Sentinels relocatedHEADmain

1 files changed, 546 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/59622-0.txt b/59622-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aae40c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/59622-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,546 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59622 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                        ROUTINE _for a_ HORNET
+
+                             BY DON BERRY
+
+               _Hurtling through space to meet the enemy
+             in equipment too delicate to step on, without
+              enough fuel to get back, and knowing you're
+                  completely expendable is just_----
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+             Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1956.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+Alarm bells filled the wardroom, screaming off the metal walls and
+filling the room with their flat, metallic clang. Cressey leaped up,
+spilling the table with its checkerboard to the floor.
+
+Running to the suitlocker, he wondered if the bells had to be loud
+enough to jar a man's mind. The other on-duty men in the wardroom were
+running with him, and the corridor outside reverberated to the sound
+of pounding feet on metal. As his hand automatically manipulated the
+zippers on his G-suit, he noticed that his heart was beating furiously.
+At this point, Cressey had never been able to tell whether he was
+frightened or not. As far as he could know from what his belly told
+him, there was no physical difference between plain old chicken fear
+and the body's normal preparation for action.
+
+The men pounded 'up' the metal stairs to the Hornet's Nest on the
+satellite's rim. The Hornet's Nest. Cressey thought suddenly how
+irrational it was. When a nickname stuck, it carried its aura to
+everything around it. He didn't know what live-wire journalist had
+first used the name Hornets for the Primary Interceptor Command, but
+now, inevitably, the launching racks were Hornet's Nests and the sleek
+missiles Stingers.
+
+He suddenly felt slightly nauseated. He hated this light-headed,
+slightly sick feeling, listening to the roaring of blood in his head
+and the thundering of his heart. The medics had told him these physical
+symptoms were just nature's way of preparing the body for sudden
+activity. Cressey didn't know. It felt like fear to him, and he was
+afraid now.
+
+His ship this run was PIC-503, and when he reached it the Stingers
+were just coming up the loading elevators. Long, slim, twenty-foot
+pencils of death, glistening in the harsh glare of the overheads. They
+had their own sort of lethal beauty, those Stingers, and a power about
+them, as if they were quiescently submitting to these puny men for now,
+for their own mechanical reasons.
+
+Each Hornet carried two Stingers, slung beneath the stubby delta-wings.
+The Stingers were twice the length of the Hornet itself, projecting
+fore and aft of the ship for five feet in either direction. The Hornet
+looked ungainly, riding atop those slim needles, like some grotesque
+parasite hitching a ride on two silver arrows.
+
+_They're--quite small._ Who had said that? Mackley. Captain Mackley,
+the glib Information Officer who'd told Cressey everything he was
+allowed to know about Hornets before he saw one.
+
+_I'll be frank with you, Mr. Cressey. Strategic Command has Hornets
+listed not as aircraft, but as portable launching racks. Their job is
+to take Stingers to the Outspace ships. There's a man in them because
+we can't build a computer as efficient as man at such light weight. And
+we couldn't afford to if we had the necessary knowledge._
+
+Cressey remembered his shock at being told he was a light-weight
+computer, and some of the bitterness. He watched the loading crew lock
+the Stingers into position beneath the Hornet's wings and throw the
+hooked boarding ladder over the edge of the cockpit. Cressey mounted
+past the red-painted NO STEP signs on the wings and settled himself in
+the cramped cockpit. As the crew carried the ladder away, he flipped
+the switch by his left hand and listened to the hum as the canopy
+rolled forward and locked into place with a metallic clack. NO STEP,
+he thought wearily. His own god-damned life, entrusted to a piece of
+equipment too delicate to step on.
+
+He swung the fish-bowl over his head and locked it into place. He
+coupled the hose leading from his right hip to a similar hose which
+disappeared into the floor of the cockpit, and partially inflated his
+suit. No detectable leaks. If his check crew had done their job, he was
+ready.
+
+Opening the communications channel, he listened to the other 'hot'
+Hornets checking off.
+
+"427."
+
+"Ready out."
+
+"493."
+
+"Ready out."
+
+"495."
+
+"Ready sir. Out."
+
+"501."
+
+"My fuel gauge doesn't register, sir."
+
+"Scratch 501. 503."
+
+"Ready out," replied Cressey. He wondered what was wrong with 501. No
+fuel? Or gauge just out of whack somehow? The way the Hornets were
+built, you could never be sure of anything. They were made for one
+trip, no more. No matter how the intercept worked out, they never went
+home again. There was not much money wasted in their construction.
+Mackley had easily justified that, too.
