They conquered the planet and they
owned it outright. The trouble
was--they didn't dare set foot on it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
From the head of the platoon Lieutenant Lee Hartford signaled Sergeant
Felix, busy policing up stragglers at the rear, that he was taking
over. Hartford tongued the volume-setting of his bitcher to "Low" and
softly sing-songed to his three dozen troopers: "_Your girlfriend's
just an hour away; there's a time to soldier and a time to play._ Pick
it HUP, HUP, HUP! 'Toon, tain-HUT.' HUP, twop, threep, furp; HUP, HUP;
HUP, twop, threep, furp. Mondrian, pick up the cadence; you're marching
like a man with a paper pelvis. _Swing 'em six to the front and three
to the rear; When you sing to your Daddy, sing it loud and clear._"
Hartford turned up the volume. "_Three weeks in the woods, eating
squeeze-tube beans; We'd be better off in the Fleet Marines. Sound
off!_"
"ONE, TWO," boomed the voice of the Terrible Third, sounding from the
bitchers at the chests of thirty-six safety-suits. Dust slapped up
from marching-boots. A flock of scarlet blabrigars settled on the road
ahead, chattering and watching like small boys.
"_Sound hoff!_"
"THREE, FOUR!" The road led uphill toward Stinkerville; they were
some three miles from First Regiment Barracks. Three miles from now
these troopers could shed their safety-suits and helmets, shower off
three weeks of sweat, drink a beer and leer at the short-skirted,
taut-haltered girls of the Service Companies.
"_Who are we?_" Hartford chanted.
"COMPANY C," the troopers blatted back.
The blabrigars, fluttering up from the roadway, chanted too: "Who
are we? Company See. Who, we? See, see. Company See Are Wee See
See." These wild birds didn't memorize human speech as well as their
captive cousins; they garbled their mockeries immediately. The flock
settled into the sunflowers beside the road; and were joined by a
pair of wild camelopards, chewing sunflower-leaf cud as they peered
at the marching Axenites. Hartford looked about, but there were no
Stinkers--Kansans--in sight. These natives didn't care to watch the
occupying regiment stir up their homeland's dust. "_What platoon?_"
Hartford called, his voice magnified by the bitcher till the whole
column could hear him.
"THIRD PLATOON," the men bellowed back, singing against the percussion
of their boots. "'Toon, click, click, click; 'toon, click, third
platoon, click," mocked the blabrigars in ragged chorus, reflecting
both the words and the marching feet.
"_Best platoon?_"
"THIRD PLATOON!" the men shouted. They'd turned up their bitchers to
a volume the blabrigars couldn't match. Disgusted, the birds flapped
their scarlet wings and flew off across the sunflower fields. "'Toon,"
one rear-flier chanted, "'toon, 'toon, 'toon."
"_Worst platoon?_" Hartford asked.
"FIRST PLATOON!" That was for the benefit of Lieutenant Piacentelli,
commanding the tail-end of the Regiment, the platoon marching on either
side of the lumbering Decontamination Vehicle, their safety-suit
filters clogging with the dust.
"_Sound off!_" Hartford shouted.
"ONE, TWO!"
* * * * *
That'll rattle the windows in Stinkerville, Hartford thought. He
pitched his descant louder and higher. "_Sound off!_"
"THREE, FOUR!"
"_Run 'er on down!_"
"ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR; ONE, TWO, THREEP--FURP!" The men of The
Terrible Third were grinning through the face-plates of their helmets,
rejoicing in their reputation as the loudest bunch in the Regiment,
happy to help Hartford in waging his mock-feud with Lieutenant
Piacentelli. They'd been classmates at the Axenite Academy; they'd been
room-mates in the Barracks until Pia's recent marriage to a Service
Company officer.
Hartford lowered his bitcher to a confidential tone. "Square up, men;
march tall; look rough and dirty. Show the Stinker girls what they're
missing. HUP, HUP, HUP. Sling those rifles square. Mondrian, you march
like you're wearing skis: HUP, twop, threep, furp!" Up and down the
column came the commands of sergeants and platoon-commanders, getting
their troopers in parade-trim for the march through Kansannamura:
"Stinkerville." Somewhere up front a company was singing the anthem of
the Axenite troopers, "Oh, Pioneers!" The chorus of twelve dozen men,
their bitchers full-up, filled the Kansan air and echoed from the walls
ahead.
Stinkerville, all white-washed, with flakes of mica glittering in
the sunlight, sprawled across the road that led to the Barracks. The
village wall, designed to keep wild camelopards from roaming the
streets and to keep the tame beasts out of the sunflower-fields, was
some eight feet tall. Some Indigenous Hominid had heard the Regiment's
clatter and song, for the gates of Kansannamura were open, the brick
streets were clear of Stinker commerce. The village seemed deserted.
A few blabrigars perched on the tiled eaves of the rammed-earth
houses, making echoic comments on the sounds of the troopers, singing
fleeting snatches of "Oh, Pioneers!" A camelopard stretched its
ridiculous, three-horned head at the end of its fathom of neck to peer,
big-brown-eyed, at the caravan of fishbowl-headed men. Up at the head
of the column the Regiment's flags were unfurled and the Regimental
Band was skirling the Anthem; men were counting cadence as their boots
clicked over the scrubbed bricks of Stinkerville's streets.
