Kenneth Bulmer - Behold the Stars

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BEHOLD THE STARS

Printed in U.S.A.

Every year the reunion was held in a private room of a small secluded club where they sought

fragmen-tarily for the comradeship that had really existed out there among the stars.

This year the reunion would be different. They'd still congregate happily together and sing the old songs

and remember; but this year the rejoicing held a sharper, a more poignant, an urgent note.

For a few days before the reunion David Ward would think back happily and nostalgically to those days

of vio-lence, and would forget the violence and think only of how old Pinky Dawson had commandeered a

Navy scow for pla-net leave and of how old Kicker Sloane and he had walked off with the only two eligible

girls on Dirthram IV, and of a hundred other quizzical comical sadly merry little incidents of those four

jagged years of his life.

He would look forward to the reunion hopefully, as each year passed and his buddies filled out and

married and be-came good citizens—they really had been a tear-away bunch. He would go along to enjoy

himself in the old talk and the jargon and the memories. But each year brought the same jokes and the same

memories that yet were subtly not the same, so that the outlines blurred and—was it Johnny Red who got

that Venie gunner on their forward base or was it Jackie Franks?—no, he bought it in the drop on

Suvla—surely that was when that new blond young shavetail got his when his parapack

roman-candled—no, you're thinking of that guy, what was his name? was always sick when we went

through the box ...

And so on.

He would come away from the reunions, happily fogged on his alcohol limit, whistling one of the old

songs that sounded so damned embarrassing any other time, feeling somnolently good; they were a good

bunch of guys. But the next day he'd wonder why he'd bothered, at a loss to explain why he hadn't foreseen

this let-down feeling and had the nous to duck out of it.

A little of that anticlimax feeling pervaded him as he strolled into the foyer of the club and was directed

to the private room on the twentieth storey.

"Hi, Dave!"

It was Crombie.

"Hi, Alex," said Ward, smiling, shaking hands. "You look sleeker than a mouse-fed kitten. What's your

secret?"

"A clear conscience, and a good night's rest." Crombie winked. "And that's what I tell my wife, for the

record."

David Ward had not seen Alex Crombie since last year's reunion; he didn't keep up the old contacts as

some did— about the only ex-trooper he saw at all regularly was Steve Jordan, and that because Jordan

had been his oppo and was still his best friend in a lonely life. Now Ward smiled at Crombie as though at a

bosom comrade and, throwing off that chill depression he was feeling, went with him into the elevator and

so to the private room.

The noise hit them before the cage stopped at the twen-tieth floor.

"The boys are whooping it up already." Crombie couldn't wait for the gates to open. "And I'm as dry as

Mars! Come on, Dave."

"Right with you."

"Where's Steve?" Crombie reached the door and hammer-ed on it, disdaining 'the ident robot. "Thought

for sure you two'd turn up together as always."

"I don't know. I was waiting for him down below . . ."

The door opened, emitting a blast of heat and sound, and effectively preventing Ward from continuing.

Jim Wichek stood welcoming them inside the room, red-haired, squat, thick, tough and with hands that

could as-semble a transistorized printed-circuit lashup with tremorless delicacy under nuclear attack. He

wore the regulation issue enormous smile from ear to ear.

"Alex. Dave. Come on in."

Familiar faces popped shining from the haze as men circulated, orbiting on the bar at the end of the room

and talking, talking, talking. Heart-warming stuff. The right session for a man to forget today and remember

the more glorious past. Nobody wore medals, of course; they weren't gong-hunters. But had they done so,

the starry glare would have been brilliant. They were an elite. They were, in their own unspoken estimation,

the elite.

Dinner was served. Ward tucked in, determined to en-joy it. The thought scarcely crossed his mind that

this good food had been processed in vast factories, manufactured by bacteria and viruses, perhaps barely a

quarter growing naturally on fields in the open air. It tasted fine. Turtle soup. Crisp golden-brown rolls with

white fluffy bread, thick rich-ly-smooth butter. Dover Sole. Steaks—of varying cuts and degrees of

cooking, on demand from the robots to suit indi-vidual tastes. Sweets, Zabaglioni. Liqueurs, coffee, brandy;

the whole works. Each man present eating a meal of his own choosing, and yet sharing it with his comrades

as a part in a joint function.

