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Peace in the Wilderness
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
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Science Fiction

Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust
www.mzbworks.com

Copyright ©1956 by Marion Zimmer Bradley

First published in Fantastic Universe, 1956

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

Peace in the Wilderness

Marion Zimmer Bradley

CONTENTS

I

II

III

IV

V

* * * *

I

The counterman was getting nervous.

Kerry Donalson was the last customer in the little cafe. The clatter of dishes had completely subsided and to either side of him the cracked white-tile counter and worn stools were bare and clean and empty. Although Kerry was a well-dressed man far into his forties, the counterman hovered disrespectfully around him, giving a perfunctory toweling to surfaces already spotless. Finally, his starchy apron a-crackle with audible irritation, he demanded, “You got far to go, Mister? It's getting close to curfew!"

As if to emphasize the man's words, a blinding dazzle of white light flared in the street outside, arching through the glass front of the cafe.

“Not far,” Kerry said, and paid no attention to the lights. For thirteen years no street on Earth had been dark at night. And during all of those years without darkness Earth had been in a state of total war.

A young man had come into the cafe with the lights, and was making his way toward the far end of the counter. As the counterman turned toward the new customer, Kerry pointedly buried himself in the front page of the Times-Telegram. Behind his paper he turned his wrist to look at the dial of his watch. Half an hour before curfew, the message had said. I'll come up and speak to you. But don't speak to me.

Kerry knew the headlines by heart, for he had scribbled his personal blue-pencil okay on every story. For five years now he had been editor, and part owner, of the Times-Telegram. Yet he continued to study the columns, as if something might be hidden there that would give him a clue to the mystery which had led him to seek a possibly dangerous meeting with a total stranger.

The main story read: EX-GOVERNMENT SCIENTIST AFFIRMS MOON BASE POSSIBLE. Earlier in the day Kerry had skimmed it professionally for typographical errors, and now he shrugged off the story itself with cynical amusement. It was nothing but a rehash of the usual hopeful platitudes. The moon base project had been definitely abandoned.

United Earth had been trying for twelve years to set a rocket on Luna, and before that, the Free Americas and the Asian Alliance had ruthlessly trampled one another in a futile race for a satellite station. But no drive, no known fuel could successfully propel a rocket beyond the outer limits of Earth's gravity.

That afternoon, Kerry had received a phone call from a dead man. Ben Thrusher had been a rocket research-expert for the Government of the Free Americas, but a tragic accident had made him one of the earliest casualties in Earth's war against the Pharigs. Or had it been an accident?

Farther up the counter, he heard the waiter grumble, “Counter's closed, lad. Too near curfew. You want to get picked up by the Night Police?"

“I only came to meet a friend here,” the newcomer said.

Kerry, lifting his eyes from a routine headline, Pharig Atrocities Spark Curfew Crackdown in Dallas, looked up quickly and found himself staring at the face of a tanned youngster, maybe nineteen, maybe even younger. He was wearing blue jeans and a leather jacket.

“You must be Mr. Donalson?” the youngster said.

Kerry stood up. “And you're Lewis Fallon?” he asked.

The youngster nodded and touched Kerry's extended hand briefly.

“I thought you wouldn't show up,” Kerry said. “Coffee?"

“No time,” Fallon said. “Like the man said, it's near curfew; and we don't want to get picked up by the Night Police, do we, now? The youth spoke with a faint inflection of sarcasm, looking past Kerry at the recruiting poster which hung over the cash register.

AN EARTH DIVIDED IS AN EARTH CONQUERED

Join the Night Police

Serve in Your Own Community!

Kerry shrugged into his overcoat, and flung a greenie on the counter. The counterman, making change, sounded apologetic. “I didn't mean to hurry you up, Mister. Only I live way out in the suburbs and I don't want to go home under police escort again. My wife gets nervous."

“That's all right,” Kerry said. “Sorry I kept you from closing on time."

He left the change and went out into the glare of the streetlights, the Fallon youngster walking easily and warily at his side. He noticed that Fallon glanced nervously to right and left as they came out, as if he expected to see someone waiting. But the street was empty—a bare illuminated cavern that stretched away for endless miles, white with the billions of vapor-lamps that brightened every street and alley.

Earth was largely a continuous network of cities by now—and every inch of the crammed countryside, every solitary lane or alley.

“I hope, if you have a wife,” Fallon said, “that she's not the nervous type."

“I called Ruth before I left the Times-Telegraph building,” Kerry said.

Fallon jerked his head in sudden anger. “I should think you'd have had sense enough to call her from a public telephone, Mr. Donalson! Damn it, why do you think I went to the trouble to meet you way out here?"

That did it. Kerry stopped walking and faced the youth. “Look here,” he said, “I'm not going another step with you until you tell me what this is all about. Precisely where are we going, and why are you acting like a criminal conspirator?"

Lew Fallon frowned. “I should have warned you. Your office phone—can you swear it's not tapped?"

“Of course it's tapped,” Kerry said, startled. He did not need to be reminded that newspapers—and other organs of information—were heavily censored for purposes of public wartime morale.

Fallon jammed his hands down in his pockets and sighed. “Well, I've brought you this far, so we may as well go on. But I don't like it. If that's the kind of person you are—” he checked his rising anger with a visible effort, and named a hotel halfway across town.

“But we can't get there before curfew, can we?” Kerry said. “Hadn't we better give our route and destination to the Night Police?"

Fallon turned abruptly, his young face tense in the bluish light. “Get this, Mr. Donalson. I'm taking you to Ben Thrusher. If the Night Police get wind of this you'll lose the biggest news story of the year—to say nothing of what would happen to Ben. It was Ben who wanted it this way. Now, are you coming or aren't you, and to hell with the curfew! I can remember when it wasn't a crime to be on the streets whenever you had business to transact."

Lawbreaking comes hard to a respectable man. “If you'd printed as many stories of Pharig atrocities as I have,” Kerry told him, “you'd know the curfew laws were for your own protection."

Fallon muttered something under his breath, and went on. Kerry followed, but he was not at all reassured. For many years only the Night Police, equipped with neuron-guns, had dared to walk the streets after curfew.

The Pharigs were immobile in daylight, but at night, despite the inhibiting curfew lights, they marauded the world. If they escaped the unknown menace of Pharig attack, there was still the dangerous risk of a crippling neuron-blast.

Neuron-guns were fatal to the non-human Pharigs, and the Night Police had orders to shoot first and ask questions afterward. The assumption was that if you were human, a neuron-blast wouldn't do you any lasting damage.

