In great-grandfather’s time the target was Clyde, Rocketry firm and ores on the side. If we hadn’t of seen them direct we’d of missed ’em; There wasn’t a blip from the whole damn system.
That was the first.
Before great-grandfather’s day was done We cut the orbit of Cyrnus One. The contact there was Trader McCue, But the sons o’ bitches missed us too.
That was the second.
My grandpa lived to see the green Of Target Three through the high-powered screen. But where in hell was Builder Carruthers? They let us go by like all the others. That was the——”
“Ma,” said Haarland. “Thanks very much, but would you skip to the last one?” Ma grinned.
The Haarland Trading Corp. was last With the fuel down low and going fast. I’m glad it was me who saw the day When they brought us down on GCA. I told him the message; he called it a mystery, But anyway this is the end of the history. And it’s about time!
“The message, please,” Haarland said broodingly.
Ma took a deep breath and rattled off: “L-sub-T equals L-sub-zero e to the minus-T-over-two-N.”
Ross gaped. “That’s the message?”
“Used to be more to it,” Ma said cheerfully “That’s all there is now, though. The darn thing doesn’t rhyme or anything. I guess that’s the most important part. Anyway, it’s the hardest.”
“It’s not as bad as it seems,” Haarland told Ross. “I’ve asked around. It makes a very little sense.”
“It does?”
“Well, up to a point,” Haarland qualified. “It seems to be a formula in genetics. The notation is peculiar, but it’s all explained, of course. It has something to do with gene loss. Now, maybe that means something and maybe it doesn’t. But I know something that does mean something: some member of a Wesley Family a couple of hundred years ago thought it was important enough to want to get it across to other Wesley families. Something’s happening. Let’s find out what it is, Ross.” The old man suddenly buried his face hi his hands. In a cracked voice he mumbled, “Gene loss and war. Gene loss or war. God, I wish
somebody would take this right out of my hands—or that I could drop with a heart attack this minute. You ever think of war, Ross?”
Shocked and embarrassed, Ross-mumbled some kind of answer. One might think of war, good breeding taught, but one never talked about it.
“You should,” the old man said hoarsely. “War is what this faster-than-light secrecy and identification rigmarole is all about. Right now war is impossible—between solar systems, anyhow, and that’s what counts. A planet might just barely manage to fit an invading multigeneration expedition at gigantic cost, but it never would. The fruits of victory— loot, political domination, maybe slaves—would never come back to the fitters of the expedition but to their remote descendants. A firm will take a flyer on a commercial deal like that, but no nation would accept a war on any such basis-—because a conqueror is a man, and men die. With F-T-L—faster-than-light travel—they might invade Curnus or Azor or any of those other tempting dots on the master maps. Why not? Take the marginal population, hop them up with patriotic fervor and lust for booty, and ship them off to pillage and destroy. There’s at least a fifty per cent chance of coming out ahead on the investment, isn’t there? Much more attractive deal commercially speaking than our present longliners.”
Ross had never seen a war. The last on Halsey’s planet had been the Peninsular Rebellion about a century and a half ago. Some half a million constitutional psychopathic inferiors had started themselves an ideal society with theocratic trimmings in a remote and unfruitful corner of the planet. Starved and frustrated by an unrealistic moral creed they finally exploded to devastate their neighboring areas and were quickly quarantined by a radioactive zone. They disintegrated internally, massacred their priesthood, and were permitted to disperse. It was regarded as a shameful episode by every dweller on the planet. It wasn’t a subject for popular filmreels; if you wanted to find out about the Peninsular Rebellion you went through many successive library doors and signed your name on lists, and were sternly questioned as to your age and scholarly qualifica-