He pointed over their heads, toward the line of sleek, powerful ships arrayed in the big hangar outside the briefing chamber.
“So we have no choice left but to put aside peaceful methods of settling disagreements and dust off these relics of a more combative age. They have been updated and modernized to where they are as efficient and, I am sad to say, deadly as anything that flies. Our ancestors would admire their new capabilities. I cannot.” He sighed deeply.
“Yet it seems they must be employed. We believe they are quite superior to anything the traitors or the Ko-Dan have in their arsenal. Resistance to their attack they will expect . . . but not resistance of such effectiveness. They know we have relied for hundreds of years on the defensive potential of the Frontier. They should not be expecting us to attack them.”
“How can we be so sure of what the Ko-Dan can bring to bear?” wondered a voice from the rear of the assemblage.
Enduran allowed himself a slight, very human-looking smile. “Merely because we strive for peace does not mean we do not prepare for war. We have our own servants among the traitors. I am assured that our gunstars, completely rebuilt and updated as they are now, acting under the command of the best Starfighters the League can muster, are more than a match for anything the Ko-Dan have built. If we react in time. We are still not entirely sure of how the traitors and the Ko-Dan plan to announce their intentions.” He gazed past them, through the glass wall, to the line of ships waiting in the immense hangar.
“So much intelligence, so much effort and energy, wasted on the restoration of antique war machines. Taken together they have not the elegance or permanence of a single song cycle.” He let his stare drop back down to the waiting pilots and crews.
“What a tragedy. To think that we have come so far, achieved so much, at the expense of our own defense. Because while we still possess these machines and the talent to improve them, the ability to utilize them in battle has been bred out of the majority during the long peace.
“Hence the exhaustive hunts which have brought you together here. Just as these vessels are reminders of our violent adolescence, so are you and the abilities you still retain. You see, you all are also relics. Few are left who can use these ships. Peace breeds contentment, and contentment stifles the fighting reflexes and urges and what we might call the, uh, gift of doing battle.
“Among the billions of citizens of the League, grown contented and easygoing over the centuries, only a few are left who still possess this gift. Only a few. You few.” He let that sink in before adding, “The future of our civilization, of the League itself, rests on you. You, the most extreme throwbacks, the most primitive and yet skilled among us. It is a talent I have no desire to possess. I pity you for it. I envy you for it. I salute you for it.”
A muffled cheer rose from the assembled fighters. Many of them were outcasts, social misfits on Rylos and the other worlds. Now that which caused them to be shunned was to be their redemption. After this war they would be regarded as saviors; not to be liked, perhaps, but to be respected. All looked forward to the forthcoming conflict.
All, that is, save one, who kept his thoughts to himself and wished desperately that he were elsewhere.
Enduran waited patiently for the cheering and the shudderingly robust war cries to die down. He’d been told by the psychologists to expect something of the kind, but still, to see such naked expressions of violence among citizens of the well-behaved League was a shock.
A fortunate one, though. Without such citizens there would be no chance of turning back the Ko-Dan incursion. He studied the many different visages and expressions and marveled at the similarities. The urge to combat, to fight, to kill, had been drained from the general population by hundreds of years of peace. Yet a residue of the ancient feelings still remained. He felt terribly sorry for all of them.
“You alone,” he went on, hating what he was doing, hating the carefully calculated manipulation of primitive emotions but at the same time knowing how necessary it was, “stand between the rest of us and the dark terror of the Ko-Dan. You alone must do what the rest of us can no longer do. You alone must place yourselves between civilization and chaos, between aspiration and anarchy. You alone must resist, must fight, must destroy!” The speech clogged his throat and he could say no more.
He didn’t have to. The speech, carefully designed by the amunopsychs, had precisely the effect on the gunstar pilots they’d intended it to. There was a unity of feeling running through the assembly now that transcended such trivialities as racial type and world or origin. These pilots and navigators were defectives, on whom Enduran’s words had a powerful effect.
“Victory or death!” shouted one uniformed support officer. The chant was taken up by the others, including the pilots. The force of it shook Enduran. He’d been warned, and the tranquilizers they’d pumped into his system helped him to remain calm, but the feeling of raw violence that now overwhelmed the chamber was terribly unsettling to anyone who regarded himself as a civilized creature.
And he’d been chosen to deliver this presentation because he’d tested out emotionally more resilient than his colleagues. The fury of the fighter’s response to the speech would surely have caused poor Masurv of Cann’our, next in line to make the presentation, to faint on the dais.
They were on their feet now, circulating through the briefing room like a living storm, pilots and navs and technicians and engineers, all selected for defects in their emotional makeup. Defects which made them pariahs on their home worlds but heroes of the battle to come. They pounded each other enthusiastically with hands or tentacle tips, slapped backs or carpaces as they strove to bolster each other’s spirits. Fighting spirits, Enduran told himself. We have not progressed far enough.
Which was lucky for everyone else.
Alex was on his feet with everyone else, stumbling through the crowd and trying not to get trampled in the excitement. His course wasn’t planned and he was just trying to reach the far wall without tripping over any chairs or Bodati tentacles. In a few moments he found himself nearly in the clear, on the opposite side of the chamber.
Where a familiar figure was moving easily through the mob, its attention fixed on a handful of glittering crystalline shapes.
Alex started shoving his way through the remaining crowd, ignoring occasional outcries and not even caring if he offended some belligerent Bodati. The figure he was heading toward was joined by a uniformed alien. Together they headed for an open doorway.
“Centauri, Centauri, wait!”
His recruiter/kidnapper didn’t hear him. Or maybe he did and was hurrying out of the room. Alex was clear of the press of alien bodies then. Their cheers and whistles echoed in his ears as he plunged down a short hall and out into the main hangar.
It was filled with noisy equipment being operated by the usual assortment of strange creatures, some of whom were more outre in appearance than the machines they worked with. There was no sign of Centauri, though he thought he saw a half-familiar shape vanishing around a far corner.
He ran, waving and yelling, and not looking where he was going. Fortunately, the alien he ran into was no Bodati.
5
It was quite humanoid, though completely hairless. The rounded skull and the face with its deep-set yellowish eyes was covered by a thick orange-yellow crust that reminded Alex of desert ponds months after scorching heat had caused them to dry and crack. He was tall (the “he” another sexual presumption on Alex’s part which turned out to be correct) and, thankfully, devoid of tentacles.
“I’m sorry,” Alex apologized. There was no sign of Centauri now, and no way of knowing which way he’d gone.
“This is a restricted area, off limits to . . .” The alien stopped in mid-sentence, examining Alex more closely as they both knelt to re cover Alex’s clothes and the small handful of components the tall being had been carrying.
“I don’t recognize your species,” he said.
“Human.” Alex stared at a six-inch-long something that filled his hand. It looked like a cross between an oversized ballpoint pen and an electric toothbrush. He suspected it was neither, and handed it over.
“From Earth,” he added.
“Earth what?”
“Just Earth. We like to keep things simple.”
I don’t believe I’m having this conversation, he told himself. I don’t believe a bit of it.
“That’s a uniform.” The alien gestured with a thick-skinned hand at Alex’s bundle of clothing.