The Misplaced Battleship Read online

mainpurpose. Which was waiting for bad news. There was no place I could gothat would be better situated for the chase than Cittanuvo. The missingship could have gone in any direction. With each passing minute thesphere of probable locations grew larger by the power of the squaredcube. I kept the on-watch crew of the cruiser at duty stations andconfined the rest within a one hundred yard radius of the ship.

  There was little more information on Pepe and Angelina, they hadcovered their tracks well. Their origin was unknown, though the factthey both talked with a slight accent suggested an off-world origin.There was one dim picture of Pepe, chubby but looking too grim to be ahappy fat boy. There was no picture of the girl. I shuffled the meagerfindings, controlled my impatience, and kept the ship's psiman busypulling in all the reports of any kind of trouble in space. Thenavigator and I plotted their locations in his tank, comparing thepositions in relation to the growing sphere that enclosed all thepossible locations of the stolen ship. Some of the disasters andapparent accidents hit inside this area, but further investigationproved them all to have natural causes.

  I had left standing orders that all reports falling inside the dangerarea were to be brought to me at any time. The messenger woke me from adeep sleep, turning on the light and handing me the slip of paper. Iblinked myself awake, read the first two lines, and pressed the _actionstation_ alarm over my bunk. I'll say this, the Navy boys know theirbusiness. When the sirens screamed, the crew secured ship and blastedoff before I had finished reading the report. As soon as my eyeballsunsquashed back into focus I read it through, then once more, carefully,from the beginning.

  It looked like the one we had been waiting for. There were no witnessesto the tragedy, but a number of monitor stations had picked up thedischarge static of a large energy weapon being fired. Triangulation hadlead investigators to the spot where they found a freighter, _Ogget'sDream_, with a hole punched through it as big as a railroad tunnel. Thefreighter's cargo of plutonium was gone.

  I read _Pepe_ in every line of the message. Since he was flying anundermanned battleship, he had used it in the most efficient waypossible. If he attempted to negotiate or threaten another ship, theelement of chance would be introduced. So he had simply roared up to theunsuspecting freighter and blasted her with the monster guns hisbattleship packed. All eighteen men aboard had been killed instantly.The thieves were now murderers.

  I was under pressure now to act. And under a greater pressure not tomake any mistakes. Roly-poly Pepe had shown himself to be a ruthlesskiller. He knew what he wanted--then reached out and took it. Destroyinganyone who stood in his way. More people would die before this was over,it was up to me to keep that number as small as possible.

  * * * * *

  Ideally I should have rushed out the fleet with guns blazing and draggedhim to justice. Very nice, and I wished it could be done that way.Except where was he? A battleship may be gigantic on some terms ofreference, but in the immensity of the galaxy it is microscopicallyinfinitesimal. As long as it stayed out of the regular lanes ofcommerce, and clear of detector stations and planets, it would never befound.

  Then how _could_ I find it--and having found it, catch it? When theinfernal thing was more than a match for any ship it might meet. Thatwas my problem. It had kept me awake nights and talking to myself days,since there was no easy answer.

  I had to construct a solution, slowly and carefully. Since I couldn't besure where Pepe was going to be next, I had to make him go where Iwanted him to.

  There were some things in my favor. The most important was the fact Ihad forced him to make his play before he was absolutely ready. Itwasn't chance that he had left the same day I arrived on Cittanuvo. Anyplan as elaborate as his certainly included warning of approachingdanger. The drive on the battleship, as well as controls and primaryarmament had been installed weeks before I showed up. Much of thesubsidiary work remained to be done when the ship had left. One witnessof the theft had graphically described the power lines and cablesdangling from the ship's locks when she lifted.

  My arrival had forced Pepe off balance. Now I had to keep pushing untilhe fell. This meant I had to think as he did, fall into his plan, thinkahead--then trap him. Set a thief to catch a thief. A great theory, onlyI felt uncomfortably on the spot when I tried to put it into practice.

