Rockets in Ursa Major (15 page)

Not unless they've got some radar outposts near the Earth. My ships got rid of most of these outriders and I didn't see any on the way out.'

Betelgeuse got up off the bunk and moved over to the radar screen. We looked together. The glaring white blob of the Sun was now growing impossibly bright.

To one side I could make out the asteroid, which seemed to have a magnetic pull to my eyes.

`You know, I suddenly feel rather thirsty,' I said.

`If you go to the cabin below, you will find most of your Earth drinks and the water in the pipe should be boiling. There are also space rations of Earth food.'

`Splendid,' I said, moving over to the lift.

`I suggest you take the space rations rather than solid foods, it will help your stomach and you won't feel sick.'

`Don't worry, the thought of pushing down solid food doesn't really appeal,' I said, holding my stomach and laughing.

The galley, as I suppose some people call it, was very simple. A hot water pipe with a pressure gauge, but no washing bowl or anything. Below a working top were some deep freezers. In one of them I found the coffee and made myself a drink. There didn't appear to be any milk tablets so I drank it black. The space rations were all in boxes with numbers on them. Not knowing what the numbers stood for I took one from each of several boxes and swallowed them with the coffee. My stomach felt empty, but the coffee worked wonders.

Back up in the cabin, I found Betelgeuse watching the radar scope with immense interest.

`We're being followed!' Betelgeuse said with amusement.

`What!' The idea was ridiculous.

`I was just testing the radar aerial at the rear of the ship to see that it was opening and closing, when I picked this up.'

There was nothing to be seen at first as the large mass of Venus behind us was extremely big, but then I noticed a small dot crossing the surface of the planet. 'How near is it?'

`About four to five hours and traveling about the same speed.'

`It isn't one of yours, is it?'

`No, I tested it with our recognition signal, but there was no reply. I also tried your Earth distress signal just in case, but no response.'

I had to raise my hat to the imagination of this stranger from space; he had the cunning of a fox. I'd never have thought of using our mayday signal for a recognition count.

`What do you think?' Betelgeuse said, working the punch operator. 'We haven't time to stop and find out who it is behind us. I have a suspicion whoever it is, is trying to slow us down, so we'll leave a torpedo here. I'll leave it with a radio message, so that as the ship passes in about four hours it will get a message asking its origin.

If there is no reply then the torpedo will home in, and bang.'

Betelgeuse lay down to have a nap. The Western he had been watching had looked interesting, so I checked through the index of films available and flicked the switch. Time passed in a hot haze of desert and gun shots.

There was a buzz from somewhere. Betelgeuse woke up and went over to the radar screen.

`Dick,' he called. 'Our tail has caught up with the torpedo.'

The screen showed the tiny follower some four hours behind. Then there was a brilliant little flash.

`Well, he wasn't very friendly, was he,' said Betelgeuse.

`Certainly not.' I looked hard, but there weren't any more ships. Betelgeuse was now scanning with the radio equipment. Instead of the quiet we'd had earlier during the journey, space was now full of sounds.

`It was our enemy.'

`The Yela?' I said.

Betelgeuse smiled and nodded.

`Have you noticed anything?' I said.

`You mean the heat,' Betelgeuse said, looking at me. `Is that what's making me feel thirsty?'

Betelgeuse nodded. 'It's nearly 800° centigrade outside.'

`Whew! Hot enough to melt lead. We must be well inside the orbit of Mercury,' I said. 'How much heat can the outside shell stand?'

`I don't think it will be the ship that suffers first, it will be us. The refrigeration plant is going at full power. I've dried the atmosphere, so we can stand up to around 80° centigrade.'

`What happens then?'

`You will see in a moment,' Betelgeuse handed me a thermometer. It read 62° centigrade.

The radar monitor was now filled with the Sun, its huge surface boiling and bubbling away.

`We'll put it in around there,' I said, pointing to a flare point in the surface. Betelgeuse made some adjustments to the sighting mechanism. My legs were beginning to feel rubbery. The temperature was now 70.90° centigrade.

