Forced Move — Text and Context

Snow had fallen in the morning but now the sky was clear and Ruy, with a glance at the frosty stars and a sharp twist of his foot as he ground out a cigarette, stepped out quickly. It was axiomatic. What had to be done, had to be done. A forged pass, with 48 hours of alleged validity gleaming brightly in red letters under the plastic overlaminate was better than no pass. And an outdated pass would wipe away a week's work in the underground.

The sharp, massive gray outline of the Pentagon loomed before him, dark and foreboding against the sky. The brightly lighted entrance through which he must gain admittance resembled the glowing peep-hole into the inferno of an atomic drive.

Ruy's stomach hardened, then exploded in a surge of bitter, stringent gastric juices as the MP glanced at his pass, scrutinized his face, and then turned his attention toward others coming through the entrance.

Ruy wanted to run and hide. His dark blue uniform seemed to shrink tighter and tighter. The misfit must be apparent from the back. The silvery commander's insignia on his jacket weighed heavily at his chest and at his heart. He wished desperately for one fleeting, but excruciating, moment that he were back on his ship, in his own uniform, at the control panel of his computer.

He started off to the right in a seeming trance. The first step had been taken. His many hours of thought, study and planning would carry him from here.

This was the only way. He had repeated the fact over and over. It was an ugly business, but had to be done. Five years of war was enough. Man was on his knees before the invaders from outer space; but they in turn had been too long from home and were near the breaking point. A continued drain would mean defeat for both sides. Ruy could turn the tide, but very probably his life would be the minimum sacrifice.

He had decided his fate long before he left the decks of his ship. Only the belligerent pride of statesmen, and the steadfast belief in the infallability of their computers, kept the two great battle fleets drawn in null position against each other. The computers, perhaps, deserved such ultimate confidence--in theory. They always predicted optimum maneuver envelopes, always predicted mobilization rates to develop force fields designed to offset those of the enemy. And they always kept battle losses to a minimum--merely dribbling away the resources of the solar system. Yet in five years of such optimum maneuvering, not a single battle had been won.

Two doors gave way before Ruy's pocket vibrator, the lock tumblers slipping and turning freely in a mad frenzy to escape the resonating hum. A short, windowless corridor lay before him, broken only by a massive door at the other end. Beyond that door lay Ruy's objective.

The guard never had time to do more than note Ruy's presence in this sanctum sanctorum. The needle thin spray of a paralyzing drug made his body feel stiff, unmanageable, and peculiarly buoyant, as though he were being hurled through space. His thoughts became blurred and then after a blinding flash, complete oblivion set in.

The two officers seated at the control panels of the master computer experienced similar depression of their cardiovascular systems and medullae.

Small thermite igniters pressed against the door lock and hinges fused the steel door to its frame.

With the smell of scorched paint still stinging his nostrils, Ruy seated himself at the control panel, dabbed his left wrist with stringent antiseptic, gripped his hand into a fist, and plunged the silver probes deep into the nerves of his wrist.

Glancing through the observation window into the battle plotting room below, he studied the positions of the fleets as they appeared on the large wall diagram of the solar system.

Disregarding the distraction offered by the moving figures of the few officers and technicians on duty by the map, he fixed the positions of the fleets into his mind. He would have need for a clear visual picture until he adapted to the mental images the computer would feed into his brain. He worked with furious haste, yet each step was meticulously precise--everything depended on his grasping the reins of battle from the computer and successfully twisting its authority to his own purposes.