“It’s a possibility,” said the director thoughtfully, “a bare possibility.” He pounded his desk in sudden resolution. “But by the Protectorate, at least it’s something! Alert the section heads for a staff meeting in half an hour. I want every scout sent on a quick check of every system in our area!”
“I beg your pardon, Director,” said Schankle, “but half our light ships are red-lined for essential maintenance and the other half should be. Anyway it would take months to check every possible hideout in this area, even if we used the whole fleet.”
“I know,” said Krogson, “but we’ll have to do what we can with what we have. At least I’ll be able to report to sector command that we’re doing something. Tell Astrogation to set up a series of search patterns. We won’t have to check every planet. A single quick sweep through each system will do the trick. Even Carr can’t run a base without power. Where there’s power, there’s flux leakage, and flux leakage can be detected a long way off. Put everyone on double shifts and have all detection gear double-checked.”
“Can’t do that either,” said Schankle. “There aren’t more than a dozen techs left. Most of them were transferred to Prime Base last week.”
Director Krogson threw up his hands. “How in the name of the Bloody Blue Pleiades am I supposed to keep a war base going without technicians? You tell me, Schankle, you always seem to know the answers.”
Schankle coughed modestly. “Well, sir,” he said, “as long as you have a situation where technicians are sent to the uranium mines for making mistakes, it’s going to be an unpopular vocation. And, as long as the Lord Protector of the moment is afraid that his subordinates have ideas about grabbing his job—which they generally do—he’s going to keep his fleet as strong as possible and theirs so weak they aren’t dangerous. The best way to do that is grabbing techs. If most of a base’s ships are sitting around waiting for repair, no commander will be able to act on any ambitions he may happen to have. Add that to the obvious fact that our whole technology has been on a downward spiral for the last three hundred years and you have your answer.”
Krogson nodded gloomily. “Sometimes I feel as if we were all on a dead ship falling into a dying sun,” he said. His voice suddenly altered. “But in the meantime we have our necks to save. Get going, Schankle!”
Schankle bobbed and darted out of the office.
CHAPTER THREE
It was exactly ten o’clock in the morning when Kurt Dixon of the Imperial Space Marines snapped to attention before his commanding officer.
“Sergeant Dixon reporting as ordered, sir!” His voice cracked a bit in spite of his best efforts to control it.
The colonel looked at him coldly. “Nice of you to drop in, Dixon,” he said. “Shall we go ahead with our little chat?”
Kurt nodded nervously.
“I have here,” said the colonel, shuffling a sheaf of papers, “a report of an unauthorized expedition made by you to off limits territory.”
“Which one do you mean, sir?” asked Kurt without thinking.
“Then there have been more than one?” asked the colonel quietly.
Kurt started to stammer.
Colonel Harris silenced him with a quick gesture. “I’m talking about the country to the north, the tableland back of the Twin Peaks.”
“It’s a beautiful place!” Kurt burst out. “It’s . . . it’s like Imperial Headquarters must be. Dozens of streams full of fish, trees heavy with fruit, small game so slow and stupid that they can be knocked over with a club. Why, the battalion could live there without hardly lifting a finger!”
“I’ve no doubt that they could,” said the colonel.
“Think of it, sir!” Kurt said. “No more plowing details, no more hunting details, no more nothing but taking it easy!”
“You might add to your list no more tech schools,” said Colonel Harris. “I’m quite aware that the place is all you say it is, Sergeant. As a result, I’m placing all information that pertains to it in a ‘Top Secret’ category. That applies to what’s inside your skull as well.”
“But sir!” protested Kurt. “If you could only see the place—”
“I have,” broke in the colonel, “thirty years ago.”
Kurt stared at him in amazement. “Then why are we still on the plateau?”
“Because my commanding officer did just what I’ve done, and then he gave me thirty days of extra detail on the plows. After he took my stripes away, that is.” Colonel Harris rose slowly to his feet. “Dixon,” he said softly, “it’s not every man who can be a noncommissioned officer in the Space Marines. Sometimes we guess wrong. When we do, we do something about it!” His voice held the crackle of distant summer lightning. He roared, “Wipe those chevrons off!”
Kurt looked at him in mute protest.
“You heard me!” the colonel thundered.
“Y-yes, sir!” Kurt stammered. Reluctantly he drew his arm across his forehead and wiped off the three triangles of white grease-paint that marked his rank. Quivering with shame, he took a tight grip on his temper and choked back angry protests.
“Maybe,” suggested the colonel, “you’d like to make a complaint to the I.G. He’s due in a few days and he might reverse my decision. It has happened before, you know.”
“No, sir,” said Kurt woodenly.
“Why not?” demanded Harris.
“When I was sent out as a scout for the hunting parties, I was given direct orders not to range farther than twenty kilometers to the north. I went sixty.” And then his forced composure broke. “I couldn’t stop myself, sir,” he said. “There was something behind those peaks that kept pulling me and pulling me and—” He shrugged helplessly. “You know the rest.”
A sudden change came over the colonel’s face. A warm, human smile swept across it, and he laughed, a distant look in his eye. “It’s a hell of a feeling, isn’t it, son? You know you shouldn’t, but at the same time there’s something inside you that says you’ve got to know what’s behind those peaks or die. When you get a few more years under your belt you’ll find that it isn’t just mountains that make you feel like that. Here, boy, have a seat.” He gestured toward the woven wicker chair by his desk.
Kurt shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, stunned by the colonel’s unexpected shift in attitude and embarrassed by the request. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but we aren’t out on work detail, and . . .”
The colonel laughed again. “And enlisted men not on work detail don’t sit in the presence of officers. Doesn’t the way we do things ever strike you as odd, Dixon? On one hand you’d see nothing strange about being yoked to the plow with a major, and on the other, you’d never dream of sitting in his presence off duty.”
Kurt looked puzzled. “Work details are different,” he said. “We all have to work if we’re going to eat. But in the garrison, officers are officers and enlisted men are enlisted men and that’s the way it’s always been.”
Still smiling, the colonel reached into his desk drawer, fished something out, and tossed it to Kurt.
“Stick this in your scalp lock,” he said.
Kurt looked at it, stunned. It was a golden feather crossed with a single black bar, the insignia of rank for a second lieutenant of the Imperial Space Marines. The room swirled before his eyes.
“Now,” said the colonel, “sit down!”
Kurt slowly lowered himself into