A Man's meal.

Leaning back, replete, satisfied in body but still troubled in mind, Ward thought again of Steve Jordan,

glanced un-easily at the single empty chair and place setting.

As soon as he decently could after the meal, when the ex-troopers were once again standing and sitting

around the bar and looking forward to a night of it, Ward walked through to the phone booths. Snatches of

conversation rode tag on him, like sheepdogs herding along an ungainly flock: First time I went through the

box I couldn't tell my elbow from my—those poor Navy slobs thought we were a bunch of ghosts—but

there's nothing like sleeping in your own bed at nights . . .

He called Jordan's home first. He couldn't understand why Jordan hadn't left his destination on his phone

robot; he'd expected to hear: "Mr. Stephen Jordan is attending an Army reunion tonight and requests

messages be left." But this blank ding ding of the call bell infuriated and alarmed him. He called Stella

Ransome's number and again that mocking ding ding was all his reward. Common sense told him that they

were out together. This vague dyspeptic feeling of unrest that had dogged him all evening must be growing

blackly from his own awareness that he didn't possess a girl like Stella, that he wasn't progressing in civilian

life like Steve Jordan and the rest of his buddies, that life was slipping past and nothing had been done.

At last, and feeling irrationally that he was prying, he called Jordan's office.

"Ransome Stellar Corporation."

At least here he had a reply, even if it was only a robot.

"Mr. Stephen Jordan, please."

"Mr. Stephen Jordan. He is attending an Army reunion tonight—"

"Thank you; but he isn't. Will you check if he is still in the offices."

The robot could carry out that simple internal office check in fifteen seconds.

"I am sorry, sir. Mr. Jordan is not on the premises."

If he asked the robot to check if anyone knew where Steve had gone it might raise questions better left

unposed. After all, he wasn't Steve's keeper . . .. Just that it wasn't like the guy . . .

"Thank you," he said and cut the connection.

Jack Tracy was talking to a circle of men whose faces looked serious and in strange contrast to their

previous gay hilarity. After one or two words Ward knew why. Tracy was talking about the threat hanging

over them, the un-spoken fears thronging all their brains, the dark shadow that made this reunion so

different from all the previous ones.

". . . secrets." Tracy looked up as Ward joined the circle and he did not smile a welcome. He went on

evenly: "I'm not spilling anything that you all won't know pretty soon and I wouldn't be telling you guys even

this much if I didn't know you all. After all—you may be ex-troopers but you're still Army."

"They won't get me back in the mob, that I swear," someone said on a note of grim determination.

"Let's hope there's no need. But out beyond Ramses we're beginning a build up. The poor old Navy is

chasing its tail as usual and getting really fouled up in the process. If it wasn't for the Army I'd almost sign

up with the Gershmi myself—" He shook his head. "Stupid talk. Those aliens may look like us and the

Venies and the Centaurians and Procyns and a dozen other local stellar races; but they're more alien, if you

allow a vague statement like that—"

"We know what you mean." Crombie sat quietly with the others now, his usual liveliness not evident.

"We remember the Venies as they were—oh—ten years ago. But today they're just another friendly race

in our local interstellar civilization. Sometimes you can make contact with an alien race and remain friends

and sometimes there just has to be a dumb stupid war. But so far we haven't bumped into any alien aliens

so hostile that they won't see sense."

"And so these Gershmi, too, will become our friends!" George Appleby spoke quietly but with complete

conviction.

"Say, Jack," Crombie broke in, "are we at war with the Gershmi or aren't we?"

"I don't know." Tracy held up his hands in bafflement. "No one does. We've tangled a few times out

past Ramses. One or two ships have been reported missing. But we don't want another war, it's too darned

soon after the Venie clash. But they might think we are at war. And that would make the difference."

"If there is a war with the Gershmi then we'll be in it," someone put in.

"And," Tracy added evenly, "their transit equipment is right up there with ours. Good. What we can do,

they can do too. We had a fractional edge over the Venies. But not with these boys."

