Doomsday Warrior 19 - America’s Final Defense (15 page)

“C’est vrai,”
Rock said glumly. They opened a bulkhead door for him. They entered not the ballroom where the soirée had been, but a smaller conference chamber. There was a little gravity here. Rock saw Louis sitting at a table with several other medal-bedecked officials. There was one empty chair—for Rockson, no doubt.

“What’s this about, Louis?” Rockson asked as he seated himself.

“This place, don’t you know, is the main trading
chambre.
We must talk.” The Frenchie got down to business quickly: the business of filling Rockson’s saucer with the equipment necessary to reach Karrak and save the earth. Rockson was amazed that the Frenchie leader was demanding payment for the rocket boosters they would provide him.

Rockson immediately proposed that perhaps Louis didn’t really understand the gravity of the situation. He suggested boldly that the Frenchies just give the Americans all they needed. “To negotiate is ridiculous,” Rock said. “This isn’t business, the earth is in danger. If the earth is destroyed, nothing of this space station will survive.”

“Yes, but zat eez just ze point,” Louis smirked. “We Frenchies have every confidence that you
will
save ze earth . . . and since everything weel be
normal,
it weel again be important that we, how you say, get a
bon marché,
a good trade, weeth the Americans.”

Rockson cursed under his breath but quickly made a very bad deal for his side, just so that the damned trip to Karrak could get under way once more.

The Frenchie chieftain was a hard bargainer. He agreed to exchange most of Rock’s food supply, the food Rock had intended for eating on Karrak, for a quick and expert repair job on the saucer. They were not going to try to repair the impossible to comprehend LaBarre drive but decided instead to refit the saucer with conventional rocket boosters.

Later, Rock showed the agreement he signed to Detroit. The black man exclaimed, “They sure got everything but our nightshirts in the deal, Rock. How could you sign this?”

“Listen, Detroit,” Rock said, “I
had to
agree to the deal. We’re late for our date with the Goddess of Fear, Karrak.”

Two hours and twenty minutes later, Rock was floating in his spacesuit outside the space station. He used his jets, floated up alongside Chen, and tapped his helmet. “The repairs look good,” he stated. “I’m glad it’s the Frenchies, not us, floating around and welding all that stuff on the saucer. It’s hard enough to hold my cookies not knowing which way is up. Work would be too much.”

“Archer sure looks happy, though,” Chen said. “He’s manhandling huge parts for them. Soon the saucer will have all the power it needs. It’s what Scot calls “a bloomin’ miracle.”

“And,” Rock said proudly, “we can do what we came up here to do.”

Rockson sure was glad that the Frenchies had traded all the Freefighters’ ungainly Glower spacesuits for some of the space station’s regular, old-model suits. They probably got some advanced features on the Glower equipment, but Rock preferred his man-sized outfit. The arms and legs of the Frenchies’ spacesuits were more flexible, also. He looked around at the stars; at the earth.

“To be up here, floating in space, watching a bunch of French exiles weld boosters onto
our
flying saucer . . .” Chen just shook his head. “I never dreamed this could happen.”

Rockson agreed. He and the other Freefighters, as unaccustomed as they were to space repair work, could help but little. Sometimes they ferried over a part or two for the Frenchies; that was about all. It was a nerve-wracking experience just to float out in limitless space. Except for Archer. He went to help move an engine up to the saucer with a gang of Frenchies, leaving Rock floating alone 50 yards from the craft, watching in amazement, and with some tension.

Rockson sighed in relief when Archer moved alongside him to tap his helmet and say, “
Muuuch
fun. Me like space. Work
easy!
Feel liiike
fly.”

Rockson said, “Glad
you’re
enjoying it.”

The work took another hour.

Just as the Frenchies were finishing the installation of the last rocket engine attachment, making it look kind of like a weird giant ceiling fixture, Rock heard rapid French words on his helmet radio. “Sacré Bleu, Rock! Allez
ici.”
It was Louis XIV.

“Huh?” Rock asked. “Can you speak English,
s’il vous plaît?
What’s the matter?
Qui fait?”

Rockson saw Louis’s distinctive tiger-striped spacesuit jetting toward him. The Frenchie leader arrived almost too fast to kill his speed, and he bumped into Rockson, who absorbed the hit, but had to fire a burst of his suit jets to steady himself. “Now, what’s the matter?”

