Lindoo's return from the Solar Sector was that of a conqueror. There
were speeches and parades, and public demonstrations; and the hours
wore by interminably. Lindoo knew just how important his victory had
been, and yet how obvious had been his chances of winning. Even the
Head of Strategy of a proud and tyrannical race could feel within
him the seeds of discontent. He suffered the publicity because such
propaganda was necessary, and as soon as he could, he sought private
audience with Vorgan.
"Hail the conquering hero," greeted Vorgan, as Lindoo entered. The tone
was slightly sarcastic.
Lindoo was not hurt. "How many know?" he asked the Lord of All.
"Very few--thanks to a pleased fate."
"But we know," said Lindoo bitterly. "What a victory. A bulldozer
crushing an ant hill; a pile driver smashing eggs; an elephant warding
off mosquitoes."
"And yet," Vorgan told him, "unlimited freedom would build the ant hill
beyond the ability of the bulldozer, and the mosquitoes could smother
the elephant if their numbers filled the atmosphere. It was necessary."
Lindoo nodded. "We lost seventeen million of our first-line fighting
men. They were bitter opponents."
"Think of what might have happened if they'd expanded for another two
thousand years."
"That would be double their scientific history, I think," agreed
Lindoo. "They've been expanding on a high order exponential curve.
Another two thousand years would have put a barrier across the
Galaxy with the Solar Sector at the center, and the Loard-vogh might
never complete their plan. We acted rightly, Vorgan. But in spite of
seventeen million men lost, and in spite of the danger to our plans,
I feel that there is something strictly awry. They are an intelligent
race. They must have known their inability to win--yet they fought like
demons. We could well afford to lose seventeen million expendables.
They could not, yet--?"
"Did they?"
"They must have. Our forces may have been overeager. An attacking force
usually loses more than the defending force. Our fighter psychology
is more battle-minded than theirs, for our soldiers are trained to
think only in terms of battle. But even so, Vorgan, the tacticians and
statisticians estimate that we could have lost no more than two to one.
And granting that, it means a loss of eight and one half million men
lost from the Solar Sector."
* * * * *
Vorgan thought that over. "They could ill afford to lose that many of
their prime citizens."
"And knowing that, and knowing that they are of a high order of
intelligence, I ask again: Why did they fight?"
"Could it have been sheer desperation?"
"There was calculated strategy in their battle plan. There was a
purpose, I tell you. It is obscure to me, but there was a definite
plan, and no plan is executed without a purpose."
"Could they have hoped to hold us off?"
"Never. They knew our strength. They knew our plan. They understood our
purpose, and they recognized our determination. Does the weakling,
knowing all factors, fight against his superior?"
"It might have been the determination--knowing they must lose--to take
as many enemies with them as possible."
"The cornered rat technique?"
"It has been done before," observed Vorgan.
Lindoo agreed. "You were not there," he told the Lord of All. "Their
plan bore the stamp of a superior strategist who had some purpose in
mind. A purpose that required him to fight a losing battle for other
reasons than the cornered rat technique. You see, Vorgan, the cornered
rat technique presents a rather peculiar psychological problem. It
is a suicide-fighter's psychology. And suicide fighters operate in
a vastly different manner than a man who is fighting for something
beyond the abstract concepts of a victory for his contemporaries and
his descendants. Even the most vicious and well-trained of suicide
fighters is inferior to a reasonably well trained man wrested from his
home and impressed for service. The psychology of the suicide fighter
evolves into a seeking-for-death technique, which lessens his survival
factor over a man fighting to preserve his integrity--and fighting to
get the battle over with so that he can go home and resume his daily
life. We know that. That is why the Loard-vogh fighter is supreme.
He is no suicide fighter. He is vicious because he has been wrested
from his home and family, and his tenure of service depends upon his
ability. Since a victorious soldier is mustered out of arms and sent
home sooner than a lax one, it urges all men to perform great deeds,
act in a superior manner, and to be victorious in the shortest time so
that he may return to his daily life. The Terrans are far from suicide
fighters, Lord of All. Their theories of warfare are similar to ours.
In fact," smiled Lindoo thoughtfully, "every race that offers us a
stiff resistance seems to have come to that conclusion."
"Then what was their purpose? Seems to me that they must have been
fighting for something."
"I don't know. They will fight if outnumbered, of course. The entire
Solar Sector is composed of forms of life with a bitterly high value of
survival factor. That, coupled with high intelligence, should indicate
that surrender offers the greater number of survivals."
