The Misplaced Battleship
around waiting for my message. The mike was turned off to the
transcribers outside, and I took the code groups down in shorthand
myself.
"... xybb dfil fdno, and if you don't--don't come back!"
The message broke into clear at the end and the psiman smiled as he
spoke the words. I broke the point off my stylus and growled at him not
to repeat _any_ of this message, as it was classified, and I would
personally see him shot if he did. That got rid of the smile, but didn't
make me feel any better.
The decoded message turned out not to be as bad as I had imagined. Until
further notice I was in charge of tracking and capturing the stolen
battleship. I could call on the League for any aid I needed. I would
keep my identity as an admiral for the rest of the job. I was to keep
him informed of progress. Only those ominous last words in clear kept my
happiness from being complete.
I had been handed my long-awaited assignment. But translated into simple
terms my orders were to get the battleship, or it would be my neck.
Never a word about my efforts in uncovering the plot in the first place.
This is a heartless world we live in.
This moment of self-pity relaxed me and I immediately went to bed. Since
my main job now was waiting, I could wait just as well asleep.
* * * * *
And waiting was all I could do. Of course there were secondary tasks,
such as ordering a Naval cruiser for my own use, and digging for more
information on the thieves, but these really were secondary to my main
purpose. Which was waiting for bad news. There was no place I could go
that would be better situated for the chase than Cittanuvo. The missing
ship could have gone in any direction. With each passing minute the
sphere of probable locations grew larger by the power of the squared
cube. I kept the on-watch crew of the cruiser at duty stations and
confined the rest within a one hundred yard radius of the ship.
There was little more information on Pepe and Angelina, they had
covered their tracks well. Their origin was unknown, though the fact
they both talked with a slight accent suggested an off-world origin.
There was one dim picture of Pepe, chubby but looking too grim to be a
happy fat boy. There was no picture of the girl. I shuffled the meager
findings, controlled my impatience, and kept the ship's psiman busy
pulling in all the reports of any kind of trouble in space. The
navigator and I plotted their locations in his tank, comparing the
positions in relation to the growing sphere that enclosed all the
possible locations of the stolen ship. Some of the disasters and
apparent accidents hit inside this area, but further investigation
proved them all to have natural causes.
I had left standing orders that all reports falling inside the danger
area were to be brought to me at any time. The messenger woke me from a
deep sleep, turning on the light and handing me the slip of paper. I
blinked myself awake, read the first two lines, and pressed the _action
station_ alarm over my bunk. I'll say this, the Navy boys know their
business. When the sirens screamed, the crew secured ship and blasted
off before I had finished reading the report. As soon as my eyeballs
unsquashed back into focus I read it through, then once more, carefully,
from the beginning.
It looked like the one we had been waiting for. There were no witnesses
to the tragedy, but a number of monitor stations had picked up the
discharge static of a large energy weapon being fired. Triangulation had
lead investigators to the spot where they found a freighter, _Ogget's
Dream_, with a hole punched through it as big as a railroad tunnel. The
freighter's cargo of plutonium was gone.
I read _Pepe_ in every line of the message. Since he was flying an
undermanned battleship, he had used it in the most efficient way
possible. If he attempted to negotiate or threaten another ship, the
element of chance would be introduced. So he had simply roared up to the
unsuspecting freighter and blasted her with the monster guns his
battleship packed. All eighteen men aboard had been killed instantly.
The thieves were now murderers.
I was under pressure now to act. And under a greater pressure not to
make any mistakes. Roly-poly Pepe had shown himself to be a ruthless
killer. He knew what he wanted--then reached out and took it. Destroying
anyone who stood in his way. More people would die before this was over,
it was up to me to keep that number as small as possible.
* * * * *
Ideally I should have rushed out the fleet with guns blazing and dragged
him to justice. Very nice, and I wished it could be done that way.
Except where was he? A battleship may be gigantic on some terms of
reference, but in the immensity of the galaxy it is microscopically
infinitesimal. As long as it stayed out of the regular lanes of
commerce, and clear of detector stations and planets, it would never be
found.
Then how _could_ I find it--and having found it, catch it? When the
infernal thing was more than a match for any ship it might meet. That
was my problem. It had kept me awake nights and talking to myself days,
since there was no easy answer.
I had to construct a solution, slowly and carefully. Since I couldn't be
sure where Pepe was going to be next, I had to make him go where I
wanted him to.
There were some things in my favor. The most important was the fact I
had forced him to make his play before he was absolutely ready. It
wasn't chance that he had left the same day I arrived on Cittanuvo. Any
plan as elaborate as his certainly included warning of approaching
danger. The drive on the battleship, as well as controls and primary
armament had been installed weeks before I showed up. Much of the
subsidiary work remained to be done when the ship had left. One witness
of the theft had graphically described the power lines and cables
dangling from the ship's locks when she lifted.