“Rockson! There is
another
rocket craft taking off from Earth. You come look through le grand telescope, mon ami.”

Rockson jetted back to the big broken Eiffel Tower space station with Louis. Without taking off their spacesuits—this part of the half-wrecked station had no air pressure yet—they went directly to the observatory room. There Rock was directed to a long refractor telescope constructed of a design and ornamentation that would make Jules Verne cream in his pants. Rock pressed his eye as close to the eyepiece as possible and saw a view not of the stars but of an area of South America. The mountain range he perceived was partly veiled by clouds.

“See?”

Rock saw. There were twin red-white flames outlined against the peaks of the Andes of Peru.

The head Frenchie said with much excitement, “Do you not see? It is for sure a spacecraft. It is Killov’s rocketsheep! It is evident Killov has left Peru. According to ze speed at which he approaches us, he will soon go right past us, and head for Karrak.”

Rock had to adjust the high-power focus several times to keep the rocket image clearly in view. It was going very fast—escape velocity or better. He saw the rocket’s first-stage boosters suddenly flare out, and then the booster fell away. The rocket’s main engine erupted into flames.

Damn.
Why couldn’t it have failed? Then the bastard would have fallen hack to Earth.
“But no such luck,”
Rock cursed. Killov was in that rocket, that was for sure. He sensed it. Killov was coming . . . fast.

Rockson whistled when he saw something about the rocket that he particularly didn’t like to see. There were barbs on the craft; barbs of jutting objects; nasty looking appendages that could only be guns, or missiles.

The Frenchie leader was busy at a control panel. He confirmed to Rockson that the equipment said the approaching rocket did have weapons. Missiles and more. “Sorry, Rockson, we Frenchies can’t arm you with anything like that; we have just a few cannons.”

“When will he get here?” Rock asked, gritting his teeth.

“In a few hours at most. We will be done fixing your saucer; don’t worry. You will leave ahead of him.”

“But Killov has real power in that thing. He’ll catch up to us. Can you think of anything to counter his missile capability? So we don’t get shot down?”

“Nothing to match zat stuff,” Louis said, “because all of our missiles, she was used up in our war weeth les Nazis. Or, rather, ze
remnants
of ze fameux Nazis. But we can geeve you a large swivel-gun—you know—an anti-aircraft gun? And also perhaps some extra maneuver power. We can give you some more booster jets. Perhaps enough so that you get out of the way, if Killov fires at you—okay? It will only take a few extra minutes to strap on ze maxiboosters. Provided . . .” Louis smiled through his visi-plate.

“Yeah, I know,” Rockson frowned, “provided we can make a deal. What do you want?”

Rockson quickly agreed to trade their Frenchie spacesuits back, once the Americans had boarded the saucer again. In return, the Frenchies would provide the maxiboosters Louis had spoken about.

Fifteen

T
he rocket they suspected of being Killov’s was less than forty minutes away by the time the Frenchies finished strapping high speed maneuver jets to the saucer. Rockson rushed up in the newly created gunnery bubble at the apex of the saucer. There he saw McCaughlin standing, in his spacesuit, supervising the bolting down of the huge, twin-barrel anti-spacecraft ack-ack gun. McCaughlin would man it, for he had experience with such primitive artillery. He had once led an artillery brigade that had been outfitted from a twentieth-century army depot.

McCaughlin could barely squeeze his large-sized suit into the gunner’s seat. Perhaps it was made for the more dainty French posterior. Still McCaughlin was all excited when he started to sight the space station through the range-finder. “Wow, an illuminated crosshair,” Scot exclaimed. “And a built-in laser-tracking mechanism. This is a great toy—better than the weapon I had back—”

Rock interrupted to say, “Glad you like it, but remember, this ‘toy’ might be the only thing that’ll keep us alive if Killov gets on our tail.” Rock called out to Louis on the wrist radio; “Louis, how soon until you finish checking out the wiring?”

“Ten minutes,
mon cher.
I will have your saucer out of here in ten minutes. You will have a
bon
head start on Killov. The extra boosters should keep you ahead of him all the way to Karrak . . . or at least most of the way.”

Rock turned to McCaughlin, “That’s what worries me, Scot. Those words ‘most of the way.’ All Killov has to do is get within range of us and he can send out a gaggle of his intercept missiles against us.”