It was assumed that anyone on the streets after curfew without police escort—except in the protected areas reserved for necessary night workers—was either a criminal or a Pharig. No honest or sane Earthman had any business on the streets at that hour.

Kerry quickened his steps to match the hasty walk of the younger man. And all at once a random, surprising memory darted through his brain and he said aloud, “Lew Fallon!"

The youngster turned impatiently, and Kerry repeated, less sure of himself, “Lew Fallon. But no, it can't be! You're much too young to be the Lew Fallon who was killed by Pharigs eight years ago!"

“The rocket man? That was my father.” Lew Fallon's mouth was tight. “He wasn't dead either—until a week ago."

“I don't understand,” Kerry said. “Ben Thrusher and I were roommates in college, and we worked at a civilian center during the Three Days war. He was about the best friend I had until the Pharig invasion came, and the Army took Ben for rocket research. He and your father were killed when the Pharigs sabotaged an experimental rocket."

“Rubbish!” Fallon blurted out, then added quickly, “Look I can't explain. Ben Thrusher will have to do it."

Kerry had thought, at first, that the whole thing was a cruel or sinister hoax. But now the youngster's attitude convinced him otherwise. He hurried along, trying to match Fallon's stride. It was four minutes to curfew, and the streets were totally empty. But every shadow where the arch of light fell away became the possible lurking configuration of a concealed Pharig, or a uniformed Night Policeman. And there were many shadows.

He slackened his pace, a hand to the stitch in his side, angry at himself for the upsurge of excitement aroused by his own guilt. He hadn't broken any laws yet!

“This is the hotel,” Fallon said abruptly. He stopped, and added with a shrug, “With just one minute to spare before curfew. Don't inquire at the desk. Go right up to Room four-o-seven."

He swung about on his heels and walked swiftly toward the rear of the building.

Kerry started to follow, feeling a sudden desperate need to insist on a further explanation. But the sudden wail of the curfew siren drowned thought for a few seconds. When the noise died away he was standing inside the lobby, and a bellboy was bolting the doors behind him.

[Back to Table of Contents]

II

Kerry went on up. When he rapped at the door of Room 407, he was still breathless from climbing and it occurred to him, perhaps tardily, that he might be walking into a trap. But he put up his hand notwithstanding and knocked once loudly, determined to end the mystery as quickly as possible

“Who is it?” called a muffled voice from within the room.

“It's Kerry Donalson—"

“Come in."

Kerry pushed the door open, and then stepped back in consternation. The room was in total darkness.

The unseen voice arrested his retreat. “Wait! Don't go. It's me, Kerry—"

“Ben!” Kerry moved quickly toward the sound, forgetting all caution. No one could have imitated that peculiar nasal inflection, even though the timbre of the voice itself had changed almost beyond recognition.

“Don't put on the lights just yet,” Ben Thrusher warned from the darkness. “I don't want to frighten you off before you know it's really me. Remember Lavender Hall—the Marshall twins, Nancy and Norma, and that old porch swing? How's Ruthie? How's my godson, little Phil? The baby—Judith, wasn't it?—must be almost ten years old now."

Kerry found that his own voice was husky. “Okay, you've convinced me. Now can I put some lights on?"

Ben coughed and his voice grew steadier. “Go ahead. Only—I've changed a lot, Kerry."

Kerry found the light switch by the door, and managed to flick it upward. A wide swath of light flooded the room. Kerry's breath caught in his throat and he hardly recognized his own voice whispering hoarsely in the darkness.

“For God's sake, Ben! I—I didn't know—"

The thing on the bed stretched its mouth in a grimace that ought to have been a smile, but wasn't. The skull was hairless, the face swollen; the lips a festering, toothless sore. The hands were wrapped in bandages that bulged out, awkward and useless, below the split sleeves of flannel pajamas.

Ben Thrusher moved his head slowly from side to side.

“Radiation burns,” he said, steadily. “It doesn't hurt much at this stage, Kerry. But now you know why I wanted you to recognize me first in the dark."

“My God,” Kerry murmured, and it was a prayer. “We—we thought you were dead eight years ago. Did the Pharigs—"

“Pharigs!” Kerry was horrified to see Ben's toothless mouth twist into a wide, tormented smile. “I might have known you'd say that—"

“But how—how did it happen? Ben, have you seen a doctor?"

“No. When I came here I was still recognizably myself in a dim light. A doctor would have reported to the Army, to make sure I'd die in a cell and never get a chance to say what I've got to say."

Kerry started, feeling suddenly convinced that Ben's mind had been unhinged by suffering. But his eyes—mere slits in angry flesh—met Kerry's with a steady calm.

“I'm not insane, Kerry. If you don't believe me, call an ambulance. Or to save trouble—call the Night Police. The outcome would be the same. You'd never see or hear of me again. They'd hold me incommunicado and my death would not be long delayed. If you're in mortal terror of the dictatorship, I can die all right without your help! Only I thought you had courage enough from the old days. The courage to be an honest newspaperman and tell the public the truth."

“Sure,” Kerry soothed. “But first we've got to get you to a hospital, old fellow. I won't let them lock you up."

Again the slow, tormented smile. “Stop humoring me, Kerry,” One of the bandaged hands moved, clumsily tugging at Kerry's arm in an absurd but heartbreaking gesture of reassurance. “The doctors couldn't do much. I've had it, Kerry. They'd just make sure I didn't talk—"

Carefully Kerry lowered himself toward the bed. Ben winced, warding him away with a clumsy forward movement of his shoulders. In tight-lipped concern Kerry drew up a chair, and leaned forward. “Why should they do a thing like that?” he asked.

“I'm trying to tell you!” The raw flesh around Ben's mouth contracted in a spasm that could have been agony—or anger. “I'll give you a story that will shake the world!"

“If he can print it,” said a tight voice behind them. Lew Fallon came in, shutting the door carefully behind him.

Instantly Ben twisted on the bed, in a convulsive movement of pain and fear. “What does he mean? Kerry, tell me. I must know. Can you print it? Do we still have a free press?"

“What the devil—” Kerry remembered that Ben was a very sick man, and compassionately amended his tone. “Of course we have a free press. Why not? Where have you been, to ask that?"

Ben Thrusher said, his voice muffled, “I've been on the moon."

In three incredulous strides Kerry was across the room, uncradling the telephone.

Lew Fallon took a catlike step toward him. “What are you going to do?” he demanded.

Kerry let the dial spin back. “I'm going to call a doctor,” he said, “Ben needs help."

Lew Fallon wrenched the receiver from his hand. “Oh, no you're not,” he said, his voice defiant.

