Bill laughed. "I meant mine. Come on, let's haunt the bar where we can
excel in our own fields."
* * * * *
The lightness of the talk was doing Maynard a world of good. There was
nothing said at all; nothing of the slightest importance. It was all
done by inference and by double-talk, and each of the women seemed
to be doing her best to entice him. In the back of Maynard's mind
something kept telling him that it was all sort of silly; that he had
nothing in common with these frivolous women, but the fore portion of
his mind enjoyed it.
And the stiffness went out of him, and absently he began to look over
their heads for Laura Greggor. When he saw her arrive, he wondered how
he should greet her, but she took the problem in her own way and came
over to the group.
"Hello, Guy," she said, offering him her hand.
"I'm glad to see you," he told her.
One of the other women smiled wryly. "An eligible, girls. That's about
all, now."
"We've experience," returned another. "And what has she got that we
haven't?"
"His hand," said the first. "And from here, it looks as though she
intends to keep it."
The orchestra broke into dance music, and as though prearranged, Guy
led Laura through the crowd to the dance floor.
"How've you been?" he asked quietly.
She looked up at him and smiled. "Fine," she said. "I'm glad you're
here."
"So am I--now. An hour ago I didn't think I would."
"So?"
"I was feeling low. Reaction, I guess."
"What you need is relaxation," she told him. "A drink, perhaps?"
"Could be," he agreed.
"If I were you, I'd get good and fried. You must have been through
everything."
"It seems like everything," he smiled. "But I can't get stinkeroo. I'm
supposed to be the guest of honor."
Laura laughed lightly, and led him to the bar where she prescribed a
healthy drink. Guy downed it, gulped, and wiped tears from his eyes.
"Whoooooo!" he squealed, hugging his midsection.
"Sissy," giggled Laura.
"Feels like a MacMillian going off down there. Is there a fire
extinguisher in the place?"
They both laughed. Then Laura led the way to the opened French doors
and out into the fragrant garden. It was warm and pleasant there, and
with one thought they went to the far, darker end of the garden and sat
down.
"Did you think of me?" asked Laura.
"Always," lied Maynard. Then he said truthfully: "I've been working
toward this moment for a long time. You wanted a set of patrol
marshal's nebulae. You may have mine, now."
Laura took the box, and looked at the starred nebulae of the sector
marshal.
"I shouldn't do this," she teased.
It rubbed Maynard the wrong way, that teasing. He knew it was just
coquetry, but still it went against the grain. It was probably because
he knew what was in her mind.
"Why not?" he asked. "In some circles it is considered an honor."
"Huh," gibed Laura, "perhaps in some circles. But remember it is no
great novelty to the daughter of a space marshal."
"The thrill of giving some bird the royal send-off is gone, hey?" asked
Guy, stubbornly. "How many other officers have you done the honor for?"
"Quite a number," she told him. "Quite a few more than any one man can
boast of having women do it for him. After all, one man only gets eight
new insignia during the course of his life."
"You must have quite a collection," said Guy. "Which collection
includes some of mine."
"Some," answered Laura sharply. "Most of my officers are true, though,
and do not go off letting other girls pin their insignia on."
* * * * *
Guy shrugged. This was not going according to plan at all. But best
have it out. If he could get the upper hand in this argument with
Laura, he'd feel better. Always before he had come off second best in
disagreements with Laura Greggor. But he felt that he was dead right in
this affair, and he was not going to back down now that she had flung
his actions into his teeth.
"Well," he said with an expansive wave of the hand, "you told me not
to annoy you with petty trifles, and that you'd be glad to accept
the patrol marshal's nebulae when I became sector marshal. I merely
followed your wishes. To the letter, in fact."
"You didn't have to make a public show of yourself with that little
waitress!"
"You mean Senior Aide Forbes?" asked Maynard, feeling the back of his
neck bristle. If he'd been possessed of any kind of mane, it would have
stood up in anger.
"Senior aide? How did she get that rank?" scorned Laura.
"She worked for it. And hard."
"Slinging hash?"
"No, you little twirp. She went to a school for Patrol Nurse Corps and
paid for her tuition by working nights."
"She could have made a better night-living than working in a beanery,"
snapped Laura.
_Slap!_
Maynard had been raised as a normal youngster. His mother had done
her best to instill the instincts of a gentleman in her son Guy, and
at an early age he discovered that little girls are not to be beaten
over the skull with a toy truck, and that beebee guns make little
round bruises when they hit little girls' legs, and that produced bad
evidence. Little girls, he learned, had no such restriction upon their
action, but could let him have a few quick blows without suffering the
consequences. On the other hand, he soon discovered that at best their
blows didn't count for much, and so he learned that hitting women was
taking an unfair advantage.
But hitting with the tongue had never been explained to Maynard's
satisfaction. Laura Greggor was being just too open with her scorn.
And so Maynard, who never had hit a lady before, slapped Laura Greggor
across the face.
"You hit me," she said in absolute surprise and equally absolute anger.
