diff options
| author | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-27 22:01:22 -0800 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-27 22:01:22 -0800 |
| commit | 57594d5a3c015567a837fbbf40e91ede24e3640c (patch) | |
| tree | e1e8f668e6e4dc3db4e36c5b3239b52685ead178 | |
| parent | face76e475da852c1a5fdcc53a2aa8af51c61bd9 (diff) | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 4 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/61316-h.zip | bin | 528265 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/61316-h/61316-h.htm | 3322 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/61316-h/images/cover.jpg | bin | 242731 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/61316-h/images/illus1.jpg | bin | 118579 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/61316-h/images/illus2.jpg | bin | 105035 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/61316.txt | 3176 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/61316.zip | bin | 61217 -> 0 bytes |
10 files changed, 17 insertions, 6498 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d2ce463 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #61316 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61316) diff --git a/old/61316-h.zip b/old/61316-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 8e7eeb2..0000000 --- a/old/61316-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/61316-h/61316-h.htm b/old/61316-h/61316-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index fd180e8..0000000 --- a/old/61316-h/61316-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3322 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=us-ascii" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Chemically Pure Warriors, by Allen Kim Lang. - </title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.caption {font-weight: bold;} - -/* Images */ -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -div.titlepage { - text-align: center; - page-break-before: always; - page-break-after: always; -} - -div.titlepage p { - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; - font-weight: bold; - line-height: 1.5; - margin-top: 3em; -} - -.ph1 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; font-weight: bold; } -.ph1 { font-size: large; margin: .83em auto; } - -.ph2 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; } -.ph2 { font-size: medium; margin: .83em auto; } - -.poetry .stanza -{ - margin: 1em auto; -} - -.poetry .verse -{ - padding-left: 3em; -} - - - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -Project Gutenberg's The Chemically Pure Warriors, by Allen Kim Lang - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: The Chemically Pure Warriors - -Author: Allen Kim Lang - -Release Date: February 4, 2020 [EBook #61316] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHEMICALLY PURE WARRIORS *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="348" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>THE CHEMICALLY PURE WARRIORS</h1> - -<h2>BY ALLEN KIM LANG</h2> - -<p class="ph1">They conquered the planet and they<br /> -owned it outright. The trouble<br /> -was—they didn't dare set foot on it!</p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>From the head of the platoon Lieutenant Lee Hartford signaled Sergeant -Felix, busy policing up stragglers at the rear, that he was taking -over. Hartford tongued the volume-setting of his bitcher to "Low" and -softly sing-songed to his three dozen troopers: "<i>Your girlfriend's -just an hour away; there's a time to soldier and a time to play.</i> Pick -it HUP, HUP, HUP! 'Toon, tain-HUT.' HUP, twop, threep, furp; HUP, HUP; -HUP, twop, threep, furp. Mondrian, pick up the cadence; you're marching -like a man with a paper pelvis. <i>Swing 'em six to the front and three -to the rear; When you sing to your Daddy, sing it loud and clear.</i>" -Hartford turned up the volume. "<i>Three weeks in the woods, eating -squeeze-tube beans; We'd be better off in the Fleet Marines. Sound -off!</i>"</p> - -<p>"ONE, TWO," boomed the voice of the Terrible Third, sounding from the -bitchers at the chests of thirty-six safety-suits. Dust slapped up -from marching-boots. A flock of scarlet blabrigars settled on the road -ahead, chattering and watching like small boys.</p> - -<p>"<i>Sound hoff!</i>"</p> - -<p>"THREE, FOUR!" The road led uphill toward Stinkerville; they were -some three miles from First Regiment Barracks. Three miles from now -these troopers could shed their safety-suits and helmets, shower off -three weeks of sweat, drink a beer and leer at the short-skirted, -taut-haltered girls of the Service Companies.</p> - -<p>"<i>Who are we?</i>" Hartford chanted.</p> - -<p>"COMPANY C," the troopers blatted back.</p> - -<p>The blabrigars, fluttering up from the roadway, chanted too: "Who -are we? Company See. Who, we? See, see. Company See Are Wee See -See." These wild birds didn't memorize human speech as well as their -captive cousins; they garbled their mockeries immediately. The flock -settled into the sunflowers beside the road; and were joined by a -pair of wild camelopards, chewing sunflower-leaf cud as they peered -at the marching Axenites. Hartford looked about, but there were no -Stinkers—Kansans—in sight. These natives didn't care to watch the -occupying regiment stir up their homeland's dust. "<i>What platoon?</i>" -Hartford called, his voice magnified by the bitcher till the whole -column could hear him.</p> - -<p>"THIRD PLATOON," the men bellowed back, singing against the percussion -of their boots. "'Toon, click, click, click; 'toon, click, third -platoon, click," mocked the blabrigars in ragged chorus, reflecting -both the words and the marching feet.</p> - -<p>"<i>Best platoon?</i>"</p> - -<p>"THIRD PLATOON!" the men shouted. They'd turned up their bitchers to -a volume the blabrigars couldn't match. Disgusted, the birds flapped -their scarlet wings and flew off across the sunflower fields. "'Toon," -one rear-flier chanted, "'toon, 'toon, 'toon."</p> - -<p>"<i>Worst platoon?</i>" Hartford asked.</p> - -<p>"FIRST PLATOON!" That was for the benefit of Lieutenant Piacentelli, -commanding the tail-end of the Regiment, the platoon marching on either -side of the lumbering Decontamination Vehicle, their safety-suit -filters clogging with the dust.</p> - -<p>"<i>Sound off!</i>" Hartford shouted.</p> - -<p>"ONE, TWO!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>That'll rattle the windows in Stinkerville, Hartford thought. He -pitched his descant louder and higher. "<i>Sound off!</i>"</p> - -<p>"THREE, FOUR!"</p> - -<p>"<i>Run 'er on down!</i>"</p> - -<p>"ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR; ONE, TWO, THREEP—FURP!" The men of The -Terrible Third were grinning through the face-plates of their helmets, -rejoicing in their reputation as the loudest bunch in the Regiment, -happy to help Hartford in waging his mock-feud with Lieutenant -Piacentelli. They'd been classmates at the Axenite Academy; they'd been -room-mates in the Barracks until Pia's recent marriage to a Service -Company officer.</p> - -<p>Hartford lowered his bitcher to a confidential tone. "Square up, men; -march tall; look rough and dirty. Show the Stinker girls what they're -missing. HUP, HUP, HUP. Sling those rifles square. Mondrian, you march -like you're wearing skis: HUP, twop, threep, furp!" Up and down the -column came the commands of sergeants and platoon-commanders, getting -their troopers in parade-trim for the march through Kansannamura: -"Stinkerville." Somewhere up front a company was singing the anthem of -the Axenite troopers, "Oh, Pioneers!" The chorus of twelve dozen men, -their bitchers full-up, filled the Kansan air and echoed from the walls -ahead.</p> - -<p>Stinkerville, all white-washed, with flakes of mica glittering in -the sunlight, sprawled across the road that led to the Barracks. The -village wall, designed to keep wild camelopards from roaming the -streets and to keep the tame beasts out of the sunflower-fields, was -some eight feet tall. Some Indigenous Hominid had heard the Regiment's -clatter and song, for the gates of Kansannamura were open, the brick -streets were clear of Stinker commerce. The village seemed deserted. -A few blabrigars perched on the tiled eaves of the rammed-earth -houses, making echoic comments on the sounds of the troopers, singing -fleeting snatches of "Oh, Pioneers!" A camelopard stretched its -ridiculous, three-horned head at the end of its fathom of neck to peer, -big-brown-eyed, at the caravan of fishbowl-headed men. Up at the head -of the column the Regiment's flags were unfurled and the Regimental -Band was skirling the Anthem; men were counting cadence as their boots -clicked over the scrubbed bricks of Stinkerville's streets.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>But no Kansan, Stinker, Indigenous Hominid, Gook or Native watched. No -cowboy youngsters stared at the gunned-and-holstered men from another -planet. No elders looked down their noses at the brash invaders. No -mothers wiped their hands on their aprons as they thought of their -sons, and the fleshly price they'd pay for freedom. No teenage -girls, those patrons of parades, watched with lips half-open with -apprehension and audacious thoughts about the hundreds of gift-wrapped -young man marching past. This planet could have as well been named -Coventry as Kansas, Hartford thought. Out the far gate of Kansannamura -marched Third Platoon, Company "C," then First Platoon, flanking the -Decontamination Vehicle. A villager came from the house nearest the -gate and closed it. He did not look after the two columns of men -winding up through the fields of sunflowers to the high plateau where -they lived.</p> - -<p>The sight of the Barracks gave the men's steps a new swing and spring. -After three weeks of sleeping in safety-suits; of breathing, sweating, -drinking, eating and excreting through germ-barrier valves and tubing, -the prospect of stripping off the plastic battle-dress was seductive. -Inside that eight stories of windowless, doorless stone were gardens -where the troopers could walk barefoot on the grass, pools whose water -could splash their naked skin. In the Barracks were the three hundred -Service Company women who made the big stone box home to their three -thousand men.</p> - -<p>The men of First Regiment massed on the parade-ground. While they stood -At Ease, their plastic-sleeved rifles and packs growing heavier by the -minute, their safety-suits staler, four of the five Service Companies -marched out from the Syphon to join them. The women were suited in -yellow plastic, giving rise to the gags about fool's gold. The four -golden companies took up position at the center of the Regiment.</p> - -<p>Colonel Benjamin Nef, Commander-in-Chief, Kansas, CINCK, climbed to -the reviewing-stand in his command safety-suit of scarlet. Facing -into the sun, the Colonel had the polarizing shield dropped over his -eyes, and seemed to be wearing a black bandage. His lower jaw beetled -to give him a truculent look generally ratified by his actions. His -hair glinted through the helmet like spun copper. Nef turned to his -second-in-command, a lieutenant-colonel in ordinary officer's blues, -and murmured instructions. The light colonel saluted, turned the -controls of his bitcher to Full Loud, and addressed the troopers -assembled: "Regiment...."</p> - -<p>Down the chain-of-command came the ripple of warning:</p> - -<p>"Battaaalion...."</p> - -<p>"Commmpaneee...."</p> - -<p>"'Toooon...."</p> - -<p>"Tain-HUT!" Fifteen hundred pairs of boots smacked together. The -Adjutant held up his clipboard and read precisely: "Attention to orders:</p> - -<p>"One. Officer of the Guard, Lieutenant Lee Hartford.</p> - -<p>"Two. CINCK commends troopers involved in the just-completed three-week -Field Exercise on not having had a single incident of compromise -of sterility. Household, Maintenance and Security troopers are -complimented on having maintained the integrity of the Barracks with a -much-reduced force.</p> - -<p>"Three. All male and female troopers are again cautioned that -fraternization with Indigenous Hominids is an offense punishable by -General Court-Martial, and that any unauthorized intercourse with the -natives is prohibited."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There was of course a murmur of automatic laughter at this last bit -of official double-entendre. The idea of bedding-down a Stinker wench -was a favorite bit of pornographic fantasy. An air-tight safety-suit, -though fit with valves as functional as the drop-seat in long-johns, -was no garment for romance. To undress, to appear in outdoor Kansas -outside that head-to-foot sausage-casing, appealed to none of the -troopers. Healthy young men and women don't entertain the thought of -painful suicide.</p> - -<p>The reporting officer about-faced, saluted Colonel Nef, about-faced -again. "Present...."</p> - -<p>"Preezent...."</p> - -<p>"Preeezent...."</p> - -<p>"Preeeezent...."</p> - -<p>"HAHMS!" Fifteen hundred Dardick-rifles, sheathed in plastic, slapped -perpendicular. The blue-clad officers, armed with pistols, touched -their index fingers to their helmet-temples. The bandsmen's drums -growled, the electronic horns sobbed against their mutes, and the -flutes in lonely purity played the theme of "Oh, Pioneers!" For all his -har-de-har-hardness, Hartford felt a sting in his eyes at this moment, -as he did whenever the splendidly stage-managed ceremony of Retreat was -performed. After the Anthem, much louder, the band played Retreat. The -colors crept down the flagstaff, into the reverent arms of a pair of -Service Policemen.</p> - -<p>"Oh-deph, HAHMS! By line-of-battalions, line-of-companies, -line-of-platoons, line-of-squads, return to quarters and dismiss!" The -light colonel made one last salute to CINCK, and the little ballet on -the reviewing-stand was over. The troopers were now free to go in to -their showers, their latrines, their suppers, and their women.</p> - -<p>"At ease," Hartford told the Terrible Third. "Rest. Smoke if you've got -'em."</p> - -<p>The men chuckled dutifully at the oldest joke in the service. An -Axenite trooper, sealed in his germ-free safety-suit and helmet, is by -definition a non-smoker outside his Barracks. It would be another hour -they'd be outside, since the Third was next to the last of the fifty -platoons to swim home through the Syphon. While the companies on the -far left flank of the Regiment were ballooning-up and peeling-off in -columns-of-squads to enter the Barracks, Hartford went back to talk -with Piacentelli, C.O. of First Platoon.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph2">II</p> - -<p>Getting inside the Barracks was a production. The safety-suits worn -outside presumably bore on their outer surfaces all the dust-borne -bugs native to Kansas. To carry these bacteria into the Barracks, to -be inspired and ingested by Axenites—humans who'd never before had a -bacterium inside their bodies—would wipe out the Regiment. Axenites -are chemically pure people. They have no immuniological experience. -Their gamma-globulin is low, their intestinal walls are thin. They may -be killed by a light salting of staphyllococci, a soupcon of strep, or -just a pinch of B. subtilis, a buglet as innocuous to "normal" humans -as the dust-motes it inhabits.</p> - -<p>The Syphon was the only entrance to the Barracks. It opened as the "Wet -Gut," a ramp leading downward into liquid disinfectant which finally -filled a tunnel, which ran the length of the Barracks. Each trooper, -as he walked down into the disinfectant, grabbed the hand-holds at -either side to pull himself along. Half-swimming through a turbulent -portion that tugged at his suit with cavitations designed to loose the -gummiest particle of bug-dirt, he came to a quieter section where he -wormed along in silence, watching the man ahead of him, his stay in the -antiseptic gauged to make the outside of his safety-suit as germ-free -as the inside.</p> - -<p>The Wet Gut ended in an upslope. The troopers walked out, dripping, -into a hallway returning in the direction from which they'd just -swum. This upper arm of the Syphon was a hallway so brilliantly -lighted that the trooper had to drop his polarizing shields over his -eyes. The air here in the Hot Gut was spiced with ozone from the -ultra-violet sources. As each man strode down the Hot Gut at a set -pace, his suit was bathed in u-v light from lamps in the ceiling, -floor and walls. Just as he was washed sufficiently in the Wet Gut -to kill the sturdiest-shelled spore of anthrax, the most insistently -cysted protozooan, in the Hot Gut he was laved in actinic radiation -powerful enough to afford a one hundred per cent safety factor against -his bringing viable bug-dirt into the Barracks. At the very end of -the Syphon, so that his safety-suit wouldn't stink of disinfectant -or crack from ozone-rot, the trooper was blasted from all sides by a -needle-shower of sterile water. Then he was home.</p> - -<p>The platoon to the left of the Terrible Third had ballooned and was -column-of-squadding toward the entrance to the Syphon. "At ease, men," -Hartford said. "Increase suit-pressure one pound. Open and check -reserve air-tanks. Close off filters." The men blimped a bit. Their -suits sausaged out around their arms and legs. Should some trooper -have a pinhole in his safety-suit, the positive pressure within would -keep the deadly antiseptic solution from seeping in. "Okay, men. First -squad off to the sheep-dip. Check the man ahead of you for bubbles. -This is Save-Your-Buddy Week," Hartford said.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Fat-legged and stiff, the men of Third Platoon waddled through the -doorway and down the ramp into the bug-juice. One by one they went -under, tugging themselves along through the turbulent area, past that; -then turning over in three planes so that the man behind them could -spot bubbles coming from any part of their safety-suit. A leak, of -course, meant Decontamination. Decontamination meant an all-over shave, -a load of antibiotics and quarantine. But it was better that one man -should suffer this from time to time than that the Barracks should be -sullied with a single bit of germ-laden dust.</p> - -<p>The pale-green murk of the Wet Gut and the desert brightness of the Hot -Gut were the gates of home, and welcome.</p> - -<p>Hartford saw the Terrible Third off to their quarters, then got -together with Piacentelli to go up to Officers' Country. It was good to -un-clam helmets and breathe the inside air, smelling faintly green from -having swept across the gardens on Level Eight. Hartford shucked off -his blue suit and draped it over a refreshing unit. The device buzzed -into action, washing, drying and recharging the safety-suit with fresh -filters and reserve air and water. The moment the refresher had grunted -an okay to his safety-suit, Hartford carried it, clean and sweet as -the day it had left the Goodyear plant on Titan, to hang it up in his -locker, ready for his next foray onto bug-dirt.</p> - -<p>Piacentelli was already under a shower. "Come on, jay-bird," he -shouted. "Last one out buys the beers."</p> - -<p>"No contest," Hartford said, setting the shower-dial. "I'm gonna stay -under water for three weeks." He revolved blissfully beneath cold and -angry needles.</p> - -<p>Piacentelli, snowed in with suds and steam, yelled through the blasting -water. "How'd you rate O.G. the night we get in?" he asked. "I thought -you were Nasty Nef's fairhaired boy."</p> - -<p>Hartford turned off his shower. "I got nothing better to do," he said. -He stood on the drier for a minute. "I don't mind being Officer of the -Guard, so long as I can eat supper off a plate instead of through a -tube." He stepped into his shorts, pulled on sneakers and tugged on a -tee-shirt that had stenciled over its shoulders the two half-inch gold -stripes of his rank.</p> - -<p>Pia dressed in a similar uniform. "It isn't the Messhall I miss," -he said. "It's this. No number of ingenious engines, valves and -relief-tubes can still my nostalgia for the simple dignity of our -Barracks latrines."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Junior Officers' Mess was set in what looked like a park, except that -the bushes were tomato-plants and the trees grew apples. The tables -were mostly full. "All the subalterns getting in a quick sundowner," -Pia remarked, finding a two-place table yet untaken. A Service Company -K.P. in the brief skirt-and-halter Class B's the women wore informally -in the Barracks came to take their order. "Big cold beer for me, -honey," Pia said. "The other gentleman is tonight's O.G., so he'll have -a black, black coffee."</p> - -<p>Hartford stared after the girl. "You're right, Pia," he said. "No -matter how comfy Goodyear makes those safety-suits, home is best."</p> - -<p>"You bachelors are a threat to the Table of Organization," Piacentelli -said. "You'd breed us right out of house and home if you had a chance."</p> - -<p>"Damned right," Hartford said.</p> - -<p>"You could find a girl," Piacentelli said.</p> - -<p>"They all itch to get married," Hartford explained. "They come out to -these germy planets like they used to go to Purdue. The man-woman ratio -is in their favor. And biology. Pia, I've seen bears you wouldn't glim -twice on Titan turn into love-goddesses after six months here. I'll -meet some Service Company corporal, say. She'll look to me like the -prettiest li'l thing since Adam's costectomy, and I'll call in at the -Orderly Room to have us assigned Family Quarters. Back at Home Base, -she'll turn out to be something you scare kids quiet with. She'll talk -all the time, leave lipstick on drinking-glasses, or play bridge and -talk about it. First thing you know, I'll be volunteering for another -five years duty on bug-dirt, just for a chance to leave her behind."</p> - -<p>"So pick up a local germ," Piacentelli suggested. "If they can't -decontaminate you, they'll send you to Earth. Lots of women on Earth."</p> - -<p>"I'd do it," Hartford said, "but I'm still more scared of microbes than -lustful for a woman. Here's Dimples with our chow."</p> - -<p>"Dimples?" Piacentelli asked as the girl came up with their tray.</p> - -<p>"Watch her when she walks away," Hartford suggested.</p> - -<p>"You must keep a carton of goat-glands under your bunk, Lee," -Piacentelli said. "Marriage isn't all bad. I've done pretty well with -Paula."</p> - -<p>Hartford nodded. Paula Piacentelli, a lieutenant in the Service -Companies, was a pretty decent sort. "Where is she now?" he asked.</p> - -<p>"She'll be on the Status Board tonight," Piacentelli said. "You'll be -in the Board Room with her. Lee, I've got a favor to ask you. As O.G. -you'll be in charge tonight."</p> - -<p>"Paula will be in charge," Hartford said. "I'll be sleeping."</p> - -<p>"If I go outside, though, it will need your okay as well as Paula's," -Piacentelli said.</p> - -<p>"Who's going outside with you?"</p> - -<p>"That's the sticky bit," Piacentelli said. "I'd like to go outside -alone."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"Want to run in the rain in your little bare skin?" Hartford asked. -"Mix it up with a Stinker maiden? Paula wouldn't like that. Besides, -you might get yourself jack-rolled by some Indigenous Hominid who -doesn't like Axenites running his planet."</p> - -<p>"I want to work on my Kansan-Standard Dictionary," Piacentelli said.</p> - -<p>"Bug-dirt," Hartford said. "Don't tell lies."</p> - -<p>"All right, then," Piacentelli said. "I've got an idea that might lead -to the most important discovery ever made on Kansas. Paula suggested -it. I want to prove it."</p> - -<p>"Tell Nasty Nef about your idea," Hartford said, signalling the -waitress for a second cup of stay-awake. "Give CINCK something clever -to report when the supply ship lands, and you'll have your silver -stripes before I will. Wouldn't Paula love that, though? Captain -Piacentelli, I'd have to salute first."</p> - -<p>"Nasty Nef wouldn't consider our idea," Piacentelli said. "He wouldn't -be happy to know that I've been studying the Kansan language, even. A -common humanity between us Axenites and the Indigenous Hominids is a -notion not welcome to the world of Colonel Nef. <i>Brother</i> Nef, I might -say."</p> - -<p>Hartford leaned against the table to press a fist against Piacentelli's -propped elbow. "Don't say that, Pia," he whispered. "I'm not political; -I'm not interested; I don't care whether the Brotherhood even exists."</p> - -<p>"Yes, Virginia; there is a Brotherhood," Piacentelli said. "And our -Nasty Nef is a Brother."</p> - -<p>"He's a number of things," Hartford said. "He's our CO; he's CINCK; -he's an SOB. But he's our boss, and 'Brotherhood' is a dangerous -word." He sipped his coffee. "Tell you what, Pia. If you want to go -out and talk Gook with the Gooks, I'll fix it for you to draw picket -duty tonight. The man who's got picket has been married only a month, -and spent three weeks of that in a safety-suit out in the woods. I'm -sure he'll relinquish to you the pleasure of a night's romp as picket -officer."</p> - -<p>"Can you do it?"</p> - -<p>"An O.G. can do anything, during those hours when his superior officers -are asleep," Hartford said.</p> - -<p>"You're a buddy," Piacentelli said. "I'll give you free tutoring in -Kansan for the rest of our tour."</p> - -<p>"<i>Do mo arigato gazaimashita</i>," Hartford said. "Thanks to your mumbling -the stuff in our room, I already talk like a Stinker." He stood up. -"I'm going down to the Board Room. Pick your companion for picket, -and come on down when you've dressed." Hartford bowed, Kansas-style. -"<i>Shitsurei itashimasu ga ...</i>" he said politely, and left to assume -his duties as O.G.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph2">III</p> - -<p>As one of the seventy-six male lieutenants of the Regiment, Hartford -pulled O.G. about once every eleven weeks. His Terrible Third drew duty -with him as Guard Platoon. All of them could expect to sleep through -the night undisturbed, unless Nasty Nef held a dry-run, falling them -out for a Simulated Problem. Nef was tired tonight, though; the Guard -could sleep. Only the two men on picket and the handful of Service -Company personnel on duty at the Status Board need stay awake tonight.</p> - -<p>Awake or sleeping, the security of First Regiment would rest this -night in the hands of Lee Hartford. It was he who bore the final -responsibility for allowing no living thing to enter the Barracks -except in a well-scrubbed safety-suit; for assuring that the air his -sleeping comrades breathed was sterile and dustless; that the Syphon's -poisonous bug-juice was of the proper pH and germicidity; and for -checking that the whereabouts of every Axenite on Kansas was reflected -on the Status Board. That these duties were complex was attested by the -assignment of a Service Company officer to the Board, a woman who would -watch the Board's bands of lights and meters every moment. Hartford -could sleep; he was the Responsible Male. Mrs. Paula Piacentelli, -1/Lt. S.C. (Gnotobiotics Spec.), had to remain awake: she was the -Knowledgeable Woman.</p> - -<p>Hartford found Paula already at her work in the Board Room. Only a bit -over five feet tall, Piacentelli's wife was concentrated woman of the -most splendid sort. When Hartford had told her that Pia was taking the -picket, she frowned. "I hope he doesn't plan anything foolish."</p> - -<p>"Me? Foolish?" Piacentelli demanded from the elevator. He walked up, -clammed shut in his blue safety-suit, ready to hit bug-dirt. Under one -arm he carried a package sheathed in opaque plastic. Behind him, in the -gray safety-suit of an enlisted trooper, was a man Hartford recognized -as Corporal Bond, machine-gunner from Pia's platoon. "Lieutenant -Gabriel Piacentelli reporting with one man, Sir and Ma'am," he said, -saluting his wife and Hartford.</p> - -<p>"At ease, Weenie-head," Hartford said. "With you and Bond on picket -amidst the sunflowers, I won't sleep a wink all night." He turned to -the corporal. "Did you sure-enough volunteer for this duty?" he asked.</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir!" Bond said. "I voluntarily assumed the duty of absorbing a -fifth of Lt. Piacentelli's Class-VI Scotch. The Lieutenant was kind -enough to reciprocate by offering me this tour."</p> - -<p>"He gave you Scotch?" Hartford turned to Piacentelli. "Gabe, for a jug -of Scotch I'd have gone on picket with you myself. What's that you're -taking outside with you? Lunch?"</p> - -<p>"A microscope," Piacentelli said. "I'm doing a little research for -Paula." His wife nodded. A gnotobiotics technician, responsible for -maintaining the bacteriological security of the Barracks, she had -business with microscopes.</p> - -<p>"Want to give me the word on this romp of yours?" Hartford asked.</p> - -<p>"Standard picket, Lee," Piacentelli said. "I'll learn a little Kansan, -take care of Paula's project and tell you all about it when we get -back."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"Let's see your weapons." Hartford inspected Bond's Dardick-rifle and -Piacentelli's Dardick-pistol. Both weapons were loaded, clean and -wrapped up for their trip through the Wet Gut in plastic sleeves. -The trucks and heavy weapons stayed outside on bug-dirt. The lighter -weapons and all ammunition came back inside the Barracks with the -troopers who carried them. The weapons were detail-stripped on each -re-entry, irradiated with u-v and fit with fresh sleeves. As had been -discovered with the first axenic animals, in the 1930's, keeping a -mammal germ-free is a formidable task. When that mammal is a human -being and a soldier the job is double-tough.</p> - -<p>"Check out a jeep," Hartford said. "Report each half-hour. Don't shoot -any Stinkers ... sorry, I mean Indigenous Hominids. Try not to hit a -camelopard with the jeep; we're low on replacement parts. In fact, be -careful. Okay, Pia?"</p> - -<p>"Done and done, Exalted One."</p> - -<p>Hartford dropped his voice. "I'd feel easier in my mind if I knew -what's so important as to require your desertion of our mutual womb -tonight, Pia."</p> - -<p>"Language study, you might say," Piacentelli replied.</p> - -<p>"<i>Ha! So desa ka?</i>" Hartford replied. "That's so much bug-dirt, and you -know it."</p> - -<p>"<i>Ha!</i>" Piacentelli said. "See you at dawn. Take care of my wife, -buddy."</p> - -<p>"Aren't you going to kiss her good night?" Hartford asked.</p> - -<p>Pia grinned through his clammed-shut helmet and clomped to the elevator -with Bond. They were en route to the Hot Gut and the Wet Gut, the -twisting hallway from the sterile First Regiment Barracks to the living -night of Kansas.</p> - -<p>Hartford turned.</p> - -<p>Paula Piacentelli wore the short skirt, knee-hose and short-sleeved -blouse of Pioneer green that was the Class B uniform for females inside -the Barracks. She looked, Hartford thought, remarkably delectable; -and he again congratulated his friend on his luck in getting her. He -returned his attention to the Status Board, which Paula was conning. -Two red lights flickered on above the ground-floor diagram of the -Barracks, indicating that the two men of the picket had entered the Hot -Gut. A moment later these lights blinked off, and two lighted over the -diagram of the Wet Gut. Piacentelli and Bond were swimming now, towing -their weapons in ballooning plastic sleeves. Sterile, on their way out -into a filthy world, these two men were the outpost that would protect -through the night their hundreds of brothers and sisters sleeping safe -<i>in utero</i>. Freud, thou shouldst have lived this hour! Hartford mused.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Piacentelli turned the ignition key of the jeep he'd chosen. With the -starting cough of the engine, one of the rank of TV screens over the -Status Board lighted. The camera eye was looking out the rear-view -mirror of the jeep, and picked up Pia's helmeted head and the shoulder -of his companion. "We're off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of -Oz!" Piacentelli sang.</p> - -<p>His wife spoke into the microphone before her. "Don't do anything -foolish, Lieutenant," she said. "And remember, all transmissions are -recorded and are audited, at random, by the Base Commander."</p> - -<p>"Transmission received, receiver contrite," Piacentelli reported back. -"Okay, Paula-Darling. From now on till Bond and I swim home, we'll be -as military as GI soap." He flicked the TV monitor around to look out -the windshield and started the jeep down the road toward Stinkerville. -The duty of the picket was to chug around outside at random, hitting -all the cross-roads, settlements and high spots of the countryside near -the Barracks; to interview late-riding Indigenous Hominids and inquire -their business being out; to conduct such searches of Stinker homes and -hideaways as might seem useful to the occupying Axenites; and to remain -at all times in contact with the officers on duty at the Status Board.</p> - -<p>As the picket got underway, Hartford went down to the Terrible Third's -area to check quickly through the two-man apartments. Knock on the -door; "As you were, Troopers." A brisk inspection of two safety-suits, -gaping beside their owners' bunks like firemen's boot-sheathed pants. -The men were quiet. Guard-duty meant that any socializing with Service -Company troopers was impossible for a night, and militated against any -intake of alcoholic beverage. It was a bore, especially after three dry -and womanless weeks in the field. Hartford visited his Platoon Sergeant -last: "Sergeant Felix, could you have our bunch standing on bug-dirt -ten minutes after I blew the whistle? Very well, then. Good night, -Felix."