Title: Preview Of Peril
Author: Coppel, Alfred
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Preview Of Peril" ***


                           PREVIEW OF PERIL

                         By ALFRED COPPEL, Jr.

               _Like shadows, the four ships of Flotilla
             Blue Three slipped through the patrol cordon
               of the powerful Martian Space Force. Only
              the crazy luck of their mad, medal-bedecked
               Commodore would ever get them out again._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                    Planet Stories September 1953.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


The Second Martian War was three weeks old when the officers of the
Terran destroyer _Darkside_ found themselves assembled in Control and
glumly aware that the Flotilla Commodore was sizing them up. It was
hard to tell just what he was thinking, but whatever it was they had
made up their minds to return it doubled in spades.

Having a Flotilla Commodore on board was actually a hardship,
particularly if as in the case of the _Darkside_--the ship elected was
unsuitable for a flagship. The Commodore needed cabin space for himself
and for his staff, and that meant that five of the _Darkside's_ nine
officers would have to double up on what space was left. On board a
destroyer that meant a good deal. But more important yet was the moral
effect on the ship's company.

With a flag officer on board the easy life of an informal vessel would
vanish and something of the formality of a big ship would take its
place. The officers and crew would feel themselves under the scrutiny
of higher authority no matter how hard the Commodore tried not to
interfere with the working of the ship. And it naturally followed that
the ship's commander would lose some of the joy in his independent
command. Thus a happy ship would become a tight one ... QED. It was a
situation as old as ships and men.

So there was little joy to be seen in the faces of Commander Scott and
his officers when Commodore Hartnett stepped through the valve followed
by his staff. Nor was their anything about Hartnett's appearance to
suggest that they had been anything but right about the manner in which
Flotilla Blue Three would be handled throughout the coming patrol. The
Commodore was a model of military correctness, a martinet moulded in
two Martian Wars and twenty years in space to a steely hardness that
was disconcerting.

They saw a lean, leathery man in his late forties, dressed in
immaculate Greys that sported an apalling amount of silver braid.
Four stripes were rare aboard destroyers. Eyes that matched the hard
grey of the uniform glittered in a spaceburned face, shaded by heavy
black brows. Young Ensign Blake's heart sank as he took in the set
of the shoulders and the smooth fit of the blouse. He made a mental
note of the fact that from now on there would be no more standing
watches in sweatshirt and sneakers. He also reflected sadly on the many
pleasure jaunts that Scott was wont to let him make in the _Darkside's_
skeeter-boat, and bade a mental farewell to those happy moments. The
set of the Commodore's long jaw instilled more respect for Space Force
Regs in the young reservist than all the ten orientation lectures
he had received at Hamilton Spaceport. Plainly there was a new era
beginning for the TRS _Darkside_!

There wasn't a man on board who hadn't heard of Hartnett, of course. A
gambler in combat, he had always managed to come out ahead of the game.
His record was the record of practically every major achievement of the
Force. Most of it could be read from the four rows of ribbons under his
Command Pilot's sunburst.

There was the pale blue of the Terran Honor Medal that he'd won by
ramming a Martian dreadnaught of the Diemos class with his crippled
corvette off Io in the first Cat war. There was the red bar of the DSM
received for leading the first deep-space expedition to reach Ariel
and Oberon in the Uranian system ... that, before Blake had been born.
And the rainbow colored ribbon of the old UN patrol, the First Martian
Victory Medal, the Venerian Exploratory Medal, the Spatial Cross; four
rows of them ending up with the General Service and Martian Occupation
Ribbon.

To say, that it impressed the _Darkside's_ green personnel would be an
understatement. The decorations showed Hartnett to be the gambler ...
the lucky gambler ... that he was said to be.

All the way out to Luna Base from Hamilton Spaceport, the crew of the
flagship had been muttering about the "damned brass-hat" who was going
to disrupt the pleasant life of their beloved ship with his unwanted,
high-ranking, stinking, presence, but the iron-hard reality of the man
and the aura of confidence that emanated from him as he stood on the
steel deck of the Control, spiked their guns too quickly. From the
moments Hartnett stepped aboard, reflected Commander Scott bitterly,
the ship tightened up. From here on in it was Hartnett's ship and there
wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Introductions were short and to the point. Most of the ship's officers
had met Hartnett's staff at the Base Officer's Club after the Captain's
Council, where the commanders of the four ships that made up Flotilla
Blue Three had met their Commodore for the first time. Scott sighed as
he thought of the evident relief on Lieutenant Morrow's face when he
had found that the flagship was to be the _Darkside_ and not his own
ship, the _Lysander_.

"That Hartnett will take over your ship, Scott," Morrow had told him.
"He can't help it. From the moment he steps aboard, it'll be his baby."
And Hartnett was a gambler....

Scott presented his officers to the Commodore almost jealously,
starting with the Executive, Lieutenant Commander Chavez and Lieutenant
Horowitz, the Tactical Physicist; and ending up with Ensign Blake, the
Junior Gunnery Officer, who was startled from his nervous fidgeting by
the sound of his name.

"A reservist," was Hartnett's only comment, and though it was said in
a friendly tone, Blake flushed furiously and wondered if it stuck like
straw out of his ears.

