The Martian Imperial Commandos were experts at killing sentries with loops of piano wire.
Their secret destination was the Earthling moon. They were going to start the war there.
Unk found a big blue stone outside the furnace room of barrack twelve. The stone was a turquoise. Turquoises are very common on Mars. The turquoise Unk found was a flagstone a foot across.
Unk looked under it. He found an aluminum cylinder with a screw cap. Inside the cylinder was a very long letter written in pencil.
Unk did not know who had written it. He was in poor shape for guessing, since he knew the names of only three people — Sergeant Brackman, Boaz, and Unk.
Unk went into the furnace room and closed the door. He was excited, though he didn’t know why. He began to read by the light from the dusty window. Dear Unk: — the letter began.
Dear Unk: — the letter began: They aren’t much, God knows — but here are the things I know for sure, and at. the end you will find a list of questions you should do your best to find answers to. The questions are important. I have thought harder about them than I have about the answers I already have. That is the first thing I know for sure: (1.) If the questions don’t make sense, neither will the answers.
All the things that the writer knew for sure were numbered, as though to emphasize the painful, stepby-step nature of the game of finding things out for sure. There were one hundred and fifty-eight things the writer knew for sure. There had once been one hundred and eighty-five, but seventeen had been crossed off.
The second item was, (2.) I am a thing called alive.
The third was, (3.) I am in a place called Mars.
The fourth was, (4.) I am in a part of a thing called an army.
The fifth was, (5.) The army plans to kill other things called alive in a place called Earth.
Of the first eighty-one items, not one was crossed out. And, in the first eight .one items, the writer progressed to subtler and subtler matters, and mistakes grew more numerous.
Boaz was explained and dismissed by the writer very early in the game.
(46.) Watch out for Boaz, Unk. He is not what he seems.
(47.) Boaz has something in his right-hand pocket that hurts people in the head when they do something Boaz doesn’t like.
(48.) Some other people have things that can hurt you in the head, too. You can’t tell by looking who has one, so be sweet to everybody.
(71.) Unk, old friend — almost everything I know for sure has come from fighting the pain from my antenna, said the letter to Unk. Whenever I start to turn my head and look at something, and the pain comes, I keep turning my head anyway, because I know I am going to see something I’m not supposed to see. Whenever I ask a question, and the pain comes, I know I have asked a really good question. Then I break the question into little pieces, and I ask the pieces of the questions. Then I get answers to the pieces, and then I put the answers all together and get an answer to the big question.
(72.) The more pain I train myself to stand, the more I learn. You are afraid of the pain now, Unk, but you won’t learn anything if you don’t invite the pain. And the more you learn, the gladder you will be to stand the pain.
There in the furnace room of the empty barrack, Unk laid the letter aside for a moment. He felt like crying, for the heroic writer’s faith in Unk was misplaced. Unk knew he couldn’t stand a fraction of the pain the writer had stood — couldn’t possibly love knowledge that much.
Even the little sample twinge they had given him in the hospital had been excruciating. He gulped air now, like a fish dying on a riverbank, remembering the big pain Boaz had slammed him with in the barrack. He would rather die than risk another pain like that.