"That's the beauty of the Earth War," Thrang said. "Stupendous yet
delicate complications, completely interrelated. Leave out one
seemingly unimportant detail and the whole structure collapses."
"Those Terrans!" Draxil said, shaking his head in admiration.
"Now to work. Boys, I'm calling for volunteers. Who'll be a spy?"
No one responded.
"Really now!" said Thrang. "That's no attitude to take. Come on, some
of you must be harboring treasonous thoughts. Don't be ashamed of it.
Remember, it takes all kinds to make a war."
Little Herg, a zipper salesman from Xcoth, cleared his throat. "I have
a cousin who's Minister of War for the Allies."
"An excellent motive for subversion!" Thrang cried.
"I rather thought it was," the zipper salesman said, pleased. "Yes, I
believe I can handle the job."
"Splendid!" Thrang said.
By then, the train had arrived at the station. The doors were unsealed,
allowing the commuters to leave for their jobs. Thrang watched the
zipper salesman depart, then hurried into the crowd. In a moment, he
found a tall man wearing a slouch hat and dark glasses. On his lapel
was a silver badge which read _Secret Police_.
"See that man?" Thrang asked, pointing to the zipper salesman.
"You bet," the Secret Policeman said.
"He's a spy! A dirty spy! Quick, after him!"
"He's being watched," said the Secret Policeman laconically.
"I just wanted to make sure," Thrang said, and started to walk off.
He felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He turned. The Secret Policeman
had been joined by two tall men in slouch hats and dark glasses. They
wore badges that said _Storm Troopers_.
"You're under arrest," said the Secret Policeman.
"Why? What have I done?"
"Not a thing, as far as we know," said a Storm Trooper. "Not a single
solitary thing. That's why we're arresting you."
"Arbitrary police powers," the Secret Policeman explained. "Suspension
of search warrants and habeas corpus. Invasion of privacy. War, you
know. Come along quietly, sir. You have a special and very important
part to play in the war effort."
"What's that?"
"You have been arbitrarily selected as Martyr," said the Secret
Policeman.
Head held high, Thrang marched proudly to his destiny.
* * * * *
The whole of Mala took to war with a will. Soon books began to appear
on the stalls: _War and You_ for the masses, _The Erotic Release of
War_ for the elite, _The Inherent Will to Destroy_ for philosophers,
and _War and Civilization_ for scholars. Volumes of personal
experiences sold well. Among them was an account of daring sabotage by
a former zipper salesman, and the dramatic story of the Martyrdom of
Thrang.
War eliminated a thousand old institutions and unburdened the people of
the heavy hand of tradition. War demonstrated clearly that everything
was as temporary as a match-flash except Art and Man, because cities,
buildings, parks, vehicles, hills, museums, monuments were as whispers
of dust after the bombers had gone.
Among the proletariat, the prevailing opinion was voiced by Zun, who
was quoted as saying at a war plant party, "Well, there ain't nothin'
in the stores I can buy. But I never made so much money in my life!"
In the universities, professors boned up on the subject in order to fit
themselves for Chairs of War that were sure to be endowed. All they had
to do was wait until the recent crop of war profiteers were taxed into
becoming philanthropists, or driven to it by the sense of guilt that
the books assured them they would feel.
Armies grew. Soldiers learned to paint, salute, curse, appreciate home
cooking, play poker, and fit themselves in every way for the post-war
civilian life. They broadened themselves with travel and got a welcome
vacation from home and hearth.
War, the Malans agreed, was certainly one of the cleverest of Earth
institutions and as educational as it was entertaining.
* * * * *
"Nope," Beliakoff was saying, "you wouldn't like Ran-hachi Prison, not
one little bit. It's on Mercury, you know, in the twilight zone. You
blister by day and you freeze by night. Only two men have escaped from
Ran-hachi in the last hundred years, and one of them figured his curve
wrong and flipped into Sol."
"What about the other one?" Kelly asked, perspiring lightly.
"His gyros fused. He was bound straight for the Coal Sack. Take him
a couple of thousand years to get there, at his speed," Beliakoff
finished dreamily. "No, Johnny, you wouldn't like Ran-hachi."
"Okay, okay," Kelly said. "The death penalty would be better."
"They give that only as a measure of extreme clemency," Beliakoff said
with gloomy Slavic satisfaction.
