Polaris, page 3
"Carter, let Svenson have any men you can dig up with some experience in weapon systems," Traynor commanded.
"At least four or five, Dron," Carter stated.
"I'd appreciate it," Svenson said gratefully. "We've been primarily concentrating on the matter deflectors and the laser cannon. We've had no time to work on the disruptors. The parts for the systems are waiting at the station for someone to pick them up, but I haven't had time to get them."
"Carter, I hate to keep taking men away from you, but security is the best source of manpower," Traynor explained. "We'll need two crews to shuttle those parts over here. If I'm any judge of weapons, those crates will be enormous. Probably want all-Vendran crews. Eight men should do it. You go along as receiving officer."
"Aye, sir," Carter acknowledged the assignment.
"Sir, don't you think I ought to be the receiving officer?" Nelson asked.
"We have a ship to put together, Mr. Nelson," Traynor said. "I won't send any of my command officers anywhere while this craft is non-operational! Besides, these crews will be security men. It's a good chance for some morale boosting. Maybe if we get started, we might turn the morale of this ship around soon.
"Aye, sir," Nelson said softly.
"Good," Traynor agreed. "Svenson, how about the High-Energy Heat Beam?"
"Fleet specialists have been installing it for the past week," Svenson replied. "I was told that when installation was completed, the man in charge would provide the Captain with the proper firing-sequence procedure."
"Where is the projector located on the hull?"
"Between the foreward laser banks," Svenson replied.
"Thank you. Communications?"
"We are operating with relatively new personnel, sir, 'the Pronethan began. "And also, as was reported earlier, Communications is without three people.
"Our equipment has been installed. We are waiting for the computer to be prepared that we may discover whether our equipment is operational. The department members have been on shifts, familiarizing themselves with the equipment thoroughly, while monitoring the one communication link we have functioning; the link with Station Fifteen."
"Very good Major Kran," Traynor complimented the creature. "Have you run into any serious problems?"
"No, sir," Kran replied.
"Very good, Major. Pilots?"
"Well, uh, sir, we have no real problems," Peters began. "We, uh, can't test, uh, our equipment until we have, uh, full power. Other than that, we have our equipment installed, and, uh, I'm having the, uh, n-new personnel g-go over the equipment to I-learn it."
"OK, Peters," Traynor said softly. "Commander Shanesey, tell me about the little birds."
"As ye know, sir," Shanesey's thick accent filled the conference room. "A cruiser this size carries fifteen transports. Of the fifteen on board now, nine are new, and two of the old birds need engine repair. I can only certify five ready for flight."
"You said we received nine new birds but only five are flyable?" Traynor questioned. "Did we receive four non-operational transports?"
"I've only certified one of the new transports," Shanesey explained. Seeing Traynor's questioning look, she continued. "Only transports I've checked over myself are certified flyable on this ship. If ye want to change that policy, ye'Il have to get rid of me."
"There'll be no need for that, Commander," Traynor replied smiling. "However, leave the two down for engine work alone until you've got the other birds ready."
"Very good, sir," she answered. Under her breath, she continued: "It was what I'd intended to do." Though it was spoken softly, Traynor's ears caught Shanesey's last remark. He glanced over at her from where he was standing, winked, and smiled. Shanesey caught his eye, realized he had overheard her remark, and blushed as red as her hair.
"Engineering?"
Corensky looked up from the papers he had been involved with.
"Sir?" he asked questioningly.
"Your report, Colonel, please," Traynor explained.
"Ah, yes, my report," Corensky replied slowly. "Our neutronium pile has been successfully installed within its shielded walls. We should soon have the neutronium drive operational.
"As for our sub-light engines; we have been having some trouble getting them set. Major LeMay was supposed to have them operational by now. She doesn't seem to have them working yet. If and when she has them set, Polaris will have nearly full power. Right now we're operating on power from Station Fifteen. We have a radio-energy hook up."
"Are you having any personnel problems, Colonel?"
