Voyage From Yesteryear Part 1

Voyage From Yesteryear.

James P. Hogan.

PROLOGUE.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, our guest of honor tonight-Henry B. Congreve." The toastmaster completed his introduction and stepped aside to allow the stocky, white-haired figure is black tie and dinner jacket to move to the podium. Enthusiastic applause arose from the three hundred guests gathered in the Hilton complex on the western outskirts of Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. The lights around the room dimmed, fading the audience into white s.h.i.+rtfronts, glittering throats and fingers, and mask like faces. A pair of spotlights picked out the speaker as he waited for the applause to subside. In the shadows next to him, the toastmaster returned to his chair.

After sixty-eight years of tussling with life, Congreve's bulldog frame still stood upright, his shoulders jutting squarely below his close-cropped head. The lines of his roughly chiseled face were still firm and solid, and his eyes twinkled good-humoredly as he surveyed the room. It seemed strange to many of those present that a man so vital, one with so much still within him, should be about to deliver his retirement address.

Few of the younger astronauts, scientists, engineers, and North American s.p.a.ce Development Organization executives could remember NASDO without Congreve as its president. For all of them, things would never be quite the same again.

"Thank you, Matt." Congreve's voice rumbled in a gravelly baritone from the speakers all around. He glanced from side to side to take in the whole of his audience. "I, ah-I almost didn't make it here at all."

He paused, and the last whispers of conversation died away. "A sign in the hall outside says that the fossil display is in twelve-oh-three upstairs." The American Archeological Society was holding its annual convention in the Hilton complex that week. Congreve shrugged. "I figured that had to be where I was supposed to go. Luckily I b.u.mped into Matt on the way, and he got me back on the right track." A ripple of laughter wavered in the darkness, punctuated by a few shouts of protest from some of the tables. He waited for silence, then continued in a less flippant voice. "The first thing I have to do is thank everybody here, and all the NASDO people who couldn't be with us tonight, for inviting me. Also, of course, I have to express my sincere appreciation for this, and even more my appreciation for the sentiments that it signifies. Thank you-all of you." As he spoke, he gestured toward the eighteen-inch-long, silver and bronze replica of the as yet unnamed, untried SP3 star probe that stood on its teak base before Congreve's place at the main table.

His voice became more serious as he continued. "I don't want to go off into a lot of personal anecdotes and reminiscences. That kind of thing is customary on an occasion such as this, but it would be trivial, and I wouldn't want my last speech as president of NASDO to be marked by trivia. The times do not permit such luxury. Instead, I want to talk about matters that are of global significance and which affect every individual alive on this planet, and indeed the generations yet to be born-a.s.suming there will be future generations." He paused. "I want to talk about survival-the survival of the human species."

Although the room was already quiet, the silence seemed to intensify with these words. Here and there in the audience, faces turned to glance curiously at one another. Clearly, this was not to be just another retirement speech. Congreve went on. "We have already come once to the brink of a third world war and hung precariously over the edge. Today, in 2015, twenty-three years have pa.s.sed since U.S. and Soviet forces clashed in Baluchistan with tactical nuclear weapons, and although the rapid spread of a fusion based economy at last promises to solve the energy problems that brought about that confrontation, the jealousies, mistrusts, and suspicions which brought us to the point of War then and which have persistently plagued our race throughout its history are as much in evidence as ever.

"Today the sustenance that our industries crave is not oil, but minerals. Fifty years from now our understanding of controlled-fusion processes will probably have eliminated that source of shortages too, but in the meantime shorter sighted political considerations are recreating the climate of tension and rivalry that hinged around the oil issue at the close of the last century. Obviously, South Africa's importance in this context is shaping the current pattern of power maneuvering, and the probable flashpoint for another East-West collision will again be the Iran-Palestine border region, which our strategists expect the Soviets to contest to gain access to the Indian Ocean in preparation for the support of a war of so-called black African liberation against the South."