</p> - -<p>Having demonstrated to his troopers that he was suffering the same -strictures as they, Hartford went back to the O.G. cubicle in the -Board Room. He checked his own safety-suit, his plastic-packaged -Dardick-pistol, said good night to Paula Piacentelli and lay down to -begin his first night's sleep outside a safety-suit in three weeks.</p> - -<p>But sleep didn't come easily.</p> - -<p>There was the murmur from the Board Room; Piacentelli's half-hourly -reports. "Nothing to report, Paula. I'm at Road Junction (41-17). No -I.H. activity. No excitement at all."</p> - -<p>"Continue random patrol, Lieutenant."</p> - -<p>"Yes, Dear. I'm going to run down to Kansannamura (42-19) for my next -call-in."</p> - -<p>"Carry on, Lieutenant."</p> - -<p>Pia was in the best possible hands with Paula on duty, Hartford mused. -The Status Board was really a woman's job. The girls of the Service -Companies were the house-keepers of the Barracks, the guardians of the -Regimental lares and penates. Paula, for example, had as her primary -duty gnotobiotic control: the maintenance of the whole germ-free system -of the Barracks, from the Hot-&-Wet Guts to safety-suit inspection -and the upkeep of the Decontamination Vehicles. Behind the women on -Board-duty, however, was always at least one male, combat-trained -Officer of the Guard, ready (once awakened and briefed by the female -help) to take armed men into the field.</p> - -<p>But meanwhile, Hartford wanted to sleep.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Half an hour passed, and at its end Pia made his report: "Picket -reporting, Paula. I'm going into the village. Corporal Bond will remain -with the jeep, and will keep the transmitter open till I get back. -Okay?"</p> - -<p>"Be careful, Lieutenant," Paula Piacentelli said, combining affection -with military formality.</p> - -<p>Hartford, deciding that sleep was impossible, got up and cold-showered. -Dressing in fresh Class B's, he walked out to join Paula at the Status -Board. The TV screen showed Bond, the sheathed Dardick-rifle slung over -his shoulder, pacing back and forth in front of the jeep, glancing -from time to time toward the walls of Kansannamura, white in the light -of the skyful of stars. He was nervous, evidently aware of the fact -that Kansas was largely unexplored, her potential for midnight mayhem -untested. Bond spoke across his shoulder. "The lieutenant has been gone -for a quarter hour, Ma'am," he said. "Do you want me to go in and ask -him to come out?"</p> - -<p>"Wait another quarter-hour, Corporal," Paula said. She explained to -Hartford, "What he's got to do may take a little time." They watched -the screen. Bond climbed back into the jeep, where he sat with his -rifle between his knees, sweeping his attention around him, at the -village, at the road behind, at the sunflower-fields, where the -blossoms were bleached white and the leaves enameled black by starlight.</p> - -<p>With Paula's agreement, Hartford pressed the microphone-switch to talk -with Bond. "Have you tried to tap Piacentelli on his suit-receiver, -Corporal?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir," Bond said. "First thing. No answer."</p> - -<p>"Turn your bitcher full up, then," Hartford said. "Tell Lieutenant -Piacentelli that the O.G. wants him out on the road within five -minutes."</p> - -<p>"Done and done, sir." Bond tongued the bitcher's controls to Full -Volume and repeated the message. Echoes bounced back from the walls of -Stinkerville and lost themselves in the tangle of sunflowers.</p> - -<p>No one answered.</p> - -<p>The village seemed as much asleep as it had been before Bond's bellow. -The Kansans were never hasty to volunteer response to Axenites; they -knew that troopers meant trouble.</p> - -<p>"Piacentelli is busy at something," Hartford said, as much to reassure -himself as Pia's wife. "I think I'll go out and have a look." He spoke -to Bond: "Get out of the jeep, but stay close to it. Report any haps -immediately. Watch for lights, listen for small-arms fire."</p> - -<p>"Done and done, sir."</p> - -<p>Hartford phoned Felix, his platoon sergeant. "Report to the Board Room -to sub for me," he said. "Wake the Platoon Guide and tell him to stand -ready to fall the Guard out, but not to wake anyone else yet. This is -probably a nothing, Felix; Lt. Piacentelli just went for a walk in -Stinkerville."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The Command Light, top in the tier of all the hierarchy of -red-yellow-green-white Status-Board indicators, flashed alive.</p> - -<p>"A nothing?" Nasty Nef's voice demanded. "What sort of talk is that, -Lieutenant? If I've been properly interpreting the past five minutes' -transmissions, we've got an Axenite officer stranded in the middle of -a Stinker village. This, Mister, is not a nothing. Call out the Guard. -Prepare to join me in a Stinkerville shakedown. Those Gooks got to -learn they can't play fast-and-easy with Axenite troopers."</p> - -<p>"Done and done, sir!" Hartford snapped. He toggled the phone to get -Felix back. "Felix, fall the boys out beside the Syphon. We've got the -Old Man hitting bug-dirt with us, so look sharp."</p> - -<p>"The colonel's going out with us?" Felix asked.</p> - -<p>"Yes. There must be more to this situation than meets the company-grade -eye," Hartford said. "Diaper-up our darlings and stand by in the Hot -Gut, Felix."</p> - -<p>"Done and done!"</p> - -<p>Twenty seconds later a figure in Santa Claus red came clashing into -the room. Hartford, half into his blue safety-suit, came to a clumsy -attention. The newcomer, his helmet clammed shut all ready for -contamination, bellowed, "Get with it, Mister!"</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir." Hartford fit himself into the suit, a sort of cockpit, a -congeries of valves, gauges, counters and vetters. In a moment he'd -sealed himself in the sterile suit, checked his air-filters and air -reserve. "The Guard is assembled in the Hot Gut, sir, ready to take the -field."</p> - -<p>"Dam' well better be," Nef said. "Lead off, Mister." He turned to Paula -Piacentelli. "Send a Decontamination Vehicle after us, Lieutenant. No -telling what those Stinker devils have cooked up with Piacentelli." -Back to Hartford: "You're in command of the Guard, I'll observe and -offer suggestions."</p> - -<p>"Tain-HUT!" Platoon Sergeant Felix saluted the scarlet-clad colonel -and the blue-clad lieutenant as they stepped from the elevator into -the electric atmosphere of the Hot Gut. The Guard snapped to, their -plastic-packaged Dardick-rifles at order arms.</p> - -<p>"Take 'em out, Felix," Hartford said. "Two personnel carriers, -a .50-caliber m.g.-mounted jeep fore and aft. You and the colonel take -the rear jeep; I'll lead. Have the men unbag their weapons the instant -we're outside. Any questions?"</p> - -<p>"No, sir."</p> - -<p>"Move out," Hartford said.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph2">IV</p> - -<p>The squads peeled off and double-timed down the Hot Gut. Man by man -they dipped into the Wet Gut for their swim outside. They'd been -drilled for speed in exiting. If the Regiment were needed outside, -the Syphon could become a literal bottle-neck. As the last squad -splashed into the antiseptic solution, Hartford turned to Colonel Nef. -"Sir, I have a question," he said.</p> - -<p>"Hurry it up, Mister."</p> - -<p>"Isn't this a bit extreme, sir? We're going out to take one man out -of a primitive village where we're not even sure he's in trouble. And -we're carrying enough firepower to blast into an armed city."</p> - -<p>"I don't trust the Gooks," the colonel said. "Their bucolic way of -life may be a fraud, designed to lull us into complacency. Tonight -we may discover that they're plotting the overthrow of the Garrison, -using weapons and tactics they've kept secret. I hope such is the case, -Lieutenant. It would give us adequate cause to wipe the Stinkers off -Kansas and make this as clean a world as Titan."</p> - -<p>"Sir...."</p> - -<p>"Move, Mister," Nef said. "Piacentelli has been in Stinkerville for -fifty minutes. Let's get him out."</p> - -<p>The four trucks roared down the plateau toward the Indigenous Hominid -hamlet at its foot. When the first Axenite Pioneers landed on the -planet, bacteria-free as all men in space had to be, they'd set up camp -near the spot where First Regiment Barracks now stood. They saw the -fields of sunflowers, grown for food and cloth, and heard the natives -call the nearest village Kansannamura. From that time on, this world -was Kansas.</p> - -<p>There was no moonlight—Kansas has no moon—but the headlamps of the -four vehicles were wasted against the bright ribbon of road, lighted -as it was by the sheet of stars that melted together in a metallic -ceiling over the night. The men sat with their rifles between their -knees, the plastic sleeves stripped off. Each of these Dardick-rifles -could fire a solid stream of death. Each round of ammunition was -fitted with a matrix that served as chamber, cartridge and the first -fraction-of-an-inch of barrel. A magazine of forty such rounds could be -hosed through the rifle in half a second. The troopers sped downhill, -through sunflower fields black and silver in the light of the stars.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The personnel carriers and the jeeps scuffed to a halt by the village -gate, the men scattering like shrapnel, according to the book. Colonel -Nef spoke to Hartford on the command-band. "Move in, Lieutenant. Bring -out Piacentelli. Any Stinker resistance is to be treated as open -rebellion."</p> - -<p>"Yes, sir." Hartford spoke to his men: "First squad, lead scout, -forward to the gate."</p> - -<p>The scout, his plastic safety-suit and the glass of his helmet -glinting highlights, scuttled to the gate. He kicked the gate -open—Piacentelli had evidently left it ajar—and entered, rifle-first. -"First squad, follow me in column. Open to Line-of-Skirmishers in the -square. Second squad, follow in the same manner. Third squad; maintain -your interval and stand ready."</p> - -<p>Hartford ran, pistol in hand, through the open gate. It was like -charging some Roman ruin unpeopled for three centuries, like a field -exercise with boulders marking obstacles to be won. There was no sign -of natives. Their shop-boards hung bearing the picture-script the -Kansans used, quiet as the marbles in a cemetery. Hartford directed -first squad in a sweep through the alleys, searching for Piacentelli. -Second squad clattered through the gate behind them, took up a skirmish -line, and moved in to cover the square as first squad disappeared into -the doorways and alleys of Stinkerville.</p> - -<p>The village, except for its beasts, might have been deserted. These -animals, camelopards used for riding and to carry burdens, woke -and gazed serenely down at the interrupters of their vegetable -dreams, blinking their liquid half-shuttered eyes. Boots clattered -on cobblestones. The houses were unlighted. "Throw on your i-r," -Hartford ordered. As they moved into the dark, narrow ways, the men -beamed infra-red light from the projectors on their safety-suits, the -bounced-back, invisible light being transduced to black-and-green -chiaroscuro by passage through the stereatronic goggles dropped inside -their helmets.</p> - -<p>"Turn the Stinkers out, Mister," Nef command-banded.</p> - -<p>"Into the houses," Hartford signaled. Ahead, a boot slammed wood, and -hinges burst. To the restless night sounds of the camelopards in their -stalls, the click of military boots on brick, and the rustle of rifles -against safety-suits was added the whispering of families rousing from -their beds. Hand in hand from father to mother to elder brother, down -the scale to the youngest, the Kansans stumbled out into their little -courtyards. "<i>Ano hito wa dare desu ka?" "Abunai yo!" "Shikata ga -nai....</i>"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"Any sign of Piacentelli yet?" Nef demanded.</p> - -<p>"Not yet, sir," Hartford signalled.</p> - -<p>"Feed a candle into every building, Lieutenant. We'll get these Gooks -in the open and interrogate till we find our man."</p> - -<p>"Done and done, sir," Hartford said, stepping out of the way of a -little girl fleeing toward the village square with an even littler girl -strapped to a pack-board on her back. He passed on the order. "Fire -in ten seconds, nine, eight ... now!" Each man of first squad tossed -a Lake Erie Lightning Universal Gas Candle through the window nearest -him. A little over a second later a dozen grenades spit out a cloud -of smoke with a hiss like a bursting fire-hose, and the outer air was -filled with an eye-stinging gas. The Indigenous Hominids spilled out of -their homes in all directions now; coughing, choking, children rubbing -the smoke particles into their half-wakened eyes. Two camelopards, -blinded like their masters, blundered into the square, tears streaming -from their reproachful eyes, twelve feet above the pavement. Second -squad's men danced clear of the beasts and hallooed them out the gate.</p> - -<p>Somewhere back in an alley a first-squad trooper tapped his trigger, -jetting steel against overhanging roof-tiles. "Nail that shot, Mister!" -Nef demanded.</p> - -<p>Hartford heard the squad leader: "It's Lieutenant Piacentelli, sir. -He's here."</p> - -<p>"Bring him out, man; bring him out!" Nef's excited voice triggered a -new string of rifle bursts.</p> - -<p>Hartford tongued his bitcher full-volume: "Cease fire, you idiots! -Piacentelli, head for the square."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus1.jpg" width="335" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - -<p>"Stop it, for God's sake, stop it!" Piacentelli shouted, his -unamplified voice coming from a smoke-filled alley. Hartford plunged -into the dark smoke—a tear-gas grenade had set afire some of the -sun-flower-paper room dividers, and kindled with them a row of wooden -houses—and shouted for Piacentelli. A blabrigar, as blind in the smoke -as the men, blundered against Hartford's helmet. "<i>Yuke! Yuke!</i>" the -bird screamed, grabbing hold of the transceiver-antenna that horned up -from the helmet. Hartford grabbed the blabrigar and tossed it up above -the melee. He heard it flying in circles, searching for its Stinker -owners, chanting the last words they'd said to it: "<i>Yuke! Yuke! -Yuke!</i>"—"Go!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Everything was burning. Even through the safety-suit Hartford suffered -from the heat. He retracted his i-r goggles, useless in all this smoke. -Nef called. "I'm coming in, Mister." Hartford acknowledged. Great. One -more blind man wandering in the smoke was what he needed.</p> - -<p>He tongued his bitcher loud and shouted; "Gabe! Come this way. Gabe! -Gabe!" The heat was intolerable. He positive-pressured his suit, -ballooning the fabric away from his skin. How hot, he wondered, would -the rounds packed into the butt of his Dardick-pistol have to get -before they exploded?</p> - -<p>As though in answer, a snap of gunfire sounded from the fog ahead. -Some meat-head had spooked. There were more shots as other troopers -fired at their fantasies. "Cease fire, damn it!" Nef shouted over the -command-circuit. "If anyone was hurt by you idiots, I'll court-martial -every man with smoke in his gun barrel." Hartford hurried on. Ahead of -him in the alley he heard Colonel Nef's voice, uncharacteristically -soft. "Hartford, join me. I've found Piacentelli." Ahead in the smoke -was a pinkness: the scarlet-suited commander kneeling above a body on -the bricks.</p> - -<p>Here in the open of planetary air, available to all the microscopic -beasts of Kansas, Piacentelli was wearing only Class B's; his sneakers, -shorts and tee-shirt. The center of the shirt sopped blood from the -bullet-hole that funneled into Axenite Lieutenant Piacentelli's chest.</p> - -<p>Nef stood. "The Decontamination Vehicle should be standing by," he -said. "Get Piacentelli outside. We may be able to save him." He sounded -unhopeful.</p> - -<p>Hartford draped his friend's body across his shoulder. The smoke was -bad, but he'd memorized his course through it. The air sucked in -through his filter was clean, but hot. His helmet steamed opaque. As he -stumbled out, blind, but guided by the colonel's voice, two men came -forward to take Piacentelli over to the Decontamination Vehicle parked -by the village gate. In the cooler air Hartford's helmet cleared. A -girl gnotobiotician from the Decontamination Squad pressed the pickup -of her helmet's "ears" against Piacentelli's bloody chest.</p> - -<p>She looked up. "He's dead, sir," she said.</p> - -<p>Nef's voice boomed from his bitcher. "Burn the Stinker village!" he -shouted. "These Gooks will pay for Piacentelli's death with their -homes."</p> - -<p>Hartford felt imminent danger of vomiting, bad business in a -safety-suit. He fought it as he looked around. The column of smoke -rising from the buildings already fired was sweeping around, carried -by the morning wind that poured off the plateau. Everything within the -walls of the rammed-earth houses would be incinerated. Kansannamura was -destroyed. "Regroup by the vehicles," Hartford spoke to his troopers. -He walked back to his jeep, the village flaming behind him.</p> - -<p>The Decontamination Squad checked Hartford's safety-suit, and found it -sound despite its roasting. Piacentelli they cocooned in plastic: he -was contaminated and dangerous. As the five trucks rolled back toward -the Barracks, they met families of Indigenous Hominids, smoke-stained, -who retreated back into the sunflower-fields as the troopers drew near -them. The Stinkers seemed to have salvaged little from the flames -beyond an occasional blabrigar, perched on an old man's shoulder, -or now and then a camelopard, fitted with a saddle and carrying a -blanket-wrapped bundle of clothing and cooking-pots.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph2">V</p> - -<p>Hartford had to see Piacentelli's body placed in the Barracks morgue, -where a necropsy would be performed by a safety-suited gnotobiotician. -It was seldom that an Axenite was contaminated. Rarer yet was the death -of a trooper who'd been exposed to bacteria. Information held in Pia's -body might someday save lives.</p> - -<p>Hartford, directing the sealing-off of the morgue from the rest of the -Barracks, was not comforted by these reflections. He unsuited, shaved -and showered, and put on fresh Class B's to finish what remained of -this O.G. tour. On his way back up to the Board Room he had to pass the -morgue again. Colonel Nef, in the midst of a cluster of lesser ranks, -was there. On a wheeled cart, covered by a sheet, was a second body.</p> - -<p>Hartford stopped. "What happened, sir?" he demanded. "Who is it?"</p> - -<p>Nef raised the corner of the sheet with a hand that seemed infinitely -weary. The body was Paula Piacentelli. "Another accident," the Colonel -grunted.</p> - -<p>A hydroponics corporal, S.C., spoke up. "She was relieved of duty as -soon as she heard about her husband's death, sir. Someone should have -stayed with her. She went up to Level Eight to be alone. There are only -two of us on duty there through the night. She must have blundered off -the walkway, blinded by her tears. However it happened, she caught -hold of a lighting-cable where the insulation was frayed, and was -electrocuted the moment she touched the wet seeding-bed. Colonel Nef -found her there."</p> - -<p>"I was going to console her on Gabriel Piacentelli's death," Nef said. -"Leave the body here and clear out, all of you." No refrigeration was -needed for Paula's corpse, of course. An uncontaminated Axenite was -preserved by purity. The body might dry a bit, the integrity of the -internal organs suffer somewhat from the corrosive effects of their own -juices: but Paula's corpse would otherwise remain uncorrupted until -taken outside and buried in bug-dirt. "Hartford," Nef said, "I'd like -to have a talk with you."</p> - -<p>"I'm still on O.G., sir," Hartford said.</p> - -<p>"And I relieve you of that duty," Nef snapped. "Come up to my quarters."</p> - -<p>Nasty Nef's sitting-room had the only window in the Barracks, a -skylight through which poured the brilliance of Kansas's pyrotechnic -flood of stars. "Rest, Hartford. Sit down. Brandy?"</p> - -<p>Hartford allowed that he could use some.</p> - -<p>"What do you think of tonight's adventure, Lee?" Nef asked. "Don't look -startled. I know the first name of every officer and non-com in the -Regiment."</p> - -<p>"What happened, sir, was horrible," Hartford said.</p> - -<p>"I understand your feelings," Nef said. "Two tragic accidents, killing -your two closest friends the same night. I am certain that the loss -of these comrades will fire your zeal for getting the Stinkers under -control. Isn't that right, Lee?" Nef took a cigar from the humidor next -his chair.</p> - -<p>"With all respect, sir," Hartford said, placing his empty brandy-glass -on the table to his right, "I can hardly see how the events tonight -were caused by the Indigenous Hominids."</p> - -<p>"You must use the official name for the Gooks, mustn't you?" Nef -mused. His voice turned harsh: "Someone stripped the safety-suit off -Piacentelli, Mister."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Hartford nodded, his face pale. The "A" of the Axenite's alphabet -was Apprehension. As a germ-free—axenic, gnotobiotic—human being, -he is superior in most ways to ordinary men. He's usually larger and -stronger. He never has dental caries, pimples, appendicitis, the -common cold or certain cancers. No matter how much or how long he -sweats, the Axenite doesn't stink; nor do his other excretions. On a -contaminated world, however, the Axenite is a tender flower indeed. A -baby's breath can be death to him, if that baby be a "normal" human; -for no microbe is benign to the man without antibodies. To him a drop -of rain may reek with pestilence, the scent of evening may be a lethal -gas. "I can't understand their stripping Pia, sir," he said. "Why would -they do such a terrible thing?"</p> - -<p>"Because they're Stinkers!" Nef said. "Can you imagine what it must be -like to be one of them? Every inch of your skin a-crawl with living -filth, your guts packed with foulness, your whole frame a compromise -with rottenness? Do you wonder that they'd delight to make us as -unwholesome as they are themselves?" Colonel Nef lighted the cigar he'd -been mulling. "Lee, do you think one Stinkerville destroyed is too high -a price for them to pay for having murdered two Axenite troopers? For -Piacentelli's wife is as much their victim as her husband."</p> - -<p>Hartford shook his head. "I'm not sure, sir. What bothers me more than -anything else is that it's my fault Pia went out last night. He asked -me to arrange for him to replace the scheduled picket officer, and I -did."</p> - -<p>"Lee, why was Piacentelli so anxious to pull this extra duty?" Nef -asked.</p> - -<p>Hartford tried unobtrusively to squirm his chair out of the jet-stream -from Nef's cigar. "He told me he wanted to work on the language, sir," -he said. "Pia really had such a project. He'd never had contact with -anyone with a speech other than Standard before, and the problem of -transducing one language into another fascinated him. The Kansans call -their speech <i>Nihon-go</i>. Pia taught me to understand some of it."</p> - -<p>"A waste of your time, Lee," Nef said. "You'll never have occasion -to speak it. Be that as it may, unless Piacentelli was attempting to -coax a course in Bedroom Kansan from a Stinker maiden, I can hardly -understand why his lexigraphical labors should require him to unsuit -himself. No, Piacentelli was deliberately murdered."</p> - -<p>"I'm puzzled, sir," Hartford admitted. "When we tossed those -smoke-candles, I heard Pia shouting for us to stop it. Would he have -done so if the Indigenous Hominids had him captive? Why did none of the -natives lift a hand against us, though we were burning their homes? Why -did Paula Piacentelli seem to know why Pia was going outside tonight? -Why did he take a microscope with him? Why did Paula kill herself?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"Don't noise that last 'why' around the Barracks, Mister," Nef growled. -"Officially, she died in tear-blinded grief, an accident." He smiled. -"Whatever our reason for burning out Stinkerville, Lee, we got it -done. The fact that those half-humans down the hill bred and sweat and -poisoned the soil within half an hour's walk has been a stench in my -nostrils ever since we got here. Now they're gone. I'm as sorry as you -that the Piacentellis are dead. But the manner of their dying was such -as to assure Axenic mankind a new home."</p> - -<p>"I'm not sure I understand you, sir."</p> - -<p>Nef poured them each a second brandy. He raised his; Hartford of -necessity followed suit. "To Brotherhood," the colonel said. He stared -into Hartford's eyes. "To <i>the</i> Brotherhood," he amended.</p> - -<p>Hartford was tired, confused and in awe of Nef's rank; otherwise he -might have ventured protest. Nef sipped his drink. "I must emphasize, -Lee, that what I say is my opinion only, not Axenite policy. You see my -point."</p> - -<p>"I do, sir," Hartford said.</p> - -<p>"Forgive me, then, for prefacing my remarks with a bit of truism," Nef -said. "In all history before gnotobiotic man was cut from his mother -through cellophane, the human being was never pure organism. Before -us, every man who ever lived was, in fact, one mammal plus the sum -of millions of viruses, rickettsia, bacteria, fungi and molds. When -the old philosophers asked, 'What is man?' the answer could only be: -'Foul smell and blood in a bag.' We're the first men beyond that, Lee. -The first real men, True Men, members of the winner-species. <i>Homo -gnotobioticus</i>.</p> - -<p>"We must destroy the bridge that led to us. We must destroy the -Stinkers. Not just these quasi-human natives here on Kansas, but the -Stinkers on Earth, and on every other planet where bug-laden man has -followed Axenite. What chance has <i>Homo sapiens</i> to match his sapiency -against <i>Homo gnotobioticus</i>, when he is a bifurcate septic tank, a -polyculture of a thousand kinds of living dirt?"</p> - -<p>Hartford finished his brandy, wishing he were anywhere else than in -Nasty Nef's quarters, tired, ill at ease and a little drunk from -the two brandies. "What do you propose, sir?" he asked with Academy -politeness.</p> - -<p>"Aha!" Nef rejoiced, pouring them each another drink. "You justify -my trust, Lee. You perceive that I speak not merely if-ly, -philosophically, but as a man of action, leashed only by temporary -practicality." He leaned back in his chair and regarded Hartford more -as a sculptor might regard a recent product than a father a son, with -uncritical approval. "Where were you born, Lee?"</p> - -<p>"On Titan, sir."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"I thought so. You have the mark of natal excellence," Nef said. -"You're a second or third-generation Axenite, then?"</p> - -<p>"Third, sir," Hartford said.</p> - -<p>"Splendid. Your grandparents were from their mothers' wombs untimely -ripp'd; your parents and yourself born normally, in germ-free ambience. -How fortunate we are, you and I! Third-generation Axenites. Eff-two of -a new race." Nef paused in his recital. "There is one fact that chafes -us, though. We, perforce the Columbuses of tomorrow, explorers of the -planets beyond even the stars we see here on the frontier, are held -back by our Stinker cousins. They have the proper feeling, that only -pure man might pioneer the alien worlds, for fear of destroying what he -finds there. But who will inherit those planets when we've finished our -explorations? Who will at the last till the fields of Kansas?"</p> - -<p>"Colonists from Earth, sir," Hartford said. "From Eurus, Tinkle, -Westside, Unashamed, T'ang, Williams's World and Hope. From all the -planets normal man has colonized."</p> - -<p>"Doesn't that annoy you, Lee?" Nef asked. "That our work's fruit is to -be enjoyed by shiploads of Stinkers?"</p> - -<p>"They're as human as we, sir," Hartford said. He smiled. "You might say -they just haven't had our advantages."</p> - -<p>"You're tender-minded, Lee," Nef said. "We garrison a hundred worlds -on the Frontier, planets our Stinker masters mustn't visit yet, least -Man contaminate some life-form yet unmet. We pioneer, clear planets as -safe, and move on. For reward, we Axenites have three worlds of our own -in the M'Bwene System, axenized for our use; we have the Academies on -Luna and Titan, and a dome on Pluto. <i>It's not enough.</i> We are the new -men, the next-comers to humanity. We must have worlds of our own. I, -and the Brotherhood whose hand here I am, intend that Kansas shall be -ours."</p> - -<p>"What about the Stinkers?" Hartford asked. "What will happen to them if -we decide to axenize Kansas?"</p> - -<p>"Maybe they'll leave," Colonel Nef said, smiling in the manner that -had won him the name "Nasty." "A few more punitive expeditions like -tonight's—an incendiary grenade was thrown at Kansannamura, did you -know that, Lee? I threw it—and we'll have no Stinkers underfoot. -We soon will be able to mop and polish this world to our own high -standards. We'll walk this lovely world without safety-suits and -breathe unfiltered air. We'll enter into our birthright, Lee." Nef -gazed at his cigar admiringly, though it had gone out. "So much for the -moment, Brother Hartford," he said. "Perhaps we'd both do well to get -some sleep."</p> - -<p>Hartford jumped to attention and formally requested permission to -withdraw. Nef nodded. Hartford about-faced and left the room.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph2">VI</p> - -<p>The things the colonel had told him hadn't fallen into place in his -mind yet. Hartford was numb of thought.</p> - -<p>Back in his own room in B.O.Q. the numbness cleared a bit. He poured -himself a drink. Somehow, he thought, he'd become fairhaired boy to an -Attila the Hun, an Alaric the Goth, a Hitler, a Haman; an Ashurbanipal -I, a Rameses II. For Nef was equally with these a servant of Siva the -Destroyer, with his plan to make Man pure.</p> - -<p>His purification would involve the destruction of all non-axenic men -and women all the way from the Home World to the newest beach-head on -the Frontier; the sterilization of a hundred worlds as culture media -for the new race; and the planting on the newly axenized soil of -colonies of <i>Homo gnotobioticus</i>, the feeder-on-hydroponic-greens, the -inodorous, the thin-gutted, the strong toothed Superman.</p> - -<p>Nef's pogrom had begun with the raid on the village, Hartford mused, -his arms behind his head as he lay on his bunk. Nef had decided that -this green and pleasant world belonged to the silver men, the true men, -the new men. Us, Hartford thought. Earth's Stinkers, ordinary humanity -with its common cold and its caries, would follow the Kansan Indigenous -Hominid, and the Great Auk, into history.</p> - -<p>The double funeral of the Lieutenants Piacentelli was to be held at -Retreat, outside the Barracks. Hartford wondered a bit at the haste -with which the two bodies were to be consigned to the earth of Kansas. -Perhaps haste was necessary because of the micro-organisms with which -poor Pia's corpse was necessarily contaminated.</p> - -<p>Hartford grimaced. Contaminated humans must lead disgusting lives. -They smelled of ferments, were bloated with bacterially elaborated -gases, suffered rot in their very teeth. Their corpses—poor -forefathers!—suffered corruption that would never touch an Axenite, -whose unembalmed cadaver would last longer than the best-mummified -Pharaoh.</p> - -<p>Whatever mysterious errand it had been that had taken Piacentelli -outside the Barracks, it had killed him. It was over.</p> - -<p>Hartford marched the Terrible Third into position facing the graves, -cut into the soil at the base of the hundred-foot flagpole. The entire -regiment, less only the handful of men and women necessary to secure -the Barracks, was on the Parade Ground. Colonel Nef, his scarlet -safety-suit brilliant in the light of the setting sun, stood beside the -graves, a finger of his right gauntlet inserted to mark his place in -the black <i>Book of Honors and Ceremonies</i>.</p> - -<p>The regiment stood at parade-rest as a truck brought the bodies of two -comrades through its ranks. As the improvised hearse halted and twelve -blue-suited casket-bearers stepped forward to lift the flag-draped -boxes, Nef called the regiment to attention. The bearers slow-marched -the caskets to the graves and placed them on the lowering-devices.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Nef's words of funeral were few. He spoke of the dedication of the two -Axenites being laid to rest and bitterly accused the Stinkers—this -word seemed rude, in so formal a setting—of having murdered the young -couple. He spoke of condign justice, and of revenge.</p> - -<p>This done, he called: "Escort, less firing-party. Present, HAHMS! -Firing-party, FIRE THREE VOLLEYS!"