What he was really asking was what the Emperor would say when he learned the conquest of Tosev 3 might not be a complete conquest. Atvar said, “Here speed-of-light works with us. Whatever he says, we shall not know about it until near the time when the colonization fleet arrives, or perhaps even a few years after that.”
“Truth,” Kirel said. “Until then, we are autonomous.”
Autonomous,in the language of the Race, carried overtones ofalone orisolated orcut off from civilization. “Truth,” Atvar said sadly. “Well, Shiplord, we shall have to make the best of it, for ourselves and for the Race as a whole, of which we are, and remain, a part.”
“As you say, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel answered. “With so much going on in such strange surroundings at so frenetic a pace, keeping that basic fact in mind is sometimes difficult.”
“Is frequently difficult, you mean,” Atvar said. “Even without the battles, there are so many irritations here. That psychological researcher the Big Uglies in China have kidnapped… They state it is in reprisal for his studies of a newly hatched Tosevite. How can we do research on the Big Uglies if our males go in fear of having vengeance taken on them for every test they make?”
“It is a problem, Exalted Fleetlord, and I fear it will only grow worse,” Kirel said. “Since we received word of this kidnapping, two males have already abandoned ongoing research projects on the surface of Tosev 3. One has taken his subjects up to an orbiting starship, which is likely to skew his results. The other has also gone aboard a starship, but has terminated his project. He states he is seeking a new challenge.” Kirel waggled his eye turrets, a gesture of irony.
“I had not heard that,” Atvar said angrily. “He should be strongly encouraged to return to his work: if necessary, by kicking him out the air lock of that ship.”
Kirel’s mouth fell open in a laugh. “It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord.”
“Exalted Fleetlord!” The image of Pshing, Atvar’s adjutant, suddenly filled one of the communicator screens in the fleetlord’s chamber. It was the screen reserved for emergency reports. Atvar and Kirel looked at each other. As they’d just said, the conquest of Tosev 3 was nothing but a series of emergencies.
Atvar activated his own communications gear. “Go ahead, Adjutant. What has happened now?” He was amazed at how calmly he brought out the question. When life was a series of emergencies, each individual crisis seemed less enormous than it would have otherwise.
Pshing said, “Exalted Fleetlord, I regret the necessity of reporting a Tosevite nuclear explosion by a riverside city bearing the native name Saratov.” After a moment in which he swiveled one eye turret, perhaps to check a map, he added, “This Strata is located within the not-empire of the SSSR. Damage is said to be considerable.”
Atvar and Kirel looked at each other again, this time in consternation. They and their analysts had been confident the SSSR had achieved its one nuclear detonation with radioactives stolen from the Race, and that its technology was too backwards to let it develop its own bombs, as had Deutschland and the United States. Once again, the analysts had not known everything there was to know.
Heavily, Atvar said, “I acknowledge receipt of the news, Adjutant. I shall begin the selection process for a Soviet site to be destroyed in retaliation. And, past that”-he looked toward Kirel for a third time, mindful of the discussion they’d been having-“well, past that, right now I don’t know what we shall do.”
XIV
The typewriter spat out machine-gun bursts of letters: clack-clack-clack, clack-clack-clack, clackety-clack The line-end bell dinged. Barbara Yeager flicked the return lever; the carriage moved with an oiled whir to let her type another line.
She stared in dissatisfaction at the one she’d just finished. “That ribbon is getting too light to read any more,” she said. “I wish they’d scavenge some fresh ones.”
“Not easy to come by anything these days,” Sam Yeager answered. “I hear tell one of our foraging parties got shot at the other day.”
“I heard something about that, but not much,” Barbara said. “Was it the Lizards?”
Sam shook his head. “Nothing to do with the Lizards. It was foragers out from Little Rock, after the same kinds of stuff our boys were. There’s less and less stuff left to find, and we aren’t making much these days that doesn’t go straight out the barrel of a gun. I think it’ll get worse before it gets better, too.”
“I know,” Barbara said. “The way we get excited over little things now, like that tobacco you bought-” She shook her head. “And I wonder how many people have starved because crops either didn’t get planted or didn’t get raised or couldn’t get from the farm to a town.”
“Lots,” Sam said. “Remember that little town in Minnesota we went through on the way to Denver? They were already starting to slaughter their livestock because they couldn’t bring in all the feed they had to have-and that was a year and a half ago. And Denver’s going to go hungry now. The Lizards have tromped on the farms that were feeding it, and wrecked the railroads, too. One more thing to put on their bill, if we ever get around to giving it to them.”
“We’re lucky to be where we are,” Barbara agreed. “It gets down to that, we’re lucky to be anywhere.”
“Yeah.” Sam tapped a front tooth with a fingernail. “I’ve been lucky I haven’t broken a plate, too.” He reached out and rapped on the wooden desk behind which Barbara sat. “Way things are now, a dentist would have a heck of a time fixing my dentures if anything did break.” He shrugged. “One more thing to worry about.”
“We’ve got plenty.” Barbara pointed to the sheet of paper in the typewriter. “I’d better get back to this report, honey, not that anybody’ll be able to read it when I’m through.” She hesitated, then went on, “Is Dr. Goddard all right, Sam? When he gave me these notes to type up, his voice was as faint and gray as the letters I’m getting from this ribbon.”
Sam wouldn’t have put it that way, but Sam hadn’t gone in for literature in college, either. Slowly, he answered, “I’ve noticed it for a while now myself, hon. I think it’s getting worse, too. I know he saw some of the docs here, but I don’t know what they told him. I couldn’t hardly ask, and he didn’t say anything.” He corrected himself: “I take that back. He did say one thing: “We’ve gone far enough now that no one man matters much any more.’ “
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Barbara said.
“Now that I think about it, I don’t, either,” Sam said. “Sort of sounds like a man writing his own what-do-you-call-it-obituary-doesn’t it?” Barbara nodded. Sam went on, “Thing is, he’s right. Pretty much everything we’ve done with rockets so far has come out of his head-either that or we’ve stolen it from the Lizards or borrowed it from the Nazis. But we can go on without him now if we have to, even if we won’t go as fast or as straight.”
Barbara nodded again. She patted the handwritten originals she was typing. “Do you know what he’s doing here? He’s trying to scale up-that’s the term he uses-the design for the rockets we have so they’ll be big enough and powerful enough to carry an atomic bomb instead of TNT or whatever goes into them now.”
“Yeah, he’s talked about that with me,” Sam said. “The Nazis have the same kind of project going, too, he thinks, and they’re liable to be ahead of us. I don’t think they have a Lizard who knows as much as Vesstil, but their people were making rockets a lot bigger than Dr. Goddard’s before the Lizards came. We’re doing what we can, that’s all. Can’t do more than that.”