Unk imagined the writer as being a marvelous old man with a white beard and the build of a blacksmith.
Unk turned the page and read the signature.
I remain faithfully yours — was the sentiment expressed above the signature.
The signature itself filled almost the whole page. It was three block letters, six inches high and two inches wide. The letters were executed clumsily, with a smeary black kindergarten exuberance.
This was the signature:
The signature was Unk’s.
Unk was the hero who had written the letter.
Unk had written the letter to himself before having his memory cleaned out. It was literature in its finest sense, since it made Unk courageous, watchful, and secretly free. It made him his own hero in very trying times.
Unk did not know that the man he had murdered at the stake was his best friend, was Stony Stevenson. Had he known that, he might have killed himself. But Fate spared him that awful knowledge for many years.
When Unk got back to his barrack, jungle knives and bayonets were being honed with harsh screescraws. Everyone was sharpening a blade.
And everywhere were sheepish smiles of a peculiar sort. The smiles spoke of sheep who, under proper conditions, could commit murder gladly.
Orders had just been received that the regiment was to proceed with all possible haste to its space ships.
The war with Earth had begun.
Advance units of the Martian Imperial Commandos had already obliterated Earthling installations on the Earthling moon. The Commando rocket batteries, firing from the moon, were now giving every major city a taste of hell.
And, as dinner music for those tasting hell, Martian radios were beaming this message to Earth in a maddening sing-song:
Brown man, white man, yellow man — surrender or die.
Brown man, white man, yellow man — surrender or die.
chapter six
A DESERTER IN TIME OF WAR
“I am at a loss to understand why German batball is not an event, possibly a key event, in the Olympic Games.”
— WINSTON NILES RUMFOORD
It was a six-mile march from the army camp to the plain where the invasion fleet lay. And the route of the march cut across the northwest corner of Phoebe, the only city on Mars.
The population of Phoebe at its height, according to Winston Niles Rumfoord’s Pocket History of Mars, was eighty-seven thousand. Every soul and every structure in Phoebe was directly related to the war effort. The mass of Phoebe’s workers were controlled just as the soldiers were controlled, by antennas under their skulls.
Unk’s company was now marching through the northwest corner of Phoebe, on its way in the midst of its regiment to the fleet. It was thought unnecessary now to keep the soldiers moving and in ranks by means of twinges from their antennas. War fever had them now.
They chanted as they marched, and set their iron. heeled boots down hard on the iron street. Their chant was bloody:
Terror, grief, and desolation —
Hut, tup, thrup, fo! —
Come to every Earthling nation!
Hut, tup, thrup, fo! —
Earth eat fire! Earth wear chains!
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!
Break Earth’s spirit, spill Earth’s brains!
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!
Scream! Tup, thrup, fo!
Bleed! Tup, thrup, fo!
Die! Tup, thrup, fo!
Doooooooooommmmmmmmmm.
The factories of Phoebe were still going full blast. No one was idling in the streets to watch the chanting heroes pass. Windows winked as dazzling torches inside went off and on. A doorway vomited spattering, smoking yellow light as metal was poured. The screams of grinding wheels cut through the soldiers’ chant.
Three flying saucers, blue scout ships, skimmed low over the city, making sweet cooing sounds like singing tops. “Toodleoo,” they seemed to sing, and they skimmed away in a flat course while the surface of Mars curved away beneath them. In two shakes of a lamb’s tail, they were twinkling in space eternal.
“Terror, grief and desolation — ” chanted the troops.
But one soldier was moving his lips without making a sound. The soldier was Unk.
Unk was in the first file of the next to the last rank of his company.
Boaz was right behind him, his eyes making the back of Unk’s neck itch. Boaz and Unk, moreover, were made Siamese twins by the long tube of a six-inch siege mortar which they were carrying between them.