As Kerry broke away the bandaged man on the bed stirred.

“Let him alone, Lew,” Ben pleaded. Then, more quietly, “Kerry, you idiot, come over here and listen to me. I'm not going to be able to talk much longer. My throat's giving me hell. I haven't the time nor the strength to spend hours softening you up and trying to convince you. You've got to trust me, Kerry! I haven't got many words left and I'll be damned if I'll waste them—” His voice thinned and he lay back, his face ashen. There were dark stains on the rumpled pillow.

Kerry returned to the bed, and sat down. He said, “Do you mean the Pharigs have a prison base on—our moon?"

“No, not the Pharigs!” Ben spoke with a flare of furious energy, then sank back helplessly, pressing one of his useless hands against his throat.

Lew Fallon brought him a glass of water from a pitcher on the bureau, and Kerry supported him while he drank it, in great greedy swallows. Kerry could feel the fever heat in the man's skin.

He pleaded, “Ben, if you're afraid to go to a hospital, let me take you home to Ruthie. I know a doctor who can be trusted—"

“Ruthie!” Ben's eyes brightened in momentary warm gratefulness. Then he shook his head. “Thanks, Kerry. But I've no intention of making it difficult for her. I've only a day or two left. It's just that—I didn't want to crawl in a hole and die like a rat without a word to anybody."

His eyes closed and Kerry thought for a moment that he had fainted. He arose, and began to tiptoe across the room. Maybe he could persuade Lew Fallon to some logical course of action.

But at the first step, Ben's eyes opened, “Come back here, Kerry, and sit down!” he said, raising himself with an effort. “I'm not dead yet! The Army men picked up Chapman, and—I'm supposed to have died in the crash.” His voice held a brief trace of its old vigor, and he put a completely steady hand to his ruined face.

“There was faulty radiation shielding in our ship. It was privately built, but you'd be surprised if I told you who financed it. We didn't have proper facilities to test it. Quite as important, we weren't fit to stand acceleration. That takes young men—tough, experienced test pilots. Fallon died when we took off. I made it—there and back. But Chapman and I won't live to be heroes. How about it, Kerry? Is the story worth it?"

“Good God,” Kerry said simply. For a moment, his eagerness to get all of the facts outweighed even his concern over Ben's desperate condition. A dozen urgent questions trembled on his tongue, but he resolutely suppressed his curiosity.

“I still say you'd be better off at my house,” he said.

Lew Fallon crossed the room to stand beside him. “I'm afraid he's right,” he said. “There's an alert out on the Night Police frequency. I was listening just now. I knew it was a mistake to call you at the newspaper building."

Ben said in a barely audible whisper, “I don't want to get you in trouble if I can help it, Kerry. Or you either, Lew—"

Fallon made a reckless gesture of repudiation. “Trouble's what I'm looking for! This was a free country once! They owe me something for all the years I thought Dad was dead—"

Ben Thrusher sank bake against the pillows, his body racked by coughs. When the spasm quieted he muttered, “Remember Kerry doesn't know, and we've no time now to explain. Can you get us out of here?"

“I guess so—if Mister Donalson isn't afraid to take a few risks,” Fallon said bitterly.

Kerry turned on him angrily. “Knock it off, will you? I'm here. Isn't that enough?"

Like many men who lead fairly dull lives and only daydream about adventure, Kerry resented its intrusion into everyday life, and felt almost personally indignant about what seemed like heroics on young Fallon's part. Still, in some obscure corner of his brain, he knew that Ben was neither raving nor a madman.

Fallon had slipped out of the room, and Ben now lay with his eyes closed. But Kerry, seeing the swollen lids flicker, guessed that the dying man was only avoiding questions. It was vitally necessary for him to hoard his small strength, but a furious impatience nagged at Kerry, and he paced the room restlessly until young Fallon reappeared.

Over his arm the youth carried a huge, loose raincoat. He said to Kerry, “This place is all locked up for curfew. But there's a service door. If we get caught, leave everything to me.” He went to the bed and drew back the blankets.

“Do you think you can walk, Ben?” he asked, his voice tight with concern.

Kerry gasped with horror. Ben's feet were swollen to nearly three times their normal size. Fallon produced an enormous air of carpet-slippers, slit them at toe and heel, and knelt to put them on the useless feet.

Ben forced himself painfully to a sitting position, and just as he did so Lew broke into Kerry's frozen dismay with a rasping, “Come and help me, Mr. Donalson. Can't you see we'll have to carry him?"

They bundled the raincoat over Ben's pajamas, lifting and supporting him. Ben crossed the room in a shambling walk, dragging himself along between Lew and Kerry as if the men were living crutches. Although he did not say a word, Kerry felt him wince and heard the harsh catch of breath each time he set one of the swollen feet to the ground. They could only guess at his pain.

Somehow they got him into a small service elevator and rested, breathing harshly—Ben was a large and heavy man—while it made a creaky and slow descent.

The back door opened on a narrow areaway, lying deserted in a brilliant vapor-light which brightened its every ugly crevice from the building to the curb. The hoisted Ben bodily into the front seat of a small, war-model electric automobile, and Kerry climbed in after him.

The big man sagged on Kerry's shoulder. Kerry looked curiously at Fallon as the youngster climbed into the driver's seat.

As if sensing his apprehensive scrutiny Fallon explained, “We'll take a chance on the law of averages. How many Night Police are in the city? They can't check every street, and they usually concentrate on deserted spots."

[Back to Table of Contents]

III

Lew Fallon drove the car down the main street. They encountered no other car, and saw only one pedestrian—a solitary Night Cop lounging in a doorway, his neuron-gun a luminescent halo on his hip. The police officer did not even raise his head as their car's lights swung across his uniform.

Lew laughed, harshly and contemptuously, “See? They think the whole city is so scared by now that no one would dare-to be here without a police permit!"

They were rapidly approaching Kerry's street, and the newspaperman was beginning to relax. He had almost convinced himself that the peaceful drive was an anti-climax to a melodramatic prelude when a blinding shaft of light crossed their headlights. One of the small, fast prowlies darted from a side-street and completely blocked their passage, blinking a menacing red signal.

Lew jammed on the brakes.

A uniformed man jumped from the prowlie, his right hand ghostly by the phosphorescence around his neuron-gun. He strode up to the car.

“What is it this time?” he asked angrily. “Are you taking your wife to the maternity hospital? If you're not, your excuse had better be good."

Kerry was startled. As was so often the case with law-abiding citizens, it had never occurred to him that the Night Police had to deal with such minor violations fairly often. In the news stories he printed such violations were a serious matter and the Night Police fast on the trigger. This particular officer had his neuron-gun in readiness, but otherwise he sounded like an argumentative daytime traffic cop.