"Perhaps you do not understand their psychology."
Lindoo admitted this. "I have with me their mental leader--the former
susceptible Billy Thompson. Perhaps we may get some idea by questioning
him."
"Have him brought in," agreed Vorgan.
He pressed a button.
A crack opened in the ceiling, and down from above there dropped a
reflection-free sheet of perfect glass. It slid in fitted slides, and
sealed off the room into two sections.
The section occupied by Lindoo and his emperor was large and roomy,
but the other section was small, a sort of cove, off of the main room.
A man-at-arms moved an ornate chair that stopped the descent of the
glass, and when the sheet of glass reached the floor, men-at-arms
went around the edges and sealed it with a gluey mixture that came
from portable pressure-guns. This was done on both sides, and as
those on the small side left the room through the tiny square door,
one of them snapped a button on the wall. The invisible and soundless
atomizer-vents in the ceiling filled the air with a gentle spray of the
best bactericide known to the Loard-vogh.
The tiny door opened again, and Billy Thompson entered, leaving his
glass case attached to the door frame on the other side.
His nose wrinkled at the smell of the bactericide, but he grinned at
the precautions. He, the vanquished, still held sway over their fears.
Thompson advanced and saluted. Then he waited.
"Arrogant, to boot," snapped Vorgan to Lindoo. His voice came to Billy
out of the speaker in the ceiling, and Thompson stifled the natural
impulse to face the position from which came the voice. He faced Vorgan.
"Not arrogant," he said quietly. "I merely request the respect shown to
a vanquished, but adequate adversary."
"Our adversaries are always vanquished," snapped Lindoo. "And they
become our slaves."
"A slave you may consider me," nodded Billy. "That I can not change.
But the self-respect I have for having been vanquished only after a
bitter fight requires me to consider myself more than a voiceless
slave. You can not change that."
Vorgan looked at Lindoo. "Was that your reason for fighting?" asked the
Lord of All.
"The basic reason for all strife," said Billy, "is to impose your will
upon your adversaries."
Vorgan and Lindoo nodded impatiently.
"We fought to impose our will upon you. Our will is that we of the
Solar Sector gain your respect, slaves though we must be."
"And you were willing to lose eight and one half million men to gain
that respect?"
"Your estimate is wrong. We lost but seven thousand souls--five
thousand of which were civilians caught in the backwash and splash-over
from our fighting."
"Seven thous--" exploded Vorgan, visibly shaken.
"Seventeen million--" cried Lindoo hoarsely.
"Your losses?" asked Billy of Lindoo.
The Head of Strategy nodded.
"It is deplorable. I am sorry--"
"How dare you!" thundered Vorgan. "How dare you, a slave, to feel sorry
for your masters?"
Thompson smiled wanly. "Would I get better treatment if I claimed to be
glad of your losses?"
"I'll have your throat--"
"Careful, Lord of All, you are not being fair. I am damned for being
sorry and equally damned if I feel glad. Do you prefer my sympathy or
my hatred?"
"You brazen, arrogant--"
"Vorgan, I and all of the Solar Sector are at your mercy. We fought
you to prove our ability, and to gain your respect. Had we surrendered
without a fight, we would have gained your contempt. Also," smiled
Thompson, "it is foreign to our psychology to give up easily. But the
main reason for fighting was to extract from you a modicum of respect.
That we have done."
"You assume--"
"I know. You are puzzled by my temerity, amused by my position, and
completely baffled by my purpose. Were it not so, I would be dead
instead of here, behind this protecting glass. For otherwise you
wouldn't bother with a race so dangerous to your very lives. Am I
correct?"
"Assume so. And proceed."
* * * * *
"The thing that makes us dangerous to you is the same thing that will
make us useful to you."
"A moment. At this point I can wait no longer," said Lindoo. "Before
this bold Terran leads us too far from the subject, I must know: How
did you preserve your forces in that bitter fighting where your ships
fell like hail?"
"We ran out of ships, not men," smiled Thompson. "We adapted a phase
of the snatcher beam to personnel-protection. Each man carried a
focal attractor in his clothing. Ship-destruction triggered a fast
time-constant multi-driver circuit that inclosed each man in the
incompressible spheres of the atomic crusher principle. They were
withdrawn from the stricken ship while it was still exploding and
brought back safely to a redistributing station where they re-entered
the battle in a new ship."
"We'll make a note of that," rumbled Vorgan. Lindoo looked a bit
ashamed of himself for not having thought of it before.
