General Shaeffer choked back his anger and presented the question.
"They don't tell us anything. The crew is confined to the ship."
Shamar the Worker turned to Ge-Ge. "It's going about the same," he said.
* * * * *
A year later, General Merle S. Shaeffer's card popped out of the
computer.
"General Shaeffer's up for re-assignment."
"Who in hell is General Shaeffer?"
"Never heard of him."
The card passed upward.
"Merle Shaeffer is due for re-assignment," a man who knew the name told
the Secretary of the Over Council at lunch the following day. "There's
a new planet opened up even further away than Folger's Hill."
"He's the one who butchered the Itra assignment? Send him there.
Anything new from Itra recently, by the way?"
"Same as usual. I understand the anarchists have formed some kind of
government."
"Terrible. Terrible. Well, the less said about that the better."
A week later, again over lunch, the Secretary was told:
"I guess we needn't worry about Merle Shaeffer any more. Disappeared
from his post, he and that Itraian woman of his, a couple of weeks
after they arrived on Folger's Hill. Probably a hunting accident got
them both. Their bodies were never found. These things happen on wild
new planets."
The Secretary was silent for a long time. Then he said: "Shaeffer dead,
eh? I guess it's better that way. Well, a genius has passed, and we'll
not see his like again. Perverted, perhaps, but a genius none the less."
They drank solemnly.
"To Merle Shaeffer. You could call him a hero, so let's you and I drink
to that. No one else ever will."
They drank again.
Nothing further served to stir the Secretary's memory of Merle
Shaeffer, and he retired six months later at the end of his term. The
new Secretary was not familiar with the Itraian affair.
He had been in office just a few days less than a year when, one
morning, he arrived at his office in a furious rage. "Get me the Head
of the Defense Forces!"
"I'm sorry, sir, all the phones are tied up," his secretary said.
"What in hell do you mean, all the phones are tied up?"
"I don't know. Maybe all at once everybody just left their phones off
the hook or something."
"Why would they do that? That's ridiculous! Get a runner over after
him."
Half an hour later, the Head of the Defense Forces arrived.
"Do you know," the new Secretary demanded, "that yesterday all the
pennies went out of circulation? People apparently have been saving
them for the last couple of months. It finally showed up. All at once,
there aren't any pennies. You can't make change. Damn it, why would
those crazy idiots all decide to save their pennies at the same time?
It's not rational. Why did they do it?"
The Head of the Defense Forces said nothing.
The Secretary raved at him in anger, but the Head of the Defense Forces
did not have the heart to tell him that a hero had returned home.