«And they don’t try. What can you do with a people who’re willing to scorch their earth and evacuate their own dwellings before we get there? What’s the point of silly little actions like this one—going out, burning a city in reprisal, what does the enemy care? It’s just a chance for him to harass us some more.»
«We’ll teach them manners, sir,» said the aide.
«Oh, in time, of course. In time. When we get enough troops and supplies here. But curse it, I can’t get enough!»
An explosion cracked before them. The chief saw three men fall screaming from the grenade. A heavy machine gun began to clatter.
«Guerrillas!» he roared.
He glimpsed the big green forms dashing in out of the brush. They could gallop like the wind, those devils, and they could carry as much armament on their backs as a small truck. The war whoop sent a brief tingle of fear along his nerves.
The tanks began to speak, throwing flame and thunder at the enemy. One of the machines was suddenly wrapped in red smoke—a fire bomb. The Ulugani infantry had thrown themselves to the ground and were shooting up at the trampling, yelling centauroids.
«Drive ’em back!» screamed the chief. «Drive ’em back!»
The Patrol did, after a short interval of utter ferocity. But not before a bomb had struck the command car and incinerated its contents.
The colonel looked out of the thick plastic port and shivered. Beyond it, the landscape was one vast gloom. Poisonous mists curled between him and the unseen horizon, like a wall. He thought he could see the sudden red spouting of a volcano, somewhere in the fog. A moment later, the floor quivered under his feet.
«You fool!» he raged. «You utter imbecile!»
The base geologist stood his ground. «We did our best, sir,» he answered. «As far as we could tell, the terrain here was stable.»
«One whole base has already been destroyed in a quake. Isn’t that enough for you?»
The wind slapped monstrously at the dome. They had never seen such gales as blew endlessly across Shang V. A blind whirl of sleet—solid ammonia—hid the outside view.
«Sir,» said the geologist, «this planet is utterly crazy. The probes gave readings that on any normal world would mean safe, solid ground.»
«Nevertheless, one of our domes has just been cracked open. Every man within it died instantly. You and your team are due for court-martial.»
The geologist nodded.
«As the colonel says. But may I suggest that we find another site? This one is obviously dangerous after all.»
«And do you realize what it means, in terms of effort and materials, to break camp on this planet?»
«I can’t help that, sir. I am officially proposing that we move.»
«Headquarters will have my skin, too,» said the colonel gloomily. He looked out again at the sinister land. «How could we know? How could anyone have foretold it would be like this?»
The Patrol knew! laughed his mind. They knew! Now all I can do is submit a recommendation that we evacuate. The other commanders here will back me up. But that’s an invitation to the enemy to return.
The floor trembled. He heard a paperweight jump on his desk. Outside, not five meters off, a hole opened in the ground—slowly, hugely, with all the time in the universe to do its work. Fire spilled from it, and magma crawled forth toward the dome.
The Elgash family had come up the hard way, from the peasant stock of a conquered land; it had been ennobled only fifty years ago. For that, and for its owning the Munitions Trust, Hurulta despised it. But he did not underestimate the being who sat across from his desk. The present Elgash was fat and wheezy and dandified, but there was a hard drive and a cold brain in him.
«I speak for several others, your excellency,» he said. «I need not mention their names.»
«The money barons,» replied Hurulta sullenly. «The industrialists and financiers. What of it?»
«Shall I speak plainly?» asked Elgash.
«Go ahead. We’re alone.»
«The group I represent is not at all satisfied with the conduct of the war.»
«Oh? And you have constituted yourselves the new General Staff?»
«Spare the sarcasm, your excellency. It was understood that Tukatan would be subjugated within six months. Now, after almost a year, we are still fighting there.»
«They could be bombarded from space,» said Hurulta, «but as you well know, that would destroy the whole value of the planet. We have to go slowly. Then the Patrol appeared to complicate matters.»
«I realize all that.» The insolence was more marked than ever. «And rather than concentrate on Tukatan and the Patrol, and get them safely out of the way, your ministry has tried to take on the whole star cluster. You have blundered disastrously into planets we hardly knew a thing about.»
«To keep the Patrol from using them against us.» Hurulta checked his temper. «All right, I admit we’ve had our troubles. But we’re making progress. The over-all timetable for the establishment of our hegemony has been accelerated enormously. In the long run, that will mean a saving.»
«Will it now? Even your successes are dubious. Take that forsaken little pill of sand, Yarnaz IV. There’s been no trouble in occupying it. But the expense of maintaining bases under such alien conditions is fantastic. The commoners are being taxed to the limit, and your new tax on the leading groups of society is outrageous.»
«It has to be done. Or would you rather have the Patrol come in and run things?»
«Of course,» said Elgash coldly, «your most inexcusable blunder was the occupation of Umung.»
«What?» For a moment Hurulta could find no words. Slowly, then, he gulped down his rage, and when he spoke it was with thin precision. «That was the one operation which went off like clockwork. At a negligible cost in men and money, we have already doubled our war production. Inside another year, we can expect to quadruple it.»
«I thought you were a realist, your excellency,» said Elgash. «I thought you understood the economic foundation on which the empire rests. Or are you deliberately ruining my class?»
«Are you mad? First you complain about taxes, then when I find a way to increase production, a way that costs us hardly one crown, you—»
«Your excellency, we have only so many soldiers and there is a limit to the amount of war materiel they can use. When Umung is producing all of it, what will become of Ulugan’s factories?»
Fear.
Shamuvaz, soldier of the empire, looked around him. He moved his head very slowly, lest he see something behind his back. There was only the landscape-distorted trees, murmuring reddish grass, a remote waterfall that echoed the furious clamor of his heart.
He felt ill. He wanted to vomit. Looking at the faces of his companions, he thought that they were impossibly alien. They were evil. They were made evil by the same horror that rode on him, and in their panic they might turn and tear him.
Shamuvaz whimpered, deep in his throat, and thought of his wife and children. They were so far away, so many centuries away, he would never see them again. He would rot on Gyreion, the wind would blow through his ribs and the small beasts of the field would nest in his empty, empty skull.
They said it was harmless. They said it was only that the natives—so thoroughly indoctrinated by the Patrol that there was no dealing with them… or was it that, being telepaths, they knew Ulugan meant them for pawns?—the natives were afraid, and you yourself heard their fear. Nothing to it. Ignore it. You are a soldier of the empire, and fear of nothingness is unworthy of you.
Only the generals didn’t have to live with fear. They didn’t have to torment themselves, night after night, to stay awake, for fear of the dreams; and when they finally did sleep, in spite of everything, they weren’t brought up within minutes, screaming. They didn’t see their comrades break, one by one, and be sent home muttering idiot words, and wonder when their turn would come.