+
+_Cressey, you must understand one thing. We are desperate. The
+Outspacers caught us totally unprepared, and some of the measures we
+must resort to are not what we would normally desire._
+
+_When the Outspacers came into the system, six years ago, we had only
+two manned satellites in operation. Within two years this was increased
+to six, and it was still inadequate. For this reason, another ring
+of stations was set up, this time one-man Detector Posts. There are
+twelve of them, two reporting to each Satellite Base. Their orbit is
+roughly half-way between the orbits of Earth and Mars. Two concentric
+circles about the Earth, do you see? When an Outspacer crosses D-line,
+a signal is flashed to the nearest Satellite Base and the Hornets
+launched._
+
+_The point I'm trying to make, Cressey, is this: it took nearly forty
+years to set up the first manned satellite, and that after all the
+means were in our hands. Then, in just over two years, we put up four
+more satellites and twelve D-Posts. We were not geared for that effort._
+
+Translated into personal terms, Mackley had meant that the planet could
+not afford to enclose Cressey in an adequate ship. Too much would be
+lost if the Outspacer weapons caught it.
+
+The loading crew had retreated into the sealed cubicle from which they
+would watch the launching. The huge, curved walls of the hull began to
+roll back, and even in the cockpit, Cressey could hear the air roar out
+into space with a brief explosion of sound. The air hissed out of his
+cockpit, and his suit inflated full. Still no leak.
+
+He felt a momentary panic as the launching rack swung him out, pointed
+away from the Satellite directly into the emptiness of space. Now he
+could not see the reassuring bulk of the mother ship. He was alone,
+with only the incredible myriads of stars before him, and the two
+needle points of the Stingers projecting full into their mass. The tens
+of thousands of bright specks that seemed so close gave no comfort.
+His eyes told him space was full, crammed to bursting with stars, and
+his mind told him it was as empty as death.
+
+Pointed out into loneliness, riding the two graceful arrows, Cressey
+heard the Communicator rasp, "Gentlemen, you are on an intercept to
+an Outspace ship. The safety of your world rides with you. Do your
+job well." The hypocritical son-of-a-bitch, thought Cressey angrily,
+sitting in his snug control room telling _us_ to do our job! Well,
+maybe it made an impression on the first-timers, he couldn't remember.
+This was his third, and he could no longer remember any farther back
+than when he climbed into the cockpit. It was better not to remember
+his other missions, much better.
+
+The roar seemed to come a split second before the pressure, and then
+Cressey was slammed into his acceleration cradle by the sudden impact.
+His body suddenly weighed over a thousand pounds, and his blood sloshed
+wearily in his veins as a straining heart refused to pump such a load.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_"Captain Mackley," said Cressey, "I've heard it said that Earth is the
+aggressor in this war."_
+
+_"Have you ever seen the London Crater?" asked the Information Officer._
+
+_"Pictures, yes, but what I want to know is, who attacked first?"_
+
+_"It doesn't really matter, does it Cressey? There is a war, and we've
+got to fight it, no matter how it started."_
+
+_"Yes sir," said Cressey, "but I wanted to know."_
+
+_"All right, I'll tell you then. The Outspacers contacted this system
+roughly six years ago. The first eighteen months they spent on the
+outer planets. During the second year they came in as far as Mars,
+and established a base there. Six months later, one of their ships
+left on an obvious course toward Earth. It was destroyed by a missile
+launched from Satellite II." Mackley shrugged. "You know the rest. They
+retaliated. Satellite II was vaporized."_
+
+_"But Earth fired first?"_
+
+_"I told you, it doesn't make any difference now. One Outspacer later
+got through the defense rings, and now there's nothing from London to
+Cambridge but glass. Whatever the hell they use for weapons, they're
+effective."_
+
+_"So we don't know whether or not they were originally hostile."_
+
+_"No, we don't. It had to be assumed they were. We were not in a
+position to make allowances. You must realize, Cressey, we were dealing
+with something totally unprecedented, a completely unknown force.
+Common sense is enough to tell you the Outspacer had to be considered
+inimical to us, until proven otherwise."_
+
+_"They weren't given much of a chance to prove it."_
+
+_"That may be. The point is irrelevant at the moment. We are committed
+to a line of action, and we must follow it through. On their part, the
+Outspacers are doing the same."_
+
+_Cressey was silent for a moment, and Mackley continued in a softer
+voice. "Look here, son. I don't have to tell you all this. I could just
+as easily shoot you full of starry-eyed patriotism and send you out
+to save the world from the Bug-Eyed Monsters, but the military isn't
+doing things that way any more. There is a possibility that we've made
+a mistake, I'll admit that, but we're stuck with the consequences of
+the original action. We're defending our planet with everything we've
+got. The Hornets are the only weapon that has proven even remotely
+effective."_
+
+_"I'll have to think it over, Captain."_
+
+_"Of course," said Mackley. "It's not an easy decision to make. Come
+back again, any time you like, and we'll talk it over some more."_
+
+And Cressey had gone back.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Acceleration pressure abated, and Cressey's face resumed its normal
+shape. The red haze in front of his eyes cleared, and he could see
+out through his canopy again. The thick blanket of stars remained
+motionless, though he knew he was moving with tremendous speed toward
+the Outspace ship.
