Troublemakers Read Online Free PDF Page B

deferential to the Commanding General. He was short, but dapper; clothes hung well on him; hair thinning across his skull; eyes alert, and a weariness in the softness and line of his body: a man who had been too long in grade, too long as Captain, with Colonel’s rank out of reach. He folded his hands across his paunch, finished his speech, and settled back in the chair.
        He stared across the desk at the General. The General steepled his blocky fingers, rocked back and forth in the big leather chair. He stared at his Adjutant with a veiled expression. Adjutant: the politically correct word for assistant, second-in-charge, gopher, the guy who actually got the job done. The General had found Alberts when he was a Second Looey, and knew he had a treasure when Alberts solved ten thorny problems in two days. He wasn’t about to upgrade this Captain...he needed him right there, serving the General’s needs. Adjutant: it sounded better than slave.
        “How long-to the hour-have they been here now, Captain?” His tone was almost chiding, definitely aggressive.
        He waited silently for an answer as the Adjutant leafed through a folder, consulted his watch, and closed his eyes in figuring. Finally the Adjutant leaned forward and said, “Three days, eight and one-half hours, General.”
        “And nothing has been done about them yet,” the heavy-faced Air Force man replied. It was not a question; it was a statement, and one that demanded either an explanation or an alibi.
        The Adjutant knew he had no explanation, so he offered the alibi. “But, General, what can we do? We don’t dare scramble a flight of interceptors. Those things are almost four miles around, and there’s no telling what they’d do if we made a hostile move...or even a move that looked hostile.
        “We don’t know where they come from or what they want. Or what’s inside them. But if they were smart enough to get here, they’re surely smart enough to stop any offensive action we might take. We’re stuck, General. Our hands are tied.”
        The General leaned forward, and his sharp blue eyes caught the Adjutant’s face in a vise-lock stare. “Captain, don’t you ever use that word around me. The first thing I learned, when I was a plebe at West Point, was that the hands of the United States Air Force are never tied. You understand that?”
        The Captain shifted uneasily, made an accepting motion with his hand. “Yes, but, General...what...”
        “I said never, Captain Alberts! And by that I mean you’d better get out there and do something, right now.”
        The Adjutant rose hastily to his feet, slid the chair back an inch, and saluted briskly. Turning on his heel, he left the office, a frozen frown on his face. For the first time since he’d gotten this cushy job with the General, it looked as though there was going to be work involved. Worse, it might be dangerous.
        Captain Harold Alberts, Adjutant, was terribly frightened, for the first time since he’d been appointed to the General’s staff.

    The saucers seemed to be holding a tight formation. They hovered, and lowered not an inch. They were separated by a half mile of empty space on either side, but were easily close enough to pick off anyone flying between them...should that be their intent.
        They were huge things, without conning bubbles or landing gear, without any visible projections of any sort. Their skins were of some non-reflective metal, for it could be seen that the sun was glinting on them, yet was casting no burst of radiance. It made the possibility that this was some super-strong metal seem even more possible. They were silent behemoths, around which the air lanes of the world had had to be shifted. They did not move, nor did they show evidence of life. They were two cymbals, laid dead face-on-face.
         They were simply there, and what sort of contesting could there be to that?
        Every few hours,