“But we can understand Bobby’s doing it and play along.”
“You’re so right. Actually, we owe her a vote of thanks for what she’s done for us.”
“We certainly do. I’d tell her so myself, too, if it wouldn’t . . . but say . . . s’pose she’s
reading us right now?”
The man stiffened momentarily, then said, “We haven’t said a word I wouldn’t want her to
hear. If you are on us, Bobby, I say this-thanks; and you can put it down in your book
that we’re both with you until the last clang of the gong. Check, Cecily?”
“How I check!” She kissed him fervently. “You were right; I should have talked to you
before. I didn’t have a leg to stand on.”
“That allegation I deny.” He laughed, put his right hand on her well-exposed left leg, and
squeezed. “This, in case nobody ever told you before-I thought I had-is one of the only
perfect pair of such ever produced.”
She put her hand over his, pressed it even tighter against her leg, and grinned up at him;
and for a time action took place of words. Then she pulled her mouth away from his and
leaned back far enough to ask, “You don’t suppose she’s watching us now, do you?”
“No. Definitely not. She’s no Peeping Thomasina. But even if she were-now that you’re
you again, my redheaded bundle of joy, we have unfinished business on the agenda. And
anyway, you’re not exactly a shrinking violet.”
“Why, I am too!” She widened her eyes at him in outraged innocence. “That’s a vile and
base canard, sir. I’m just as much of a Timid Soul as you are, you Fraidy Freddie,
you-why, I’m absodamlutely the shrinkingest little violet you ever laid your cotton-pickin’
eyes on!”
“Okay, Little Vi, let’s jet.” He got up and helped her to her feet; then, arms tightly around
each other and savoring each moment, they moved slowly toward a closed door.
The cold-war stalemate that had begun sometime early in the twentieth century had
become a way of life. Contrary to the belief of each side over the years, the other had
not collapsed. Dictatorship and so-called democracy still coexisted; both were vastly
stronger than they had ever been before. Each had enough superpowerful weapons to
destroy all life on Earth, but neither wanted a lifeless and barren world; each wanted to
rule the Earth as it was. Therefore the Big Bangs had not been launched; each side was
doing its subtle best to outwit, to undermine, and/or to overthrow the other.
WestHem was expanding into space; EastHem, as far as WestHem’s Intelligence could
find out, was waiting, with characteristic Oriental patience, for the capitalistic and
imperialistic government of the West to fall apart because of its own innate weaknesses.
This situation existed when the Galactic Federation was formed; specifically to give all
the peoples of all the planets a unified, honest, and just government;, when Secretary of
Labor Deissner, acting through Antonio Grimes, called all the milk-truck drivers of
Metropolitan New York out on strike.
At three forty five of the designated morning all the milk-delivery trucks of Depot
Eight-taking one station for example; the same thing was happening at all were in the
garage and the heavy steel doors were closed and locked. The gates of the yard were
locked and barricaded. The eight-man-deep picket line was composed one-tenth of
drivers, nine-tenths of heavily-armed, heavy-muscled hoodlums and plug-uglies. They
were ready, they thought, for anything.
At three fifty a fleet of armored half-tracks lumbered up and began to disgorge armored
men. Their armor, while somewhat reminiscent of that worn by the chivalry of old, was
not at all like it in detail. Built of leybyrdite, it was somewhat lighter, immensely stronger,
and very much more efficient. Its wide-angle visors, for instance, were made of
bullet-proof, crack-proof, scratch-proof neo-glass. Formation was made and from one of
the trucks an eighty-decibel voice roared out:
“Strikers, attention! We are coming through; the regular deliveries are going to be made.