"Mr. Blake is the Charles Blake who won the New York to Ley City
amateur skeeter-boat race last year, Sir," explained Scott.

The Commodore nodded vaguely, his eyes wandering over the burnished
chrome and steel of the Control panels. "Good sport, small ship racing,
Mr. Blake," he commented.

Blake's cherubic face burst into smiles. "The best sir!"

Hartnett's men were presented to the ship's commander more as a
formality than anything else, as he had met them before. Thorne, a full
Commander, was Flotilla Astrogator, Wilson and Orsov, Lieutenants,
were Flotilla Gunnery Officers, James, a jaygee, was Flotilla Signals
Officer, and Ensign Ward, a thin boy about Blake's age, was the
Commodore's Aide. He sported his single silver augilette proudly.

They didn't seem a bad lot, reflected Scott grudgingly. Maybe they
wouldn't get in the way too much.

"We can lift ship as soon as convenient, Mr. Scott," said Hartnett,
issuing his first order.

"Aye, sir."

Hartnett turned to his staff. "Get yourselves below and sort yourselves
out. Try not to take up too much room." As they vanished down the ramp,
he turned to take a seat at the visiplates.

Scott was taking a time check from the Tower Control, and the signalmen
were relaying the lift-ship order to the three other ships of Blue
Three. Outside on the airless field, the amber warning lights were
spinning on the Tower mast, warning the spacesuited maintenance crews
away from the blast pits.

Chavez was snapping orders into the intercom and the _Darkside_ was
awaking to activity smoothly. Five shielded decks below Control,
Chief Jetman Collins and the black-gang were busily removing
the seals from the cadmium dampers in the blast chambers. The
"three-minutes-to-lift-ship" alarm blared and the lights dimmed,
leaving Control lighted only by the reflected glow of the panel lights.
On the visiplate screen, the slender shapes of the _Lysander_, the
_Argus_ and the fat, ungainly silhouette of the ironically named
_Artemis_ showed clearly in the earthlight.

The _Artemis_, thought Hartnett, was the only weak link in his command.
The other three ships were modern, but the _Artemis_ was an ancient
alcohol burner, converted to atomics and pressed into service by the
exigencies of an undeclared and treacherous war.

At best, she could stand no more than 5 Terran Gs and the rest of the
Flotilla would be forced to keep to her reduced speed throughout the
cruise. Her armament was lighter and her armor thinner than it should
be. In fact, she was strictly Cat meat if she should ever be forced to
stand and fight. And if they intercepted any Cats, that is exactly what
she would have to do, since she was the only ship of Blue Three that
could not outrun any comparable Martian ship.

Scott was giving his orders now, eyes fastened on the master
chronometer. Hartnett was pleased to see that he did so without a
sidelong look at his superior. He knew his business and did it. Good.
Then Hartnett could stick to handling Blue Three and worrying about the
_Artemis_ without thought of how the ship under him was being managed.

He slipped into his G-Suit and plugged the lines into an outlet on the
side of his chair. The second hand swept up the face of the dial, and
Scott hit the firing studs. Far below, Jetman Collins removed the
dampers from the main blast chambers.

       *       *       *       *       *

The takeoff was strictly routine for the Luna Base personnel. The
four ships of the Flotilla rose from the pits on their long tails of
radioactive flame, setting the outside Geiger counters to clucking
wildly and outlining in vivid relief the three dreadnaughts that lay in
their careening berths and the dozen or so smaller ships on the line.
Under 3 Terran Gs of acceleration, Flotilla Blue Three was soon lost in
the ebony sky. For just an instant there was the vaguest suggestion of
four racing shadows on the blue-green disk of the gibbous Terra that
hung low in the heavens, and then nothing. The airless silence of Luna
Base continued unbroken.

In the sheathed Control Tower, the Operations Officer made ready to go
off watch. He was thinking of a few drinks and a girl and maybe a thick
steak down in Ley City. Wonderful place, Ley City ... even in wartime.

The door burst open, but it was not his relief. It was a breathless
yeoman of signals. He held a sheaf of papers in his hand.

"Has Blue Three lifted, sir? Cryptographing sent me with this."

"Damn! They're well out by this time Reilly." He indicated the radar
screen that showed four rapidly moving pips already heading into deep
space.

The yeoman handed him the papers without a word.

"What kept you?" The officer demanded angrily.

Reilly looked at his superior reproachfully. "I made it from Crypto in
forty seconds flat, sir. Couldn't come any faster!"

"Dammit! Now we'll have to put this on tight beam and scramble it.
Intelligence suspects the Cats have cracked our cipher!"

He sat down at the scrambler and began to type.