My arrival had forced Pepe off balance. Now I had to keep pushing until
he fell. This meant I had to think as he did, fall into his plan, think
ahead--then trap him. Set a thief to catch a thief. A great theory, only
I felt uncomfortably on the spot when I tried to put it into practice.
A drink helped, as did a cigar. Puffing on it, staring at the smooth
bulkhead, relaxed me a bit. After all--there aren't that many things
you can do with a battleship. You can't run a big con, blow safes or
make burmedex with it. It is hell-on-jets for space piracy, but that's
about all.
"Great, great--but why a battleship?"
I was talking to myself, normally a bad sign, but right now I didn't
care. The mood of space piracy had seized me and I had been going along
fine. Until this glaring inconsistency jumped out and hit me square in
the eye.
Why a battleship? Why all the trouble and years of work to get a ship
that two people could just barely manage? With a tenth of the effort
Pepe could have had a cruiser that would have suited his purposes just
as well.
Just as good for space piracy, that is--but not for _his_ purposes. He
had wanted a battleship, and he had gotten himself a battleship. Which
meant he had more in mind than simple piracy. What? It was obvious that
Pepe was a monomaniac, an egomaniac, and as psychotic as a shorted
computer. Some day the mystery of how he had slipped through the screen
of official testing would have to be investigated. That wasn't my
concern now. He still had to be caught.
* * * * *
A plan was beginning to take shape in my head, but I didn't rush it.
First I had to be sure that I knew him well. Any man that can con an
entire world into building a battleship for him--then steal it from
them--is not going to stop there. The ship would need a crew, a base for
refueling and a mission.
Fuel had been taken care of first, the gutted hull of _Ogget's Dream_
was silent witness to that. There were countless planets that could be
used as a base. Getting a crew would be more difficult in these peaceful
times, although I could think of a few answers to that one, too. Raid
the mental hospitals and jails. Do that often enough and you would have
a crew that would make any pirate chief proud. Though piracy was, of
course, too mean an ambition to ascribe to this boy. Did he want to rule
a whole planet--or maybe an entire system? Or more? I shuddered a bit as
the thought hit me. Was there really anything that could stop a plan
like this once it got rolling? During the Kingly Wars any number of
types with a couple of ships and less brains than Pepe had set up just
this kind of empire. They were all pulled down in the end, since their
success depended on one-man rule. But the price that had to be paid
first!
This was the plan and I felt in my bones that I was right. I might be
wrong on some of the minor details, they weren't important. I knew the
general outline of the idea, just as when I bumped into a mark I knew
how much he could be taken for, and just how to do it. There are natural
laws in crime as in every other field of human endeavor. I _knew_ this
was it.
"Get the Communications Officer in here at once," I shouted at the
intercom. "Also a couple of clerks with transcribers. And fast--this is
a matter of life or death!" This last had a hollow ring, and I realized
my enthusiasm had carried me out of character. I buttoned my collar,
straightened my ribbons and squared my shoulders. By the time they
knocked on the door I was all admiral again.
Acting on my orders the ship dropped out of warpdrive so our psiman
could get through to the other operators. Captain Steng grumbled as we
floated there with the engines silent, wasting precious days, while half
his crew was involved in getting out what appeared to be insane
instructions. My plan was beyond his understanding. Which is, of course,
why he is a captain and I'm an admiral, even a temporary one.
Following my orders, the navigator again constructed a sphere of
speculation in his tank. The surface of the sphere contacted all the
star systems a days flight ahead of the maximum flight of the stolen
battleship. There weren't too many of these at first and the psiman
could handle them all, calling each in turn and sending by news releases
to the Naval Public Relations officers there. As the sphere kept growing
he started to drop behind, steadily losing ground. By this time I had a
general release prepared, along with directions for use and follow up,
which he sent to Central 14. The battery of psimen there contacted the
individual planets and all we had to do was keep adding to the list of
planets.
The release and follow-ups all harped on one theme. I expanded on it,
waxed enthusiastic, condemned it, and worked it into an interview. I
wrote as many variations as I could, so it could be slipped into as many
different formats as possible. In one form or another I wanted the basic
information in every magazine, newspaper and journal inside that
expanding sphere.
"What in the devil does this nonsense _mean_?" Captain Steng asked
peevishly. He had long since given up the entire operation as a futile
one, and spent most of the time in his cabin worrying about the affect
of it on his service record. Boredom or curiosity had driven him out,
and he was reading one of my releases with horror.
"Billionaire to found own world ... space yacht filled with luxuries to
last a hundred years," the captain's face grew red as he flipped through
the stack of notes. "What connection does this tripe have with catching
those murderers?"
* * * * *
When we were alone he was anything but courteous to me, having assured
himself by not-too-subtle questioning that I was a spurious admiral.