"Well," said Vince Macklin belligerently, "we're all young enough to be called back into the Army and

we're all capable of making a box drop. If these damned Gershmi are asking for it then I for one am

prepared to hand it to them—and not worry too much how damaged they get. Right?"

Only when he was shrugging on his coat to leave and shouting good-byes and promises to ring friends

and to turn up faithfully next year did David Ward think that if war with the Gershmi became a fact he, too,

would once more have to don the green Army uniform and drop through hellfire on-to a hostile planet.

The first thing David Ward did the following morning was to ring Steve Jordan's apartment to give him a

piece of his mind.

The answerobot said: "Mr. Stephen Jordan has left town and it is not certain when he will be back. Will

you please leave any message."

Ward opened his mouth to reply, cursed, and slammed the receiver back. What the hell? Still, it wasn't

his business.

If Jordan wanted to take a trip then that was up to him. Ward left for work. He was three minutes early

and that made him smile. The front office would start thinking that at last David Ward was trying to make

something of him-self.

His footfalls soundless on the deep pile of the carpet in reception, he walked past the robots already

handling rou-tine staff duties at the counters and headed for the elevator banks. He had an hour's office

work before his first trip. All about him rose the monstrous hundred and fifty storey edifice of Solterran

Space Agency. Here many thousands of men and women attended to the needs and problems of Earth's

position in space. Here policies were initiated and in-vestigated and matured so that Man's outward thrust

for the stars should be ordered and economical and of most effect.

These days you couldn't just slam the airlock on your spaceship and blast off for the planets. Anyway,

space-ships were absolutely useless for interstellar work, even in-terplanetary, and as such performed their

tasks well within reach of their planetary bases.

Except for the Carriers.

The box bags.

Those were what was carrying mankind out to the stars and they were what made life real and earnest

for Ward and for men like him.

He checked his clip for the day's assignments and grimaced as he saw they'd set him up for three

carriers. Three. Well, if nothing went wrong and each box bag behaved itself there still should be a little

overtime in it for him.

Down in the canteen, a tall, freckle-faced man with athle-tic shoulders and modishly slim waist walked

across and sat down at Ward's table.

"Say, Dave, have you heard? Jimmy Kinross went missing on his last assignment yesterday."

Ward put the coffee cup down deliberately. His mind blanked for an instant, then he said: "No, Bill, I

hadn't heard. That's bad."

Bill Roscoe sipped his own coffee as though to collect his thoughts. Roscoe was a Navy man,

Lieutenant Comman-der, trim and efficient in Navy whites. He wasn't just passing the time of day.

"What happened?" asked Ward.

Roscoe frowned. "He transited okay. The circuits were operating on all systems go. But he didn't return

on time. I went through to check and there was no sign of him. I know he'd reached his carrier and begun

to stock the mat-ter bins—but he'd evidently been interrupted. They were still filling and overflowing when I

had to stop them to tran-sit myself."

"But he couldn't have just disappeared."

Ward couldn't help thinking of Steve Jordan. But there was no comparison in the two cases of

disappearance—if Jordan could be said to have disappeared at all.

"But he could, Dave, and you damned well know it."

"But we haven't had a miss in—oh, in ten years or more! Why now? Why should we have a miss now?"

"We may not have. He got there safely. He began his job. When I went after him there wasn't a sign.

He may not have tried to return—we'd know if he had and he gave us no indication of it."

"He'd have called for the fuel lines to be stopped any-way."

"Yes. But he didn't."

"Well, what's all this nonsense about a miss?"

Roscoe rubbed a hand across his forehead. "We just don't know, Dave. He's just disappeared. We've

got to look for any eventuality however remote."

"Well what do you think happened?"

Roscoe looked uncomfortable.

"Jimmy was servicing a carrier on the Ganges run."

"Thank you for telling me." Ward saw it all now, the whole messy business. He spelled it out. "The

Ganges run trajectory goes out past Ramses. The carriers are well on their vector past it. And I've three

carriers on the Ganges run today."

"Check," said Roscoe. He spoke without enthusiasm.

"But surely—you don't think—I mean . . . Oh, no!"

