I told them I wasn’t hungry. But they said they wanted to see how well I really could act and would I please look ravenous and voracious and look as if I was eating it. Well, nothing was easier: I am a natural actor and today I was capable of anything. Then they got some shots of me chewing the bite as though delicious. Finally, Bis and they agreed I’d done beautifully and left.
One hundred girls were doing a parade dance along the bars, floating big banners along, and I got interested in watching them. They seemed a bit unreal but pretty.
The crowd was already pretty noisy and suddenly there was a surge of sound so I looked to see what had attracted their attention.
It was just a Palace City limousine. It glided to the landing target. And out stepped Captain Tars Roke, the King’s Own Astrographer. He was accompanied by several aides and they were all in dress uniform and made a splendid sparkle of color to the crowd. They came sedately over to the platform and up the steps. The Homeview crane swung way over and got close.
Roke came up and shook Heller’s hand and they chatted like old friends. And a Homeview interrogator was there. I caught some scraps of it.
“I’m sorry,” Roke was saying, “I can’t reveal where this mission is headed. I just came over to tell my friend Jet that I wished him well.”
“From the type of engines that this mission ship has, Captain, couldn’t we conclude that the mission is back to the old home galaxy? Perhaps to pick up and tow here some ancestral monument from the ruins of our racial planet?”
“I didn’t say that,” said Roke. “You did.”
“But, Captain, this is Tug One and we have it on reliable authority that it can’t be run within a galaxy without peril. Its sister ship blew up.”
At the moment I thought, well, I’ll just have to carry it there with my bare hands. I felt perfectly able to do so. Really capable of tremendous feats! Methedrine, I thought, what have I ever done without you? What glorious stuff! My mouth felt kind of dry but I didn’t want to get down into that crowd just to get some tup.
The Fleet male chorus was singing some Fleet song and the crowd took it up. I didn’t realize it was a prelude to something else. Then I noticed that everyone was looking up. So I looked up.
Maybe three miles above us, two hundred and fifty Fleet spacefighters were flying in formation. They do it in a very orderly fashion. I think the command ship has a computer which spits out coordinate orders to individual crews and they immediately take those positions. They wheeled and formed various figures, all very precise. And then suddenly they all strung out across about five miles of sky.
They fired their guns all at once!
Mile-long, eighth-mile wide bands of sustained flame, the kind that lasts a minute glaring in the daylight, and then throws out white clouds, blasted across the sky. It said:
GOOD LUCK, JET!
And then the concussion wave hit while the sign flamed!
It was loud enough to be heard by every person in every one of the five cities!
And even the ground was lit up by the glaring light of those letters!
Although I was feeling almost as high as those letters, something nagged at me that this was not quite all right for a secret mission! I couldn’t put my finger on it. It just didn’t seem fitting somehow. Then I realized what it was. Those pilots and crews up there were missing the party! Flying around up there, they wouldn’t get any tup or cakes.
I was about to call this to someone’s attention when down they came and, with new blasts, they landed in an open field nearby and out poured the pilots and crews and over they came to the party. So that was handled.
I was feeling a little sorry for the Homeview crews. They were working so hard and yet, really, they weren’t getting anything newsworthy. The stuff would never be used. They had lots of films of dancing girls and tup trucks. Why would they show any more? So it was all right. The secrecy of the mission was still intact.
I was gazing down upon what now must be ten thousand Fleet and Apparatus people and had just about decided it was pretty well over when I heard a yell.
Somebody was pointing up and then a lot of people were pointing up and here came a white and gold air-limousine. It was an unmistakable vehicle. It had been built as a present from billions of fans on a hundred and ten planets!
The din of the crowd hurt the ears! “It’s Hightee Heller!” They chanted her name so loud it almost took the hangar roof off! “Hightee Heller! Hightee Heller! Hightee Heller!”
I smiled. I understood now what Jet had meant. A family affair. Of course. How nice of her to come!
The Homeview crane was swooping down.
Hightee Heller danced out of the limousine, throwing kisses. She was dressed as an angel!
Of course. For the christening!
Well, we’d get the christening over and leave. Nothing else of interest could happen.
All five bands and choruses began to sing and play her favorite song.
A special effects truck was drawn up below the review platform and its crew, waving canisters of tup the while, were setting up.
Hightee came dancing up the platform steps. She kissed Heller lightly on the cheek and the crowd screamed “Hightee and Jet!” “Hightee and Jet!”
Then here went the christening!
