesite near a place which had been called “Singapore.”
“That does it, old fellow,” said the Hockner. “There is a report here that there has been heavy activity in that area and some sort of platform being laid out. They're taking that console to 'Singapore'!”
The quarter-admiral tried to disagree. As the senior officer he had a right to be obeyed. He explained that it must be the pagoda. The reason was that he hated all religions. Religious people were zealots and upset governments and always had to be crushed. This obviously was a religious revolt and they even had evidence of it. A religious order had upset the government of the planet and had now stolen a console. This planet was the one and he ordered them all to head for the pagoda objective.
His order did it. The combined force streaked into controlled motion, in full cry after the Singapore-bound group.
But the mighty Terrify-class battle-plane-launching capital ship Capture did not follow them.
Egged on by Roof Arsebogger into independent action that would make better copy and by a scathing hatred of all religions, Quarter-Admiral Snowleter turned his ponderous and overwhelming ship, with its belly full of battle planes, toward Kariba.
Chapter 2
Jonnie awoke with a start of alarm. The ground had shaken! A woman nurse who must have been at his bedside left the room.
He stared around him, for a moment unable to place the unfamiliar surroundings. Then he recognized them. It was the bunker room at Kariba that the Chinese had fixed up especially for him at the inner edge of the hollow of the firing platform. They had ringed the inside hill with deep bunkers and even tiled some of them. They were lit with mine lights.
This one was tiled in yellow. It was furnished with a bed, chairs, and a wardrobe. They had even done a portrait of Chrissie in the tiles, taking it from a picto-recorder shot– it looked quite like her except that they had slightly slanted her eyes.
The ground jolted again. Bombs?
He was just about to swing out of bed when Dr. Allen came in and soothingly pushed him back. “It’s all right,” said Dr. Allen. “They have things under control out there.” He was taking Jonnie's pulse.
Sir Robert showed up in the doorway. He had a bandage across his nose which Dr. Allen had set. He was obviously waiting for Dr. Allen to finish.
“You had a nasty one,” said Dr. Allen. “But your pulse is normal now. That prevention shot of serum you had handled some of the venom reaction. But you really owe it all to Sir Robert: he got the poison out and even gave you a few drops of serum.”
Jonnie's huge Psychlo wrist watch was lying on the sidetable. He stared at it. He had been asleep for eighteen hours! Lord knows what had happened in that time.
Dr. Allen anticipated him. “I know, I know. But it was necessary to put you on an opiate to slow your heart down.” He had a stethoscope on Jonnie's chest. He listened. Then he folded it up. “I can't detect any heart damage. Hold out your hand.”
Jonnie did.
“Ah, no tremble,” said Dr. Allen. “I think you're fine. A few days in bed-'
At that moment the ground jolted again. Jonnie tried to get up and Dr. Allen pushed him back again.
“Sir Robert!” called Jonnie. “What's happening?”
Dr. Allen nodded to Sir Robert that it was all right and then left. Sir Robert came over to stand beside the bed. He was not answering Jonnie's question. He just stood there beaming down at Jonnie, glad to see him alive. The lad even had color in his cheeks.
“What is happening?” said Jonnie, spacing each word.
“Oh,” said Sir Robert. “That's a Tolnep ship up there. It 's at about two hundred miles but it keeps sending down planes to bomb this place. We have air cover. Stormalong is here and directing air defenses. So far the enemy is giving Singapore its main attention.”
Angus was at the door. Jonnie called to him, “Have you set up the console?”
“Oh, aye,” said Angus. He came in. “That's why they didn't disturb you.” He pointed a finger up. “With all that firing, our antiaircraft outside the screen, and the motors of our own planes, we wouldn't dare use the firing rig. It 's all connected. The Chinese set that place up very nice.”
“The next firing position of the switch is down," said Jonnie.
“Yes, Sir Robert told us that. It 's all ready to go if this firing ever stops! Get a rest.” Angus left and passed Thor.
Thor said, “How do you feel?”
Jonnie waved his hand negatively. “Unimportant. The last I remember was being in the dome. You better bring me up to date.”
They told him what had happened and what they had done.
“A recoil that bad!” said Jonnie. “Worse,” said Thor.
“How many men did we lose?” said Jonnie.
“Andrew and MacDougal," said Thor. “But we have fifteen of them here in this little hospital they have. Couple of concussions, broken arms or legs. Mostly bruised, very badly bruised. The lead of the coffins protected them. No radiation burns. Andrew was badly bayoneted by the Brigantes and couldn't fasten his coffin lid from inside, and it blew open.”
“And MacDougal?" said Jonnie.
“Well, that one is sort of bad. He had the station over by the old cage and the coffin was jolted out of the ground. We couldn't find his body for a while and that's what got us looking.” Jonnie noticed Thor was holding a heavy package: he had steadied it against the table. “We had to start looking for corpses. They had been blown all around, most of the flesh burned off. We followed the blast line, thinking his body had been blown directly away from the platform, and we got into what was left of Terl’s office– the whole top of it had been blown off. Four or five bodies from the platform edge had been blown into that area. We didn't want to leave anyone listed simply as missing so we were trying to identify bodies. We found MacDougal's body.
“And we found this.” He was unwrapping the heavy package. “I know you will be relieved to have it. One of the corpses had all the flesh burned off and the vertebrae were exposed and this was sticking in them.”
It was the pea-sized pellet of the unknown core material of the bomb.
“Brown Limper," said Jonnie. "Terl threw it at him. Like a bullet. Yes, I am very, very glad you found it!”
“We got the other package Terl handed to him,” said Thor. “We gave it to Angus and he disarmed it. What does it do?”
“We don't really know,” said Jonnie.
“But knowing Terl-'
“We got his whole recycling basket,” said Thor. “We figured he'd try to use it and we cut the power off. It 's really full! It 's out here on a dolly if you want it. We had it in a radiation-proofmine sack, fortunately.” He beckoned toward the door. “We grabbed it right after he left his office.”