    "COMMODORE CLARE HARTNETT: ABOARD TRS DARKSIDE FLOTILLA BLUE THREE.
    PRIORITY MISSION. REPEAT. PRIORITY MISSION. SPATIAL INTELLIGENCE
    REPORTS LARGE QUANTITY ISOTOPE X-R REFERENCE 6589-3 CODE BOOK IN
    DANGER OF CAPTURE AT METALLURGICAL STATION 9 CHART REFERENCE A-5.
    PREVENT AT ALL COSTS. LARGE CONCENTRATION MARTIAN PHOBOS CLASS
    CRUISERS AND POSSIBLE SUPERDREADNAUGHT ARMED WITH CYCLOTRONICS IN
    VICINITY SEARCHING FOR STATION 9. REPEAT. X-R MUST NOT FALL INTO
    MARTIAN HANDS. DESTROY IF NECESSARY. FOR YOUR INFORMATION AND
    GUIDANCE INTELLIGENCE SUSPECTS CIPHER TWO HAS BEEN CRACKED BY
    MARTIAN CRYPTO. LUCK. DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE. SIGNED: TORAN LONG,
    CAPTAIN, SENIOR CONTROL, LUNA BASE. END MESSAGE."

Rising, he detached the roll of perforated tape from the scrambler and
fed it into the tight beam transmitter. When the roll was consumed,
Long dropped sullenly into a chair. His relief arrived, but all desire
to partake of the joys of Ley City was gone. Like most of the old
timers he admired Hartnett immensely, and he could not rid himself
of the feeling that he was in some way responsible for sending the
fabulous spaceman into sure destruction.

Against the ten known cruisers and the suspected superdreadnaught that
were searching that quadrant for the illusive Station 9, the strength
of Flotilla Blue Three was sadly inadequate.

If the message had arrived earlier, a dreadnaught or at least a couple
of cruisers could have been despatched with Hartnett's force. But the
impossibility of a rendezvous in space made it strictly the Commodore's
baby now. Besides, Terra had no ships to spare. Hartnett would have to
rescue the three technicians at the Station and destroy the Isotope X-R
with no help.

The Cats didn't know what X-R was, but they wanted to find out awfully
badly if their concentration of strength in the Uranus quadrant was any
indication. And it wouldn't be very long before they found that the
mysterious Station 9 was on Oberon, either. With more than eleven ships
prowling around, they wouldn't miss such an obvious bet for very much
longer. All Hartnett had to do now was sneak through their screen,
land a ship on Oberon, take the technicians off, destroy the X-R, and
get away again without being seen because the _Artemis_ couldn't fight!
Long groaned. That's all!

Oh, why, he wondered, wouldn't Terrans learn? An ancient leader of
Terra's nationalist era had said it perfectly for them. Speak softly,
he had said, but carry a big stick! Why wouldn't they listen?

He shook his head and left the Control Tower wearily.

"What's eating him?" asked the relief.

"He's just sent Blue Three into the Uranus quadrant," replied Reilly.

The relief gave a low whistle and turned to look out over the earthlit
moonscape. "Too bad."

       *       *       *       *       *

Hartnett caught the Commander's eye as he worked at the control board.

"Sorry to crowd you like this, Mr. Scott," he said.

"It's nothing at all, sir. It's a pleasure to have you aboard." Even
as he said it, Scott realized how stupid it must sound. Of course it
crowded him to have Hartnett aboard and it annoyed him being the second
ranking officer on his own ship.

Commodore Hartnett smiled at the Commander's words. There was hardly
anything else he could say, poor devil. Rank has its privileges,
he thought. But he said: "Glad you feel that way," and fell silent
watching Scott and the Quartermaster guide the ship through the first
stages of acceleration.

Scott felt he should say something more, but he wasn't at all sure just
what. Finally he said, "We've only an hour or so more of acceleration,
sir. If there's anything you want tied down in your cabin, you'd best
notify Mr. Ward. The _Darkside_ has no gravitators."

"The cabin will be in order, Mr. Scott," replied Hartnett casually, "My
staff and I are all destroyer men."

Scott cursed himself for an idiot and mumbled an apology, but the
Commodore had let the incident pass with a half hidden smile and was
inspecting the orbital calculators at the far wing of the Control panel.

The voice of Lieutenant Morse, Astrogation Officer, saved Scott any
further embarassment. The communicator buzzed and Scott closed the
switch.

"Control here!" he snapped, a bit too crisply.

"Astrogation. We'll be at the boundary of our inner patrol zone at 2335
Sidereal, sir."

Scott looked over at Hartnett. "Any orders, sir?"

The Commodore shook his head. "Just have the other ships maintain
visual contact. Particularly the _Artemis_. The _Lysander_ can take the
rear position. Have me called in my cabin if anything comes up before
then. See you in the wardroom at dinner. Carry on, Mr. Scott."

He left Scott feeling sorry for his friend, Tom Drew, who commanded
Blue Three's lame duck, the beloved _Artemis_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Striding down the ramp, the Commodore came to the main gun-deck and
headed aft, past the banks of five inchers and torpedo tubes that lined
the inner shell. The gun crews stood respectfully as he walked past
them and returned young Blake's sharp salute. Hartnett restrained a
smile and continued down to the cabin deck.

Ensign Ward was unpacking his gear as he came through the valve,
and listening to a commercial broadcast on short wave that crackled
and faded with the vagaries of Terra's faraway heavyside layer. The
reports, pieced together, gave a fairly comprehensive picture of the
fighting that was going on in the Uranian quadrant.

"I don't like the way things are going, sir," said Ward.