Congreve paused, swept his eyes from one side of the room to the other, and raised his hands in resignation. "It seems that as individuals we can only stand by as helpless observers and watch the events that are sweeping us onward collectively. The situation is complicated further by the emergence and rapid economic and military growth of the Chinese-j.a.panese Co-Prosperity Sphere, which threatens to confront Moscow with an una.s.sailable power bloc should it come to align with ourselves and the Europeans. More than a few Kremlin a.n.a.lysts must see their least risky gamble as a final resolution with the West now, before such an alliance has time to consolidate. In other words, it would not be untrue to say that the future of the human race has never been at greater risk than it is at this moment."

Congreve pushed himself back from the podium with his arms and straightened. When he resumed speaking, his tone had lightened slightly. "In the area that concerns all of us here in our day-to-day lives, the accelerating pace of the s.p.a.ce program has brought a lot of excitement in the last two decades. Some inspiring achievements have helped offset the less encouraging news from other quarters: We have established permanent bases on the Moon and Mars; colonies are being built in s.p.a.ce; a manned mission has reached the moons of Jupiter; and robots are out exploring the farthest reaches of the Solar System and beyond. But"-he extended his arms in an animated sigh-"these operations have been national, not international. Despite the hopes and the words of years gone by, militarization has followed everywhere close on the heels of exploration, and we are led to the inescapable conclusion that a war, if it comes, would soon spread beyond the confines of the surface and jeopardize our species everywhere. We must face up to the fact that the danger now threatening us in the years ahead is nothing less than that."

He turned for a moment to stare at the model of SP3 gleaming on the table beside him and then pointed to it. "Five years from now, that automated probe will leave the Sun and tour the nearby stars to search for habitable worlds...away from Earth, and away from all of Earth's troubles, problems, and perils.

Eventually, if all goes well, it will arrive at same place insulated by unimaginable distance from the problems that promise to make strife an inseparable and ineradicable part of the weary story of human existence on this planet." Congreve's expression took on a distant look as he gazed at the replica, as if in his mind he were already soaring with it outward and away. "It will be a new place," he said in a faraway voice. "A new, fresh, vibrant world, unscarred by Man's struggle to elevate himself from the beasts, a place that presents what might be the only opportunity for our race to preserve an extension of itself where it would survive, and if necessary begin again, but this time with the lessons of the past to guide it."

An undercurrent of murmuring rippled quickly around the hall. Congreve nodded, indicating his antic.i.p.ation of the objections he knew would come. He raised a hand for attention and gradually the noise abated.

"No, I am not saying that SP3 could be modified from a robot craft to carry a human crew. The design could not feasibly be modified at this late stage. Too many things would have to be thought out again from the beginning, and such a task would require decades. And yet, nothing comparable to SP3 is anywhere near as advanced a stage of design at the present time, let alone near being constructed. The opportunity is unique and cannot, surely, be allowed to pa.s.s by. But at the same time we cannot afford the delay that would be needed to take advantage of that opportunity. Is there a solution to this dilemma?" He looked around as if inviting responses. None came.

"We have been studying this problem for some time now, and we believe there is a solution. It would not be feasible to send a contingent of adult humans, either as a functioning community or in some suspended sate, with the s.h.i.+p; it is in too advanced a stage of construction to change its primary design parameters.

But then, why send adult humans at all?" He spread his arms appealingly. "After all, the objective is simply to establish an extension of our race where it would be safe from any calamity that might befall us here, and such a location would be found only at the end of the voyage. The people would not be required either during the voyage or in the survey phase, since machines are perfectly capable of handling everything connected with those operations. People become relevant only when those phases have been successfully completed. Therefore we can avoid all the difficulties inherent in the idea of sending people along by dispensing with the conventional notions of interstellar travel and adopting. A totally new approach: by having the s.h.i.+p create the people after it gets there."

Congreve paused again, but this time not so much as a whisper disturbed the silence.

Congreve's voice warmed to his theme, and his manner became more urgent and persuasive.

