White, James – Sector General 05 – Sector General

verbal insubordi­nation it might utter would die with this Earth-human, who in

turn sensed the other’s sympathy and was in too much pain to care about the

things he said about his own superiors. And while they talked the Earth-human

learned something of vital importance, an enemy’s-eye view of the simple,

stupid, and jointly misunderstood incident which had been responsible for

starting the war in the first place.

It had been during the closing stages of this conversation that an Orligian ship

which chanced to be in the area had landed and, after assessing the situation,

used its Stopper on the Earth wreck.

Even now the operating principles of the Orligian primary space weapon were

unclear to MacEwan. The weapon was capable of enclosing a small ship, or vital

sections of a large one, within a field of stasis in which all motion stopped.

Neither the ships nor their crew were harmed physically, but if someone so much

as scratched the surface of one of those Stopped hulls or tried to slip a needle

into the skin of one of the Stopped personnel, the result was an explosion of

near-nuclear propor­tions.

But the Orligian stasis field projector had peaceful as well as military

applications.

With great difficulty the section of Control Room and the two Stopped bodies it

contained had been moved to Orligia, to occupy the central square of the

planetary capital as the most gruesomely effective war memorial ever known, for

236 years. During that time the shaky peace which the two frozen beings had

brought about between Orligia and Earth ripened into friendship, and medical

science progressed to the point where the terribly injured Earth-human could be

saved. Although its

injuries had not been fatal, Grawlya-Ki had insisted on being Stopped with its

friend so that it could see MacEwan cured for itself.

And then the two greatest heroes of the war, heroes because they had ended it,

were removed from stasis, rushed to a hos­pital, and cured. For the first time,

it was said, the truly great of history would receive the reward they deserved

from pos­terity—and that was the way it had happened, just over thirty years

ago.

Since then the two heroes, the only two entities in the whole Federation with

direct experience of war, had grown increas­ingly monomaniacal on the subject

until the honor and respect accorded them had gradually changed to reactions of

impatience and embarrassment.

“Sometimes, Ki,” MacEwan saidt turning away from the frozen figures of their

former selves, “I wonder if we should give up and try to find peace of mind like

the Colonel said. Nobody listens to us anymore, yet all we are trying to tell

them is to relax, to take off their heavy, bureaucratic gauntlets when extending

the hand of friendship, and to speak and react hon­estly so that—”

“I am aware of the arguments,” Grawlya-Ki broke in, “and the completely

unnecessary restatement of them, especially to one who shares your feelings in

this matter, is suggestive of approaching senility.”

“Listen, you mangy, overgrown baboon!” MacEwan began furiously, but the Orligian

ignored him.

“And senility is a condition which cannot be successfully treated by the

Colonel’s psychiatrists,” it went on. “Neither, I submit, can they give

psychiatric assistance to minds which are otherwise sane. As for my localized

loss of fur, you are so lacking in male hormones that you can only grow it on

your head and—”

“And your females grow more fur than you do,” MacEwan snapped back, then

stopped.

He had been conned again.

Since that first historic meeting in MacEwan’s wrecked Con­trol Room they had

grown to know each other very well. Graw­lya-Ki had assessed the present

situation, decided that MacEwan was-feeling far too depressed for his own good,

and instituted

curative treatment in the form of a therapuetic argument com­bined with subtle

reassurance regarding their sanity. MacEwan smiled.

“This frank and honest exchange of views,” he said quietly, “is distressing the

other travelers. They probably think the Earth—Orligian war is about to restart,

because they would never dream of saying such things to each other.”

“But they do dream,” Grawlya-ki said, its mind going off at one of its

peculiarly Orligian tangents. “All intelligent life-forms require periods of