A Matter of Importance, Murray Leinster [best affordable ebook reader txt] 📗

temporary star, but even from a quarter-million-mile distance it was incredibly bright. It was a bomb, blasting a metal-foil flimsy which the electronic brain of a missile-rocket could only perceive as an unidentified and hence enemy object. Bomb and rocket and flimsy metal foil turned together to radioactive metal vapor.

Sergeant Madden knew professional admiration.

"Thirty-four seconds!" he said approvingly.

The Huks could not have expected the appearance of an enemy just here and now. It was the first such appearance in all the planet's history. They certainly looked for no consequences of the seizure of the Cerberus, carefully managed as that had been. So to detonate a bomb against an unexpected inimical object within thirty-four seconds after its appearance was very good work indeed.

"Hm-m-m," said Sergeant Madden, "we've nothing more to do right now, Willis. We'll go back to that hunk of ice you spotted comin' in, and wait for the Aldeb."

Patrolman Willis obediently set the hop-timer and swung the squad ship to a proper aiming. He pressed the overdrive button.

His manner, like that of Sergeant Madden, was the manner of someone conducting a perfectly routine operation.

"If my son Timmy were with me on this job," said Sergeant Madden, "I'd point out the inner meaning of the way we're going about handling it."

He reposed in his bucket-seat in the squad ship, which at that moment lay aground not quite right-side-up close to the north pole of Sirene VIII. The local sun was not in view. The squad ship's ports opened upon the incredible brilliance of the galaxy as seen out of atmosphere. There was no atmosphere here. It was all frozen. But there was a horizon, and the light of the stars showed the miniature jungle of gas crystals. Frozen gases—frozen to gas-ice—they were feathery. They were lacy. They were infinitely delicate. They were frost in three dimensions.

"Yes, sir," said Patrolman Willis.

"The Aldeb's due soon," said Sergeant Madden, "so I'll make it short. The whole thing is that we are cops, and the Huks are soldiers. Which means that they're after feeling important—after glamour. Every one of 'em figures it's necessary to be important. He craves it."

Patrolman Willis listened. He had a proximity detector out, which would pick up any radiation caused by the cutting of magnetic lines of force by any object. It made very tiny whining noises from time to time. If anything from a Huk missile rocket to the salvage ship Aldeb approached, however, the sound would be distinctive.

"Now that," said Sergeant Madden, "is the same thing that makes delinks. A delink tries to matter in the world he lives in. It's a small world, with only him and his close pals in it. So he struts before his pals. He don't realize that anybody but him and his pals are human. See?"

"I know!" said Patrolman Willis with an edge to his voice. "Last month a couple of delinks set a ground-truck running downhill, and jumped off it, and—"

"True," said Sergeant Madden. He rumbled for a moment. "A soldier lives in a bigger world he tries to matter in. He's protectin' that world and being admired for it. In old, old days his world was maybe a day's march across. Later it got to be continents. They tried to make it planets, but it didn't work. But there've got to be enemies to protect a world against, or a soldier isn't important. He's got no glamour. Y'see?"

"Yes, sir," said Willis.

"Then there's us cops," said Sergeant Madden wryly. "Mostly we join up for the glamour. We think it's important to be a cop. But presently we find we ain't admired. Then there's no more glamour—but we're still important. A cop matters because he protects people against other people that want to do things to 'em. Against characters that want to get important by hurtin' 'em. Being a cop means you matter against all the delinks and crooks an' fools and murderers who'd pull down civilization in a minute if they could, just so they could be important because they did it. But there's no glamour! We're not admired! We just do our job. And if I sound sentimental, I mean it."

"Yes, sir," said Willis.

"There's a big picture in the big hall in Police Headquarters on Valdez III," said the sergeant. "It's the story of the cops from the early days when they wore helmets, and the days when they rode bicycles, and when they drove ground-cars. There's not only cops, but civilians, in every one of the panels, Willis. And if you look careful, you'll see that there's one civilian in every panel that's thumbin' his nose at a cop."

"I've noticed," said Willis.

"Remember it," said Sergeant Madden. "It bears on what we've got to do to handle these Huks. Soldiers couldn't do what we've got to. They'd fight, to be admired. We can't. It'd spoil our job. We've got to persuade 'em to behave themselves."

Then he frowned, as if he were dissatisfied with what he'd said. He shook his head and made an impatient gesture.

"No good," he said vexedly. "You can't say it. Hm-m-m ... I'll nap a while until the Aldeb gets here."

He settled back to doze.

Patrolman Willis regarded him with an odd expression. They were aground on Sirene VIII, on which no human ship had ever landed before them, and they had stirred up a hornet's nest on Sirene IV, which had orbital eighty-gee rocket missiles in orbit around it with bust bomb heads and all the other advantages of civilization. The Aldeb was on the way with a fifteen-man crew. And seventeen men, altogether, must pit themselves against an embattled planet with all its population ready and perhaps eager for war. Their errand was to secure the release of human prisoners and the surrender of a seized spaceship from a proud and desperate race.

It did not look promising. Sergeant Madden did not look like the kind of genius who could carry it through. Dozing, with his chin tilted forward on his chest, he looked hopelessly commonplace.

The skipper of the Aldeb came over to the squad ship, because Sergeant Madden loathed spacesuits and there was no air on Sirene VIII. Patrolman Willis watched as the skipper came wading through the lacy, breast-high gas-frost. It seemed a pity for such infinitely delicate and beautiful objects to be broken and crushed.