A great white cloud, by three-dimensional electronic projection, appeared in the sky above. An angel seemed to step out of it—but, of course, it was just Hightee on the platform furnishing the physical pattern which was projected on the sky.
The crowd screamed with delight!
The white cloud settled over the ship, billowing and curling.
Hightee leaned over on the platform and the three-dimensional image of her, a hundred and fifty feet tall, made an elegant motion over the ship with both hands.
All five bands struck a dramatic chord. Both choruses sang a prolonged note.
The angel cried, “Little ship, I give thee life!”
The bands and choruses went silent.
The angel seemed to bend over and kiss the ship upon the nose.
The bands and choruses sounded another chord which ended with a cymbal crash.
Then the angel again spread her hands and cried out, “THY NAME IS NOW PRINCE CAUCALSIA!”
The bands and choruses sang with joy.
The crowd went mad!
The Homeview crews got it all!
Some good sense seemed to penetrate my fog. Because it was Hightee Heller here, those Homeview pictures just could get viewed on every screen in a hundred and ten planets. And worse, all you had to do was put that name, Prince Caucalsia, on any office or school or museum computer keyboard and you’d get Folk Legend 894M and that would point directly to the mission destination, Blito-P3!
Oh, it was a good thing I was powerful enough even to work with such crass amateurs! Superhuman feat, but I could do it.
Besides, Hightee had probably christened other ships. That wouldn’t guarantee they would use the pictures. It would take more than that.
The fireworks truck was busy again. The christening had ended with a wild display of daylight fireworks in all colors, visible for miles. And then there was a supernova! It must have been started earlier because now, twenty miles up at least, it burst with a flash that lit up all five cities already brilliantly lit by Voltar’s sun. Spectacular!
About a minute later the shattering crash of it made even the ground shake!
Everybody, all the thousands, had drinks in their hands and they were shouting good luck to the Prince Caucalsia.
Hightee flew off to get back to the studio. Well, I guessed it was pretty well over and we’d be leaving. No real damage done, I told myself. The Homeview crew would never use those pictures.
A bunch of mountain dancing bears was performing now.
I was heartened by the fact that Bugs Bunny hopped up the steps and handed me a carrot. I wasn’t hungry but I munched at it. “They’ll never use those pictures, doc,” he said in English. “No violen
ce.” I thanked him for his good advice. Always sound. But I wondered if a freighter had just come in from Earth. They had to be careful about stowaways. I turned to caution him but he was gone.
The dancing bears didn’t go away and the crowd loved them.
Suddenly, in the cleared space below, Snelz, my dear friend Snelz, appeared with his company. Good man, Snelz.
His whole company was uniformed splendidly in black. They were wearing their visored combat helmets and carrying blastrifles. A band, accompanied by the Fleet chorus, began to play and sing a march, and to its time, Snelz’s company began to go through the most complex set of geometric infantry figures I have ever seen. Squares and crosses and interthreading lines. Then doing it with blastrifles spinning and going through manuals of arms. How did he ever get Apparatus troops to do anything like those maneuvers?
The crowd was impressed. They cheered the conclusion of each difficult pattern.
Then the blastrifles seemed to fire. At the end of a difficult swirl, each time, the blastrifles all banged off a reduced charge. Maneuver, Bang! Maneuver, Bang! On and on. Impressive.
Then suddenly all the rifles seemed to shoot out a flag. And the most difficult patterns of marching yet seen were accompanied by a manual of arms that made floating blurs of color the while.
Then with one final bang, the rifles fired flitter up into the sky. With the whole company going to a knee-present-arms to the ship, the flitter began to float down in sparking bits over the tug.
The crowd went absolutely crazy! They had never before seen drilling like that!
The cheering died when Snelz told his company, “Dismiss!”
There was a moment’s silence. And through it cut the voice of an Apparatus officer, addressed to the Fleet fliers, “Yeah, yeah! So you Fleet guys think the Apparatus troops can’t drill!”
There was a silent, electric tension, like a blanket going over the whole crowd.
Then a Fleet pilot said, real loud, “That drill captain is an ex-Fleet Marine! He ain’t no ‘drunk’!”
An Apparatus man hit him!
A Fleet pilot hit an Apparatus man!
Twenty Apparatus men hit twenty Fleet men!
A hundred Fleet men hit a hundred Apparatus men!
The fight was on!
The Homeview crews got it all and continued to get it!
Screams sounded!
Canisters flew!
Fleet military police spacers present leaped in to try to stop the fight.
Apparatus military police guards sprang up and tried to stop the fight.
Fleet and Apparatus military police met head-on and began to fight each other!