“Just let him get in range of this twin-barrel death dealer, Rock, and I’ll show the crumb-bum what it’s like to have his face smeared all over outer space.” He made motions of squeezing the twin triggers.

“Careful, Scot; there’s no safety on that thing! You don’t want to blast our host’s space station to pieces, do you?”

McCaughlin sheepishly took his hands from the triggers. “No, I guess not. Sure can’t wait until this bubble is pressurized and I can take this friggin’ spacesuit off. It chafes.”

Rockson agreed, and jetted himself out of the open gunner dome before the plexiglass shield was bolted into place by a crew of French women technicians. Rock floated off to the side and watched. He had to admire the French gender obsession. The women’s spacesuits had little feminine adornments: frilled collars and cuffs, and the little twin domes on the chest plates for their ample breasts.

Once the bubble of see-through substance was sealed in place and he saw McCaughlin give him the high-sign, Rockson jetted out a hundred feet from the saucer to make an overall inspection. The Glower’s weird craft looked like a sorry version of a Sea Turtle now, with a bristling assortment of various-sized rocket-engine attachments, plus all sorts of loosely lashed-in-place cables and wires.

True, in space there’s no friction, the stuff shouldn’t blow off; but it was a mess. Once they reached Karrak and decelerated for a soft landing they’d jettison all the empty rocket tanks and engines and “land smooth,” as they say.

It was with some sadness that Rockson watched a crew of spacesuit-clad workers pull his space sail made of aluminum foil and coat hangers off the roof of the saucer. Rockson watched it slowly float away, tumbling over and over. The sun’s light pressure was exerting its feeble yet effective push against the aluminum foil, keeping it moving. Soon the sail was out of sight. It might sail right out of the solar system a few million years from now, Rock thought wistfully. He felt sort of like he was setting a little sailboat, or a cork boat, off into a pond. It would just keep going, as long as the starwinds blew . . .

Through the fogged-up faceplate of the helmet Rockson looked at his Wakmann chronometer. Six minutes to blastoff from the space station. The saucer was as ready as she’d ever be, and he’d better get aboard.

So he jetted back, entered the airlock, strode up to the pilot’s seat. Detroit was co-piloting, and the black Freefighter was already seated, checking system-activation lights. There was a whole mess of new ones—installed to monitor and fire the extra rocket boosters.

Chen was at the science officer’s desk console, flicking a bevy of new switches there. He hadn’t given up on reading the old manual. He was still attempting to restore at least partial power to the LaBarre antigravity drive. If they could get even a small percent of that power, they’d have a better chance of evading Killov.

“How’s the LaBarre?” Rock asked, hopeful. “Looks like you got something going there with all those levers.”

“I have a few percent of the power we had coming up here, Rock. But it won’t last fifteen seconds. I strongly suggest that we use the LaBarre power I have to move the saucer away from the space station before we ignite that mess of strapped-on rocket boosters. Do you get my meaning?”

Rockson nodded. The damned jerry-rigged rocket boosters might blow up!

Rock didn’t let on to the rest of the crew what Chen had intimated. He didn’t want the space station to blow up too, if there was a “major malfunction.”

“Everyone strapped down. Here goes,” Chen said. He hit the LaBarre switches and there was a hum; the saucer started moving without rocket power. It edged a few feet per minute away from the waving Frenchies floating about in space until it was a half mile or more from the station. The fading radio signal from Louis said, “Bon voyage, mon amis.
Bon voyage, et bonne chance.
Americains, we depend on you.”

Chen turned off the LaBarre. “That’s all from here, Rock,” he said. “It’s your turn.”

Rockson nodded, and with his fingers crossed on both hands, started flicking the switches that started up the rocket boosters. There was a sickening clanking on the port side. Rockson cursed and immediately switched off a rocket booster. “That was close,” he said as the clanking died down. “That port-aft main booster was too loose to use; I’ve scrubbed it. We’ll never reach Karrak before Kiilov can catch up to us. I’ll hit all the other boosters now, bring them up to full power.
Hold on.”

Detroit shouted out over the thundering rockets, “Don’t worry, guys, we can count on our maneuver jets, plus McCaughlin’s twin ack-ack guns, when Killov gets near.”