"Developments in genetic engineering and embryology make it possible to store human genetic information in electronic form in the s.h.i.+p's computers. For a small penalty in s.p.a.ce and weight requirements, the s.h.i.+p's inventory could be expanded to include everything necessary to create and nurture a first generation of, perhaps, several hundred fully human embryos once a world is found which meets the requirements of the preliminary surface and atmospheric tests. They could be raised and tended by special-purpose robots that would have available to them as much of the knowledge and history of our culture as can be programmed into the s.h.i.+p's computers. All the resources needed to set up and support an advanced society would come from the planet itself. Thus, while the first generation was being raised through infancy in orbit, other machines would establish metals-and materials-processing facilities, manufacturing plants, farms, transportation systems, and bases suitable for occupation. Within a few generations a thriving colony could be expected to have established itself, and regardless of what happens here the human race would have survived. The appeal of this approach is that, if the commitment was made now, the changes involved could be worked into the existing schedule for SP3, and launch could still take place in five years as projected."

By this time life was flowing slowly back into his listeners. Although many of them were still too astonished by his proposal to react visibly, heads were nodding, and the murmurs running around the room seemed positive. Congreve nodded and smiled faintly as if savoring the thought of having kept the best part until last.

"The second thing I have to announce tonight is that such a commitment has now been made. As I mentioned a moment ago, this subject has been under study for a considerable period of time. I can now inform you that, three days ago, the President of the United States and the Chairman of the Eastern Co-Prosperity Sphere signed an agreement for the project which I have briefly outlined to be pursued on a joint basis, effective immediately. The activities of the various national and private research inst.i.tutions and other organizations that will be involved in the venture will be coordinated with those of the North American s.p.a.ce Development Organization and with those of our Chinese and j.a.panese partners under a project designation of Starhaven."

Congreve's face split into a broad smile. "My third announcement is that tonight does not mark my retirement from professional life after all. I have accepted an invitation from the President to take charge of the Starhaven project on behalf of the United States as the senior member nation, and I am relinquis.h.i.+ng my position with NASDO purely in order to give undivided attention to my new responsibilities. For those who might believe that I've given them some hard times in the past, I have to say with insincere apologies that I'm going to be around for some time longer yet, and that before this project is through the times are going to get a lot harder."

Several people at the back stood up and started clapping. The applause spread and turned into a standing ovation. Congreve grinned unabashedly to acknowledge the enthusiasm, stood for a while as the applause continued, and then grasped the sides of the podium again.

"We had our first formal meeting with the Chinese yesterday, and we've already made our first official decision." He glanced at the replica of the star-robot probe again. "SP3 now has a name. It has been named after a G.o.ddess of Chinese mythology whom we have adopted as a fitting patroness: Kuan-yin-the G.o.ddess who brings children. Let us hope that she watches over her children well in the years to come."

CHAPTER ONE.

ABOUT TWO HUNDRED feet below the ridgeline, the Third Platoon of D Company had set up its Tactical Battle Station in a depression surrounded by interconnecting patches of sagebrush and scrub. A corner in a low rock wall sheltered it on two sides, a large boulder closed in the third, and a parapet of smaller, fiat rocks protected it from the front; a thermal s.h.i.+eld stretched across the top hid the body heat of its occupants from the ever-vigilant sensors of hostile surveillance satellites.

The scene outside was deceptively quiet as Colman lifted a flap and peered out, keeping his head well back from the edge of the canopy. The hillside below the post fell steeply away, its features becoming rapidly indistinct in the feeble starlight before vanis.h.i.+ng completely into the featureless black of the gorge beneath. There was no moon, and the sky was clear as crystal. When his eyes had adjusted to the gloom, Colman s.h.i.+fted his attention to the nearer ground and methodically scanned the area in which the twenty-five men of the platoon had been concealed and motionless for the past three hours. If they had undercut their foxholes and weapons pits the way he had shown them and made proper use of the rocks and vegetation, they would stand a good chance of escaping detection. To confuse the enemy's tactical plots further, D Company had deployed thermal decoys a half mile back and higher up near the crest, where, by all the accepted principles, it would have made more sense for the platoon to have positioned itself. Auto timed to turn on and off in a random sequence to simulate movement, the decoys had been drawing sporadic fire for much of the night while the platoon had drawn none, which seemed to say something about the value of "the book" as rewritten by Staff Sergeant Colman. "There are two ways to do anything," he told the recruits. "The Army way and the wrong way. There isn't any other way. So when I tell you to do something the Army way, what does it mean?"