"Enough! We'll straighten out Mala." There was more hope than
conviction in Kelly's voice. "Thar she lies, off to starboard."
Mala was a tiny blue and brown sphere, suddenly growing larger in their
screens.
Their radio blared on the emergency channel.
Kelly swore. "That's the Galactic patrol boat from Azolith. What's he
doing here?"
"Blockade," said Beliakoff. "Standard practice to quarantine a planet
at war. We can't touch down legally until the war's declared over."
"Nuts. We're going down." Kelly touched the controls and the freighter
began to descend into the interdicted area.
"Attention, freighter!" the radio blasted. "This is the interdictory
ship _Moth_. Heave to and identify yourself."
Beliakoff answered promptly in the Propendium language. "Let's see 'em
unscramble _that_," he said to Kelly. They continued their descent.
After a while, a voice from the patrol boat said in Propendium,
"Attention, freighter! You are entering an interdicted area. Heave to
at once and prepare to be boarded."
"I can't understand your vile North Propendium accent," Beliakoff
bellowed, in a broad South Propendium dialect. "If you people can't
speak a man's language, don't clutter up the ether with your ridiculous
chatter. I know you long-haul trampers and I'll be damned if I'll give
you any air, water, food, or anything else. If you can't stock that
stuff like any normal, decent--"
"This area is interdicted," the patrol boat broke in, speaking now with
a broad South Propendium accent.
"Hell," Beliakoff grumbled. "They've got themselves a robot linguist."
"--under direct orders from the patrol boat _Moth_. Heave to at once,
freighter, and prepare to be boarded and inspected."
* * * * *
Beliakoff glanced at the planet looming large beneath them. He gestured
at the power control to Kelly and said, "Hello! Hello! Do you read me?
Your message is not coming across. Do you read me?"
"Stop or we'll fire!"
Beliakoff nodded. Kelly kicked in all the jets and they plummeted
toward the surface. With his pilot's sixth sense, Kelly changed course
abruptly. A blast seared past them, sealing a starboard tube for
good. Then they were in the atmosphere, traveling too fast, the hull
glowing red with friction. The heavy cruiser, built only for spatial
maneuvering, broke off its pursuit curve.
"All right, freighter. This means your license. You gotta leave
sometime."
Beliakoff shut off the radio. Kelly fired the braking jets and began to
spiral in for a landing.
As they circled, Beliakoff saw the shattered rubble and ruin where
cities had been. He saw highways filled with military columns, and, at
the distant edge of the horizon, a fleet of military planes winging
their way to a fresh target.
"What a mess!" he said. Kelly nodded glumly.
They touched down and opened the hatches. Already a crowd of Malans had
gathered. A few artists had set up their easels and were busy painting
the freighter, not because it was lovely, but because it was Terran,
which was better.
A Malan stepped forward, grinning. "Well," he asked, "what do you
think of it?"
"Of what?"
"Our war, of course. You must have noticed!"
"Oh, yes, we noticed," Beliakoff said.
"A real intercontinental war complete with ideological differences,"
the man stated proudly. "Just like the civilized planets have. You must
admit it's Earthlike."
"Exceedingly Earthlike," Kelly said. "Now take us to whoever's in
charge--quick!"
* * * * *
The conference with Nob at the Imperial Palace began well. The Prime
Minister was overjoyed that real Earthmen had come to witness their
war. He knew very well that, by Earth standards, it was a pretty small
war. A beginner's war, really. But they were trying. Some day, with
more know-how, with better equipment, they would be able to produce a
war that would match anyone's.
"We were hampered from the start," Nob apologized, "by not knowing how
to produce atomic fission."
"That must have been confining," Kelly said, and Beliakoff winced.
"It was. Dynamite and nitroglycerin just don't have the same grandeur
and finality. The scale of demolition seems insignificant. But if you
will come with me, gentlemen, I have something here which may interest
you."
Nob ushered the Earthmen ahead of him so he could copy their
loose-jointed, rolling walk.
"Here!" he said, darting ahead and opening a door. "Behold!"
The Earthmen saw, upon an ivory pedestal, a small model of an atomic
bomb.
"We worked until we mastered it at last," Nob said proudly. "With any
luck, we'll be in production within the month and using them within the
year. Now I think I can safely say that Mala has come of age!"