Bombs Awry

George O. Smith

I

There were some new faces among the crew that crowded around him as he came up the runway into the air-lock, and the Vanguard rang with greeting: "Hi, Pete," or "Glad to see you again, Commander Ellsworth," depending upon how well they knew him. Peter felt a bit of nostalgia-but only briefly. The Vanguard had been both a comfortable and interesting berth; but in every man's life there were crossroads, and some of them demanded that he give up one course, however pleasant, in favor of something more promising.

And some of them, like this one, took a man just across a tall fence, and let him brush occasionally against his former existence.

"How're things going?" he asked.

Toby Reed grinned. "Fine. We've still got a fine gang, Peter. We're stopping 'em all cold. We'll stop yours cold, too."

Peter felt a mild flash of professional hostility. He was no longer one of them. He had no right to the "Commander" title any more. He was "Ex-Commander" by proper title, if he owned any title at all. He was on the Other Side. And the gang that once would have turned the Vanguard inside out for Peter Ellsworth were now going to turn it inside out to prove that they were smarter than Peter Ellsworth.

"Think you have anything?" asked Harry Lockwood.

Peter nodded. "Think I'd be handing it over to this gang of thieves if I didn't?"

He felt that this was the course to take. He must be as confident as they were. They were a smart outfit, and Peter was only one man; yet Peter knew all the tricks himself, and he doubted that they had invented many new ones. So unless someone had come up with about as new a technique as could be, Peter would win. He had all the old bets covered.

Actually, Peter had been covering them for years. There's a lot of free time in a job like Peter's former command-time to watch and think and plan and set down ideas. For seven years Peter Ellsworth had been in command of the Vanguard, and in that time he had seen a good many self-guided missiles launched in the ultimate test against the Vanguard's highly-specialized countermeasures crew. He had watched them all fail. He had taken careful note of the reasons. He had worked with the crew against them-

What better training than this for a man who wanted to build one?

Down in the torpedo-hold were three shining metal cigars. Peter Ellsworth's pets. His babies. Sunk into them were all of his hopes, all his meager finances, and all the money that everybody who was Peter's friend had been able to scrape up. He could not fail.

He waved to his former crew and went aloft to the pilot's bridge to see the present commander.

"I'm Peter Ellsworth."

Commander Hogarth eyed him with interest. "You trained me a fine gang," he said warmly.

"They were a willing bunch."

Hogarth smiled. "You're hoping, but it's no go," he said cryptically.

"H'm?"

"Ellsworth, no matter how neutral a man is he can't help being human first. In some situations like this a man could count upon human nature to help him out. Not this time, Peter. Not this time. That gang below would like to have you back. The only way to get you back is to ruin your chances. They'll work hard at it. As for me, I could use an Exec. Forester wants to transfer back to the heavies."

Peter shook his head. "I'm hocked up to the eyebrows," he said. "If I fail this test, I'll be ruined. At an Executive Officer's pay it would take me about two hundred and eighteen years of service to pay it back. That's without eating."

"But you ought to know you can't win."

Peter shook his head again. "This time the Vanguard loses and I win a nice fat contract. I know what a self-guided missile has to do."

Commander Hogarth chuckled. "And we'll find out how to wreck both your hopes and your missile, Peter. Then you'll be back busting others instead of building 'em. Why, even Ordnance hasn't come up with a good one."

Peter nodded. "I know. But there's faulty reasoning in the theory that Ordnance is the only outfit that knows anything about ordnance. That's why I went into private venture. More real freedom of thought. I've had it and I've used it, and now I'm here on the other side of the game to prove it."

Hogarth started to reply, but Pilot Henderson snapped the squawk-box key and announced: "Batten down! Takeoff in five minutes!"

Way down below in the bowels of the Vanguard the field-generators began to build up. There was no more time for gab. Everybody buttoned down for takeoff, and the Vanguard speared the clouds on its needle-nose and went up and up into the black space between the planets.