"Salter has been informed on this. He and most of the top brass think what you're thinking right now but

there's no way to prove it."

"The Gershmi."

"Seems like it, Dave. It would explain the facts."

Ward suddenly didn't feel too well.

"Is this official, Bill? Are you telling me I'm laid off these assignments today?"

Slowly Roscoe shook his head.

"No, Dave. You're not. You'll be transiting as planned—"

"But, Bill, for gosh sakes! I don't want to step out of the box and be blasted or something by a damned

Gershmi!"

"Wait a minute. I'm going along too. We'll go ready for trouble. But those three carriers need servicing.

They haven't been looked at for a year. They'll run out of steam and that will foul up the whole landing

pattern."

"I know that. But why me? I'm a civilian. They ought to send the Navy in. It's their pigeon."

"I'm going along too, remember? And I'm Navy."

"But I'm not—!"

"Maybe. But you're a Solterran Government employee; a civilian, yes, but a civilian with special rights

and privileges and duties. We'll have a back-up team of marines—"

"I don't like the sound of that back up. Why can't they go first?"

Roscoe laughed. "Maybe they will, at that. Come on. We ought to get down to the Drain."

"The Drain," said Ward, rising and looking unhappy. "That doesn't sound so funny now."

Going down in the elevator through the armored shell covering the elevator and trolley lines, and

boarding a trolley that soughed off into the lighted tube slanting into the ground away from the SSA building,

Ward tried to tell himself that Salter, the big boss, wouldn't send men out to their deaths. That wouldn't be

economical. Men's lives were the most precious single asset that Solterra possessed. You don't throw away

your best cards . . . unless you're backed up against a wall and have nothing left to lose.

The trolley contained half a dozen other operators, a few techs and a sprinkling of Naval personnel. The

lighted tube leveled off and the airpumps smoothly evened out the mo-mentary imbalance of air pressure so

that no ears popped. Down here they were a mile or more beneath the ground. The Drain was even lower.

Above them, half a mile beneath the surface, stretched the armored membrane protecting the Drain.

That membrane com-pletely surrounded the Drain, like a gigantic ball, allowing of ingress only through

miserly orifices deep below the top-most levels. The biggest concentration of nuclear weapons known to

man could explode all around the concentric ring of defences, could rip and tear the very Earth apart, and

still the ball containing the Drain would remain impervious.

The trolley halted silently at the last station before the armor and everyone alighted for security check.

Normally security checks were strict but formal; it was hardly likely that anyone of Earth would wish to

destroy the Drain, but the eventuality must be taken into account. And as all al-iens so far encountered by

Earthmen were humanoid, then checks against them, also, must be stringent. Today Ward caught a

tenseness, a more than usual alertness, a sense of urgency that, he supposed with a little shiver, must

originate in snap orders sent down by Salter after the incident of Jim-my Kinross's disappearance.

Checks over, they waited quietly in line before their as-signed box door. Ward stepped through,

emerging from the matching door on the inside of the armored membrane. Quick-ly, he and Roscoe walked

through to the trolley waiting to take them to their work area.

Captain Mainwaring met them, looking harassed and yet still contriving to keep his dignity as a shield

between him and lesser mortals.

"Ah, Commander Roscoe. I see you've briefed Ward. Ma-jor Perry will take his squad in first. You will

be issued sidearms. Ward, your job is just the same as it always is. Don't get flustered. As soon as you're

through the Marines will take care of everything. Understood?"

Mainwaring was Navy. Ward smiled, a smile he tried to make thin, as though he felt supremely

confident. Thank-fully he saw Major Perry and his file of Marines approaching.

Major Perry looked like a bulldog. Like his men, he wore full combat uniform. From the bulbous helmet

down past the armor and the spring-heel boots, he looked tough, trim, trained, very deadly. His pale blue

eyes and thin nose, the heavy jaw and flushed cheeks, all reminded Ward of the way many men had looked

going into combat. He felt a pulse start up in his temple and his annoyance at that stif-fened his spine.

Goddamittohell! He, an Army man, wasn't going to pieces before these poor Navy and Marine types!

Never!