Lew completely lowered the front window. “I'm glad we ran into you,” he said. “My friends and I were playing cards at my house and we forgot the time. It was after curfew when we broke the game up, and when I tried to call up for a police escort, my phone was out of order and this guy's wife is waiting for him. We called and called, but we couldn't even get the operator. So we decided to go out and hunt one up."

The nightman glanced in the window, his disinterested eyes passing over Ben, sagging beneath the raincoat and slouch hat. He stared for an instant at Kerry in his neat snap-brim and overcoat. Then he bolstered the neuron-gun.

“Go ahead,” he said. “I'll follow you."

They pulled up before Kerry's house, and the policeman got out of the prowlie again and came to the car window. “I want to see you get in off the street. Go on in right now. And another time, keep an eye on the clock, will you?"

Lew grumbled, “Helluva note when it's a crime to drive your friends home—"

The policeman was bored, but courteous. “It's no crime to be on the street. But the law says you have to tell us beforehand for your own protection. That way we know who you are and where you'll be, and won't make the mistake of shooting you for a Pharig. You want me to radio for a permit for you to drive home?"

Fallon looked at Kerry. “No thanks, we'll spend the night here."

“Sure, glad to have you.” Kerry said, picking up his cue. The policeman lost interest and turned away.

For his benefit. Lew said in a loud voice, “Our friend here's had one too many. We'd better give him a hand or he'll flop on his noggin."

Grudgingly admiring Fallon's quick thinking, Kerry helped him hoist the sagging Ben out of the car. As, they stumbled up the steps Kerry saw, behind the curtained window of the front door, the silhouette of a woman. He called out and the door opened from inside. Swiftly they hauled Ben over the threshold.

Ruth Donalson, her fingers still gripping the doorhandle, cried out in relief as Kerry came toward her.

“Kerry! Oh darling, do you know what time it is? I was so frightened—” Her eyes fell on the sagging man and all the blood drained from her face.

Lew Fallon moved, with a catlike swiftness, to slam the door before her scream could reach the ears of the departing policeman.

The woman wailed “Ben! What happened to you?"

“Be quiet, Ruthie,” Kerry urged.

Ruth subsided and drew back, her eyes wide with distress and pity.

Ben's lips moved in their frightful smile. “Anyway you recognized me, Ruthie,” he said. “That's more than, Kerry did."

Ruth Donalson was quick to recover her self-control. “But you are hurt. You're sick! The front bedroom, Kerry, it's closer. Let me go first and pull down the shades."

She hurried ahead, drawing down opaque blinds in a room of spacious dimensions. There was a moment of waiting. They heard the prowlie roar and drive away. Finally Ruth pulled down a blanket and let the two men ease Ben Thrusher down on the clean sheets.

“What's the matter with him, Kerry?” she demanded, while Lew Fallon bent to help Ben out of the bursting slippers.

Ben Thrusher closed his eyes and said huskily, “Radiation burns. Don't worry, Ruthie—I'm in no great pain, It's swell to see you again. You go on to bed now. I've got to talk to Kerry while there's still time."

“Do as he says, dear,” Kerry said. “If there's any trouble I want you to be able to say honestly that you didn't know anything about it."

Ruth started to leave, then turned in bewildered uncertainty toward Lew Fallon. Kerry, recalling himself, said: “Mr. Fallon—my wife. You remember Dr. Fallon, Ruthie?"

Ruth nodded. “Yes, of course. And this young man is his son. I'm sorry we haven't another guest room. But I'll make up a bed right away—"

“Please don't bother,” Fallon protested. “I don't think any of us will do much sleeping."

Kerry asked, “Are the kids in bed, dear?"

“Yes, hours ago—or they ought to be,” Ruth said. The words were hardly out of her mouth when there was a sudden sound behind her.

“Phil!” Kerry snapped, catching sight of a small freckled face in the doorway, “Go right back to bed this instant."

“I heard the police car, Daddy—” the little boy started to protest. But Ruth hurriedly blocked the door so that he could not see into the room, and pulled it shut behind her.

Inside the room, Ben Thrusher said, “Ruthie hasn't changed a bit, has she? Bless her! Phil must be quite a boy by now,” he added with a faint sigh.

“Did you really want to see the kid, Ben?"

Ben said quietly, “Sure. But I don't want him to see me. Not like this."

Kerry said uncomfortably, “Ben, is there anything I can do for you, anything you need? Should I try to get hold of that doctor I mentioned?"

But Ben's eyes had slipped shut. Kerry drew up a chair, and sat motionless at his old friend's side for some minutes. In the back of his mind he was still as concerned as ever about Ben. But the instincts of a newspaperman are a recognizable syndrome. Hunger, thirst, and sex are minor tropisms compared to a newsman's curiosity.

He got up and joined Lew Fallon, who had drawn the shade a little aside and was looking out guardedly into the lighted street.

He said “They're not likely to look for him here. And now don't you think you owe me some explanation of all this? I heard that the Army closed down the rocket project—about the time Ben was supposed to have been killed."

Fallon let the shade fall into place and turned around with a gesture of bitter impatience. “And didn't it ever strike you as being deliberately planned? When the whole planet is in the throes of total war with invaders from outer space, why would the Army close down rocket research at the precise moment when four top scientists disappear!"

Kerry thought he was beginning to understand. “You mean the project just went underground? Then why—?"

The bandaged man on the bed stirred. He said, “Let me tell it, Lew. No, it wasn't an Army ship. You might call me a—well, a fifth columnist. The Army really thought I was dead. I covered my tracks pretty well.” Ben's voice had cleared a little, and was almost recognizable.

“Listen carefully, Kerry. When the Science draft took me in the Army I was told I'd be working on rockets and guided missiles for the Free Americas. We were all set to beat the Asian Alliance to the Moon. We even had rocket bombs with thermonuclear warheads to blast the Asians right off the planet if they gave us any trouble. Then we're confronted with the Pharig threat, and immediately the Free Americas are rubbing noses with the Asians. And what does Earth-United Science Services order me to do? Build solar-power packs—cheap power for private homes. War effort, they called it!"

“But the solar-power project was a wartime measure,” Kerry pointed out. “The big central power-plants were too easy a target. Remember when the Pharigs bombed Niagara and Grand Coulee? If we'd ever had a complete power failure in those areas—"

“Considerate of them, wasn't it—to wait until everyone in both areas was using solar-power,” said Ben quietly. “I know all the arguments for decentralization, Kerry. I fell for it too—for a while. Do you remember the big Pharig ships that crashed in Iceland and Tibet?"