"It means do it your way, Sergeant."

"Very good."

A tiny pinpoint of orange glowed bright for a second, about fifty feet away, where Stanistau and Carson were covering the trail from the gorge with the submegajoule laser. Colman scowled to himself. He turned his head a fraction to whisper to Driscoll. "The LCP's showing a cigarette. Tell them to get rid of it."

Driscoll tapped into the finger panel of the compack, and from a spike pushed into the ground, ultrasonic vibrations spread outward through the soil, carrying the call sign of the Laser Cannon Post. "LCP reading," a muted voice acknowledged from the compack.

Driscoll spoke into the microphone boom projecting from his helmet. "Red Three, routine check." This would leave an innocuous record in the automatic signal logging system. In the darkness Driscoll pressed a key to deactivate the recording channel momentarily. "You're showing a light, s.h.i.+theads. Douse it or cover it." His finger released the key. "Report status, LCP."

"Ready and standing by," the voice replied neutrally. "Nothing to report." Outside, the pinpoint of light vanished abruptly.

"Remain at ready. Out."

Colman grunted to himself, made one final sweep of the surroundings, then dropped the flap back into place and turned to face inside. Behind Driscoll, Maddock was examining the bottom of the gorge through the image intensifier, while in the shadows next to him the expression of concentration on Corporal Swyley's face was etched sharply by the subdued glow of the forward terrain display screen propped in front of him.

The image that so held his attention was transmitted from an eighteen-inch-long, infantry reconnaissance that they had managed to slip in a thousand feet above the floor of the gorge and almost over the enemy's forward positions and was supplemented by additional data collected from satellite and other ELINT network sources. The display showed the target command bunker at the bottom of the gorge, known enemy weapons emplacements as computed from backplots of radar-tracked sh.e.l.l trajectories, and the locations of observation and fire command posts from source a.n.a.lysis triangulations of stray reflections from control lasers. On it the cool water of the stream and its tributaries stood out as black lines forking like twigs; the rock crags and boulders were shades of blue; living vegetation varied from rust brown on the hills to deep red where it crowded together along the lower slopes of the gorge; and sh.e.l.l and bomb scars glowed from dull orange to yellow depending on how recently the explosions had occurred.

But what Corporal Swyley was concentrating on so intently were the minute specks of brighter reds that might or might not have been imperfectly obscured defensive positions, and the barely discernible hairline fragments that could have been the thermal footprints of recent vehicle movements."

How Swyley did what only he did so well was something n.o.body was quite sure of, least of all Swyley himself. Whatever the reason, Swyley's ability to pick out significant details from a hopeless mess of background garbage and to distinguish consistently between valid information and decoys was justly famed and uncanny. But since Swyley himself didn't understand how he did it, he was unable to explain it to the systems programmers, who had hoped to duplicate his feats with their image-a.n.a.lysis programs.

That had been when the "-sits" and the "-zoologists" began their endless batteries of fruitless tests.

Eventually Swyley made up plausible-sounding explanations for the benefit of the specialists, but these were exposed when the programs written to their specifications failed to work. Then Swyley began claiming that his mysterious gift had suddenly deserted him completely.

Major Thorpe, Electronics Intelligence Officer at Brigade H.Q., had read somewhere that spinach and fish were sure remedies for failing eyesight, so he placed Corporal Swyley on an intensive diet. But Swyley hated spinach and fish even more than he hated being tested, and within a week he was afflicted by acute color-blindness, which he demonstrated by refusing to see anything at all in even the simplest of training displays.

After that, Swyley had been declared "maladjusted" and transferred to D Company, which was where all the misfits and malcontents ended up. Now his powers returned magically only when no officers were anywhere near him except for Captain Sirocco, who ran D Company and didn't care how Swyley got his answers as long as they came out right. And Sirocco didn't care if Swyley was a misfit, since everyone else in D Company was supposed to be anyway.

