James Blish - King of the Hill

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King of the Hill

IT DID Col. Hal Gascoigne no good whatsoever to know that

he was the only man aboard Satellite Vehicle 1. No good

at all. He had stopped reminding himself of the fact some

time back.

And now, as he sat sweating in the perfectly balanced air

in front of the bombardier board, one of the men spoke to

him again:

"Colonel, sir"

Gascoigne swung around in the seat, and the sergeant

Gascoigne could almost remember the man's nameUirew

him a snappy Air Force salute.

"Well?"

"Bomb one is primed, sir. Your orders?"

"My orders?" Gascoigne said wonderingly. But the man

was already gone. Gascoigne couldn't actually see the ser-

geant leave the control cabin, but he was no longer in it.

While he tried to remember, another voice rang in the

cabin, as flat and razzy as all voices sound on an intercom.

"Radar room. On target."

A regular, meaningless peeping. The timing circuit had

cut in.

Or had it? There was nobody in the radar room. There

was nobody in the bomb hold, either. There had never been

anybody on board SV-I but Gascoigne, not since he had

relieved Grinnelland Grinnell had flown the station up

here in the first place.

Then who had that sergeant been? His name was . . .

It was . . .

The hammering of the teletype blanked it out. The noise

was as loud as a pom-pom in the echoing metal cave. He got

up and coasted across the deck to the machine, gliding in the

gravity-free cabin with the ease of a man to whom free fall

is almost second nature.

The teletype was silent by the time he reached it, and at

first the tape looked blank. He wiped the sweat out of his

eyes. There was the message.

MNBVCXZ LKJ HGFDS PYTR AOIU EUIO QPALZM

He got out his copy of The Well-Tempered Pogo and

checked the speeches of Grundoon the Beaver-Chile for the

key letter-sequence on which the code was based. There

weren't very many choices. He had the clear in ten minutes.

BOMB ONE WASHINGTON 1700 HRS TAMMANANY

There it was. That was what he had been priming the

bomb for. But there should have been earlier orders, giving

him the go-ahead to prime. He began to rewind the paper.

It was all blank.

AndWashington? Why would the Joint Chiefs of Staff

order him

"Colonel Gascoigne, sir."

Gascoigne jerked around and returned the salute. "What's

your name?" he snapped.

"Sweeney, sir," the corporal said. Actually it didn't sound

very much like Sweeney, or like anything else; it was just

a noise. Yet the man's face looked familiar. "Ready with

bomb two, sir."

The corporal saluted, turned, took two steps, and faded.

He did not vanish, but he did not go out the door, either.

He simply receded, became darker and harder to distinguish,

and was no longer there. It was as though he and Gascoigne

had disagreed about the effects of perspective in the glowing

Earthlight, and Gascoigne had turned out to be wrong.

Numbly, he finished rewinding the paper. There was no

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James Blish - King of the Hill

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