On familiar ground now, Kerry said, “Sure. I went to Iceland to get the story."

Embittered laughter came from Ben's ravaged throat. “I'll bet you didn't get within a mile of it!"

“You'd lose your bet. I saw it from two hundred feet. But I wasn't allowed aboard, and the Army officials deliberately exposed all the film we brought, so we couldn't print photographs."

“For the omnipresent reason of public morale, I suppose,” Ben commented. “I wasn't allowed aboard, either. Not a single man from the rocket-research division was allowed aboard. But they couldn't clamp down on public information eight years ago the way they can today. Pass or no pass, I decided I'd get to see the thing from the inside. So, finally, I did get aboard. And I snooped and snooped until I found it—” His voice thinned out.

Kerry had to prompt him. “Found what?"

“I still don't know who slipped up and left it there for me to find,” Ben said. “But when I saw it, I resigned. That Pharig ship was made right here on Earth, Kerry. It didn't come from outer space at all."

Kerry looked at him, appalled. “Does that mean—that some men from the rocket project sold out to the Pharigs?"

Lew Fallon cut in angrily, “Listen to what he says, will you, not to your own ideas! Why do you think he had to disappear? He's trying to tell you that the ship was a big fake. There aren't any Pharigs. There never were any!"

If Ben had said it, Kerry might have dismissed it as delirium. He stared at the hard-headed youth, then back at the dying man on the bed. Ben's hairless skull moved in silent agreement. When the silence threatened to become unendurable, Kerry said quite reasonably, “But that's impossible."

“Have you ever seen a Pharig? Has anyone you know ever seen one? What do you know about the Pharigs? Not just what do you copy off the news releases and the news wires and the propaganda releases of Earth United, but what do you really know?"

Kerry pressed his fingers against his eyes. “How do I know the south pole exists? I've never been there. How do I know the moon's not made of green cheese? No, I've never seen a Pharig."

“And neither has anybody else, because there aren't any such creatures."

“You're crazy,” Kerry said. But to his surprise his voice carried no conviction. He was trying to remember the different Pharig atrocity stories he had printed in the last year. People brutally murdered in the streets—buildings and property wrecked. Yet the crime rate was falling so low that city after city was abolishing its prison system. If the Pharigs did not exist, why were such inhuman acts committed?

He put the question in terrible puzzlement, adding, “Of course I've never seen a Pharig. Not to my knowledge. But they're humanoid. It takes a neuron-gun charge to prove a man isn't one, and if he is, there isn't enough left for an autopsy. For all I know, you could both be Pharigs!"

“Convenient, isn't it?” Ben Thrusher said, a bleak hopelessness in his voice.

Lew Fallon interrupted. “Have you ever seen a single so-called Pharig atrocity that couldn't be the work of human vandals or hooligans?"

Kerry said helplessly, “There's no arguing on those grounds."

Ben twisted spasmodically on the bed, pressing his swollen face into the pillow. His voice came out muffled, “No arguing with me. What about you? You understand it better now. Even if the hoax could be exposed, who'd believe it after thirteen years? And the longer it goes on, the harder it would be to convince anyone. Oh, hell, why didn't I die in the crash? After all I went through to get in touch with you—” He pounded the pillow furiously with his swathed fists, then collapsed and lay still, gasping and choking.

Kerry approached the bed and laid a hand on the quivering shoulders. “Try to get some rest, old man. Can't you tell me in the morning?"

Ben Thrusher rolled over. His face had visibly deteriorated in the last few hours. Now it was a swollen, grotesque mask, unnaturally drained of all expression.

Fallon said fiercely, “Give him a chance, will you? He hasn't time to argue every point with you! And if you believe in this non-existent war, name one war plant that's making anything in the shape of a weapon! Why did we never use any of our stockpiled H-bombs against the Pharigs?"

“In our own atmosphere?” Kerry demanded. “If we'd done that the radioactive fallout would have endangered the lives of our own citizens!"

“I know what the war plants are making. Solar power packs. I'll bet you have one on this house right now?” He mimicked Kerry's nod. “Cheap proteins, yeast and fungi stuff, for the Famine Belt countries—"

“Well, what of that? An Earth divided is an Earth—"

“I'd rather you didn't repeat that one-world propaganda excuse in my presence,” Ben said weakly.

“Why didn't we accept the risks and wallop the Pharigs right out of the Solar System?"

“When we didn't even have space flight?"

Ben gave an almost inarticulate groan of protest. “We didn't have space flight? The everlasting hell we didn't! I developed the drive myself—my team, that is—and the Army of Earth United thanked us politely, closed down the rocket project and told me to go build solar-power packs instead."

His voice failed, and Fallon took up the story. It had taken them eight years. Young Fallon did not know all of the details, but he sketched them in. Eight years of being officially dead; eight years of hiding, of working in secret.

He would not name the private enterprise and industries who had financed the ship. But he was quite explicit about their reasons. They were men, and groups of men, who for one reason or another hated the new regime. They were men who had been appalled by what they considered the betrayal of the Free Americas through cooperation with the Asian Alliance and who rebelled against the military rule which the population as a whole accepted as a necessity. They were above all men who objected to the centralized police law—for although the Army of Earth United functioned on a planet-wide scale, there was no government more central than the local government of each city.

“But why” Kerry asked, “would anyone deliberately set out to hoax a whole world ?"

“Isn't it obvious?” Ben Thrusher stirred against Ruthie's embroidered pillowcases. “Power. The seeds were planted far back in the Third World War, when they first began giving the President special emergency powers. The Three Days’ War put the whole continent under martial law, and now their non-existent Pharig invasion has done the same for the whole world!"

Kerry was almost beyond speech. He got up and paced the room in silence. Finally he said, “It makes a kind of sense. Only maybe there was an emergency you don't know anything about. Would you rather have the Free Americas and the Asian Alliance dropping bombs on each other? Remember the Three Days’ War—"

“But we won it!” Ben said fiercely, “We were a great nation then! We could knock out half the world at the push of a button, and now—"

Fallon chimed in, “And now we have a non-existent war where nobody gets killed except on paper, where the Asian Alliance no longer threatens our very existence—"

“—and where scientists spend their valuable time and resources fiddling with solar power and free food and birth control when we could have freed the world and set our course for the stars.” Ben's voice shook with the intensity of his emotion. “Kerry, what have we got?"

Beyond the window, the curfew lights winked out.

“If you're right,” Kerry said thoughtfully, “We've got what men have been looking for since history began. We've got peace."

