Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

Senate after long joint coi sideration by the President and Manning. The direct of

the Red Cross, an obscure little professor of history from Switzerland, Dr. Igor

Rimski who had developed the Karst-Obre technique indepen’dently and whom the A. P.

F. had discovered in prison after the dusting of Moscow-those three were the only

foreigners. The rest of the list is well known.

Ridpath and his staff were of necessity the original technical crew of the

Commission; United States Army and Navy pilots its first patrolmen. Not all of the

pilots available were needed; their records were searched, their habits and

associates investigated, their mental processes and emotional attitudes examined by

the best psychological research methods available-which weren’t good enough. Their

final acceptance for the Patrol depended on two personal interviews, one with

Manning, one with the President.

Manning told me that he depended more on the President’s feeling for

character than he did on all the association and reaction tests the psychologists

could think up. “It’s like the nose of a bloodhound,” he said. “In his forty years

of practical politics he has seen more phonies than you and I will ever see and each

one was trying to sell him something. He can tell one in the dark.”

The long-distance plan included the schools for the indoctrination of cadet

patrolmen, schools that were to be open to youths of any race, color, or

nationality, and from which they would go forth to guard the peace of every country

but their own. To that country a man would never return during his service. They

were to be a deliberately expatriated band of Janizanies, with an obligation only to

the Commission and to the race, and welded together with a carefully nurtured esprit

de corps.

It stood a chance of working. Had Manning been allowed twenty years without

interruption, the original plan might have worked.

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The President’s running mate for reelection was the result of a political

compromise. The candidate for Vice President was a confirmed isolationist who ha

opposed the Peace Commission from the first, but was he or a party split in a year

when the oppositio was strong. The President sneaked back in but with greatly

weakened Congress; only his power of vet twice prevented the repeal of the Peace

Act. The Vic President did nothing to help him, although he did n publicly lead the

insurrection. Manning revised h plans to complete the essential program by the end

1952, there being no way to predict the temper of tF next administration.

We were both overworked and I was beginning 1 realize that my health was

gone. The cause was not fi to seek; a photographic film strapped next to my ski

would cloud in twenty minutes. I was suffering froi cumulative minimal radioactive

poisoning. No wel defined cancer that could be operated on, but a sy temic

deterioration of function and tissue. There w~ no help for it, and there was work to

be done. I’ve a ways attributed it mainly to the week I spent sittir on those

canisters before the raid on Berlin.

February 17, 1951. I missed the televue flash aboi the plane crash that

killed the President because I w~ lying down in my apartment. Manning, by that tim

was requiring me to rest every afternoon after lunc though I was still on duty. I

first heard about it from my secretary when I returned to my office, and at om

hurried into Manning’s office.

There was a curious unreality to that meeting. seemed to me that we had

slipped back to that d~ when I returned from England, the day that Estel Karst died.

He looked up. “Hello, John,” he said.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “Don’t take it hard, chief,” was all I could

think of to say.

Forty-eight hours later came the message from ti newly sworn-in President

for Manning to report him. I took it in to him, an official despatch which decoded.

Manning read it, face impassive.

“Are you going, chief?” I asked.

“Eh? Why, certainly.”

I went back into my office, and got my topcoat, gloves, and briefcase.

Manning looked up when I came back in. “Never mind, John,” he said. “You’re