To The Stars

Wartime had intensified the traditional Russian paranoia and the tower at Baikonur was in continual radio contact with the pilot as soon as they had started across the Black Sea.

“This is a security warning, Air Force four three niner, and must be obeyed exactly. Any deviation will cause automatic reprisal. Do you read me?”

“Read you? For Christ’s sake, Baikonur, I told you I did, about seventeen goddamned times now! My autopilot’s locked on your frequency, I am steady at your specified height of twenty thousand. I’m just a passenger in this plane, so you bring it in and talk to your machinery if you want to issue any more orders.”

Unmoved, the deep voice carried on insistently.

“No deviation will be allowed. Do you read me, Air Force four three niner?”

“I read you, I read you,” the pilot said wearily, defeated by Slavic stolidity.

It was night when they crossed the Soviet shore and began their approach to the space complex. The lights of towns and cities swept by beneath them, but Baikonur itself was completely blacked out because of the hostilities. It was disconcerting to see that the plane was dropping lower and lower toward the ground while still completely under airport control. It is one thing to know abstractly that radar and electronic communications need no light, that they work just as well in complete darkness; still another to hear the wing flaps grinding into position, the landing gear locking down — when there is nothing visible in any direction. All of this was controlled by the computer on the ground — the ground which was still totally invisible in the darkness ahead. The aircraft’s landing lights stayed off, as did the runway lights. Jan found that he was holding his breath as the engine throttled back and they dropped.

To make a perfect landing on the still invisible runway. Only when they had come to a complete stop at the end of the taxiway was control returned to the pilot.

“Feel like a goddamned passenger,” he muttered to himself, settling his infrared goggles firmly into place. The FOLLOW ME car finally arrived and they taxied after it into a blacked-out hangar; the lights came on only after the door was closed. Jan blinked in the sudden glare as he unbuckled his straps. An officer, wearing the same black uniform as his, was waiting at the foot of the steps.

“Technician Halliday?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get your bag and come with me. There’s a supply shuttle on line now with a window coming up in about twenty minutes. We can make it if we hurry. Let’s go.”

After this, Jan was just a passenger. The chemical-fueled rocket boosted into a low orbit that was barely outside the atmosphere. A deep space fusion shuttle locked to them and the passengers, all military personnel, transferred to this. Every one of them was at home in null-G. Jan was thankful that he had worked in space before, or his clumsiness would have given him away instantly. Once in their seats they had to wait while the cargo was transferred as well; in the interval they enjoyed the dubious pleasure of a Russian squeezepak meal. It had a soapy texture and tasted vaguely of fish. Afterward Jan read the instructions on the free fall toilet very carefully before he used it. There were as many disaster stories about its use as there were about the equivalent bit of sanitary engineering that was fitted into submarines.

Boredom very quickly replaced tension, since there was little to do other than look at recordings or catch up on sleep. The space colony of Lagrange 5 was unluckily almost at its maximum distance from Earth, nearly 200,000 miles, so the trip was a long one. While pretending to doze, Jan eavesdropped shamelessly on his fellow spacemen. The colony was being used as a base for the Space Force and headquarters for the Earth defense fleet, he discovered. Most of the conversation seemed to be a mixture of rumor and gossip and he memorized the best bits to be used as part of his cover.

He quickly discovered, when talking with the others, that most of them were reservists who had never served in the regular Space Force before. This was encouraging, since it would help to cover any omissions or slips on his part. As it turned out these precautions were not necessary; Thurgood-Smythe had planned his future quite precisely. When they finally docked and disembarked at Lagrange 5, Jan never even had the opportunity to see the interior of the manufacturing colony. A messenger was waiting in the spacelock chamber as they emerged.

“Technician Halliday,” he shouted as the men floated by him. “Which one of you is Tech Halliday?”

Jan hesitated just an instant before he kicked off in the man’s direction. His cover could not have been discovered; this development had to be part of Thurgood-Smythe’s complex planning. It was.