It probably meant that there was no easy way of getting out of D Company again let alone out of the regular service, Colman reflected as he watched in the darkness and waited for Swyley to deliver his verdict. And that made it unlikely that Colman would get the transfer into Engineering that he had requested, It seemed self-evident to him that n.o.body in his right mind would want to get killed, or to be sent to places he'd never heard of by people he'd never met in order to kill other people he didn't know.

Therefore n.o.body in his right mind would be in the Army. But since the Army was full of people whom it had judged to be acceptably sane and normal, it seemed to follow that the Army's ideas of what was normal had to be very strange. Now, to transfer into something like Engineering seemed on the face of it to be a perfectly natural, reasonable, constructive, and desirable thing to want to do. And that seemed enough to guarantee that the Army would find the request unreasonable and him unsuitable.

On the other hand, an important part of the evaluation was the psychiatric a.s.sessment and recommendation, and in the course of the several sessions that he had spent with Pendrey, the psychiatrist attached to Brigade, Colman had found himself harboring the steadily growing suspicion that Pendrey was crazy. He wondered if perhaps a crazy psychiatrist working with a crazy set of premises might end up arriving at sane answers in the same way that two logical inverters in series didn't alter the truth of a proposition; but then again, if Pendrey was normal by the Army's standards, the a.n.a.logy wouldn't work.

Sirocco had endorsed the request, it was true, but Colman wasn't sure it would count for very much since Sirocco ran D Company, and anything he said was probably inverted somewhere along the chain as a matter of course. Perhaps he should have persuaded Sirocco not to endorse the request. On the other hand, if anything recommended by Sirocco was inverted to start with, and if Pendrey was crazy but normal by the Army's standards, and if the premises that Pendrey was working with were also crazy, then the decision might come out in Colman's favor after all. Or would it? His attempt to think the tortuous logic of the situation once again was interrupted by Swyley at last leaning back and turning his face away from the screen.

"They've got practically all their strength out on the flanks both ways along the gorge," Swyley announced. "There are some units moving down the opposite slope, but they won't be in position for about another thirty minutes." The glow from the screen highlighted the mystified look that flashed across his face. He shrugged. "Right now they're wide open, right down below us."

"They don't have anything here?" Colman checked, touching the screen with a finger to indicate the place where the bottom of the trail emerged from a small wood on the edge of a gra.s.sy fiat and just a few hundred feet from the enemy bunker. The display showed a faint pattern of smudges on either side of the trail in just the positions where defensive formations would be expected.

Swyley shook his head. "Those are decoys. Like I said, they've moved practically all the guys out to the flanks"-he jabbed at the screen with a finger-"here, here, and here."

"Getting round behind B Company, and up over spur Four-nine-three," Colman suggested as he studied the image.

"Could be," Swyley agreed noncommittally.

"Looks dead as h.e.l.l down there to me," Maddock threw in without taking his eyes from the viewpiece of the intensifier.

"What do the seismics and Sniffers say about Swyley's decoys?" Colman asked, turning his head toward Driscoll.

Driscoll translated the question into a computer command and peered at the data summary on one of the compack screens. "Insignificant seismic above threshold at eight hundred yards. Downwind ratio less than five points up at four hundred. Negative corroboration from acoustics-background swamping." The computers were unable to identify vibration patterns correlating with human activity in the data coming in from the sensing devices quietly scattered around the gorge by low-flying, remote piloted "bees" on and off throughout the night; the chemical sensors located to the leeward of the suspected decoys were detecting little of the odor molecules characteristic of human bodies; the microphones had yielded nothing in the way of coherent sound patterns, but this was doubtless because of the white-noise background being generated in the vicinity of the stream. Although the evidence was only partial and negative at that, it supported Swyley's a.s.sertion that the main road down to the objective was, incredibly, virtually undefended for the time being.