</p> - -<p>The shots of the Dardick-rifles echoed down the plateau to the -smoldering village below. The Regimental Bugler, standing between the -heads of the graves, flicked on his instrument. As the last volley spat -from the muzzles of the rifles, the bugler played <i>Taps</i>.</p> - -<p>Four men stepped forward to recover and fold the green-silk Pioneer -colors, and the caskets were lowered to corruption in alien earth. The -banner crept down the flagstaff, and the funeral was over.</p> - -<p>Bone-weary, Hartford went from the Syphon to the refresher-room, where -he checked his safety-suit and hung it.</p> - -<p>Another officer was there, still in his blue safety-suit. Hartford -wondered sleepily why he'd so long postponed unsuiting. Even the -fellow's helmet was sealed. "Our first deaths on Kansas," Hartford -remarked, wanting to coax the man into conversation and learn who he -was. "I'd never realized till now that we're really soldiers, subject -to violent death and formal burying." The man must be a replacement, -come in on the supply ship a month ago, Hartford thought. Black -hair, crewcut. Tanned. Must be from one of the M'Bwene Worlds, where -an Axenite's naked skin can bear unfiltered sunlight. "Both the -Piacentellis were my friends," Hartford said, determined to coax -speech from the stranger.</p> - -<p>The man's bitcher boomed, evidently set on full volume. "<i>Mattaku -shirazu</i>," he said. "Excuse. Pia not teach entire use of Standard -tongue."</p> - -<p>Hartford's right hand tore through the plastic pellicle over his -Dardick-pistol and brought the weapon to bear on the figure before him. -"You're a Stinker!" he said. "Pia's safety-suit—that's the suit you're -wearing."</p> - -<p>"<i>Tonshu</i>," the Indigenous Hominid said, bowing his head. He indicated -the empty holster at his side: he was unarmed. "I come on <i>taku</i>, -here to your honored precincts, to speak of things done and of future -things. You are Hartford?"</p> - -<p>Hartford thought quickly. His responsibility was to the Garrison. -This stranger was above all else a possible source of contamination, -a carrier of the micro-bugs that could kill every Axenite on Kansas. -Shooting him would rupture the safety-suit he wore. As it was, his -exterior surface was clean; he could have entered the Barracks only by -marching in from Retreat with the rest of the regiment, through the -sterilizing Syphon. "I am Hartford. Lee Hartford."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"Pia said you are a good man," the stranger said, bowing.</p> - -<p>"What is your name?"</p> - -<p>"Renkei. As you say, I take Pia's <i>uwa-zutsumi</i>, this smooth garment." -Renkei indicated the safety-suit by slicking his hands over it. "I must -enter here to talk with Hartford. To enter, I must have garment. Pia, -my brother, is dead. I borrowed his garment. Can I, with you, stop -the ugly thing that began last night in Kansannamura? <i>Kuwashiku wa -zonzezu</i>; I do not know. I can but try."</p> - -<p>What a perfect disguise a safety-suit made, Hartford thought. Besides, -it was the only passport a man needed to enter the Barracks. He stared -at the stranger. He looked no different to men Hartford had met before, -Axenites whose grandparents had been born by aseptic Caesarian section -in Nagoya or Canton, two of the great gnotobiotic centers of fifty -years ago. Renkei was a Stinker, a Kansan, an Indigenous Hominid -(ignominious name!); he was also, Hartford felt, a man.</p> - -<p>"Tell me why you made the dangerous journey here, into the midst of -your enemies," he said.</p> - -<p>"The death of our friend Pia. The burning of Kansannamura. The war -between my people and you who wear smooth garments," he said. "This is -<i>aru-majiki koto</i>."</p> - -<p>"A thing that ought not to be," Hartford said, translating. He was glad -for the practice he'd gotten with Pia, speaking the native tongue. "Sit -down," he said. "You must explain, Renkei."</p> - -<p>The refresher-room, a hall filled with lockers and the machinery that -automatically tested and refitted the safety-suits each time they -returned to the Barracks, had a dozen entrances and exits. As Renkei, -still completely sealed in Pia's safety-suit, sat on the bench beside -Hartford, the doors all closed at once. They hissed as the pneumatic -seals were set in their frames.</p> - -<p>Contamination Alert! Someone, most likely the Service girl on watch at -the Status Board, had discovered that there was one more person in the -Barracks than could be accounted for. A crash-priority head-count had -been made. Each room and compartment had doubtless been eavesdropped -through the built-in TV eyes and microphone ears.</p> - -<p>One door at the far end of the hall burst open. A squad of -safety-suited Service Police spilled in. At the point of their wedge -was the scarlet uniform of Colonel Nef. Dardick-pistol in hand, he ran -toward Renkei. "Don't shoot!" Hartford shouted, springing up.</p> - -<p>"Get back, Mister," the colonel yelled. He dropped to one knee and -squeezed all twelve rounds into the seated figure to Hartford's right. -Service Police swooped down to pull Hartford away from the shattered -body of Renkei. The lieutenant's tee-shirt was stained, -however, by flecks of blood splashed up as the SPs' bullets chewed into -the Kansan. Hartford was contaminated.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>For the next hour, Hartford had no more to say about his disposition -than an angry bullock being dipped and scrubbed against an epidemic of -cattle ticks.</p> - -<p>His purification consisted in a sudsing with antiseptic soaps, this -administered by a team of three Service Company gnotobioticians who -were completely indifferent to his modesty and who seemed determined -to peel off the outer surface of his skin. The women, safety-suited -against being themselves contaminated, shaved off all his hair and -ostentatiously packaged-up the shavings to be burned. They administered -parenteral and enteric doses of broad-spectrum antibiotics. By the -time the gnoto girls were finished, Hartford was as bald all over as a -six-weeks foetus, as sore as though he'd been sand-blasted, slightly -feverish as a result of the injections and madder than hell.</p> - -<p>Ignoring his demands to see Colonel Nef at once, the Service Company -troopers helped him into his safety-suit. Hartford would have to live -inside the suit for a week's quarantine, watched carefully to see -whether a missed microbe would breed within him in spite of all the -measures taken.</p> - -<p>Hartford's company commander refused him permission to speak to the -colonel. The lieutenant was to speak to no one concerning Renkei's -invasion of the Barracks. He would remain safety-suited inside the -Barracks or out; but would otherwise continue with his regular -duties.</p> - -<p>Hartford returned to the refresher-room where the murder had taken -place. Renkei's macerated body had been removed for burning. The room -had been carefully decontaminated, to the extent of hosing it down with -detergent steam and individually re-refreshing each safety-suit in the -huge hall's rows of lockers.</p> - -<p>There was nothing to be done against Nef's madness, Hartford thought. -He sat on the bench where Renkei had sat. The ultimate breakdown in -communication is silencing one side of the dialogue, he thought. That's -why killing a man is the ultimate sin; it removes forever the hope -of understanding him. It ends for all time the conversation by which -brothers may touch one another's mind.</p> - -<p>What crap to find in a soldier's thoughts, Hartford told himself. -He was an Axenite trooper, a Pioneer, a pistol-packing officer of -infantry, commander of the Terrible Third Platoon. He was an Axenite, -dedicated by the immaculacy of his birth to the conquest of Man's -frontiers.</p> - -<p>Hartford snapped his plastic-sheathed Dardick-pistol, death in a -supermarket wrapper, from his belt and placed it on the shelf of his -locker. He'd seen the village of Kansannamura burned. Pia had died -across his shoulder. Paula lay buried, too. Renkei's life had been -splashed out on a stream of bullets. Enough of death.</p> - -<p>Hartford picked up a pack of field-ration squeeze-tubes and walked down -the hallway toward the Syphon.</p> - -<p>His leaving would show on the Status Board, of course, but that didn't -matter any more. He was deserting the regiment.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He walked through the valley of desert that was the Hot Gut, and down -into the birth-canal that was the Wet Gut, to emerge in the evening air -of Kansas. The motor sergeant, stationed outside to guard the vehicles, -saluted. "Going for a walk, sir?" he asked.</p> - -<p>"If you'll lend me a jeep, I'll go for a ride," Hartford said. "I'd -like to see how things look, down in the village."</p> - -<p>"It's against regulations, but if you'll have the truck back by dark I -can let it go, sir."</p> - -<p>"Thank you, Sergeant." Hartford returned the salute and drove off -downhill, toward Kansannamura.</p> - -<p>What would happen to Hartford-the-deserter? he wondered. At best, he'd -be booted out of the troopers and grounded on Titan, or Luna or one of -the M'Bwene planets, to serve the rest of his life as a paper-pusher, -the bureaucratic equivalent of an endless Kitchen Police. At worst, -he'd be exiled to Earth.</p> - -<p>That meant exposure to bacteria, a gradual contamination till he'd been -exposed to the full dirtiness in which earthlings daily lived, till -he'd equipped himself with antibodies and a Stinker's immune-response.</p> - -<p>The Service Police would be after him soon. Once out of sight of the -Barracks, he turned his jeep off the road, onto one of the numberless -paths used by camelopard riders on their trips between Stinker -villages. He was headed upgrade, now, toward the mountains. On either -side of the jeep were the fields of sunflowers, silent in the twilight -calm. In a few moments the cool winds from the sea would flow into the -land, stirring the billions of heart-shaped sunflower-leaves into the -whisper that filled the evening and early-morning hours of Kansas.</p> - -<p>His heart filled with hope and hopelessness, feeling like a happy -suicide, Hartford sang to himself as the sunflower heads and leaves -tattooed against his windshield. <i>Pioneers! O Pioneers</i> he sang, the -anthem of the Axenites, the fellowship he was leaving forever:</p> - -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse">Lo, the darting bowling orb!</div> - <div class="verse">Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,</div> - <div class="verse">All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, Pioneers! O pioneers!</div> -</div></div> - -<p>The crunching of the jeep over the narrow track, the whipping of the -plants against the vehicle and his singing all combined to drown out -whatever noise it was the girl might have made. Hartford didn't see her -till the jeep, rearing like a startled pony, climbing the flank of the -camelopard the girl rode, tossed him into a tangle of green stalks and -golden flowers.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph2">VII</p> - -<p>The riding camelopard bleated only a moment and was dead, its great -neck broken by the jeep's charge. The girl, thrown clear, was up before -Hartford.</p> - -<p>A scarlet bird circled the scene of the wreck, the dead beast, the -stalled jeep, the man and the woman sprawled by the side of the path. -"<i>Miyo! Miyo! Miyo!</i>" cried the blabrigar: "See! See! See!"</p> - -<p>Hartford rose and went to the girl, who was rubbing the shoulder she'd -landed on. She stared, but didn't back away. "<i>Kinodoku semban</i>," -he said very carefully: <i>a thousand-myriad pardons</i>. His bitcher, -unfortunately, was set on full volume; his words of comfort blatted at -the girl with parade-ground force. She put her hands over her ears.</p> - -<p>The blabrigar above them, impressed by Hartford's stentorian voice, -circled repeating "<i>Kinodoku semban</i>" over and over, till the girl -called it down to rest quietly on her shoulder. The girl spoke to the -bird, which stared at her lips with his head cocked to one side, an -attentive student. She repeated four times the same message. The bird -nodded, and repeated the phrase to her. "Yuke!" the girl said. The -blabrigar spread its scarlet wings and flew up. It circled twice, then -headed north, up into the mountains. Of the girl's message Hartford had -understood only the native word for camelopard: <i>giraffu</i>. His Kansan -was inadequate. He could understand it only if it were slowly spoken.</p> - -<p>Hartford tongued his bitcher's controls to a conversational level. -"<i>Kinodoku semban</i>," he repeated, bowing.</p> - -<p>The girl knelt beside the dead camelopard and stroked its head, over -the central, vestigal horn. She looked up at Hartford with tears in her -eyes. "<i>Tonshu</i>," Hartford said: I bow my head.</p> - -<p>"<i>Anata we dare desu ka?</i>" she asked.</p> - -<p>"Lee Hartford," he replied.</p> - -<p>The girl spoke slowly. "I am named Take." She knit her hands before her -and bowed. "Forgive my bad actions," she said.</p> - -<p>"The fault is entirely mine, Takeko," Hartford replied. He was sorry, -of course, to have killed the girl's steed and to have subjected her to -danger; he was very glad to have met her. Takeko wore what must have -been the Kansan riding costume: short trousers and a jacket woven of -floss from retted sunflower stalk, dyed a golden brown. Most curious, -he thought, was her perfume; mild, flowerlike, slightly pungent. The -smell of this lovely Stinker belied the trooper epithet.</p> - -<p>Then it hit him.</p> - -<p>The filters of a safety-suit remove, together with all the dust -of the ambient air, all its character, including odor. The clean, -characteristic smells of the Barracks, together with the bland -spit-and-sweat odors of a long-worn safety-suit, were all an Axenite -came in contact with.</p> - -<p>If he were able to smell the outside world, it could only be because -his gnotobiotic security was compromised.</p> - -<p>Hartford inspected his safety-suit, peering where he could and twisting -and feeling the surfaces he couldn't see. Takeko laughed. She reached -across his shoulder and lifted a flap of torn fabric, ripped loose when -Hartford had flown from his jeep.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>His panic would have been unmanly in a normal human; but Hartford all -his life had been impressed with the horror of contamination. He ran -blindly, though he knew that his deepened breathing was drawing the -germ-laden air of Kansas deeper into his lungs. He ran through lanes of -sunflowers, flailing his arms, into the darkness, away from the alien -girl, away from the fear of going septic. He ran and stumbled and fell -and ran again. All his life he'd been warned of the consequences of -becoming infected with the bacteria against which he had no defenses. -Now he was so infected.</p> - -<p>When Hartford fell the last time it was for sheer lack of wind.</p> - -<p>He opened his helmet and tossed it aside. Dead already, he could lose -nothing by making himself comfortable for dying. He shivered. The chill -of infection? No, the night was cool. He looked about him in the light -of the sky of stars. The fields were below him, rustling in a million -private conversations as the breeze filtered through them. It was a -lovely place to die, here on the crest of a hill.</p> - -<p>Hartford lay back and stared into the curtain of stars that rippled -above him. Perhaps he wouldn't wake, he thought. With this thought he -slept.</p> - -<p>The sunlight stung his eyes. He sprang to his feet, then bent and -groaned. Sore. He'd slept on naked soil, packed hard by the hillcrest -winds. He stretched his hard-bedded muscles. For a dead man, he felt -good. The alien bacteria and viruses within him were establishing -beachheads, multiplying their platoons to companies, their companies to -battalions. By the time they'd reached division-strength, he thought, -he'd be well aware of the invasion.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, breakfast.</p> - -<p>He opened a package of field-rations, squeeze-tube beans. He inserted -the nozzle of the tube into his mouth and fed himself a dollop of -the stuff. It felt strange to eat directly from the tube, not having -inserted the adjutage into his helmet-opening to be sterilized first. -Being septic saved a lot of time.</p> - -<p>He finished the squeeze-tube beans and was thirsty. Down at the base -of his hill was a little stream. Hartford thoughtfully peeled off -his safety-suit. Dressed only in his shorts, shirtless, barefoot and -tender, he made his way down to the water.</p> - -<p>It was delicious.</p> - -<p>Did bacteria impart that brisk taste? Hartford wondered. So far -committed to contamination that nothing mattered, he shed his shorts -and dived into the stream. It was chilly, delightful. He returned to -shore and lay on the grass for the sun to toast him dry. He began to -relax.... The girl giggled.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Hartford snatched up his shorts and pulled them on. It was Takeko. She -was afoot, wearing the costume he'd last seen her with; but she had -strapped on her back a leather wallet. A blabrigar sat on Takeko's -shoulder. She spoke to it, repeating her message four times and -listening to the bird repeat once. Then she shooed the scarlet bird -away, to carry north the message that Hartford had been found.</p> - -<p>"I laugh. Excuse me," she said. "But you funny." Takeko patted her -head. Hartford understood. Shaved by the Decontamination Squad, he was -bald and eyebrowless, entirely lacking in body hair. He smiled. "<i>Hai.</i>"</p> - -<p>"Your skin is like the hide of a <i>giraffu</i>," she said.</p> - -<p>Hartford looked down at his freckled arm. True, the pattern of brown -against pink was very like the reticulations of a camelopard. "Where -did you learn to speak Standard, Takeko?"</p> - -<p>"Pia-san talked to my cousin, and I listened," she said. "Kansannamura -was my home. Pia often visited us." Hartford, who after Nasty Nef was -the man most responsible for the burning of Takeko's village, was -silent. "When your <i>jeepu-kuruma</i> hit my <i>giraffu</i>, I think you are -Renkei," the Kansan girl said. "Renkei is my cousin. He go to see what -can be done."</p> - -<p>"Renkei is dead," Hartford told her.</p> - -<p>"<i>Iie!</i>" Takeko pressed her hands against her face. "You strangers are -quick to kill, to burn, to sweep away."</p> - -<p>"I did not wish him harmed," Hartford said.</p> - -<p>"You pink folk will not be happy until all our people are dead and -under the ground," Takeko moaned. "You will not be pleased until you -can march across our graves."</p> - -<p>"That is not so."</p> - -<p>"Pia-san said it," Takeko said. "He said that your Nef is a master of -the Brotherhood, which wishes death to all people who do not wear glass -heads."</p> - -<p>"If that is true, I am no longer a part of it, Takeko-san," Hartford -said. "I have left Nef and his Barracks. I am a dead man."</p> - -<p>"You will come with me," Takeko said. "You will not be dead for many -years, unless Nef and his Brotherhood kill you." She looked into the -sky, where a red bird was circling. It hawked down to her shoulder and -sat there, its head tilted to her. "Takeko," the girl said to the bird. -With this key to unlock its message the blabrigar spilled its rote. -Hartford recognized a word or two of the bird-o-gram, but not the full -sense of the message.</p> - -<p>Takeko reached into the pocket of her short trousers for a few -zebra-striped sunflower-seeds. The blabrigar picked these daintily -from her hand, using its beak like a pair of precise tweezers, pinching -up one seed at a time and cracking it. "There will soon come <i>giraffu</i> -to take us to a further village," Takeko said. "You are to speak to -our chief men there, to tell them what happened to Renkei, why he was -killed in the Stone House."</p> - -<p>"I may not live through this day," Hartford said. "It is not easy to -explain. We wear the 'glass head' to keep out your air. It is deadly, -<i>doku</i>, to us. Do you understand, Takeko?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"You may be tired, having slept on the old bones of the hill," she -said. "You may be hungry, having eaten only the squeezings of your -metal sausages. But you are not hurt badly, nor are you old, Lee-san. -Why should you die?"</p> - -<p>"You cannot understand," Hartford said. He spoke more to himself than -to the girl. "The medicine here is certainly primitive. You have no -concept of the biological nature of disease. Tell me, Takeko-san, do -you Kansans know anything of the very, very small...."</p> - -<p>"Microscopic?" Takeko asked.</p> - -<p>"Piacentelli did a splendid job of teaching you the Standard -language," Hartford said. He looked up and down Takeko's trim, just -post-adolescent figure in frank appraisal, jealously wondering whether -Gabe could have achieved his remarkable pedagogical results by means -of the pillow-book method of linguistic instruction so popular with -soldiers of occupation in every time and climate. That thought, he -rebuked himself, was unworthy of Pia's memory. In any case, his friend -had conducted his researches wearing that guarantee of chastity, a -safety-suit.</p> - -<p>"We'll have to wait an hour or so until the <i>giraffu</i> come," Takeko -said.</p> - -<p>She unstrapped the wallet from her back and unpacked it on the grass -at the edge of the little stream. The Kansan girl took out a coil of -line, spun from the stalk of the sunflower, and a bronze hook. "We will -feed the gentleman from the Stone House," she said. Hartford watched -with amusement as she baited the hook with a bit of the bread from -her knapsack, twirled the line about her head and dropped it into the -center of the stream. "This place has many fish," she said. "We will -not wait long before we eat."</p> - -<p>It took Takeko only ten minutes to have three seven-inch fish, so plump -and meaty-looking that not even a xenologist would have wasted time -studying them, lying on the grass.</p> - -<p>Hartford demanded equal time with the fishline, and discovered to -his gratification that the dough he pinched off the chapattis and -molded to the hook took the fancy of Kansas fish as well as Takeko's -offerings. With a sense of at last participating in the affairs of the -universe, he de-capitated and decaudated the six fish they ended with, -and gutted them with a rich delight in the juicy messiness of the task.</p> - -<p>Hartford and Takeko scissored the fillets in split twigs and roasted -them, like aquatic weenies, over a fire built from the pithy stalks -of dead sunflowers. The firepit, a saucer of scooped-out dirt, had -buried beneath it half a dozen of the swollen roots of sunflowers, each -wrapped in the cordiform, sharkskin-surfaced leaf of the parent plant, -to roast beneath the coals.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>They seasoned their fish with <i>daikon</i>, a kind of horseradish; and -their plates were the fresh-baked, flat, un-leavened chappattis Takeko -had brought in her pack. The tubers, eaten from a fresh leaf-plate, -needed only butter. Takeko had this, too, churned of camelopard-milk -cream. Buds or flower-heads of the sunflower were eaten with sunflower -oil, like artichokes. "Your people have a good friend in the -sunflower;" Hartford remarked, wiping his lips.</p> - -<p>"With the golden flower and the golden <i>giraffu</i>, with the <i>take</i>-grass -and the good soil, we had a rich life here before you glass-headed -men came," Takeko said. "Now we are treated in our own villages like -rats to be driven out, in our fields as gnawing vermin. Why is your -Brotherhood so angry with us, Lee-san, who live in only a few places on -a wide world? Is there no law among the light-skinned people? We have -lived here, on the world you call Kansas, for many generations. We were -once of Earth, as were your grandfathers."</p> - -<p>"All humans were once of Earth," Hartford said.</p> - -<p>"If we are as much human as you," she said, "why does your Nef call us -<i>Hominids</i>? Is that a name to give a brother?"</p> - -<p>"It is better than <i>Stinker</i>," Hartford suggested.</p> - -<p>"<i>Hai!</i> I tell you, Lee-san why you must re-name us. It is because men -do not kill men until they give their brother-enemy a monstrous name. -Why do you wish to kill us all?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"I'm not a member of the Brotherhood," Hartford said. "I'm only a man -who was born on Axenite. That means, until your beast and my jeep -collided, tearing my safety-suit, I was an animal uncontaminated by -microscopic life. These microscopic animals, Takeko, are deadly to an -Axenite."</p> - -<p>"You are not dead, though," Takeko suggested. "<i>Ne?</i>"</p> - -<p>"I've been breathing contaminated air for twelve hours," Hartford said. -"It's true. I cannot understand why I have no fever, no malaise, no -symptoms of pneumonia."</p> - -<p>Takeko giggled. "Forgive me," she said. "<i>Kinodoku semban</i>; but you -seem to be sorry to be alive." She was silent for a moment, listening. -She pointed north. "My father will appear with our <i>giraffu</i> soon," she -said. "I can hear them."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus2.jpg" width="332" height="500" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>Takeko's father rode up a moment later, an unbent man of seventy. He -sat astride his camelopard, a comic quadruped little better designed as -a beast of burden than an ostrich, with as much dignity as though his -steed were an Arabian stallion. His name, Takeko said, was Kiwa-san. -The old man bowed from his saddle when his daughter introduced Hartford.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>At Kiwa-san's command the two <i>giraffu</i> he'd brought along on -lead-reins spread their legs to bring their down-sloping backs a scant -four feet from the ground. The saddles, with dangling, boot-like -gambadoes in place of ordinary stirrups, seemed inaccessible to -Hartford. "Watch me," Takeko told him. She took a short run up behind -her <i>giraffu</i> and, with a movement like a leap-frog hurdle, flipped -herself up into the saddle.</p> - -<p>Hartford stepped back, ran and leaped. He succeeded only in banging -his shoes into the right sifle-joint of his mount and in flipping -himself to the ground. In the interest of haste, grace was abandoned. -Hartford monkey-crawled up a sturdy cane of bamboo growing nearby and, -as Kiwa-san maneuvered his beast, stepped over into the saddle.</p> - -<p>"I'd better take my safety-suit and helmet," he said. "If the troopers -should find it, they could follow our trail."</p> - -<p>"<i>Hai!</i>" Takeko said, agreeing. She leaped from her <i>giraffu</i>, packed -the safety-suit and helmet onto the beast, and remounted. "We will -now go to Yamamura," she said. Old Kiwa spoke, and she translated: -"We must move quickly and with care," she said. "My father heard an -<i>hikoki</i>—how do you say?" she asked, raising and lowering her hand.</p> - -<p>"A veeto-platform," Hartford said. "I mustn't be seen, Takeko. Colonel -Nef would use my presence as an excuse to kill any of your people -around me."</p> - -<p>The ride, though cautious, was indeed demanding. Hartford felt tendons -stretch he didn't know he had. Muscles were bruised from his instep to -his upper back, and the skin was chafed away from his inner thighs as -though he'd been riding an unplaned plank. He understood, well before -the journey to the mountain village was over, the importance of that -lifetime exercise, best begun by riding young, known to generations -of horsemen as "stretching the crutch." He swore to himself that his -future transportation, if he had a future through which to transport -himself, would be by boots or wheeled vehicle.</p> - -<p>The three of them were following no clear path. Kiwa led. Hartford -noted that their course took them along the contours of streams, on the -borders of fields, through contrasting background that would make their -presence less obvious from the air.</p> - -<p>They were in a thicket of bamboo when the veeto-platform did appear.</p> - -<p>The instant they heard its whistle, Kiwa spoke a sharp word. He and -his daughter slipped from their mounts, loosed the brow-bands of -their camelopards and unlocked their girths, tossed off the saddles -and dangling gambadoes and gave the animals each a sharp slap on the -rump that sent them crashing through the bamboo. They helped Hartford -unsaddle and send his beast off in another direction, and lay down in -the direction the late-morning sun dialed the shadows of the bamboo -stems.</p> - -<p>If the veeto-pilot saw the <i>giraffu</i> now, they were saddleless and -innocent.</p> - -<p>The downdraft of the veeto-platform puffed dust up from the ground -around them, and pressed down the leafy tops of the bamboo like a great -hand stroking across the thicket. Hartford, aware of the way his bald -head and pink face would stand out, dusted his hands with the soil and -laced his dusty fingers over his scalp.</p> - -<p>The platform passed almost directly over them, shooting fragments of -dust and bamboo-duff into every particle of clothing, into ears and -eyes and nostrils, with the whirl-wind of its passage.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph2">VIII</p> - -<p>It took them half an hour to recover their <i>giraffu</i> and saddle up -again, but Hartford did not regret the delay.</p> - -<p>Aboard the grotesque mount again, he groaned. To mask the misery of his -unaccustomed pounding he paid scientific attention to the landscape, -the gait of the camelopards, the leather of the saddles, and the -posture and person of Takeko—this last by far the most effective of -his analgesic thoughts.</p> - -<p>They rode on an ancient piedmont, among the foothills of a worn-down -mountain-range. The leather of their saddles and gambadoes was, by its -pattern, obviously tanned camelopard-hide. Hartford was certain that -this pattern would by the end of their journey be an indelible part of -his own hide. The <i>giraffu</i>, remarkably swift and easy-moving over the -rugged, heavily grown terrain, ambled, moving both legs on the same -side together. And Takeko was lovely.</p> - -<p>Hartford decided to essay his Kansan. He practiced his question: "Is -Yamamura far from here?" mentally, moving his lips, until he was sure -he'd mastered the phrasing. Then he addressed Old Kiwa. "<i>Yamamura wa -koko kara toi desu ka?</i>"</p> - -<p>Kiwa smiled, and rattled off an answer much too brisk for Hartford to -catch. He pointed ahead and up. "He says we must go through the pass, -under the Great Buddha," Takeko explained. "We have only an hour to go."</p> - -<p>"<i>Arigato</i>," Hartford said, suppressing a moan. Another hour!</p> - -<p>The pass Kiwa had spoken of loomed ahead. It was quite narrow, and -walled on either side by the almost perpendicular flanks of mountains, -shoulder to shoulder. Kiwa went first, for the cleft could only be -negotiated in single file. Takeko followed her father, and Hartford -took up the rear. In the ravine it was dark. The camelopards, sensing -their mangers up ahead, paced more quickly. Suddenly the canyon was -light, the walls spreading further apart here.</p> - -<p>Far up on Hartford's right, seated on a shelf left from some ancient -avalanche, was a gigantic figure cast of a coppery metal, green now -against the granite wall. "Who is that?" Hartford called to Takeko.</p> - -<p>"It is our <i>Daibutsu</i>," Takeko said. "It is the <i>Amida Buddha</i>, the -Lord of Boundless Light."</p> - -<p>"Do you worship him?"</p> - -<p>Takeko smiled and shook her head. "We worship not any man, but a Way," -she said. "<i>Butsudo</i>—the Way of the Buddha. We are nearly to the -village now, Lee-san."</p> - -<p>"I thank the Lord Buddha for that," Hartford said, bowing from his -saddle toward the great bronze image.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Yamamura nestled in a fold of the high mountains. The fields that -supported the village, its population now doubled by the refugees from -Kansannamura, were tucked here and there on narrow ledges, watered by -bamboo flumes that stole water from the mountain streams. The crop of -greatest importance was the ubiquitous sunflower, supplier of bread and -soap ash, of cloth and bath oil, birdseed and writing paper. Bamboo -grew in clefts and shelves too slight for cultivation. This was the -wood for tools, the water pipe, the house wattles and, in its youth, -the salad of the people, the only wood eaten in its native state. There -were also carrots, beets and tiny plum-trees, and the horseradish, -<i>daikon</i>. Yamamura was a lovely place, Hartford decided.</p> - -<p>It was twenty hours from the moment of his contamination that Hartford -dismounted. He moved into the house Kiwa invited him to with as much -tenderness as though he'd been carefully bastinadoed and flayed. He -was, nonetheless, free of febrile symptoms. He had breathed Kansan -air, had eaten its fish and drunk its water; he'd spoken with a Kansan -native and had lain with his face in Kansan dust. He was still as -healthy as any Axenite, never before in the saddle, would be after a -five-hour ride.