+
+In front of him behind the instrument panel, he could hear the
+insect-like buzzing as his course computer was fed information from his
+Base Satellite. With both the outer D-Post and the Satellite tracking
+the enemy, fairly precise positioning was possible. Unfortunately,
+because of the enormous distances involved, not precise enough to
+pinpoint the Stingers themselves. You had to be closer to do that, and
+the way to get closer was in a Hornet.
+
+For a few minutes now, Cressey had only to watch his own scope for
+the first pip, and consider his insane position. It was his third
+mission. Of nearly a thousand Hornetmen, forty-three had more than one
+mission. If he got out of this one, he had two more before compulsory
+retirement. He was not sure he could go two more missions, even if he
+survived physically.
+
+Five missions, then retirement. It had looked good to him, a year ago.
+When he left college for Primary Interceptors, it had seemed the very
+best kind of an idea. Five missions as a Hornetman, then home. Home as
+a hero, as a king. At twenty-one he would never have to worry about
+anything again. The pension Mackley had mentioned was so high as to be
+inconceivable. And that was just from the government. Being a hero had
+other, less official compensations. A shack in Beverly Hills, worth a
+hundred thousand or so? Hell, they'd force it on him, just for being a
+hero. A woman? What woman could resist a five-mission Hornetman? Every
+daydream he'd ever had, and a hundred he'd not thought of, free for
+nothing. Or free for running five intercepts.
+
+It had looked good to him until his first mission. Then it had suddenly
+lost its charm. He had learned why, so far, there were no five-mission
+Hornetmen.
+
+Abruptly he heard the "ping" telling him his radar was tracking. The
+Satellite had guided him true enough. He was within the limited range
+of his own radar.
+
+"Radar contact made," he said into the lip mike. "503 going on manual
+control. Out." He clicked the Com switch and settled down to fixing on
+his target.
+
+From the size of the blip on the screen, he could see the Outspace ship
+was huge, as all of them were. Funny, there had not even been enough
+contact to know how many different sorts of ship the Alien had. They
+were not battleships, nor cruisers, nor anything else specific. They
+were simply Outspace, and he had to seek them out and destroy them.
+
+A single ship, as usual. He wondered why they had never sent more than
+one ship at a time. Perhaps their thinking was so completely foreign
+it had never occurred to them. No one knew anything about how they
+thought, except that they retaliated when attacked.
+
+Cressey wondered how the conflict looked through Outspacer eyes.
+Perhaps they were completely bewildered by attack. Perhaps those
+god-awful disruptor beams were meant for some other, more peaceful
+purpose, and were being pressed into use as an emergency weapon by
+frightened beings. It was even possible the aliens did not know they
+were under attack by sentient creatures, and wrote off the loss of
+their ships to natural calamity of some unknown nature.
+
+There were a thousand maybes. It was useless to speculate in the total
+absence of data. You couldn't be sure of anything, so you couldn't
+take any chances. You had to act as though they were hostile just to be
+on the safe side. The malignant neurosis of humanity, making it behave
+as though all things unknown were dangerous. Or perhaps just realistic
+thinking. You couldn't know, unless you knew all about the universe.
+Perhaps the idea of conscious animosity was incomprehensible to the
+Outspacers, but there was no way to tell. He reached between his legs
+to the cockpit floor and threw the switches there, arming the Stinger
+warheads.
+
+On his first mission he had actually gotten within visual range of the
+Outspace ship, launching the Stingers at not more than three miles
+range. The ship had been bulky, almost grotesque by his own standards,
+covered with lumps and bulges of indeterminate purpose. There had been
+no lights visible, no ports. Perhaps the Aliens did not see in our
+spectrum, or perhaps they had radiation screens across the ports, there
+was no way to tell.
+
+Cressey smiled ruefully. This miserable war was turning him into a
+philosopher.
+
+On his second mission he had not seen his target. He had launched at
+six miles, out of fear, trusting to the followers in the Stingers'
+noses to track. He did not know what the result had been either time.