Ben Thrusher shook his head.

“Solitudinem faciunt: pacem appellant,” he quoted with heavy bitterness. “They made a wilderness and call it peace!"

[Back to Table of Contents]

IV

Sunlight was streaming in through the window of Kerry's private office. He stared at the sheet of paper which he'd just removed from his typewriter, and said—more to himself than to Lew Fallon—Someone once said that you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

“The hell you can't!” Fallon's voice was bitter. “It's been done time and time again! Hoaxes, even clumsy and silly ones, have thrown whole states into panic until somebody in an ‘official’ position denied them. This time, there were no denials, that's all. What do people believe? On a world as big as this one, by and large, they believe what they're told."

Fallon leaned across Kerry's desk. “Listen. I was a rookie in the Night Police. I never saw a Pharig, but it never occurred to me to doubt their existence. My training manuals told me how to fight them. I had a special gun to kill them. My whole job was to keep people off the streets to protect them against the Pharigs! If a crime was committed, and we failed to actually catch somebody in the act, everyone assumed that the Pharigs had done it. Humans weren't supposed to be capable of such things! I'm just learning what humans are capable of! A thousand—even five hundred—people could know and share the secret, and a whole world could be hoaxed!"

Kerry handed Fallon his editorial. “If we can get this into print we can start people asking questions,” he said.

He was remembering all he had heard from Ben, and from young Fallon after he had finally persuaded Ben to take a sedative and try to sleep. Kerry himself had not slept at all. During his years as head of the Times-Telegram he had been content to print the news as he received it. He had been content to be just another dupe in the human herd!

Now Ben Thrusher was giving his life so that the truth could come out. The fact could not be disputed. If Ben had given himself up for immediate medical attention, they might have been able to save him. By the ghosts of all newsman, here was a crusade worth taking on!

The youngster was musing over the editorial. “'It has long been the policy of this paper to print all the news without bias and without questioning the sources, when we had reasonable assurance of the integrity of those sources,'” he read aloud. “I like this part down here better, though. ‘The people of the sabotaged former Government of the Free Americas have been made the victim of the most audacious coup in modern history—’”

Someone knocked at the door. When Kerry drew back the bolt and looked out the morning sunlight glinted brightly on a metal service belt and the somber color of a uniform.

“Mr. Donalson?” the policeman asked.

Kerry nodded, and stepped back from the doorway.

The man showed credentials. “I believe you once knew a government scientist by the name of Benedict Thrusher?” he said. “Is that correct?"

Kerry frowned. “Why, yes. We were very good friends at one time. When he died eight years ago—” Kerry paused in consternation.

Lew Fallon's muscles had gone rigid. He tried to telegraph to the youth, with a casual nod, that what he was witnessing was just the routine inquiry which he had been expecting all along. But it was no use. He knew he had to get Lew Fallon out of the room before he did something unwise.

Kerry said to the policeman, “Excuse me just a minute.” Then he pointed to the editorial in Fallon's hand. “Joe, take that down to the press room and tell them to give it a box on the front page."

He prayed that Fallon would see through the little comedy and would obey him without question. He had a bad moment—fortunately the policeman's back was turned—when Fallon looked startled and indignant. But he need not have been alarmed. Fallon glanced down at the editorial and almost instantly departed.

“Check, Mr. Donalson,” Fallon said.

Kerry tried not to let his relief betray him. He turned abruptly and gave his attention to the policeman again. “You were saying?"

The officer put his credentials away. “Please come with me, Mr. Donalson,” he said.

Kerry's solar plexus knotted. “Do you mind telling me why?” he demanded.

“I'd rather not say here,” the officer replied.

Kerry stood up and reached for his coat. It still might be the routine inquiry. More as a test than as a real question; “May I call my wife?” he asked.

The policeman motioned Kerry to precede him through the door. “There's no need for that,” he said. “You'll be coming right back."

Kerry framed a silent “Oh yeah?” but he did not say it aloud. He sagged despondently in the seat of the prowlie, while the siren screamed through the jammed streets.

After a few minutes, he decided that a too-stubborn silence could be as dangerously revealing as unguarded talk.

“Why am I being taken in a police car?” he asked, in a dignified way. “Where am I going?"

The officer answered at once. “Your friend didn't die, Mr. Donalson. He's up in the police-precinct hospital. I guess he asked for you."

“Ben Thrusher?” Kerry felt trapped. He had been so sure that Ben would be safe at his house. But if they had taken him from there, what might have happened to Ruthie and the children? He found himself wishing that Ben had chosen a man without wife or children to confide in.

The precinct station of the Night Police was an immense remodeled factory. Inside, the halls were dusty, and full of odd unfamiliar smells. Only on the top floor was the corridor sanitary, and pungent with the flavor of disinfectants. Still shepherded by the policeman, Kerry found himself being hustled along behind the white-smocked back of a capped nurse.

The policeman said in a whisper, outside a door, “Your friend's in there. I better warn you, he's a mess. I guess the Pharigs had him prisoner all these years. He looks like it, anyway."

Kerry went in. The walls and the bed and pillows were a pale frosty green. Ben's face, against that cool background was shocking, horribly disintegrated even in the few hours since Kerry had last seen him. A needle dripped fluid into an ‘immobilized’ arm. The hands, tightly re-bandaged, showed brownish stains through the white folds.

Across the bed Kerry faced a tall darkly handsome man, uniformed—not in the somber color of the Night Police—but in the blazing blue of the Army of Earth United. A commander's stars sparkled on his sleeve.

Kerry said softly, “Ben—"

Ben's eyes forced themselves open. A pallid flicker of recognition stirred in them, and the hideous cavern of the mouth moved. From somewhere back of it a deep despairing sound came, that might, or might not, have been a word. Even that much effort twisted the ruined face into spasms, and the tall man on the other side bent forward.

“Don't try to talk,” he said gently. “Everything's all right."

Questions were screaming inside Kerry's brain—questions Ben could never answer and the police probably would turn aside. He stared in fierce interrogation at the stranger, who bowed very slightly.

“Mr. Donalson?” the tall officer said, “I am Commander Shakhara Lal, stationed in Delhi.” He offered his hand, but Kerry ignored it. The commander walked around the bed. “I assure you, Mr. Donalson,” he said, “we knew Ben Thrusher's whereabouts long before he tried to contact you. We had not the slightest desire to make him prisoner, although if he had surrendered himself sooner—” he broke off, looking at Ben's inert body.

“Dr. Chapman is recovering nicely,” he added. He spoke perfect English, but a certain extra precision and sibilance betrayed that it was not his native language.