Hartnett didn't either, but he could see no point in saying so.
Besides, the Flotilla's patrol area was on the other side of the sun
from Uranus, and the news there was bad enough to give him food for
thought.

"I won't need you for a bit, Ward. Take off and get yourself settled,"
he suggested.

The aide saluted and left. Hartnett stripped off his blouse and shirt
and settled himself comfortably on the acceleration bunk. He switched
on the bank of solar lamps and let the warm rays sooth and relax his
tired muscles. The tension of many harrowing days in the Pentagon began
to leave him, and he felt a great pity for the desk-bound VIP who could
not know the joy of a ship under them in deep space. Thank God he got
past the last physical. They were getting tougher every patrol!

The radio was still on and as the news reports came in, his restless
mind turned to consider the unfortunate tactical situation in which the
Terran Space Force now found itself.

It was the old democratic failing. God Bless it! As old as Terra's
history. Ship for ship and man for man the Terran Forces were better
than the Martian. Terrans shot faster and straighter. Terran ships flew
farther and faster. And Terra, for all its failings, was a free world
fighting for a free space. But the Cats had more ships and a hell of a
lot less reluctance about using them to enslave everybody in sight.

       *       *       *       *       *

The first Martian war had ended the squabbling confederation of
sovereign states that had been the UN. And the Martian war had brought
about in five short years the advancement of space-flight that might
otherwise have taken decades. It was ironic that the peace-loving
peoples of the Universe always seemed to produce better under the harsh
goad of war. The nastier the war the more magnificent the achievements.
Hartnett wondered if that were not a very significant commentary on the
true nature of the human organism.

But in the first Cat war the Solar System had been faced with the
unfortunate situation of two races developing interplanetary flight
within a decade of each other ... and both starting out to proselytize
their own peculiar institutions among the outposts of the System. A
clash was inevitable ... and Terra won the narrow margin of victory by
a more comprehensive understanding of material science. While the war
had begun with chemical fueled ships and bombs, it had ended up with
atomic powered ships and proton cannon.

The primitive ships of the war's beginning were still vivid memories to
Hartnett. He had spent many months in them, suffering the effects of
free-fall for weeks while they coasted in half-computed orbits around
the sun. The people of Terra had long had atomics, but it was not until
the third year of war that a method had been found to utilize the power
of the atom for a space drive. In those days a ship did not dare even
a perihelion passage, for fear the terrible heat of the sun would
detonate their precious reserves of fuel. Things were different now.

Ward reentered the room abruptly. "Message from Luna Control, sir,"
he said, passing over the note. "Came on tight beam, coded, and
scrambled," he added unnecessarily.

The Commodore read it over slowly and pursed his lips. He swung his
legs over the side of the bunk and reached for the intercom. "Control."

"Control here," came the reply.

"Stand by for a change of course. Be with you in a moment."

There was a moment of surprised silence, and then: "Aye, sir."

Hartnett turned to his aide. "Reach me that space-bag, will you Ward?
That's the one. Fish out Code Book 6589 and the A chart. That's the
deal."

       *       *       *       *       *

Hartnett's staff and all of the _Darkside's_ officers not actually
on watch assembled in the wardroom on the Commodore's orders. The
Flotilla had already come about and was heading sunward, its steady
acceleration of 3 Gs aided by gravity. Already, Greys had been packed
away in deference to the rising temperature, and all hands were clad in
fiberglass shorts and jumpers.

The assembled officers rose when the Commodore entered the room and he
waved them back to their seats, taking a chair at the head of the mess
table.

"Mr. Scott," he began without preamble, "What do you know about the new
Cat superdreadnaughts?"

"Very little, sir. I have heard that they are the biggest thing
in space ... although I don't believe they have more than one in
service right now. The other two of that class were photographed by a
photo-recon skeeter out of the _Gorgon_ a week before we lifted ship. I
saw the prints."

"What about armament?" asked the Flotilla Gunnery Officer, Wilson.

Scott shrugged. "We know very little about that. Mr. Horowitz could
tell you more. I understand they mount some kind of new cyclotronic
rifles."

"That's correct, sir," replied Horowitz. "I don't know exactly how the
things work, but I could guess that they detonate the heavy metals used
for fuel in atomic powered vessels."

"Range?" asked Lieutenant Orsov laconically.

"No information ... but I would be willing to guess that it is not more
than fifty miles no matter how tight their beam. There would be far too
great a voltage loss."

"Mr. Blake," said Hartnett, "How good are you on the skeeter-boat?"

Blake looked perplexed, but he answered with some pride that he was
considered quite passable.

"I'll bear that out, sir," said Scott drily. "Mr. Blake is something of
a hotshot pilot."

"Good enough," returned Hartnett. "We'll see when we near Station 9."
He looked over at Blake. "Do you think you can land a skeeter there and
take off three passengers without arousing the Cats?"

"A skeeter is only meant for three people, sir, and four would be quite
an overload," protested Blake.

"It will have to be done. If we try to land a ship there, every Cat in
the quadrant will be on our necks. It's either the skeeter, or ..." he
shrugged expressively.

