judiciary and government will support the LRB. Neither do I need to dwell upon what
these events will do to the already vicious spiral of inflation.
“It’s easy to say `fight’, but how far must we be prepared to go? The LRB will rule
against us. We will appeal. While that appeal is pending, Hoadman will call all his copper
miners out. That strike will be completely effective, and as all industry slows down the
public will scream for GalMet’s blood. All the mass media of WestHem will crucify me
personally. As I said, we will lose the appeal-or perhaps, even before that, the
government will seize the mines and give Hoadman everything he wants. In either case, if
we stop at that point, we will be in even worse shape than if we had surrendered without
fighting at all.”
“But how much farther than that can we possibly go?” Zeckendorff demanded.
“I’m coming to that. If we fight at all, we must be prepared to go the full route. We’ll drag
the legal proceedings out as long as we can. Meanwhile well be developing copper
mines on the planets. We have maps and your Metalsmen and Builders will be very good
at that. We’ll ram planetary copper down WestHem’s collective throat. However, that
ramming will not-he easy. The government is very strong and it will do its utmost to block
every move we make. So the most logical conclusion is that we will have to form a
government of the planets and declare our complete independence of Tellus.
“We are already calling ourselves the Galaxians; that would be as good a name as any
for the new government. That would probably involve a massive and effective blockade
of Tellus, which in turn might cause the Nameless One of EastHem to launch his
thermonuclear bombs. WestHem would retaliate, and it is distinctly possible that all
Tellus might become a radioactive wasteland.”
The silence, which had been deepening steadily, was broken by an explosive “Jesus
Christ!” from peppery little Bryce of Metals.
“Precisely,” Maynard went on. “That is why this meeting was called. This is-at least I
think it will become-the first meeting of the Board of Directors of the Galaxians, a
government which is to adhere strictly to the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest.
“What we can accomplish remains to be seen. We will have to exert extreme caution; we
must keep ahead of the opposition; above all, we must be able at all times to pull up
short of ultimate catastrophe to Tellus.
“Whether or not we fight at all depends absolutely upon the attitude of the Planetsmen.
We must have solidarity. Hoadman expects the full support of Labor, even to the
extremity of a general strike of all the unions of WestHem. This would necessitate the
cooperation of the Planetsmen, and he expects even that. It is psychologically impossible
for any man of Hoadman’s stripe to understand that on the planets there is neither
Capital nor Labor; that we Galaxians are all labor and are all capitalists. Hence it is clear
that unless we are sure of virtual unanimity of all Galaxians we cannot fight Hoadman at
all.
“I now ask the supremely vital question- Do the Planetsmen, the most important segment
by far of the Galaxians, want to go the route for a stable dollar and all that it means?
You seven may retire to a private room for discussion, if you like….
“But I see you don’t need to,” Maynard went on, as all seven men spoke practically at
once, Holbrook of Communications being first by an instant. “Peter Holbrook, president of
the Associated Wavesmen, has the floor.”
Holbrook of Communications was the youngest man there. He was scarcely out of his
twenties and was so deeply tanned that his crew-cut, sun-bleached hair seemed almost
white. He looked like a -professional football player; or like the expert “pole-climber” he
had been until a year before. He stood up, cleared his throat, and said, “You’re right, Mr.
Maynard, we don’t need to discuss that point. We’ve thought about it and talked about it
a lot. We have been and are highly concerned. But I’m not the one to talk about it here. I
yield the floor to Mr. Egbert Bryce, President of the Society of Metalsmen, who has been
coordinating us all along on this very thing.”
You, Eggie?” Maynard asked, with a grin, and the tone of the meeting became less
formal all of a sudden. I “And you never let me in on it?”
“Me,” the wiry, intense Bryce agreed. “Naturally not. You’re always beating somebody’s
ears down about presenting a half-developed program and ours isn’t developed yet at all.
But you’ve apparently made plans for a long time ahead.”
“Plenty of them, but they’re all fluid. Nothing to go into at this point. Go ahead.”
“All right. On this basic factor there’s no disagreement whatever. No doubt or question.
Tellurian labor is a bunch of plain damned fools. Idiots. Cretins. However, that’s only to
be expected because everybody with any brains or any guts left Tellus years ago.
There’s scarcely any good breeding stock left, even. So about the only ones with brains
left-except for the connivers, chiselers, I boodlers, gangsters, and bastardly crooked
politicians and that goes for most Tellurian capitalists, too. Right?” “Dead right, and we
don’t like it one bit better than you do. That’s why so much Tellurian capital is all set to
join us Galaxians when we leave Tellus.”
“Oh? You’ve gone that far? That’s some of the stuff you’ll go into later?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
“All right. Every time I think of Tellurian labor it makes me so damn mad.. . .”
“Eggie’s the evenest-tempered man alive,” Wellington explained to the group at large.
“Mad all the time.” “So what?” the bristly little man snapped. “This is a thing to really get
mad about. Slaves! Not slaves, either -slaves don’t necessarily like slavery and they
sometimes rebel. They’re serfs. They like it that way. Dead level advancement by
seniority only-security-security, hell! No change-change scares the pants off of ’em.
Don’t want to think. Think? They cart think. One good thought would fracture their
brainless damned skulls. And as long as they get a dollar an hour more than they’re
worth they don’t give a cockeyed tinker’s damn that their bosses are stealing everything
in sight that isn’t welded down-and sometimes even some of that. So you can paste it in
your tall silk hat, Mayn, that the Planetsmen are free men, not brainless stupid serfs.
Burley Hoadman won’t get any help at all from us in stealing any more megabucks than
he already has stolen. Not by seven thousand spans of Steinman truss.”
“Serf labor versus free men,” Maynard said, thoughtfully. “Very well put, Eggie. In that
connection, Speers of the Little Gem made a tape that shows the attitude of two of his
best men. Will you play it, please, Miss Champion?”
She played it and Maynard went on, “We have thousands of similar recordings. The serf
attitude is characteristic of non-union, as well as of union labor, and also of white-collar
people as a class. In fact, it is characteristic of Tellus as a planet. In contrast to that atti-
tude, Zeckendorff of the Stockmen brought along a tape, of which we will hear the last
few sentences. Scene, a meeting of Local 3856 of the Stockmen. Occasion, the voting
upon a resolution presented by a Tellurian union organizer after weeks of work. Miss
Champion?”
She flipped a switch and the speaker said, “The vote is nine hundred seventy eight
against; none for. That kind of crap doesn’t go on the planets, Gaylord, and if you had
the brain God gave a goose you’d know it. That kind of security is what life-termers on
the Rock have and we don’t want any part of it. Nobody but ourselves is ever going to
tell us what we can or can’t do; so you’d better get the hell out of here and back to Tellus
before somebody parts your hair with a routing iron.”
“I like that,” Maynard said. “I like it very much. We knew in general what the sentiment
is. However, pure Galaxianism-everybody pulling together harmoniously for the common
good-is an ideal and as such can never be realized. The question is, can we approach it
nearly enough to snake it work?”
“We can try-and I think we can do it,” Bryce said. “Anyway, Mayn, this first hurdle was
the biggest one, and it’s solid. We can guarantee that.”
“Wonderful!” Maynard said. “Then we’re in business -so let’s get on with it.”
And the meeting went on; not only for all the rest of that day, but all day and every day
for two solid weeks.
Shortly after the Deston Uranium Expedition got back to Newmars, the Deston family
went to Earth and to the Warner-owned, luxury-type Hotel Warner; arriving there early of
an evening.
Barbara was thoroughly accustomed to red-carpet treatment. She nodded and smiled;