The Only Thing We Learn by C. M. Kornbluth

24 The Best of C. M. Kornbluth “Oh, commander!” protested the archivist. “I’m not so little!” He wandered away, chuckling. Arris wished he had the shooting of him, and tried to explore the chain of secrecy for a weak link. He was tired and bored by this harping on the Fron-on the brigands. His aide tentatively approached him. “Interceptors in striking range, sir,” he murmured. “Thank you,” said the wing commander, genuinely grateful to be back in the clean, etched-line world of the Service and out of that blurred, water-color, civilian land where long-dead Syrians apparently retailed classified matter to nasty little drunken warts who had no business with it. Arris confronted the sixty-incher. The particle that had become three particles was now-he counted-eighteen particles. Big ones. Getting bigger. He did not allow himself emotion, but turned to the plot on the interceptor squadron. “Set up Lunar relay,” he ordered. “Yessir.” Half the plot room crew bustled silently and efficiently about the delicate job of applied relativistic physics that was ‘lunar relay.’ He knew that the palace power plant could take it for a few minutes, and he wanted to see. If he could not believe radar pips, he might believe a video screen. On the great, green circle, the eighteen-now twenty-four-particles neared the thirty-six smaller particles that were interceptors, led by the eager young Efrid. “Testing Lunar relay, sir,” said the chief teck. The wing commander turned to a twelve-inch screen. Unobtrusively, behind him, tecks jockeyed for position. The picture on the screen was something to see. The chief let mercury fill a thick-walled, ceramic tank. There was a sputtering and contact was made. “Well done,” said Arris. “Perfect seeing.” He saw, upper left, a globe of ships-what ships! Some were Service jobs, with extra turrets plastered on them wherever there was room. Some were orthodox freighters, with the same porcupine-bristle of weapons. Some were obviously home-made crates, hideously ugly-and as heavily armed as the others. Next to him, Arris heard his aide murmur, “It’s all wrong, sir.

They haven’t got any pick-up boats. They haven’t got any hospital ships. What happens when one of them gets shot up?” “Just what ought to happen, Evan,” snapped the wing commander. “They float in space until they desiccate hi their suits. Or if they get grappled inboard with a boat hook, they don’t get any medical care. As I told you, they’re brigands, without decency even to care of their own.” He enlarged on the theme. “Their morale must be insignificant compared with our men’s. When the Service goes into action, every rating and teck knows he’ll be cared for if he’s hurt. Why, if we didn’t have pick-up boats and hospital ships the men wouldn’t-” He almost finished it with “fight,” but thought, and lamely ended,-“wouldn’t like it.” Evan nodded, wonderingly, and crowded his chief a little as he craned his neck for a look at the screen. “Get the hell away from here!” said the whig commander hi a restrained yell, and Evan got. The interceptor squadron swam into the field-a sleek, deadly needle of vessels in perfect alignment, with its little cloud of pick-ups trailing, and farther astern a white hospital ship with the ancient red cross. The contact was immediate and shocking. One of the rebel ships lumbered into the path of the interceptors, spraying fire from what seemed to be as many points as a man has pores. The Service ships promptly riddled it and it should have drifted away-but it didn’t. It kept on fighting. It rammed an interceptor with a crunch that must have killed every man before the first bulwark, but aft of the bulwark the ship kept fighting. It took a torpedo portside and its plumbing drifted through space in a tangle. Still the starboard side kept squirting fire. Isolated weapon blisters fought on while they were obviously cut off from the rest of the ship. It was a pounded tangle of wreckage, and it had destroyed two interceptors, crippled two more, and kept fighting. Finally, it drifted away, under feeble jets of power. Two more of the fantastic rebel fleet wandered into action, but the wing commander’s horrified eyes were on the first pile of scrap. It was going somewhere- The ship neared the thin-skinned, unarmored, gleaming hospital vessel, rammed it amidships, square in one of the red crosses, and

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