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"Da," Kutuzov muttered. "There is no point in sacrificing these officers for nothing. Captain Blaine, you will instruct them to use lifeboats, but caution them that no miniatures must come out with them. When they leave, you will immediately come aboard Lenin."
"Aye aye, sir," Rod sighed in relief and rang the intercom line to the generator compartment. "Staley: the Admiral says you can use the lifeboats. Be careful there aren't any miniatures in them, and you'll be searched before you board one of Lenin's boats. Trigger the torpedoes and get away. Got that?"
"Aye aye, sir." Staley turned to the other middies. "Lifeboats," he snapped. "Let's...-"
Green light winked around them. "Visors down!" Whitbread screamed. They dove behind the torpedoes while the beam swung wildly around the compartment. It slashed holes in the bulkheads, then through compartment wails beyond, finally through the hull itself. Air rushed out and the beam stopped swinging, but it remained on, pouring energy through the hull into the Field beyond.
Staley swung his sun visor, up. It was fogged with silver metal deposits. He ducked carefully under the beam to look at its source.
It was a heavy hand laser. Half a dozen miniatures had been needed to carry it. Some of them, dead and dry, clung to the double hand hold.
"Let's move," Staley ordered. He inserted a key into the lock on the torpedo panel. Beside him Potter did the same thing. They turned the keys—and had ten minutes to live. Staley rushed to the intercom. "Mission accomplished, sir."
They moved through the airtight open compartment's door into the main after corridor and rushed sternward, flinging themselves from hand hold to hand hold. Null-gee races were a favorite if slightly non-regulation game with midshipmen, and they were glad of the practice they'd had. Behind them the timer would be clicking away- "Should be here," Staley said. He blasted through an airtight door, then fired a man-sized gap through the outer hull itself. Air whistled out-the miniatures had somehow again enclosed them in the stinking atmosphere of Mote Prime even as they had come aft, Wisps of ice-crystal fog hung in the vacuum.
Potter found the lifeboat inflation controls and smashed the glass cover with his pistol butt. They stepped out of the way and waited for the lifeboats to inflate.
Instead the flooring swung up. Stored beneath the deck was a line of cones, each two meters across at the base, each about eight meters long.
"The Midnight Brownie strikes again," said Whitbread.
The cones were all identical, and fabricated from scratch. The miniatures must have worked for weeks beneath the deck, tearing up the lifeboats and other equipment to replace them with-these things. Each cone had a contoured crash chair in the big end and a flared rocket nozzle in the point.
"Look at the damn things, Potter," Staley ordered. "See if there's anywhere Brownies could hide in them." There didn't seem to be. Except for the conical hull, which was solid, everything was open framework. Potter tapped and pried while his friends stood guard.
He was looking for an opening in the cone when he caught a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye. He snatched a grenade from his belt and turned. A space suit floated-out of the corridor wall. It held a heavy laser in both hands.
Staley's nerves showed in his voice. "You! Identify yourself!"
The figure raised its weapon. Potter threw the grenade.
Intense green light lashed out through the explosion, lighting the corridor weirdly and tearing up one of the conical lifeboats. "Was it a man?" Potter cried. "Was it? The arms bent wrong! Its legs stuck straight out-what was it?"
"An enemy," Staley said. "I think we'd better get out of here. Board the boats while we've still got ‘em." He climbed into the reclined contour seat of one of the undamaged cones. After a moment the others each selected a seat.
Horst found a control panel on a bar and swung it out in front of him. There were no labels anywhere. Sentient or nonsentient, all Moties seemed to be expected to solve the workings of a machine at a glance.
"I'm going to- try the big square button," Staley said firmly. His voice sounded - oddly hollow through the suit radio. Grimly he pushed the button.
A section of the hull blew away beneath him. The cone swung out as on a sling. Rockets flared briefly. Cold and blackness-and he was outside the Field.
Two other cones popped out of the black sea. Frantically Horst directed his suit radio toward the looming black hulk of Lenin no more than a kilometer away. "Midshipman Staley here! The lifeboats have been altered. There are three of us, and we're alone aboard them-."
A fourth cone popped from the blackness. Staley turned in his seat. It looked like a man- Three hand weapons fired simultaneously. The fourth cone glowed and melted, but they fired for a long time. "One of the-uh-" Staley didn't know what to report. His circuit might not be secure.
"We have you on the screens, Midshipman," a heavily accented voice said. "Move away from MacArthur, and wait for pickup. Did you complete your mission?"
"Yes, sir." Staley glanced at his watch. "Four minutes to go, sir."
"Then move fast, mister," the voice ordered.
But howl Staley wondered. The controls had no obvious function. While he searched frantically, his rocket fired. But what-he hadn't touched anything.
"My rocket's firing again," said Whitbread's voice. He sounded calm-much calmer than Staley felt.
"Aye, and mine," Potter added. "Never look a gift horse in the mouth. We're movin' away from you ship."
The rumble continued. They were accelerating together at nearly a standard gee, with Mote Prime a vast green crescent to one side. On the other was the deep black of the Coal Sack, and the blacker mass of Lenin. The boats accelerated for a long time.
32 Lenin
The young Russian midshipman carried himself proudly. His battle armor was spotless, and all his equipment arranged properly by the Book. "The Admiral requests that you conic to the bridge," he chirped in flawless Anglic.
Rod Blaine followed listlessly. They floated through the air lock from Lenin's number-two hangar deck to a flurry of salutes front Kutuzov's Marines. The full honors of a visiting captain only stirred his grief. He'd given his last orders, and he'd been the last man to leave his ship. Now he was an observer, and this was probably the last time anyone would render him boarding honors.
Everything aboard the battleship seemed too large, yet he knew it was only an illusion. With few exceptions the compartments and corridors of capital ships were standardized, and - he might as well have been aboard MacArthur. Lenin was at battle stations, with all her airtight doors closed and dogged. Marines were posted at the more important passageway controls, but otherwise they saw no one, and Rod was glad of that. He could not have faced any of his former crew. Or passengers.
Lenin's bridge was enormous. She was fitted out as a flagship, and in addition to the screens and command posts for the ship herself there were a dozen couches for the Admiral's battle staff. Rod woodenly acknowledged the Admiral's greeting and sank gratefully into the flag Captain's chair. He didn't even wonder where Commander Borman, Kutuzov's flag lieutenant and chief of staff, had gone. He was alone with the Admiral at the flag command station.
MacArthur was displayed from half a dozen views on the screens above him. The last of Lenin's boats were pulling away from her. Staley must have accomplished his mission, Rod thought. Now she has only a few minutes to live. When she's gone I'll really be finished. A newly promoted captain who lost his ship on her first mission---even the Marquis' influence would not overcome that. Blind hatred for the Mote and all its inhabitants welled up inside him.