The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (30 page)

"That's your problem, not mine," said the sector
commander coldly. "All I know is that rumors have got to the Protector
that an organized underground is being built up and that Carr is behind it. The
Protector wants action now. If he doesn't get it, heads are going to
roll!"

"I'll do what I can, sir," promised Krogson.

"I'm sure you will," said the sector commander
viciously, "because I'm giving you exactly ten days to produce something
that is big enough to take the heat off me. If you don't, I'll break you,
Krogson. If I'm sent to the mines, you'll be sweating right alongside me.
That's a promise!"

Krogson's face blanched.

"Any questions?" snapped the sector commander.

"Yes," said Krogson.

"Well, don't bother me with them. I've got troubles of
my own!" The screen went dark.

Krogson slumped into his chair and sat staring dully at the
blank screen. Finally he roused himself with an effort and let out a bellow
that rattled the windows of his dusty office.

"Schninkle! Get in here!"

A gnomelike little figure scuttled in through the door and
bobbed obsequiously before him.

"Yes, commander?"

"Switch on your think tank," said Krogson.
"The Lord Protector has the shakes again and the heat's on!"

"What is it this time?" asked Schninkle.

"General Carr!" said the commander gloomily,
"the ex-Number Two."

"I thought he'd been liquidated."

"So did I," said Krogson, "but he must have
slipped out some way. The Protector thinks he's started up an
underground."

"He'd be a fool if he didn't," said the little
man. "The Lord Protector isn't as young as he once was and his grip is
getting a little shaky."

"Maybe so, but he's still strong enough to get us
before General Carr gets him. The Sector Commander just passed the buck down to
me. We produce or else!"

"We?" said Schninkle unhappily.

"Of course," snapped Krogson, "we're in this
together. Now let's get to work! If you were Carr, where would be the logical
place for you to hide out?"

"Well," said Schninkle thoughtfully, "if I
were as smart as Carr is supposed to be, I'd find myself a hideout right on
Prime Base. Everything's so fouled up there that they'd never find me."

"That's out for us," said Krogson. "We can't
go rooting around in the Lord Protector's own back yard. What would Carr's next
best bet be?"

Schninkle thought for a moment. "He might go out to one
of the deserted systems," he said slowly. "There must be half a
hundred stars in our own base area that haven't been visited since the old
empire broke up. Our ships don't get around the way they used to and the
chances are mighty slim that anybody would stumble on to him
accidentally."

"It's a possibility," said the commander
thoughtfully, "a bare possibility." His right fist slapped into his
left palm in a gesture of sudden resolution. "But by the Planets! at least
it's something! Alert all section heads for a staff meeting in half an hour. I
want every scout out on a quick check of every system in our area!"

"Beg pardon, commander," said Schninkle, "but
half our light ships are red-lined for essential maintenance and the other half
should be. Anyway it would take months to check every possible hideout in this
area even if we used the whole fleet."

"I know," said Krogson, "but we'll have to do
what we can with what we have. At least I'll be able to report to sector that
we're doing
something!
Tell Astrogation to set up a series of search
patterns. We won't have to check every planet. A single quick sweep through
each system will do the trick. Even Carr can't run a base without power. Where
there's power, there's radiation, and radiation can be detected a long way off.
Put all electronic techs on double shifts and have all detection gear
double-checked."

"Can't do that either," said Schninkle.
"There aren't more than a dozen electronic techs left. Most of them were
transferred to Prime Base last week."

Commander Krogson blew up. "How in the name of the
Bloody Blue Pleiades am I supposed to keep a war base going without
technicians? You tell me, Schninkle, you always seem to know all the
answers."

Schninkle coughed modestly. "Well, sir," he said,
"as long as you have a situation where technicians are sent to the uranium
mines for making mistakes, it's going to be an unpopular vocation. And, as long
as the Lord Protector of the moment is afraid that Number Two, Number Three,
and so on have ideas about grabbing his job—which they generally do—he's going
to keep his fleet as strong as possible and their fleets so weak they aren't
dangerous. The best way to do that is to grab techs. If most of the base's
ships are sitting around waiting repair, the commander won't be able to do much
about any ambitions he may happen to have. Add that to the obvious fact that
our whole technology has been on a downward spiral for the last three hundred
years and you have your answer."