We sweated quietly, neither of us moving more than was necessary.

`Hullo there, are you O.K.? Over,' came an enquiry in a very polite English voice.

`Hullo, Earth H.Q. We're having a sauna bath. Have you a message for us?' Betelgeuse asked.

`The Yela force seems to be on the move. We got a report from one of your people who was moving fast out of the solar system.'

`Don't blame them,' said Betelgeuse. 'We shall make for cover as soon as we have dropped the bomb.' He glanced at the clock in front of him. 'In about two minutes fifty seconds now.'

`It's time to get our heads down,' Betelgeuse said, walking unsteadily over to the bunks, and I followed. He strapped himself down, so I did too; and we stared at the monitor.

Suddenly in front of us was the vast Sun. The target area was dead in centre; the bomb was locked on course.

`You ready?' Betelgeuse said calmly. I nodded, with the sinking feeling of a visit to the dentist. 'Here we go.'

`Bomb away.' I clung to the side of my bunk.

The ship started to spin end over end. One minute the Sun was on the screen, the next it wasn't. Then she suddenly steadied up and we were on our way back to safety as fast as the ship could go.

`I've tuned the radio into Earth's H.Q., who will be able to give us details of any events that we cannot see.'

I felt terrible; the ship just went on accelerating. She must be incredibly powerful, I thought, since the main cabin was also the acceleration cabin. Even taking off from Earth hadn't been as bad as this. We had nearly an hour to go to the safety of the asteroid.

`Well, we're on course,' Betelgeuse said after about ten minutes. 'What are you thinking?' he asked me.

`Well,' I said, looking at the picture of the Sun's surface. 'It looks just about the most terrible thing I've ever seen, even without an explosion. Look at the activity. Imagine what will happen if the whole thing explodes.'

If it does, there'll be something wrong with your calculations.' Betelgeuse laughed.

`Yes, and no more worries about Earth, Betelgeuse, Warboys or the Yela.'

The weird musical sound was now quite loud, persistent and irritating as well as frightening.

`Hello, Sac Peak, H.Q. speaking. Can you say whether solar activity is higher than anything previously experienced?' we heard the English voice from World H.Q.

`Activity is very high, but not outside previous experience. Fifteen minutes ago it looked as if something unusual was happening. If the intensity of H alpha had gone on increasing, we'd have had the father and mother of all flares. But for the last ten minutes the intensity has been falling off slowly.'

`It looks as though it was a miss,' I said.

`I was on target'

`Not your shooting, it was the theory behind the idea I was referring to.'

`Look at that!' Betelgeuse suddenly said, sitting up. `What?'

`Here, watch the patch by the sunspots near the east limb. It's brightening very quickly.'

`It's only brightening along the usual sort of thread. What I want is the whole surface to go up,' I said damply.

The path of the brightness was spreading slowly like a snake across a small part of the surface. Then suddenly the whole thread began to widen at an incredible speed.

`How far are we from the asteroid?' I asked.

Too far,' Betelgeuse said, punching some new instructions. 'We'll change course and head right into the sheltered side of Mercury. That should take us twenty minutes.'

`Twenty minutes! ... Look it's going right round the east limb.'

`Well, you'll be glad to know that your calculations look right now,' Betelgeuse said, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

`Maybe, but I wish I had more knowledge of this type of thing.'

`The whole damn thing's going up,' Betelgeuse said. `It's going to boil,' I said jubilantly.

`Yes, and we're going to get cooked alive along with everything else.'

`How long?' I said.

'No time at all. Those particles are traveling at nearly the speed of light.'

`Certainly, but there's just a chance, with it being towards the east of the Sun. There's usually a longer delay between the particles and light when it's on that side.'

`Of course. The magnetic field, but that'll be shot to pieces.'

`Normally, yes. But that boiling must be bringing up a lot of new magnetic field from below. It may hold back the particles for a few moments.'

`Maybe,' Betelgeuse said, watching the instruments in front of him.