He walked across to his locker to pull out his space suit.

"You'd better wear an armored suit," Roscoe said. "The Marines have brought up a couple of spares—if

you don't object to wearing Marine gear?" he finished with a flash of sarcasm. Roscoe knew, as many in

SSA did not, that Ward had been an Army man.

"That'll suit me fine," Ward said gruffly.

Major Perry picked up a Massenet Nine—a sweet little hand gun that coughed a hundred miniaturized

high-explosive shells in half a second—hefted it and then tossed it curtly at Ward. Ward caught it by the

butt, twirled it, caught it by the butt again and felt the safety with the fleshy part of his thumb.

Perry raised his eyebrows, his face grimly amused behind the emergency faceplate of his helmet, the

visor high and peaked above his head.

"You've handled one of those before?"

"Uh-huh," Ward said, annoyed with himself for showing off.

The Marines formed a single file and unlimbered their wea-pons, holding them ready for instant action.

In back of the group a second team of Marines waited by the single exit door from this flat. They were

there in case the operation backfired and the Drain was faced with an incursion of Ger-shmi out for blood.

A bull-necked, craggy, immense Marine with enough stripes on his arm to fence in a state prison stood

at the head of the line. Plastic sheathed concrete walls surrounded them, fluorescents blazed down, air

filters maintained the atmos-phere at its best level for human toleration. Ward and the team going through

couldn't feel that; they were already on suit air, their helmets battened down and clamped. Ma-jor Perry

slammed his own visor down, gave a single curt gesture with his hand, and stepped forward as the

fire-en-gine red door silently opened.

Ward licked his lips. Despite the filters and wipers in his suit, he was sweating, and he felt the dizzying

fingers of fear clawing at him. He wasn't enjoying this one little bit.

The big top sergeant stepped in, the door shut, the scar-let transitter light glowed for the second time, the

door opened as more air gushed into the waiting vacuum. The line moved up one.

Major Perry came through on the phone to Mainwaring; Ward and the others waiting in their suits

couldn't hear the conversation, they could only see Mainwaring nodding and looking relieved and his urgent

gesture to the men to get on with it. He hadn't stopped the transit, so Perry must have reported in negative

on Gershmi.

Ward felt relief go through him like a weakening flux.

Only four men left now, and Roscoe, before him . . . Three . . . Two . . . He became acutely aware of

where he was. Buried deep within the inconceivably tough armored membrane of the Drain, surrounded by

millions of tons of rock and concrete and steel and plastic, deep within the earth, he had for a tiny instant

the sensation of being crushed.

One...

Roscoe said: "Just stick close to the box as you come through, Dave. Major Perry has everything under

control out there."

"See you," Ward said, fumbling the words.

Now why should he get all het up now about this transit when everything had gone well? If there hadn't

been this stupid hitch, the disappearance of Jimmy Kin-ross, the intervention of Major Perry and the

Marines, he would have been halfway through servicing the carrier by now. And he wouldn't have been in

a blue funk about stepping past that red door into the box, either.

The green ready light glowed as air pumped hissingly into the vacuum of the box. The fire-engine red

door opened and he stepped through. The door closed and the internal red light cycled.

The door in front of him opened and he stepped through. He hadn't switched on his exo-skeleton power

and he drifted easily across in free fall to grasp a stanchion anchoring the box to the floor of the carrier

deck. Roscoe hung at right angles to him half way up one wall. Perry and his Marines were fanned out all

around the box and the big top sergeant was just going through the lock out onto the hull.

"All okay, Dave." Roscoe gave the thumbs up and his ar-mored body swayed in reaction. "Get on with it,

there's a good boy."

"And make it snappy, Ward." Major Perry's grating voice rode in over Roscoe's last words. "I'm sending

a party across to the other carriers—doing it physically. They're within a coupla hundred miles of us right

now."

"And that's good shooting," Ward had to say.

"Sure," Perry came right back. "That's your job."

A fraction of a second before he had been standing on concrete, deep within the Earth, surrounded by

armor and machines and men and women; now he stood in the hollow steel hull of a spaceship spearing

through space fifty light years or more from Earth.