Colman frowned to himself as his mind raced over the data's significance. No sane attacking force would contemplate taking an objective like that by a direct frontal a.s.sault in the center-the lowermost stretch of the trail was too well covered by overlooking slopes, and there would be no way back if the attack bogged down. That was what the enemy commander would have thought anyone would have thought. So what would be the point of tying up lots of men to defend a point that would never be attacked? According to the book, the correct way to attack the bunker would be along the stream from above or by crossing the stream below and coming down from the spur on the far side. So the other side was concentrating at points above both of the obvious a.s.sault routes and setting themselves up to ambush whichever attack should materialize. But in the meantime they were wide open in the middle.

"Alert all section leaders on the grid," Colman said to Driscoll. "And open a channel to Blue One."

Sirocco came through on the compack a few moments later, and Colman summarized the situation. The audacity of the idea appealed to Sirocco immediately. "We'd have to handle it ourselves. There isn't enough time to involve Brigade, but we could pin down those guys on the other side while you went in, and roll a barrage in front of you to clear obstacles." He was referring to the Company controlled robot batteries set up to the rear, below the crest line of the ridge. "It would mean going in without any counter battery suppression when you break though. What do you think?"

"If we went fast, we could make it without." Colman answered.

"Without CB suppression there wouldn't be time to move any of the other platoons round to back you up. You'd be on your own," Sirocco said.

"We can use the robot batteries to lay down a close cover screen from the flanks. If you give us an optical and IR blanket at twelve hundred feet, we can make it."

Sirocco hesitated for a split second. "Okay" he finally said. "Let's do it."

Ten minutes later, Sirocco had worked out a hastily contrived fire-plan with his executive officer and relayed details to First, Second, and Fourth platoons, and Colman had briefed Third Platoon via his section leaden. Colman secured and checked his equipment; unloaded, reloaded, and rechecked his M32 a.s.sault cannon; checked and inventoried his ammunition, As soon as the first salvo of smoke bombs burst at twelve hundred feet to blot out the area from hostile surveillance, the Third Platoon launched itself down the trail toward the denser vegetation below.

Moments later, optical interdiction sh.e.l.ls began exploding just below the curtain of smoke and spewed out clouds of aluminum dust to disrupt the enemy control and communications lasers. Ahead of the attacking troops, a concentrated point barrage of sh.e.l.ls and high-intensity pulsed beams fired from the fairing platoons rolled forward along the trail to clear the way of mines and other antipersonnel ordnance.

Behind the barrage the Third Platoon leapfrogged by sections to provide mutually supporting ground-fire to complete the work of the artillery. There was no opposition. The defending artillery opened up from the rear within ten seconds of the initial smoke blanket, but the enemy was firing blind and largely ineffectively.

In thirteen minutes the firefight was all over. Colman stood on the gravel bank of the stream and watched as a bewildered major was led from the enemy bunker, followed by his numb staff, who joined the gaggle of disarmed defenders being herded together under the watchful eyes of smirking Third Platoon guards.

The primary objective had been to take prisoners and obtain intelligence, and the crop had yielded two captains in addition to the major, a first and a second lieutenant, a chief warrant officer, a sergeant major, two sergeants, and over a dozen enlisted men. Moreover, the call-sign lists and maps had been seized intact, along with invaluable communications and weapons-control equipment. Not a bad haul at all, Colman reflected with satisfaction.

The computers had p.r.o.nounced two men of Third Platoon killed and five wounded seriously enough to have been incapacitated. Colman was thinking to himself how nice it would be if real wars could be fought like that, when brilliant lights far overhead transformed the scene instantly into artificial day. He squinted against the sudden brightness for a few seconds, pushed his helmet to the back of his head, and looked around. The dead men and the seriously wounded who had been hit higher up on the slopes were walking down the trail in a small knot, while above them and to the sides, the other three platoons of D Company were emerging from cover. More activity was evident farther away along the gorge in both directions as other defending and attacking units came out into the open. Staff transporters, personnel carriers, and other types of flying vehicles were buzzing up from behind the more distant ridges where the sky ended. Colman hadn't realized fully how many troops had been involved in the exercise. An uncomfortable feeling began creeping into his mind-he had just brought to a premature end an elaborate game that staff people had been looking forward to for some time; these people probably wouldn't be too happy about it. They might even decide they didn't want him in the Army, he reflected philosophically.

