but huddled foolishly to await Algan’s gunfighters and the death they brought. “One of the things you believe because you have seen them hi notes to elementary-school editions of Remd is that Telse was the fourth planet of the star, Sol. Archaeology denies it by establishing that the fourth planet-actually called Marse, by the way-was in those days weather-roofed at least, and possibly atmosphere-roofed as well. As potential warriors, you know that one does not waste fissionable material on a roof, and there is no mention of chemical explosives being used to crack the roof. Marse, therefore, was not the locale of Remd, Book Two. “Which planet was? The answer to that has been established by X-radar, differential decay analyses, video-coring, and every other resource “of those scientists still quaintly called ‘diggers.’ We know and can prove that Telse was the third planet of Sol. So much for the opening of the attack. Let us jump to Canto Three, the Storming of the Dynastic Palace. -* “Imperial purple wore they Fresh from the feast Grossly gorged They sought to slay- “And so on. Now, as I warned you, Remd is of the Old Epic, and makes no pretense at fairness. The unorganized huddling of Telse’s population was read as cowardice instead of poor A.R.P. The same is true of the Third Canto. Video-cores show on the site of the palace a hecatomb of dead in once-purple livery, but also shows impartially that they were not particularly gorged and that digestion of their last meals had been well advanced. They didn’t give such a bad accounting of themselves, either. I hesitate to guess, but perhaps they accounted for one of our ancestors apiece and were simply outnumbered. The study is not complete. “That much we know.” The professor saw they were tiring of the terse scientist and shifted gears. “If but the veil of time were rent that shrouds the years between us and the Home Suns People, how much more would we learn? Would we despise the Home Suns People as our frontiersman ancestors did, or would we cry: ‘This is our spirit-
The Only Thing We Learn 21 ual home-this world of rank and order, this world of formal verse and exquisitely patterned arts’?” If the veil of time were rent-? We can try to rend it… Wing Commander Arris heard the clear jangle of the radar net alarm as he was dreaming about a fish. Struggling out of his too-deep, too-soft bed, he stepped into a purple singlet, buckled on his Sam Browne belt with its bolstered .45 automatic, and tried to read the radar screen. Whatever had set it off was either too small or too distant to register on the five-inch C.R.T. He rang for his aide, and checked his appearance in a wall mirror while waiting. His space tan was beginning to fade, he saw, and made a mental note to get it renewed at the parlor. He stepped into the corridor as Evan, his aide, trotted up-younger, browner, thinner, but the same officer type that made the Service what it was, Arris thought with satisfaction. Evan gave him a bone-cracking salute, which he returned. They set off for the elevator that whisked them down to a large, chilly,’ dark underground room where faces were greenly lit by radar screens and the lights of plotting tables. Somebody yelled “Attention!” and the tecks snapped. He gave them “At ease” and took the brisk salute of the senior teck, who reported to him hi flat, machine-gun delivery: “Object-becoming-visible-on-primary-screen-sir.” He studied the sixty-inch disk for several seconds before he spotted the intercepted particle. It was coming hi fast from zenith, growing while he watched. “Assuming it’s now traveling at maximum, how long will it be before it’s within striking range?” he asked the teck. “Seven hours, sir.” “The interceptors at Idlewild alerted?” “Yessir.” Arris turned on a phone that connected with Interception. The boy at Interception knew the face that appeared on its screen, and was already capped with a crash helmet. “Go ahead and take him, Efrid,” said the wing commander. “Yessir!” and a punctilious salute, the boy’s pleasure plain at being known by name and a great deal more at being on the way to a fight that might be first-class.