Krogson nodded gloomy agreement. "Sometimes I feel as
if we were all on a dead ship falling into a dying sun," he said. His
voice suddenly altered. "But in the meantime we have our necks to save.
Get going, Schninkle!"

Schninkle bobbed and darted out of the office.

It was exactly ten o'clock in the morning when Sergeant
Dixon of the Imperial Space Marines snapped to attention before his commanding
officer.

"Sergeant Dixon reporting as ordered, sir!" His
voice cracked a bit in spite of his best efforts to control it.

The colonel looked at him coldly. "Nice of you to drop
in, Dixon," he said. "Shall we go ahead with our little chat?"

Kurt nodded nervously.

"I have here," said the colonel, shuffling a sheaf
of papers, "a report of an unauthorized expedition made by you into
Off
Limits
territory."

"Which one do you mean, sir?" asked Kurt without
thinking.

"Then there has been more than one?" asked the
colonel quietly.

Kurt started to stammer.

Colonel Harris silenced him with a gesture of his hand.
"I'm talking about the country to the north, the tableland back of the
Twin Peaks."

"It's a beautiful place!" burst out Kurt
enthusiastically. "It's . . . it's like Imperial Headquarters must be.
Dozens of little streams full of fish, trees heavy with fruit, small game so
slow and stupid that they can be knocked over with a club. Why, the battalion
could live there without hardly lifting a finger!"

"I've no doubt that they could," said the colonel.

"Think of it, sir!" continued the sergeant.
"No more plowing details, no more hunting details, no more nothing but
taking it easy!"

"You might add to your list of 'no mores,' no more tech
schools," said Colonel Harris. "I'm quite aware that the place is all
you say it is, sergeant. As a result I'm placing all information that pertains
to it in a 'Top Secret' category. That applies to what is inside your head as
well!"

"But, sir!" protested Kurt. "If you could
only see the place—"

"I have," broke in the colonel, "thirty years
ago."

Kurt looked at him in amazement. "Then why are we still
on the plateau?"

"Because my commanding officer did just what I've just
done, classified the information 'Top Secret.' Then he gave me thirty days'
extra detail on the plows. After he took my stripes away that is." Colonel
Harris rose slowly to his feet. "Dixon," he said softly, "it's
not every man who can be a noncommissioned officer in the Space Marines.
Sometimes we guess wrong. When we do we do something about it!" There was
the hissing crackle of distant summer lightning in his voice and storm clouds
seemed to gather about his head. "Wipe those chevrons off!" he
roared.

Kurt looked at him in mute protest.

"You heard me!" the colonel thundered.

"Yes-s-s, sir," stuttered Kurt, reluctantly
drawing his forearm across his forehead and wiping off the three triangles of
white grease paint that marked him a sergeant in the Imperial Space Marines.
Quivering with shame, he took a tight grip on his temper and choked back the
angry protests that were trying to force their way past his lips.

"Maybe," suggested the colonel, "you'd like
to make a complaint to the I.G. He's due in a few days and he might reverse my
decision. It has happened before, you know."

"No, sir," said Kurt woodenly.

"Why not?" demanded Harris.

"When I was sent out as a scout for the hunting parties
I was given direct orders not to range farther than twenty kilometers to the
north. I went sixty." Suddenly his forced composure broke. "I
couldn't help it, sir," he said. "There was something behind those
peaks that kept pulling me and pulling me and"—he threw up his
hands—"you know the rest."

There was a sudden change in the colonel's face as a warm
human smile swept across it, and he broke into a peal of laughter. "It's a
hell of a feeling, isn't it, son? You know you shouldn't, but at the same time
there's something inside you that says you've got to know what's behind those
peaks or die. When you get a few more years under your belt you'll find that it
isn't just mountains that make you feel like that. Here, boy, have a
seat." He gestured toward a woven wicker chair that stood by his desk.