We don’t want to kill any more of you than we have to, so those of you with only clubs,
brass knucks, knives, lead pipes, and such stuff, we’ll try to only knock out as cold as
frozen beef. You guys with the guns, every one of you who lets go one burst will get
shot. Non-fatally, we hope, but we can’t guarantee it. Now, you damn fool bystanders” -it
is remarkable how quickly a New York crowd can gather, even at four o’clock in the
morning= keep right on crowding up, as close as you can get. Anybody God damned fool
enough to stand gawking in the line of fire of fifty machine guns ought to get killed-so just
keep on standing there and save some other fool-killer the trouble of sending you to the
morgue in baskets. Okay, men, give ’em hell!”
To give credit to the crowd’s intelligence, most of it did depart-and at speed-before the
shooting began. New Yorkers were used to being chivvied away from scenes of interest;
they were not used to being invited, in such a loud tone of such savage contempt, to stay
and be slaughtered. Of the few who stayed, the still fewer survivors wished fervently,
later, that they had taken off as fast as they could run.
Armored men strode forward, swinging alloy-sheathed fists, and men by the dozens went
down flat. Then guns went into action and the armored warriors fell down and rolled
hap-hazardly on the pavement; for no man, however strong, can stand up against the
kinetic energy of a stream of heavy bullets. Except for a few bruises, however, they
were not injured. They were not even deafened by the boiler-shop clangor within their
horribly resounding shells of metal-highly efficient earplugs had seen to that.
Those steel-jacketed bullets, instead of penetrating that armor, ricocheted off in all
directions-and it was only then that the obdurately persistent bystanders-those of them
that could, that is-ran away.
The machine-gun phase of the battle didn’t last very long, either. In the assault-proof
half-tracks expert riflemen peered through telescopic sights and .30-caliber rifles barked
viciously. The strikers’ guns went silent.
Leybyrdite-shielded mobile torchers clanked forward and the massed pickets fled: no
man in his right mind is ever going to face willingly the sixty-three-hundred degree heat of
the oxy-acetylene flame. The gates vanished. The barriers disappeared. The locked
doors opened. Then, with an armored driver aboard, each delivery truck was loaded as
usual and went calmly away along its usual route; while ambulances and meat-wagons
brought stretchers and baskets and carried away the wounded and the dead.
Nor were those trucks attacked, or even interfered with. It had been made abundantly
clear that it would be the attackers who would suffer.
But what of the source of New York’s milk? The spaceport and Way Nineteen? Pickets
went there, too, of course; but what they saw there stopped them in their tracks. Just
inside the entrance, one on each side of the Way, sat those two tremendous,
invulnerable, enigmatic super-tanks. They did not do anything. Nothing at all. They merely
sat there; but that was enough. No one there knew what those things could or would do;
and no one there wanted to find out. Not, that is, the hard way.
Nor did the Metropolitan Police do anything. There was nothing they could do. This was,
most definitely, not their dish. This was war. War between the Galaxians on one side and
Labor, backed by WestHem’s servile government, on the other. The government’s armed
forces, however, did not take part in the action. At the first move of the day, Maynard
had taken care of that.
“Get the army in on this if you like,” he had told Deissner, flatly. “Anything and everything
you care to, up to and including the heaviest nuclear devices you have.
We are three long subspace jumps ahead of anything you can do, and the rougher you
want to play it the more of a shambles New York will be when it’s over.”
Therefore, after that one brief but vicious battle, everything remained-on the
surface-peaceful and serene. Milk-deliveries were regular and punctual, undisturbed by
any overt incident. The only difference-on the surface-was that the milk-truck drivers
wore leybyrdite instead of white duck.
Beneath that untroubled surface, however, everything seethed and boiled. Grimes and
his lieutenants raved and swore. Deissner gritted his teeth in quiet, futile desperation.
The Nameless One of EastHem, completely unaccustomed to frustration and highly
allergic to it, went almost mad. He now knew that the Galaxians had the most powerful
planet in the galaxy and he could not find it.
This situation was, of course, much too unstable to endure, and Nameless was the first
to crack. He probably went completely mad. At any rate, his first move was to liquidate
both Secretary of Labor Deissner and Chief Mediator Wilson. Nor was there anything of
finesse about these assassinations. Two multi-ton blockbusters were detonated, one in