* * * * *
But no Kansan, Stinker, Indigenous Hominid, Gook or Native watched. No
cowboy youngsters stared at the gunned-and-holstered men from another
planet. No elders looked down their noses at the brash invaders. No
mothers wiped their hands on their aprons as they thought of their
sons, and the fleshly price they'd pay for freedom. No teenage
girls, those patrons of parades, watched with lips half-open with
apprehension and audacious thoughts about the hundreds of gift-wrapped
young man marching past. This planet could have as well been named
Coventry as Kansas, Hartford thought. Out the far gate of Kansannamura
marched Third Platoon, Company "C," then First Platoon, flanking the
Decontamination Vehicle. A villager came from the house nearest the
gate and closed it. He did not look after the two columns of men
winding up through the fields of sunflowers to the high plateau where
they lived.
The sight of the Barracks gave the men's steps a new swing and spring.
After three weeks of sleeping in safety-suits; of breathing, sweating,
drinking, eating and excreting through germ-barrier valves and tubing,
the prospect of stripping off the plastic battle-dress was seductive.
Inside that eight stories of windowless, doorless stone were gardens
where the troopers could walk barefoot on the grass, pools whose water
could splash their naked skin. In the Barracks were the three hundred
Service Company women who made the big stone box home to their three
thousand men.
The men of First Regiment massed on the parade-ground. While they stood
At Ease, their plastic-sleeved rifles and packs growing heavier by the
minute, their safety-suits staler, four of the five Service Companies
marched out from the Syphon to join them. The women were suited in
yellow plastic, giving rise to the gags about fool's gold. The four
golden companies took up position at the center of the Regiment.
Colonel Benjamin Nef, Commander-in-Chief, Kansas, CINCK, climbed to
the reviewing-stand in his command safety-suit of scarlet. Facing
into the sun, the Colonel had the polarizing shield dropped over his
eyes, and seemed to be wearing a black bandage. His lower jaw beetled
to give him a truculent look generally ratified by his actions. His
hair glinted through the helmet like spun copper. Nef turned to his
second-in-command, a lieutenant-colonel in ordinary officer's blues,
and murmured instructions. The light colonel saluted, turned the
controls of his bitcher to Full Loud, and addressed the troopers
assembled: "Regiment...."
Down the chain-of-command came the ripple of warning:
"Battaaalion...."
"Commmpaneee...."
"'Toooon...."
"Tain-HUT!" Fifteen hundred pairs of boots smacked together. The
Adjutant held up his clipboard and read precisely: "Attention to orders:
"One. Officer of the Guard, Lieutenant Lee Hartford.
"Two. CINCK commends troopers involved in the just-completed three-week
Field Exercise on not having had a single incident of compromise
of sterility. Household, Maintenance and Security troopers are
complimented on having maintained the integrity of the Barracks with a
much-reduced force.
"Three. All male and female troopers are again cautioned that
fraternization with Indigenous Hominids is an offense punishable by
General Court-Martial, and that any unauthorized intercourse with the
natives is prohibited."
* * * * *
There was of course a murmur of automatic laughter at this last bit
of official double-entendre. The idea of bedding-down a Stinker wench
was a favorite bit of pornographic fantasy. An air-tight safety-suit,
though fit with valves as functional as the drop-seat in long-johns,
was no garment for romance. To undress, to appear in outdoor Kansas
outside that head-to-foot sausage-casing, appealed to none of the
troopers. Healthy young men and women don't entertain the thought of
painful suicide.
The reporting officer about-faced, saluted Colonel Nef, about-faced
again. "Present...."
"Preezent...."
"Preeezent...."
"Preeeezent...."
"HAHMS!" Fifteen hundred Dardick-rifles, sheathed in plastic, slapped
perpendicular. The blue-clad officers, armed with pistols, touched
their index fingers to their helmet-temples. The bandsmen's drums
growled, the electronic horns sobbed against their mutes, and the
flutes in lonely purity played the theme of "Oh, Pioneers!" For all his
har-de-har-hardness, Hartford felt a sting in his eyes at this moment,
as he did whenever the splendidly stage-managed ceremony of Retreat was
performed. After the Anthem, much louder, the band played Retreat. The
colors crept down the flagstaff, into the reverent arms of a pair of
Service Policemen.
"Oh-deph, HAHMS! By line-of-battalions, line-of-companies,
line-of-platoons, line-of-squads, return to quarters and dismiss!" The
light colonel made one last salute to CINCK, and the little ballet on
the reviewing-stand was over. The troopers were now free to go in to
their showers, their latrines, their suppers, and their women.
"At ease," Hartford told the Terrible Third. "Rest. Smoke if you've got
'em."
The men chuckled dutifully at the oldest joke in the service. An
Axenite trooper, sealed in his germ-free safety-suit and helmet, is by
definition a non-smoker outside his Barracks. It would be another hour
they'd be outside, since the Third was next to the last of the fifty
platoons to swim home through the Syphon. While the companies on the
far left flank of the Regiment were ballooning-up and peeling-off in
columns-of-squads to enter the Barracks, Hartford went back to talk
with Piacentelli, C.O. of First Platoon.