The letter said nothing about it, because the writer knew nothing about it, but this man and his dog were Winston Niles Rumfoord and Kazak, the hound of space. And their appearances on Mars were not irregular. Being chrono-synclastic infundibulated, Rumfoord and Kazak appeared as predictably as Halley’s Comet. They appeared on Mars once every one hundred and eleven days.
As the letter to Unk said, (155.) According to Stony, this big guy and his dog show up at the meetings, and just snow everybody under. He is a big charm boy, and by the time a meeting is over everybody is trying to think just exactly the way he thinks. Every idea anybody has comes from him. He just smiles and smiles and yodels and yodels in that fancy voice of his, and fills everybody up with new ideas. And then all the people at the meeting pass around the ideas as though they had thought them up themselves. He is crazy about the game of German batball. Nobody knows what his name is. He just laughs, if anybody asks him. He usually wears the uniform of the Parachute Ski Marines, but the real commanders of the Parachute Ski Marines swear they’ve never seen him anywhere but at the secret meetings.
(156.) Unk, old pal, said the letter to Unk, every time you and Stony find out something new, add it on to this letter. Keep this letter well hidden. And every time you change its hiding place, be sure to tell Stony where you put it. That way, even if you go to the hospital to have your memory cleaned out, Stony can tell you where to go to have your memory filled up again.
(157.) Unk – you know why you keep on going? You keep on going because you have a mate and a child. Almost nobody on Mars has either one. Your mate’s name is Bee. She is an instructress at the Schliemann Breathing School in Phoebe. Your son’s name is Chrono. He lives in the grade school in Phoebe. According to Stony Stevenson, Chrono is the best German batball player in the school. Like everybody else on Mars, Bee and Chrono have learned to get along all alone. They don’t miss you. They never think of you. But you have to prove to them that they need you in the biggest way possible.
(158.) Unk, you crazy son-of -a-bitch, I love you. I think you are the cat’s pajamas. When you get this little family of yours together, swipe a space ship and go flying away to somewhere peaceful and beautiful, some place where you don’t have to take goof balls all the time to stay alive. Take Stony with you. And when you get settled down, all of you spend a lot of time trying to figure out why whoever made everything went and made it.
All that remained for Unk to read of the letter was the signature.
The signature was on a separate page.
Before turning to the signature, Unk tried to imagine the character and appearance of the writer. The writer was fearless. The writer was such a lover of truth that he would expose himself to any amount of pain in order to add to his store of truth. He was superior to Unk and Stony. He watched and recorded their subversive activities with love, amusement, and detachment.
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:
UNK
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.
“Bleed! Tup, thrup, fo!” chanted the troops. “Die! Tup, thrup, fo! Doooooooooommmmmmmmmm.”
“Unk, old buddy – ” said Boaz.
“Yes, old buddy?” said Unk absently. He was holding, amid the confusion of his soldier’s harness, a live hand grenade. The pin had been pulled. To make it go off in three seconds, Unk had only to let go of it.
“I done fixed us up with a good assignment, old buddy,” said Boaz. “Old Boaz – he takes care of his buddy, don’t he, buddy?”
“That’s right, buddy,” said Unk.
Boaz had arranged things so that he and Unk would be on board the company mother ship for the invasion. The company mother ship, though it would, through a logistical fluke, be carrying the tube of the siege mortar, was essentially a noncombat ship. It was meant to carry only two men, the rest of the space being taken up by candy, sporting goods, recorded music, canned hamburgers, board games, goofballs, soft drinks, Bibles, note paper, barber kits, ironing boards, and other morale-builders.
“That’s a lucky start, ain’t it, old buddy – getting on the mother ship?”
“Lucky us, old buddy,” said Unk. He had just chucked the grenade into a sewer as he passed.