"If we strip the boat down and remove all unnecessary mass it should
do," suggested Orsov. "What do you think, Blake?"

Blake gulped. To strip the skeeter would mean removing all armor and
guns. "I ... uh...." He squared his shoulders and grinned sheepishly.
"It would," he declared finally.

"Good," said the Commodore.

"Just where is this Station 9, sir?" asked Morse.

Hartnett ignored the question, but by way of answer, he turned to his
Flotilla Astrogator, Thorne and asked: "Do you remember the analysis of
Oberon's surface, Thorne?"

"Vaguely. All four of the Uranian satellites are composed mainly of
pitchblende and similar ores. Heavy metals. Very dense. I happen to
remember because it's one of the coincidences of astronomy that the
planet itself was given the name Uranus before the discovery that the
whole of its system was lousy with uranium ores."

"What else can you tell us about it?"

"Well, Oberon is small ... about 800 miles in diameter. Ariel and
Titania are about 1,000 and 600 respectively, and Umbriel is the baby
at about 400 miles. Much of Terra's uranium was brought in from Titania
back in the days of U-235 bombs and so forth. They are abandoned now."

"Gentlemen," said Hartnett, facing the others seriously. "There are ten
Martian cruisers and a superdreadnaught in the vicinity of Oberon and
Ariel ... you may have guessed by this time that our mysterious Station
9 is on Oberon. My orders are to rescue the three technicians and
destroy their samples of Isotope X-R, which is, I understand, a very
unstable Isotope of plutonium.

"If we could ... in some way ... destroy the bulk of the Cat strength
in the Uranus system, it would be a great step forward toward the
successful conclusion of this war that is still young enough to have
killed relatively few people."

Scott looked around at his officers and read plain astonishment on
their faces. To talk of destroying such a Martian fleet with four tiny
ships was madness!

"The rescue of the Station personnel will be handled by Mr. Blake and
the skeeter-boat. And ... if the plan I have works out properly, the
destruction of the enemy fleet will be handled by ... one ship alone."
He looked around the table with the vaguest suggestion of a grin on his
leathery face. He nodded his head at Scott. "You're quite right, Mr.
Scott, the _Artemis_."

       *       *       *       *       *

Scott paced furiously up and down the steel deck of the dark Control.
Chavez sat before the panels, his saturnine face wreathed in demon-like
curls of blue smoke from the short, black, Mexican cheroot he smoked so
lovingly.

"You should have heard him!" exclaimed Scott, "Standing there and
calmly telling us that we are going to destroy the Cat fleet with the
_Artemis_! Booby trap 'em, he says! Chav, I tell you he's gone looney!"

Chavez shrugged and smoothed his hairline moustache. "Quien sabe?"

"What the hell do you mean 'Quien sabe!' Are you trying to tell me
you're thinking he can do it?"

The Latin smiled, showing animal white teeth. "I understand he's done
a lot of things that people said weren't possible. Personally, I should
be very glad if he did what he says so we could all get back to Ley
City. Amigo, I have a little friend back on Luna that is." He smiled
dreamily and kissed his fingertips.

"I think you're all going crazy. It's just having that man aboard."

"Ah, Ah!" cautioned Chavez, "Remember all those beautiful silver
stripes."

"Well, damn the lot of you. I just hope we get the _Darkside_ back to
Luna Base and your little...." He made an angry parody of Chavez's
romantic gesture.

"We'll get back, I think, Mr. Scott," said a casual voice from the
Valve. The Commodore was standing in the arch, outlined against the
ramp light. He stepped into Control and took a seat beside Chavez at
the panels.

Scott and Chavez maintained an embarrassed silence. Hartnett looked up
to study the now receding solar disk through the tinted visiplate. The
Flotilla was now heading once again for deep space.

It was a few moments before Hartnett spoke. When he did, it was a
command directed at Scott.

"Mr. Scott, the Flotilla will land for certain necessary readjustments
on Hyperion. See that the other vessels are properly notified." Then he
rose and left the Control.

Scott dropped unhappily into a chair. He looked at Chavez. "Well, Mr.
Chavez. How do you think you will enjoy command of the _Darkside_?"

Chavez laid a friendly hand on his commander's sleeve. "I don't think
he'd take your ship from you just because...."

"Skip it, Chav!" snapped Scott and he left the Control in peevish
silence.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sixty hours later Blue Three lay grounded in a jagged little valley
on airless Hyperion. Spacesuited figures swarmed about the clustered
ships transferring personnel from the _Artemis_ to the other ships, and
rigging special television, remote control, and other apparatus in the
_Artemis_.

Hartnett stood beneath the _Darkside's_ ventral valve on the metallic
soil of the little moon with Chavez and Orsov watching the progress
of the work. Lieutenant Morrow of the _Lysander_ and Lieutenant Griggs
of the _Argus_ joined them and stood in silence while the last of the
_Artemis'_ personnel was transferred into the _Darkside_. Tom Drew, the
commander of the _Artemis_ stood sadly apart watching the spacemen make
a ghost ship of his command.