That meant little; it was his condition of work.

He set about servicing the carrier with methodical thor-oughness, forcing himself to slow down, to make

a good job of it.

No damn Gershmi would make him skimp a job.

The fuel bins were nearly empty. He'd do those first, as per schedule. He unhooked the phone and

called Earth on the direct line. Mainwaring answered.

"Put Chuck on, will you, Captain? Let's get this heap ser-viced fast."

"Chuck, here," came Marlow's familiar voice from Earth, riding along the carrier waves that had a

moment before brought Ward and Roscoe and Perry and his men through some queer non-space to the

carrier fifty light years from the planet of their birth. "Everything okay?"

"Sure. Sorry I didn't get to speak to you; too many uniforms around."

Chuck Marlow was a civilian, too, the switch operator on this shift for Earth.

"You're fueling from Zanzibar Twenty today. I'm on the line to them. Switching you—now."

The phone crackled softly, like soggy cereal. Then a new voice: "Zanzibar Twenty here. Smithson. All

ready when you are, Dave."

"Hi, Smitty." Ward set up the deflector circuits, checked that the red box door was shut—he didn't want

a spray of dirt sprouting through the crew flat of the carrier—and thumbed the toggle. "Start her going."

The control board lit up with the telltales, indicating that the deflectors were in operation and functioning

on the top line. From Zanzibar Twenty—a small outer planet five thou-sand million miles from a minor

sun—in the Zanzibar sys-tem, thirty light years from Earth and thus about twenty from the carrier, a stream

of rock and minerals and dirt dug from the soil, loosened by robot mining equipment and funneled through

the box, spouted across space and into the box aboard the carrier and was deflected into the fuel bins. For a

moment Ward watched the fuel meters, noted their steady rise.

"Okay, Smitty. Your stuff is coming in fine."

He had no need for the servicing manuals or schedules in their plastic sheaths tagged to the control

fascia. He'd been servicing carriers for six years now and knew the drill.

After an hour of general checks, minor adjustments, a thor-ough going-over, he felt satisfied that this

Ganges carrier was functioning on all systems go.

"I'm going outside now," he called to Roscoe.

The Navy man had been perched up in the angle of deck and wall, wedged comfortably in, watching

Ward at work.

"Right, Dave. If you want to make course corrections you'll have to check with the Major first."

"What the—! Why?"

Roscoe's words came thinly. "Use your head, Dave. If there are Gershmi hanging around a flare of

energy will bring them like hungry sharks."

"Yeah. I get you. Well, here goes."

He sailed up towards the air lock and stepped through. No air inside the ship meant no wait for cycling,

and he went straight on through the outer valve. They'd designed air locks into the carriers but no external

viewports—that made sense, micrometeorites would have sandblasted them into useless opaqueness in

months—but Ward figured they might have installed a screen. But then, if the designers had done that, he

wouldn't have had the chance of going out-side, the best part of any servicing transit.

He stood on the carrier's hull, activating his magneboots, and stared about him in a genuine pleasure that

all the fears of Gershmi and of violent action could not alloy. Look-ing out on space like this, at the eternal

stars, gave him a feel-ing of peace. Many men felt their own insignificance, facing the stars. A man was

after all but a tiny mote of dust set in a strange and terrifying environment.

But that was not all. Man by his very being negated the senselessness on the universe. David Ward was

a man, a hu-man being, from the planet Earth. He was proud of that. Proud, because he could think about

the stars and the planets and the comets of space—and they were mere bundles of mat-ter, dead, for all

their giant outpouring of energies, dead, unreasoning, unthinking. No—Dave Ward wasn't afraid of the

might of space.

He was afraid, very much so, of other human beings, aliens, with the minds and thoughts of thinking

beings, who might bear him no good will.

The carrier had drifted a mere thousandth of a degree off course; probably one of the multifarious shifts

of gravita-tional attraction interlacing through space had proved to be stronger than originally predicted. A

microsecond of thrust would put her back on course. He made the necessary calcu-lations, using his

equipment and then, after a last long look around, went back inside.

Out there, too, prowled the Gershmi.