+He had turned and run for home at full acceleration, and he fully
+intended to do the same on this mission. There was such a thing as
+pushing your luck too far, and he needed all he had.
+
+The pip on his screen drifted to the left, and he gave a short burst
+to center it. He begrudged having to use his infinitesimal fuel on
+tracking when he needed it so desperately to go home. He looked through
+the canopy, but saw nothing, and returned his eyes to the screen. The
+telltale pip had drifted slightly to the right. He had overcorrected.
+Cursing, he fired another burst, shorter this time, with the left bank,
+and watched the pip center. That was good enough.
+
+His ranging said only twelve miles, his speed two mps, relative to
+target. One second, two seconds, three--there it was, occulting a tiny
+area of star patched sky.
+
+Out of the corner of his eye he saw a bright flare as some other Hornet
+disappeared in the wave of energy released by its molecular disruption.
+Then another, in another quadrant. The Alien was fighting back. He
+jabbed violently at the Stinger release, and saw the two pencils
+roar fiercely out ahead of him on their own power. He cut his flimsy
+launching rack into as tight a turn as it would take. The familiar red
+haze clouded his vision, and just before blacking out he fired another
+last long burst on the rockets to head him toward home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_"You understand," said Mackley, "that the amount of fuel we can pack
+into a Hornet is severely limited by the size of the craft. There is
+not enough to perform the complicated braking maneuvers necessary to
+return to the Satellite._
+
+_"Therefore, the Hornets make no attempt to return to the Satellite
+from which they were launched. Instead, they return directly to Earth.
+This may sound contradictory, but remember that the planet has a heavy
+envelope of air, which the Satellite Bases, of course, have not. We use
+that air to brake the ships, through friction."_
+
+_"But Captain, wouldn't the Hornet burn as soon as it touched
+atmosphere?"_
+
+_"Ordinarily, if it plunged directly in, yes. But there are techniques
+for slowing your flight through friction without heating excessively.
+Basically, the operation is the same as skipping a flat stone on a
+lake. The Hornet actually only skims the atmosphere, entering at a very
+shallow angle. The entire delta-wing of the ship is a control surface.
+That much area, even at such extreme heights, gives a certain amount of
+control, and the pilot can pull up out of the atmosphere again before
+heating has become too extreme. He has also been considerably slowed by
+the same friction which causes the heating. Do you follow me?"_
+
+_"Yes, I suppose so, but it seems pretty tricky."_
+
+_"It is tricky, Cressey, and you never want to forget it. It takes a
+very considerable amount of piloting skill, but it can be done."_
+
+_"Captain, how many Hornets do you lose trying to get in like that?"_
+
+_Mackley hesitated momentarily. "Our losses are right around
+thirty-seven percent. That's due to enemy fire. It's high, but under
+the circumstances, it isn't extreme. We're fighting at a disadvantage,
+and combat is not a gentle affair. Men's lives are lost. That's been
+true ever since two cave men took after each other with stone axes.
+It was true with bows and arrows and muzzle loaders. It was true with
+tanks and machine guns, and it is true now._
+
+_"It is expected in a combat situation that men will die. One of the
+aims of military strategy has always been to keep as many of your own
+men alive as possible. This has not changed either. But combat is,
+after all, combat; and there are some unavoidable risks."_
+
+_"What's the total loss, Captain? I mean from enemy action and from the
+hazards of this skip approach you were talking about?"_
+
+_The Information Officer stared at Cressey for what seemed like a long
+time before he answered. "Our total losses, Mr. Cressey, are roughly
+ninety-three percent."_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Cressey regained consciousness, the Earth was a great globe,
+filling his entire field of vision. He could not estimate his distance,
+though he thought he was within the Satellite ring. His speed would
+plunge him into atmosphere shortly, too shortly.
+
+Within seconds he began to feel the warmth as he entered the region
+where a few air molecules began to brush over the surfaces of his ship.
+He rotated the delta-wings full, but there was no response. He was not
+yet deep enough into the sea of air for the control surfaces to react.
+He watched the tips of the wings, so ridiculously close to him, though
+he knew he would not be able to see anything. Soon he began to feel a
+gentle bucking motion as the wings met resistance. He flattened them
+out, horizontal, and began to draw them up again slowly, so they would
+move the tiny ship upward instead of simply tearing off at the roots.
+
+The heat was already uncomfortable, and he was slowing. Now he was
+pressed forward against the seat belt as deceleration increased. The
+control surfaces bit into the thin air more solidly now, and Cressey
+thought the nose had come up a bit, but it was so slight he couldn't be
+sure. The bucking motion was more pronounced, but there was nothing he
+could do about that.
