“Information secured from others is invariably inaccurate in some
fashion. A complete and reasoned statement of a series of events is
almost necessarily trimmed and distorted and edited, or it would not
appear reasonable and complete. Truly factual accounts of any series
of happenings will, if honest, contain inconsistent or irrational
elements. Reality is far too complex to be reduced to simple
statements without much suppression of fact....”
_Manual, Interstellar Medical Service._ P. 25.
He was able to verify his guess about the means by which interstellar
war became practical, when the Med ship was landed. Normally, a landing
grid was a gigantic, squat structure of steel girders, half a mile high
and a full mile in diameter. It rested upon bedrock, was cemented into
unbreakable union with the substance of its planet, and tapped the
ionosphere for power. When the Med ship reached the abysmal darkness
of the nearest planet’s shadow, there were long, long pauses in which
it hung apparently motionless in space. There were occasional vast
swingings, as if something reached out and made sure where it was. And
Calhoun made use of his nearest-object indicator and observed that
something very huge fumbled about and presently became stationary in
emptiness, and then moved swiftly and assuredly down into the blackness
which was the planet’s night-side. When it and the planetary surface
were one, the Med ship began its swift descent in the grip of landing
grid-type force-fields.
It landed in the center of a grid--but not a typical grid. This was
more monstrous in size than any spaceport boasted. It was not squat,
either, but as tall as it was wide. As the ship descended, he saw
lights in a control-system cell, midway to the ground. It was amazing
but obvious. The Med ship’s captors had built a landing-grid which was
itself a spaceship. It was a grid which could cross the void between
stars. It could wage offensive war.
“It’s infernally simple,” Calhoun told Murgatroyd, distastefully. “The
regular landing-grid hooks onto something in space and pulls it to the
ground. This thing hooks onto something on the ground and pushes itself
out into space. It’ll travel by Lawlor or overdrive, and when it gets
somewhere it can lock onto any part of another world and pull itself
down to that and stay anchored to it. Then it can land the fleet that
traveled with it. It’s partly a floating dry dock and partly a landing
craft, and actually it’s both. It’s a ready-made spaceport anywhere it
chooses to land. Which means that it’s the deadliest weapon in the past
thousand years!”
Murgatroyd climbed on his lap and blinked wisely at the screens. They
showed the surroundings of the now-grounded Med ship, standing on its
tail. There were innumerable stars overhead. All about, there was the
whiteness of snow. But there were lights. Ships at rest lay upon the
icy ground.
“I suspect,” growled Calhoun, “that I could make a dash on emergency
rockets and get behind the horizon before they could catch me. But this
is just a regular military base!”
He considered his recent studies of historic wars, of battles and
massacres and looting and rapine. Even modern, civilized men would
revert very swiftly to savagery once they had fought a battle.
Enormities unthinkable at other times would occur promptly if men went
back to barbarity. Such things might already be present in the minds
of the crews of these spaceships.
“You and I, Murgatroyd,” said Calhoun, “may be the only wholly rational
men on this planet. And you aren’t a man.”
“_Chee!_” shrilled Murgatroyd. He seemed glad of it.
“But we have to survey the situation before we attempt anything noble
and useless,” Calhoun observed. “But still--what’s that?”
* * * * *
He stared at a screen which showed lights on the ground moving toward
the Med ship. They were carried by men on foot, walking on the snow. As
they grew nearer it appeared that there were also weapons in the group.
They were curious, ugly instruments--like sporting rifles save that
their bores were impossibly large. They would be--Calhoun searched his
new store of information. They would be launchers of miniature rockets,
capable of firing small missiles with shaped charges which could wreck
the Med ship easily.
Thirty yards off, they separated to surround the ship. A single man
advanced.
“I’m going to let him in, Murgatroyd,” observed Calhoun. “In war time,
a man is expected to be polite to anybody with a weapon capable of
blowing him up. It’s one of the laws of war.”
He opened both the inner and outer lock doors. The glow from inside the
ship shone out on white, untrodden snow. Calhoun stood in the opening,
observing that as his breath went out of the outer opening it turned to
white mist.
“My name is Calhoun,” he said curtly to the single dark figure still
approaching. “Interstellar Medical Service. A neutral, a noncombatant,
and at the moment very much annoyed by what has happened!”
A gray-bearded man with grim eyes advanced into the light from the
opened port. He nodded.
“My name is Walker,” he said, as curtly. “I suppose I’m the leader of
this military expedition. At least, my son is the leader of the ...
ah ... the enemy, which makes me the logical man to direct the attack
upon them.”
