ROUTINE for a HORNET
BY DON BERRY
Hurtling through space to meet the enemy
in equipment too delicate to step on, without
enough fuel to get back, and knowing you're
completely expendable is just——
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Alarm bells filled the wardroom, screaming off the metal walls andfilling the room with their flat, metallic clang. Cressey leaped up,spilling the table with its checkerboard to the floor.
Running to the suitlocker, he wondered if the bells had to be loudenough to jar a man's mind. The other on-duty men in the wardroom wererunning with him, and the corridor outside reverberated to the soundof pounding feet on metal. As his hand automatically manipulated thezippers on his G-suit, he noticed that his heart was beating furiously.At this point, Cressey had never been able to tell whether he wasfrightened or not. As far as he could know from what his belly toldhim, there was no physical difference between plain old chicken fearand the body's normal preparation for action.
The men pounded 'up' the metal stairs to the Hornet's Nest on thesatellite's rim. The Hornet's Nest. Cressey thought suddenly howirrational it was. When a nickname stuck, it carried its aura toeverything around it. He didn't know what live-wire journalist hadfirst used the name Hornets for the Primary Interceptor Command, butnow, inevitably, the launching racks were Hornet's Nests and the sleekmissiles Stingers.
He suddenly felt slightly nauseated. He hated this light-headed,slightly sick feeling, listening to the roaring of blood in his headand the thundering of his heart. The medics had told him these physicalsymptoms were just nature's way of preparing the body for suddenactivity. Cressey didn't know. It felt like fear to him, and he wasafraid now.
His ship this run was PIC-503, and when he reached it the Stingerswere just coming up the loading elevators. Long, slim, twenty-footpencils of death, glistening in the harsh glare of the overheads. Theyhad their own sort of lethal beauty, those Stingers, and a power aboutthem, as if they were quiescently submitting to these puny men for now,for their own mechanical reasons.
Each Hornet carried two Stingers, slung beneath the stubby delta-wings.The Stingers were twice the length of the Hornet itself, projectingfore and aft of the ship for five feet in either direction. The Hornetlooked ungainly, riding atop those slim needles, like some grotesqueparasite hitching a ride on two silver arrows.
They're—quite small. Who had said that? Mackley. Captain Mackley,the glib Information Officer who'd told Cressey everything he wasallowed to know about Hornets before he saw one.
I'll be frank with you, Mr. Cressey. Strategic Command has Hornetslisted not as aircraft, but as portable launching racks. Their job isto take Stingers to the Outspace ships. There's a man in them becausewe can't build a computer as efficient as man at such light weight. Andwe couldn't afford to if we had the necessary knowledge.
Cressey remembered his shock at being told he was a light-weightcomputer, and some of the bitterness. He watched the loading crew lockthe Stingers into position beneath the Hornet's wings and throw thehooked boarding ladder over the edge of the cockpit. Cressey mountedpast the red-painted NO STEP signs on the wings and settled