+
+Slowly, slowly. The wings had to tilt so very slowly, or they would be
+ripped from the pod-like hull, leaving it to plummet into thick air and
+glow briefly like a cigarette in the dark before it plunged down to
+earth. His face was wet behind the fish-bowl, but he could not reach it
+to wipe the sweat away. Nor could he have taken his hands away from the
+controls in any case.
+
+The nose had come up, he was certain of that now. He was definitely
+rising, but the heat was becoming unbearable. Imperceptibly, a thin
+shrieking had arisen in the cabin, almost out of sonic range, just
+enough to make a man's nerves feel as if they had been dragged across a
+rough file. The heat transmitted through the body of the pod and into
+the bucket was beginning to burn his legs. He was being held out of
+the seat itself by the force of his deceleration, but the backs of his
+calves still touched metal. He thought he could smell the fabric of his
+suit burning, but realized it was probably his overwrought imagination.
+
+His cheeks felt too large, puffed out, as though strong, implacable
+hands were pulling all his loose flesh forward. His eyes strained
+forward, threatening to come out of their sockets. The red haze
+began, and he had a sudden frightening thought that he might lose
+consciousness before the Hornet had well begun its rise out of
+atmosphere. The red darkened into black.
+
+He regained consciousness. The first skip had been made. The ship began
+to settle back into atmosphere again, and now its speed was lower.
+With each pass the heat would become more intense, as the plane would
+not have a chance to cool completely before it began to heat again. He
+had to maintain a delicate balance between going deep enough to slow
+him, but not so deep he couldn't bring the ship up before it burned,
+cherry-red. His body was drenched as by a shower, and the inner lining
+of his suit felt soggy from sweat.
+
+The second skip was worse than the first, and he lost consciousness
+almost too soon. The third was worse than the second. After the fourth,
+he could not lift high enough to clear atmosphere. He had gone too
+deep, and was now bound by the great mass of Earth below.
+
+He was still at a shallow angle, relative to the ground. He estimated
+he would make at least one complete orbit, perhaps two, before his
+spiralling trajectory brought him to the contact point on the surface.
+If he were still conscious, he would leave the aircraft at 30,000
+feet, and hope. He knew his speed was still too high, well over Mach 2,
+higher than it had been on either of his other approaches. The ship was
+threatening to tear apart under the furious pounding it was taking from
+air and shock waves.
+
+Hobson's choice. Bail out high, and suffocate because the automatic
+chute release would not allow him to make a delayed opening. Bail out
+low, and the thick air would pound his body to a pulp, and below the
+steel webbed chute would hang nothing but a suit, full of a still, red
+messiness.
+
+The timing had to be precision itself, but it had to be done by
+guesswork. There was no training that could prepare a man for this. It
+was all new. He uncoupled the air hose leading to his suit, and placed
+his hand on the ejector lever. He knew he was too high, but the wings
+showed quivering signs of buckling under the strain.
+
+He pulled the lever, releasing the canopy and arming the seat
+cartridge. The canopy disappeared miraculously from over his head.
+He was deafened by the thunderous roar of air that entered the
+cramped cockpit, like an explosion peak that remained constant, not
+diminishing. Instinctively, he ducked his head, recoiling at the sound.
+He did not remember triggering the seat ejector.
+
+Cressey fell. The seat dropped away from him, the incredibly strong
+parachute opened, all automatically. He fell forty-five thousand
+feet into the Pacific Ocean, unconscious. His face was battered by
+windblast almost beyond recognition, and his body equally so. When
+the rescue team pulled him from the water, three hours later, they
+thought he was an old man. His eyes were a mass of red, from dozens of
+sub-conjunctival hemorrhages. He would see again, but not until after
+weeks of near blindness.
+
+But he was alive. When he woke up in the California hospital four days
+later, he considered ruefully that that was about the best one could
+expect in his business.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Cressey, can you hear me?"
+
+"Yes, I can hear you. Who is it?"
+
+"It's Captain Mackley. I've come to see you."
+
+"Well--thanks, Captain."
+
+"You got the Outspacer, Cressey. I thought you'd like to know."
+
+"Frankly, Captain, I couldn't care less. But thanks for telling me,
+anyway."
+
+"It means a lot, Cressey. There were a lot of people's lives riding
+with you."
+
+_Yeah, I'm a hero. I'm a Hornetman._
+
+"Thanks, Captain."
+
+"Was it pretty rough?"
+
+_Rough? Like birth and death and all of life, rolled into minutes._
+
+"No more so than I expected, Captain. Pretty much routine. Routine for
+a Hornetman."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Routine for a Hornet, by Don Berry
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59622 ***