</p> - -<p>Kiwa's wife and Takeko's mother was a little woman named Toyomi-san, -dressed in brightly patterned garments a good deal more formal than her -daughter's jacket and shorts. Toyomi-san spoke no Standard, but she -made quite clear to Hartford his welcome. She led him into a large, -steam-filled room, where she indicated he was first to wash himself -then soak, then dry and dress in the clean clothing she'd laid out for -his use.</p> - -<p>The soaking water was very hot, and very welcome. Hartford sat in the -copper-bottomed tub, his muscles hard and sore, until he felt the very -marrow of his bones had cooked. He stepped from the tub then and dried -gently, easy on his chafed back and legs.</p> - -<p>"The oil will help," Takeko said, slipping a screen shut behind her. -She had bathed and brushed her black hair free of the bamboo-thicket -dust, and wore now a brilliant, silk <i>kimono</i> of the sort her mother -was wearing.</p> - -<p>Hartford held the towel at his waist.</p> - -<p>"Excuse me," he said.</p> - -<p>Takeko giggled. "Are you unique, Lee-san, that you must hide yourself? -Lie down on the cot, and I will make you comfortable."</p> - -<p>Wondering greatly at the folkways of Kansas, but determined to commit -no gaffe that would imperil his relations with this girl, Hartford -lay face down on the mat-covered cot. Takeko removed the <i>tenugi</i> -towel with which he'd modestly draped himself and gently stroked -sweet-scented sunflower-seed oil into his macerated skin. Using the -radical border of her hands, which were remarkably strong, Takeko -coaxed the muscles to relax with effleurage; and she further softened -the clonic hardness with a kneading motion. "This is," she said, -working her thumb-knuckles up his spinal-column as though telling the -beads of his vertebrae, "one of the good things my ancestors brought -from earth."</p> - -<p>"<i>Yoroshiku soro</i>," Hartford grunted agreement. "It is good."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Half an hour later, his skin soothed with oil and his muscles suppled -by Takeko's massage, Hartford joined the family for supper. The Kansans -used paired sticks for eating. Hartford, who'd not yet been introduced -to the skill of using these <i>o-hashi</i>, and who was too hungry to -practice now, was given a metal spoon with which to eat.</p> - -<p>When they'd finished their meal, several elder Kansans entered -Kiwa-san's house. Each bowed to Hartford, who, bald-headed, his feet -socked into unfamiliar <i>geta</i> and wearing mitten-toed stockings, bowed -in return. The newcomers each spoke some Standard, but it was obvious -that Takeko was the most fluent of them all. "Pia-san taught Renkei; -Renkei taught me," the girl explained. "I was the second-best speaker. -It would be better if Renkei were here."</p> - -<p>"I regret his death more deeply than I can tell you," Hartford said. -"Renkei and Pia my friend are both dead now. This is what Renkei told -me: <i>aru-majiki koto</i>, a thing that ought not to be."</p> - -<p>The Kansans, seated on the cushions about the room, nodded. "Do you -know, Lee-san, the greatest law of life?" Takeko asked.</p> - -<p>"You said, beside the stream where we fished, that men do not kill -men," Hartford answered. "But they do."</p> - -<p>"It is an ideal we have more nearly than the glass-heads," one of -the Kansan elders said. "In the past four days, Renkei has died, and -Pia-san. In the years before you Latecomers came to build the Stone -House and cut roads and practice making holes in paper at a distance, -no man died here at the hand of another."</p> - -<p>"We cannot teach the glass-heads our way when they walk about only -with guns, when they live in the Stone House none of us can enter -without dying, when they look at us with glass bowls over their faces -and hate in their hearts," Takeko said.</p> - -<p>"The hate is hardly needful," Hartford said. "But the helmets must -remain if Axenites are to live on Kansas."</p> - -<p>"Do you live?" Takeko asked quietly.</p> - -<p>"I do," Hartford said. "It puzzles me."</p> - -<p>"Does it not puzzle you that none of us harbors open sores, or coughs -up phlegm, or dies of fever?" Kiwa asked, speaking through his -daughter's intermediation.</p> - -<p>"I had not thought of that," Hartford admitted. "I have never before -lived so close to Stinkers." Embarrassed, he stopped short. "I'm -sorry," he said. "<i>Shitsurei shimashita</i>."</p> - -<p>"You meant us no discourtesy," Takeko said. "Think, Lee, of the word -you used. Do we indeed stink?"</p> - -<p>"No," Hartford said. "It's strange. I've been told all my life of the -rot and fermentation within ordinary mammals, and of the evil smells -elaborated by these processes. But you, and all of Kansas, stink no -more than Axenites do. You have, as we, the mulberry odor of saliva, -the wheat smell of thiamin, the faint musk oil of the hair. Even your -camelopards smell sweet."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The girl laughed. "If you think all Kansas a place of sweet perfumes, -smell this, Lee-san," she said. She took a covered dish and opened it. -"This is <i>takuwan</i>," she said. A smell strong as that of limburger -cheese made itself known in the room. "It is pickled turnip, made in -the old manner of our island forefathers on Earth."</p> - -<p>"Whew!" Hartford said. "There is the true Stinker of Kansas."</p> - -<p>"Pia-san learned much from the bad-smelling <i>takuwan</i>," Takeko said. -"His wife knew about the small stink-makers, these bacteria; she was -a user of microscopes. She looked for them in the air of Kansas, and -in our soil. Pia-san went even further. He took drops of our blood and -other things to test."</p> - -<p>"Tell our guest, Take-chan, what Pia found," Old Kiwa told his daughter.</p> - -<p>"<i>Hai, Otosan.</i>" The girl turned to Hartford. "In our bodies there are -no mischief-makers of the sort Earth-people know. There are not even -those juices Pia-san called 'footprints of the bugs.'"</p> - -<p>"He must have meant you have no bacterial antibodies," Hartford said. -"That explains the whole package," he went on, with growing excitement. -"Why I'm alive without my safety-suit. What Piacentelli went outside -to find. And, when he found it, why he unsuited himself, knowing -this world as pure as Titan. You're Axenites, you Kansans! You're as -germ-free as the troopers."</p> - -<p>"The whole truth is less simple," said the lean old man who'd been -introduced to Hartford as Yamata, the calligrapher.</p> - -<p>"Does the rubble of your forest-floors never turn to mould, then?" -Hartford asked. "Do the bodies of your buried fathers lie uncorrupted -in their graves?"</p> - -<p>"Of course not," Takeko said. "If that happened, we would be buried -ourselves in unmouldered leaves. The bodies of our ancestors would be -stacked about us, unchanging, like logs for the charcoal-burners. Our -soil would die, and all men would die with it, if dead things did not -crumble to make new soil."</p> - -<p>"Show our friend the hero of our epic," the calligrapher told her.</p> - -<p>"<i>Hai.</i>" Takeko stood and went to another room, going through the -ritual of kneeling to slide the door screen, standing, kneeling, -standing, with a grace that made the kimono she wore the loveliest of -garments. She brought to the small table at the center of the room a -heavy object wrapped in a yellow silk <i>tenugui</i>. Near this on the table -she placed a small lamp, fueled with sunflower-seed oil. She lighted -the lamp and uncovered the instrument she'd brought in.</p> - -<p>It was the microscope Piacentelli had taken from the Barracks on his -fatal expedition.</p> - -<p>Takeko dipped a chopstick into a dish and placed it beneath the -objective of the microscope. "We shall look at a spot of evil-smelling -<i>takuwan</i>-juice," she said. "There is light enough. Make it fit your -eyes, Lee-san; and you will know the secret of Jodo, this world you -call Kansas."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph2">IX</p> - -<p>Hartford knelt over the microscope in the yoga-posture called for by -its being so near the floor and tried to adjust the instrument as he -remembered having seen it done. He focused the coarse adjustment of -the 'scope till he saw spots darting about the fluid Takeko had placed -on the slide. He nailed the spots down with a gentle hand on the fine -adjustment.</p> - -<p>The juice of the pickled turnip was aswim with tiny bodies that looked -like tadpoles. "What are they?" he asked, peering into the micro-world -below him.</p> - -<p>"Pia-san named them monads," said the carpenter, white-bearded Togo. -"We all have them in our bodies. You have them now in yours. Our soil -is alive with them. They chew the chaff of our fields into black loam; -they turn to dust the flesh of our fathers. They cause turnips to -become <i>takuwan</i>."</p> - -<p>Hartford rocked back from the microscope to sit again on his heels. -"You have no disease, no benign bacterial flora and of course no -bacterial antibodies. Instead you have this whip-tailed animalcule, -this monad. Is this correct?"</p> - -<p>"So Pia-san said," Takeko agreed. "He said that the monad is a -jealous beast. It is a tiger among the pygmies, he said. No little -nuisance-makers can exist on Kansas; the monad would eat them in a -rage."</p> - -<p>"The ultimate antibiotic," Hartford said. "A micro-organism that -functions as a saprophyte, a soil-former and a scavenger. Besides all -this, it's a universal phagocyte, policing up the human environment -inside and out, to keep it clean of any other microscopic organisms. -The monad fills every niche in the micro-ecology of the planet."</p> - -<p>"This is what Pia-san and his <i>okusama</i>, poor dead girl, discovered," -Takeko said. "Renkei entered the Stone House to tell you that we do -not stink, that we are not dangerous. Three people have died to tell -this—and Nef still does not know."</p> - -<p>"I think he may know it after all," Hartford said. "He knows about the -monad, and fears it. This little bug means that every member of the -human race can join his damned Brotherhood. A crew of monads in his gut -would make every man on Stinker Earth a dignotobiote, germ-free except -for his housekeeping protozoa."</p> - -<p>"Until Pia-san told us," Yamata said, "we knew nothing except that we -lived longer than our ancestors had. We knew that we did not suffer -from the strange tirednesses the books told of, ills caused by the -little animals. We did not know that the smallest natives of this -planet had made of us their fortresses."</p> - -<p>"If I could only get past Nasty Nef to tell this to the Axenites," -Hartford said.</p> - -<p>"<i>Ron yori shoko</i>," Kiwa-san said. Takeko translated for her father. -"He says, Proof is stronger than argument."</p> - -<p>"Indeed," Hartford agreed. "But how do I prove to the troopers that the -monad sweeps Kansas cleaner than their Barracks floors?"</p> - -<p>"As Pia-san tried to," Takeko said. "He removed his glasshead and his -silken suit. He breathed our air and ate our food. He wanted to prove -that he could live, but he was killed before he could. Now you have -made that proof. Your brothers of the Stone House must undress of their -silken suits and come among us, Lee-san."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"That they will not," Hartford said. "They are certain they will die if -they inhale a breath of Kansas air, chew a bite of Kansas food, drink -your clear stream water. I was certain I would die when my safety-suit -was torn: remember our meeting, Takeko-san? It will not be easy to -persuade my brothers and sisters in the Barracks to forget their fears. -We are so sure, we Axenites, that contamination will kill us that -we'd rather dance with lightning and eat stones than walk this world -unprotected and eat its fruits."</p> - -<p>When Takeko had respoken these words to her father, the old man said -again: "<i>Ron yori shoko</i>." Proof is greater than argument.</p> - -<p>"Proof?" Hartford asked. "I am not proof enough to have a Regiment -of Axenites shed their safety-suits and declare the Kansans their -brothers. It would take years of lab work before the first of them -would walk suitless onto bug-dirt. We'd have to knock down the walls of -the Barracks and burn two thousand-odd safety-suits, before we'd have -the Axenite troopers here trapped into being guinea-pigs."</p> - -<p>"Each trooper carries the Stone House with him when he walks our -roads," the calligrapher remarked. "We have but to break through the -silken suit he wears to make a trooper know the garment isn't needed -here."</p> - -<p>"He'd die of fright," Hartford said. "I very nearly did. Besides, -each column of troopers, a squad or the Regiment, goes out with a -Decontamination Team. If a man becomes septic through some sort of -accident, he's hustled by a cleanup squad into a Decontamination -Vehicle for his shower, shave and shots. I know the process well," he -said, running his palm over his naked head.</p> - -<p>"<i>Ano ne</i>," Kiwa said. "Will this Decontamination-<i>kuruma</i> house two -thousand men? Two hundred? Twenty?"</p> - -<p>"It will hold two or three troopers at once," Hartford answered. "We -have several of them, though."</p> - -<p>"<i>So ... ka?</i>" white-bearded Togo exclaimed. He leaned over to whisper -into the ear of Takeko's father, who nodded and smiled.</p> - -<p>Old Kiwa spoke, and Takeko interpreted. "We must surprise a group of -troopers," he said. "We must cause all their silken suits to be torn, -or all their glass heads shattered, at one time. It is so simple as -that."</p> - -<p>"Simple in all but the doing," said Yamata the calligrapher. He -picked up a brush and sketched on the mat before him a line of -trooper-silhouettes, a platoon, marching single-file. "How do we break -into all those Stone Houses at once?" he asked.</p> - -<p>Hartford's face was pale. "We could use grenades, perhaps," he said. -"Or bombs. After all, these troopers we speak of are no more than my -family, my village, my people. I may of course be expected to cooperate -in their destruction."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Takeko reached over and took his hand, then dropped it. "<i>Ano ne!</i> -You do not understand! We can no more injure your brothers than you -can, Lee-san. We may not harm any living person. Forgive us. You -misunderstand us. We are bound, Lee-sensei, by <i>Butsudo</i>: the Peaceful -Path of the Lord Buddha." She bowed toward him, her hands clasped -together, her head touching the <i>tatami</i>.</p> - -<p>"It is my fault if I have misunderstood," Hartford said. The men were -staring, Takeko's eyes were filled with tears, the room was silent. "I -do not know you well. I did not know you do not kill."</p> - -<p>"Let me tell you, then," Takeko said, rising to sit beside him. "Our -people, who once lived on islands in the greater sea of Earth, were -folk mighty in battle. Their pride was named the Way of the Warrior, -which is called <i>Bushido</i>. Their loveliest flower, the <i>sakura</i> or -cherry-blossom, they made the symbol of the warrior, so highly did they -hold his calling.</p> - -<p>"After their villages had been crushed many times in war, our ancestors -vowed forever to abandon <i>Bushido</i>, the warrior's path, and to place -their feet in the path of the Lord Buddha, called <i>Butsudo</i>. This was -many years ago, before any man had ventured into space, before our -ancestors found this world you call Kansas. When they came here, they -came in peace. And they named this place <i>Jodo</i>, which we still call -it. It means the Pure Land, where men are just. And all justice is -built on a single law. No man shall take man's life."</p> - -<p>"I spoke of the Axenite Brotherhood," Hartford said. "These men are -a group of our leaders—Colonel Nef is one; he invited me to join -him—who have decided that Stinker humanity must go. They're dedicated -men, prepared to extinguish all the rest of mankind, to sterilize Earth -and reseed it as a gnotobiotopic Paradise. Nef has, I fear, already -killed three people to this end.</p> - -<p>"You who cannot kill will face an enemy trained in killing," he went -on. "Your camelopard-mounted messengers will meet veeto-platforms with -machine-guns. Your peaceful words will be drowned out by the roar of -Dardick-rifles. How can you hope to live if you will not kill?"</p> - -<p>"If the choice were death or killing, Lee-san, we would gladly die," -Takeko said. "We have a saying, <i>Muriga toreba dori ga hikkomu</i>. When -might takes charge justice withdraws. We will not kill, and neither -will we be defeated."</p> - -<p>Yamata the calligrapher addressed Hartford. "How badly torn must -a safety-suit be, to make necessary the wearer's going into the -purification cart?" he asked.</p> - -<p>"Only so much as the point of a pin would make would be enough," -Hartford said.</p> - -<p>"We have to drive pins into several dozens of men's clothing at one -time," Yamata said. He smiled. "So phrased, the mountain does not seem -too tall to be climbed."</p> - -<p>"It would be difficult to puncture the safety-suits without hurting the -wearers," Hartford said. "Few armies are so solicitous."</p> - -<p>"<i>Butsudo</i> forbids us to kill men," Takeko said. "It does not deny us -the right, in pointing them to the path of knowledge, to jab them a -bit." She smiled at Hartford.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"How do you propose to do this jabbing?" he asked. "I remind you all, -if you need reminding, that our troopers travel with Dardick-rifles and -machine-guns, with rocket-mounted jeeps and veeto-platforms from which -bombs can be dropped."</p> - -<p>Kiwa spoke. "We are like a bear after honey," he said. "We are hungry, -but do not wish to taste the stings of the guardians of the hive. We -must surprise them."</p> - -<p>Hartford, his knees stiff with kneeling, his backside sore from the -camelopard-saddle despite the expert massage, got up to pace the floor. -"We need a needle-gun of some sort," he said.</p> - -<p>"No gun," insisted white-bearded Togo.</p> - -<p>"It need have only slight power," Hartford said. "It would throw -its projectile only forcefully enough to penetrate the fabric of a -safety-suit."</p> - -<p>"It has been so many generations since we have been soldiers, we know -nothing of weapons," Yamata-san said. He wet a fine brush with <i>sumi</i>, -Chinese ink, and sketched rapidly. "I remember seeing pictures of -<i>Bushi</i> carrying a sort of throwing-sticks with pointed ends in pockets -on their backs, and flinging them like little spears with a kind of -one-stringed lute."</p> - -<p>Hartford stared at the calligrapher's drawing, then exclaimed. "Of -course! A bow and arrow."</p> - -<p>Takeko inspected the sketch. "The man who threw the stick is standing," -she said. "Could we stand against troopers?"</p> - -<p>"A man would have to stand exposed to shoot an arrow," Hartford -admitted. "The Dardick-guns would mow us down before we'd punctured a -single safety-suit." He paced up and down the room, the only trained -warrior there, trying to devise his unkilling weapon.</p> - -<p>"We have wine, Lee-san," Takeko said. "Please sit and drink."</p> - -<p>Hartford, bemused with his problem, folded his legs onto his cushion -and lowered himself gently. Takeko's mother appeared with tiny cups of -hot wine, <i>sake</i>. Hartford bowed with the others and sipped. The stuff -was good, rather like a dry sherry.</p> - -<p>Takeko bowed to leave the room, returned, bowed and commenced playing -a tune with the instrument she'd brought in. It was a flute made of -bamboo, with a high-pitched, pure sound Hartford found quite pleasant. -He frowned, though, after a moment. Takeko took the pipe from her lips. -"You do not enjoy my playing?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"What is that made of?" Hartford demanded. "Just bamboo, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>"<i>Hai, take</i>," Takeko agreed. "It is my name. <i>Take</i>—bamboo. This is -only a <i>shakuha-chi</i>, for very simple music."</p> - -<p>Hartford smiled and bowed toward Togo-san, the white-bearded carpenter. -"Sir," he said, "if we may have your advice, I believe Takeko-chan has -helped us find our weapon."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph2">X</p> - -<p>The meeting broke up to adjourn to Togo-san's workshop. There was -bamboo there in plenty, and young men eager to help the ex-lieutenant -of Axenites in testing his device. As the week wore on, young Kansans -appeared from other villages, called by blabrigars and messengers on -camelopard-back to join the army that was to make brothers and sisters -of the troopers of First Regiment.</p> - -<p>The blowgun Hartford finally established as his field model was some -two yards long, made of bamboo bored through the joints and polished -smooth within, of a caliber somewhat less than the diameter of a man's -little finger. Though the bamboo-tube was somewhat flexible, Togo-san -and his apprentices were able to bind a front sight to the muzzle, -allowing somewhat greater accuracy that could be obtained by pointing -and hoping.</p> - -<p>The dart was about the length of a man's hand. Its point was a sliver -of bamboo, sharp as steel, entirely sharp enough to penetrate the tough -material of a safety-suit if puffed from the blowgun with enough force.</p> - -<p>All the craftsmen of the village became arms-makers. They drilled -bamboo, polished the bore with abrasive-coated cord, fitted on the -sights and tested their blowguns against the targets. Hundreds of darts -were turned out for practice, and the most perfect were saved for the -battlefield itself. The blowgunners began their drill, shooting from -a prone position at targets as far as ten yards off, as great a range -as amateurs could be expected to shoot with accuracy in the short time -these had for practice.</p> - -<p>To fire the blowgun, the dart was wrapped in a bit of silk of -sunflower-stalk-fluff, so that it would fit tightly into the tube. The -puff that sent it on its way had to be sharp and hard. Achieving the -proper slap of air took more practice even than aiming.</p> - -<p>Hartford became every day a better horseman, or rather camelopardist. -He in fact rejoiced in opportunities to leap-frog into his saddle, fit -his feet and legs into the leather gambadoes, and go hailing off into -the hills to recruit men and material. He carried with him the radio -he'd salvaged from his safety-suit, and could from time to time pick up -First Regiment transmissions. The bitcher from his suit was useful in -training large numbers of recruits on the blowgun range, and would be -used when the Kansan guerrillas took the field against the troopers. -He was picking up the language rapidly, now. He had to use Takeko's -services as interpreter less and less. Her usefulness declined not -a bit, though, as the girl became his first lieutenant in charge of -details.</p> - -<p>The band of expert puff-gunners was joined by a company of scouts. -These men and women skulked the hills afoot or astride camelopards, -spying out the programs of the Regiment. Having no radio to maintain -contact with Yamamura, each scout carried a pair of blabrigars, trained -to report to a specific person in its home village when given a -selected prompt-word.</p> - -<p>Yamata-san, the calligrapher, became a cartographer. He drew in -jet-black <i>sumi</i> ink the contours of the mountains, greened in -the stands of bamboo, drew blue streams and broad brown fields of -sunflowers, till at last the map that filled the largest room in -Yamamura was almost as real as the Kansan soil it reflected. Walking -across this map in his <i>tabi</i>-stockinged feet, Hartford and the others -of Kansas Intelligence would move toy troopers, made of wood like -<i>kokeshi</i>-dolls, into the positions where the blabrigars reported -patrols to be.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The plan of battle of the Kansas forces was <i>yawara-do</i>, the Gentle Way -also called <i>judo</i>. They would wait till the enemy made a move they -could use, then they'd trip him up by re-directing his own strength.</p> - -<p>The move they most wanted the troopers to make was into the ravine that -led toward the village of Yamamura, the pass under the <i>Daibutsu</i>, the -huge bronze Buddha set there by their ancestors. In that ravine, under -the gaze of the Lord of Boundless Light, the Kansas forces would either -prevail against the invader and make him their brother by darts and -sweet reason, or they would all die in the attempt.</p> - -<p>The camelopards were stabled, ready as the steeds of any -march-patrolling cavalry troop. The dartsmen, and those of the women -who'd shown skill in handling the blowgun, were trained and eager. -The path through the pass had been memorized in infinite detail by -every one of the guerrillas. The squad of sappers responsible for -check-mating the troopers had prepared their levers, their blocks and -skids. Nothing remained now but to coax the enemy into the battlefield -of the Kansans' choosing.</p> - -<p>"Take out what's left of the safety-suit," Hartford ordered one of his -men. "Leave it here—" He stabbed a toe at the map they both stood on.</p> - -<p>"Would it be well for me to leave beside the torn and broken suit -signs of a fight?" asked the boy, Ito Jiro, son of Old Ito-san, the -knife-maker. "If the troopers are angry, they will be careless."</p> - -<p>"If only you believed in war, Jiro-chan, you'd make a fine warrior," -Hartford grinned. "Do it your way, and hurry back."</p> - -<p>Jiro placed the bait under the Regiment's nose early in the day, and -returned to Yamamura. It was midday when a blabrigar flew in from one -of the scouts posted to watch First Regiment's reaction. The bird -prated its message into the ear of its receiver. Troopers, a band -of fifty-odd, were scouring the hills to the west, following the -camelopard-hoofprints left by Jiro. Aiding them in their search was the -Regiment's veeto-platform, skimming, hovering, pouncing to pick up -clues. "They're on the scent," Hartford said. He turned again to Ito -Jiro, fleetest of the camelopard-riders. "Jiro-chan, lead them a chase -that will bring them to the ravine no sooner than the Hour of the Dog. -Be very cautious of the flying-thing; it can surprise you."</p> - -<p>"<i>Hai</i>," Jiro said, bowing. "The Hour of the Dog they will call upon -you near the <i>Daibutsu</i>." Ito-san the knife-maker watched his son -run toward the stables, the boy as excited as though he were going -to a festival rather than to face alone half a company of full-armed -Axenites. The blabrigars that would ride out with Jiro were trained to -report to the father. It would be a long afternoon for the old man, -Hartford thought.</p> - -<p>There was much to do before the scarlet bird came winging in from -Jiro's shoulder with the message that the trap was sprung. At the Hour -of the Monkey, four hours before the troopers were to be in ambush, -the first blabrigar flew in to report to Ito-san that the boy's mount -was winded, the enemy was drawing nearer the ravine, and that Jiro -was approaching the point of rendezvous where he would find a fresh -camelopard. Hartford ordered out two youths to join Jiro there in his -harassment of the foot-soldiers from Regiment.</p> - -<p>"It is time we take up our positions," he told his band of dartsmen. -"Let us go in hope."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Kiwa-san, Takeko's father, stepped forward to pronounce a benediction -upon the little company. "The Enlightened One, speaking at Rajagriha, -spake, saying: 'Remember one thing, O beloved disciples, that hatred -cannot be silenced by lies but by truth.'"</p> - -<p>The irregulars, heads bowed, replied, "Namu Amida Butsu," Glory to the -Amida Buddha! Hartford, though his training as an Axenite trooper had -left him as untouched by religions as by microbes, joined the prayer, -feeling that a degree of celestial interest in their stratagem would -not be unwelcome.</p> - -<p>The camelopardists vaulted into their saddles, adjusted their legs in -the boot-like gambadoes, and slapped the reins to head their <i>giraffu</i> -toward the ravine where the endgame would be played. Hartford rode at -the head of the band, Takeko beside him. The others were dispersed at -wide interval, a precaution against the veeto-platform's swooping over -the horizon to surprise them en route. As they left Yamamura, the women -and children of the village were leaving from the other side, together -with the men too old to go out with the guerrillas. Yamamura was being -abandoned until the outcome of battle made itself known.</p> - -<p>The canyon that led up the mountain's groin had once been the deep-cut -bed of a stream. Collapse of over-beetling rock had formed a vault -over the stream, which was consequently underground. Soil had filtered -into the rocks, and bamboo had taken root. In result the lower ravine -was a green enfilade hardly wider than a hallway, the walls on either -side rising squarely from its floor. Well within the pass, set into the -left-hand wall as one rode down from Yamamura, was a niche very like -the <i>tokonoma</i> or honored alcove of a Kansan home. In this alcove, some -fifty feet from the bottom of the pass, was set the great bronze image -of Buddha, the <i>Daibutsu</i> of Kansas.</p> - -<p>Further down, below the <i>Daibutsu</i>-niche, the canyon became irregular. -Along either side, some ten feet from the floor, were ledges marking -the fracture planes along which ancient avalanches had calved. It was -from these shelves that the Kansans hoped to ambush the men from First -Regiment. The narrowness of the ravine, and the overhang of willow -trees—these growing in clefts of rock, fingering their roots down to -the subterranean stream—were enough, Hartford prayed, to prevent the -veeto-platform's pilot from spotting the Kansans lying in wait with -their blowguns.</p> - -<p>Hartford disposed his troops on the shelves, checking to see that -each man had a good field of fire and adequate cover. He glanced at -the sun, the Kansan timepiece. It was between six and eight in the -evening, he judged, the Hour of the Clock. He pressed his ear to the -radio-receiver. Short-range, the safety-suit radio picked up only -occasional orders from Axenite officers and non-coms. Twice Hartford -caught the name, "Lieutenant Felix." He smiled, feeling mixed emotions. -Felix had been his old Platoon Sergeant, and they would face each other -in an hour or so as enemies. Very likely the fifty troopers chasing Ito -Juro and his fellows toward the canyon included men of the Terrible -Third Platoon, his old command. Hartford checked to see his bitcher -worked and waited the arrival of the message-blabrigars with fresh news.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph2">XI</p> - -<p>The first bird arrived a few moments before the radio began coming in -clear.</p> - -<p>"<i>Sakura</i>," Hartford said, this being the prompt-word to which the -blabrigar was trained to reply.</p> - -<p>"Fifty men, sir; fifty men, sir; on the way, sir; on the way, sir," the -bird chanted into Hartford's ear. He let the bird rest on his shoulder; -it would have to fly back to the scout who'd sent it soon, to tell him -to join the rest of them at the ambush-point.</p> - -<p>The sun was low in the sky. H-hour was near. The signals began coming -closer-together. "Saw one Stinker off your left flank, Miller.... Left -flank-guard reporting, sir. That Gook took off due east. Blabrigar on -his shoulder.... Lieutenant Felix here. Anything on the right flank?... -Nothing, sir.... Keep moving, Lieutenant." This last voice was the -colonel's.</p> - -<p>Hartford frowned. If Nasty Nef had come out in person, the game would -have to be played fast and dirty.</p> - -<p>Hartford set his bitcher low. "<i>Abunai yo!</i>" he said to his guerrillas, -sprawled out all along the ledge like figurines on a mantlepiece. "Be -cautious. Shoot your dart and get behind something. From now on, be -silent. The enemy is near."</p> - -<p>Takeko spoke: "You mean, Lee-chan, that our brothers draw near." The -other Kansans smiled. Some saluted, a gesture they'd observed among the -Axenites they'd been spying upon for the past few days.</p> - -<p>The first of the scouts came galloping up the gullet of the canyon. -Without a sound he signaled his watching comrades, invisible above him. -He made a circle with his hand, pointing up. That meant the Regiment's -veeto-platform was scouting ahead of the approaching Axenites. The -first man slapped his <i>giraffu</i> to hasten it up the pass, past the -Daibutsu. Two other scouts, the foxes urging on the hounds, came -shouting into the canyon. Neither of them was Ito Jiro. As his name -signified, Jiro was the youngest son of Ito-san, the knife-maker. He -was the darling of the family. Where was he? Hartford worried.</p> - -<p>The radio, no longer masked by the rocks, was filled with information. -Hartford heard the veeto-pilot reporting: "They're headed up the gulch -past the big idol, sir," he said. "There's a village up there. That's -where they're probably headed. What do you want me to do, sir?" The -platform hovered over the canyon, unwilling to work its way into the -jagged, bamboo-and-pine-prickly fissure.</p> - -<p>"Keep in touch, Sky-Eye," Nef ordered. "We're coming right up."</p> - -<p>"Felix here, sir," the lieutenant reported. "We've got one of the Gooks -prisoner. He's just a kid. Doesn't seem to know a thing."</p> - -<p>"Hold him till we get someone who talks Stinker," Nef said.</p> - -<p>They got Jiro, Hartford thought. Damn.