"You talk too rotten about someone far above you," snapped Maynard.
"Don't you call me rotten," snarled Laura. "Go on back to that little
trollop you prefer."
"Can't," said Guy shortly. "She died up there!"
It made no impression on Laura. "And so now you come running back to
me? Sorry, Guy. I don't play second fiddle--even to a corpse!"
"You don't have to," he said evenly. He took the box from her hand.
Then as she watched in amazement, Guy removed his own insignia and
placed the starred nebulae on his own lapel. With that finished, he
arose from the bench; flung the plain nebulae into the little lagoon,
and left Laura sitting there.
* * * * *
Guy entered the room through the same door, and went immediately into
the bar where he downed four drinks in rapid succession.
He felt as though he needed that alcoholic sterilization of his mouth.
Maynard's stomach was unused to liquor in such undilution. It reacted;
got rid of the alcohol as soon as it could by filtering it into the
blood stream. In other words, Guy became slightly drunk on a total
of five drinks. Unevenly, Guy went to the main room, where he was
immediately taken in tow by two women.
"Now," said the one on his right, "we have you to ourselves. Tell us
about Mephisto."
"How did you find it?"
_I found it cold and forbidding._
"To think that it was undiscovered for all of these years!"
_Too bad I did find it._
"You found it, and you conquered it. That makes it almost your own
planet, Guy."
_I'll trade it for a chance to seek it again._
They prattled on, not noticing his silence. They wouldn't have heard
him if he had spoken, for they poured the questions at him without
waiting for an answer.
"Was it exciting to go all the way out there?"
_It was deadly. They hit us with all they had._
"Tell us about the battle. We want to hear the final words on the
finish of the fight. Tell us how you captured the weapon that destroyed
all Mephisto. Was that thrilling?"
_Thrilling?_ Maynard saw a white face with closed eyes, neatly placed
in endless rows of other faces. He heard the voice of the chaplain
saying again: "--vast though the universe be, and though you travel it
endlessly, there you will find His work--"
_How could death be thrilling?_
"You make me sick," said Maynard uncertainly.
"He's drunk."
"Yes, I'm drunk," he roared. "And you'd be dead or worse than drunk if
you'd seen what I had to live with. What do you know of death and of
war? _Thrilling? Exciting? Wonderful?_ Bah. It was rotten, as sordid,
and as ungodly as running opium! Sending men to their death. Fighting a
war against an enemy that knows it is fighting for its right to live.
"Fighting for what? So that you and your kind can sit here and praise
the unlucky man who is destined to return for these medals.
"Fighting to make the Solar System bend to Terra's will, that's what it
is. What did we want of Mephisto? Nothing except tribute. I'm sick and
tired of people telling me that I did a wonderful job. A brilliant job
of butchering, that's what they mean!"
"Guy, take it easy. They mean no harm," interposed Kane.
"If they want to see how thrilling war is," blazed Guy, "let 'em go out
and see!"
"Take it easy!"
"Let 'em help cut the leg from a corpse so that it can be grafted onto
a lad with his leg shot off!" stormed Guy. "Let 'em watch a ship fall
ten thousand miles into a planet, and watch it blaze as it hits the
air."
"It's all over," Kane told him. He turned to the rapidly collecting
group and said: "Permit me to apologize. Guy has been through hell, and
shock still claims him."
"It's over?" asked Guy. "It'll never be over. It'll go on and on and on
until the last Terran is dead and forgotten."
"Well," said Kane, "you'd better make the best of it, Guy. You're
Terran, and there's no place else to go."
"I'd like to find a planet that hasn't seen war for a thousand years,"
said Guy uncertainly. The alcohol-concentration was reaching new levels
in Guy's system, and his brain was feeling more and more the effects.
"We'd all like that," said Kane. "Now break it up, Guy, and simmer
down."
* * * * *
The storm passed, then, and Kane walked Guy into the dining room and
seated him at the speakers' table.
The room hazed before Guy's eyes as he sat down. The echo of his voice
resounded in his brain: "A thousand years--"
What was it that Charalas said? A thousand years--no, it was more than
that. Thousands of years since they had war. That was a planet! Ertene.
The nomad world that wanted no part of Sol's warfare and strife;
killing and death. They knew--they knew from the things he said--that
Terra was a planet of self-aggrandizement and that Terrans were proud,
haughty, and belligerent.
Maynard laughed wildly.
His hand felt the clean-shaven face.
He'd go there!
"No strife for thousands of years," he said aloud.
Space Marshal Mantley, at his side, turned in puzzlement and asked:
"What was that?"
Maynard saw the other as a sheer maze of white; no features were
visible to his befuddled mind.
"They haven't had war for thousands of years," he said.
"Who? What kind of dead, sterile place is that?"
"Ertene--and never call Ertene dead!" exploded Guy.
"What's Ertene?"
"Ertene--the nomad planet. The wanderers."
"I do not follow?"
"They came and saw us. They decided not to have any."