The Greatest Works of E. E. Smith. E. E. Smith

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      CHAPTER 2

      In Command

       Table of Contents

      Barely a month after his graduation, even before he had entirely completed the post-graduate tours of duty mentioned by von Hohendorff, Kinnison was summoned to Prime Base by no less a personage than Port Admiral Haynes himself. There, in the Admiral’s private aero, whose flaring lights cut a right-of-way through the swarming traffic, the novice and the veteran flew slowly over the vast establishment of the Base.

      Shops and factories, city-like barracks, landing fields stretching beyond the far horizon; flying craft ranging from tiny one-man helicopters through small and large scouts, patrol-ships and cruisers up to the immense, globular superdreadnaughts of space—all these were observed and commented upon. Finally the aero landed beside a long, comparatively low building—a structure heavily guarded, inside Base although it was—within which Kinnison saw a thing that fairly snatched away his breath.

A space-ship it was—but what a ship!^[1] In bulk it was vastly larger even than the superdreadnaughts of the Patrol; but, unlike them, it was in shape a perfect teardrop, streamlined to the ultimate possible degree.

      “What do you think of her?” the Port Admiral asked.

      “Think of her!” The young officer gulped twice before he attained coherence. “I can’t put it in words, sir; but some day, if I live long enough and develop enough force, I hope to command a ship like that.”

      “Sooner than you think, Kinnison,” Haynes told him, flatly. “You are in command of her beginning tomorrow morning.”

      “Huh? Me?” Kinnison exclaimed, but sobered quickly. “Oh, I see, sir. It takes ten years of proved accomplishment to rate command of a first-class vessel, and I have no rating at all. You have already intimated that this ship is experimental. There is, then, something about her that is new and untried, and so dangerous that you do not want to risk an experienced commander in her. I am to give her a work-out, and if I can bring her back in one piece I turn her over to her real captain. But that’s all right with me, Port Admiral—thanks a lot for picking me out. What a chance—What a chance!” and Kinnison’s eyes gleamed at the prospect of even a brief command of such a creation.

      “Right—and wrong,” the old Admiral made surprising answer. “It is true that she is new, untried, and dangerous, so much so that we are unwilling to give her to any of our present captains. No, she is not really new, either. Rather, her basic idea is so old that it has been abandoned for centuries. She uses explosives; of a type that cannot be tried out fully except in actual combat. Her primary weapon is what we have called the ‘Q-gun.’ The propellant is heptadetonite: the shell carries a charge of twenty metric tons of duodecaplylatomate.”

      “But, sir .” Kinnison began.

      “Just a minute, I’ll go into that later. While your premises were correct, your conclusion is not. You graduated Number One, and in every respect save experience you are as well qualified to command as is any captain of the Fleet; and since the Brittania is such a radical departure from any conventional type, battle experience is not a prerequisite. Therefore if she holds together through one engagement she is yours for good. In other words, to make up for the possibility of having yourself scattered all over space, you have a chance to win that ten years’ rating you mentioned a minute ago, all in one trip. Fair enough?”

      “Fair? It’s fine—wonderful! And thanks a .”

      “Never mind the thanks until you get back. You were about to comment, I believe, upon the impossibility of using explosives against a free opponent?”

      “It can’t be impossible, of course, since the Brittania has been built. I just don’t quite see how it could have been made effective.”

      “You lock to the pirate with tractors, screen to screen—dex about ten kilometers. You blast a hole through his screens to his wall-shield. The muzzle of the Q-gun mounts as annular multiplex projector which puts out a Q-type tube of force—Q47SM9, to be exact. As you can see from the type formula, this helix extends the gun-barrel from ship to ship and confines the propellent gases behind the projectile, where they belong. When the shell strikes the wall-shield of the pirate and detonates, something will have to give way—all the Brains agree that twenty tons of duodec, attaining a temperature of about forty million degrees absolute in less than one micro-second, simply cannot be confined.

      “The tube and tractors, being pure force and computed for this particular combination of explosions, will hold; and our physicists have calculated that the ten-kilometer column of inert propellent gases will offer so much inertia and resistance that any possible wall-shield will have to go down. That is the point that cannot be tried out experimentally—it is quite within the bounds of possibility that the pirates may have been able to develop wall-screens as powerful as our Q-type helices, even though we have not.

      “It should not be necessary to point out to you that if they have been able to develop a wall-shield that will stand up under those conditions, the back-blast through the breech of the Q-gun will blow the Brittania apart as though she were so much matchwood. That is only one of the chances—and perhaps not the greatest one—that you and your crew will have to take. They are all volunteers, by the way, and will get plenty of extra rating if they come through alive. Do you want the job?”

      “You don’t have to ask me that, Chief—you know I want it!”

      “Of course, but I had to go through the formality of asking, sometime. But to get on with the discussion, this pirate situation is entirely out of control, as you already know. We don’t even know whether Boskone is a reality, a figurehead, a symbol, or simply a figment of an old-time Lensman’s imagination. But whoever or whatever Boskone really is, some being or some group of beings has perfected a mighty efficient organization of outlaws; so efficient that we haven’t even been able to locate their main base.

      “And you may as well know now a fact that is not yet public property—that even conveyed vessels are no longer safe. The pirates have developed ships of a new and extraordinary type; ships that are much faster than our heavy battleships, and yet vastly more heavily armed than our fast cruisers. Thus, they can outfight any Patrol vessel that can catch them, and can out-run anything of ours armed heavily enough to stand up against their beams.”

      “That accounts for the recent heavy losses,” Kinnison mused.

      “Yes,” Haynes went on, grimly. “Ship after ship of our best has been blasted out of the ether, doomed before it pointed a beam, and more will be. We cannot force an engagement on our terms; СКАЧАТЬ