Chapter 2: Rake That Radiation!

The deputy commander and the safety officer got untangled and hurried to their post, with no more than black looks at Rip. He got to his feet, his face crimson with embarrassment. A fine entrance for a Planeteer officer, especially one on his first orders!

Around him the spacemen were settling in their acceleration seats or snapping belts to safety hooks. From the direction of the stern came a rising roar as methane, heated to a liquid, dropped into the blast tubes, flaming into pure carbon and hydrogen under the terrible heat of the atomic drive.

Rip had to lean against the acceleration. Fighting for balance, he picked up his spack and made his way to the nine enlisted Planeteers. They had braced against the ship’s drive by sitting with backs against bulkheads or by lying flat on the magnesium deck. Sergeant Major Koa was seated against a vertical brace, his brown face wreathed in a grin.

Rip looked him over carefully. There was a saying among the Planeteers that an officer was only as good as his senior sergeant. Koa’s looks were reassuring. His face was good-humored, but he had a solid jaw and a mouth that could get tough when necessary. Rip wondered a little at his size. Big men usually didn’t go to space; they were too subject to space sickness. Koa must be a special case.

Rip slid to the floor next to the sergeant major and stuck out his hand. He sensed the strength in Koa’s big fist as it closed over his.

Koa said, “Sir, that was the best fleedle I’ve ever seen an earthling make. You been on Venus?”

Rip eyed him suspiciously, wondering if the big Planeteer was laughing at him. Koa was grinning, but it was a friendly grin. “What is a fleedle?” Rip demanded. “I’ve never been on Venus.”

“It’s the way the water hole people fight,” Koa explained. “They’re like a bunch of rubber balls when they get to fighting. They ram each other with their heads.”

Rip searched his memory for data on Venus. He couldn’t recall any mention of fleedling. Venusians, if his memory was right, had a sort of blowgun as a main weapon. He told Koa so.

The sergeant major nodded. “That’s when they mean business, Lieutenant. Fleedling is more like us fighting with our fists. Sort of a sport. Great Cosmos! The way they dive at each other is something to see.”

Rip grinned. “I didn’t know I was going to fleedle those officers. It isn’t the way I usually enter a cruiser.” He hadn’t entered many. He added, “I suppose I ought to report to someone.”

Koa shook his head. “No use, sir. You can’t walk around very well until the ship reaches Brennschluss. Besides, you won’t find any space officers who’ll talk to you.”

Rip stared. “Why not?”

“Because we’re Planeteers. They’ll give us the treatment. They always do. When the commander of this bucket gets good and ready, he’ll send for you. Until then, we might as well take it easy.” He pulled a bar of Venusian chru from his pocket. “Have some. It’ll make breathing easier.”

The terrific acceleration made breathing a little uncomfortable, but it was not too bad. The chief effect was to make Rip feel as though a ton of invisible feathers were crushing him against the vertical brace. He accepted a bite of the bittersweet vegetable candy and munched thoughtfully. Koa seemed to take it for granted that the spacemen would give them a rough time.

He asked, “Aren’t there any spacemen who get along with the Special Order Squadrons?”

“Never met one.” Koa chewed chru. “And I was on the Icarus when the whole thing started.”

Rip looked at him in surprise. Koa didn’t seem that old. The bad feeling between spacemen and the Special Order Squadrons had started about eighteen years ago, when the cruiser Icarus had taken the first Planeteers to Mercury.

He reviewed the history of the expedition. The spacemen’s job had been to land the newly created Special Order Squadron on the hot planet. The job of the squadron was to explore it. Somehow confusion developed, and the spacemen, including the officers, later reported that the squadron had instructed them to land on the sun side of Mercury, which would have destroyed the spaceship and its crew, or so they believed at the time.

The commanding officer of the squadron denied issuing such an order. He said his instructions were to land as close as possible to the sun side, but not on it. Whatever the truth--and Rip believed the SOS version, of course--the crew of the Icarus mutinied, or tried to. They made the landing on Mercury with squadron guns pointed at their heads. Of course, they found that a sun-side landing wouldn’t have hurt the ship. The whole affair was pretty well hushed up, but it produced bad feeling between the Special Order Squadrons and the spacemen. “Trigger-happy space bums,” the spacemen called them, and much worse, besides.

The men of the Special Order Squadrons, searching for a handy nickname, had called themselves Planeteers, because most of their work was on the planets. As Maj. Joe Barris had told the officers of Rip’s class, “You might say the spacemen own space, but we Planeteers own everything solid that’s found in it.”

The Planeteers were the specialists--in science, exploration, colonization, and fighting. The spacemen carried them back and forth, kept them supplied, and handled their message traffic. The Planeteers did the hard work and the important work--or so they believed.

To become a Planeteer, a recruit had to pass rigid intelligence, physical, aptitude, and psychological tests. Fewer than fifteen out of each one hundred who applied were chosen. Then there were two years of hard training on the space platform and the moon before a recruit was finally accepted as a Planeteer private. Out of each fifteen who started training, an average of five fell by the wayside.

For Planeteer officers, the requirements were even tougher. Only one out of each five hundred applicants finally received a commission. Six years of training made them proficient in the techniques of exploration, fighting, rocketeering, and both navigation and astrogation. In addition, each became a full-fledged specialist in one field of science. Rip’s specialty was astrophysics.

Sergeant Major Koa continued, “That business on the Icarus started the war, but both sides have been feeding it ever since. I have to admit that we Planeteers lord it over the spacemen like we were old man Cosmos himself. So they get back at us with dirty little tricks while we’re on their ships. We command on the planets, but they command in space. And they sure get a great big nuclear charge out of commanding us to do the dirty work!”

“We’ll take whatever they hand us,” Rip assured him, “and pretend we like it fine.” He gestured at the other Planeteers. “Tell me about the men, Koa.”

“They’re a fine bunch, sir. I handpicked them myself. The one with the white hair is Corporal Nels Pederson, from Sweden. I served with him at Marsport, and he’s a real tough spacewalker in a fight. The other corporal is Paulo Santos. He’s from the Philippines, and the best snapper-boat gunner you ever saw.”

He pointed out the six privates. Kemp and Dowst were Americans. Bradshaw was an Englishman, Trudeau a Frenchman, Dominico an Italian, and Nunez a Brazilian.

Rip liked their looks. They were as relaxed as acceleration would allow, but you got the impression that they would leap into action in a microsecond if the word were given. He couldn’t imagine what kind of assignment was waiting, but he was satisfied with his Planeteers. They looked capable of anything.

He made himself as comfortable as possible and encouraged Koa to talk about his service in the Special Order Squadrons. Koa had plenty to tell, and he talked interestingly. Rip learned that the tall Hawaiian had been to every planet in the system, had fought the Venusians on the central desert, and had mined nuclite with SOS One on Mercury. He also found that Koa was one of the seventeen pure-blooded Hawaiians left. During the three hours that acceleration kept them from moving around the ship, Rip got a new view of space and of service with the SOS--it was the view of a Planeteer who had spent years around the Solar System.

“I’m glad they assigned you to me,” Rip told Koa frankly. “This is my first job, and I’ll be pretty green, no matter what it is. I’ll depend on you for a lot of things.”

To his surprise, Koa thrust out his hand. “Shake, Lieutenant.” His grin showed strong white teeth. “You’re the first junior officer I ever met who admitted he didn’t know everything about everything. You can depend on me, sir. I won’t steer you into any meteor swarms.”