Calhoun did not quite believe his ears, but he pricked them up. A
father and son on opposite sides would hardly have been trusted by
either faction, as warfare used to be conducted. And certainly their
relationship would hardly be a special qualification for leadership at
any time.
He made a gesture of invitation, and the gray-bearded man climbed the
ladder to the port. Somehow he did not lose the least trace of dignity
in climbing. He stepped solidly into the air lock and on into the cabin
of the ship.
“If I may, I’ll close the lock-doors,” said Calhoun, “if your men won’t
misinterpret the action. It’s cold outside.”
The sturdy, bearded man shrugged his cape-clad shoulders.
“They’ll blast your ship if you try to take off,” he said. “They’re in
the mood to blast something!”
With the same air of massive confidence, he moved to a seat. Murgatroyd
regarded him suspiciously. He ignored the little animal.
“Well?” he said impatiently.
“I’m Med Service,” said Calhoun. “I can prove it. I should be neutral
in whatever is happening. But I was asked for by the planetary
government of Phaedra. I think it likely that your ships come from
Phaedra. Your grid ship, in particular, wouldn’t be needed by the
local citizens. How does the war go?”
The stocky man’s eyes burned.
“Are you laughing at me?” he demanded.
“I’ve been three months in overdrive,” Calhoun reminded him. “I haven’t
heard anything to laugh at in longer than that. No.”
“The ... our enemy,” said Walker bitterly, “consider that they have
won the war! But you may be able to make them realize that they have
not, and they cannot. We have been foolishly patient, but we can’t risk
forbearance any longer. We mean to carry through to victory even if we
arrive at cutting our own throats for a victory celebration! And that
is not unlikely!”
Calhoun raised his eyebrows. But he nodded. His studies had told him
that a war psychology was a highly emotional one.
“Our home planet Phaedra has to be evacuated,” said Walker, very grimly
indeed. “There are signs of instability in our sun. Five years since,
we sent our older children to Canis III to build a world for all of us
to move to. Our sun could burst at any time. It is certain to flare up
some time--and soon! We sent our children because the place of danger
was at home. We urged them to work feverishly. We sent the young women
as well as the men at the beginning, so that if our planet did crisp
and melt when our sun went off there would still be children of our
children to live on. When we dared--when they could feed and shelter
them--we sent younger boys and girls to safety, overburdening the new
colony with mouths to feed, but at the least staying ourselves where
the danger was! Later we sent even the small children, as the signs of
an imminent cataclysm became more threatening.”
* * * * *
Calhoun nodded again. There were not many novas in the galaxy in any
one year, even among the millions of billions of stars it held. But
there had been at least one colony which had had to be shifted because
of evidence of solar instability. The job in that case was not complete
when the flare-up came. The evacuation of a world, though, would
never be an easy task. The population had to be moved light-years of
distance. Space travel takes time, even at thirty times the speed of
light. Where the time of disaster--the deadline for removal--could not
be known exactly, the course adopted by Phaedra was logical. Young
men and women were best sent off first. They could make new homes for
themselves and for others to follow them. They could work harder and
longer for the purpose than any other age-group--and they would best
assure the permanent survival of somebody! The new colony would have
to be a place of frantic, unresting labor, of feverish round-the-clock
endeavor, because the time-scale for working was necessarily unknown
but was extremely unlikely to be enough. When they could be burdened
further, younger boys and girls would be shipped--old enough to help
but not to pioneer. They could be sent to safety in a partly-built
colony. Later smaller children could be sent, needing care from their
older contemporaries. Only at long last would the adults leave their
world for the new. They would stay where the danger was until all
younger ones were secure.
“But now,” said Walker thickly, “our children have made their world and
now they refuse to receive their parents and grandparents! They have a
world of young people only, under no authority but their own. They say
that we lied to them about the coming flare of Phaedra’s sun: that we
enslaved them and made them use their youth to build a new world we
now demand to take over! They are willing for Phaedra’s sun to burst
and kill the rest of us, so they can live as they please without a care
for us!”
Calhoun said nothing. It is a part of medical training to recognize
that information obtained from others is never wholly accurate.
Conceding the facts, he would still be getting from Walker only one
interpretation of them. There is an instinct in the young to become
independent of adults, and an instinct in adults to be protective
past all reason. There is, in one sense, always a war between the
generations on all planets, not only Phaedra and Canis III. It is a
conflict between instincts which themselves are necessary--and perhaps
the conflict as such is necessary for some purpose of the race.