Out in the vast empty lot of the Solar System that laid beyond the orbit of Saturn the Vanguard lay in wait for its war-game enemy. In one sense it was like a game of solitaire. There were actually two crews aboard the Vanguard, kept separate from one another during the trials. The first was a skeleton crew trained to handle the missiles, to check them out, finally to launch them against the 'enemy'. The second crew was the countermeasures crew who would take over the operation of the Vanguard against the attack.

Every possible weapon would be used against the missile, every gadget, every device, every brain.

If the Vanguard's crew succeeded there would be a space-borne skyburst of flame that expended itself harmlessly. If the crew failed-and they had never been known to fail-then the Countermeasures Department lost three million dollars worth of guided drone. Not the crews. They were safe in the Vanguard. Just the drone. The guided spacecraft, the "enemy" spacecraft, which would be coupled to every single motion that the Vanguard went through from hatch-openings to main-battery fire to space maneuverings. From the drone would come back the sighting-plate information for presentation on the crew's plates, so that visible and audible information created the illusion that they, themselves, were fending off a self-guided missile loaded with a fission-flash warhead.

So perfect was the illusion that, in every such test, the crew swore and sweated it out. It was the best operation that could be devised; even better than using a live crew directly against the deadly things, for someday the crew might fail.

Today, Peter hoped.

The squawk-box honked tinnily and Henderson said: "Drone at fifteen kilos."

Commander Hogarth said: "Torpedo crew make ready and fire!"

There was a slight lurch as Peter Ellsworth's first pet whooshed out of the torpedo tube. He saw it streak away to be gone almost instantly. It was a tiny spot on the radar, curving outward in a veritable crawl towards the spot fifteen thousand miles across space.

"Henderson, take over!" ordered Hogarth.

There was a lurch as Henderson thrust home a master toggle-the lurch of Drone and Mother aligning together. From this moment on, the two were near-identical. Turn for turn, trick for trick, weapon for weapon. Acceleration for acceleration and direction for direction they were one ship. Only in the matter of distance: fifteen thousand miles but closing rapidly, and in the matter of velocity: the Vanguard was loafing along while the Drone came up out of Sol's inner system at a terrific velocity, were the two ships un-like.

They were chained together with a single, non-radiating communication band of the Z-wave, multi-modulated in both directions so that attack upon the Drone seemed to be attack against the Mother, and riposte by the Mother turned out to be riposte against the missile from the Drone.

There was an electric-sounding sizzle from below; far across space where the invisible Drone must be, there was a faint flowering of violet as the primary beams lashed out. Someone below was testing the main-battery.

Aboard the Vanguard were two factions. One of them (The Crew) hoped to see the missile blossom in the emptiness like a futile flower. The other (Peter Ellsworth) hoped that the crew would see their sighting-plates flare before their eyes in the searing blast that meant their destruction-in-simulation, and their defeat in reality.

It was a perfect set-up. The missile was as good as the best brains could make it. The defense was as fine as could be collected together from the men in the Space forces. Nothing could go wrong.

But it did.

II

It was no failure of man or machine. It was a coincidence so impossibly improbable that only the Divine Intervention of a Deity who was tired of His paper-work could be used as an explanation.

Chuckling in some mysterious Godlike humor, He picked up a meteorite that had been serving as a paperweight on His desk to hold down a sheaf of supplications and prayers. He wound up magnificently, having watched some of His minions playing in the Heavenly Series.

He pitched a clean strike.

The meteorite drilled the Drone right through the middle of Capricorn. The Drone exploded in a puff of flame that flashed in the sighting-plates in the Vanguard only briefly before they blacked out.

Commander Hogarth employed a series of robust verbs and adverbs and nouns in a long sentence that ended with its subject: "-ing meteorite!"

Then he asked Henderson: "How long before we can get another Drone out here?"

"About two hours. I'll have to compute. But-"

"Okay. Tell the crew to take a break. Get the galley to run up some coffee-and. Give the whole outfit a Green Alert. We'll pick it up later. Ellsworth, how's about some grub?"

"Okay by me."

"Can you get control of...