Short Fiction - Fritz Leiber (desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📗

The star Grunfeld had been waiting for touched the hazy rim of Uranus. He drifted back to the eyepiece and began to follow it in as the pale planet’s hydrogen muted its diamond brilliance.

In the aft cabin, lank hairy-wristed Croker pinned another blanket around black Jackson as the latter shivered in his trance. Then Croker turned on a small light at the head of the hammock.

“Captain won’t like that,” plump pale Ness observed tranquilly from where he floated in womb position across the cabin. “Enemy can feel a candle of our light, captain says, ten million miles away.” He rocked his elbows for warmth and his body wobbled in reaction like a pollywog’s.

“And Jackson hears the Enemy think⁠ ⁠… and Heimdall hears the grass grow,” Croker commented with a harsh manic laugh. “Isn’t an Enemy for a billion miles, Ness.” He launched aft from the hammock. “We haven’t spotted their green since Saturn orbit. There’s nowhere for them.”

“There’s the far side of Uranus,” Ness pointed out. “That’s less than ten million miles now. Eight. A bare day. They could be there.”

“Yes, waiting to bushwack us as we whip past on our way to eternity,” Croker chuckled as he crumpled up against the aft port, shedding momentum. “That’s likely, isn’t it, when they didn’t have time for us back in the Belt?” He scowled at the tiny white sun, no bigger a disk than Venus, but still with one hundred times as much light as the full moon pouring from it⁠—too much light to look at comfortably. He began to button the inner cover over the port.

“Don’t do that,” Ness objected without conviction. “There’s not much heat in it but there’s some.” He hugged his elbows and shivered. “I don’t remember being warm since Mars orbit.”

“The sun gets on my nerves,” Croker said. “It’s like looking at an arc light through a pinhole. It’s like a high, high jail light in a cold concrete yard. The stars are highlights on the barbed wire.” He continued to button out the sun.

“You ever in jail?” Ness asked. Croker grinned.

With the tropism of a fish, Ness began to paddle toward the little light at the head of Jackson’s hammock, flicking his hands from the wrists like flippers. “I got one thing against the sun,” he said quietly. “It’s blanketing out the radio. I’d like us to get one more message from Earth. We haven’t tried rigging our mirror to catch radio waves. I’d like to hear how we won the battle of Jupiter.”

“If we won it,” Croker said.

“Our telescopes show no more green around Jove,” Ness reminded him. “We counted 27 rainbows of Enemy cruisers ‘burning.’ Captain verified the count.”

“Repeat: if we won it.” Croker pushed off and drifted back toward the hammock. “If there was a real victory message they’d push it through, even if the sun’s in the way and it takes three hours to catch us. People who win, shout.”

Ness shrugged as he paddled. “One way or the other, we should be getting the news soon from Titania station,” he said. “They’ll have heard.”

“If they’re still alive and there ever was a Titania Station,” Croker amended, backing air violently to stop himself as he neared the hammock. “Look, Ness, we know that the First Uranus Expedition arrived. At least they set off their flares. But that was three years before the War and we haven’t any idea of what’s happened to them since and if they ever managed to set up housekeeping on Titania⁠—or Ariel or Oberon or even Miranda or Umbriel. At least if they built a station that could raise Earth I haven’t been told. Sure thing Prospero hasn’t heard anything⁠ ⁠… and we’re getting close.”

“I won’t argue,” Ness said. “Even if we raise ’em, it’ll just be hello-goodbye with maybe time between for a battle report.”

“And a football score and a short letter from home, ten seconds per man as the station fades.” Croker frowned and added, “If Captain had cottoned to my idea, two of us at any rate could have got off this express train at Uranus.”

“Tell me how,” Ness asked drily.

“How? Why, one of the ship’s launches. Replace the fusion-head with the cabin. Put all the chem fuel in the tanks instead of divvying it between the ship and the launch.”

“I haven’t got the brain for math Copperhead has, but I can subtract,” Ness said, referring to Prospero’s piloting robot. “Fully fueled, one of the launches has a max velocity change in free-fall of 30 miles per second. Use it all in braking and you’ve only taken 30 from 100. The launch is still going past Uranus and out of the system at 70 miles a second.”

“You didn’t hear all my idea,” Croker said. “You put piggyback tanks on your launch and top them off with the fuel from the other four launches. Then you’ve 100 miles of braking and a maneuvering reserve. You only need to shed 90 miles, anyway. Ten miles a second’s the close circum-Uranian velocity. Go into circum-Uranian orbit and wait for Titania to send their jeep to pick you up. Have to start the maneuver four hours this side of Uranus, though. Take that long at 1 G to shed it.”

“Cute,” Ness conceded. “Especially the jeep. But I’m glad just the same we’ve got 70 percent of our chem fuel in our ships’ tanks instead of the launches. We’re on such a bull’s eye course for Uranus⁠—Copperhead really pulled a miracle plotting our orbit⁠—that we may need a sidewise shove to miss her. If we slapped into that cold hydrogen soup at our 100 mps⁠—”

Croker shrugged. “We still could have dropped a couple of us,” he said.

“Captain’s got to look after the whole fleet,” Ness said. “You’re beginning to agitate, Croker, like you was Grunfeld⁠—or the captain himself.”

“But if Titania Station’s alive, a couple of men dropped off would do the fleet some good. Stir Titania up to punch a message through to Earth and get