Battlefield Earth

Chapter 2

Jo

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 i

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 Jo

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.”

Jo

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 Jo

Jo

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

At that moment the ground jolted again. Jo

“Sir Robert!” called Jo

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 Jo

“What is happening?” said Jo

“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. Jo

“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 co

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

“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?”

Jo

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

“A recoil that bad!” said Jo

“How many men did we lose?” said Jo

“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 Jo

“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.” Jo

“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 Jo

“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 Jo

“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 Jo

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.

Jo

Another thud and ground shake.

Suddenly, Jo

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

"Naw, naw," said Sir Robert. "Di

“What is the situation?” demanded Jo

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.