On the eastern horizon, Saturn was rising into a black sky studded with
points of fiery brilliance. Quickly the ringed planet climbed into the
sky and flooded the tortured landscape of Hyperion with light. The men
at the _Darkside's_ valve stood watching the show of celestial grandeur
in awe. Orsov, for all his deep-space experience, could not help but
feel a twinge of vertigo as he looked up into the haloed face of the
heavenly giant that filled a quarter of the inverted bowl of ebony that
the heavens had become.

Everyone was relieved to lift ship, however, for the thought of being
caught grounded by any roving Martian spaceship was not pleasant to
contemplate. Atomic bombs had long been obsolete, but one such would
certainly suffice to exterminate four grounded spacecraft. Then too,
they were all glad to get away from the glaring spectre that so eerily
filled too much of the sky ... the ringed Saturn had a hypnotic effect
that left a man shaken.

In the Control of the _Darkside_ Chavez whispered to Scott: "We were
thinking that you were going to lose the _Darky_ ... and it turns out
that poor old Drew is the one who lost his command."

"He should be glad to get rid of it."

"But what," asked Chavez, "is the old man going to do with her?"

Scott shrugged and spoke succinctly. "Bait." His spirits had risen
considerably when Hartnett had left him in command of the _Darkside_,
contrary to his expectations. He reflected somewhat ruefully that it
did a man good to have a scare thrown into him from time to time. Even
now, rapidly approaching a quadrant heavy with Cat warships, he could
feel contented in merely feeling his beloved tin can responding under
his hands on the control panels.

A thousand yards behind and astern, the unmanned _Artemis_ followed
the _Darkside_ like a dog on a leash, its myriad functions controlled
by an invisible chain of subetheric impulses from jerry-rigged remote
controls on the _Darkside's_ gun-deck.

In the faint light of the faraway sun, where the irrepressible Blake
had sloshed paint on her flank, gleamed the legend: BOOBY TRAP.

Like shadows, the four ships of Flotilla Blue Three slipped through the
patrol cordons of the Martian Space Force. In the infinite vastnesses
of the interplanetary deeps they were unnoticed. Blast tubes silent,
guided only by the ever increasing gravitational attraction of mammoth
Uranus, and the reaction of whining gyroscopes.

Beneath them, its greenish disk ever increasing, lay Uranus ... cold,
harsh, forbidding. The thick atmosphere of methane and ammonia lay in
great turbulent belts, whipped to maniacal fury by the eternal storms
that swept the unguessable surface of the ghastly planet.

       *       *       *       *       *

Blake shivered slightly as the skeeter-valve of the _Darkside_ closed
soundlessly behind him and the blackness of the void closed in about
the tiny boat. For just an instant, the familiar shape of the destroyer
loomed comfortingly in the faint light of the dwarfed sun, and then it
was gone, and he was falling away towards the mystery shrouded world
that lay beneath him. The very size of the disk was frightening. A huge
swirling mass 30,000 miles across seemed to be drawing him inexorably
into its gassy body.

With an effort he settled himself down in the control chair and patted
the tattered pin-up picture on the panel before him. It was a bit of
Terra far from home, and the simple act gave him courage. This was
certainly different from the Terra-Luna flights he had so often made
alone ... this was different. He grinned to himself and spoke aloud the
phrase made famous by ten thousand generations of actors and hacks.
This, he declaimed, is _it_!

Quickly now, he set up the constants for Oberon and pressed the firing
stud. There was a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach as the
skeeter came alive and the vast disk of Uranus vanished from the
forward vision ports. Speed was essential now. His trail would not mark
the place of the Flotilla, but it surely would arouse the sharp eyes
of the Cats who must be nearby. He pressed the second stud and the
skeeter leaped ahead. The accelerometer stood at 7 Terran Gs. By long
practice he could stand 11 ... and the skeeter ... stripped and souped
up ... could produce 20. Far too many.

He set the seat to prone position. Maybe he could squeeze an extra
one out of it now. 12 G! He gave the skeeter more power and the stars
seemed to go into a crazy dance as his vision started to fail. Enough.

Thirty minutes of terrific speed and still no sign of the Cats. The
tiny, dark disc of Oberon grew with alarming rapidity in the port. He
began to decelerate so fast that he nearly blacked out again. Damn!
Below him the tiny moon lay barren and bizarre in the greenish glow of
its huge primary.

The mushroom shaped huts of the metallurgical station were directly
below him and he swung the skeeter into a wild approach that would
have given his rocket instructor heart failure, but the boat held
together and settled to the surface of the tiny spaceport with a
crunch. Without waiting even for the surrounding soil to cool, Blake
was out of the ship and clumping clumsily toward the distant huts. The
terrific density of Oberon made the gravity almost normal. Three suited
figures appeared from the valves and began to run grotesquely toward
him. He waved them back and began shouting instructions at them on
the photophone. The infrared lamps on the top of the helmets blinked
eagerly in answer. Then quickly the four men vanished into the storage
hut and set feverishly to work.

       *       *       *       *       *

Control was lit only by the red battle lamps. Lines were strung
along the walls and through the valves, and Scott, Chavez, and the
Quartermaster sat strapped at the panels. The ship was in a free
falling orbit around Uranus, its sister ships and the ghost ship,
_Artemis_, following her lead like huge beads on an invisible string.
The orbit could not be broken until Blake returned with the Station
technicians. All hands sat in nervous silence at GQ while the Flotilla
hung dead in space.

