Down to Earth Read Free

got discovered instead of the other way round, and they’re still in business.”
    “Yes, sir, that’s right, they are, damn them. But you know how come they’re still in business?” Without giving Stone a chance to answer, Johnson continued, “They’re still in business because they wised up in a hurry. They learned everything they could from us and England and Germany and France, and inside of nothing flat they had their own factories going and they were making their own steamships and then they could damn well sail wherever they pleased. They started playing the same game everybody else was.”
    “Yeah, and then the slant-eyed sons of bitches chose to sail for Pearl Harbor and give us one right in the nuts,” Stone growled. Like most purely human conflicts, the one between the USA and Japan had gone by the boards when the Lizards attacked. It was gone, but not forgotten.
    “Oh, hell, yes, sir,” Johnson said. “But that’s the point: they were able to sail across the Pacific and kick us when we weren’t looking. If we’re able to do that to the Lizards one of these days, we won’t be so bad off. Even if we don’t do it, we won’t be so bad off, because we can.”
    “I see what you’re saying,” Stone told him. The chief pilot waved around the
Lewis and Clark’s
control room. “This isn’t a bad first step, is it?”
    “It’s a lot better than what we would have had if the Lizards hadn’t come, I’ll tell you that,” Johnson answered. “I wonder if we would even have been in space by now.” He shrugged. “No way to tell, I guess.” He didn’t say so aloud, but he thought of the
Lewis and Clark
as the equivalent of the first Japanese-built coastal steamer, which had surely been a clumsy, makeshift vessel that barely dared sail out of sight of land. It was very fine in its way, but what he wanted were battleships and aircraft carriers out on the open sea.
    Stone coughed. “You’re not supposed to be here to start a bull session, you know. You’re supposed to be here to learn how to fly this thing in case Mickey and I both wake up dead one morning.”
    “Sir, the only controls that are a whole lot different from ones I’ve used before are the ones for the reactor—and if I have to mess with those, we’re all in a lot of trouble,” Johnson said. The motor sat at the end of a long boom to minimize the risk for the rest of the
Lewis and Clark
if anything went wrong with it.
    “One of the reasons you’re learning is that we’re all liable to be in a lot of trouble,” Stone pointed out. “Face it: you came aboard because you were curious about us, right?” Johnson could hardly argue with that; it was the Gospel truth. Stone waited to see if he’d say something anyhow, then nodded when he didn’t. “Uh-
huh.
Okay, you aren’t the only one. What if the Lizards send a present after us? What are we going to do about it?”
    “Or the Germans,” Johnson said.
    Stone shook his head now. “They can’t catch us, not any more. This may not sound like a hot ship—.01g? Wow!” He had a gift for the sardonic. “We tack on a whole four inches to our velocity every second. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? It adds up, though. At the end of a day, we’re going five miles a second faster than we were when that day started. Regular rockets kick a lot harder to start with, but once they’re done kicking, it’s free fall the rest of the way. The Nazis don’t have any constant-boost ships, though I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts they’re working on them now. The Lizards, damn them, do.”
    “All right,” Glen Johnson said agreeably. “Suppose they come after us at, say, .1g? That’s ten times our acceleration. We can run, we can’t hide, and we can’t even dodge—the
Lewis and Clark
is about as maneuverable as an elephant on roller skates. So what do we do then? Besides go down in flames, I mean?”
    “If we have to, we fight,” Stone answered. “That’s what I was coming