Space did not belong to the men of Earth. They might send off their ships on the long lonely treks; but

others could do the same. No one owned space. You could only try to own the little chips of matter orbiting

parent suns; you could lay claim only to the planets.

Jimmy Kinross must have done this. He must have set his fuel supply pouring into the bins, transmitted

from what-ever feed point had been allocated for the day, and then gone outside to check his astrogation.

And he hadn't come back inside the carrier. That seemed the obvious answer to his disappearance. Had

Gershmi taken him? Had he been killed, taken away to some unimaginable hell of alien in-vention?

Ward shuddered.

"All set okay, Dave?" Roscoe's voice startled him; he was too used to operating on carrier assignments

alone.

"Yeah. I need to use energy, though; a small correction."

"I'll check with the Major."

Ward left him to it and went down aft to run a final check on the engines.

The decision whether or not to fire the steering tubes lay with the Major. Ward would see the

reasonableness of the Marine's position; the stern engines to which Ward was now sailing through the

empty hull gave off a steady beat of energy as they converted the rocky fuel and thrust the carrier forward

steadily at a low g acceleration, safe and economical and quite insufficient to give the semblance of gravity

aboard, so that free fall conditions prevailed. But to introduce a sudden modulation to the energy pattern

radiating from the carrier would indicate the presence of life; the carrier's energy patterns would no longer

be swal-lowed up by the eternal beat of power from the stars and the waiting Gershmi would home in to

rend and destroy.

That is—if Solterra was at war with the Gershmi.

Even if there was no war, there was absolutely no guar-antee what a hot-headed alien race might do.

If Perry decided not to fire the jets, Ward, for one, wouldn't object.

Trouble there, though, was that the carrier would con-tinue on a diverging course from the Ganges run.

Just how much later on the corrections could be made, Ward, of course, could not know; but he did know

that the longer they were left the more violent they would have to be.

The engines were running sweetly and Ward saw at a glance that his ministrations were not needed.

Rock and dirt from the bins fed through hoppers into the converters, driv-ing the ship gently forward. That

gentle drive steadily puls-ing away over the years had already built up a sizeable c number. The carrier, in

theory, if propelled at one g for a year or so should attain c unity—the velocity of light. They hadn't done

that yet, although they'd struck very near it, and some of the effects had been very peculiar indeed.

He checked that the dials gave the same values as the repeaters on the control panel. Current

speed—point three two one seven c. Nearly a third of the speed of light. Not bad. The Ganges cluster of

stars lay sixty-nine light years from Earth. The carrier had reached to within nineteen light years. There

was still some way and time to go before she would be turned end for end—exactly at the halfway mark

—and her speed be meticulously dropped off in the same ratio as she had built it up.

The really exciting times for a carrier supervisor were the days when a carrier reached her objective.

Ward had shared in three of those in his six years' service and he really yearned for more. That was when

all the toil and planning and sweat paid off.

Roscoe's voice called him on his headphones.

"Everything all set to go, Dave, apart from the course cor-rection?"

"Everything. As soon as I put the old tub back on course we can transit out."

He began to make his way forward again, arriving in the control position with the fire-engine red door of

the box closed and waiting. He switched the deflectors out of action as the bins filled to maximum capacity,

and then looked at the door. Through it lay the Earth.

Major Perry said: "Reports from the other two carriers are negative. My radar search reports no sign of

any suspi-cious object in space for a thousand miles." His voice rough-ened. "Make your course

corrections, Ward! To hell with the Gershmi ... If they do show up, we'll be waiting for them!"

III

"We need this license and we need it fast!" Old Man Ran-some hammered a sinewy fist onto his

teakwood desk. His high cockscomb of silver hair danced over a baby-pink skull. His thin, pinched,

dedicated features were flushed with a fine network of veins spidering the skin. "We're a private con-trol

corporation, not a Terran State enterprise! You get onto Bates at the Ministry and jolt him up a bit! You're

here to run things, Mikardo, and by damn you'll run them my way!"

Gerald Mikardo sighed—but he was careful to sigh under his breath. Old Man Ransome had a bite that

was way worse than his bark; and that was bad enough. Mikardo of-ten wondered why he bothered to

head up Ransome Stel-lar Corporation; but he knew the answer to that: money, money and a position where

juggling with power invigora-ted him every minute of every day.

