The Invaders Plan (67 page)

Then a Fleet pilot said, real loud, "That drill captain is an ex-Fleet marine! He ain't no 'drunk'!" An Apparatus man hit him!

A Fleet pilot hit an Apparatus man!

Twenty Apparatus men hit twenty Fleet men!

A hundred Fleet men hit a hundred Apparatus men!

The fight was on!

The Homeview crews got it all and continued to get it!

Screams sounded!

Canisters flew!

Fleet military police spacers present leaped in to try to stop the fight.

Apparatus military police guards sprang up and tried to stop the fight.

Fleet and Apparatus military police met head on and began to fight each other!

Benches went over! Cakes were being used as ammunition!

The Homeview crews were getting every bit of it!

Heller, high on the review platform, gazed over the seething scene. He grabbed a microphone that was hooked to the public sound system.

Above the din he shouted, "All bands and choruses! STRIKE UP 'SPACEWARD, HO!' " It is what is called a song-chant. The first lines are sung as a melody and then some lines are chanted as though they are orders and so on.

Above the din, three bands which were perched too high on stages to get into the fight, struck up the refrain.

Those of the choruses still in place sang the first two lines:
Spaceward, ho! To the stars we go!

Then the chant:
Upward, upward, upward!

Canisters were crashing. Screams and shouts racketed. The bands and choruses turned up their volumes. The choruses sang:
Spaceward, ho! The planet flees below.

And the chant:
Thunder, thunder, thunder!

Far off, above the din, sirens were wailing as alerted riot units rose to fly in! The choruses sang:
Spaceward, ho!

Raid sirens were going off. The first of the antiriot ships bashed to ground nearby. The battle raged on. The choruses sang:
Space is a mistress!

A tup lorry went over, spilling a flood of tup!

The riot police that were landing were Fleet and Apparatus! They started to fight even before they got to the gates!

The Homeview crew, high on their crane, ground on.

Heller said, "They'll be at that fight all day! Get in. It's noon. We're blasting off!" He went in and perched himself on the edge of the local control chair. He sent some orders to the auxiliary engine room and then he hit every sound switch on the panel. Tugs have beams that, in space, which is silent, fasten to hulls of ships and conduct sound along them. These beams flashed into the hangar, against the ground and against every Apparatus spaceship in view. The tug's whistles, sirens, gongs and blast signals all started going off at once. Ear-splitting!

I had made an ineffectual last second attempt to close the airlock. But somehow I couldn't get my hands connected with anything. We were already lifting and I sprawled in the opening, my head out into the air.

The Homeviews were swivelled about to get the departure and, no doubt, my helmet falling the two hundred feet now separating us from ground.

The tug whistles, sirens, gongs and blast signals were still going. So was the riot!

For some minutes now, even before the song, my hands had been shaking. And now my body began to go into a sort of vertigo. The euphoria was gone and in its place I felt extremely irritable.

I told myself that this was the most
un
secret secret mission departure
anyone
had ever heard of!

Three hundred feet below us, in the space where the tug had been, there was a single guardsman, isolated from the riot. And the guardsman, with both hands, was madly throwing kisses after the tug. It was the Countess Krak! She had not been properly at Spiteos. She had been here all day!

She was very tiny now, far down there on Voltar. She stopped throwing kisses and stood there sort of slumped.

Somebody grabbed my heels, pulled me in and closed the airlock door.

We were on our totally advertised, totally certain to be shown on every screen on every planet, secret way.

We were headed for Earth.

But Gods only knew what would happen now!