Decision, Frank M. Robinson [free biff chip and kipper ebooks txt] 📗

into the wheelhouse.

The drone plane had been up for half an hour. By this time it should have a clearer picture of the object that hovered over the Josef.

It did. The object was dun colored, the color of storm clouds on a cold winter's day. Big, easily as big as the Josef, and tubular shaped, slightly flattened on the bottom. There was nothing that could be identified as gun ports but they probably didn't use guns. He wondered just what their armament was.

He turned to the radarman on watch.

"Has the Josef moved any?"

The man nodded. "Yes, sir. About oh four hundred they steamed ten miles north at top speed."

"The object kept up with them?"

"Yes, sir. It's never left them, sir. Same position directly overhead at all times."

The captain of the Josef must have realized that he couldn't get away from his overhead observer and probably froze in position, afraid of what would happen if he continued to run for it. He'd probably stay there until the alien ship made some hostile move or he got instructions from home.

The Captain walked back to the bridge. The ship was strangely silent. There were no jets warming up on the flight deck, there were no sounds of chipping hammers. Except for the planes overhead, it was a quiet summer day, one of those days when a perfectly smooth sea looks like a sheet of plate glass.

He glanced down at the sides of the Oahu. Tiny figures were huddled by the anti-aircraft guns, their helmets glinting in the sun. A tight ship, he thought, a ship that was ready for anything.

McCandless came out on the bridge, his eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep. He stood a respectful distance from the Captain, a little to the right and just behind.

"Beautiful day, isn't it, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir. It is, sir. Very fine day."

Sir. That was the one reason why he tolerated Davis, the Captain thought. Just to hear somebody call him by his first name and treat him as something other than a symbol of rank.

"If your theory is correct, Lieutenant," he mused aloud, "then the alien ship should be opening fire—if that's what you would call it—any minute now."

"Yes, sir." McCandless brushed his mouth with his hand—probably surreptitiously removing a wad of gum, the Captain thought. "I was wondering what you would do, sir, if the alien ship opens fire on the Josef."

"If it wasn't against regulations, I'd issue a couple of cans of beer per man."

McCandless gaped. "I—I don't understand you, sir."

"If they finish off the Josef, Lieutenant, it'll save us the trouble. For my money, I'd be tickled pink if the Combine sent reinforcements and it really developed into a fracas."

McCandless turned slightly so the Captain could no longer read his face. The Captain wondered if it was intentional.

"I ... I guess I just took it for granted that we'd join forces against the aliens, sir. It seemed like the natural thing to do."

So McCandless had thought they'd go to the rescue of the Josef, the Captain thought slowly. To the rescue. The phrase had a funny sound to it when you coupled it with the Combine, an almost obscene sound.

"Lieutenant," the Captain said slowly, "history has been full of possible turning points that the United States has almost always failed to take advantage of. I think this time, just for once, we ought to play it smart. The Combine has been a threat for as long as I can remember. We've had opportunities before when we could have let two systems cancel each other out. We didn't take advantage of it then and we've regretted it ever since."

McCandless didn't reply immediately and the Captain thought to himself, why not be more honest? Why don't you tell him that all your life you've fought the Combine and the conflict has been the only thing that has lent meaning to living? You hate for thirty years and you become a slave to that hatred—you don't forget it with a snap of the fingers and go charging to the rescue like a knight in shining armor.

"The aliens are ... alien, sir," McCandless suddenly said. "The men on the Josef are ... human beings."

"Are they, Mister?" The Captain hated the lecturing attitude but he couldn't help it. "They're the representatives of the Combine, aren't they? And I suppose the Combine acted like human beings during the Berlin war? I suppose the slave labor camps and the purges and the forced confessions were the products of ordinary human beings? No, Lieutenant, if the aliens have six arms and two heads they couldn't be less inhuman than the Combine has been!"

"My father was in the Pacific in the Second World War," the Lieutenant said tightly. "There were times when we ... didn't take prisoners. And I remember my Dad saying that some of the men went home with ear necklaces."

"Hearsay," the Captain said gruffly. "And that was in a declared war." And then he wondered just how valid the distinction was. There were, he supposed, sadists on both sides. And then it came down to who committed the first cruelty and just how should you rank them? Was intentional torture for the few any the worse than the dispassionate act of dropping a bomb that produced quite the same, if not worse, results for the many?

"Just what would you do, Mister McCandless?"

