Heinlein, Robert A If This Goes On

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Huxley seemed unperturbed. 'Shift to light-phone circuits,' was all he said.
The communications officer had anticipated him; our audio circuits were now on infra-red beams,
ship to ship. Huxley hung over my shoulder most of the next hour, watching the position plot lines grow.
Presently he said, 'I think we will deploy now, John. Some of those pilots aren't any too steady; I think
we will give them time to settle down in their positions before anything more happens.'
I passed the order and cut my tracker out of circuit for fifteen minutes; it wasn't built for so many
variables at such high speeds and there was no sense in overloading it. Nineteen minutes later the last
transport had checked in by phone, I made a preliminary set up, threw the starting switch and let the
correction data feed in. For a couple of minutes I was very busy balancing data, my hands moving among
knobs and keys; then the machine was satisfied with its own predictions and I reported, 'Tracking, sir.'
Huxley leaned over my shoulder. The line was a little ragged but I was proud of them-some of those
pilots had been freighter jacks not four weeks earlier.
At three a.m. we made the precautionary signal, 'Coming on the range,' and our own turret rumbled
as they loaded it.
At 3:31 Huxley gave the command, 'Concentration Plan III, open fire.'
Our own big fellow let go. The first shot shook loose a lot of dust and made my eyes water. The craft
rolled back on her treads to the recoil and I nearly fell out of my saddle. I had never ridden one of the big
booster guns before and I hadn't expected the long recoil. Our big rifle had secondary firing chambers up
the barrel, electronically synchronized with the progress of the shell; it maintained max pressure all the
way up and gave a much higher muzzle velocity and striking power. It also gave a bone-shaking recoil.
But the second time I was ready for it.
Huxley was at the periscope between shots, trying to observe the effects of our fire. New Jerusalem
had answered our fire but did not yet have us ranged. We had the advantage of firing at a stationary
target whose range we knew to the meter; on the other hand even a heavy land cruiser could not show
the weight of armor that underlay the Palace's ginger-bread.
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Huxley turned from the scope and remarked, 'Smoke, John.' I turned to the communications officer.
'Stand by, sensitives; all craft!'
The order never got through. Even as I gave it the comm officer reported loss of contact. But the
psychoperator was already busy and I knew the same thing was happening in all the ships; it was normal
casualty routine.
Of our nine sensitives, three-the boy and two women-were wide-awakes; the other six were hypnos.
The technician hooked the boy first to one in Penoyer's craft. The kid established rapport almost at once
and Penoyer got through a report:
'BLANKETED BY SMOKE. HAVE SHIFTED LEFT WING TO PSYCHO. WHAT
HOOK-UP? - PENOYER.'
I answered, 'Pass down the line.' Doctrine permitted two types of telepathic hook-up: relay, in which
a message would be passed along until it reached its destination; and command mesh, in which there was
direct hook-up from flag to each ship under that flag, plus ship-to-ship for adjacent units. In the first case
each sensitive carries just one circuit, that is, is in rapport with just one other telepath; in the second they
might have to handle as many as four circuits. I wanted to hold off overloading them as long as possible.
The technician tied the other two wide-awakes into our flanking craft in the battle line, then turned his
attention to the hypnos. Four of them required hypodermics; the other two went under in response to
suggestion. Shortly we were hooked up with the transports and second-line craft, as well as with the
bombers and the rocket-jet spotting the fall of shot. The jet reported visibility zero and complained that
he wasn't getting anything intelligible by radar. I told him to stand by; the morning breeze might clear the
smoke away presently.
We weren't dependent on him anyway; we knew our positions almost to the inch. We had taken
departure from a benchmark and our dead reckoning was checked for the whole battle line every time
any skipper identified a map-shown landmark. In addition, the dead reckoners of a tread-driven cruiser
are surprisingly accurate; the treads literally measure every yard of ground as they pass over it and a little
differential gadget compares the treads and keeps just as careful track of direction. The smoke did not
really bother us and we could keep on firing accurately even if radar failed. On the other hand, if the
Palace commander kept us in smoke he himself was entirely dependent on radar. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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