Space Eater Read Free

one saying ADMIN. CAPT. SINCLAIR. A couple of chairs in gray plastic, a rubbery gray floor, making five shades of gray altogether—six if you counted the way my face felt. These twitchy civilians: twitchiness is catching. I wasn’t death-happy yet. I sat counting the grays, waiting, drifting off into thoughts about last week’s combat trial against the laser bunker...
    Then there was that tiny click-scrape of the slack being taken up in a loose door handle. Reflex took over. As ADMIN. CAPT. SINCLAIR’s door handle started to turn, I snapped upright, twisting to expose minimum side profile to the opening crack of the door, left hand braced against the wall, right slapping my belt as it scrabbled for the shock gun—Ah. Special Force Regulations 3/45b: Weapons may not be carried with dress uniform, “weapons” comprising all classes of offensive implement listed in Appendix H . I caught myself then, and dropped out of the reflex sequence. Civilians!
    Forcemen do not open doors at you, suddenly, like that. By the time the tall gray door had swung all the way open, I was standing and looking what I hoped was relaxed. A balding secretary peered at me, sniffed, and said, “Captain Sinclair would like to see you now.”
    “Thanks.” I followed him through another gray room thick with filing cabinets; it was only six or seven paces and in that time he glanced at me over his shoulder twice. Twitchy, twitchy. Another door...
    “Forceman Jacklin,” he said into the room beyond, and I went in.
    This was an even more cluttered office; I could guess what some of the clutter was hiding. Admin does not trust Combat even a little bit. Captain Sinclair was sitting hard up against the far wall, behind a massive desk that looked like something left over from the Siegfried Line and was probably a sight tougher. She herself was round-faced, blue-eyed, hair gray like vanadium steel. We’d met before.
    “Forceman Jacklin,” she told me, tossing me a smile as if it were a banana. Admin also thinks, or pretends to think, that Combat men are plain stupid.
    “Yes, Captain.”
    “Please do sit down.”
    “Yes, Captain.” There was one hard gray chair standing before the desk; I tried to shift it casually to one side and found it locked in place. Score one for Admin. I sat down, automatically scanning walls, floor, ceiling (nothing immediately over or under the chair, or nothing visible). Sinclair nibbled gently at her bottom lip.
    “You’re applying for promotion to combat lieutenant.” Fine, great, first she tells me my name and then comes up with the big punch line about why I’m here. I nodded, half my mind still wondering what bothered me about the portable electric fan sitting on a filing cabinet to the left.
    “The reason for your application?”
    I knew that one all right. “Advancement of Force career.” That fan...
    A shuffle of papers. “This is very interesting. Yes. You would certainly seem to be well qualified in course work, training ground practicals, yes: with one exception, the Anomalous Physics I course.”
    The fan was trained right on my chair, not on Sinclair’s desk, and there was a black spot on the central boss between the blades. Probably a dart gun. Anomalous Physics I—ah yes, that was the MT course.
    “That’s all right,” I said too quickly. I’d been in the tank after theCopenhagen raid all that week, but my good old drinking buddy Skeld had sneaked out the course texts and read them to me. Interesting stuff ...
    wait a minute, that material was restricted. Get Skeld into trouble if know about it.
    “According to my records, Jacklin, you were hospitalized during AP-I last year. Have you ever been exposed to this material?” She began to fiddle with some electronic components on the massive desk.
    “I can read up on MT in two days if you’ll give me temporary CONF clearance, Captain.”
    “Then you aren’t familiar with matter transmission equipment, jammers, nullbombs, or any of the