These ships were charged with UWTB given to Moncrief by Rumfoord at Newport. They were put into service at once, shuttling the first machines and the first recruits to the iron plain on Mars where the city of Phoebe would rise.
When Phoebe did rise, every wheel was turned by Salo’s UWTB.
It was Rumfoord’s intention that Mars should lose the war — that Mars should lose it foolishly and horribly. As a seer of the future, Rumfoord knew for certain that this would be the case — and he was content.
He wished to change the World for the better by means of the great and unforgettable suicide of Mars.
As he says in his Pocket History of Mars: “Any man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people’s blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed.
“Every failure of Earthling leadership has been traceable to a lack on the part of the leader,” says Rumfoord, “of at least one of these three things.
“Enough of these fizzles of leadership, in which millions die for nothing or less!” says Rumfoord. “Let us have, for a change, a magnificently-led few who die for a great deal.”
Rumfoord had that magnificently-led few on Mars — and he was their leader.
He had showmanship.
He was genially willing to shed the blood of others.
He had a plausible new religion to introduce at the war’s end.
And he had methods for prolonging the period of repentance and horror that would follow the war. These methods were variations on one theme: That Earth’s glorious victory over Mars had been a tawdry butchery of virtually unarmed saints, saints who had waged feeble war on Earth in order to weld the peoples of that planet into a monolithic Brotherhood of Man.
The woman called Bee and her son, Chrono, were in the very last wave of Martian ships to approach Earth. Theirs was a wavelet, really, composed, as it was, of only forty-six ships.
The rest of the fleet had already gone down to destruction.
This last incoming wave, or wavelet, was detected by Earth. But thermo-nuclear devices were not fired at it. There were no more thermo-nuclear devices to fire.
They had all been used up.
And the wavelet came in unscathed. It was scattered over the face of the Earth.
The few people who were lucky enough to have Martians to shoot at in this last wave fired away happily — fired away happily until they discovered that their targets were unarmed women and children.
The glorious war was over.
Shame, as Rumfoord had planned it, began to set in.
The ship carrying Bee and Chrono and twenty-two other women was not fired upon when it landed. It did not land in a civilized area.
It crashed into the Amazon Rain Forest in Brazil.
Only Bee and Chrono survived.
Chrono emerged, kissed his good-luck piece.
Unk and Boaz weren’t fired upon either.
A very peculiar thing happened to them after they pressed the on button and took off from Mars. They expected to overtake their company, but they never did.
They never even saw another space ship.
The explanation was simple, though there was no one around to make it: Unk and Boaz weren’t supposed to go to Earth — not right away.
Rumfoord had had their automatic pilot-navigator set so that the ship would carry Unk and Boaz to the planet Mercury first — and then from Mercury to Earth.
Rumfoord didn’t want Unk killed in the war. Rumfoord wanted Unk to stay in some safe place for about two years.
And then Rumfoord wanted Unk to appear on Earth, as though by a miracle.
Rumfoord was preserving Unk for a major part in a pageant Rumfoord wanted to stage for his new religion.
Unk and Boaz were very lonely and mystified out there in space. There wasn’t much to see or do.
“God damn, Unk — ” said Boaz. “I wonder where the gang got to.”
Most of the gang was hanging, at that moment, from’ lamp posts in the business district of Boca Raton.