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The first of the troopers, an officer in the blue safety-suit, -spearheaded the column. "Nothing in sight yet," Felix's voice reported. -The officer signaled "Come on" with the sweep of his arm, and the -first squad of Axenites, dispersed as skirmishers, formed themselves -into a file to enter the canyon. The veeto-platform above kept the -foliage pressed down with its jet of air, stirring dust that both -improved concealment and threatened to trigger a sneeze from one of the -ambushers.</p> - -<p>Hartford peered cautiously over the edge of the shelf. He'd set his -forces far enough back in the canyon that the entire Axenite column -would be encased. "Sir, this is Felix," the radio said. "Do you agree, -sir, that I should place one squad in reserve till the rest get through -the gully?"</p> - -<p>"Peel off one squad and stay with it, Felix," Nef said.</p> - -<p>Felix's voice again: "Sir, it was our Lieutenant Hartford that the -Gooks got. I'd like to go in early."</p> - -<p>"Very well, Felix. Miller, hold your squad where it is. Disperse them -well, and wait my order before bringing them into the ditch. Confirm."</p> - -<p>"Done and done, sir," Miller snapped.</p> - -<p>The first two dozen troopers were in the canyon now, half the Axenite -force. Colonel Nef had shown the good sense to don an ordinary blue -safety-suit; his scarlet command-suit would have made him a splendid -target. Another squad entered, their Dardick-rifles held at the ready. -This would have to be quick, Hartford thought, or he'd lose his entire -corps at their first volley. He raised his hand, a signal visible only -to Takeko. She cupped her hands around her mouth and whistled the call -of the nightingale, "Ho-o-kekyo ... kekyo!"</p> - -<p>Before the echoed notes had died, the darts had found their targets.</p> - -<p>The radio was a clutter of undisciplined Damn's, cries of "I've been -hit!" One trooper, quicker than the rest, caught sight of a Kansan. He -raised his rifle and purred out a stream of Dardick-pellets. Yoritomo, -apprentice to the paper-maker, tumbled over the lip of the ledge, his -blowpipe falling with him like a jack-straw. There was a babble on the -radio. Nef overrode all other circuits to command: "At ease! Rake the -ledges with sustained fire."</p> - -<p>The canyon was blasted with a confetti of metal and spalled rock as the -troopers hosed the shelves with bullets.</p> - -<p>The angle made aiming impossible. But by luck and the intensity of the -barrage another man, the carpenter's son, had toppled to his death.</p> - -<p>"Sky-Eye! Get your butt down here!" Nef bellowed. "Decontamination -Team! Bring the vehicle to the mouth of the canyon. We've got men -septic." He tongued-on his bitcher and bellowed at the troopers. "On -the double, through the ditch."</p> - -<p>"<i>Yuke!</i>" Hartford shouted to the men far up the wall, in the niche -that held the Daibutsu. "Go!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The sappers at the back of the giant bronze statue bent to their -levers. The tons of metal scooted slowly forward, hit the fat-smeared -edge of the shelf. As quietly as a man rocking forward in prayer, the -Daibutsu dropped head-down into the ravine. It struck the bottom with -the sound of a great gong, and rocked, unshattered, plugging the throat -of the canyon, standing as a dam. The hands of the Enlightened One were -held in the positions of Protection and of Giving; His face bore still -a quiet smile. About the head of the image a fountain of water burst, -squeezed up from the stream below. "<i>Namu Amida Butsu!</i>" Takeko said, -cuddled against Hartford, staring down.</p> - -<p>"Keep down," he said. He lifted his suit-radio and flicked on the -transmission-switch. "This is Lee Hartford, late of the First -Regiment," he announced. "The safety-suits of most of you have -been breached. There is not room for more than three of you in the -Decontamination Vehicle. You are not septic. I repeat: you have not -been contaminated. Kansas is as safe for you as the Barracks, or Titan, -or the M'Bwene planets, or in the cells at Luna. You do not need your -safety-suits on Kansas."</p> - -<p>"Find that man and gun the traitor down," Nef's voice demanded from the -speaker on his suit.</p> - -<p>"I am coming out unarmed," Hartford radioed.</p> - -<p>"Fire the moment you see him," Nef said. One of the officers had his -Dardick-pistol drawn, his eyes traversing the canyon walls.</p> - -<p>"No, sir!" Felix's voice snapped from his bitcher. "You can't shoot the -man till he's had a chance to speak."</p> - -<p>"Go to the rear at once, Private Felix," Nef bellowed.</p> - -<p>Felix pointed his handgun toward Nef. "No, sir," he replied. "Hartford -was my C.O., and an honest man. I'll hear him before I see him killed. -Or by my life, sir, I'll kill you after him."</p> - -<p>"This is treason," Nef said.</p> - -<p>"Drop your pistol, sir, or I'll have to try to shoot it from your hand. -Excuse me, sir," Felix said.</p> - -<p>Nef's gun dropped.</p> - -<p>"You all hear me?" Felix bitched. "Hear me out there, Miller?" There -was a chorus of "Roger!" Felix went on: "I'm going to unclamp my -helmet, troopers. I'm going to take off my safety-suit. That's how much -I trust Lee Hartford, troopers. The man who tries to stop Hartford -better begin with me." Felix opened his helmet, removed it, and placed -it on the rocks beside him. He went up to drink from the fountain that -sparkled about the head of the Daibutsu, cupping his hands. "It's good -water, men," he said. "Come on down, Hartford," he shouted through the -clear night air.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Lee Hartford twisted over the edge of the shelf, held himself by his -finger-tips, and dropped. He stood before his old comrades in arms -dressed as a country Kansan. His head bore only a stubble of hair, and -a scarlet blabrigar came down to settle familiarly on his shoulder. "I -caused your suits to be breached for good reason," he said, speaking -into the bitcher he'd recovered from his safety-suit. "If any of you -has a sore backside because of the darts my men sent at you, please -accept my apologies." Two more Axenites removed their helmets, and -stood grinning uncertainly at Hartford. "I have lived on Kansas for -two weeks, living like a native. I've breathed Kansan air, eaten their -wonderful food and even kissed one of their girls." There was a murmur -of laughter. "I'm as healthy as ever I was inside the Barracks," -Hartford said. "And I'm a good deal happier."</p> - -<p>There was louder laughter among the Axenites, and more helmets -opened. Hartford turned to look behind him. Takeko was hanging by her -finger-tips off the shelf, trying to work up the courage to drop. He -went over to stand below her. "Fall to me, darling," he said. "Fall -into my arms."</p> - -<p>"I hear, <i>shujin</i>, and obey," Takeko squeaked, and dropped.</p> - -<p>When Hartford released Takeko and turned to face the troopers, every -helmet but Nef's was opened. Half a dozen of the men had already -stripped to their Class B's. They had their faces tilted into the wind -that was sweeping up the gullet of the canyon, smelling for the first -time in their lives the scents of open nature, the spice of green -life in the air. They were seeing the Kansas sky; a mosaic of stars, -unfiltered by helmets. They were breathing air not humid with their -own perspiration. Holding Takeko's hand in his, Hartford walked up to -Felix. "You saved the day, old buddy," he said.</p> - -<p>There was the cough of a tapped-off Dardick-round.</p> - -<p>Felix fell. Colonel Nef, his pistol held at the hip, tilted it toward -Hartford. He looked startled for a moment, then dropped the pistol. -In his wrist were three blowgun-darts. Clustered across his chest -were half a dozen more. Hartford waved at the Kansans on the ledge. -"<i>Arigato!</i>" he shouted, and told them to come down.</p> - -<p>Two men had died in the engagement: Yoritomo the paper-maker and -Sannosuke the carpenter's son. Felix's thigh-bone had been broken by -Nef's shot; and Colonel Nef's right wrist would require attention. A -medical officer had been sent for from the Barracks to set Felix's leg. -The dead men were carried on litters up to the shelves and around the -fallen Daibutsu to the village. Hartford splinted his friend's broken -leg. "What now, Hartford?" Felix asked.</p> - -<p>"I suggest that you all become guests in Yamamura."</p> - -<p>"Done and done," Felix said.</p> - -<p>Takeko came up to lay a bunch of flowers on his chest. "They smell -sweet," she said. "Courage such as yours smells sweet in the nostrils -of heaven."</p> - -<p>"Thank you, Ma'am," Felix said. He turned his head to follow the girl -as she took a second handful of flowers to place it beside the fountain -that jetted about the head-standing Daibutsu. "I can see where this -will be a popular planet to do duty on, Lieutenant," he said. "What you -discovered here will pretty well wipe out the Brotherhood."</p> - -<p>"You're right," Hartford said. "The Brotherhood is doomed."</p> - -<p>They watched as Takeko knelt before the inverted image. "<i>Namu Amida -Butsu</i>," she said. "All men are the same in the sight of Amida, the -Lord of Boundless Light."</p> - -<p>"Maybe I'm wrong, Lieutenant," Felix said. "Maybe the Brotherhood just -got started."</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Chemically Pure Warriors, by Allen Kim Lang - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHEMICALLY PURE WARRIORS *** - -***** This file should be named 61316-h.htm or 61316-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/1/3/1/61316/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive -specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this -eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook -for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, -performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given -away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks -not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the -trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the -Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country outside the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no - restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it - under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this - eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the - United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you - are located before using this ebook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain -Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation." - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The -Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the -mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its -volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous -locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt -Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to -date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and -official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -For additional contact information: - - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - - - -</pre> - -</body> -</html> diff --git a/old/61316-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/61316-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index f1ec9c9..0000000 --- a/old/61316-h/images/cover.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/61316-h/images/illus1.jpg b/old/61316-h/images/illus1.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index f8adf45..0000000 --- a/old/61316-h/images/illus1.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/61316-h/images/illus2.jpg b/old/61316-h/images/illus2.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 5095520..0000000 --- a/old/61316-h/images/illus2.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/61316.txt b/old/61316.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 741fd17..0000000 --- a/old/61316.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3176 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's The Chemically Pure Warriors, by Allen Kim Lang - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll -have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using -this ebook. - - - -Title: The Chemically Pure Warriors - -Author: Allen Kim Lang - -Release Date: February 4, 2020 [EBook #61316] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHEMICALLY PURE WARRIORS *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - THE CHEMICALLY PURE WARRIORS - - BY ALLEN KIM LANG - - They conquered the planet and they - owned it outright. The trouble - was--they didn't dare set foot on it! - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - -From the head of the platoon Lieutenant Lee Hartford signaled Sergeant -Felix, busy policing up stragglers at the rear, that he was taking -over. Hartford tongued the volume-setting of his bitcher to "Low" and -softly sing-songed to his three dozen troopers: "_Your girlfriend's -just an hour away; there's a time to soldier and a time to play._ Pick -it HUP, HUP, HUP! 'Toon, tain-HUT.' HUP, twop, threep, furp; HUP, HUP; -HUP, twop, threep, furp. Mondrian, pick up the cadence; you're marching -like a man with a paper pelvis. _Swing 'em six to the front and three -to the rear; When you sing to your Daddy, sing it loud and clear._" -Hartford turned up the volume. "_Three weeks in the woods, eating -squeeze-tube beans; We'd be better off in the Fleet Marines. Sound -off!_" - -"ONE, TWO," boomed the voice of the Terrible Third, sounding from the -bitchers at the chests of thirty-six safety-suits. Dust slapped up -from marching-boots. A flock of scarlet blabrigars settled on the road -ahead, chattering and watching like small boys. - -"_Sound hoff!_" - -"THREE, FOUR!" The road led uphill toward Stinkerville; they were -some three miles from First Regiment Barracks. Three miles from now -these troopers could shed their safety-suits and helmets, shower off -three weeks of sweat, drink a beer and leer at the short-skirted, -taut-haltered girls of the Service Companies. - -"_Who are we?_" Hartford chanted. - -"COMPANY C," the troopers blatted back. - -The blabrigars, fluttering up from the roadway, chanted too: "Who -are we? Company See. Who, we? See, see. Company See Are Wee See -See." These wild birds didn't memorize human speech as well as their -captive cousins; they garbled their mockeries immediately. The flock -settled into the sunflowers beside the road; and were joined by a -pair of wild camelopards, chewing sunflower-leaf cud as they peered -at the marching Axenites. Hartford looked about, but there were no -Stinkers--Kansans--in sight. These natives didn't care to watch the -occupying regiment stir up their homeland's dust. "_What platoon?_" -Hartford called, his voice magnified by the bitcher till the whole -column could hear him. - -"THIRD PLATOON," the men bellowed back, singing against the percussion -of their boots. "'Toon, click, click, click; 'toon, click, third -platoon, click," mocked the blabrigars in ragged chorus, reflecting -both the words and the marching feet. - -"_Best platoon?_" - -"THIRD PLATOON!" the men shouted. They'd turned up their bitchers to -a volume the blabrigars couldn't match. Disgusted, the birds flapped -their scarlet wings and flew off across the sunflower fields. "'Toon," -one rear-flier chanted, "'toon, 'toon, 'toon." - -"_Worst platoon?_" Hartford asked. - -"FIRST PLATOON!" That was for the benefit of Lieutenant Piacentelli, -commanding the tail-end of the Regiment, the platoon marching on either -side of the lumbering Decontamination Vehicle, their safety-suit -filters clogging with the dust. - -"_Sound off!_" Hartford shouted. - -"ONE, TWO!" - - * * * * * - -That'll rattle the windows in Stinkerville, Hartford thought. He -pitched his descant louder and higher. "_Sound off!_" - -"THREE, FOUR!" - -"_Run 'er on down!_" - -"ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR; ONE, TWO, THREEP--FURP!" The men of The -Terrible Third were grinning through the face-plates of their helmets, -rejoicing in their reputation as the loudest bunch in the Regiment, -happy to help Hartford in waging his mock-feud with Lieutenant -Piacentelli. They'd been classmates at the Axenite Academy; they'd been -room-mates in the Barracks until Pia's recent marriage to a Service -Company officer. - -Hartford lowered his bitcher to a confidential tone. "Square up, men; -march tall; look rough and dirty. Show the Stinker girls what they're -missing. HUP, HUP, HUP. Sling those rifles square. Mondrian, you march -like you're wearing skis: HUP, twop, threep, furp!" Up and down the -column came the commands of sergeants and platoon-commanders, getting -their troopers in parade-trim for the march through Kansannamura: -"Stinkerville." Somewhere up front a company was singing the anthem of -the Axenite troopers, "Oh, Pioneers!" The chorus of twelve dozen men, -their bitchers full-up, filled the Kansan air and echoed from the walls -ahead. - -Stinkerville, all white-washed, with flakes of mica glittering in -the sunlight, sprawled across the road that led to the Barracks. The -village wall, designed to keep wild camelopards from roaming the -streets and to keep the tame beasts out of the sunflower-fields, was -some eight feet tall. Some Indigenous Hominid had heard the Regiment's -clatter and song, for the gates of Kansannamura were open, the brick -streets were clear of Stinker commerce. The village seemed deserted. -A few blabrigars perched on the tiled eaves of the rammed-earth -houses, making echoic comments on the sounds of the troopers, singing -fleeting snatches of "Oh, Pioneers!" A camelopard stretched its -ridiculous, three-horned head at the end of its fathom of neck to peer, -big-brown-eyed, at the caravan of fishbowl-headed men. Up at the head -of the column the Regiment's flags were unfurled and the Regimental -Band was skirling the Anthem; men were counting cadence as their boots -clicked over the scrubbed bricks of Stinkerville's streets. - - * * * * * - -But no Kansan, Stinker, Indigenous Hominid, Gook or Native watched. No -cowboy youngsters stared at the gunned-and-holstered men from another -planet. No elders looked down their noses at the brash invaders. No -mothers wiped their hands on their aprons as they thought of their -sons, and the fleshly price they'd pay for freedom. No teenage -girls, those patrons of parades, watched with lips half-open with -apprehension and audacious thoughts about the hundreds of gift-wrapped -young man marching past. This planet could have as well been named -Coventry as Kansas, Hartford thought. Out the far gate of Kansannamura -marched Third Platoon, Company "C," then First Platoon, flanking the -Decontamination Vehicle. A villager came from the house nearest the -gate and closed it. He did not look after the two columns of men -winding up through the fields of sunflowers to the high plateau where -they lived. - -The sight of the Barracks gave the men's steps a new swing and spring. -After three weeks of sleeping in safety-suits; of breathing, sweating, -drinking, eating and excreting through germ-barrier valves and tubing, -the prospect of stripping off the plastic battle-dress was seductive. -Inside that eight stories of windowless, doorless stone were gardens -where the troopers could walk barefoot on the grass, pools whose water -could splash their naked skin. In the Barracks were the three hundred -Service Company women who made the big stone box home to their three -thousand men. - -The men of First Regiment massed on the parade-ground. While they stood -At Ease, their plastic-sleeved rifles and packs growing heavier by the -minute, their safety-suits staler, four of the five Service Companies -marched out from the Syphon to join them. The women were suited in -yellow plastic, giving rise to the gags about fool's gold. The four -golden companies took up position at the center of the Regiment. - -Colonel Benjamin Nef, Commander-in-Chief, Kansas, CINCK, climbed to -the reviewing-stand in his command safety-suit of scarlet. Facing -into the sun, the Colonel had the polarizing shield dropped over his -eyes, and seemed to be wearing a black bandage. His lower jaw beetled -to give him a truculent look generally ratified by his actions. His -hair glinted through the helmet like spun copper. Nef turned to his -second-in-command, a lieutenant-colonel in ordinary officer's blues, -and murmured instructions. The light colonel saluted, turned the -controls of his bitcher to Full Loud, and addressed the troopers -assembled: "Regiment...." - -Down the chain-of-command came the ripple of warning: - -"Battaaalion...." - -"Commmpaneee...." - -"'Toooon...." - -"Tain-HUT!" Fifteen hundred pairs of boots smacked together. The -Adjutant held up his clipboard and read precisely: "Attention to orders: - -"One. Officer of the Guard, Lieutenant Lee Hartford. - -"Two. CINCK commends troopers involved in the just-completed three-week -Field Exercise on not having had a single incident of compromise -of sterility. Household, Maintenance and Security troopers are -complimented on having maintained the integrity of the Barracks with a -much-reduced force. - -"Three. All male and female troopers are again cautioned that -fraternization with Indigenous Hominids is an offense punishable by -General Court-Martial, and that any unauthorized intercourse with the -natives is prohibited." - - * * * * * - -There was of course a murmur of automatic laughter at this last bit -of official double-entendre. The idea of bedding-down a Stinker wench -was a favorite bit of pornographic fantasy. An air-tight safety-suit, -though fit with valves as functional as the drop-seat in long-johns, -was no garment for romance. To undress, to appear in outdoor Kansas -outside that head-to-foot sausage-casing, appealed to none of the -troopers. Healthy young men and women don't entertain the thought of -painful suicide. - -The reporting officer about-faced, saluted Colonel Nef, about-faced -again. "Present...." - -"Preezent...." - -"Preeezent...." - -"Preeeezent...." - -"HAHMS!" Fifteen hundred Dardick-rifles, sheathed in plastic, slapped -perpendicular. The blue-clad officers, armed with pistols, touched -their index fingers to their helmet-temples. The bandsmen's drums -growled, the electronic horns sobbed against their mutes, and the -flutes in lonely purity played the theme of "Oh, Pioneers!" For all his -har-de-har-hardness, Hartford felt a sting in his eyes at this moment, -as he did whenever the splendidly stage-managed ceremony of Retreat was -performed. After the Anthem, much louder, the band played Retreat. The -colors crept down the flagstaff, into the reverent arms of a pair of -Service Policemen. - -"Oh-deph, HAHMS! By line-of-battalions, line-of-companies, -line-of-platoons, line-of-squads, return to quarters and dismiss!" The -light colonel made one last salute to CINCK, and the little ballet on -the reviewing-stand was over. The troopers were now free to go in to -their showers, their latrines, their suppers, and their women. - -"At ease," Hartford told the Terrible Third. "Rest. Smoke if you've got -'em." - -The men chuckled dutifully at the oldest joke in the service. An -Axenite trooper, sealed in his germ-free safety-suit and helmet, is by -definition a non-smoker outside his Barracks. It would be another hour -they'd be outside, since the Third was next to the last of the fifty -platoons to swim home through the Syphon. While the companies on the -far left flank of the Regiment were ballooning-up and peeling-off in -columns-of-squads to enter the Barracks, Hartford went back to talk -with Piacentelli, C.O. of First Platoon. - - - II - -Getting inside the Barracks was a production. The safety-suits worn -outside presumably bore on their outer surfaces all the dust-borne -bugs native to Kansas. To carry these bacteria into the Barracks, to -be inspired and ingested by Axenites--humans who'd never before had a -bacterium inside their bodies--would wipe out the Regiment. Axenites -are chemically pure people. They have no immuniological experience. -Their gamma-globulin is low, their intestinal walls are thin. They may -be killed by a light salting of staphyllococci, a soupcon of strep, or -just a pinch of B. subtilis, a buglet as innocuous to "normal" humans -as the dust-motes it inhabits. - -The Syphon was the only entrance to the Barracks. It opened as the "Wet -Gut," a ramp leading downward into liquid disinfectant which finally -filled a tunnel, which ran the length of the Barracks. Each trooper, -as he walked down into the disinfectant, grabbed the hand-holds at -either side to pull himself along. Half-swimming through a turbulent -portion that tugged at his suit with cavitations designed to loose the -gummiest particle of bug-dirt, he came to a quieter section where he -wormed along in silence, watching the man ahead of him, his stay in the -antiseptic gauged to make the outside of his safety-suit as germ-free -as the inside. - -The Wet Gut ended in an upslope. The troopers walked out, dripping, -into a hallway returning in the direction from which they'd just -swum. This upper arm of the Syphon was a hallway so brilliantly -lighted that the trooper had to drop his polarizing shields over his -eyes. The air here in the Hot Gut was spiced with ozone from the -ultra-violet sources. As each man strode down the Hot Gut at a set -pace, his suit was bathed in u-v light from lamps in the ceiling, -floor and walls. Just as he was washed sufficiently in the Wet Gut -to kill the sturdiest-shelled spore of anthrax, the most insistently -cysted protozooan, in the Hot Gut he was laved in actinic radiation -powerful enough to afford a one hundred per cent safety factor against -his bringing viable bug-dirt into the Barracks. At the very end of -the Syphon, so that his safety-suit wouldn't stink of disinfectant -or crack from ozone-rot, the trooper was blasted from all sides by a -needle-shower of sterile water. Then he was home. - -The platoon to the left of the Terrible Third had ballooned and was -column-of-squadding toward the entrance to the Syphon. "At ease, men," -Hartford said. "Increase suit-pressure one pound. Open and check -reserve air-tanks. Close off filters." The men blimped a bit. Their -suits sausaged out around their arms and legs. Should some trooper -have a pinhole in his safety-suit, the positive pressure within would -keep the deadly antiseptic solution from seeping in. "Okay, men. First -squad off to the sheep-dip. Check the man ahead of you for bubbles. -This is Save-Your-Buddy Week," Hartford said. - - * * * * * - -Fat-legged and stiff, the men of Third Platoon waddled through the -doorway and down the ramp into the bug-juice. One by one they went -under, tugging themselves along through the turbulent area, past that; -then turning over in three planes so that the man behind them could -spot bubbles coming from any part of their safety-suit. A leak, of -course, meant Decontamination. Decontamination meant an all-over shave, -a load of antibiotics and quarantine. But it was better that one man -should suffer this from time to time than that the Barracks should be -sullied with a single bit of germ-laden dust. - -The pale-green murk of the Wet Gut and the desert brightness of the Hot -Gut were the gates of home, and welcome. - -Hartford saw the Terrible Third off to their quarters, then got -together with Piacentelli to go up to Officers' Country. It was good to -un-clam helmets and breathe the inside air, smelling faintly green from -having swept across the gardens on Level Eight. Hartford shucked off -his blue suit and draped it over a refreshing unit. The device buzzed -into action, washing, drying and recharging the safety-suit with fresh -filters and reserve air and water. The moment the refresher had grunted -an okay to his safety-suit, Hartford carried it, clean and sweet as -the day it had left the Goodyear plant on Titan, to hang it up in his -locker, ready for his next foray onto bug-dirt. - -Piacentelli was already under a shower. "Come on, jay-bird," he -shouted. "Last one out buys the beers." - -"No contest," Hartford said, setting the shower-dial. "I'm gonna stay -under water for three weeks." He revolved blissfully beneath cold and -angry needles. - -Piacentelli, snowed in with suds and steam, yelled through the blasting -water. "How'd you rate O.G. the night we get in?" he asked. "I thought -you were Nasty Nef's fairhaired boy." - -Hartford turned off his shower. "I got nothing better to do," he said. -He stood on the drier for a minute. "I don't mind being Officer of the -Guard, so long as I can eat supper off a plate instead of through a -tube." He stepped into his shorts, pulled on sneakers and tugged on a -tee-shirt that had stenciled over its shoulders the two half-inch gold -stripes of his rank. - -Pia dressed in a similar uniform. "It isn't the Messhall I miss," -he said. "It's this. No number of ingenious engines, valves and -relief-tubes can still my nostalgia for the simple dignity of our -Barracks latrines." - - * * * * * - -Junior Officers' Mess was set in what looked like a park, except that -the bushes were tomato-plants and the trees grew apples. The tables -were mostly full. "All the subalterns getting in a quick sundowner," -Pia remarked, finding a two-place table yet untaken. A Service Company -K.P. in the brief skirt-and-halter Class B's the women wore informally -in the Barracks came to take their order. "Big cold beer for me, -honey," Pia said. "The other gentleman is tonight's O.G., so he'll have -a black, black coffee." - -Hartford stared after the girl. "You're right, Pia," he said. "No -matter how comfy Goodyear makes those safety-suits, home is best." - -"You bachelors are a threat to the Table of Organization," Piacentelli -said. "You'd breed us right out of house and home if you had a chance." - -"Damned right," Hartford said. - -"You could find a girl," Piacentelli said. - -"They all itch to get married," Hartford explained. "They come out to -these germy planets like they used to go to Purdue. The man-woman ratio -is in their favor. And biology. Pia, I've seen bears you wouldn't glim -twice on Titan turn into love-goddesses after six months here. I'll -meet some Service Company corporal, say. She'll look to me like the -prettiest li'l thing since Adam's costectomy, and I'll call in at the -Orderly Room to have us assigned Family Quarters. Back at Home Base, -she'll turn out to be something you scare kids quiet with. She'll talk -all the time, leave lipstick on drinking-glasses, or play bridge and -talk about it. First thing you know, I'll be volunteering for another -five years duty on bug-dirt, just for a chance to leave her behind." - -"So pick up a local germ," Piacentelli suggested. "If they can't -decontaminate you, they'll send you to Earth. Lots of women on Earth." - -"I'd do it," Hartford said, "but I'm still more scared of microbes than -lustful for a woman. Here's Dimples with our chow." - -"Dimples?" Piacentelli asked as the girl came up with their tray. - -"Watch her when she walks away," Hartford suggested. - -"You must keep a carton of goat-glands under your bunk, Lee," -Piacentelli said. "Marriage isn't all bad. I've done pretty well with -Paula." - -Hartford nodded. Paula Piacentelli, a lieutenant in the Service -Companies, was a pretty decent sort. "Where is she now?" he asked. - -"She'll be on the Status Board tonight," Piacentelli said. "You'll be -in the Board Room with her. Lee, I've got a favor to ask you. As O.G. -you'll be in charge tonight." - -"Paula will be in charge," Hartford said. "I'll be sleeping." - -"If I go outside, though, it will need your okay as well as Paula's," -Piacentelli said. - -"Who's going outside with you?" - -"That's the sticky bit," Piacentelli said. "I'd like to go outside -alone." - - * * * * * - -"Want to run in the rain in your little bare skin?" Hartford asked. -"Mix it up with a Stinker maiden? Paula wouldn't like that. Besides, -you might get yourself jack-rolled by some Indigenous Hominid who -doesn't like Axenites running his planet." - -"I want to work on my Kansan-Standard Dictionary," Piacentelli said. - -"Bug-dirt," Hartford said. "Don't tell lies." - -"All right, then," Piacentelli said. "I've got an idea that might lead -to the most important discovery ever made on Kansas. Paula suggested -it. I want to prove it." - -"Tell Nasty Nef about your idea," Hartford said, signalling the -waitress for a second cup of stay-awake. "Give CINCK something clever -to report when the supply ship lands, and you'll have your silver -stripes before I will. Wouldn't Paula love that, though? Captain -Piacentelli, I'd have to salute first." - -"Nasty Nef wouldn't consider our idea," Piacentelli said. "He wouldn't -be happy to know that I've been studying the Kansan language, even. A -common humanity between us Axenites and the Indigenous Hominids is a -notion not welcome to the world of Colonel Nef. _Brother_ Nef, I might -say." - -Hartford leaned against the table to press a fist against Piacentelli's -propped elbow. "Don't say that, Pia," he whispered. "I'm not political; -I'm not interested; I don't care whether the Brotherhood even exists." - -"Yes, Virginia; there is a Brotherhood," Piacentelli said. "And our -Nasty Nef is a Brother." - -"He's a number of things," Hartford said. "He's our CO; he's CINCK; -he's an SOB. But he's our boss, and 'Brotherhood' is a