“They grew tired of the effort building the colony required,” said
Walker, his eyes burning as before. “So they decided to doubt its
need! They sent some of their number back to Phaedra to verify our
observations of the sun’s behavior. Our observations! It happened that
they came at a time when the disturbances in the sun were temporarily
quiet. So our children decided that we were over-timid; that there was
no danger to us; that we demanded too much! They refused to build more
shelters and to clear and plant more land. They even refused to land
more ships from Phaedra, lest we burden them with more mouths to feed!
They declared for rest; for ease! They declared themselves independent
of us! They disowned us! Sharper than a serpent’s tooth....”
“... Is an ungrateful child,” said Calhoun. “So I’ve heard. So you
declared war.”
“We did!” raged Walker. “We are men! Haven’t we wives to protect?
We’ll fight even our children for the safety of their mothers! And we
have grandchildren--on Canis III! What’s happened and is happening
there ... what they’re doing--” He seemed to strangle on his fury.
“Our children are lost to us. They’ve disowned us. They’d destroy us
and our wives, and they destroy themselves, and they will destroy our
grandchildren--We fight!”
* * * * *
Murgatroyd climbed into Calhoun’s lap and cuddled close against him.
_Tormals_ are peaceful little animals The fury and the bitterness in
Walker’s tone upset Murgatroyd. He took refuge from anger in closeness
to Calhoun.
“So the war’s between you and your children and grandchildren,”
observed Calhoun. “As a Med ship man--what’s happened to date? How has
the fighting gone? What’s the state of things right now?”
“We’ve accomplished nothing,” rasped Walker. “We’ve been too
soft-hearted! We don’t want to kill them--not even after what they’ve
done! But they are willing to kill us! Only a week ago we sent a
cruiser in to broadcast propaganda. We considered that there must be
some decency left even in our children! No ship can use any drive
close to a planet, of course. We sent the cruiser in on a course to
form a parabolic semiorbit, riding momentum down close to atmosphere
above Canopolis, where it would broadcast on standard communication
frequencies and go on out to clear space again. But they used the
landing-grid to strew its path with rocks and boulders. It smashed into
them. Its hull was punctured in fifty places! Every man died!”
Calhoun did not change expression. This was an interview to learn the
facts of a situation in which the Med Service had been asked to act. It
was not an occasion in which to be horrified. He said:
“What did you expect of the Med Service when you asked for its help?”
“We thought,” said Walker, very bitterly indeed, “that we would have
prisoners. We prepared hospital ships to tend our children who might be
hurt. We wanted every possible aid in that. No matter what our children
have done--”
“Yet you have no prisoners?” asked Calhoun.
He didn’t grasp this affair yet. It was too far out of the ordinary
for quick judgment. Any war, in modern times, would have seemed
strange enough. But a full-scale war between parents and children on a
planetary scale was a little too much to grasp in all its implications
in a hurry.
“We’ve one prisoner,” said Walker scornfully. “We caught him because
we hoped to do something with him. We failed. You’ll take him back.
We don’t want him! Before you go, you will be told our plans for
fighting; for the destruction, if we must, of our own children! But
it is better for us to destroy them than to let them destroy our
grandchildren as they are doing!”
This accusation about grandchildren did not seem conceivably true.
Calhoun, however, did not question it. He said reflectively:
“You’re going about this affair in a queer fashion, whether as a war or
an exercise in parental discipline. Sending word of your plans to one’s
supposed enemy, for instance--”
Walker stood up. His cheek twitched.
“At any instant now, Phaedra’s sun may go! It may have done so since we
heard. And our wives--our children’s mothers--are on Phaedra. If our
children have murdered them by refusing them refuge, then we will have
nothing left but the right--”
* * * * *
There was a pounding on the air-lock door.
“I’m through,” rasped Walker. He went to the lock and opened the doors.
“This Med man,” he said to those outside, “will come and see what we’ve
made ready. Then he’ll take our prisoner back to Canis. He’ll report
what he knows. It may do some good.”
He stepped out of the air lock, flinging a command to Calhoun to follow.
Calhoun grunted to himself. He opened a cabinet and donned heavy
winter garments. Murgatroyd said “_Chee!_” in alarm when it appeared
that Calhoun was going to leave him. Calhoun snapped his fingers and
Murgatroyd leaped up into his arms. Calhoun tucked him under his coat
and followed Walker down into the snow.
This, undoubtedly, was the next planet out from the colonized Canis
III. It would be Canis IV, and a very small excess of carbon dioxide in
its atmosphere would keep it warmer--by the greenhouse effect--than its
distance from the local sun would otherwise imply. The snow was winter
snow only. This was not too cold a base for military operations against
the planet next inward toward the sun.
