Roberts glanced at the paper, to read, ” . . . In new vote, the surviving rulers have approved building of a Rest & Refit Center. Garoujik Corporation has subcontracted the actual construction work to Krojac Enterprises, and work is expected to begin at once . . .”
Roberts said, “The Iatulon, the Ribar, and the other efficient kings were able to end the famine?”
“Out of their accumulated stocks, they were able to ease it greatly, until the ground froze, and it became possible to also get food in quantity from the producing regions still cut off by bad roads. Then, between them, they built up stocks to get through the rest of the year on a reasonably normal basis.”
“Why didn’t anybody foresee this? To try to even suggest it to them was enough to drive you mad.”
The colonel nodded. “There were only so many people here to see it, and they were all too busy seeing something else. The peasants saw the money they were offered. Overall allocation of effort wasn’t their job. That job belonged to the kings. Their attention was on the money they’d get when the Royal Road was finished. If there was a famine—Well, they’d gotten through famines before. The consul, of course, should have seen it, but he is highly-educated, in economics that comes out of books written on highly developed worlds. ‘Subsistence economy’ is a pair of words that doesn’t mean much on highly developed worlds. What counts there is capital accumulation and technological development. But wherever, for whatever reason, you’re just able to produce enough food—or anything else you’ve got to have to exist—any diversion of effort from that work is fatal.
“The consul,” said the colonel, “may have known it mentally, but it was about as real to him as the words ‘cave bear,’ when he reads about the experiences of humanity’s remote ancestors. To people who’ve experienced the thing, the word ‘famine’ means a whole lot more.”
Roberts involuntarily shivered as the colonel spoke the word “famine.”
“Sir, does the Interstellar Patrol get involved like this very often?”
The colonel nodded soberly. “It has to. The universe isn’t made out of cotton candy. Our job is to get things done. And often there is no other way.”
Hammell said, “Sir, how many people had to die to get that R & R Center in?”
“Very few,” said the colonel. “Because the situation was thought out carefully.”
Roberts said, “If there’d been an error?”
“Millions of people could have died.”
“That’s a big responsibility.”
“It is. It requires thorough and determined training to be able to bear the responsibility. It’s a help if you enter on your initial training with some idea what’s in front of you. A man is less likely to throw away something if he knows he will desperately need it later.”
Roberts said, “We are about to start our training?”
“You are,” the colonel answered.
The four recruits looked at each other grimly.
The colonel said, “That will be all, gentlemen. You have tomorrow off. Then you begin training.”
Roberts, Hammell, Morrissey, and Bergen filed from the room. The last man out closed the door gently.
The colonel glanced at the wall above his desk, where gradually the strongly built keen-eyed man who had given him the problem came into view, smiling.
The colonel said, “What do you think?”
“I think you made the point. And it’s an important point. Without it, half the training could be wasted.”
The colonel nodded.
“I think they’re motivated,” he said.
THE NITROCELLULOSE DOORMAT
Colonel Valentine Sanders of the Interstellar Patrol tightened the restraining web as, around him, the globular screen showed the recorded scene of jungle and Space Force combat infantry.
Just ahead, beyond a thin screen of leaves, water poured in a wide sheet over a rock ledge, to foam and roar amongst the tumbled stone blocks below. On all sides, the blue-green trunks of giant trees twisted up through green twilight toward a sky that could be seen only as occasional patches high overhead. Through one of these rare openings, a shifting oblong of light shone down on the tangle of intertwined mossy roots on the jungle floor.
The air, hot, rank, and damp, with only a faint suggestion of a breeze, added the final touch to an illusion of reality that was almost complete.
The colonel glanced back. Through the trees, men darted forward, obviously well-trained, in good condition and alert, but very lightly armed. A little upstream of the waterfall, a lightly armed infantryman crawled out behind a mossy log, to peer through straggling weeds at the far bank of the stream.
The stream, about eight inches deep, and roughly forty feet across, was flowing swiftly over a bed of rock, strewn with occasional logs and flat stone slabs. The far bank rose steeply about eight feet high, topped by gently waving leafy branches.
What was atop the bank, behind the leaves, was anyone’s guess.
Frowning, the colonel glanced at the Space Force infantryman lying behind the log. The colonel could think of a number of devices for solving the problem of that bank, but the infantryman’s only weapon seemed to be a slug-throwing rifle, and his only protection appeared to be a helmet. The usual equipment of the Space Force combat infantry was such that one man armed as usual would have been more formidable than a thousand men armed like this.
Behind the log, the infantryman now bunched himself, as if to cross the stream in a rush. But then he paused and looked again. First, he would have to drop down the bank on the near side of the stream. Then there would be the splashing rush across forty feet of water, flowing over an uneven rock bottom that was probably coated with slime. Then there was the problem of getting up the bank on the far side.
The infantryman gave a slight shake of the head, and crouched lower. Without his usual equipment, his special skills would be a burden. He would constantly feel the need to use this or that piece of equipment—which he didn’t have.
Scowling, the colonel looked around. In this situation, a band of aborigines could slaughter the best troops in existence.
Now a second infantryman, in a mottled green-and-gray camouflage suit, crawled forward and tugged at the first man’s ankle. The two talked in low murmurs, then the second man crawled forward to take a look. He shrugged, scrambled out from behind the log, and slid over the bank. As he splashed out into the stream, the first man shoved his rifle forward and watched the far bank.
A third infantryman eased forward behind a tree as, halfway across the stream, the second slipped and fell. A fourth man crawled up behind a low pile of mossy rocks, and peered out at the far bank. The second, his wet uniform clinging to him, limped through the rushing water. A fifth and a sixth infantryman, as lightly armed as the rest, slipped forward through the trees.
In his mind’s eye, the colonel could see the whole near bank filling up with men stopped by that stream. He stared out across it, to see the second man find a handhold, and start to haul himself up the far bank, where the leaves moved gently in the breeze.
From behind the delicately waving leaves, brilliant lines sprang horizontally across the stream, to slice through brush, trees, and men like knives of light. Dazzling puffs of luminous vapor reached across the stream, and on the near bank blazing fireballs burst in explosions of bright droplets that left criss-crossing tracks like a thousand fiery spiderwebs. On all sides, the ground lifted in eruptions of flying dirt and rock.
The edges of the restraining web bit in hard as the colonel forgot himself and sought cover. With an effort, he relaxed and looked around at the recorded chaos of blurs as the viewing head left the site of the ambush. The record abruptly came to an end, and the screen around him went blank.
The colonel took a deep breath, and unlatched the restraining web. The globular screen divided into sections and swung up, to nest itself out of sight overhead.
The colonel glanced across the room, where the strongly built Section Chief, his penetrating blue eyes alight with anger, looked up from a viewer, snapped out the record spool, and said, “What do you think of it, Val?”
“Those were Space Force combat infantry?”
“Correct. Their best.”
“If we used men like that, we’d be finished in a month.”
“The circumstances were peculiar. Take a look at this.” The Chief tossed across the little spool, and the colonel bent to snap it into a viewer on a stand nearby.
A Space Force brigadier general, spare, trim, and frowning, appeared.
“The scene you’ve just witnessed was the beginning of an action that destroyed the 1866th Combat Infantry Regiment. This was one of our crack units—every man was first-rate. Four days earlier, the 1728th Combat Infantry was wiped out in a similar action. By ‘wiped out,’ I mean destroyed as a unit. Both regiments suffered over eighty percent killed. Most of the remainder were seriously wounded. Only a total of thirty-one men remained fit for service from these two actions.