The Misplaced Battleship | Page 9

took the code groups down in shorthand
myself.
"... xybb dfil fdno, and if you don't--don't come back!"
The message broke into clear at the end and the psiman smiled as he
spoke the words. I broke the point off my stylus and growled at him not
to repeat any of this message, as it was classified, and I would
personally see him shot if he did. That got rid of the smile, but didn't
make me feel any better.
The decoded message turned out not to be as bad as I had imagined.
Until further notice I was in charge of tracking and capturing the stolen
battleship. I could call on the League for any aid I needed. I would keep
my identity as an admiral for the rest of the job. I was to keep him
informed of progress. Only those ominous last words in clear kept my

happiness from being complete.
I had been handed my long-awaited assignment. But translated into
simple terms my orders were to get the battleship, or it would be my
neck. Never a word about my efforts in uncovering the plot in the first
place. This is a heartless world we live in.
This moment of self-pity relaxed me and I immediately went to bed.
Since my main job now was waiting, I could wait just as well asleep.
* * * * *
And waiting was all I could do. Of course there were secondary tasks,
such as ordering a Naval cruiser for my own use, and digging for more
information on the thieves, but these really were secondary to my main
purpose. Which was waiting for bad news. There was no place I could
go that would be better situated for the chase than Cittanuvo. The
missing ship could have gone in any direction. With each passing
minute the sphere of probable locations grew larger by the power of the
squared cube. I kept the on-watch crew of the cruiser at duty stations
and confined the rest within a one hundred yard radius of the ship.
There was little more information on Pepe and Angelina, they had
covered their tracks well. Their origin was unknown, though the fact
they both talked with a slight accent suggested an off-world origin.
There was one dim picture of Pepe, chubby but looking too grim to be
a happy fat boy. There was no picture of the girl. I shuffled the meager
findings, controlled my impatience, and kept the ship's psiman busy
pulling in all the reports of any kind of trouble in space. The navigator
and I plotted their locations in his tank, comparing the positions in
relation to the growing sphere that enclosed all the possible locations of
the stolen ship. Some of the disasters and apparent accidents hit inside
this area, but further investigation proved them all to have natural
causes.
I had left standing orders that all reports falling inside the danger area
were to be brought to me at any time. The messenger woke me from a
deep sleep, turning on the light and handing me the slip of paper. I

blinked myself awake, read the first two lines, and pressed the action
station alarm over my bunk. I'll say this, the Navy boys know their
business. When the sirens screamed, the crew secured ship and blasted
off before I had finished reading the report. As soon as my eyeballs
unsquashed back into focus I read it through, then once more, carefully,
from the beginning.
It looked like the one we had been waiting for. There were no witnesses
to the tragedy, but a number of monitor stations had picked up the
discharge static of a large energy weapon being fired. Triangulation had
lead investigators to the spot where they found a freighter, Ogget's
Dream, with a hole punched through it as big as a railroad tunnel. The
freighter's cargo of plutonium was gone.
I read Pepe in every line of the message. Since he was flying an
undermanned battleship, he had used it in the most efficient way
possible. If he attempted to negotiate or threaten another ship, the
element of chance would be introduced. So he had simply roared up to
the unsuspecting freighter and blasted her with the monster guns his
battleship packed. All eighteen men aboard had been killed instantly.
The thieves were now murderers.
I was under pressure now to act. And under a greater pressure not to
make any mistakes. Roly-poly Pepe had shown himself to be a ruthless
killer. He knew what he wanted--then reached out and took it.
Destroying anyone who stood in his way. More people would die
before this was over, it was up to me to keep that number as small as
possible.
* * * * *
Ideally I