BATTLE-HYMN

THERE DIDN’T SEEM MUCH ROOM for hope. Sibelius Hopkins put it into the simplest words.

“We’ve got to have Martian consent, and we won’t get it, that’s all.”

The gloom among the others was thick enough to impede breathing. “We should never have granted the colonists autonomy,” said Ralph Colodny.

“Agreed,” said Hopkins. “Now who wants to volunteer to go back in time twenty-eight years and change history. Mars has the sovereign right to decide how its territory is to be used, and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“We might choose another site, “ said Ben Devers, who was the youngest of the group and hadn’t yet worked himself to the proper pitch of cynicism.

“No other site,” said Hopkins flatly. “If you don’t know that experiments with hyperspace are dangerous, go back to school. You can’t do them on Earth, and even the Moon is far too built up. The space settlements are too small by three orders of magnitude and it’s not possible to reach anything beyond Mars for at least twenty years. But Mars is perfect. It’s still practically empty. It has a low surface gravity and a thin atmosphere. It’s cold. Everything’s perfect for hyperspatial flight--except the colonists.”

“You can never tell,” said young Devers. “People are funny. They might vote in favor of hyperspatial experiments on Mars, if we play it right.”

“How do we play it right,” said Hopkins. “The opposition has blanketed Mars with an old hillbilly tune that has the words:

“No, no, a thousand times, no! You cannot buy my caress!

“No, no, a thousand times, no! I’d rather die than say, yes.”

He grinned mirthlessly. “Mars is blanketed with the tune. It’s being drilled into the minds of the Martian colonists. They’ll vote ‘no’ automatically, and we won’t have hyperspatial experiments and that means we won’t have flights to the stars for decades, maybe generations--certainly not in our lifetimes.”

Devers said, frowning in thought, “Can’t we use a tune for our side of the argument?”

“What tune?”

“A large percentage of the Martian colonists are of French extraction. We might play on their ethnic consciousness.”

“What ethnic consciousness? Everyone speaks English now.”

“That doesn’t stop ethnic consciousness,” said Devers. “If you play the old national anthem of France, they’ll all drip nostalgia. It’s a battle-hymn, you know, and battle-hymns always stir the blood, especially now that there aren’t any wars.”

Hopkins said, “But the words don’t mean anything any more. Do you remember them?”

“Yes,” said Devers. “Some--

“Allons, enfants de la patrie,

“La jour de gloire est arrive.

“Contre nous de la tyrannie,

“L’Etendard sanglant est leve.”

He sang them in a clear tenor voice.

Hopkins said, “Not one Martian in a thousand will know what that means.”

Devers said, “Who cares? Play it anyway. Even if they don’t understand the words they will know it’s the old battle hymn of France and that will stir them up. Besides, the tune is a winner. Infinitely better than that silly music-hall thing about ‘No, no.’ I’m telling you, the battle hymn will settle into every mind and wipe out the no-no.”

“Maybe you have something there,” said Hopkins. “ And if we accompany it with some strong slogan in different changes, ‘Humanity to the stars!,’ ‘Reach out for a star,’ ‘Faster than light is the slowest we can go.’ And always with that tune.”

Colodny said, “You know, ‘la jour de gloire’ means ‘the day of glory,’ I think. We can use that phrase, ‘the glory day when we reach the stars.’ If we say ‘glory day’ often enough, maybe the Martians will vote, ‘Yes.”‘

“It sounds too good to be true,” said Hopkins, gloomily, “but I really don’t see that there’s any other choice we have right now. We can try it and see if it does any good.”

That was the beginning of the great voting battle of the tunes. In everyone of the domed settlements on Mars, from Olympus all along the Valles Marineris and far into the cratered areas, there rang out on one side, “No, no, a thousand times, no--” and on the other side, “ Allons, enfants de la patrie--”

There was no question that the stirring rhythm of the battle-hymn was having its effect. It roared back at the simple negation sing-song and Hopkins had to admit that from zero chance, the “yes” vote was becoming a possibility; from sure defeat, it was beginning to have just a chance.

Hopkins said, “The trouble is, though, we have nothing direct. Their song, silly though it is, has the advantage of saying, “No--No!--No! Ours is just a tune which is catchy and is filling the minds of many, but with what? La jour de gloire?”

Devers smiled and said, “Why not wait for the election? “ After all, it was his idea.

They did.

challenge to the reader

What happened on election day? Did the negative vote win or the positive? And, in either case, why?

The best reason counts. You can win if you have the vote come out negative or positive.

On the evening of election day, Hopkins found himself almost unable to talk. The vote had been running a steady 90 percent in favor of “Yes” and there was simply no question about it.

The colonists of Mars were voting to allow their planet to be used for the work that would eventually send human beings to the stars.

Hopkins said, finally, “What happened? What did we do right? “

“It was the tune,” said Devers, smiling his satisfaction. “I had it figured right, but I didn’t want to explain my notion because I didn’t want it to get out to the other side somehow. Not that I don’t trust everyone here, but I didn’t want the tune neutralized in some clever way.”

“What was there about the tune that made so much difference?” demanded Hopkins.

“Well, it did have a subliminal message. Maybe the colonists no longer knew enough French to get the meaning of the words, but they had to know the name of the battle-hymn. That name rang through their minds each time they heard the tune; each time they hummed it.”

“So what?”

“So this,” said Devers, grinning, “The name is ‘Mars say yes!”‘