Slave Ship by Frederik Pohl Read Free Book Online

course, in twenty minutes I could be closer inshore than they would dare to follow.
    But they didn't really have to catch me, you see. Their missiles would do the job for them.
    I watched the sonar screen with very close attention-it was all I had to do. There were the eight of them, big and ugly by now; there were the four staggered little streaks that were my missiles. And there—yes, there, just before the lead Caodai, were two other little glowing streaks. They weren't mine. They were missiles, but they weren't mine.
    I kicked the auto-armor pedal home. My scout was now defensively armed; it was dropping random-sized masses of fine-spun metallic wool into the slipstream, hoping to divert the Caodai missiles. Unfortunately they were doing the same; I saw a mushrooming flare around one of my missiles as it went off, far out of effective range of the enemy craft, triggered no doubt by just such a blob of chaff. And another; and then the sonar screen was awash with light from rim to rim; the pressure-spheres surrounding the exploding missiles confused the sound waves, made them return conflicting images. I scrambled the sonar screen and snapped on the Audic; at least I would know if something big was getting close to me.
    Something big was! But not the Caodais—it came from due south, down the coast, and it was big and fast. IFF gave the answer: It was a Spruance-class cruiser, coming to the rescue.
    They might get me, but Big Brother was going to get them! I snapped open the TBS and yelled excitedly, "Welcome to the party! I'll give you my bearings for cross-check. My grid position—"
    But I didn't finish. Audic tinkled and cut out in my earphone; there had been a big, near-by explosion and the filters, designed to keep the wearer from ruptured eardrums, had cut off the amplification. I waited for the smash.
    I never heard it, but I felt it. Something hit the side of my head; and that was all, brother, that was all. . . .
     
    But—
    "Only the good die young," growled somebody with a Russian accent.
    I sat up abruptly. "Semyon!" I said. "What—?"
    The heel of his hand caught me in the chest, and I went back down again. "Doctor says to lie still!" he scolded. "You should have been dead, Logan! Don't provoke fortune!"
    Well, I was alive, though it took me a while to .believe it. What had hit me had been nothing but concussion, and the torp, though sprung a little at the seams, was still intact. The auto-pilot cut itself off when the hull was breached and, when nobody took the controls, automatically surfaced the vessel—and hydrofoils found it, with me inside. But I was alive.
    "Did they get them?" I demanded.
    "Get who? The Orientals?" Semyon shrugged. "They did not yet have the courtesy to report to me, Logan. I can only assume—"
    "All right. What about the stockade?"
    "Ha," he said, sitting up. "Such a struggle, Logan. Through the jungle like savages, screaming and fighting, deadly beyond—"
    " What about the stockade ?"
    He pouted. "Is over," he grumbled. "We fought a little bit, and then armor began coming up from the highway, and when the Orientals saw the tanks they ran. Oh, some got through; they will be caught."
    So that was that. Well, I thought, leaning back against the pillows of the sick bay and listening to the thumping in my head, it wasn't so bad after all, A free ride in a scout torp—I'd thought I'd never get to pilot one again. A successful, or anyway fairly successful, combat sweep against superior odds. A sure commendation in my file jacket, maybe even a citation from COMINCH. Who knows, possibly a Navy Cross—stranger things had happened. And the whole thing was over, a pleasant interlude in a dull existence.
    What I didn't know was that nothing is ever really over.
    Semyon said commandingly: "The doctor." I sat up, and he pushed me down again.
    The doctor poked me and looked into my eyes and said: "Back on duty in the morning. Meanwhile—"
    He reached for a needle. I protested, "But, doctor, I