To The Stars

The political commander was less than reassured by the operator’s reasoning. He did not like to think that his life depended on the non-random dispersal of magnetic charges and electrons that made up the program. Playing an intellectual game with the enemy computers. He looked out at the tiny sparks of the stars, the growing disc of the Earth, and tried to imagine the web of light beams and radio waves surging around them. He could not. He had to take it on faith that they were there and working at speeds infinitely beyond his own. A human being could not fight a battle in space. The machines did that. The crew were just captive spectators. His hands were clenched tightly behind his back, though he was not aware of it.

There was a series of small thudding sounds, more felt than heard, followed by an explosion that actually shook the deck beneath his feet.

“We’ve been hit!” he called out unthinkingly.

“Not yet.” The watch operator glanced at his screens. “All of our remaining dupes and reflectors have been launched, then the scout ship. Mission accomplished — but now we have to get out of here. Fusion drive cut… space drive circuits now energized. As soon as the gravity fields allow we’ll be on our way.”

The political commander’s eyes widened at a sudden thought; he turned sharply about.

“Where’s Blakeney?” he called out. But no one on the bridge had heard him. They were counting the seconds, waiting for the missiles that must have surely been launched in their direction.

The political commander felt a sudden arrow of despair. He knew where Blakeney was.

He had been right, absolutely right! And they called themselves comptechs. They couldn’t write a program to win at tic-tac-toe. Orbital mechanics, fine, simple trig and geometry and calculus. Child’s play. But comparison plane orientation was apparently well beyond them.

Blakeney watched with satisfaction for less than a second while the cursor on the computer roved all over the highly amplified image of Earth — then froze on the great sweep of a circular storm over Europe. He switched on the override and put his finger on the screen, on the only bit of Australia clear of the cloud cover of a tropical storm. When the glowing blob of the cursor jumped to this spot he typed in POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION and took his finger away. At least the moronic thing could be counted upon to stay there once orientated.

None too early. The engine note changed as the course shifted, just moments later. Good. He followed the program display, then unlocked the launching switch as they hurtled toward the top of the atmosphere, ready to release manually if there were any more difficulties.

There were none. At the same instant that zero appeared on the screen the ejection mechanism thudded heavily. As the ship arced slowly away to avoid the outer traces of atmosphere, the heavy ceramic container was hurtling toward Earth. He knew what would be happening next; this thing at least had been well designed. Layer after layer of ablative material would burn away as it impacted on the thickening air. It would grow hot — and slow down — with the frozen virus locked safely into the cryogenic flask inside. Then a layer of ceramic would fall away to reveal an opening for the air to enter, to impact on a pressure gauge inside.

At exactly 10,769 meters, in the middle of the jet stream, the explosive charge would explode releasing the contents of the flask.

The wind would carry the virus across Australia, perhaps to New Zealand as well — a carefully designed virus that would attack and destroy any and all of the food crops grown on Earth.

Blakeney smiled at the thought as the missile hit.

It had an atomic warhead so that, to the watchers below, there was suddenly a new sunjust visible through the clouds.

Two

The TWA jet had left New York a few hours after dark. As soon as it had reached its cruising altitude it had gone supersonic and cut a booming path straight across the United States. About the time it was crossing Kansas the western sky had grown light as the Mach 2.5 craft caught up with the setting sun. The sun was well above the horizon again when they lost altitude over Arizona, and the passengers who had seen one sunset in New York City now witnessed a far more colorful one over the Mojave desert.