Alfred Coppel

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”