Commodore Hartnett came through the valve from the gun-deck. There was
a flimsy in his hand and he pulled himself along the guide-line with
some difficulty.

"Mr. Scott," he rapped out. The waiting was taking its toll of his
nerves as well as the other's. "Mr. Scott. You will break radio silence
and transmit this message immediately. Unscrambled and in Code Two."

The men at the panels stiffened in surprise. So far they had managed to
avoid arousing the prowling Cats ... but now this!

"Sir," protested Scott, "You surely can't mean to break radio silence
with young Blake down there!"

It was hard for a man to look dignified floating in midair ... but
somehow Hartnett managed it. "It's an order, Mr. Scott."

Scott flushed angrily. A gambler! Damn you, he thought! But he bit his
lip and reached for the message. "Yes, sir."

Hartnett remained behind him as he rang for communications.

"Communications here!"

"Stand by to transmit."

"Spread beam," ordered Hartnett.

Scott cursed silently. "Spread beam."

"Aye, aye, Sir...." The voice of the radioman sounded strangled.

Scott read from the flimsy in a flat voice, a note of astonishment
creeping in as he finished the message.

    "TORAN LONG, SENIOR CONTROL, LUNA BASE. AM STANDING BY OFF OBERON
    READY TO LOAD ISOTOPE X-R ON BOARD DESTROYER "ARTEMIS" HAVE NOT MET
    THE ENEMY AND HAVE SUFFERED NO CASUALTIES. ONE AUXILIARY TUBE ON
    THE "ORION" HAS BLOWN BUT THE "JOVE" AND "MINERVA" ARE STANDING BY
    TO EFFECT EMERGENCY REPAIRS. HAVE DOCK SPACE AVAILABLE FOR REPAIR
    OF "ORION" L PLUS 21 2235 SIDEREAL. SIGNED C. HARTNETT COMMODORE
    RED SIX. END MESSAGE."

Scott wondered wildly if Hartnett had not suddenly lost his mind. Red
Six was the Code name for the Task Force that included five Terran
dreadnaughts, and the part about the blown tube and the repairs added
up to just so much lunacy. The Cats had the cipher ... there wasn't
much doubt of that, and had Hartnett invited every Martian captain in
the quadrant to come blasting down on them with all tubes blowing, he
couldn't have phrased it better!

Leaving the stunned Scott to ponder his strange madness, Commodore
Hartnett hurried down into the cluttered gun-deck. Drew, at the remote
controls of the _Artemis_, was ready for action when he arrived. Time
was important now, thought Hartnett.

"Now get that can down there ... and fast!"

Drew and his men went into action, and the _Artemis_ vanished from the
string of beads and plunged toward Oberon ... an empty and forlorn
bait for a trap whose jaws were beginning to close as from all over
the quadrant, Cat warships converged on Oberon ... their vaunted
superdreadnaught in the lead.

Twenty minutes after _Artemis_ left the Flotilla, the radioactive
streaks of the first Martian cruisers showed in the sky 15,000 miles
away.

       *       *       *       *       *

Blake and the three technicians from Station 9 huddled in the careening
skeeter-boat. They were almost on top of the Martian superdreadnaught
before they saw it. For just a fleeting instant it seemed to fill all
of space, and then it was gone. The Cats on board paid no attention to
a tiny boat that they imagined to be the survivor of the battle that
must have already begun off Oberon. But Blake paled at the very size
and might of the craft. From what he had seen of it it would take much
heavier stuff than the _Darkside_ carried to dent that monster!

Then they were nearing the _Darkside_ and Blake had his hands full
threading the skeeter back into the valve that yawned black as he drew
near. Once aboard, he slipped through the sighing valves and into
the boat deck. A steward came to take charge of the passengers, and
Blake hurried up to the gun-deck that had been transformed into the
extra-corporeal brain of the doomed _Artemis_.

Hartnett looked up from his work to grunt at him: "Did you do what I
told you to do?"

Blake grinned, "Yes, sir. All the stuff is buried in the storage
chambers directly under the pits ... the ones that are used to store
the coolants."

"Good enough." He rang for Control. "Have we been sighted yet?"

"No, sir," came Chavez' voice. "But the Cats are gathering thick and
fast."

Blake told Hartnett about the mammoth superdreadnaught, and the older
man smiled. "We'll see if we can't give them something for their
trouble." He turned back to the communicator. "Chavez, see to it that
we maintain a mean distance from Oberon of at least 25,000 miles. And
have all the screens in place."

"Aye, Sir."

"_Artemis_ is down, Sir," reported Drew.

Hartnett turned to look into the visiplates. The derelict ship had
landed nicely on the spaceport near the metallurgical station. He
nodded with satisfaction. At least the blast of her tubes hadn't
detonated the pile. He looked into a sky plate and saw that she had not
landed a minute too soon.

Two Martian cruisers, their black shapes dark against the starry sky,
were hanging low over her. Others circled behind them, and higher
than all the others, Hartnett could make out the huge shape of the
superdreadnaught that Blake had seen. That was the one he wanted!