dangerous -word." He sipped his coffee. "Tell you what, Pia. If you want to go -out and talk Gook with the Gooks, I'll fix it for you to draw picket -duty tonight. The man who's got picket has been married only a month, -and spent three weeks of that in a safety-suit out in the woods. I'm -sure he'll relinquish to you the pleasure of a night's romp as picket -officer." - -"Can you do it?" - -"An O.G. can do anything, during those hours when his superior officers -are asleep," Hartford said. - -"You're a buddy," Piacentelli said. "I'll give you free tutoring in -Kansan for the rest of our tour." - -"_Do mo arigato gazaimashita_," Hartford said. "Thanks to your mumbling -the stuff in our room, I already talk like a Stinker." He stood up. -"I'm going down to the Board Room. Pick your companion for picket, -and come on down when you've dressed." Hartford bowed, Kansas-style. -"_Shitsurei itashimasu ga ..._" he said politely, and left to assume -his duties as O.G. - - - III - -As one of the seventy-six male lieutenants of the Regiment, Hartford -pulled O.G. about once every eleven weeks. His Terrible Third drew duty -with him as Guard Platoon. All of them could expect to sleep through -the night undisturbed, unless Nasty Nef held a dry-run, falling them -out for a Simulated Problem. Nef was tired tonight, though; the Guard -could sleep. Only the two men on picket and the handful of Service -Company personnel on duty at the Status Board need stay awake tonight. - -Awake or sleeping, the security of First Regiment would rest this -night in the hands of Lee Hartford. It was he who bore the final -responsibility for allowing no living thing to enter the Barracks -except in a well-scrubbed safety-suit; for assuring that the air his -sleeping comrades breathed was sterile and dustless; that the Syphon's -poisonous bug-juice was of the proper pH and germicidity; and for -checking that the whereabouts of every Axenite on Kansas was reflected -on the Status Board. That these duties were complex was attested by the -assignment of a Service Company officer to the Board, a woman who would -watch the Board's bands of lights and meters every moment. Hartford -could sleep; he was the Responsible Male. Mrs. Paula Piacentelli, -1/Lt. S.C. (Gnotobiotics Spec.), had to remain awake: she was the -Knowledgeable Woman. - -Hartford found Paula already at her work in the Board Room. Only a bit -over five feet tall, Piacentelli's wife was concentrated woman of the -most splendid sort. When Hartford had told her that Pia was taking the -picket, she frowned. "I hope he doesn't plan anything foolish." - -"Me? Foolish?" Piacentelli demanded from the elevator. He walked up, -clammed shut in his blue safety-suit, ready to hit bug-dirt. Under one -arm he carried a package sheathed in opaque plastic. Behind him, in the -gray safety-suit of an enlisted trooper, was a man Hartford recognized -as Corporal Bond, machine-gunner from Pia's platoon. "Lieutenant -Gabriel Piacentelli reporting with one man, Sir and Ma'am," he said, -saluting his wife and Hartford. - -"At ease, Weenie-head," Hartford said. "With you and Bond on picket -amidst the sunflowers, I won't sleep a wink all night." He turned to -the corporal. "Did you sure-enough volunteer for this duty?" he asked. - -"Yes, sir!" Bond said. "I voluntarily assumed the duty of absorbing a -fifth of Lt. Piacentelli's Class-VI Scotch. The Lieutenant was kind -enough to reciprocate by offering me this tour." - -"He gave you Scotch?" Hartford turned to Piacentelli. "Gabe, for a jug -of Scotch I'd have gone on picket with you myself. What's that you're -taking outside with you? Lunch?" - -"A microscope," Piacentelli said. "I'm doing a little research for -Paula." His wife nodded. A gnotobiotics technician, responsible for -maintaining the bacteriological security of the Barracks, she had -business with microscopes. - -"Want to give me the word on this romp of yours?" Hartford asked. - -"Standard picket, Lee," Piacentelli said. "I'll learn a little Kansan, -take care of Paula's project and tell you all about it when we get -back." - - * * * * * - -"Let's see your weapons." Hartford inspected Bond's Dardick-rifle and -Piacentelli's Dardick-pistol. Both weapons were loaded, clean and -wrapped up for their trip through the Wet Gut in plastic sleeves. -The trucks and heavy weapons stayed outside on bug-dirt. The lighter -weapons and all ammunition came back inside the Barracks with the -troopers who carried them. The weapons were detail-stripped on each -re-entry, irradiated with u-v and fit with fresh sleeves. As had been -discovered with the first axenic animals, in the 1930's, keeping a -mammal germ-free is a formidable task. When that mammal is a human -being and a soldier the job is double-tough. - -"Check out a jeep," Hartford said. "Report each half-hour. Don't shoot -any Stinkers ... sorry, I mean Indigenous Hominids. Try not to hit a -camelopard with the jeep; we're low on replacement parts. In fact, be -careful. Okay, Pia?" - -"Done and done, Exalted One." - -Hartford dropped his voice. "I'd feel easier in my mind if I knew -what's so important as to require your desertion of our mutual womb -tonight, Pia." - -"Language study, you might say," Piacentelli replied. - -"_Ha! So desa ka?_" Hartford replied. "That's so much bug-dirt, and you -know it." - -"_Ha!_" Piacentelli said. "See you at dawn. Take care of my wife, -buddy." - -"Aren't you going to kiss her good night?" Hartford asked. - -Pia grinned through his clammed-shut helmet and clomped to the elevator -with Bond. They were en route to the Hot Gut and the Wet Gut, the -twisting hallway from the sterile First Regiment Barracks to the living -night of Kansas. - -Hartford turned. - -Paula Piacentelli wore the short skirt, knee-hose and short-sleeved -blouse of Pioneer green that was the Class B uniform for females inside -the Barracks. She looked, Hartford thought, remarkably delectable; -and he again congratulated his friend on his luck in getting her. He -returned his attention to the Status Board, which Paula was conning. -Two red lights flickered on above the ground-floor diagram of the -Barracks, indicating that the two men of the picket had entered the Hot -Gut. A moment later these lights blinked off, and two lighted over the -diagram of the Wet Gut. Piacentelli and Bond were swimming now, towing -their weapons in ballooning plastic sleeves. Sterile, on their way out -into a filthy world, these two men were the outpost that would protect -through the night their hundreds of brothers and sisters sleeping safe -_in utero_. Freud, thou shouldst have lived this hour! Hartford mused. - - * * * * * - -Piacentelli turned the ignition key of the jeep he'd chosen. With the -starting cough of the engine, one of the rank of TV screens over the -Status Board lighted. The camera eye was looking out the rear-view -mirror of the jeep, and picked up Pia's helmeted head and the shoulder -of his companion. "We're off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of -Oz!" Piacentelli sang. - -His wife spoke into the microphone before her. "Don't do anything -foolish, Lieutenant," she said. "And remember, all transmissions are -recorded and are audited, at random, by the Base Commander." - -"Transmission received, receiver contrite," Piacentelli reported back. -"Okay, Paula-Darling. From now on till Bond and I swim home, we'll be -as military as GI soap." He flicked the TV monitor around to look out -the windshield and started the jeep down the road toward Stinkerville. -The duty of the picket was to chug around outside at random, hitting -all the cross-roads, settlements and high spots of the countryside near -the Barracks; to interview late-riding Indigenous Hominids and inquire -their business being out; to conduct such searches of Stinker homes and -hideaways as might seem useful to the occupying Axenites; and to remain -at all times in contact with the officers on duty at the Status Board. - -As the picket got underway, Hartford went down to the Terrible Third's -area to check quickly through the two-man apartments. Knock on the -door; "As you were, Troopers." A brisk inspection of two safety-suits, -gaping beside their owners' bunks like firemen's boot-sheathed pants. -The men were quiet. Guard-duty meant that any socializing with Service -Company troopers was impossible for a night, and militated against any -intake of alcoholic beverage. It was a bore, especially after three dry -and womanless weeks in the field. Hartford visited his Platoon Sergeant -last: "Sergeant Felix, could you have our bunch standing on bug-dirt -ten minutes after I blew the whistle? Very well, then. Good night, -Felix." - -Having demonstrated to his troopers that he was suffering the same -strictures as they, Hartford went back to the O.G. cubicle in the -Board Room. He checked his own safety-suit, his plastic-packaged -Dardick-pistol, said good night to Paula Piacentelli and lay down to -begin his first night's sleep outside a safety-suit in three weeks. - -But sleep didn't come easily. - -There was the murmur from the Board Room; Piacentelli's half-hourly -reports. "Nothing to report, Paula. I'm at Road Junction (41-17). No -I.H. activity. No excitement at all." - -"Continue random patrol, Lieutenant." - -"Yes, Dear. I'm going to run down to Kansannamura (42-19) for my next -call-in." - -"Carry on, Lieutenant." - -Pia was in the best possible hands with Paula on duty, Hartford mused. -The Status Board was really a woman's job. The girls of the Service -Companies were the house-keepers of the Barracks, the guardians of the -Regimental lares and penates. Paula, for example, had as her primary -duty gnotobiotic control: the maintenance of the whole germ-free system -of the Barracks, from the Hot-&-Wet Guts to safety-suit inspection -and the upkeep of the Decontamination Vehicles. Behind the women on -Board-duty, however, was always at least one male, combat-trained -Officer of the Guard, ready (once awakened and briefed by the female -help) to take armed men into the field. - -But meanwhile, Hartford wanted to sleep. - - * * * * * - -Half an hour passed, and at its end Pia made his report: "Picket -reporting, Paula. I'm going into the village. Corporal Bond will remain -with the jeep, and will keep the transmitter open till I get back. -Okay?" - -"Be careful, Lieutenant," Paula Piacentelli said, combining affection -with military formality. - -Hartford, deciding that sleep was impossible, got up and cold-showered. -Dressing in fresh Class B's, he walked out to join Paula at the Status -Board. The TV screen showed Bond, the sheathed Dardick-rifle slung over -his shoulder, pacing back and forth in front of the jeep, glancing -from time to time toward the walls of Kansannamura, white in the light -of the skyful of stars. He was nervous, evidently aware of the fact -that Kansas was largely unexplored, her potential for midnight mayhem -untested. Bond spoke across his shoulder. "The lieutenant has been gone -for a quarter hour, Ma'am," he said. "Do you want me to go in and ask -him to come out?" - -"Wait another quarter-hour, Corporal," Paula said. She explained to -Hartford, "What he's got to do may take a little time." They watched -the screen. Bond climbed back into the jeep, where he sat with his -rifle between his knees, sweeping his attention around him, at the -village, at the road behind, at the sunflower-fields, where the -blossoms were bleached white and the leaves enameled black by starlight. - -With Paula's agreement, Hartford pressed the microphone-switch to talk -with Bond. "Have you tried to tap Piacentelli on his suit-receiver, -Corporal?" - -"Yes, sir," Bond said. "First thing. No answer." - -"Turn your bitcher full up, then," Hartford said. "Tell Lieutenant -Piacentelli that the O.G. wants him out on the road within five -minutes." - -"Done and done, sir." Bond tongued the bitcher's controls to Full -Volume and repeated the message. Echoes bounced back from the walls of -Stinkerville and lost themselves in the tangle of sunflowers. - -No one answered. - -The village seemed as much asleep as it had been before Bond's bellow. -The Kansans were never hasty to volunteer response to Axenites; they -knew that troopers meant trouble. - -"Piacentelli is busy at something," Hartford said, as much to reassure -himself as Pia's wife. "I think I'll go out and have a look." He spoke -to Bond: "Get out of the jeep, but stay close to it. Report any haps -immediately. Watch for lights, listen for small-arms fire." - -"Done and done, sir." - -Hartford phoned Felix, his platoon sergeant. "Report to the Board Room -to sub for me," he said. "Wake the Platoon Guide and tell him to stand -ready to fall the Guard out, but not to wake anyone else yet. This is -probably a nothing, Felix; Lt. Piacentelli just went for a walk in -Stinkerville." - - * * * * * - -The Command Light, top in the tier of all the hierarchy of -red-yellow-green-white Status-Board indicators, flashed alive. - -"A nothing?" Nasty Nef's voice demanded. "What sort of talk is that, -Lieutenant? If I've been properly interpreting the past five minutes' -transmissions, we've got an Axenite officer stranded in the middle of -a Stinker village. This, Mister, is not a nothing. Call out the Guard. -Prepare to join me in a Stinkerville shakedown. Those Gooks got to -learn they can't play fast-and-easy with Axenite troopers." - -"Done and done, sir!" Hartford snapped. He toggled the phone to get -Felix back. "Felix, fall the boys out beside the Syphon. We've got the -Old Man hitting bug-dirt with us, so look sharp." - -"The colonel's going out with us?" Felix asked. - -"Yes. There must be more to this situation than meets the company-grade -eye," Hartford said. "Diaper-up our darlings and stand by in the Hot -Gut, Felix." - -"Done and done!" - -Twenty seconds later a figure in Santa Claus red came clashing into -the room. Hartford, half into his blue safety-suit, came to a clumsy -attention. The newcomer, his helmet clammed shut all ready for -contamination, bellowed, "Get with it, Mister!" - -"Yes, sir." Hartford fit himself into the suit, a sort of cockpit, a -congeries of valves, gauges, counters and vetters. In a moment he'd -sealed himself in the sterile suit, checked his air-filters and air -reserve. "The Guard is assembled in the Hot Gut, sir, ready to take the -field." - -"Dam' well better be," Nef said. "Lead off, Mister." He turned to Paula -Piacentelli. "Send a Decontamination Vehicle after us, Lieutenant. No -telling what those Stinker devils have cooked up with Piacentelli." -Back to Hartford: "You're in command of the Guard, I'll observe and -offer suggestions." - -"Tain-HUT!" Platoon Sergeant Felix saluted the scarlet-clad colonel -and the blue-clad lieutenant as they stepped from the elevator into -the electric atmosphere of the Hot Gut. The Guard snapped to, their -plastic-packaged Dardick-rifles at order arms. - -"Take 'em out, Felix," Hartford said. "Two personnel carriers, -a .50-caliber m.g.-mounted jeep fore and aft. You and the colonel take -the rear jeep; I'll lead. Have the men unbag their weapons the instant -we're outside. Any questions?" - -"No, sir." - -"Move out," Hartford said. - - - IV - -The squads peeled off and double-timed down the Hot Gut. Man by man -they dipped into the Wet Gut for their swim outside. They'd been -drilled for speed in exiting. If the Regiment were needed outside, -the Syphon could become a literal bottle-neck. As the last squad -splashed into the antiseptic solution, Hartford turned to Colonel Nef. -"Sir, I have a question," he said. - -"Hurry it up, Mister." - -"Isn't this a bit extreme, sir? We're going out to take one man out -of a primitive village where we're not even sure he's in trouble. And -we're carrying enough firepower to blast into an armed city." - -"I don't trust the Gooks," the colonel said. "Their bucolic way of -life may be a fraud, designed to lull us into complacency. Tonight -we may discover that they're plotting the overthrow of the Garrison, -using weapons and tactics they've kept secret. I hope such is the case, -Lieutenant. It would give us adequate cause to wipe the Stinkers off -Kansas and make this as clean a world as Titan." - -"Sir...." - -"Move, Mister," Nef said. "Piacentelli has been in Stinkerville for -fifty minutes. Let's get him out." - -The four trucks roared down the plateau toward the Indigenous Hominid -hamlet at its foot. When the first Axenite Pioneers landed on the -planet, bacteria-free as all men in space had to be, they'd set up camp -near the spot where First Regiment Barracks now stood. They saw the -fields of sunflowers, grown for food and cloth, and heard the natives -call the nearest village Kansannamura. From that time on, this world -was Kansas. - -There was no moonlight--Kansas has no moon--but the headlamps of the -four vehicles were wasted against the bright ribbon of road, lighted -as it was by the sheet of stars that melted together in a metallic -ceiling over the night. The men sat with their rifles between their -knees, the plastic sleeves stripped off. Each of these Dardick-rifles -could fire a solid stream of death. Each round of ammunition was -fitted with a matrix that served as chamber, cartridge and the first -fraction-of-an-inch of barrel. A magazine of forty such rounds could be -hosed through the rifle in half a second. The troopers sped downhill, -through sunflower fields black and silver in the light of the stars. - - * * * * * - -The personnel carriers and the jeeps scuffed to a halt by the village -gate, the men scattering like shrapnel, according to the book. Colonel -Nef spoke to Hartford on the command-band. "Move in, Lieutenant. Bring -out Piacentelli. Any Stinker resistance is to be treated as open -rebellion." - -"Yes, sir." Hartford spoke to his men: "First squad, lead scout, -forward to the gate." - -The scout, his plastic safety-suit and the glass of his helmet -glinting highlights, scuttled to the gate. He kicked the gate -open--Piacentelli had evidently left it ajar--and entered, rifle-first. -"First squad, follow me in column. Open to Line-of-Skirmishers in the -square. Second squad, follow in the same manner. Third squad; maintain -your interval and stand ready." - -Hartford ran, pistol in hand, through the open gate. It was like -charging some Roman ruin unpeopled for three centuries, like a field -exercise with boulders marking obstacles to be won. There was no sign -of natives. Their shop-boards hung bearing the picture-script the -Kansans used, quiet as the marbles in a cemetery. Hartford directed -first squad in a sweep through the alleys, searching for Piacentelli. -Second squad clattered through the gate behind them, took up a skirmish -line, and moved in to cover the square as first squad disappeared into -the doorways and alleys of Stinkerville. - -The village, except for its beasts, might have been deserted. These -animals, camelopards used for riding and to carry burdens, woke -and gazed serenely down at the interrupters of their vegetable -dreams, blinking their liquid half-shuttered eyes. Boots clattered -on cobblestones. The houses were unlighted. "Throw on your i-r," -Hartford ordered. As they moved into the dark, narrow ways, the men -beamed infra-red light from the projectors on their safety-suits, the -bounced-back, invisible light being transduced to black-and-green -chiaroscuro by passage through the stereatronic goggles dropped inside -their helmets. - -"Turn the Stinkers out, Mister," Nef command-banded. - -"Into the houses," Hartford signaled. Ahead, a boot slammed wood, and -hinges burst. To the restless night sounds of the camelopards in their -stalls, the click of military boots on brick, and the rustle of rifles -against safety-suits was added the whispering of families rousing from -their beds. Hand in hand from father to mother to elder brother, down -the scale to the youngest, the Kansans stumbled out into their little -courtyards. "_Ano hito wa dare desu ka?" "Abunai yo!" "Shikata ga -nai...._" - - * * * * * - -"Any sign of Piacentelli yet?" Nef demanded. - -"Not yet, sir," Hartford signalled. - -"Feed a candle into every building, Lieutenant. We'll get these Gooks -in the open and interrogate till we find our man." - -"Done and done, sir," Hartford said, stepping out of the way of a -little girl fleeing toward the village square with an even littler girl -strapped to a pack-board on her back. He passed on the order. "Fire -in ten seconds, nine, eight ... now!" Each man of first squad tossed -a Lake Erie Lightning Universal Gas Candle through the window nearest -him. A little over a second later a dozen grenades spit out a cloud -of smoke with a hiss like a bursting fire-hose, and the outer air was -filled with an eye-stinging gas. The Indigenous Hominids spilled out of -their homes in all directions now; coughing, choking, children rubbing -the smoke particles into their half-wakened eyes. Two camelopards, -blinded like their masters, blundered into the square, tears streaming -from their reproachful eyes, twelve feet above the pavement. Second -squad's men danced clear of the beasts and hallooed them out the gate. - -Somewhere back in an alley a first-squad trooper tapped his trigger, -jetting steel against overhanging roof-tiles. "Nail that shot, Mister!" -Nef demanded. - -Hartford heard the squad leader: "It's Lieutenant Piacentelli, sir. -He's here." - -"Bring him out, man; bring him out!" Nef's excited voice triggered a -new string of rifle bursts. - -Hartford tongued his bitcher full-volume: "Cease fire, you idiots! -Piacentelli, head for the square." - -"Stop it, for God's sake, stop it!" Piacentelli shouted, his -unamplified voice coming from a smoke-filled alley. Hartford plunged -into the dark smoke--a tear-gas grenade had set afire some of the -sun-flower-paper room dividers, and kindled with them a row of wooden -houses--and shouted for Piacentelli. A blabrigar, as blind in the smoke -as the men, blundered against Hartford's helmet. "_Yuke! Yuke!_" the -bird screamed, grabbing hold of the transceiver-antenna that horned up -from the helmet. Hartford grabbed the blabrigar and tossed it up above -the melee. He heard it flying in circles, searching for its Stinker -owners, chanting the last words they'd said to it: "_Yuke! Yuke! -Yuke!_"--"Go!" - - * * * * * - -Everything was burning. Even through the safety-suit Hartford suffered -from the heat. He retracted his i-r goggles, useless in all this smoke. -Nef called. "I'm coming in, Mister." Hartford acknowledged. Great. One -more blind man wandering in the smoke was what he needed. - -He tongued his bitcher loud and shouted; "Gabe! Come this way. Gabe! -Gabe!" The heat was intolerable. He positive-pressured his suit, -ballooning the fabric away from his skin. How hot, he wondered, would -the rounds packed into the butt of his Dardick-pistol have to get -before they exploded? - -As though in answer, a snap of gunfire sounded from the fog ahead. -Some meat-head had spooked. There were more shots as other troopers -fired at their fantasies. "Cease fire, damn it!" Nef shouted over the -command-circuit. "If anyone was hurt by you idiots, I'll court-martial -every man with smoke in his gun barrel." Hartford hurried on. Ahead of -him in the alley he heard Colonel Nef's voice, uncharacteristically -soft. "Hartford, join me. I've found Piacentelli." Ahead in the smoke -was a pinkness: the scarlet-suited commander kneeling above a body on -the bricks. - -Here in the open of planetary air, available to all the microscopic -beasts of Kansas, Piacentelli was wearing only Class B's; his sneakers, -shorts and tee-shirt. The center of the shirt sopped blood from the -bullet-hole that funneled into Axenite Lieutenant Piacentelli's chest. - -Nef stood. "The Decontamination Vehicle should be standing by," he -said. "Get Piacentelli outside. We may be able to save him." He sounded -unhopeful. - -Hartford draped his friend's body across his shoulder. The smoke was -bad, but he'd memorized his course through it. The air sucked in -through his filter was clean, but hot. His helmet steamed opaque. As he -stumbled out, blind, but guided by the colonel's voice, two men came -forward to take Piacentelli over to the Decontamination Vehicle parked -by the village gate. In the cooler air Hartford's helmet cleared. A -girl gnotobiotician from the Decontamination Squad pressed the pickup -of her helmet's "ears" against Piacentelli's bloody chest. - -She looked up. "He's dead, sir," she said. - -Nef's voice boomed from his bitcher. "Burn the Stinker village!" he -shouted. "These Gooks will pay for Piacentelli's death with their -homes." - -Hartford felt imminent danger of vomiting, bad business in a -safety-suit. He fought it as he looked around. The column of smoke -rising from the buildings already fired was sweeping around, carried -by the morning wind that poured off the plateau. Everything within the -walls of the rammed-earth houses would be incinerated. Kansannamura was -destroyed. "Regroup by the vehicles," Hartford spoke to his troopers. -He walked back to his jeep, the village flaming behind him. - -The Decontamination Squad checked Hartford's safety-suit, and found it -sound despite its roasting. Piacentelli they cocooned in plastic: he -was contaminated and dangerous. As the five trucks rolled back toward -the Barracks, they met families of Indigenous Hominids, smoke-stained, -who retreated back into the sunflower-fields as the troopers drew near -them. The Stinkers seemed to have salvaged little from the flames -beyond an occasional blabrigar, perched on an old man's shoulder, -or now and then a camelopard, fitted with a saddle and carrying a -blanket-wrapped bundle of clothing and cooking-pots. - - - V - -Hartford had to see Piacentelli's body placed in the Barracks morgue, -where a necropsy would be performed by a safety-suited gnotobiotician. -It was seldom that an Axenite was contaminated. Rarer yet was the death -of a trooper who'd been exposed to bacteria. Information held in Pia's -body might someday save lives. - -Hartford, directing the sealing-off of the morgue from the rest of the -Barracks, was not comforted by these reflections. He unsuited, shaved -and showered, and put on fresh Class B's to finish what remained of -this O.G. tour. On his way back up to the Board Room he had to pass the -morgue again. Colonel Nef, in the midst of a cluster of lesser ranks, -was there. On a wheeled cart, covered by a sheet, was a second body. - -Hartford stopped. "What happened, sir?" he demanded. "Who is it?" - -Nef raised the corner of the sheet with a hand that seemed infinitely -weary. The body was Paula Piacentelli. "Another accident," the Colonel -grunted. - -A hydroponics corporal, S.C., spoke up. "She was relieved of duty as -soon as she heard about her husband's death, sir. Someone should have -stayed with her. She went up to Level Eight to be alone. There are only -two of us on duty there through the night. She must have blundered off -the walkway, blinded by her tears. However it happened, she caught -hold of a lighting-cable where the insulation was frayed, and was -electrocuted the moment she touched the wet seeding-bed. Colonel Nef -found her there." - -"I was going to console her on Gabriel Piacentelli's death," Nef said. -"Leave the body here and clear out, all of you." No refrigeration was -needed for Paula's corpse, of course. An uncontaminated Axenite was -preserved by purity. The body might dry a bit, the integrity of the -internal organs suffer somewhat from the corrosive effects of their own -juices: but Paula's corpse would otherwise remain uncorrupted until -taken outside and buried in bug-dirt. "Hartford," Nef said, "I'd like -to have a talk with you." - -"I'm still on O.G., sir," Hartford said. - -"And I relieve you of that duty," Nef snapped. "Come up to my quarters." - -Nasty Nef's sitting-room had the only window in the Barracks, a -skylight through which poured the brilliance of Kansas's pyrotechnic -flood of stars. "Rest, Hartford. Sit down. Brandy?" - -Hartford allowed that he could use some. - -"What do you think of tonight's adventure, Lee?" Nef asked. "Don't look -startled. I know the first name of every officer and non-com in the -Regiment." - -"What happened, sir, was horrible," Hartford said. - -"I understand your feelings," Nef said. "Two tragic accidents, killing -your two closest friends the same night. I am certain that the loss -of these comrades will fire your zeal for getting the Stinkers under -control. Isn't that right, Lee?" Nef took a cigar from the humidor next -his chair. - -"With all respect, sir," Hartford said, placing his empty brandy-glass -on the table to his right, "I can hardly see how the events tonight -were caused by the Indigenous Hominids." - -"You must use the official name for the Gooks, mustn't you?" Nef -mused. His voice turned harsh: "Someone stripped the safety-suit off -Piacentelli, Mister." - - * * * * * - -Hartford nodded, his face pale. The "A" of the Axenite's alphabet -was Apprehension. As a germ-free--axenic, gnotobiotic--human being, -he is superior in most ways to ordinary men. He's usually larger and -stronger. He never has dental caries, pimples, appendicitis, the -common cold or certain cancers. No matter how much or how long he -sweats, the Axenite doesn't stink; nor do his other excretions. On a -contaminated world, however, the Axenite is a tender flower indeed. A -baby's breath can be death to him, if that baby be a "normal" human; -for no microbe is benign to the man without antibodies. To him a drop -of rain may reek with pestilence, the scent of evening may be a lethal -gas. "I can't understand their stripping Pia, sir," he said. "Why would -they do such a terrible thing?" - -"Because they're Stinkers!" Nef said. "Can you imagine what it must be -like to be one of them? Every inch of your skin a-crawl with living -filth, your guts packed with foulness, your whole frame a compromise -with rottenness? Do you wonder that they'd delight to make us as -unwholesome as they are themselves?" Colonel Nef lighted the cigar he'd -been mulling. "Lee, do you think one Stinkerville destroyed is too high -a price for them to pay for having murdered two Axenite troopers? For -Piacentelli's wife is as much their victim as her husband." - -Hartford shook his head. "I'm not sure, sir. What bothers me more than -anything else is that it's my fault Pia went out last night. He asked -me to arrange for him to replace the scheduled picket officer, and I -did." - -"Lee, why was Piacentelli so anxious to pull this extra duty?" Nef -asked. - -Hartford tried unobtrusively to squirm his chair out of the jet-stream -from Nef's cigar. "He told me he wanted to work on the language, sir," -he said. "Pia really had such a project. He'd never had contact with -anyone with a speech other than Standard before, and the problem of -transducing one language into another fascinated him. The Kansans call -their speech _Nihon-go_. Pia taught me to understand some of it." - -"A waste of your time, Lee," Nef said. "You'll never have occasion -to speak it. Be that as it may, unless Piacentelli was attempting to -coax a course in Bedroom Kansan from a Stinker maiden, I can hardly -understand why his lexigraphical labors should require him to unsuit -himself. No, Piacentelli was deliberately murdered." - -"I'm puzzled, sir," Hartford admitted. "When we tossed those -smoke-candles, I heard Pia shouting for us to stop it. Would he have -done so if the Indigenous Hominids had him captive? Why did none of the -natives lift a hand against us, though we were burning their homes? Why -did Paula Piacentelli seem to know why Pia was going outside tonight? -Why did he take a microscope with him? Why did Paula kill herself?" - - * * * * * - -"Don't noise that last 'why' around the Barracks, Mister," Nef growled. -"Officially, she died in tear-blinded grief, an accident." He smiled. -"Whatever our reason for burning out Stinkerville, Lee, we got it -done. The fact that those half-humans down the hill bred and sweat and -poisoned the soil within half an hour's walk has been a stench in my -nostrils ever since we got here. Now they're gone. I'm as sorry as you -that the Piacentellis are dead. But the manner of their dying was such -as to assure Axenic mankind a new home." - -"I'm not sure I understand you, sir." - -Nef poured them each a second brandy. He raised his; Hartford of -necessity followed suit. "To Brotherhood," the colonel said. He stared -into Hartford's eyes. "To _the_ Brotherhood," he amended. - -Hartford was tired, confused and in awe of Nef's rank; otherwise he -might have ventured protest. Nef sipped his drink. "I must emphasize, -Lee, that what I say is my opinion only, not Axenite policy. You see my -point." - -"I do, sir," Hartford said. - -"Forgive me, then, for prefacing my remarks with a bit of truism," Nef -said. "In all history before gnotobiotic man was cut from his mother -through cellophane, the human being was never pure organism. Before -us, every man who ever lived was, in fact, one mammal plus the sum -of millions of viruses, rickettsia, bacteria, fungi and molds. When -the old philosophers asked, 'What is man?' the answer could only be: -'Foul smell and blood in a bag.' We're the first men beyond that, Lee. -The first real men, True Men, members of the winner-species. _Homo -gnotobioticus_. - -"We must destroy the bridge that led to us. We must destroy the -Stinkers. Not just these quasi-human natives here on Kansas, but the -Stinkers on Earth, and on every other