In front of him behind the instrument panel, he could hear the insect-like buzzing as his course computer was fed information from his Base Satellite. With both the outer D-Post and the Satellite tracking the enemy, fairly precise positioning was possible. Unfortunately, because of the enormous distances involved, not precise enough to pinpoint the Stingers themselves. You had to be closer to do that, and the way to get closer was in a Hornet.
For a few minutes now, Cressey had only to watch his own scope for the first pip, and consider his insane position. It was his third mission. Of nearly a thousand Hornetmen, forty-three had more than one mission. If he got out of this one, he had two more before compulsory retirement. He was not sure he could go two more missions, even if he survived physically.
Five missions, then retirement. It had looked good to him, a year ago. When he left college for Primary Interceptors, it had seemed the very best kind of an idea. Five missions as a Hornetman, then home. Home as a hero, as a king. At twenty-one he would never have to worry about anything again. The pension Mackley had mentioned was so high as to be inconceivable. And that was just from the government. Being a hero had other, less official compensations. A shack in Beverly Hills, worth a hundred thousand or so? Hell, they'd force it on him, just for being a hero. A woman? What woman could resist a five-mission Hornetman? Every daydream he'd ever had, and a hundred he'd not thought of, free for nothing. Or free for running five intercepts.
It had looked good to him until his first mission. Then it had suddenly lost its charm. He had learned why, so far, there were no five-mission Hornetmen.
Abruptly he heard the "ping" telling him his radar was tracking. The Satellite had guided him true enough. He was within the limited range of his own radar.
"Radar contact made," he said into the lip mike. "503 going on manual control. Out." He clicked the Com switch and settled down to fixing on his target.
From the size of the blip on the screen, he could see the Outspace ship was huge, as all of them were. Funny, there had not even been enough contact to know how many different sorts of ship the Alien had. They were not battleships, nor cruisers, nor anything else specific. They were simply Outspace, and he had to seek them out and destroy them.
A single ship, as usual. He wondered why they had never sent more than one ship at a time. Perhaps their thinking was so completely foreign it had never occurred to them. No one knew anything about how they thought, except that they retaliated when attacked.
Cressey wondered how the conflict looked through Outspacer eyes. Perhaps they were completely bewildered by attack. Perhaps those god-awful disruptor beams were meant for some other, more peaceful purpose, and were being pressed into use as an emergency weapon by frightened beings. It was even possible the aliens did not know they were under attack by sentient creatures, and wrote off the loss of their ships to natural calamity of some unknown nature.
There were a thousand maybes. It was useless to speculate in the total absence of data. You couldn't be sure of anything, so you couldn't take any chances. You had to act as though they were hostile just to be on the safe side. The malignant neurosis of humanity, making it behave as though all things unknown were dangerous. Or perhaps just realistic thinking. You couldn't know, unless you knew all about the universe. Perhaps the idea of conscious animosity was incomprehensible to the Outspacers, but there was no way to tell. He reached between his legs to the cockpit floor and threw the switches there, arming the Stinger warheads.
On his first mission he had actually gotten within visual range of the Outspace ship, launching the Stingers at not more than three miles range. The ship had been bulky, almost grotesque by his own standards, covered with lumps and bulges of indeterminate purpose. There had been no lights visible, no ports. Perhaps the Aliens did not see in our spectrum, or perhaps they had radiation screens across the ports, there was no way to tell.
Cressey smiled ruefully. This miserable war was turning him into a philosopher.
On his second mission he had not seen his target. He had launched at six miles, out of fear, trusting to the followers in the Stingers' noses to track. He did not know what the result had been either time. He had turned and run for home at full acceleration, and he fully intended to do the same on this mission. There was such a thing as pushing your luck too far, and he needed all he had.
The pip on his screen drifted to the left, and he gave a short burst to center it. He begrudged having to use his infinitesimal fuel on tracking when he needed it so desperately to go home. He looked through the canopy, but saw nothing, and returned his eyes to the screen. The telltale pip had drifted slightly to the right. He had overcorrected. Cursing, he fired another burst, shorter this time, with the left bank, and watched the pip center. That was good enough.
His ranging said only twelve miles, his speed two mps, relative to target. One second, two seconds, three—there it was, occulting a tiny area of star patched sky.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a bright flare as some other Hornet disappeared in the wave of energy released by its molecular disruption. Then another, in another quadrant. The Alien was fighting back. He jabbed violently at the Stinger release, and saw the two pencils roar fiercely out ahead of him on their own power. He cut his flimsy launching rack into as tight a turn as it would take. The familiar red haze clouded his vision, and just before blacking out he fired another last long burst on the rockets to head him toward home.