The sergeant unlocked the lock-door and spoke into a microphone when he heard the skipper stamping on the steel lock-flooring.

"Brush yourself off," commanded the sergeant, "and sweep the stuff outside. Part of its methane and there's some ammonia in those crystals."

There was a suitable pause. The outer door closed. The lock filled with air, and gas-crystal fragments turned to reeking vapor as they warmed. The skipper bled them out and refilled the lock. Then he came inside. He opened his face plate.

"Well?"

"There's Huks here," Sergeant Madden told him, "their hair in a braid and all set to go. They popped off a marker I stuck out for them to shoot at in thirty-four seconds by the clock. Bright boys, these Huks! They don't wait to ask questions. When they see something, they shoot at it."

The skipper tilted back his helmet and said beseechingly:

"Scratch my head, will you?"

When Patrolman Willis reached out his hand, the skipper revolved his head under it until the itchy place was scratched. Most men itch instantly they are unable to scratch. The skipper's space gloves were sprouting whiskers of moisture-frost now.

"Thanks," he said gratefully. "What are you going to do, sergeant?"

"Open communication with 'em," said the sergeant, heavily.

The skipper waited. Opening communication with someone who shoots on detector-contact may be difficult.

"I figure," rumbled the sergeant, "they're a lot like delinks. A cop can figure how they think, but they can't figure how a cop thinks."

"Such as?" asked the skipper.

"They can't understand anybody not tryin' to be important," said Sergeant Madden. "It baffles 'em."

"What's that got to do with the people on the Cerberus?" demanded the skipper. "It's our job to get them and the Cerberus back on the way to port!"

"I know!" conceded Sergeant Madden, "and the girl my son Timmy's going to marry is one of them. But I don't think we'll have much trouble. Have you got any multipoly plastic on the Aldeb?"

The skipper nodded, blankly. Multipoly plastic is a substance as anomalous as its name. It is a multiple polymer of something-or-other which stretches very accommodatingly to a surprising expanse, and then suddenly stops stretching. When it stops, it has a high and obstinate tensile strength. All ships carry it for temporary repairs, because it will seal off anything. A one-mill thickness will hold fifteen pounds pressure. Ships have been known to come down for landing with bubbles of multipoly glistening out of holes in their hulls. A salvage ship, especially, would carry an ample supply. A minor convenience in its use is the fact that a detonator-cap set off at any part of it starts a wave of disintegration which is too slow to be an explosion and cleans up the mess made in its application.

"Naturally I've got it," said the skipper. "What do you want with it?"

Sergeant Madden told him. Painfully. Painstakingly.

"The tough part," said the skipper, "is making 'em go out an ejector tube. But I've got fourteen good men. Give me two hours for the first batch. We'll make up the second while you're placing them."

Sergeant Madden nodded.

The skipper went into the lock and closed the door behind him. After a moment Patrolman Willis saw him wading through the incredibly delicate and fragile gas-ice crystals. Then the Aldeb's lock swallowed him.

The odd thing about the Huk business was the minute scale of the things that happened, compared to the background in which they took place. The squad ship, for example, lifted off Sirene VIII for the second time. She'd been out once and come back for the second batch of multipoly objects. Sirene VIII was not a giant planet, by any means, but it was a respectable six thousand miles in diameter. The squad ship's sixty feet of length was a mote so minute by comparison that no comparison was possible.

She headed in toward the sun. She winked out of existence into overdrive. She headed toward Sirene IV, in quadrature, where missile rockets floated in orbit awaiting the coming of any enemy. The distance to be traveled was roughly one and a half light-hours—some twelve astronomical units of ninety-three million miles each.

The squad ship covered that distance in a negligible length of time. It popped into normality about two hundred thousand miles out from the Huk home-world. It seemed insolently to remain there. In a matter of seconds it appeared at another place—a hundred fifty thousand miles out, but off to one side. It seemed arrogantly to remain there, too—in a second place at the same time. Then it appeared, with the arbitrary effect a ship does give when coming out of overdrive, at a third place a hundred seventy-five thousand miles from the planet. At a fourth place barely eighty thousand miles short of collision with the Huk world. At a fifth place. A sixth. Each time it appeared, it seemed to remain in plain, challenging, insolent view, without ceasing to exist at the spots where it had appeared previously. In much less than a minute, the seeming of a sizable squadron of small human ships had popped out of emptiness and lay off the Huk home world at distances ranging from eighty thousand miles to three times as much.

Suddenly, light flashed intolerably in emptiness. It was in contact with one of the seeming squad ships, which ceased to be. But immediately two more ships appeared at widely different spots. A second flash—giant and terrible nearby—a pin point of light among the stars. Another ostensible human ship vanished in atomic flame—but still another appeared magically from nowhere. A third and then a fourth flash. Three more within successive seconds.

Squad ships continued to appear as if by necromancy, and space near the planet was streaked by flarings of white vapor as eighty-gee rockets hurled themselves to destruction against the invading objects. As each bomb went off, its light was brighter than the sun. But each was a mere flicker in enormousness. They flashed, and flashed—Each was a bomb turning forty kilograms of matter into pure, raw, raging destruction. Each was devastation sufficient to destroy the greatest city the galaxy ever knew.