"Now, Terran," said Lindoo, "there was talk of a secret weapon. What
was it and why was it not used?"
"As a means of destruction," explained Thompson, "nothing of that
nature exists. Terra's secret weapon in this case lies within your
own minds. We were fighting for survival, and the retention of our
integrity. Our secret weapon is the respect we extracted from you in
fighting valiantly and losing necessarily. Our secret weapon is our
minds and our ability to employ logic and data to a problem and come
up with an answer. The personnel snatcher is but one phase of this
weapon we possess. You admire it. It is, of course, yours by right of
conquest. Other developments will be yours, also. But they would be
lost if we had been merely trampled over and our interesting facets
ignored by the high councils of the Loard-vogh. You have a horde of
problems, Lord of All. A myriad of problems that we of Terra may solve.
I offer you the Solar Sector as a research area!"
"You offer?" asked Vorgan, puzzled. "You infer that we have not taken?"
"Permit us our integrity. Sol is our home. Sol is unfit for you, and
Terrans are not well liked in your empire because of the living death
we carry. Permit us to remain in the Solar Sector and we will be your
research area."
"And free to breed discontent?" asked Lindoo.
"Are we fools? Our battle was to impress you with our ability to
be recognized as worthy. Another fight would prove our lack of
intellectual grasp of the truth. Permit us to live as we were, and you
will have all of the benefits of our rather harsh environment to aid
you in your plan. Were you of another psychology, I'd offer alliance,
but being what you are I can but offer allegiance."
"Offers!" scorned Vorgan impatiently. "We demand."
"You cannot force mental activity," reminded Thompson. "You can drive a
slave to fetch and carry, to become agricultural, to be menial. But you
can never drive a man into mental activity. The subconscious mind will
block. The subconscious mind will divert, and will work against those
who drive, and the result will be complete loss of Sol's children and
the benefits of a violent heredity. Permit us to remain as we are. Put
overseers there, communications offices. We will solve your problems."
* * * * *
Lindoo whispered to Vorgan for a moment. The Lord of All snapped off
the communicator, and he and the Head of Strategy spoke for an hour
while Billy waited in silence, wondering what they had in mind. Finally
Vorgan turned the communicator on again and said:
"Terran, if what you say is true, you are correct in your assumption
that Sol will be of value as she is. I offer you a chance to prove
it. Sscantoo is against all forms of alliance. Sscantoo will ally
herself with any other race temporarily to fight us. The entire Galaxy
may spring against us if Sscantoo can not be subdued. We must attack
Sscantoo in the due course of time.
"There is one difficulty, however. The Sscantovians are not a
gregarious race. Eventually we shall have the same trouble with
Sscantoo as we have had with Tlembo. The catmen will seek a worthy
adversary, and cause us to attack some sector long before our plan
calls for it. Your premature battle was but one in several caused by
Tlembo, all of which bring the Loard-vogh out of line and off balance
like a runner careening downhill. Numberless though we may seem, we
cannot overrun the Galaxy until our numbers permit it. It must be taken
slowly and with definite pattern.
"Now, Terran, we can wait one year before we hit Sscantoo. I'll give
you that one year, Terran. In that year, you must devise a means of
gathering Sscantoo into the Loard-vogh empire. It must be done without
battle. It must be done without losing a man--no, that is expecting
too much," smiled the Lord of All nastily, "it must be done without
losing more than one hundred men! That does not include Sscantovians,
of course."
"Within one year," said Billy Thompson, "we will hand you Sscantoo
as a willing part of the Loard-vogh empire. It will be done without
battle, without losing more than one hundred men in the process. What
will happen to the Sscantovians I will not presume to care, but I shall
destroy as few as possible. During that year, of course, we will be
free to work?"
"I will countermand the order displacing all Solar Persons save a small
percentage willing to act as data clerks and research co-ordinators,"
said Vorgan. "That is my will."
"You will be more than amply repaid," said Thompson. "And one research
we will make to provide the Galaxy with adequate protection against
visiting Terrans, and protection for those visiting the Solar Sector.
That, too, is a promise."
Within an hour, Thompson was on his way back to Terra. A year, he had.
And four months would be gone ere he landed on Terra, and another long
period of time would pass before he could get to Sscantoo. All in all,
Billy felt that he had too little time.
Yet he smiled. For even in defeat, Terra would not lose her integrity.
And how bad is slavery when the master prefixes his request with
"Please"?