“Well, there’s that on any raid, naturally,” Ben said. “But the last raid filled the quota pretty well, so only the first-timers are expected to bring back girls this time.” He shrugged disgustedly. “Matter of fact, that’s all my personal orders will let me do on this raid… find a good mauki prospect and haul her back here. But you already know all this. The Council has the whole plan from the Raid Commander. Why are you asking me?”
“To see if you know what you’re walking into,” Ivan Trefon said.
“Well, there’s nothing very exciting about kidnapping a girl,” Ben admitted. “But on the next raid they’ll let me do more.”
His father nodded slowly. “If there is a next raid.”
Suddenly Ben could feel the tension in the air, the strain and tiredness in his father’s voice. “Dad, what are you talking about? What’s wrong? Why did you call me down here?”
“Because I don’t want you to go on this raid.”
“You mean you want me to scratch?”
“That’s right. I want you to scratch.”
Ben was silent for a moment, staring at his father. Then he sighed. “Dad, look. I know that the raids are dangerous. But I’ve been training for weeks. I can take care of myself.” The older man shook his head impatiently. “It’s not that. If I let myself worry about you taking care of yourself, I’d have cracked up years ago.”
“Then what is it? What’s wrong?”
Ivan Trefon walked across the room to the light screen, and stared out at the darkening Martian desert. The sun was almost at the horizon now, bathing the rolling sand hills in deep purple light. Already the sky above was black, and the stars were showing by the hundreds. The old man turned and looked at his son squarely. “I don’t know what’s wrong, not for sure,” he said. “If I did, I swear that I’d tell you.
All I know for sure is that something is wrong. Something is going on, down on Earth, that our best intelligence men there can’t crack. The Earthmen have it under security wraps so tight that we can’t even get a toe in the door. All we can get is rumors, but the rumors sound bad.”
“Rumors about what?”
“About a blowout,” Ivan Trefon said. “Not just another of their silly reprisals. Not just a vigilante ship coming out to kidnap and torture a mauki or two. I mean a real blowout.”
“But what else could they do?” Ben asked incredulously. “They can’t mount a fleet against us…
anybody knows that.”
“I’m not so sure,” his father said slowly. “How much do you know about what’s been going on?”
“You mean between Earthmen and Spacers?”
“That’s right.”
Ben scratched his jaw. “Well… I know what everybody else knows.”
“Like what, for instance?”
“That Earth is theirs and space is ours. That they slammed the door on us centuries ago, and that we’ve never been able to break it open again. And that sometime we’ll grow strong enough to force the door open so that we won’t have to raid them any more for food and women and other things we need.
Then we can come and go as we please on Earth and they can come and go as they please in space.” Ivan Trefon shook his head grimly. “It’s a pretty dream, I know,” he said. “Even I used to believe it, a long time ago.”
“You mean you think that we’ll never have peace?” Ben said.
“I’m afraid that’s what I mean.”
“But why not?”
“Because they hate us,” Ivan Trefon said. “They hate us and they fear us. They fear the slightest contact with us, as if we had some kind of horrible disease. I never really realized how much they hated us until we had the meeting last year with their emissaries.” Ben stared. “You—you had a meeting with them?”
The older man nodded. “The Council never released the news. It was a pretty ugly meeting, and we learned later that they executed their own emissaries in space on their way home after their reports were taped. They were afraid even to let them set foot back on Earth. But we learned a lot from that meeting.”
“Like what?”
“A few simple facts that we’d known for a long time, but never really believed,” Ivan Trefon said wearily. “We learned that Earth will never settle for peace with us. They won’t even settle for enslaving us. They want us dead. Every man, every woman, every child of us—dead. Those were their terms for peace. And now our contact men down there are worried. Money has been going somewhere, and they can’t find out where. In the past five years more and more of Earth’s total labor force has been working on something that hasn’t appeared on the public market. The standard of living has dropped over fifty per cent, farms are lying idle, factories have closed down. Everything has been changing in the last five years, and now it’s beginning to look as if something is ready to break loose.” Ben Trefon was silent for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “And you think that whatever they’re doing is somehow tied into this raid?”
“I think something is ready to break. I think this raid could be the trigger to set it off.”
“But don’t you see that this is all the more reason why I can’t back out?” Ben said. “Dad, we can’t survive without the raids. Sooner or later somebody is going to have to go down there. And I’ve been tapped for this raiding party. I can’t stay home just because you’re afraid something terrible is going to happen.”
His father looked up at him. “You’re determined to go, then.”
“Of course I’m determined to go. But I’m worried about you, now. You sound—” Ben groped for words.
“Like I’m losing my grip?” Ivan Trefon laughed. “Like a frightened old man, trying to scare you away with spooks?”
“Well, maybe not,” Ben said soberly. “But you’re frightened, whether you know it or not. And there’s nothing to be frightened of. We’ve been raiding Earth for centuries. Nothing different is going to happen this time than any other time.” Ben shrugged. “So maybe they have some fancy plan for beating us off.
What do we care? The only thing they could possibly do to hurt us would be to mount a fleet against us, a space fleet. And everybody knows they can’t do that. They don’t know how, and they’re afraid to try.”
“I suppose,” Ivan Trefon said sadly. “Well, if you’re determined, nothing I can say is going to stop you. But you can’t say I didn’t try. Good luck, boy. And good hunting.” Ben clasped his father’s hand. “I’ll need both, if I’m going to bring back a mauki. You might buzz Elmo in the shop and tell him I won’t need that liniment, after all.” He turned and started for the door, his mind still filled with uneasiness. What was it that was bothering Dad? What was it he was trying to say, and still had left unsaid? At the door he turned back, searching his father’s tired face. “Was there anything else, before I go?”
Ivan Trefon shook his head slowly. “No, not really. Not now. But Ben—” He hesitated. “You know where the vaults are?”
“You mean down below?”
The old man nodded. “The lock was keyed to your hand-print the day you were born. There are certain things which require attention there, after I’m gone. When the time comes, I must count on you to open the vault. You will be responsible for what you find there.”
“When the time comes?”
“If anything should happen to me.”
“Of course. You can count on it.”
His father took a deep breath. “Good,” he said. “Now you’d better move, before the night winds give you a rough takeoff.”
Moments later Ben Trefon was walking back through the deserted entry hall toward the ramp to the hangar. Lights were coming on now, but there was still an eerie silence about the place, as though some portion of the life had somehow gone out of the House of Trefon. Ben frowned as he started down the ramp, still puzzling over his father’s last words. Down in the hangar his little S-80 was waiting, fully fuelled, the bent landing skid straightened and welded. His mind turned back to the excitement of the forthcoming raid. He checked out for launching, climbed into the cabin and waited as the winches drew the little ship out through the airlock and placed it on the long launching track.