planet where bug-laden man has -followed Axenite. What chance has _Homo sapiens_ to match his sapiency -against _Homo gnotobioticus_, when he is a bifurcate septic tank, a -polyculture of a thousand kinds of living dirt?" - -Hartford finished his brandy, wishing he were anywhere else than in -Nasty Nef's quarters, tired, ill at ease and a little drunk from -the two brandies. "What do you propose, sir?" he asked with Academy -politeness. - -"Aha!" Nef rejoiced, pouring them each another drink. "You justify -my trust, Lee. You perceive that I speak not merely if-ly, -philosophically, but as a man of action, leashed only by temporary -practicality." He leaned back in his chair and regarded Hartford more -as a sculptor might regard a recent product than a father a son, with -uncritical approval. "Where were you born, Lee?" - -"On Titan, sir." - - * * * * * - -"I thought so. You have the mark of natal excellence," Nef said. -"You're a second or third-generation Axenite, then?" - -"Third, sir," Hartford said. - -"Splendid. Your grandparents were from their mothers' wombs untimely -ripp'd; your parents and yourself born normally, in germ-free ambience. -How fortunate we are, you and I! Third-generation Axenites. Eff-two of -a new race." Nef paused in his recital. "There is one fact that chafes -us, though. We, perforce the Columbuses of tomorrow, explorers of the -planets beyond even the stars we see here on the frontier, are held -back by our Stinker cousins. They have the proper feeling, that only -pure man might pioneer the alien worlds, for fear of destroying what he -finds there. But who will inherit those planets when we've finished our -explorations? Who will at the last till the fields of Kansas?" - -"Colonists from Earth, sir," Hartford said. "From Eurus, Tinkle, -Westside, Unashamed, T'ang, Williams's World and Hope. From all the -planets normal man has colonized." - -"Doesn't that annoy you, Lee?" Nef asked. "That our work's fruit is to -be enjoyed by shiploads of Stinkers?" - -"They're as human as we, sir," Hartford said. He smiled. "You might say -they just haven't had our advantages." - -"You're tender-minded, Lee," Nef said. "We garrison a hundred worlds -on the Frontier, planets our Stinker masters mustn't visit yet, least -Man contaminate some life-form yet unmet. We pioneer, clear planets as -safe, and move on. For reward, we Axenites have three worlds of our own -in the M'Bwene System, axenized for our use; we have the Academies on -Luna and Titan, and a dome on Pluto. _It's not enough._ We are the new -men, the next-comers to humanity. We must have worlds of our own. I, -and the Brotherhood whose hand here I am, intend that Kansas shall be -ours." - -"What about the Stinkers?" Hartford asked. "What will happen to them if -we decide to axenize Kansas?" - -"Maybe they'll leave," Colonel Nef said, smiling in the manner that -had won him the name "Nasty." "A few more punitive expeditions like -tonight's--an incendiary grenade was thrown at Kansannamura, did you -know that, Lee? I threw it--and we'll have no Stinkers underfoot. -We soon will be able to mop and polish this world to our own high -standards. We'll walk this lovely world without safety-suits and -breathe unfiltered air. We'll enter into our birthright, Lee." Nef -gazed at his cigar admiringly, though it had gone out. "So much for the -moment, Brother Hartford," he said. "Perhaps we'd both do well to get -some sleep." - -Hartford jumped to attention and formally requested permission to -withdraw. Nef nodded. Hartford about-faced and left the room. - - - VI - -The things the colonel had told him hadn't fallen into place in his -mind yet. Hartford was numb of thought. - -Back in his own room in B.O.Q. the numbness cleared a bit. He poured -himself a drink. Somehow, he thought, he'd become fairhaired boy to an -Attila the Hun, an Alaric the Goth, a Hitler, a Haman; an Ashurbanipal -I, a Rameses II. For Nef was equally with these a servant of Siva the -Destroyer, with his plan to make Man pure. - -His purification would involve the destruction of all non-axenic men -and women all the way from the Home World to the newest beach-head on -the Frontier; the sterilization of a hundred worlds as culture media -for the new race; and the planting on the newly axenized soil of -colonies of _Homo gnotobioticus_, the feeder-on-hydroponic-greens, the -inodorous, the thin-gutted, the strong toothed Superman. - -Nef's pogrom had begun with the raid on the village, Hartford mused, -his arms behind his head as he lay on his bunk. Nef had decided that -this green and pleasant world belonged to the silver men, the true men, -the new men. Us, Hartford thought. Earth's Stinkers, ordinary humanity -with its common cold and its caries, would follow the Kansan Indigenous -Hominid, and the Great Auk, into history. - -The double funeral of the Lieutenants Piacentelli was to be held at -Retreat, outside the Barracks. Hartford wondered a bit at the haste -with which the two bodies were to be consigned to the earth of Kansas. -Perhaps haste was necessary because of the micro-organisms with which -poor Pia's corpse was necessarily contaminated. - -Hartford grimaced. Contaminated humans must lead disgusting lives. -They smelled of ferments, were bloated with bacterially elaborated -gases, suffered rot in their very teeth. Their corpses--poor -forefathers!--suffered corruption that would never touch an Axenite, -whose unembalmed cadaver would last longer than the best-mummified -Pharaoh. - -Whatever mysterious errand it had been that had taken Piacentelli -outside the Barracks, it had killed him. It was over. - -Hartford marched the Terrible Third into position facing the graves, -cut into the soil at the base of the hundred-foot flagpole. The entire -regiment, less only the handful of men and women necessary to secure -the Barracks, was on the Parade Ground. Colonel Nef, his scarlet -safety-suit brilliant in the light of the setting sun, stood beside the -graves, a finger of his right gauntlet inserted to mark his place in -the black _Book of Honors and Ceremonies_. - -The regiment stood at parade-rest as a truck brought the bodies of two -comrades through its ranks. As the improvised hearse halted and twelve -blue-suited casket-bearers stepped forward to lift the flag-draped -boxes, Nef called the regiment to attention. The bearers slow-marched -the caskets to the graves and placed them on the lowering-devices. - - * * * * * - -Nef's words of funeral were few. He spoke of the dedication of the two -Axenites being laid to rest and bitterly accused the Stinkers--this -word seemed rude, in so formal a setting--of having murdered the young -couple. He spoke of condign justice, and of revenge. - -This done, he called: "Escort, less firing-party. Present, HAHMS! -Firing-party, FIRE THREE VOLLEYS!" - -The shots of the Dardick-rifles echoed down the plateau to the -smoldering village below. The Regimental Bugler, standing between the -heads of the graves, flicked on his instrument. As the last volley spat -from the muzzles of the rifles, the bugler played _Taps_. - -Four men stepped forward to recover and fold the green-silk Pioneer -colors, and the caskets were lowered to corruption in alien earth. The -banner crept down the flagstaff, and the funeral was over. - -Bone-weary, Hartford went from the Syphon to the refresher-room, where -he checked his safety-suit and hung it. - -Another officer was there, still in his blue safety-suit. Hartford -wondered sleepily why he'd so long postponed unsuiting. Even the -fellow's helmet was sealed. "Our first deaths on Kansas," Hartford -remarked, wanting to coax the man into conversation and learn who he -was. "I'd never realized till now that we're really soldiers, subject -to violent death and formal burying." The man must be a replacement, -come in on the supply ship a month ago, Hartford thought. Black -hair, crewcut. Tanned. Must be from one of the M'Bwene Worlds, where -an Axenite's naked skin can bear unfiltered sunlight. "Both the -Piacentellis were my friends," Hartford said, determined to coax -speech from the stranger. - -The man's bitcher boomed, evidently set on full volume. "_Mattaku -shirazu_," he said. "Excuse. Pia not teach entire use of Standard -tongue." - -Hartford's right hand tore through the plastic pellicle over his -Dardick-pistol and brought the weapon to bear on the figure before him. -"You're a Stinker!" he said. "Pia's safety-suit--that's the suit you're -wearing." - -"_Tonshu_," the Indigenous Hominid said, bowing his head. He indicated -the empty holster at his side: he was unarmed. "I come on _taku_, -here to your honored precincts, to speak of things done and of future -things. You are Hartford?" - -Hartford thought quickly. His responsibility was to the Garrison. -This stranger was above all else a possible source of contamination, -a carrier of the micro-bugs that could kill every Axenite on Kansas. -Shooting him would rupture the safety-suit he wore. As it was, his -exterior surface was clean; he could have entered the Barracks only by -marching in from Retreat with the rest of the regiment, through the -sterilizing Syphon. "I am Hartford. Lee Hartford." - - * * * * * - -"Pia said you are a good man," the stranger said, bowing. - -"What is your name?" - -"Renkei. As you say, I take Pia's _uwa-zutsumi_, this smooth garment." -Renkei indicated the safety-suit by slicking his hands over it. "I must -enter here to talk with Hartford. To enter, I must have garment. Pia, -my brother, is dead. I borrowed his garment. Can I, with you, stop -the ugly thing that began last night in Kansannamura? _Kuwashiku wa -zonzezu_; I do not know. I can but try." - -What a perfect disguise a safety-suit made, Hartford thought. Besides, -it was the only passport a man needed to enter the Barracks. He stared -at the stranger. He looked no different to men Hartford had met before, -Axenites whose grandparents had been born by aseptic Caesarian section -in Nagoya or Canton, two of the great gnotobiotic centers of fifty -years ago. Renkei was a Stinker, a Kansan, an Indigenous Hominid -(ignominious name!); he was also, Hartford felt, a man. - -"Tell me why you made the dangerous journey here, into the midst of -your enemies," he said. - -"The death of our friend Pia. The burning of Kansannamura. The war -between my people and you who wear smooth garments," he said. "This is -_aru-majiki koto_." - -"A thing that ought not to be," Hartford said, translating. He was glad -for the practice he'd gotten with Pia, speaking the native tongue. "Sit -down," he said. "You must explain, Renkei." - -The refresher-room, a hall filled with lockers and the machinery that -automatically tested and refitted the safety-suits each time they -returned to the Barracks, had a dozen entrances and exits. As Renkei, -still completely sealed in Pia's safety-suit, sat on the bench beside -Hartford, the doors all closed at once. They hissed as the pneumatic -seals were set in their frames. - -Contamination Alert! Someone, most likely the Service girl on watch at -the Status Board, had discovered that there was one more person in the -Barracks than could be accounted for. A crash-priority head-count had -been made. Each room and compartment had doubtless been eavesdropped -through the built-in TV eyes and microphone ears. - -One door at the far end of the hall burst open. A squad of -safety-suited Service Police spilled in. At the point of their wedge -was the scarlet uniform of Colonel Nef. Dardick-pistol in hand, he ran -toward Renkei. "Don't shoot!" Hartford shouted, springing up. - -"Get back, Mister," the colonel yelled. He dropped to one knee and -squeezed all twelve rounds into the seated figure to Hartford's right. -Service Police swooped down to pull Hartford away from the shattered -body of Renkei. The lieutenant's tee-shirt was stained, -however, by flecks of blood splashed up as the SPs' bullets chewed into -the Kansan. Hartford was contaminated. - - * * * * * - -For the next hour, Hartford had no more to say about his disposition -than an angry bullock being dipped and scrubbed against an epidemic of -cattle ticks. - -His purification consisted in a sudsing with antiseptic soaps, this -administered by a team of three Service Company gnotobioticians who -were completely indifferent to his modesty and who seemed determined -to peel off the outer surface of his skin. The women, safety-suited -against being themselves contaminated, shaved off all his hair and -ostentatiously packaged-up the shavings to be burned. They administered -parenteral and enteric doses of broad-spectrum antibiotics. By the -time the gnoto girls were finished, Hartford was as bald all over as a -six-weeks foetus, as sore as though he'd been sand-blasted, slightly -feverish as a result of the injections and madder than hell. - -Ignoring his demands to see Colonel Nef at once, the Service Company -troopers helped him into his safety-suit. Hartford would have to live -inside the suit for a week's quarantine, watched carefully to see -whether a missed microbe would breed within him in spite of all the -measures taken. - -Hartford's company commander refused him permission to speak to the -colonel. The lieutenant was to speak to no one concerning Renkei's -invasion of the Barracks. He would remain safety-suited inside the -Barracks or out; but would otherwise continue with his regular -duties. - -Hartford returned to the refresher-room where the murder had taken -place. Renkei's macerated body had been removed for burning. The room -had been carefully decontaminated, to the extent of hosing it down with -detergent steam and individually re-refreshing each safety-suit in the -huge hall's rows of lockers. - -There was nothing to be done against Nef's madness, Hartford thought. -He sat on the bench where Renkei had sat. The ultimate breakdown in -communication is silencing one side of the dialogue, he thought. That's -why killing a man is the ultimate sin; it removes forever the hope -of understanding him. It ends for all time the conversation by which -brothers may touch one another's mind. - -What crap to find in a soldier's thoughts, Hartford told himself. -He was an Axenite trooper, a Pioneer, a pistol-packing officer of -infantry, commander of the Terrible Third Platoon. He was an Axenite, -dedicated by the immaculacy of his birth to the conquest of Man's -frontiers. - -Hartford snapped his plastic-sheathed Dardick-pistol, death in a -supermarket wrapper, from his belt and placed it on the shelf of his -locker. He'd seen the village of Kansannamura burned. Pia had died -across his shoulder. Paula lay buried, too. Renkei's life had been -splashed out on a stream of bullets. Enough of death. - -Hartford picked up a pack of field-ration squeeze-tubes and walked down -the hallway toward the Syphon. - -His leaving would show on the Status Board, of course, but that didn't -matter any more. He was deserting the regiment. - - * * * * * - -He walked through the valley of desert that was the Hot Gut, and down -into the birth-canal that was the Wet Gut, to emerge in the evening air -of Kansas. The motor sergeant, stationed outside to guard the vehicles, -saluted. "Going for a walk, sir?" he asked. - -"If you'll lend me a jeep, I'll go for a ride," Hartford said. "I'd -like to see how things look, down in the village." - -"It's against regulations, but if you'll have the truck back by dark I -can let it go, sir." - -"Thank you, Sergeant." Hartford returned the salute and drove off -downhill, toward Kansannamura. - -What would happen to Hartford-the-deserter? he wondered. At best, he'd -be booted out of the troopers and grounded on Titan, or Luna or one of -the M'Bwene planets, to serve the rest of his life as a paper-pusher, -the bureaucratic equivalent of an endless Kitchen Police. At worst, -he'd be exiled to Earth. - -That meant exposure to bacteria, a gradual contamination till he'd been -exposed to the full dirtiness in which earthlings daily lived, till -he'd equipped himself with antibodies and a Stinker's immune-response. - -The Service Police would be after him soon. Once out of sight of the -Barracks, he turned his jeep off the road, onto one of the numberless -paths used by camelopard riders on their trips between Stinker -villages. He was headed upgrade, now, toward the mountains. On either -side of the jeep were the fields of sunflowers, silent in the twilight -calm. In a few moments the cool winds from the sea would flow into the -land, stirring the billions of heart-shaped sunflower-leaves into the -whisper that filled the evening and early-morning hours of Kansas. - -His heart filled with hope and hopelessness, feeling like a happy -suicide, Hartford sang to himself as the sunflower heads and leaves -tattooed against his windshield. _Pioneers! O Pioneers_ he sang, the -anthem of the Axenites, the fellowship he was leaving forever: - - Lo, the darting bowling orb! - Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets, - All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, Pioneers! - O pioneers! - -The crunching of the jeep over the narrow track, the whipping of the -plants against the vehicle and his singing all combined to drown out -whatever noise it was the girl might have made. Hartford didn't see her -till the jeep, rearing like a startled pony, climbing the flank of the -camelopard the girl rode, tossed him into a tangle of green stalks and -golden flowers. - - - VII - -The riding camelopard bleated only a moment and was dead, its great -neck broken by the jeep's charge. The girl, thrown clear, was up before -Hartford. - -A scarlet bird circled the scene of the wreck, the dead beast, the -stalled jeep, the man and the woman sprawled by the side of the path. -"_Miyo! Miyo! Miyo!_" cried the blabrigar: "See! See! See!" - -Hartford rose and went to the girl, who was rubbing the shoulder she'd -landed on. She stared, but didn't back away. "_Kinodoku semban_," -he said very carefully: _a thousand-myriad pardons_. His bitcher, -unfortunately, was set on full volume; his words of comfort blatted at -the girl with parade-ground force. She put her hands over her ears. - -The blabrigar above them, impressed by Hartford's stentorian voice, -circled repeating "_Kinodoku semban_" over and over, till the girl -called it down to rest quietly on her shoulder. The girl spoke to the -bird, which stared at her lips with his head cocked to one side, an -attentive student. She repeated four times the same message. The bird -nodded, and repeated the phrase to her. "Yuke!" the girl said. The -blabrigar spread its scarlet wings and flew up. It circled twice, then -headed north, up into the mountains. Of the girl's message Hartford had -understood only the native word for camelopard: _giraffu_. His Kansan -was inadequate. He could understand it only if it were slowly spoken. - -Hartford tongued his bitcher's controls to a conversational level. -"_Kinodoku semban_," he repeated, bowing. - -The girl knelt beside the dead camelopard and stroked its head, over -the central, vestigal horn. She looked up at Hartford with tears in her -eyes. "_Tonshu_," Hartford said: I bow my head. - -"_Anata we dare desu ka?_" she asked. - -"Lee Hartford," he replied. - -The girl spoke slowly. "I am named Take." She knit her hands before her -and bowed. "Forgive my bad actions," she said. - -"The fault is entirely mine, Takeko," Hartford replied. He was sorry, -of course, to have killed the girl's steed and to have subjected her to -danger; he was very glad to have met her. Takeko wore what must have -been the Kansan riding costume: short trousers and a jacket woven of -floss from retted sunflower stalk, dyed a golden brown. Most curious, -he thought, was her perfume; mild, flowerlike, slightly pungent. The -smell of this lovely Stinker belied the trooper epithet. - -Then it hit him. - -The filters of a safety-suit remove, together with all the dust -of the ambient air, all its character, including odor. The clean, -characteristic smells of the Barracks, together with the bland -spit-and-sweat odors of a long-worn safety-suit, were all an Axenite -came in contact with. - -If he were able to smell the outside world, it could only be because -his gnotobiotic security was compromised. - -Hartford inspected his safety-suit, peering where he could and twisting -and feeling the surfaces he couldn't see. Takeko laughed. She reached -across his shoulder and lifted a flap of torn fabric, ripped loose when -Hartford had flown from his jeep. - - * * * * * - -His panic would have been unmanly in a normal human; but Hartford all -his life had been impressed with the horror of contamination. He ran -blindly, though he knew that his deepened breathing was drawing the -germ-laden air of Kansas deeper into his lungs. He ran through lanes of -sunflowers, flailing his arms, into the darkness, away from the alien -girl, away from the fear of going septic. He ran and stumbled and fell -and ran again. All his life he'd been warned of the consequences of -becoming infected with the bacteria against which he had no defenses. -Now he was so infected. - -When Hartford fell the last time it was for sheer lack of wind. - -He opened his helmet and tossed it aside. Dead already, he could lose -nothing by making himself comfortable for dying. He shivered. The chill -of infection? No, the night was cool. He looked about him in the light -of the sky of stars. The fields were below him, rustling in a million -private conversations as the breeze filtered through them. It was a -lovely place to die, here on the crest of a hill. - -Hartford lay back and stared into the curtain of stars that rippled -above him. Perhaps he wouldn't wake, he thought. With this thought he -slept. - -The sunlight stung his eyes. He sprang to his feet, then bent and -groaned. Sore. He'd slept on naked soil, packed hard by the hillcrest -winds. He stretched his hard-bedded muscles. For a dead man, he felt -good. The alien bacteria and viruses within him were establishing -beachheads, multiplying their platoons to companies, their companies to -battalions. By the time they'd reached division-strength, he thought, -he'd be well aware of the invasion. - -Meanwhile, breakfast. - -He opened a package of field-rations, squeeze-tube beans. He inserted -the nozzle of the tube into his mouth and fed himself a dollop of -the stuff. It felt strange to eat directly from the tube, not having -inserted the adjutage into his helmet-opening to be sterilized first. -Being septic saved a lot of time. - -He finished the squeeze-tube beans and was thirsty. Down at the base -of his hill was a little stream. Hartford thoughtfully peeled off -his safety-suit. Dressed only in his shorts, shirtless, barefoot and -tender, he made his way down to the water. - -It was delicious. - -Did bacteria impart that brisk taste? Hartford wondered. So far -committed to contamination that nothing mattered, he shed his shorts -and dived into the stream. It was chilly, delightful. He returned to -shore and lay on the grass for the sun to toast him dry. He began to -relax.... The girl giggled. - - * * * * * - -Hartford snatched up his shorts and pulled them on. It was Takeko. She -was afoot, wearing the costume he'd last seen her with; but she had -strapped on her back a leather wallet. A blabrigar sat on Takeko's -shoulder. She spoke to it, repeating her message four times and -listening to the bird repeat once. Then she shooed the scarlet bird -away, to carry north the message that Hartford had been found. - -"I laugh. Excuse me," she said. "But you funny." Takeko patted her -head. Hartford understood. Shaved by the Decontamination Squad, he was -bald and eyebrowless, entirely lacking in body hair. He smiled. "_Hai._" - -"Your skin is like the hide of a _giraffu_," she said. - -Hartford looked down at his freckled arm. True, the pattern of brown -against pink was very like the reticulations of a camelopard. "Where -did you learn to speak Standard, Takeko?" - -"Pia-san talked to my cousin, and I listened," she said. "Kansannamura -was my home. Pia often visited us." Hartford, who after Nasty Nef was -the man most responsible for the burning of Takeko's village, was -silent. "When your _jeepu-kuruma_ hit my _giraffu_, I think you are -Renkei," the Kansan girl said. "Renkei is my cousin. He go to see what -can be done." - -"Renkei is dead," Hartford told her. - -"_Iie!_" Takeko pressed her hands against her face. "You strangers are -quick to kill, to burn, to sweep away." - -"I did not wish him harmed," Hartford said. - -"You pink folk will not be happy until all our people are dead and -under the ground," Takeko moaned. "You will not be pleased until you -can march across our graves." - -"That is not so." - -"Pia-san said it," Takeko said. "He said that your Nef is a master of -the Brotherhood, which wishes death to all people who do not wear glass -heads." - -"If that is true, I am no longer a part of it, Takeko-san," Hartford -said. "I have left Nef and his Barracks. I am a dead man." - -"You will come with me," Takeko said. "You will not be dead for many -years, unless Nef and his Brotherhood kill you." She looked into the -sky, where a red bird was circling. It hawked down to her shoulder and -sat there, its head tilted to her. "Takeko," the girl said to the bird. -With this key to unlock its message the blabrigar spilled its rote. -Hartford recognized a word or two of the bird-o-gram, but not the full -sense of the message. - -Takeko reached into the pocket of her short trousers for a few -zebra-striped sunflower-seeds. The blabrigar picked these daintily -from her hand, using its beak like a pair of precise tweezers, pinching -up one seed at a time and cracking it. "There will soon come _giraffu_ -to take us to a further village," Takeko said. "You are to speak to -our chief men there, to tell them what happened to Renkei, why he was -killed in the Stone House." - -"I may not live through this day," Hartford said. "It is not easy to -explain. We wear the 'glass head' to keep out your air. It is deadly, -_doku_, to us. Do you understand, Takeko?" - - * * * * * - -"You may be tired, having slept on the old bones of the hill," she -said. "You may be hungry, having eaten only the squeezings of your -metal sausages. But you are not hurt badly, nor are you old, Lee-san. -Why should you die?" - -"You cannot understand," Hartford said. He spoke more to himself than -to the girl. "The medicine here is certainly primitive. You have no -concept of the biological nature of disease. Tell me, Takeko-san, do -you Kansans know anything of the very, very small...." - -"Microscopic?" Takeko asked. - -"Piacentelli did a splendid job of teaching you the Standard -language," Hartford said. He looked up and down Takeko's trim, just -post-adolescent figure in frank appraisal, jealously wondering whether -Gabe could have achieved his remarkable pedagogical results by means -of the pillow-book method of linguistic instruction so popular with -soldiers of occupation in every time and climate. That thought, he -rebuked himself, was unworthy of Pia's memory. In any case, his friend -had conducted his researches wearing that guarantee of chastity, a -safety-suit. - -"We'll have to wait an hour or so until the _giraffu_ come," Takeko -said. - -She unstrapped the wallet from her back and unpacked it on the grass -at the edge of the little stream. The Kansan girl took out a coil of -line, spun from the stalk of the sunflower, and a bronze hook. "We will -feed the gentleman from the Stone House," she said. Hartford watched -with amusement as she baited the hook with a bit of the bread from -her knapsack, twirled the line about her head and dropped it into the -center of the stream. "This place has many fish," she said. "We will -not wait long before we eat." - -It took Takeko only ten minutes to have three seven-inch fish, so plump -and meaty-looking that not even a xenologist would have wasted time -studying them, lying on the grass. - -Hartford demanded equal time with the fishline, and discovered to -his gratification that the dough he pinched off the chapattis and -molded to the hook took the fancy of Kansas fish as well as Takeko's -offerings. With a sense of at last participating in the affairs of the -universe, he de-capitated and decaudated the six fish they ended with, -and gutted them with a rich delight in the juicy messiness of the task. - -Hartford and Takeko scissored the fillets in split twigs and roasted -them, like aquatic weenies, over a fire built from the pithy stalks -of dead sunflowers. The firepit, a saucer of scooped-out dirt, had -buried beneath it half a dozen of the swollen roots of sunflowers, each -wrapped in the cordiform, sharkskin-surfaced leaf of the parent plant, -to roast beneath the coals. - - * * * * * - -They seasoned their fish with _daikon_, a kind of horseradish; and -their plates were the fresh-baked, flat, un-leavened chappattis Takeko -had brought in her pack. The tubers, eaten from a fresh leaf-plate, -needed only butter. Takeko had this, too, churned of camelopard-milk -cream. Buds or flower-heads of the sunflower were eaten with sunflower -oil, like artichokes. "Your people have a good friend in the -sunflower;" Hartford remarked, wiping his lips. - -"With the golden flower and the golden _giraffu_, with the _take_-grass -and the good soil, we had a rich life here before you glass-headed -men came," Takeko said. "Now we are treated in our own villages like -rats to be driven out, in our fields as gnawing vermin. Why is your -Brotherhood so angry with us, Lee-san, who live in only a few places on -a wide world? Is there no law among the light-skinned people? We have -lived here, on the world you call Kansas, for many generations. We were -once of Earth, as were your grandfathers." - -"All humans were once of Earth," Hartford said. - -"If we are as much human as you," she said, "why does your Nef call us -_Hominids_? Is that a name to give a brother?" - -"It is better than _Stinker_," Hartford suggested. - -"_Hai!_ I tell you, Lee-san why you must re-name us. It is because men -do not kill men until they give their brother-enemy a monstrous name. -Why do you wish to kill us all?" she asked. - -"I'm not a member of the Brotherhood," Hartford said. "I'm only a man -who was born on Axenite. That means, until your beast and my jeep -collided, tearing my safety-suit, I was an animal uncontaminated by -microscopic life. These microscopic animals, Takeko, are deadly to an -Axenite." - -"You are not dead, though," Takeko suggested. "_Ne?_" - -"I've been breathing contaminated air for twelve hours," Hartford said. -"It's true. I cannot understand why I have no fever, no malaise, no -symptoms of pneumonia." - -Takeko giggled. "Forgive me," she said. "_Kinodoku semban_; but you -seem to be sorry to be alive." She was silent for a moment, listening. -She pointed north. "My father will appear with our _giraffu_ soon," she -said. "I can hear them." - -Takeko's father rode up a moment later, an unbent man of seventy. He -sat astride his camelopard, a comic quadruped little better designed as -a beast of burden than an ostrich, with as much dignity as though his -steed were an Arabian stallion. His name, Takeko said, was Kiwa-san. -The old man bowed from his saddle when his daughter introduced Hartford. - - * * * * * - -At Kiwa-san's command the two _giraffu_ he'd brought along on -lead-reins spread their legs to bring their down-sloping backs a scant -four feet from the ground. The saddles, with dangling, boot-like -gambadoes in place of ordinary stirrups, seemed inaccessible to -Hartford. "Watch me," Takeko told him. She took a short run up behind -her _giraffu_ and, with a movement like a leap-frog hurdle, flipped -herself up into the saddle. - -Hartford stepped back, ran and leaped. He succeeded only in banging -his shoes into the right sifle-joint of his mount and in flipping -himself to the ground. In the interest of haste, grace was abandoned. -Hartford monkey-crawled up a sturdy cane of bamboo growing nearby and, -as Kiwa-san maneuvered his beast, stepped over into the saddle. - -"I'd better take my safety-suit and helmet," he said. "If the troopers -should find it, they could follow our trail." - -"_Hai!