Walker strode ahead toward the rows of spaceship hulls about the
singularly spidery grip ship. It occurred to Calhoun that astrogating
such a ship would be very much like handling an oversized, open-ended
wastebasket. A monstrous overdrive field would be needed, and keeping
its metal above brittle-point on any really long space voyage would be
difficult indeed. But it was here. It had undoubtedly lifted itself
from Phaedra. It had landed itself here, and should be able to land
on Canis and then let down after itself the war fleet now clustered
about its base. But Calhoun tried to take comfort in the difficulty
of traveling really long distances, up in the tens or twenties of
light-years, with such a creation. Possibly, just possibly, warfare
would still be limited to relatively nearby worlds--
“We thought,” rumbled Walker, “that we might excavate shelters here, so
we could bring the rest of Phaedra’s population here to wait out the
war--so they’d be safe if Phaedra’s sun blew. But we couldn’t feed them
all. So we have to blast a reception for ourselves on the world our
children have made!”
They came to a ship which was larger than any except the grid ship.
Nearby half its hull had been opened and a gigantic tent set up against
it. It was a huge machine shop. A spaceship inside was evidently the
cruiser of which Walker had spoken. Calhoun could see where ragged old
holes had been made in its hull. Men of middle age or older worked upon
it with a somehow dogged air. But Walker pointed to another object,
almost half the size of the Med ship. Men worked on that, too. It was a
missile, not man-carrying, with relatively enormous fuel-capacity for
drive-rockets.
“Look that over,” commanded Walker. “That’s a rocket-missile, a robot
fighting machine that we’ll start from space with plenty of rocket fuel
for maneuvering. It will fight and dodge its way down into the middle
of the grid at Canopolis--which our children refuse to use to land
their parents. In three days from now we use this to blast that grid
and as much of Canopolis as may go with it from the blast of a megaton
bomb. Then our grid ship will land and our fleet will follow it down,
and we’ll be aground on Canis with blast-rifles and flame and more
bombs, to fight for our rightful foothold on our children’s world!
“When our fighting men are landed, our ships will begin to bring in our
wives from Phaedra--if they are still alive--while we fight to make
them safe. We’ll fight our children as if they were wild beasts--the
way they’ve treated us! We begin this fight in just three days, when
that missile is ready and tested. If they kill us--so much the better!
But we’ll make them do their murder with their hands, with their
guns, with the weapons they’ve doubtless made. But they shall not
murder us by disowning us! And if we have to kill them to save our
grandchildren--we begin to do so in just three days! Take them that
message!”
Calhoun said:
“I’m afraid they won’t believe me.”
“They’ll learn they must!” growled Walker. Then he said abruptly: “What
repairs does your ship need? We’ll bring it here and repair it, and
then you’ll take our prisoner and carry him and your message back to
his own kind--our children!”
The irony and the fury and the frustration in his tone as he said,
“children,” made Murgatroyd wriggle, underneath Calhoun’s coat.
“I find,” said Calhoun, “that all I need is power. You drained my
overdrive charge when you snatched my ship out of overdrive. I’ve extra
Duhanne cells, but one overdrive charge is a lot of power to lose.”
“You’ll get it back,” growled Walker. “Then take the prisoner and our
warning to Canis. Get them to surrender if you can.”
Calhoun considered. Under his coat, Murgatroyd said “_Chee! Chee!_” in
a tone of some indignation.
“Thinking of the way of my own father with me,” said Calhoun wryly,
“and accepting your story itself as quite true--how the devil can I
make your children believe that this time you aren’t bluffing? Haven’t
you bluffed before?”
“We’ve threatened,” said Walker, his eyes blazing. “Yes. And we were
too soft-hearted to carry out our threats. We’ve tried everything short
of force. But the time has come when we have to be ruthless! We have
our wives to consider.”
“Whom,” observed Calhoun, “I suspect you didn’t dare have with you
because they wouldn’t let you actually fight, no matter what your sons
and daughters did.”
“But they’re not here now!” raged Walker. “And nothing will stop us!”
Calhoun nodded. In view of the situation as a whole, he almost believed
it of the fathers of the colonists on Canis III. But he wouldn’t have
believed it of his own father, regardless, and he did not think the
young people of Canis would believe it of theirs. Yet there was nothing
else for them to do.
It looked like he’d traveled three months in overdrive and
painstakingly studied much distressing information about the ancestors
of modern men, only to arrive at and witness the most heart-rending
conflict in human history.