The Lieutenant's face was flushed. "I'm not sure, sir. But I think I would look at it from a strategic viewpoint. There are two ships here, both instruments of war. If the aliens attack the one, and the other doesn't go to the rescue, then it would be obvious that we are a divided world. We would be a tempting ... prize."

"And if we went to the aid of the Josef, then you think we might beat the alien ship off?"

McCandless shrugged. "I don't know, sir. We might."

The Captain turned back to look at the now swelling sea. The air off the water was cool and brisk and the deck of his ship moved comfortably under his feet; a solid thing in a liquid world.

"It doesn't make a great deal of difference what we think, Lieutenant," the Captain said, a little of his good humor restored. "In the long run, we'll do whatever Washington says."

There was a sudden, flashing glow just over the horizon. McCandless blanched and the Captain clutched the rail, his knuckles turning white with the force of his grip. There was another flash and the OD popped out of the hatch of the wheelhouse like a cork out of a bottle. "Captain! the ..."

The Captain was already brushing past him, heading into the pilothouse for the television screen and the picture that the drone plane was transmitting.

The picture on the screen wavered and blurred with the shock of the action. From what he could see, the Captain knew that whatever action he took, if any, he would have to take it within a relative few minutes. The forward half of the superstructure of the Josef was a smoking ruin, the metal a cherry red.

Half the planes on the flight deck were charred and being frantically pushed overboard by small tractors so the remainder of the planes could be airborne. A mile overhead, in the glazing blue sky, the few planes the Josef had managed to launch buzzed futilely about the alien ship, discharging rockets that scintillated and flamed off the dull gray sides and, so far as the Captain could tell, were causing no damage at all.

"Message for you, sir."

He felt the clip board being pushed into his hand, then glanced down. It was difficult to read without his glasses but he could make it out.

Unusual ... do nothing rash ... your discretion ...

Some cautious pen pusher behind a desk, he thought chaotically. Somebody for whom miles had lent safety and detachment.

His discretion ...

It was his responsibility.

Commander Davis was at his elbow. "The Josef's starting to list, Captain."

"I can see that!" he half snarled.

He wouldn't feel pity if the Josef went down, he thought fiercely. It would be good riddance, one less carrier that they would have to worry about at some future date.

If there was some future date, a nagging thought intruded.

He throttled it. The Josef stood for everything that he despised, a way of life that had made a mockery of everything he had been taught to believe in. The menace that had eaten at the world's vitals like a cancer, the menace whose existence had been enough to drive some men to hysteria and others to the brink of suicide. His own wife ...

Now a ship from Outside was attacking that power and what emotions should he feel? Elation? Well, why not? What other emotions should he feel? Certainly not sadness, not regret, not pity.

The Josef would be sunk and maybe the aliens would be tempted to do more than just attack the Josef; they might attack the entire Combine as well. And if the Combine was beat, did it matter who did it?

Except, the thought crept back, there was no reason for him to believe that the aliens would differentiate between the Josef and the Oahu, between the Combine and the United States.

"The planes!" McCandless said, incredulous. "Look at the planes!"

The Captain glanced down at the screen again. An orangish glow was suffusing the alien ship. A jet slipped in for a rocket shot. The glow pulsed, expanded, touched the jet, and the plane vanished into a rain of wreckage that sped towards the ocean below.

"God!" Davis breathed. "Did you see that?"

The Captain only half heard him. So they were aliens. What did that mean? Beings of different background, different beliefs, different physical structure? He had been one of the first into Berlin after the massacre was over and the Combine had laid the blame on their Berlin Commandant, though it was painfully obvious that he had only followed out instructions. And the shambles he had seen there couldn't have been done by human beings. Four thousand soldiers and close to a hundred thousand civilians killed. Would you call the people who had been responsible for that human beings or ... aliens? Which name fit best?

The Berlin war ...

A dozen different outbreaks, starting with Korea so long ago ...

And then you were supposed to admit that they were blood brothers after all, and that in the face of a mutual threat you should forget your differences and pool your resources against the common enemy.

"There goes another one!"

So in fifteen minutes the Josef would go down. And from him it would bring only cheers, not tears.

But you didn't make decisions on a personal basis, he thought slowly. You had to look at it from the viewpoint of a thousand years. You had to develop a certain detachment, even though one man's lifetime was far too short a period to develop it in.

"Message for you, Captain."

It was a voice message that had been picked up in CIC. It was brief and to the point.