Kerry started to speak, but, just then the face on the pillow suddenly loosened and seemed to come apart. The nurse started forward, then tightened her lips and said reproachfully, “He's gone! If we'd had him here a week ago—"

While the nurse drew the sheet over what had been Ben Thrusher, Kerry stood motionless, unnerved by tension and grief and a sense of futile wrath. He looked up suddenly and realized that Commander Lal seemed equally unnerved.

The Indian was looking down at the shrouded form, and his fists were tightly clenched. He said aloud, and not to Kerry, “If he could have waited only three more years he would have seen the end of it. He could have had the glory he deserved."

He raised his head, and now he was speaking to Kerry. “There's nothing more that anyone can do now for him here. Mr. Donalson, will you join me in the office downstairs?"

He left the room without a backward glance, walking with an air of authority as if it never occurred to him that anyone could question his orders. Kerry's brain, cold with anger, began working again as soon as he stepped out into the corridor. He knew that downstairs were precinct headquarters, offices, the barracks of the city's enormous force of Night Police, and the detention cells where he supposed they'd hold him incommunicado—like Ben's colleague. But if he could get away—

They'd expect him to hide, naturally. What else does a fugitive do? But all he wanted was to make sure that his editorial got printed and the Times-Telegram reached the streets.

After that he couldn't disappear, or be listed as—he understood it better now—another Pharig casualty. He could do that much for Ben's memory, and he would do it, or die in the attempt.

At the end of the corridor, past the elevators, a small and narrow stairway led down to what was evidently a back alley. Kerry waited until the commander had stepped into the elevator, followed by the policeman who had brought Kerry here. Then he abruptly stepped back, dodged, and made a break for the stairs.

Someone behind him gave a startled shout. There was the sound of a door slamming shut, running feet, and then, just as Kerry reached the tops step, someone yelled, “Stop that crazy fool!"

A blinding light stabbed at Kerry's eyes, and a paralyzing cold hit him over the heart. The every nerve and muscle contracted in agony, and he collapsed in a bundle of jerking reflexes. Conscious, but powerless to control his body, he felt himself rolling, twisting and bumping, down the stairs. His head struck marble, and he blacked out.

[Back to Table of Contents]

V

Kerry became aware again of his surroundings very slowly. First there was light and air and the jab of a needle in his biceps. Then his eyes blinked open, and sunlight pierced them like another needle. There was a painful prickling in every part of his body and he groaned when he tried to move his feet. He was lying, without his coat and shoes, on a hospital bed, and a young man in a white jacket was standing beside him.

“You wake up again? Good.” He looked down at Kerry, chuckling. “What happened, to you? A touch of the sun? Well, we're all more or less crazy these days. I'm afraid you'll be stiff and sore for a few days; those neuron-guns are no joke."

He beckoned to a nurse, who brought a sterile tray. The intern rolled back Kerry's sleeve, dabbed at it and jabbed him again with a needle.

Kerry's lips were still stiff. He put up his hand and rubbed at them and managed to mumble, “What's that?"

“Neurotone,” the intern said. “If you have much muscular pain, see your own doctor and get another shot.” He turned to someone just outside the door. “He's all right now. He must have caught it right in the chest. Good thing you have a strong heart, Mr. Donalson. A man your age doesn't want to take too many shocks like that."

A policeman stood hesitant in the doorway. “Listen, Mister,” he said, “I'm sorry I had to shoot you, only don't you never run away when a policeman yells at you. You know we can't take chances with the Pharigs!"

“You needn't apologize, Sergeant,” said another voice behind him.

Kerry, stooping to lace his shoes, straightened and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. He looked up at Commander Lal, who made a dismissing motion at the policeman.

“A guilty conscience is a very bad thing to have around a police station, Mr. Donalson,” said Commander Lal. “If you had waited for a minute you would have known there was no charge against you. And just to relieve you mind I may add that you will be perfectly free to leave here in half an hour. However, I must first request the favor of an interview."

Downstairs in a small, windowless office, the commander took a seat behind, a battered desk, obviously not his own, and gestured Kerry to a chair.

“Before we begin,” he said quietly, “I want to make one thing clear. Ben Thrusher was brought here at his own request—a statement which the members of your family can verify. At the last moment, I believe he didn't want to make trouble for you by dying in your house."

His eyes, dark and level and severe, met those of Kerry across the desk. “I assure you that you are in no personal danger,” he said. “On the other hand, it is absolutely imperative that we keep you from making—shall we say—irresponsible statements."

The door to an inner office opened, and Lew Fallon, escorted by Night Police, came in. He looked a trifle rumpled and sinister, with a torn collar and the traces of a bloody nose, and he was accompanied by a man whose face Kerry dimly recognized before memory could put a name to him. He was Paul Chapman, the Australian rocketry expert who had dropped out of sight at the same time as Ben Thrusher. He was bandaged like Ben and battered and toothless. But he was recognizable.

Commander Lal dropped a crumpled piece of paper on the desk. “I believe that you'll want to reconsider before printing this,” he said.

Kerry did not need to look at it to know that it was the editorial and rough draft of the news story he had written. He crushed it in his hand.

Lew Fallon said bitterly, “I did the best I could, Mr. Donalson. Ben's dead now. Like my Dad. And for what?"

“Be quiet, Lew,” said Doctor Chapman in a resonant voice which had a little of the same blurred quality as Ben's, but was made sharper by an accent of authority. “We appreciate what you did for Ben. Only—"

“Only it was the wrong thing,” the commander interrupted. “We all appreciate it, and I, perhaps, most of all. But your mistaken kindness killed him, Fallon."

He leaned forward slightly, and said, “I shall be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Donalson. If you were a farmer, or a plumber, or the manager of a cigar store, we would let you talk all you pleased, for we could be quite sure that no one would listen. We could always have you confined—briefly of course—in a mental institution, as a precaution against anyone believing you. Or at the worst—” he paused. “At the worst we could have you listed as—another Pharig casualty."

Fallon burst out, “And they call this a free world!"

The commander ignored him. “There are laws against inciting to riot,” he said slowly, as if searching for the right words. “And you are in the peculiar position of having a large communications medium at your command. I assure you we would have no compunctions about invoking those laws against you. However, we hope such drastic action may not be necessary."

At present, there are four other newspapers in your exact position. One in Buenos Aires, one in Dallas, Texas, one in Bombay and one in Sheffield, England. To the owners and editors of these newspapers, we have made the identical revelation we are making to you. Ben Thrusher was right. There are no Pharigs. There never were any."

