VII

Earth lay fat and smug under the sun, seemingly unchanged since Duke

had left it. For generations the populace had complained that they were

draining themselves dry to rebuild other worlds, but they had grown

rich on the investment. It was the only planet where men worked shorter

and shorter hours to give them more leisure in which to continue a

frantic effort to escape boredom. It was also the only world where the

mention of aliens made men think of their order books instead of their

weapons.

Duke walked steadily away from the grotesquely elaborate landing field.

He had less than thirty cents in his pocket, but his breakfast aboard

had left him satisfied for the moment. He turned onto a wider street,

heading the long distance across the city toward the most probable

location of the recruiting stations.

The Outer Federation station would be off the main section, since the

official line was disapproving of such a union. But he was sure there

would be one. The system of recruiting was a tradition too hard to

break. Earth used it as an escape valve for her troublemakers. And

since such volunteers made some of the best of all fighters, they had

already decided the outcome of more than one war. By carefully juggling

the attention given the stations, Earth could influence the battles

without seeming to do so.

The air was thick with the smell of late summer, and there was pleasure

in that, until Duke remembered the odor of Meloa, and its cause. Later

the cloying perfume of women mixed with the normal industrial odors of

the city, until his nose was overdriven to the point of cutoff. He saw

things in the shop windows that he had forgotten, but he had no desire

for them. And over everything came the incessant yammer of voices

saying nothing, radios blaring, television babbling, and vending

machines shouting.

He gave up at last and invested half his small fund in a subway. It was

equally noisy, but it took less time. Beside him, a fungoid creature

from Clovis was busy practicing silently on its speaking machine, but

nobody else seeemed to notice.

Duke's head was spinning when he reached the surface again. He stopped

to let it clear, wondering if he'd ever found this world home. It

wouldn't matter soon, though; once he was signed up at the recruiting

station, there would be no time to think.

He saw the sign, only a few blocks from where the recruiting posters

for Meloa had been so long ago. It was faded, but he could read the

lettering, and he headed for it. As he had expected, it was on a dirty

back street, where the buildings were a confusion of shipping concerns

and cheaper apartment houses.

He knew something was wrong when he was a block away. There was no

pitch being delivered by a barking machine, and no idle group watching

the recruiting efforts on the street. In fact, nobody was in front of

the vacant store that had been used, and the big posters were ripped

down.

He reached the entrance and stopped. The door was half open, but it

carried a notice that the place had been closed by order of the World

Foreign Office. Through the dirty glass, Duke could see a young man of

about twenty sitting slumped behind a battered desk.

He stepped in and the boy looked up apathetically. "You're too late,

captain. Neutrality went on hours ago when the first word came through.

Caught me just ready to ship out--after two lousy months recruiting

here, I have to be the one stranded."

"You're lucky," Duke told him mechanically, not sure whether he meant

it or not. Oddly, the idea of a kid like this mixed up in an

interplanetary war bothered him. He turned to go, then hesitated. "Got

a newspaper or a directory around that I could borrow?"

The boy fished a paper out of a wastebasket. "It's all yours, captain.

The whole place is yours. Slam the door when you go out. I'm going over

to the Cathay office."

"I'll go along," Duke offered. The address of that place was all he'd

wanted from the paper. He'd have preferred the Federation to joining up

with Earth colonists, but beggars never made good choosers.

The kid shook his head. He dragged open a drawer, found a slip of

paper, and handed it over. It was a notice that the legal maximum age

for recruiting had been reduced to thirty! "You'd never make it,

captain," he said.

Duke looked at the paper in his hands and at the dim reflection of his

face in a window. "No," he agreed. "I didn't make it."

He followed the boy to the door, staring out at the street, thick with

its noises and smells. He dropped to the doorsill and looked briefly up

at the sky where two ships were cutting out to space. Flannery had

known the regulation and hadn't told him. Yet it was his own fault; the

age limit was lower now, but there had always been a limit. He had

simply forgotten that he'd grown older.

He found it hard to realize he'd been no older than the kid when he'd

signed up for the war with Throm.

* * * * *

For a while he sat looking at the street, trying to realize what had

happened to him. It took time to face the facts. He listened with half

his attention as a small group of teen-age boys came from one of the

buildings and began exchanging angry insults with another group

apparently waiting for them on the corner. From their attitudes, some

of them were carrying weapons and were half-eager, half-afraid to use

them. It was hard to remember back to the time when such things had

seemed important to him. He considered putting a stop to the argument,

before it got out of hand, since no police were near; but adults had no

business in kid fights. He watched them retreat slowly back to an

alley, still shouting to work up their courage. Maybe he should be glad

that there was even this much fire left under the smug placidity of

Earth.

Finally, he picked up the newspaper from where he'd dropped it and

began turning back to the want ads. His needs were few, and there

should be dishwashing jobs, at least, somewhere in the city. He still

had to eat and find some place to sleep.

A headline glared up at him, catching his attention. He started to skim

the story, and then read it thoroughly. Things weren't going at all as

he'd expected in the Outer Worlds, if the account were true; and

usually, such battle reports weren't altered much.

The aliens had developed a union of their own--if anything, a stronger

one than the humanoids had. Apparently they'd chased the Federation

ships into some kind of a trap. Losses on both sides were huge. And

raids had begun on all the alien and humanoid planets.

He scowled as he came to the latest developments. One section of the

Federation fleet under Sra of Chumkt had pulled out, accusing the

faction headed by Barth Nevesh of leading the aliens to the humanoid

rendezvous. Kel's leader had gone after the deserters, fought it out

with them in the middle of the larger battle, killed Sra, and declared

himself the head of the whole Federation. It was madness that should

have led to complete annihilation; only the fumbling, uncoördinated

leadership of the aliens had saved the humanoid fleets. And now the

Federation was coming apart at the seams, with Barth Nevesh frantically

scurrying around to catch up the pieces.

