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radar scanners on Deucalion rim above us, it would look to the Feddie
observers like nothing more than a meteroid coming in at a shallow angle.
It would never have worked on Earth.
I wondered if it would work here. It was a bit late for that question.
Twenty-three hundred hours. We watched, and I listened.
"John Henry, this is Big Mama."
"Big Mama, go."
"On the way."
We saw nothing, of course; the bird didn't need a lot of power to fling it
forty miles. It burned out a few seconds after it was launched.
We waited another minute. "It's there," Big Mama said.
We were ready. A dozen men were suited up and went out searching with
radio receivers. The homing signal the supply rocket sent was deliberately
weak, carrying no more than a few hundred meters at most.
Wait some more. Then one of the troops was running toward me. He came up and
gestured. The victory signal.
We had supplies for three more days.
The next day was the worst of all. Our packs were full again, and we were
climbing uphill. Each step was agony. Onward and upward. Left. Right. But by
God we were going to make it! "John Henry say to that Cap'n, looky yonder what
I do see, well your hole done choke and your drill done broke, and you can't
drive steel like me! Lord God, you can't drive steel like me!"
In late afternoon we made camp below the rim. There was a Feddie observation
post no more than two kilometers away. We knew that from the map, but we never
saw it. We crossed the rim at night, when Phobos was up high enough to give
light to the weird landscape around us. I left four men and supplies at the
lip; they were our signal relay station. Then we strung lines and lowered
ourselves into
Deucalion crater.
We made camp after midnight, and we were up at dawn, but now we were
confident. At the bottom of the cliffs we divided our already tiny force.
Plemmons and nine men angled off to the right, headed for the monorail that
ran from the rim to the storage area. My group kept on straight ahead.
It wasn't a smooth plain. There were rocks and boulders, and the crater
floor was cracked and broken. We picked our way across, glad of the wind
and dust that made us invisible to anyone above who might be looking down into
the crater.
The next supply rocket was tricky: we had no direct line of sight to Zemansky.
Instead we relayed through the detachment on the rim. They had survey
equipment and could locate us relative to them; and they were in line of sight
to the main camp. It was a simple double-offset problem, and I shouldn't have
worried, but I did. I worried about everything.
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The rocket almost hit us. We actually saw it fall, no more than a hundred
meters away.
And on the night of the eighth day, two more: supplies and weapons. Deucalion
power station was less than five kilometers ahead. We'd made it.
"Now the white man that invented that steam drill, well he thought that it was
so fine, and John Henry drove in fourteen feet, and the steam drill only made
nine, Lord God! and the steam drill only made nine."
It was an hour before dawn. The men were in position, and there was nothing to
do but watch the second hand of my watch as it ticked toward H-hour. I watched
it and recalled the last conference with
Sarge and Commander Farr.
"The main garrison is at the rim," Farr had said. "The guards at the storage
center itself are mostly officers, and not many of those. It has to be that
way. The Feddies don't trust anyone with that kind of power. They don't think
they have to, anyway. No one can get close to the depository without alerting
the rim garrison. Or so they think.
"You surprise 'em, you got 'em," Sarge had added. "Just blast your way in. You
won't be fightin' more than fifty people. Don't give 'em time to organize.
They'll never know what hit them."
The second hand ticked over. I turned my radio to full power. "Now!"
Two dozen rocket launchers fired shaped charges at the station in front of us:
air locks, tunnel walls, any exposed place. We reloaded and fired another
volley. Then we rushed forward.
Wilson's group had stripped to the minimum, discarding every metal object not
needed for survival, then crawled right up to the main entrance. They rushed
forward with satchel charges, and dashed away again. The air-lock doors blew [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]