Chapter 2

Jonnie awoke with a start of alarm. The ground had shaken! A woman nurse who must have been at his bedside left the room.

He stared around him, for a moment unable to place the unfamiliar surroundings. Then he recognized them. It was the bunker room at Kariba that the Chinese had fixed up especially for him at the inner edge of the hollow of the firing platform. They had ringed the inside hill with deep bunkers and even tiled some of them. They were lit with mine lights.

This one was tiled in yellow. It was furnished with a bed, chairs, and a wardrobe. They had even done a portrait of Chrissie in the tiles, taking it from a picto-recorder shot– it looked quite like her except that they had slightly slanted her eyes.

The ground jolted again. Bombs?

He was just about to swing out of bed when Dr. Allen came in and soothingly pushed him back. “It’s all right,” said Dr. Allen. “They have things under control out there.” He was taking Jonnie's pulse.

Sir Robert showed up in the doorway. He had a bandage across his nose which Dr. Allen had set. He was obviously waiting for Dr. Allen to finish.

“You had a nasty one,” said Dr. Allen. “But your pulse is normal now. That prevention shot of serum you had handled some of the venom reaction. But you really owe it all to Sir Robert: he got the poison out and even gave you a few drops of serum.”

Jonnie's huge Psychlo wrist watch was lying on the sidetable. He stared at it. He had been asleep for eighteen hours! Lord knows what had happened in that time.

Dr. Allen anticipated him. “I know, I know. But it was necessary to put you on an opiate to slow your heart down.” He had a stethoscope on Jonnie's chest. He listened. Then he folded it up. “I can't detect any heart damage. Hold out your hand.”

Jonnie did.

“Ah, no tremble,” said Dr. Allen. “I think you're fine. A few days in bed-'

At that moment the ground jolted again. Jonnie tried to get up and Dr. Allen pushed him back again.

“Sir Robert!” called Jonnie. “What's happening?”

Dr. Allen nodded to Sir Robert that it was all right and then left. Sir Robert came over to stand beside the bed. He was not answering Jonnie's question. He just stood there beaming down at Jonnie, glad to see him alive. The lad even had color in his cheeks.

“What is happening?” said Jonnie, spacing each word.

“Oh,” said Sir Robert. “That's a Tolnep ship up there. It 's at about two hundred miles but it keeps sending down planes to bomb this place. We have air cover. Stormalong is here and directing air defenses. So far the enemy is giving Singapore its main attention.”

Angus was at the door. Jonnie called to him, “Have you set up the console?”

“Oh, aye,” said Angus. He came in. “That's why they didn't disturb you.” He pointed a finger up. “With all that firing, our antiaircraft outside the screen, and the motors of our own planes, we wouldn't dare use the firing rig. It 's all connected. The Chinese set that place up very nice.”

“The next firing position of the switch is down," said Jonnie.

“Yes, Sir Robert told us that. It 's all ready to go if this firing ever stops! Get a rest.” Angus left and passed Thor.

Thor said, “How do you feel?”

Jonnie waved his hand negatively. “Unimportant. The last I remember was being in the dome. You better bring me up to date.”

They told him what had happened and what they had done.

“A recoil that bad!” said Jonnie. “Worse,” said Thor.

“How many men did we lose?” said Jonnie.

“Andrew and MacDougal," said Thor. “But we have fifteen of them here in this little hospital they have. Couple of concussions, broken arms or legs. Mostly bruised, very badly bruised. The lead of the coffins protected them. No radiation burns. Andrew was badly bayoneted by the Brigantes and couldn't fasten his coffin lid from inside, and it blew open.”

“And MacDougal?" said Jonnie.

“Well, that one is sort of bad. He had the station over by the old cage and the coffin was jolted out of the ground. We couldn't find his body for a while and that's what got us looking.” Jonnie noticed Thor was holding a heavy package: he had steadied it against the table. “We had to start looking for corpses. They had been blown all around, most of the flesh burned off. We followed the blast line, thinking his body had been blown directly away from the platform, and we got into what was left of Terl’s office– the whole top of it had been blown off. Four or five bodies from the platform edge had been blown into that area. We didn't want to leave anyone listed simply as missing so we were trying to identify bodies. We found MacDougal's body.

“And we found this.” He was unwrapping the heavy package. “I know you will be relieved to have it. One of the corpses had all the flesh burned off and the vertebrae were exposed and this was sticking in them.”

It was the pea-sized pellet of the unknown core material of the bomb.

“Brown Limper," said Jonnie. "Terl threw it at him. Like a bullet. Yes, I am very, very glad you found it!”

“We got the other package Terl handed to him,” said Thor. “We gave it to Angus and he disarmed it. What does it do?”

“We don't really know,” said Jonnie.

“But knowing Terl-'

“We got his whole recycling basket,” said Thor. “We figured he'd try to use it and we cut the power off. It 's really full! It 's out here on a dolly if you want it. We had it in a radiation-proofmine sack, fortunately.” He beckoned toward the door. “We grabbed it right after he left his office.”

A gillie wheeled the dolly in. They had stacked the material neatly on it.

“Don't try to fire those assassin pistols,” said Thor. "Ker put a plug in them so they'd shoot out of the back at the user. Ker said to tell you and that he'd fix them back.”

They handed Jonnie some of the booklets and papers that had been in the false backs and bottoms of the cabinets. Jonnie had a lot of it already. His eye was caught by a pamphlet: “Known Defenses of Hostile Races and Surveys of Their Homelands.” He thumbed through it. Lot of planets here. He looked under Tolnep:

This planet is a planet of a double-star system. (See coordinate chart for location.) The system itself has only three inhabited planets, the seventh, eight, and ninth. The Tolnep homeland is the ninth planet. It has five moons. Of these, only Asart is important. It is used as the launch of major war vessels. No Tolnep vessel can operate in atmosphere due to the great inefficiency of its star energy drives which, being essentially reaction engines, use up too much of their power in atmospheres. After construction, such vessels are based on the moon Asart and their crews and material are ferried to them from planet surface. Since plans have been proposed from time to time to occupy and mine the Tolnep planet, and since usual offensive tactics are thought to be adequate in the event of such a war, the moon Asart has not been assaulted up to the time of this writing.

Jonnie looked at the Psychlo date. It was only a couple of years old. The catalogue went on. Jonnie laid it down.

Another thud and ground shake.

Suddenly, Jonnie was aware of the underlying tension in all those who had come in. They were just trying to make him feel easy! Thor had received an urgent summons while he had been reading. And now a communicator rushed in with a sheaf of dispatches for Sir Robert and rushed out. Jonnie saw the frown flicker across Sir Robert's face as he read them.

“The situation is worse than you're letting on, isn't it?” said Jonnie.

"Naw, naw," said Sir Robert. "Dinna fret yersel', laddie,”

“What is the situation?” demanded Jonnie. Sir Robert never dropped into dialect unless agitated.

The grizzled old Scot sighed and recovered his university accent. “Well, if you must have it, we have lost the initiative. For whatever reason, the enemy has decided to attack in force.” He tapped the reports.