There was a great dearth of news; there had been for the past few hours of the crisis. Since that God-awful business from the Mars Embassy stopped and the entire staff there had—presumably—been shot in the back while hard at work fabricating incredible dispatches, there was a mighty and sullen silence over the air, ether and subetheric channels of communication.
On Venus things were pretty bad, too. A lot of Earthmen had been interned and the whole planet was sitting on edge waiting for something to happen. It did happen, with superb precision, after exactly seven hours of silence and inactivity.
There was a frantic call from, of all Godforsaken places, Jupiter. Jupiter claimed that the whole business was a feint, and that the major part of the Earth fleet was even now descending on the Jovians to pillage and slay.
The official broadcast—not a beam dispatch—from Jupiter stated this.
Earth promptly denied everything, in a stiff-necked communique.
Venus grinned out of the corner of her mouth. In an answering communique she stated that since Venus was invariably to be found on the side of the underdog, the Venus Grand Fleet would depart immediately for Jupiter to engage the enemy of her good friends, the Jovians.
Earth, to demonstrate her good faith, withdrew her own fleet from anywhere near the neighborhood of Jupiter, going clear around to the other side of the Sun for maneuvers.
Lovers of peace drew great, relieved sighs. The face-to-face had been broken up. The ultimatum had been forgotten in Earth's righteous stand that she had not invaded Jupiter nor intended to. This made Venus look and feel silly. This made the crisis collapse as though it had never been there at all.
And just after the Venus fleet had reported to its own home F.O.—this was three hours after the ultimatum had elapsed without being noticed by anybody—there were several people in the Earth Embassy on Mars acting hilariously. There was a Jovian who gurgled over and over:
"I didn't know it would be this much fun! We'd have gotten into the game years ago if we'd known."
"And I," said the ambassador, "have the satisfaction of knowing that I've given a pretty headache to the best code experts in the system. And all by the simple expedient of sending a code message that means just what it says."
"And I," said Weems, upending a glass, "have aided the cause of peace between the planets. If I can get to the Karfiness and let her know that she's being played for a sucker by the munitions people—"
"Let it come later," said Dr. Carewe. "I wish I could live another eighty years to read about it in the history books. But it really doesn't matter, because they'll say something like this:
" 'Toward the end of this year there arose a crisis between Earth and Venus, seemingly over matters of trade. It actually reached a point of ultimatums and reprisals. Fortunately the brilliant, calm and efficient work of the Hon. Secretary of Recession, Jowett Osgood, saved the day.
He contracted a defensive alliance with Jupiter, the combined might of the Earth-Jovian fleet crushing any idea of victory that may have been the goal of the Venusians.' "
Dr. Carewe laughed loudly and raucously as she refilled her glass.
THEORY OF ROCKETRY
Mr. Edel taught six English classes that year at Richard M. Nixon High School, and the classes averaged seventy-five pupils each. That was four hundred and fifty boys and girls, but Mr. Edel still tried to have the names down cold by at least the third week of the semester. As English 308 stormed into his room he was aware that he was not succeeding, and that next year he would even stop trying, for in 1978 the classes would average eighty-two pupils instead of seventy-five.
One seat was empty when the chime sounded; Mr. Edel was pleased to notice that he remembered whose it was. The absent pupil was a Miss Kahn, keyed into his memory by "Kahnsti-pated," which perhaps she was, with her small pinched features centered in a tallow acre of face.
Miss Kahn slipped in some three seconds late; Edel nodded at his intern, Mrs. Giovino, and Mrs. Giovino coursed down the aisle to question, berate and possibly demerit Miss Kahn. Edel stood up, the Modern Revised Old Testament already open before him.
"You're blessed," he read, "if you're excused for your wrongdoing and your sin is forgiven. You're blessed if God knows that you're not evil and sly any more. I, King David, used to hide my sins from God while I grew old and blustered proudly all day. But all day and all night too your hand was heavy on me, God …"
It would be the flat, crystal-clear, crystal-blank M.R.O.T. all this week; next week he'd read (with more pleasure) from the Roman Catholic Knox translation; the week after that, from the American Rabbinical Council's crabbed version heavy with footnotes; and the week after that, back to M.R.O.T. Thrice blessed was he this semester that there were no Moslems, Buddhists, militant atheists or miscellaneous cultists to sit and glower through the reading or exercise their legal right to wait it out in the corridor. This semester the classes were All-American: Protestant, Catholic, Jewish—choice of one.
"Amen," chorused the class, and they sat down; two minutes of his fifty-minute hour were gone forever.
Soft spring was outside the windows, and they were restless. Mr. Edel
"projected" a little as he told them, "This is the dreaded three-minute impromptu speech for which English Three Oh Eight is notorious, young ladies and gentlemen. The importance of being able to speak clearly on short notice should be obvious to everybody. You'll get nowhere in your military service if you can't give instructions and verbal orders. You'll get less than nowhere in business if you can't convey your ideas crisply and accurately." A happy thought struck him: great chance to implement the Spiritual-Values Directive. He added,
"You may be asked to lead in prayer or say grace on short notice." (He'd add that one to his permanent repertoire; it was a natural.) "We are not asking the impossible. Anybody can talk interestingly, easily and naturally for three minutes if they try. Miss Gerber, will you begin with a little talk on your career plans?"
Miss Gerber ("Grapefruit" was the mnemonic) rose coolly and driveled about the joys of motherhood until Mrs. Giovino passed her card to Edel and called time.
"You spoke freely, Miss Gerber, but perhaps not enough to the point,"
said Edel. "I'm pleased, though, that you weren't bothered by any foolish shyness. I'm sure everybody I call on will be able to talk right up like you did." (He liked that "like" the way you like biting on a tooth that aches; he'd give them Artificial-Grammar De-emphasis …) "Foster, may we hear from you on the subject of your coming summer vacation?" He jotted down a C for the Grapefruit.
Foster ("Fireball") rose and paused an expert moment. Then in a firm and manly voice he started with a little joke ("If I survive English Three Oh Eight …"), stated his theme ("A vacation is not a time for idling and wasted opportunity"), developed it ("harvest crew during the day for physical—my Science Search Project during the evenings for mental"), elevated it ("no excuse for neglecting one's regular attendance at one's place of worship") and concluded with a little joke ("should be darned glad to get back to school!").
The speech clocked 2:59. It was masterly; none of the other impromptus heard that morning came close to it.
"And," said Mr. Edel at lunch to his semi-crony Dr. Fugua, biology,
"between classes I riffled through the grade cards again and found I'd marked him F. Of course I changed it to A. The question is, why?"
"Because you'd made a mistake," said Fuqua absently. Something was on his mind, thought Edel.
"No, no. Why did I make the mistake?"
"Well, Fured, in The Psychology of Everyday—"