“So Ben was right,” Dr. Chapman repeated, looking hard at Kerry. “We've actually got a military dictatorship."

Commander Lal said, “We had a military dictatorship after the Three Days’ War—or rather, we had two of them. The Asian Alliance—we freely admit it—were planning to use plague germs in the next war, and I don't believe even your most rabid nationalists would deny that the Free Americas were making rocket-bombs with radiocobalt warheads. Atomic war is a lemming urge, and it would at least have remedied our worst problem—overpopulation. Natural resources were going fast. Coal and oil were virtually gone, and we had to save the heavy isotopes for space flight, or we'd never get off the earth, and we'd die on a worn-out planet."

He shrugged heavily. “The Pharig invasion was a desperate expedient. The so-called military decision not to use H-bombs on the invaders was another. Actually, all the thermonuclear weapons had been dismantled to replace dwindling power resources until we could get workable solar power—and to conserve something for space flight."

“If you were saving heavy metals for space flight,” Kerry asked bluntly, “why did the Earth United pigeonhole Ben Thrusher's space drive?"

Dr. Chapman started to answer, but the commander asked bluntly, “Do you know what the birth rate is?"

Kerry didn't. “I understood,” he remarked with sarcastic emphasis, “that it was a statistic that could give aid and comfort to the enemy."

“Any development of a new frontier tends to raise the birth rate explosively. That's fine. When we open the planets we'll need a high birth rate. But after the Three Days’ War—you remember—the crime wave was so terrific that both the Americas and the Asian Alliance had to throw their whole armies into policing.

“With the high birth rate and scarce food supplies, most families couldn't get along unless both parents worked. With neglected children—and too few schools and teachers—crime skyrocketed. The emergency—even a non-existent one from outer space—let us pass drastic laws which the public wouldn't have accepted in peacetime. Food rationing. Conversion of luxury crops to food raising. The non-worker law for mothers of families. That was unpopular, but it did cut down juvenile crime."

“And the curfew law,” Kerry said. “If there are no Pharigs, that's tyranny."

“You're perfectly right,” the commander said. “But the Night Police drain off the unemployed population. It's cheaper to pay them, as a civilian army, than to maintain prison systems and public welfare programs. If a man is unemployed or unemployable, he goes in the Night Police and it's up to him and his intelligence whether he sweeps the streets or becomes responsible for the peace of a whole city."

“So that was it!” Fallon muttered.

Commander Lal rose restlessly and paced the room. “The curfew lights—crimes were worked mostly in darkness—brought the crime rate down right away. Getting rid of unemployment and starvation took away all excuse for crimes. There are no more victims of society. The only criminals now are those who commit crimes of passion, and we don't need to be sentimental about them any more. Most crime is prevented and the rest can be punished effectively. Attributing all crimes of violence to the Pharigs made crime, in the public eye, equivalent to saying inhuman or alien, and destroyed the superficial glamour around crime and violence.

Dr. Chapman raised a hand and made the very protest that was on Kerry's lips. “But in a free society, certainly man has inherent rights and freedoms."

The commander looked tired. “Yes. But freedom exists only where there is elbowroom for a man to move without gouging his neighbor's ribs. We just don't have it on Earth any more. And all idealistic statements to the contrary, no honest man needs that kind of freedom in these days.

“Men have short working hours and ample leisure. Any further freedom is license we can't afford. We've had to keep the population fed and in order until we can find living space or a differential method of birth control. I mean by that, a way to lower the birth rate without also lowering the rate of intelligence-per-thousand."

He looked at Kerry. “We could use your help."

“To keep on hoaxing the people?"

“No, to un-hoax them, if that is an allowable expression.” Commander Lal returned to his seat. “The Pharig invasion is almost over. When we get out into space, it will be simple to stage a few mock battles and defeat them conclusively—and forever."

Fallon demanded, “But why not tell them the truth?"

The Indian propped his elbows on the desk. He seemed worn out with his long explanation. The blazing insignia of Earth United seemed a glaring anachronism on his austere frame.

“There is an Indian proverb,” he began slowly, “concerning the man who rode a tiger. He couldn't stay on and he was afraid to get off. Now that we're on the verge of leading the people of Earth out into space, suppose we did reveal that the Pharig invasion was a hoax staged for our own purposes. Then suppose we met a real alien race?"

“Good lord,” said Kerry,

“It's entirely possible."

Chapman said, “I suppose history must eventually took at the Pharig invasion as a kind of air-raid drill."

“Yes,” the Indian agreed, “To see whether Earthmen were capable of putting aside their individual concerns and functioning as a united world.” With an apologetic smile he touched the insignia he wore.

Somehow to Kerry it seemed that the insignia was insignificant now and the man himself was the symbol of a greater power. Kerry slowly crumpled the editorial he still held in his hand, shredded it, and dropped the pieces on the desk. “You win, Commander."

Fallon said, “But Ben—and my father. What about them?"

“Ben Thrusher was a martyr,” Commander Lal said. He looked sorrowful, almost shaken. “But he was a martyr only to a lie. Go and write that editorial over again, Donalson. Make it an obituary instead, and make it good. Ben Thrusher—and Dr. Fallon, too—deserved it. Say, if you want to, that they gave their lives for space flight. It's true and they ought to rest in peace. Because the discovery of space flight means an end to the Pharigs. I'm not in the mood to think up famous last words."

So even Ben's death was to be converted to the sober uses of expediency.

“Maybe his own last words would do,” Kerry said bitterly. “'They make a wilderness and call it peace!’”

The commander swung around. “Tacitus,” he said. “The words of a barbarian chief inciting his tribe to revolt against Rome. But Rome won, even though the barbarians sacked her. She kept peace, of a kind, until the very barbarians who destroyed her found time to repent and admire what they had destroyed, and a few of them remembered enough to preserve what they could.

“Even the decadence of Rome was valuable in its way. So are the curfew and Night Police. If they lasted, it would be genuine decadence. It's almost over. The day of the barbarians and pioneers will begin again when the first rocket reaches Mars. But we've accomplished something."

Lal pointed to the recruiting sign on the office wall, which Kerry and the others had taken so much for granted that they had not even noticed it.

AN EARTH DIVIDED IS AN EARTH CONQUERED!

“That sign means something,” the commander said. “Even Ben Thrusher would have admitted that. Although he died fighting it."

And Kerry left with the first lines of the obituary already ringing in his head: “A martyr to the desire for freedom, Benedict Thrusher, listed as a dead man for eight years, died today after wresting from the Pharigs the secret of the space drive that will mean their eventual extermination from Earth..."

And all the rest is written in history.

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