`By God. It's fantastic. It looks as if the whole Sun is blowing up!'

SUDDENLY the great fireball vanished from the screen. I looked at Betelgeuse. He sat punching out another message for the computer system, the sweat running off his hands on to the punch keys.

`Hello, Warboys. Ganges. Over,' came the crackling voice over the intercom.

Warboys here. How's everything down there? Over,' I said.

Sun's just given off the biggest ruddy flare in history. Are you sheltered? Over.'

`Reasonably, I think.' Betelgeuse was pointing to something on the control panel. I went over to look at the panel. The outside radiation counters were going mad, and the inside counter was climbing up to human limit.

`The radiation out here is fantastic. Over.'

`Anything you want? Over,' said Ganges.

`Yes,' said Betelgeuse. 'As soon as the flare intensity decreases let us know.'

`O.K. Over and out,' said Ganges.

My eyes were now fixed on the radiation counters. The indoor counter was rising slowly but surely.

Is there any cure for an overdose of radiation?' I asked Betelgeuse.

He smiled. 'Not here. The only way we can counteract extensive burning is to replace the burnt tissue. Unfortunately our medical unit is too far away to be able to help us if we are exposed to too big a dose.'

`That's cheerful. I'd hate to be out there in the full impact of this bombardment.'

An explosion rocked the ship. Betelgeuse somehow managed to remain standing as I went down on my shoulder with a bang.

`Essans,' he yelled.

I got up, only to be thrown back on my face, from the fierce acceleration coupled with another explosion. The Sun suddenly appeared on the tele-cine, then it vanished.

`Sorry, we've got to outmanoeuvre them,' Betelgeuse shouted.

`How many are there?' I asked.

`Three, I think.'

Again the Sun appeared. I waited until everything seemed to be going smoothly, then got up. The radar antenna was homed on the three ships.

`What are they waiting for?'

`They are trying to work out what frequencies we are jamming. The torpedoes can be thrown off course by jamming the operation frequencies.'

`You mean before you commence battle, you compute all the possible combinations?'

`Sometimes. I find it simplest to get close in on the enemy and pick up the jamming frequencies, then it's just a question of who has the fastest electronics.

`Just like playing a vast game of chess.'

`Yes, I suppose so, but you see our problem is how to solve the frequencies for one ship and hit it, meantime trying to baffle them so as not to get hit.'

`In that case how did you manage to bag the ship that was shadowing us?'

`When you've a situation like that it's easy. You set the homing devices to work so that if one frequency is jammed it moves over to the next. Each time it hits an unjammed one it moves in until cut off. Sooner or later it will hit its target because the enemy hasn't enough time to compute your next frequency. You can understand the destruction could take many hours.'

`Why did the Essans do that just now?'

`They're not fighters. They fire first and then think out the tactics after they've lost,' Betelgeuse said in disgust.

I looked at the radiation counters. Inside the ship was now close to the danger limit. Betelgeuse was looking serious. He came over, checked the radiation counter and then the radar screen.

`Come with me,' he said, getting into the lift. We went down to the crew's quarters. In a large wall cupboard were the space suits I'd seen Betelgeuse and his crew wearing originally. He rummaged around and pulled out two dull grey suits. They looked very heavy and he could barely pull them from the cupboard.

`What on earth are those?' I asked.

`Lead anti-radiation suits.'

`Surely it's not going to help much now,' I said, wondering what the actual physical pain of radiation would be.

`Oh, I think you'll find it will help quite a lot. Here,' he, said. 'Hang on to that.'

I took hold of the suit. Betelgeuse went over to a punch machine. If I'd known what was going on I'd have held on to the lead suit with more conviction.

Suddenly I became weightless and floated to the ceiling. Betelgeuse roared with laughter and began to climb into his suit. Once in the suit he threw up a small piece of lifeline and pulled me down.

`Very funny,' I said.

`You put your suit on,' Betelgeuse said, taking one of my legs and helping it into the suit. Once on, although action was a little stagy, my feet remained on the ground.