Kurt shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, stunned by
the colonel's sudden change of attitude and embarrassed by his request.
"Excuse me, sir," he said, "but we aren't out on work detail,
and—"

The colonel laughed. "And enlisted men not on work detail
don't sit in the presence of officers. Doesn't the way we do things ever strike
you as odd, Dixon? On one hand you'd see nothing strange about being yoked to a
plow with a major, and on the other, you'd never dream of sitting in his
presence off duty."

Kurt looked puzzled. "Work details are different,"
he said. "We all have to work if we're going to eat. But in the garrison,
officers are officers and enlisted men are enlisted men and that's the way it's
always been."

Still smiling, the colonel reached into his desk drawer,
fished out something, and tossed it to Kurt.

"Stick this in your scalp lock," he said.

Kurt looked at it, stunned. It was a golden feather crossed
with a single black bar, the insignia of rank of a second lieutenant of the
Imperial Space Marines. The room swirled before his eyes.

"Now," said the older officer, "sit
down!"

Kurt slowly lowered himself into the chair and looked at the
colonel through bemused eyes.

"Stop gawking!" said Colonel Harris. "You're
an officer now! When a man gets too big for his sandals, we give him a new
pair—after we let him sweat a while!"

He suddenly grew serious. "Now that you're one of the
family, you have a right to know why I'm hushing up the matter of the tableland
to the north. What I have to say won't make much sense at first. Later I'm
hoping it will. Tell me," he said suddenly, "where did the battalion
come from?"

"We've always been here, I guess," said Kurt.
"When I was a recruit, Granddad used to tell me stories about us being
brought from some place else a long time ago by an iron bird, but it stands to
reason that something that heavy can't fly!"

A faraway look came into the colonel's eyes. "Six
generations," he mused, "and history becomes legend. Another six and
the legends themselves become tales for children. Yes, Kurt," he said
softly, "it stands to reason that something that heavy couldn't fly so
we'll forget it for a while. We did come from some place else though. Once
there was a great empire, so great that all the stars you see at night were only
part of it. And then, as things do when age rests too heavily on them, it began
to crumble. Commanders fell to fighting among themselves and the Emperor grew
weak. The battalion was set down here to operate a forward maintenance station
for his ships. We waited but no ships came. For five hundred years no ships
have come," said the colonel somberly. "Perhaps they tried to relieve
us and couldn't, perhaps the Empire fell with such a crash that we were lost in
the wreckage. There are a thousand perhapses that a man can tick off in his
mind when the nights are long and sleep comes hard! Lost . . . forgotten . . .
who knows?"

Kurt stared at him with a blank expression on his face. Most
of what the colonel had said made no sense at all. Wherever Imperial Headquarters
was, it hadn't forgotten them. The I.G. still made his inspection every year or
so.

The colonel continued as if talking to himself. "But
our operational orders said that we would stand by to give all necessary
maintenance to Imperial warcraft until properly relieved, and stand by we
have."

The old officer's voice seemed to be coming from a place far
distant in time and space.

"I'm sorry, sir," said Kurt, "but I don't
follow you. If all these things did happen, it was so long ago that they mean
nothing to us now."

"But they do!" said Colonel Harris vigorously.
"It's because of them that things like your rediscovery of the tableland
to the north have to be suppressed for the good of the battalion! Here on the
plateau the living is hard. Our work in the fields and the meat brought in by
our hunting parties give us just enough to get by on. But here we have the
garrison and the Tech Schools—and vague as it has become— a reason for
remaining together as the battalion. Out there where the living is easy we'd
lose that. We almost did once. A wise commander stopped it before it went too
far. There are still a few signs of that time left—left deliberately as
reminders of what can happen if commanding officers forget why we're
here!"

"What things?" asked Kurt curiously.

"Well, son," said the colonel, picking up his
great war bonnet from the desk and gazing at it quizzically, "I don't
think you're quite ready for that information yet. Now take off and strut your
feather. I've got work to do!"