“What do you think of her?” the Port Admiral asked.
“Think of her!” The young officer gulped twice before he attained coherence. “I can’t put it in words, sir; but some day, if I live long enough and develop enough force, I hope to command a ship like that.”
“Sooner than you think, Kinnison,” Haynes told him, flatly. “You are in command of her beginning tomorrow morning.”
“Huh? Me?” Kinnison exclaimed, but sobered quickly. “Oh, I see, sir. It takes ten years of proved accomplishment to rate command of a first-class vessel, and I have no rating at all. You have already intimated that this ship is experimental. There is, then, something about her that is new and untried, and so dangerous that you do not want to risk an experienced commander in her. I am to give her a work-out, and if I can bring her back in one piece I turn her over to her real captain. But that’s all right with me, Port Admiral—thanks a lot for picking me out. What a chance—What a chance!” and Kinnison’s eyes gleamed at the prospect of even a brief command of such a creation.
“Right—and wrong,” the old Admiral made surprising answer. “It is true that she is new, untried, and dangerous, so much so that we are unwilling to give her to any of our present captains. No, she is not really new, either. Rather, her basic idea is so old that it has been abandoned for centuries. She uses explosives; of a type that cannot be tried out fully except in actual combat. Her primary weapon is what we have called the ‘Q-gun.’ The propellant is heptadetonite: the shell carries a charge of twenty metric tons of duodecaplylatomate.”
“But, sir .” Kinnison began.
“Just a minute, I’ll go into that later. While your premises were correct, your conclusion is not. You graduated Number One, and in every respect save experience you are as well qualified to command as is any captain of the Fleet; and since the Brittania is such a radical departure from any conventional type, battle experience is not a prerequisite. Therefore if she holds together through one engagement she is yours for good. In other words, to make up for the possibility of having yourself scattered all over space, you have a chance to win that ten years’ rating you mentioned a minute ago, all in one trip. Fair enough?”
“Fair? It’s fine—wonderful! And thanks a .”
“Never mind the thanks until you get back. You were about to comment, I believe, upon the impossibility of using explosives against a free opponent?”
“It can’t be impossible, of course, since the Brittania has been built. I just don’t quite see how it could have been made effective.”
“You lock to the pirate with tractors, screen to screen—dex about ten kilometers. You blast a hole through his screens to his wall-shield. The muzzle of the Q-gun mounts as annular multiplex projector which puts out a Q-type tube of force—Q47SM9, to be exact. As you can see from the type formula, this helix extends the gun-barrel from ship to ship and confines the propellent gases behind the projectile, where they belong. When the shell strikes the wall-shield of the pirate and detonates, something will have to give way—all the Brains agree that twenty tons of duodec, attaining a temperature of about forty million degrees absolute in less than one micro-second, simply cannot be confined.
“The tube and tractors, being pure force and computed for this particular combination of explosions, will hold; and our physicists have calculated that the ten-kilometer column of inert propellent gases will offer so much inertia and resistance that any possible wall-shield will have to go down. That is the point that cannot be tried out experimentally—it is quite within the bounds of possibility that the pirates may have been able to develop wall-screens as powerful as our Q-type helices, even though we have not.
“It should not be necessary to point out to you that if they have been able to develop a wall-shield that will stand up under those conditions, the back-blast through the breech of the Q-gun will blow the Brittania apart as though she were so much matchwood. That is only one of the chances—and perhaps not the greatest one—that you and your crew will have to take. They are all volunteers, by the way, and will get plenty of extra rating if they come through alive. Do you want the job?”
“You don’t have to ask me that, Chief—you know I want it!”
“Of course, but I had to go through the formality of asking, sometime. But to get on with the discussion, this pirate situation is entirely out of control, as you already know. We don’t even know whether Boskone is a reality, a figurehead, a symbol, or simply a figment of an old-time Lensman’s imagination. But whoever or whatever Boskone really is, some being or some group of beings has perfected a mighty efficient organization of outlaws; so efficient that we haven’t even been able to locate their main base.
“And you may as well know now a fact that is not yet public property—that even conveyed vessels are no longer safe. The pirates have developed ships of a new and extraordinary type; ships that are much faster than our heavy battleships, and yet vastly more heavily armed than our fast cruisers. Thus, they can outfight any Patrol vessel that can catch them, and can out-run anything of ours armed heavily enough to stand up against their beams.”
“That accounts for the recent heavy losses,” Kinnison mused.
“Yes,” Haynes went on, grimly. “Ship after ship of our best has been blasted out of the ether, doomed before it pointed a beam, and more will be. We cannot force an engagement on our terms; we must fight them where and when they please.
“That is the present intolerable situation. We must learn what the pirates’ new power-system is. Our scientists say that it may be anything, from cosmic-energy receptors and converters down to a controlled space-warp—whatever that may be. Anyway, they haven’t been able to duplicate it, so it is up to us to find out what it is. The Brittania is the tool our engineers have designed to get that information. She is the fastest thing in space, developing at full blast an inert acceleration of ten gravities. Figure out for yourself what velocity that means free in open space!”
“You have just said that we can’t have everything in one ship,” Kinnison said, thoughtfully. “What did they sacrifice to get that speed?”
“All the conventional offensive armament,” Haynes replied frankly. “She has no long-range beams at all, and only enough short-range stuff to help drive the Q-helix through the enemy’s screens. Practically her only offense is the Q-gun. But she has plenty of defensive screens, she has speed enough to catch anything afloat, and she has the Q-gun—which we hope will be enough.
“Now we’ll go over the general plan of action. The engineers will go into all the technical details with you, during a test flight that will last as long as you like. When you and your crew are thoroughly familiar with every phase of her operation, bring the engineers back here to Base and go out on patrol.
“Somewhere in the galaxy you will find a pirate vessel of the new type. You lock to him, as I said before. You attach the Q-gun well forward, being sure that the point of attachment is far enough away from the power-rooms so that the essential mechanisms will not be destroyed. You board and storm—another revival of the technique of older times. Specialists in your crew, who will have done nothing much up to that time, will then find out what our scientists want to know. If at all possible they will send it in instantly via tight-beam communicator. If for any reason it should be impossible for them to communicate, the whole thing is again up to you.”
The Port Admiral paused, his eyes boring into those of the younger man, then went on impressively:
“That information MUST get back to Base. If it does not, the Brittania is a failure; we will be back right where we started from; the slaughter of our men and the destruction of our ships will continue unchecked. As to how you are to do it we cannot give even general instructions. All I can say is that you have the most important assignment in the Universe today, and repeat—that information MUST GET BACK TO BASE. Now come aboard and meet your crew and the engineers.”
* * * * *
Under the expert tutelage of the designers and builders of the Brittania Lieutenant Kinnison drove