Benches went over! Cakes were being used as ammunition!
The Homeview crews were getting every bit of it!
Heller, high on the review platform, gazed over the seething scene. He grabbed a microphone that was hooked to the public sound system.
Above the din he shouted, “All bands and choruses! STRIKE UP ‘SPACEWARD, HO!’”
It is what is called a song-chant. The first lines are sung as a melody and then some lines are chanted as though they are orders and so on.
Above the din, three bands which were perched too high on stages to get into the fight, struck up the refrain.
Those of the choruses still in place sang the first two lines:
Spaceward, ho!
To the stars we go!
Then the chant:
Upward, upward, upward!
High, high, high!
Roll the blast! Roll the blast!
Close all locks! Grab sky!
Canisters were crashing. Screams and shouts racketed. The bands and choruses turned up their volumes.
The choruses sang:
Spaceward, ho!
The planet flees below.
And the chant:
Thunder, thunder, thunder!
Flame, flame, flame!
Feed the fuel! Feed the fuel!
Correct the course and aim!
Far off, above the din, sirens were wailing as alerted riot units rose to fly in!
The choruses sang:
Spaceward, ho!
Some other land to know!
Target, target, target!
Drive, drive, drive!
Bore the black! Bore the black!
Fasten belts! G Five!
Raid sirens were going off. The first of the antiriot ships bashed to ground nearby. The battle raged on.
The choruses sang:
Space is a mistress!
Space is a whore!
Space is a spell
No spacer can ignore.
So burn, burn, burn!
And shove, shove, shove!
We’re into space another time,
Lured from home and love
Into hope and terror,
Into stars above.
Here we go!
Here we go!
Spaceward, HO!
A tup lorry went over, spilling a flood of tup!
The riot police that were landing were Fleet and Apparatus! They started to fight even before they got to the gates!
The Homeview crew, high on their crane, ground on.
Heller said, “They’ll be at that fight all day! Get in. It’s noon. We’re blasting off!”
He went in and perched himself on the edge of the local control chair. He sent some orders to the auxiliary engine room and then he hit every sound switch on the panel. Tugs have beams that, in space, which is silent, fasten to hulls of ships and conduct sound along them. These beams flashed into the hangar, against the ground and against every Apparatus spaceship in view. The tug’s whistles, sirens, gongs and blast signals all started going off at once. Ear-splitting!
I had made an ineffectual last-second attempt to close the air lock. But somehow I couldn’t get my hands connected with anything. We were already lifting and I sprawled in the opening, my head out into the air.
The Homeviews were swiveled about to get the departure and, no doubt, my helmet falling the two hundred feet now separating us from ground.
The tug whistles, sirens, gongs and blast signals were still going. So was the riot!
For some minutes now, even before the song, my hands had been shaking. And now my body began to go into a sort of vertigo. The euphoria was gone and in its place I felt extremely irritable.
I told myself that this was the most unsecret secret mission departure anyone had ever heard of!
Three hundred feet below us, in the space where the tug had been, there was a single guardsman, isolated from the riot. And the guardsman, with both hands, was madly throwing kisses after the tug. It was the Countess Krak! She had not been properly at Spiteos. She had been here all day!
She was very tiny now, far down there on Voltar. She stopped throwing kisses and stood there sort of slumped.
Somebody grabbed my heels, pulled me in and closed the air lock door.
We were on our totally advertised, totally certain to be shown on every screen on every planet, secret way.
We were headed for Earth.
But Gods only knew what would happen now!
About the Author
L. Ron Hubbard’s remarkable writing career spanned more than half-a-century of intense literary achievement and creative influence.
And though he was first and foremost a writer, his life experiences and travels in all corners of the globe were wide and diverse. His insatiable curiosity and personal belief that one should live life as a professional led to a lifetime of extraordinary accomplishment. He was also an explorer, ethnologist, mariner and pilot, filmmaker and photographer, philosopher and educator, composer and musician.
Growing up in the still-rugged frontier country of Montana, he broke his first bronc and became the blood brother of a Blackfeet Indian medicine man by age six. In 1927, when he was 16, he traveled to a still remote Asia. The following year, to further satisfy his thirst for adventure and augment his growing knowledge of other cultures,
he left school and returned to the Orient. On this trip, he worked as a supercargo and helmsman aboard a coastal trader which plied the seas between Japan and Java. He came to know old Shanghai, Beijing and the Western Hills at a time when few Westerners could enter China. He traveled more than a quarter of a million miles by sea and land while still a teenager and before the advent of commercial aviation as we know it.