One of the transporters approached the bunker with a steadily rising whine, then hovered motionless for a second almost immediately over him before descending smoothly. Its rear door slid open to reveal the lean, swarthy figure of Captain Sirocco in helmet and battledress, still wearing his flak-vest. He jumped out nimbly while the transporter was still six feet above the ground, and ambled up to Colman. Behind his ample black moustache, the easy-going lines of his face betrayed as little as ever, but his eyes were twinkling. "Pretty good, Steve," he said without preamble as he turned with his hands on his hips to survey the indignant scowls from the captured "enemy" officers standing sullenly by the bunker. "I don't think we'll get any Brownie points for it though. We broke just about every rule in the book." Colman grunted. He hadn't expected much else. Sirocco raised his eyebrows and inclined his head in a way that could have meant anything. "Frontal a.s.sault on a strongpoint, exposed flanks, no practical means of retreat, no contingency plan, inadequate ground suppression, and no counter battery cover," he recited matter-of-factly, at the same time sounding unperturbed.

"What about leaving your chin wide open?" Colman asked. "Isn't there anything in the rules about that?"

"Depends who you are. For D Company all things are relative."

"Ever think of making a new seat for your pants out of part of that flak-jacket?" Colman asked after a pause. "You're probably gonna need it."

"Ah, who gives a s.h.i.+t?" Sirocco looked Up. "Anyhow, won't be much longer before we find out."

Colman followed his gaze. An armored VIP carrier bearing a general's insignia on its nose was angling toward them. Colman s.h.i.+fted his M32 to the other shoulder and straightened up to watch. "Smarten it up," he called to the rest of Third Platoon, who were smoking, talking, and lounging in groups by the stream and around the bunker. The cigarettes were ground out under the heavy soles of combat boots, the chattering died away, and the groups shuffled themselves into tidier ranks.

"On what did you base your a.n.a.lysis of the situational display, Sergeant?" Sirocco asked, speaking in a clipped, high-pitched voice mimicking the formal tones of Colonel Wesserman, who was General Portney's aide. He injected a note of suspicion and accusation into the voice. "Was Corporal Swyley instrumental in the formulation of your tactical evaluation?" The question was bound to arise; the image a.n.a.lysis routines run at Brigade would have yielded nothing to justify the attack.

"No, sir," Colman replied stiffly, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead. "Corporal Swyley was manning the compack. He would not have been a.s.signed to ELINT a.n.a.lysis. He's color-blind."

"Then how do you explain your extraordinary conclusions?"

"I suppose we just guessed lucky, sir."

Sirocco sighed. "I suppose I have to put it in writing that I authorized the a.s.sault on my own initiative and without any substantiating data." He c.o.c.ked his head at Colman. "Happen to know anyone around here who makes a good pair of pants?"

Ahead of them the door of the VIP carrier opened to expose the rotund form of Colonel Wa.s.sermann.

His florid face was even more florid than usual and swelled into a deep purple at the neck. He seemed to be choking with suppressed fury.

"I guess he doesn't have a nose for the sweet smell of success," Colman murmured as they watched.

Sirocco twirled one side of his moustache pensively for a second or two. "Success is like a fart," he said. "Only your own smells nice."

CHAPTER TWO.

A SUDDEN CHANGE in the colors and format of one of the displays being presented around him in the monitor room of the Drive Control Subcenter caught Bernard Fallows's eye and dismissed other thoughts from his mind. The display was one of several a.s.sociated with Number 5 Group of the Primary Fuel Delivery System and related to one of the batteries of enormous hydrogen-feed boost pumps located in the tail section of the vessel, five miles from where Fallows was sitting.

"What's happening on Five-E, Horace?" he asked the empty room around him.

"Low-level trend projection," the subcenter executive computer replied through a small grille set to one side of Fallow's console. "Booster vee-sub-three's looking as if it's going to start running hot again.

Correlation integral sixty-seven, check function positive, expansion index eight-zero."

"Reading at index six?"