"Only Major LeMay," Corensky said flatly. "She's had almost two weeks to get the sub-light engines operational. She doesn't seem to be able to handle it. I've been planning on taking over the job myself, but haven't got around to it yet."
"I'll check into the problem myself," Traynor cut him off. "Submit anything else in writing. And that will be all, ladies and gentlemen." They rose and filed out, leaving Traynor and De Gaulle alone.
"That was interesting," De Gaulle broke the silence. "From some of the looks you were getting, Alex, I'd say you were not welcome."
"Unfortunately, Marc, I think you're right," Traynor answered thoughtfully.
Replacing the disruptors of a Fleet heavy cruiser can be one of the most difficult and demanding jobs of a weapons officer. Heavy cruisers sport the largest, most powerful, and most sophisticated disruptor systems known to the Fleet.
Replacing the disruptors of the Polaris required three steps. Step one, receiving the equipment. Not always the easiest step, as Dron Svenson was finding out. Two security details of eight men each, along with Mark Carter, were transported in two of the larger landing craft to Orbital Station Fifteen. Each crew was assigned to load one large disruptor housing, boxed and ready for shipment, into its respective craft. Smaller boxes containing guidance controls, fire controls, power-amplification generators, and other vital parts, were loaded also.
The two crews Carter had selected had been chosen with care. As expected, the weapons system weighed in the general area of eleven hundred-fifty kilos. Eight normal men, even eight men possessed of greater than normal strength, would have found great difficulty in handling much more than seven hundred-fifty kilos. Yet the men chosen were able to handle the huge weight with ease, for Commander Carter had chosen sixteen of the twenty Vendrans available to him from the security department.
Vendrans are natives of the planet Vendra, the second planet in the Barnard system to be discovered by Earth explorers. Discovered in 2084, it was settled in 2090. Independence was granted in 2115. The Vendran members of Polaris's crew were representative of the sixth generation or native-born Vendrans.
Vendra's planetary size marked it as the largest planet in the three settled solar systems of the USR. Slightly larger than both Jupiter and Alpha Barnard, it was the only member of the big three to possess an atmosphere capable of supporting life. The planet supported six billion people, spread on six of ten major continents. The planetary government actively supported the idea of large family units. Some families included fifteen to twenty children in one household.
The major feature of Vendra that made the inhabitants different from other humans in the USR was the gravitational field of .the huge planet. Vendran gravity, at 2.65 Earth gravity, represented the strongest gravitational field of the member planets, though two members of the Sirius system, colony planets, had stronger gravities. Normal humans have great difficulty functioning in Vendra's gravity. The first colonists on Vendra had the same problem of adaptation to the strong gravity: the incessant pulling on the body, the ever-present danger of falling at over two and a half times normal speed. Many of the first colonists died of small accidents.
The colonists were determined to survive, though, and survive they did. Beginning with the first generation of native-born Vendrans, remarkable physical changes began to take place. Their bodies became shorter and broader, with large, broad shoulders. Their hearts increased in size to pump blood through their bodies. Bones became thicker and less easy to break. Cartilage strengthened until it had the toughness of normal bones.
The Vendrans of Polaris's security section, taken as a group, were average Vendrans, standing between one hundred forty-five and one hundred-sixty centimeters. What made them the important members of the crew they were, were their unique abilities when functioning in one Earth gravity. Accustomed to a much stronger pull on their bodies, the Vendrans were able to move with speed and quickness nearly blinding to the eyes of the others aboard Polaris. Their muscles, used to countering the immense gravity of Vendra, allowed the Vendrans to be virtually supermen in Earth's gravity.
For that particular reason, Mark Carter had selected the Vendrans as the crews he used to bring aboard the disruptor systems. Eight average Vendrans could move the crates with very little difficulty. Eight Vendrans of the caliber aboard Polaris were capable of moving over two thousand kilos with relative ease. Because of the bulkiness of the disruptors, the eight man crews were necessary to successfully load the huge casings into the transports.