Duke read it through again, but with no added information. It was a

shock to know that the aliens had combined against the humanoid

Federation. Still, looking back on that, he could begin to see that

they would have to, once they knew of the Federation. But the rest of

the account--

Flannery's words came back to him. The director had been right. His

prediction was already coming true, after only three days--unless he

had either had prior knowledge or juggled things to make it come true!

Duke considered it, but he could see no way Flannery could either learn

or act in advance of the arrival of the ship on Earth. The Federation

was farther from Meloa than from this planet. He'd been forced to

depend on the same accounts Duke had read in the papers on board the

ship.

Then Duke glanced at the date on the current paper idly, and his

thoughts jolted completely out of focus. It was dated only three days

later than the paper he had seen when they were docked on Clovis!

Without instantaneous communication, it was impossible. He might have

been mistaken about the date before, but--

Nothing fitted. The feeling of uncertainty came back, crowding out the

minor matter of his memory of the date. He stared at the richness of

even this poor section of an Earth that huddled here as if afraid of

its own shadows, yet reeked with self-satisfaction. He thought of Meloa

and Throm, and the gallant try at Federation that had been made on the

Outer Worlds. Strength had to lie in union and action; yet all the

evidence seemed to say that it lay in timidity and sloth.

Reluctantly he turned the page away from the news, to seek for the job

sections. From the alley, there came the sound of a police whistle, and

shouts that faded into the distance. It was probably the breaking up of

the teen-age argument. A few people ran by, heading for the excitement,

but Duke had lost all interest. A taxi stopped nearby and he heard a

patter that might have been that of children's feet, but he didn't look

up.

* * * * *

Then a sharper whistle shrilled almost in his ear and he twisted around

to stare at a creature who was gazing at him. Four spindly legs led up

to a globular body encased in a harness-like contraption. Above the

body, two pairs of thin arms were waving about, while a long neck ended

in a bird-like head, topped by two large ears.

The ears suddenly seemed to shimmer in the air, and a surprisingly

human voice sounded. "You're Captain Duke O'Neill!"

Before Duke could answer, a small hand came out quickly to find his and

begin shaking it, while the ears twittered on in excitement. "I'm

honored to meet you, Captain O'Neill. I've been studying your work

against Throm. Amazingly clever strategy! Permit me--I'm Queeth, lately

a prince of Sugfarth. Perhaps you noticed our ship? No, of course not.

You must have landed at the government field. My crew and I are on the

way to the war about to begin between Kloomiria and Cathay."

"Why tell me about it?" Duke asked roughly. Sugfarth--the ship he'd

seen diagrammed had come from there. If one of those titans was to be

used against Cathay, Earth's colony was doomed. And the impertinent

little monster--!

The creature tried to imitate a shrug with his upper set of arms. "Why

not, captain? We're registered here as a recruiting ship for Cathay, so

it's no secret. We thought we might as well carry along some of the men

going out to help, since we had to pass near Earth anyhow. And I

dropped by here in the hope that there might be a few who had failed to

join the Federation and who would like to switch to Cathay."

"Wait a minute," Duke said. He studied the alien, trying to rake what

he'd learned from the article out of his memory. But no record of

subtlety or deceit had been listed there. The Sugfarth were supposed to

be honest--in fact, they'd been one of the rare races to declare their

war in advance. Somehow, too, the words had a ring of truth in them.

"_For_ Cathay?"

"Certainly, captain. For whom else? The civilized Earth races naturally

have to stick together against the barbarians."

Duke stared at the almost comic figure, juggling the words he had heard

with the obvious facts. "What Earth races? Do you mean that Earth is

now giving citizenship to your people?"

"Not on this planet, of course." A pair of beady black eyes stared

back, as if trying to understand a ridiculous question. "But we're

citizens of Earth's economic-cultural-diplomatic system, naturally."

Duke felt something nibble at his mind, but he couldn't grasp it. And

he wasn't accustomed to carrying on long chitchat with aliens. He

shoved the thoughts away and reached for the paper again. "You won't

find recruits here, Queeth. Only me. And I'm too old for the recruiting

law. Besides, I've got to find a job."

He turned the pages, locating the column he wanted. What had Flannery

meant about Republican Rome? Duke could remember dimly something about

Rome's granting citizenship to her conquered neighbors. It had been the

basis of the city's growth and later power. Now if Earth could inspire

citizenship from conquered aliens--

Queeth made a sound like a sigh and shuffled his four feet on the

sidewalk uncertainly. "If you came aboard on a visit, who could stop

our taking off at once?" he suggested. "We have room for another

officer, and we need men like you, Captain O'Neill, to help us against

the aliens out there!"

Duke looked down at the small face, and even the alien features

couldn't disguise the obvious sincerity behind the words. It should

have made his decision automatic. He'd come here to be recruited, and

he was being accepted. There was a ship waiting for him, where his

skills could be used. With such a ship, things would be different from

the war he had known. He had a picture of Kloomiria under attack from

it.

Abruptly, he was seeing again the exploding ships of Throm, and the

charnel smell of Kordule on victorious Meloa was thick in his nose.

He stood up, shaking his head, and held out his hand, groping for the

phrases that had been all-important once among the recruits he had

joined. "Thanks, Queeth," he said finally. "But I've got something to

catch up on here. Good luck--on to victory--and give the aliens hell!"

He stood watching Queeth patter off toward the waiting cab and saw it

drive away. Then he turned to the want ads in earnest.

Nothing was clear in his mind yet, but he'd need a job first, then a

room near the library. He had a lot of current history to catch up on.

Whatever Earth was up to had to be recorded somewhere, if he could find

it.