For perhaps twenty minutes the Martians hung suspiciously over the
still landscape of Oberon. Then a cruiser detached itself and began to
sink down towards the spaceport on a long, slowly diminishing column of
flame.

Hartnett swore. They were going to try and land! That wouldn't do at
all. He had to goad them into attacking. He snapped an order to Drew.
Only one of the _Artemis'_ proton cannon was connected with the remote
control apparatus in the _Darkside_ but Hartnett hoped it would be
enough. It had to be.

Taking the gun control himself, he swung the sight so that it pointed
at the lowest cruiser. A flash of energy sizzled from the projector,
and spattered on the exposed flank of the Cat cruiser throwing sparks
wildly like the glitter of a child's Fourth of July sparkler. The ship
shuddered under the impact and glowed white hot along the scarred beam.

Like a speeded up motion picture shot, the Cat ship leaped away from
the spaceport, leveling its own guns at the recumbent _Artemis_. The
men in the _Darkside_ caught a glimpse of the other ships bearing
their projectors, and far above, Hartnett was elated to see that the
superdreadnaught had extended the muzzles of its massive cyclotronic
rifles.

The cruisers fired first, and the screens went blank, so the Terrans
never saw the rest of it. But up in the darkened Control Chavez and
Scott were witnesses to one of the greatest cataclysms men have ever
seen.

The tiny disk of Oberon seemed to light up with a white fire; swelling
like a glowing balloon and then shattering with a violence that left
them speechless. The very atmosphere of Uranus under the low swinging
moonlet boiled and billowed with a frightful incandescence, great
prominences of radioactivated methane spouting high into the air as the
very internal balance of the great planet teetered.

A shock-wave of corruscating fire shot out from the blazing surface
of Oberon, engulfing the Martian warships in a sea of spinning,
scintillating destruction. Like a tiny nova, the satellite flared in
the black silence of deep space, vaporizing everything within ten
thousand miles of it; churning the very vacuum into a hell of hard
radiation.

Scott stared at the outside Geiger counters as they chattered their
story of charged ions and electrons battering, even at this distance,
at sheathing in the destroyer's hull.

Hartnett's shouted order to "... get the hell out of here!" was
strictly unnecessary. By the time he had issued it, the remaining three
ships of Blue Three were piling on Gs in the direction of Terra.

Though no one stayed to look at it, the sight of the remnants of Oberon
forming into a thin ring around the grumbling Uranus must have been
quite impressive.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ten hours from Luna Base, Flotilla Blue Three's officers had assembled
for a victory dinner in the wardroom. The last course was cleared away,
and Chavez passed a quantity of his precious cheroots around.

He settled himself down beside Scott and dragged happily at his smoke.

It was Blake who burst out with the question that was on everyone's
mind.

Commodore Hartnett smiled. "It was Horowitz who really doped the
thing out, gentlemen. I just put the plan into operation. You see,
plutonium can be used as a sort of booster charge in a chain reaction
explosion ... you all know that. You, yourself, Blake, and you men from
the station moved the stuff into a spot that would be directly under
the poor old _Artemis_ when the shooting started.

"You youngsters don't remember much about land warfare, so it was
up to me to rig the trap. The bait was _Artemis_. The teaser was
the spread-beam radio message about the three dreadnaughts that we
aren't.... Remember that, Mr. Scott?"

Scott blushed furiously and nodded.

"Well," continued Hartnett, "It was something of a gamble, I suppose.
But the odds were long and the chances weren't too bad.

"You all know how anxious the Cats are to try something new. Those
cyclotronic rifles must have been literally burning a hole in their
pockets ... and the range was short ... they couldn't resist the
temptation to try them. If they had stuck to proton guns they would
have melted _Artemis_ down and that would have been the end of
it ... they would have had the X-R to do with as they pleased. But
they got itchy fingers with the new stuff ... as I prayed they would.
Curiosity, I suppose. The feline instinct. Have you ever seen a cat
trying to open a package? Same kind of people.

"The rest was just a repetition of the atom blasts of the first
Martian War and the earlier wars on Terra. The only difference was
the size of the bomb. The cyclotrons set off the chain reaction in
the plutonium ... the plutonium set off the reaction in the U-235 ...
common enough on a world made practically all of pitchblende and other
Uranium compounds. The same thing could happen to ... say Terra ... if
we ever started a chain reaction in one of the commoner elements such
as iron, or carbon. Or even one of the commoner gases. Anyway there are
only three satellites in the Uranian System now ... and eight less Cat
cruisers and one less superdreadnaught. I suspect the Cats can hardly
afford to lose them, too. Wouldn't surprise me to hear that Mars has
been feeling around for an armistice even by the time we get home. The
very fact that they have no idea how their fleet was destroyed will
tickle them in the right place, I suppose."

Scott spoke in surprised tones. "So they blew themselves up with their
own fancy cannon."

Hartnett nodded reflectively. "Um ... that's about it. Of course we had
to set up the proper conditions." He grinned at the younger man. "Or,
you might say, the 'Booby Trap'...."



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Preview Of Peril" ***

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