Step two involved transporting the equipment from the hanger deck of the Polaris to the weapons section. While it was possible for the security men escorting the disruptors from the station to carry the huge engines of destruction to the weapons section, Dron Svenson was prepared with an easier way to transport the equipment. He waited on the hangar deck with a Z-grav generator.
Z-grav, discovered in 2120 by Clayton Foster of Triton, proved to be the major breakthrough in the neutralization of gravity. Z-grav generators formed field platforms onto which the object of concern was placed. The weight of the object was effectively negated. Z-grav, however, only neutralized the weight, not the mass, of an object. Whereas it required eight Vendrans to move an eleven-hundred-fifty-kilo object effectively, it still required three Vendrans to provide the locomotion and guidance when using Z-grav fields.
The Vendrans lowered the huge casings to the waiting Z-grav fields. At one end of the casings, Dron Svenson activated a force guidance clamp. One man, holding the activator and walking ahead, could guide the cargo field successfully. Two men were required to provide locomotion by pushing the casing and Z-grav platform.
The remaining members of the security detail loaded the smaller units onto other Z-grav platforms. These platforms were moved along to join the larger units.
Under Mark Carter, and Dron Svenson's skillful guidance, the small convoy was successful in negotiating the corridors and passages to the aft-end of deck "G" where, using the cargo lift, one by one the platforms were raised to "A" deck. Svenson held the convoy in the corridor outside the lift until all the units were on the same level. He rechecked his clearance through the captain, then slowly began to guide the men and equipment through interconnecting passages toward the weapons section, some two hundred meters forward.
Navigating the passages of "A" deck required a great deal of ingenuity. More than once, the huge casings wedged themselves immobile when making a turn of more than seventy-five degrees. The men moving the equipment were forced to deactivate the Z-grav field and bodily dislodge the piece, placing it into the passage before reactivating the Z-grav field.
Finally, after a great deal of sweat and struggle along with three minor muscle strains, the equipment was successfully tucked into the weapons section.
The weapons section of the Polaris consisted of three large rooms on "A" deck and two smaller rooms on "B" deck, plus interconnecting stairwells within weapons area. One of the large rooms was devoted to the actual mechanisms of the laser banks. The six huge units occupied three quarters of the room, leaving barely enough space for specialists to keep up-to-date checks on the equipment. The second room on the upper level was the home of the disruptor beams, and, since Fleet specialists had arrived aboard Polaris, also where one of the newest Fleet weapons, the High Energy Heat Ray, could be found. It was this second room that Svenson directed the Vendrans to bring the casings. The -miscellaneous equipment that had also arrived was divided between the main weapons control room and the power relay controls in the rooms on "B" deck.
Once the equipment had been delivered, step three, actual installation of the equipment, took place.
Traynor moved confidently down the corridor. Two standard days had passed since his first conference with Polaris's department heads. The new captain's confidence was slowly growing as he made his presence felt on the ship. Operations were beginning to run smoothly. All areas of the ship were progressing by leaps and bounds, save one; repair on the sub-light engines. Traynor was on his way to engineering to find out firsthand what the problem was.
Towering over the personnel ahead of him, a blond giant who, Traynor reasoned, could only be a Ganymedan Swede, moved gracefully toward the captain. He wore the insignia of a security specialist and the rank of lieutenant. The giant rose a good head taller than anyone in the corridor, perhaps two hundred-twenty centimeters. Traynor motioned the man over.
"Where you headed, Lieutenant?" Traynor asked.
"Reporting to Commander Carter, sir," the Ganymedan replied.
"You're on me now," Traynor said. "We're headed for engineering. I'll call Carter from there and tell him you're with me."
"Aye, sir," the giant answered, falling into step with the captain. "My name is Nater, sir, Harold Nater. Everyone calls me Hal."
"Well, Hal, tell me what you know about engineering?"
They reached an elevator and Traynor punched the proper sequence of numbers into the console. Nater was silent for a moment.