  A drink helped, as did a cigar. Puffing on it, staring at the smoothbulkhead, relaxed me a bit. After all--there aren't that many thingsyou can do with a battleship. You can't run a big con, blow safes ormake burmedex with it. It is hell-on-jets for space piracy, but that'sabout all.

  "Great, great--but why a battleship?"

  I was talking to myself, normally a bad sign, but right now I didn'tcare. The mood of space piracy had seized me and I had been going alongfine. Until this glaring inconsistency jumped out and hit me square inthe eye.

  Why a battleship? Why all the trouble and years of work to get a shipthat two people could just barely manage? With a tenth of the effortPepe could have had a cruiser that would have suited his purposes justas well.

  Just as good for space piracy, that is--but not for _his_ purposes. Hehad wanted a battleship, and he had gotten himself a battleship. Whichmeant he had more in mind than simple piracy. What? It was obvious thatPepe was a monomaniac, an egomaniac, and as psychotic as a shortedcomputer. Some day the mystery of how he had slipped through the screenof official testing would have to be investigated. That wasn't myconcern now. He still had to be caught.

  * * * * *

  A plan was beginning to take shape in my head, but I didn't rush it.First I had to be sure that I knew him well. Any man that can con anentire world into building a battleship for him--then steal it fromthem--is not going to stop there. The ship would need a crew, a base forrefueling and a mission.

  Fuel had been taken care of first, the gutted hull of _Ogget's Dream_was silent witness to that. There were countless planets that could beused as a base. Getting a crew would be more difficult in these peacefultimes, although I could think of a few answers to that one, too. Raidthe mental hospitals and jails. Do that often enough and you would havea crew that would make any pirate chief proud. Though piracy was, ofcourse, too mean an ambition to ascribe to this boy. Did he want to rulea whole planet--or maybe an entire system? Or more? I shuddered a bit asthe thought hit me. Was there really anything that could stop a planlike this once it got rolling? During the Kingly Wars any number oftypes with a couple of ships and less brains than Pepe had set up justthis kind of empire. They were all pulled down in the end, since theirsuccess depended on one-man rule. But the price that had to be paidfirst!

  This was the plan and I felt in my bones that I was right. I might bewrong on some of the minor details, they weren't important. I knew thegeneral outline of the idea, just as when I bumped into a mark I knewhow much he could be taken for, and just how to do it. There are naturallaws in crime as in every other field of human endeavor. I _knew_ thiswas it.

  "Get the Communications Officer in here at once," I shouted at theintercom. "Also a couple of clerks with transcribers. And fast--this isa matter of life or death!" This last had a hollow ring, and I realizedmy enthusiasm had carried me out of character. I buttoned my collar,straightened my ribbons and squared my shoulders. By the time theyknocked on the door I was all admiral again.

  Acting on my orders the ship dropped out of warpdrive so our psimancould get through to the other operators. Captain Steng grumbled as wefloated there with the engines silent, wasting precious days, while halfhis crew was involved in getting out what appeared to be insaneinstructions. My plan was beyond his understanding. Which is, of course,why he is a captain and I'm an admiral, even a temporary one.

  Following my orders, the navigator again constructed a sphere ofspeculation in his tank. The surface of the sphere contacted all thestar systems a days flight ahead of the maximum flight of the stolenbattleship. There weren't too many of these at first and the psimancould handle them all, calling each in turn
and sending by news releasesto the Naval Public Relations officers there. As the sphere kept growinghe started to drop behind, steadily losing ground. By this time I had ageneral release prepared, along with directions for use and follow up,which he sent to Central 14. The battery of psimen there contacted theindividual planets and all we had to do was keep adding to the list ofplanets.

  The release and follow-ups all harped on one theme. I expanded on it,waxed enthusiastic, condemned it, and worked it into an interview. Iwrote as many variations as I could, so it could be slipped into as manydifferent formats as possible. In one form or another I wanted the basicinformation in every magazine, newspaper and journal inside thatexpanding sphere.

  "What in the devil does this nonsense _mean_?" Captain Steng askedpeevishly. He had long since given up the entire operation as a futileone, and spent most of the time in his cabin worrying about the affectof it on his