“Right, sir. Come along.” They left the room together. Once out of earshot McMasters continued: “As I was saying when we were so crudely interrupted, that is why you can expect a long war. The ‘status’ will stay ‘quo’ while the Federation is busy at home with insurrections and civil disorder. From time to time they’ll send a boy to do a man’s job; we’ll give the boy lumps and send him home. After a few years of that the Federation will decide that we are costing more than we are worth and will recognize us as a free nation. In the meantime there will be no ships running to Mars. Too bad!”
“I’ll get there,” Don insisted.
“You’ll have to walk.”
They reached “G” deck. Don looked around and said, “I know my way from here. I must have gone down a deck too many.”
“Two decks,” McMasters corrected, “but I’ll go with you until you are back where you belong. There is one way you might get to Mars—probably the only way.”
“Huh? How? Tell me how?”
“Figure it out. There won’t be any passenger runs, not till the war is over, but it is a dead cinch that both the Federation and the Republic will send task forces to Mars eventually, each trying to pre-empt the facilities there for the home team. If I were you, I’d enlist in the High Guard. Not the Middle Guard, not the Ground Forces—but the High Guard.”
Don thought about it. “But I wouldn’t stand much chance of getting to go along would I?”
“Know anything about barracks politics? Get yourself a job as a clerk. If you’ve any skill at kissing the proper foot, a clerk’s job will keep you around Main Base. You’ll be close to the rumor factory and you’ll know when they finally get around to sending a ship to Mars. Kiss the proper foot again and put yourself on the roster. That’s the only way you are likely to get to Mars. Here’s your door. Mind you don’t get lost up forward again.”
Don turned McMasters’ words over in his mind for the next several days. He had clung stubbornly to the idea that, when he got to Venus, he would find some way to wrangle passage to Mars. McMasters forced him to regroup his thoughts. It was all very well to talk about getting in some ship headed for Mars—somehow, legally or illegally, paid passenger, crew member, or stowaway. But suppose there were no ships heading for Mars? A lost dog might beat his way back to his master—but a man could not travel a single mile in empty space without a ship. A total impossibility.
But that notion of joining the High Guard? It seemed a drastic solution even if it would work and—little as Don knew about the workings of military organization—he held a dark suspicion that the sergeant had oversimplified things. Using the High Guard to get to Mars might prove as unsatisfactory as trying to hitch-hike on a Kansas twister.
On the other hand he was at the age at which the idea of military service was glamorous in itself. Had his feelings about Venus been just a touch stronger he could easily have persuaded himself that it was his duty to throw in with the colonists and sign up, whether it got him to Mars or not.
Enlisting held another attraction: it would give pattern to his life. He was beginning to feel the basic, gnawing tragedy of the wartime displaced person, the loss of roots. Man needs freedom, but few men are so strong as to be happy with complete freedom. A man needs to be part of a group, with accepted and respected relationships. Some men join foreign legions for adventure; still more swear on a bit of paper in order to acquire a framework of duties and obligations, customs and taboos, a time to work and a time to loaf, a comrade to dispute with and a sergeant to hate—in short, to belong.
Don was as “displaced” as any wanderer in history; he had not even a planet of his own. He was not conscious of his spiritual need—but he took to staring at the soldiers of the High Guard when he ran across them, imagining what it would be like to wear that uniform.