"You hear me, Gerald? Get your tail outta here and go chase Bates! I want that license and I mean to

have it!"

They were sitting in Old Man Ransome's private office on the one hundred and tenth storey penthouse

atop the RSC building. From the sweep of picture windows you could see away over the city, northwards,

to where the colossal bulk of the SSA building towered even higher than Ransome's little pile, dominating

the skyline, blue with distance.

There were a few dozen other skyscrapers of such size dotted about the city; but over the last fifty or so

years the fashion had declined. Ransome's had been the last to rise, shaking a fist against the sky.

"Well?" rasped Ransome.

Mikardo flushed darkly beneath his tanned skin and rose from the formfit.

"I'm on my way, sir. I don't anticipate much trouble with Bates; but he might be difficult—"

"It's your job to undifficult him! Git!"

"Yes, sir."

Gerald Mikardo slid the door closed behind him manual-ly, hard. He didn't have time for the doorobot to

do it for him. He wanted to get out of there, fast. The Old Man was always overpowering; but lately a

demon seemed to be driving him. It wasn't even that he was that old; he couldn't be much more than

ninety-six, just the right age to handle the complexities of a corporation as vast as Ransome Stellar.

At fifty-one, Gerald Mikardo was just entering the prime of life and he was well aware, thankfully so,

that he had reached a top link position at a very young age. He in-tended to go higher, of course. Except

that Stephen Jor-dan could stand in the way. He might be troublesome. Or he might be a playboy, after the

boss's daughter for the unobvious reason that he loved her, and not her fortune. In that case he could have

Stella; she meant nothing as a person to Mikardo, who had his own devious pleasures in the fleshpots of the

city, who was determined that only he would go on to run and eventually to control completely the whole

enormous star-bridging empire of Ransome Stellar. He might even change the name to Mikardo Stellar. . . .

In his office on the hundredth floor—all the ten floors above him were totally devoted to Ransome's

needs—he first checked his secrobot for the day's appointments. Nothing there he couldn't handle without

fuss. Bates was going to be the big problem of the day. If Old Man Ransome was really serious about

wanting this license for transit facilities here on Earth then he was up against not only the other

Corporations in the Interstellar Bridging business but Solterran government also.

The doorbell chimed and his doorobot triggered the ident-plate to reveal the beaming face of Ted

Zukowsky. Mikardo sighed again, openly, this time, and let Zukowsky in. Des-pite the chief scientist's huge

smile and broad gleaming fore-head, Mikardo was not fooled. This could spell trouble.

"Trouble, Ted?" asked Mikardo.

"Some." Gasp. "Fellow over at I.I.I, was talking in the club last night." Pant. "Seems that incredible idiot

Takao Em-bebe has the ridiculous idea of stringing a chain of boxes clear around"—puff.

"Yes? Where?" sharply from Mikardo.

"He wants to box in the Earth! Can you imagine it, Gerald! Crazy notion. Whew."

"I—see. . . ." Mikardo steepled his fingers on the polished plastic surface of his desk and considered.

"You don't—seem surprised."

"Should I be? What's so idiotic about the idea? Seems to me if you can transit from New York to

London in no time at all you'd be foolish to take a rocket aircraft that would take all of fifty minutes. Sound

common sense."

"Yes, but—"

"How far along is Embebe on this project?"

Ted Zukowsky looked carefully at the managerial boss of RSC. He saw a man fully capable of any

underhanded trick of the trade to gain the ends he wanted. Mikardo had black hair plastered slickly to his

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BEHOLDTHESTARSCopyright©,1965,byAceBooks,Inc.AllRightsReservedPrintedinU.S.A.IEveryyearthereunionwasheldinaprivateroomofasmallsecludedclubwheretheysoughtfragmentarilyforthecomradeshipthathadreallyexistedoutthereamongthestars.Thisyearthereunionwouldbedifferent.They'dstillcongregatehappilytogetherand...

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Kenneth Bulmer - Behold the Stars

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