"Do you want the official report, or the truth?" he asked at last.
"Both."
"Well, I'm sure you know the official report. Colonel Corensky, the supposed force that gets everything done in engineering. He's on top of everything, in command, and when something goes wrong in engineering, he's the man to see," Nater said.
"Isn't that the way it should be?" Traynor interrupted rhetorically.
"Of course, sir," Nater agreed. "But on Polaris, that's a lot of bull."
"What makes it different on Polaris?"
"Sir, your being an Earther makes that a difficult question to answer," Nater said evasively.
"Whether I come from Earth, or Vendra, or Titan or Hell itself doesn't matter! What matters is this ship! Something is tearing it apart internally, Lieutenant, and I want to know what it is!"
"Well, sir," Nater told the captain, "Colonel Corensky is not everything the official report makes him out to be. He doesn't have the push to make everything go, and he's not on top of everything, like the report says. If there's a problem in engineering, and you want to get it solved, the person to see is Major LeMay. She knows more about neutronium-drive engines than almost anyone in the fleet."
"Then what's she doing working on the sub-light engines?"
"That's what I'm coming to sir," Nater replied. "Colonel Corensky is intimidated by her obviously superior knowledge and engineering capability. To cover his inferiority, he pushes the menial tasks off on Major LeMay. Also, he assigns her assistants, which allows him to pick the most disruptive crewmen for her. Of course, they do their very best to give her as many problems as possible.
"Finally, there's Colonel Corensky. Major LeMay feels the brunt of his anger, but everyone in engineering, especially the outworlders, have fallen victim to his temper. He constantly shouts, rants, and raises holy cain over the least little problem. Last week he came down on Major LeMay and Shawn O'Leery, one of the engineers, because a barrel was on the lower deck of the engine room and was supposed to be on the upper deck. They tried to explain that both O'Leery and LeMay had rushed to the aid of a youngster, on his first cruise, who stuck a probe where it shouldn't have been and was sent flying across the room. That only sent Colonel Corensky' into more of a rage.
"It didn't help Major LeMay when the Colonel came down on her that hard. He spouted off regulation after regulation, O'Leery told me, and she just went deeper and deeper into her shell. She's an introvert, anyway, and now she barely talks to anyone unless it's unavoidable."
The elevator door opened and they stepped out into a busy corridor. Across the passageway was the entrance to the engine room.
"You seem to be in the know on Polaris," Traynor said thoughtfully, as they crossed to the engineering doors.
"When you stand out like I do, sir, you get noticed," Nater replied. "And when you get noticed, you become informed."
The doors to engineering opened on a scene that made Traynor, as captain of the Polaris, shudder.
A pretty blonde woman, wearing black work coveralls and on the verge of tears, was shouting orders to two men leaning against a huge barrel, laughing. Four others, on the upper level of the engine room, looked on concernedly.
"And I'm not going to order you again! Move that barrel or I'll... I'll... " and then the tears came.
"Major Erica LeMay," Nater whispered to Traynor. The girl pushed past the two newcomers, not even realizing who they were. A young lieutenant on the upper deck, watching the major leave, caught sight of the braids on Traynor's sleeve.
"'Ten-hut!" she cried out. All within the two-level engine room, save Traynor and Nater, came to attention. Traynor motioned the young lieutenant, a pretty little Ioan with the telltale red-hair characteristic of the natives of that world, to him.
"Find Major LeMay. Tell her I want her to report to sickbay. Directly to Major De Gaulle. She's to get something to calm herself down and rest. Also, tell her I want a complete written report of this incident. There's no rush, but as soon as she feels up to it. Go!" Traynor then spoke to Nater.
"Send one of the others to sickbay. You pick the proper one, if you get my drift. He's to report directly to Major De Gaulle. Tell De Gaulle what happened and that LeMay is coming. If she isn't there soon, De Gaulle should find her."
Traynor turned to the offenders, a commander and a lieutenant, both at attention. The commander started to speak.