_" Takeko said, agreeing. She leaped from her _giraffu_, packed -the safety-suit and helmet onto the beast, and remounted. "We will -now go to Yamamura," she said. Old Kiwa spoke, and she translated: -"We must move quickly and with care," she said. "My father heard an -_hikoki_--how do you say?" she asked, raising and lowering her hand. - -"A veeto-platform," Hartford said. "I mustn't be seen, Takeko. Colonel -Nef would use my presence as an excuse to kill any of your people -around me." - -The ride, though cautious, was indeed demanding. Hartford felt tendons -stretch he didn't know he had. Muscles were bruised from his instep to -his upper back, and the skin was chafed away from his inner thighs as -though he'd been riding an unplaned plank. He understood, well before -the journey to the mountain village was over, the importance of that -lifetime exercise, best begun by riding young, known to generations -of horsemen as "stretching the crutch." He swore to himself that his -future transportation, if he had a future through which to transport -himself, would be by boots or wheeled vehicle. - -The three of them were following no clear path. Kiwa led. Hartford -noted that their course took them along the contours of streams, on the -borders of fields, through contrasting background that would make their -presence less obvious from the air. - -They were in a thicket of bamboo when the veeto-platform did appear. - -The instant they heard its whistle, Kiwa spoke a sharp word. He and -his daughter slipped from their mounts, loosed the brow-bands of -their camelopards and unlocked their girths, tossed off the saddles -and dangling gambadoes and gave the animals each a sharp slap on the -rump that sent them crashing through the bamboo. They helped Hartford -unsaddle and send his beast off in another direction, and lay down in -the direction the late-morning sun dialed the shadows of the bamboo -stems. - -If the veeto-pilot saw the _giraffu_ now, they were saddleless and -innocent. - -The downdraft of the veeto-platform puffed dust up from the ground -around them, and pressed down the leafy tops of the bamboo like a great -hand stroking across the thicket. Hartford, aware of the way his bald -head and pink face would stand out, dusted his hands with the soil and -laced his dusty fingers over his scalp. - -The platform passed almost directly over them, shooting fragments of -dust and bamboo-duff into every particle of clothing, into ears and -eyes and nostrils, with the whirl-wind of its passage. - - - VIII - -It took them half an hour to recover their _giraffu_ and saddle up -again, but Hartford did not regret the delay. - -Aboard the grotesque mount again, he groaned. To mask the misery of his -unaccustomed pounding he paid scientific attention to the landscape, -the gait of the camelopards, the leather of the saddles, and the -posture and person of Takeko--this last by far the most effective of -his analgesic thoughts. - -They rode on an ancient piedmont, among the foothills of a worn-down -mountain-range. The leather of their saddles and gambadoes was, by its -pattern, obviously tanned camelopard-hide. Hartford was certain that -this pattern would by the end of their journey be an indelible part of -his own hide. The _giraffu_, remarkably swift and easy-moving over the -rugged, heavily grown terrain, ambled, moving both legs on the same -side together. And Takeko was lovely. - -Hartford decided to essay his Kansan. He practiced his question: "Is -Yamamura far from here?" mentally, moving his lips, until he was sure -he'd mastered the phrasing. Then he addressed Old Kiwa. "_Yamamura wa -koko kara toi desu ka?_" - -Kiwa smiled, and rattled off an answer much too brisk for Hartford to -catch. He pointed ahead and up. "He says we must go through the pass, -under the Great Buddha," Takeko explained. "We have only an hour to go." - -"_Arigato_," Hartford said, suppressing a moan. Another hour! - -The pass Kiwa had spoken of loomed ahead. It was quite narrow, and -walled on either side by the almost perpendicular flanks of mountains, -shoulder to shoulder. Kiwa went first, for the cleft could only be -negotiated in single file. Takeko followed her father, and Hartford -took up the rear. In the ravine it was dark. The camelopards, sensing -their mangers up ahead, paced more quickly. Suddenly the canyon was -light, the walls spreading further apart here. - -Far up on Hartford's right, seated on a shelf left from some ancient -avalanche, was a gigantic figure cast of a coppery metal, green now -against the granite wall. "Who is that?" Hartford called to Takeko. - -"It is our _Daibutsu_," Takeko said. "It is the _Amida Buddha_, the -Lord of Boundless Light." - -"Do you worship him?" - -Takeko smiled and shook her head. "We worship not any man, but a Way," -she said. "_Butsudo_--the Way of the Buddha. We are nearly to the -village now, Lee-san." - -"I thank the Lord Buddha for that," Hartford said, bowing from his -saddle toward the great bronze image. - - * * * * * - -Yamamura nestled in a fold of the high mountains. The fields that -supported the village, its population now doubled by the refugees from -Kansannamura, were tucked here and there on narrow ledges, watered by -bamboo flumes that stole water from the mountain streams. The crop of -greatest importance was the ubiquitous sunflower, supplier of bread and -soap ash, of cloth and bath oil, birdseed and writing paper. Bamboo -grew in clefts and shelves too slight for cultivation. This was the -wood for tools, the water pipe, the house wattles and, in its youth, -the salad of the people, the only wood eaten in its native state. There -were also carrots, beets and tiny plum-trees, and the horseradish, -_daikon_. Yamamura was a lovely place, Hartford decided. - -It was twenty hours from the moment of his contamination that Hartford -dismounted. He moved into the house Kiwa invited him to with as much -tenderness as though he'd been carefully bastinadoed and flayed. He -was, nonetheless, free of febrile symptoms. He had breathed Kansan -air, had eaten its fish and drunk its water; he'd spoken with a Kansan -native and had lain with his face in Kansan dust. He was still as -healthy as any Axenite, never before in the saddle, would be after a -five-hour ride. - -Kiwa's wife and Takeko's mother was a little woman named Toyomi-san, -dressed in brightly patterned garments a good deal more formal than her -daughter's jacket and shorts. Toyomi-san spoke no Standard, but she -made quite clear to Hartford his welcome. She led him into a large, -steam-filled room, where she indicated he was first to wash himself -then soak, then dry and dress in the clean clothing she'd laid out for -his use. - -The soaking water was very hot, and very welcome. Hartford sat in the -copper-bottomed tub, his muscles hard and sore, until he felt the very -marrow of his bones had cooked. He stepped from the tub then and dried -gently, easy on his chafed back and legs. - -"The oil will help," Takeko said, slipping a screen shut behind her. -She had bathed and brushed her black hair free of the bamboo-thicket -dust, and wore now a brilliant, silk _kimono_ of the sort her mother -was wearing. - -Hartford held the towel at his waist. - -"Excuse me," he said. - -Takeko giggled. "Are you unique, Lee-san, that you must hide yourself? -Lie down on the cot, and I will make you comfortable." - -Wondering greatly at the folkways of Kansas, but determined to commit -no gaffe that would imperil his relations with this girl, Hartford -lay face down on the mat-covered cot. Takeko removed the _tenugi_ -towel with which he'd modestly draped himself and gently stroked -sweet-scented sunflower-seed oil into his macerated skin. Using the -radical border of her hands, which were remarkably strong, Takeko -coaxed the muscles to relax with effleurage; and she further softened -the clonic hardness with a kneading motion. "This is," she said, -working her thumb-knuckles up his spinal-column as though telling the -beads of his vertebrae, "one of the good things my ancestors brought -from earth." - -"_Yoroshiku soro_," Hartford grunted agreement. "It is good." - - * * * * * - -Half an hour later, his skin soothed with oil and his muscles suppled -by Takeko's massage, Hartford joined the family for supper. The Kansans -used paired sticks for eating. Hartford, who'd not yet been introduced -to the skill of using these _o-hashi_, and who was too hungry to -practice now, was given a metal spoon with which to eat. - -When they'd finished their meal, several elder Kansans entered -Kiwa-san's house. Each bowed to Hartford, who, bald-headed, his feet -socked into unfamiliar _geta_ and wearing mitten-toed stockings, bowed -in return. The newcomers each spoke some Standard, but it was obvious -that Takeko was the most fluent of them all. "Pia-san taught Renkei; -Renkei taught me," the girl explained. "I was the second-best speaker. -It would be better if Renkei were here." - -"I regret his death more deeply than I can tell you," Hartford said. -"Renkei and Pia my friend are both dead now. This is what Renkei told -me: _aru-majiki koto_, a thing that ought not to be." - -The Kansans, seated on the cushions about the room, nodded. "Do you -know, Lee-san, the greatest law of life?" Takeko asked. - -"You said, beside the stream where we fished, that men do not kill -men," Hartford answered. "But they do." - -"It is an ideal we have more nearly than the glass-heads," one of -the Kansan elders said. "In the past four days, Renkei has died, and -Pia-san. In the years before you Latecomers came to build the Stone -House and cut roads and practice making holes in paper at a distance, -no man died here at the hand of another." - -"We cannot teach the glass-heads our way when they walk about only -with guns, when they live in the Stone House none of us can enter -without dying, when they look at us with glass bowls over their faces -and hate in their hearts," Takeko said. - -"The hate is hardly needful," Hartford said. "But the helmets must -remain if Axenites are to live on Kansas." - -"Do you live?" Takeko asked quietly. - -"I do," Hartford said. "It puzzles me." - -"Does it not puzzle you that none of us harbors open sores, or coughs -up phlegm, or dies of fever?" Kiwa asked, speaking through his -daughter's intermediation. - -"I had not thought of that," Hartford admitted. "I have never before -lived so close to Stinkers." Embarrassed, he stopped short. "I'm -sorry," he said. "_Shitsurei shimashita_." - -"You meant us no discourtesy," Takeko said. "Think, Lee, of the word -you used. Do we indeed stink?" - -"No," Hartford said. "It's strange. I've been told all my life of the -rot and fermentation within ordinary mammals, and of the evil smells -elaborated by these processes. But you, and all of Kansas, stink no -more than Axenites do. You have, as we, the mulberry odor of saliva, -the wheat smell of thiamin, the faint musk oil of the hair. Even your -camelopards smell sweet." - - * * * * * - -The girl laughed. "If you think all Kansas a place of sweet perfumes, -smell this, Lee-san," she said. She took a covered dish and opened it. -"This is _takuwan_," she said. A smell strong as that of limburger -cheese made itself known in the room. "It is pickled turnip, made in -the old manner of our island forefathers on Earth." - -"Whew!" Hartford said. "There is the true Stinker of Kansas." - -"Pia-san learned much from the bad-smelling _takuwan_," Takeko said. -"His wife knew about the small stink-makers, these bacteria; she was -a user of microscopes. She looked for them in the air of Kansas, and -in our soil. Pia-san went even further. He took drops of our blood and -other things to test." - -"Tell our guest, Take-chan, what Pia found," Old Kiwa told his daughter. - -"_Hai, Otosan._" The girl turned to Hartford. "In our bodies there are -no mischief-makers of the sort Earth-people know. There are not even -those juices Pia-san called 'footprints of the bugs.'" - -"He must have meant you have no bacterial antibodies," Hartford said. -"That explains the whole package," he went on, with growing excitement. -"Why I'm alive without my safety-suit. What Piacentelli went outside -to find. And, when he found it, why he unsuited himself, knowing -this world as pure as Titan. You're Axenites, you Kansans! You're as -germ-free as the troopers." - -"The whole truth is less simple," said the lean old man who'd been -introduced to Hartford as Yamata, the calligrapher. - -"Does the rubble of your forest-floors never turn to mould, then?" -Hartford asked. "Do the bodies of your buried fathers lie uncorrupted -in their graves?" - -"Of course not," Takeko said. "If that happened, we would be buried -ourselves in unmouldered leaves. The bodies of our ancestors would be -stacked about us, unchanging, like logs for the charcoal-burners. Our -soil would die, and all men would die with it, if dead things did not -crumble to make new soil." - -"Show our friend the hero of our epic," the calligrapher told her. - -"_Hai._" Takeko stood and went to another room, going through the -ritual of kneeling to slide the door screen, standing, kneeling, -standing, with a grace that made the kimono she wore the loveliest of -garments. She brought to the small table at the center of the room a -heavy object wrapped in a yellow silk _tenugui_. Near this on the table -she placed a small lamp, fueled with sunflower-seed oil. She lighted -the lamp and uncovered the instrument she'd brought in. - -It was the microscope Piacentelli had taken from the Barracks on his -fatal expedition. - -Takeko dipped a chopstick into a dish and placed it beneath the -objective of the microscope. "We shall look at a spot of evil-smelling -_takuwan_-juice," she said. "There is light enough. Make it fit your -eyes, Lee-san; and you will know the secret of Jodo, this world you -call Kansas." - - - IX - -Hartford knelt over the microscope in the yoga-posture called for by -its being so near the floor and tried to adjust the instrument as he -remembered having seen it done. He focused the coarse adjustment of -the 'scope till he saw spots darting about the fluid Takeko had placed -on the slide. He nailed the spots down with a gentle hand on the fine -adjustment. - -The juice of the pickled turnip was aswim with tiny bodies that looked -like tadpoles. "What are they?" he asked, peering into the micro-world -below him. - -"Pia-san named them monads," said the carpenter, white-bearded Togo. -"We all have them in our bodies. You have them now in yours. Our soil -is alive with them. They chew the chaff of our fields into black loam; -they turn to dust the flesh of our fathers. They cause turnips to -become _takuwan_." - -Hartford rocked back from the microscope to sit again on his heels. -"You have no disease, no benign bacterial flora and of course no -bacterial antibodies. Instead you have this whip-tailed animalcule, -this monad. Is this correct?" - -"So Pia-san said," Takeko agreed. "He said that the monad is a -jealous beast. It is a tiger among the pygmies, he said. No little -nuisance-makers can exist on Kansas; the monad would eat them in a -rage." - -"The ultimate antibiotic," Hartford said. "A micro-organism that -functions as a saprophyte, a soil-former and a scavenger. Besides all -this, it's a universal phagocyte, policing up the human environment -inside and out, to keep it clean of any other microscopic organisms. -The monad fills every niche in the micro-ecology of the planet." - -"This is what Pia-san and his _okusama_, poor dead girl, discovered," -Takeko said. "Renkei entered the Stone House to tell you that we do -not stink, that we are not dangerous. Three people have died to tell -this--and Nef still does not know." - -"I think he may know it after all," Hartford said. "He knows about the -monad, and fears it. This little bug means that every member of the -human race can join his damned Brotherhood. A crew of monads in his gut -would make every man on Stinker Earth a dignotobiote, germ-free except -for his housekeeping protozoa." - -"Until Pia-san told us," Yamata said, "we knew nothing except that we -lived longer than our ancestors had. We knew that we did not suffer -from the strange tirednesses the books told of, ills caused by the -little animals. We did not know that the smallest natives of this -planet had made of us their fortresses." - -"If I could only get past Nasty Nef to tell this to the Axenites," -Hartford said. - -"_Ron yori shoko_," Kiwa-san said. Takeko translated for her father. -"He says, Proof is stronger than argument." - -"Indeed," Hartford agreed. "But how do I prove to the troopers that the -monad sweeps Kansas cleaner than their Barracks floors?" - -"As Pia-san tried to," Takeko said. "He removed his glasshead and his -silken suit. He breathed our air and ate our food. He wanted to prove -that he could live, but he was killed before he could. Now you have -made that proof. Your brothers of the Stone House must undress of their -silken suits and come among us, Lee-san." - - * * * * * - -"That they will not," Hartford said. "They are certain they will die if -they inhale a breath of Kansas air, chew a bite of Kansas food, drink -your clear stream water. I was certain I would die when my safety-suit -was torn: remember our meeting, Takeko-san? It will not be easy to -persuade my brothers and sisters in the Barracks to forget their fears. -We are so sure, we Axenites, that contamination will kill us that -we'd rather dance with lightning and eat stones than walk this world -unprotected and eat its fruits." - -When Takeko had respoken these words to her father, the old man said -again: "_Ron yori shoko_." Proof is greater than argument. - -"Proof?" Hartford asked. "I am not proof enough to have a Regiment -of Axenites shed their safety-suits and declare the Kansans their -brothers. It would take years of lab work before the first of them -would walk suitless onto bug-dirt. We'd have to knock down the walls of -the Barracks and burn two thousand-odd safety-suits, before we'd have -the Axenite troopers here trapped into being guinea-pigs." - -"Each trooper carries the Stone House with him when he walks our -roads," the calligrapher remarked. "We have but to break through the -silken suit he wears to make a trooper know the garment isn't needed -here." - -"He'd die of fright," Hartford said. "I very nearly did. Besides, -each column of troopers, a squad or the Regiment, goes out with a -Decontamination Team. If a man becomes septic through some sort of -accident, he's hustled by a cleanup squad into a Decontamination -Vehicle for his shower, shave and shots. I know the process well," he -said, running his palm over his naked head. - -"_Ano ne_," Kiwa said. "Will this Decontamination-_kuruma_ house two -thousand men? Two hundred? Twenty?" - -"It will hold two or three troopers at once," Hartford answered. "We -have several of them, though." - -"_So ... ka?_" white-bearded Togo exclaimed. He leaned over to whisper -into the ear of Takeko's father, who nodded and smiled. - -Old Kiwa spoke, and Takeko interpreted. "We must surprise a group of -troopers," he said. "We must cause all their silken suits to be torn, -or all their glass heads shattered, at one time. It is so simple as -that." - -"Simple in all but the doing," said Yamata the calligrapher. He -picked up a brush and sketched on the mat before him a line of -trooper-silhouettes, a platoon, marching single-file. "How do we break -into all those Stone Houses at once?" he asked. - -Hartford's face was pale. "We could use grenades, perhaps," he said. -"Or bombs. After all, these troopers we speak of are no more than my -family, my village, my people. I may of course be expected to cooperate -in their destruction." - - * * * * * - -Takeko reached over and took his hand, then dropped it. "_Ano ne!_ -You do not understand! We can no more injure your brothers than you -can, Lee-san. We may not harm any living person. Forgive us. You -misunderstand us. We are bound, Lee-sensei, by _Butsudo_: the Peaceful -Path of the Lord Buddha." She bowed toward him, her hands clasped -together, her head touching the _tatami_. - -"It is my fault if I have misunderstood," Hartford said. The men were -staring, Takeko's eyes were filled with tears, the room was silent. "I -do not know you well. I did not know you do not kill." - -"Let me tell you, then," Takeko said, rising to sit beside him. "Our -people, who once lived on islands in the greater sea of Earth, were -folk mighty in battle. Their pride was named the Way of the Warrior, -which is called _Bushido_. Their loveliest flower, the _sakura_ or -cherry-blossom, they made the symbol of the warrior, so highly did they -hold his calling. - -"After their villages had been crushed many times in war, our ancestors -vowed forever to abandon _Bushido_, the warrior's path, and to place -their feet in the path of the Lord Buddha, called _Butsudo_. This was -many years ago, before any man had ventured into space, before our -ancestors found this world you call Kansas. When they came here, they -came in peace. And they named this place _Jodo_, which we still call -it. It means the Pure Land, where men are just. And all justice is -built on a single law. No man shall take man's life." - -"I spoke of the Axenite Brotherhood," Hartford said. "These men are -a group of our leaders--Colonel Nef is one; he invited me to join -him--who have decided that Stinker humanity must go. They're dedicated -men, prepared to extinguish all the rest of mankind, to sterilize Earth -and reseed it as a gnotobiotopic Paradise. Nef has, I fear, already -killed three people to this end. - -"You who cannot kill will face an enemy trained in killing," he went -on. "Your camelopard-mounted messengers will meet veeto-platforms with -machine-guns. Your peaceful words will be drowned out by the roar of -Dardick-rifles. How can you hope to live if you will not kill?" - -"If the choice were death or killing, Lee-san, we would gladly die," -Takeko said. "We have a saying, _Muriga toreba dori ga hikkomu_. When -might takes charge justice withdraws. We will not kill, and neither -will we be defeated." - -Yamata the calligrapher addressed Hartford. "How badly torn must -a safety-suit be, to make necessary the wearer's going into the -purification cart?" he asked. - -"Only so much as the point of a pin would make would be enough," -Hartford said. - -"We have to drive pins into several dozens of men's clothing at one -time," Yamata said. He smiled. "So phrased, the mountain does not seem -too tall to be climbed." - -"It would be difficult to puncture the safety-suits without hurting the -wearers," Hartford said. "Few armies are so solicitous." - -"_Butsudo_ forbids us to kill men," Takeko said. "It does not deny us -the right, in pointing them to the path of knowledge, to jab them a -bit." She smiled at Hartford. - - * * * * * - -"How do you propose to do this jabbing?" he asked. "I remind you all, -if you need reminding, that our troopers travel with Dardick-rifles and -machine-guns, with rocket-mounted jeeps and veeto-platforms from which -bombs can be dropped." - -Kiwa spoke. "We are like a bear after honey," he said. "We are hungry, -but do not wish to taste the stings of the guardians of the hive. We -must surprise them." - -Hartford, his knees stiff with kneeling, his backside sore from the -camelopard-saddle despite the expert massage, got up to pace the floor. -"We need a needle-gun of some sort," he said. - -"No gun," insisted white-bearded Togo. - -"It need have only slight power," Hartford said. "It would throw -its projectile only forcefully enough to penetrate the fabric of a -safety-suit." - -"It has been so many generations since we have been soldiers, we know -nothing of weapons," Yamata-san said. He wet a fine brush with _sumi_, -Chinese ink, and sketched rapidly. "I remember seeing pictures of -_Bushi_ carrying a sort of throwing-sticks with pointed ends in pockets -on their backs, and flinging them like little spears with a kind of -one-stringed lute." - -Hartford stared at the calligrapher's drawing, then exclaimed. "Of -course! A bow and arrow." - -Takeko inspected the sketch. "The man who threw the stick is standing," -she said. "Could we stand against troopers?" - -"A man would have to stand exposed to shoot an arrow," Hartford -admitted. "The Dardick-guns would mow us down before we'd punctured a -single safety-suit." He paced up and down the room, the only trained -warrior there, trying to devise his unkilling weapon. - -"We have wine, Lee-san," Takeko said. "Please sit and drink." - -Hartford, bemused with his problem, folded his legs onto his cushion -and lowered himself gently. Takeko's mother appeared with tiny cups of -hot wine, _sake_. Hartford bowed with the others and sipped. The stuff -was good, rather like a dry sherry. - -Takeko bowed to leave the room, returned, bowed and commenced playing -a tune with the instrument she'd brought in. It was a flute made of -bamboo, with a high-pitched, pure sound Hartford found quite pleasant. -He frowned, though, after a moment. Takeko took the pipe from her lips. -"You do not enjoy my playing?" she asked. - -"What is that made of?" Hartford demanded. "Just bamboo, isn't it?" - -"_Hai, take_," Takeko agreed. "It is my name. _Take_--bamboo. This is -only a _shakuha-chi_, for very simple music." - -Hartford smiled and bowed toward Togo-san, the white-bearded carpenter. -"Sir," he said, "if we may have your advice, I believe Takeko-chan has -helped us find our weapon." - - - X - -The meeting broke up to adjourn to Togo-san's workshop. There was -bamboo there in plenty, and young men eager to help the ex-lieutenant -of Axenites in testing his device. As the week wore on, young Kansans -appeared from other villages, called by blabrigars and messengers on -camelopard-back to join the army that was to make brothers and sisters -of the troopers of First Regiment. - -The blowgun Hartford finally established as his field model was some -two yards long, made of bamboo bored through the joints and polished -smooth within, of a caliber somewhat less than the diameter of a man's -little finger. Though the bamboo-tube was somewhat flexible, Togo-san -and his apprentices were able to bind a front sight to the muzzle, -allowing somewhat greater accuracy that could be obtained by pointing -and hoping. - -The dart was about the length of a man's hand. Its point was a sliver -of bamboo, sharp as steel, entirely sharp enough to penetrate the tough -material of a safety-suit if puffed from the blowgun with enough force. - -All the craftsmen of the village became arms-makers. They drilled -bamboo, polished the bore with abrasive-coated cord, fitted on the -sights and tested their blowguns against the targets. Hundreds of darts -were turned out for practice, and the most perfect were saved for the -battlefield itself. The blowgunners began their drill, shooting from -a prone position at targets as far as ten yards off, as great a range -as amateurs could be expected to shoot with accuracy in the short time -these had for practice. - -To fire the blowgun, the dart was wrapped in a bit of silk of -sunflower-stalk-fluff, so that it would fit tightly into the tube. The -puff that sent it on its way had to be sharp and hard. Achieving the -proper slap of air took more practice even than aiming. - -Hartford became every day a better horseman, or rather camelopardist. -He in fact rejoiced in opportunities to leap-frog into his saddle, fit -his feet and legs into the leather gambadoes, and go hailing off into -the hills to recruit men and material. He carried with him the radio -he'd salvaged from his safety-suit, and could from time to time pick up -First Regiment transmissions. The bitcher from his suit was useful in -training large numbers of recruits on the blowgun range, and would be -used when the Kansan guerrillas took the field against the troopers. -He was picking up the language rapidly, now. He had to use Takeko's -services as interpreter less and less. Her usefulness declined not -a bit, though, as the girl became his first lieutenant in charge of -details. - -The band of expert puff-gunners was joined by a company of scouts. -These men and women skulked the hills afoot or astride camelopards, -spying out the programs of the Regiment. Having no radio to maintain -contact with Yamamura, each scout carried a pair of blabrigars, trained -to report to a specific person in its home village when given a -selected prompt-word. - -Yamata-san, the calligrapher, became a cartographer. He drew in -jet-black _sumi_ ink the contours of the mountains, greened in -the stands of bamboo, drew blue streams and broad brown fields of -sunflowers, till at last the map that filled the largest room in -Yamamura was almost as real as the Kansan soil it reflected. Walking -across this map in his _tabi_-stockinged feet, Hartford and the others -of Kansas Intelligence would move toy troopers, made of wood like -_kokeshi_-dolls, into the positions where the blabrigars reported -patrols to be. - - * * * * * - -The plan of battle of the Kansas forces was _yawara-do_, the Gentle Way -also called _judo_. They would wait till the enemy made a move they -could use, then they'd trip him up by re-directing his own strength. - -The move they most wanted the troopers to make was into the ravine that -led toward the village of Yamamura, the pass under the _Daibutsu_, the -huge bronze Buddha set there by their ancestors. In that ravine, under -the gaze of the Lord of Boundless Light, the Kansas forces would either -prevail against the invader and make him their brother by darts and -sweet reason, or they would all die in the attempt. - -The camelopards were stabled, ready as the steeds of any -march-patrolling cavalry troop. The dartsmen, and those of the women -who'd shown skill in handling the blowgun, were trained and eager. -The path through the pass had been memorized in infinite detail by -every one of the guerrillas. The squad of sappers responsible for -check-mating the troopers had prepared their levers, their blocks and -skids. Nothing remained now but to coax the enemy into the battlefield -of the Kansans' choosing. - -"Take out what's left of the safety-suit," Hartford ordered one of his -men. "Leave it here--" He stabbed a toe at the map they both stood on. - -"Would it be well for me to leave beside the torn and broken suit -signs of a fight?" asked the boy, Ito Jiro, son of Old Ito-san, the -knife-maker. "If the troopers are angry, they will be careless." - -"If only you believed in war, Jiro-chan, you'd make a fine warrior," -Hartford grinned. "Do it your way, and hurry back." - -Jiro placed the bait under the Regiment's nose early in the day, and -returned to Yamamura. It was midday when a blabrigar flew in from one -of the scouts posted to watch First Regiment's reaction. The bird -prated its message into the ear of its receiver. Troopers, a band -of fifty-odd, were scouring the hills to the west, following the -camelopard-hoofprints left by Jiro. Aiding them in their search was the -Regiment's veeto-platform, skimming, hovering, pouncing to pick up -clues. "They're on the scent," Hartford said. He turned again to Ito -Jiro, fleetest of the camelopard-riders. "Jiro-chan, lead them a chase -that will bring them to the ravine no sooner than the Hour of the Dog. -Be very cautious of the flying-thing; it can surprise you." - -"_Hai_," Jiro said, bowing. "The Hour of the Dog they will call upon -you near the _Daibutsu_." Ito-san the knife-maker watched his son -run toward the stables, the boy as excited as though he were going -to a festival rather than to face alone half a company of full-armed -Axenites. The blabrigars that would ride out with Jiro were trained to -report to the father. It would be a long afternoon for the old man, -Hartford thought. - -There was much to do before the scarlet bird came winging in from -Jiro's shoulder with the message that the trap was sprung. At the Hour -of the Monkey, four hours before the troopers were to be in ambush, -the first blabrigar flew in to report to Ito-san that the boy's mount -was winded, the enemy was drawing nearer the ravine, and that Jiro -was approaching the point of rendezvous where he would find a fresh -camelopard. Hartford ordered out two youths to join Jiro there in his -harassment of the foot-soldiers from Regiment. - -"It is time we take up our positions," he told his band of dartsmen. -"Let us go in hope." - - * * * * * - -Kiwa-san, Takeko's father, stepped forward to pronounce a benediction -upon the little company. "The Enlightened One, speaking at Rajagriha, -spake, saying: 'Remember one thing, O beloved disciples, that hatred -cannot be silenced by lies but by truth.'" - -The irregulars, heads bowed, replied, "Namu Amida Butsu," Glory to the -Amida Buddha! Hartford, though his training as an Axenite trooper had -left him as untouched by religions as by microbes, joined the prayer, -feeling that a degree of celestial interest in their stratagem would -not be unwelcome. - -The camelopardists vaulted into their saddles, adjusted their legs in -the boot-like gambadoes, and slapped the reins to head their _giraffu_ -toward the ravine where the endgame would be played. Hartford rode at -the head of the band, Takeko beside him. The others were dispersed at -wide interval, a precaution against the veeto-platform's swooping over -the horizon to surprise them en route. As they left Yamamura, the women -and children of the village were leaving from the other side, together -with the men too old to go out with the guerrillas. Yamamura was being -abandoned until the outcome of battle made itself known. - -The canyon that led up the mountain's groin had once been the deep-cut -bed of a stream. Collapse of over-beetling rock had formed a vault -over the stream, which was consequently underground. Soil had filtered -into the rocks, and bamboo had taken root. In result the lower ravine -was a green enfilade hardly wider than a hallway, the walls on either -side rising squarely from its floor. Well within the pass, set into the -left-hand wall as one rode down from Yamamura, was a niche very like -the _tokonoma_ or honored alcove of a Kansan home. In this alcove, some -fifty feet from the bottom of the pass, was set the great bronze image -of Buddha, the _Daibutsu_ of Kansas. - -Further down, below the _Daibutsu_-niche, the canyon became irregular. -Along either side, some ten feet from the floor, were ledges marking -the fracture planes along which ancient avalanches had calved. It was -from these shelves that the Kansans hoped to ambush the men from First -Regiment. The narrowness of the ravine, and the overhang of willow -trees--these growing in clefts of rock, fingering their roots down to -the subterranean stream--were enough, Hartford prayed, to prevent the -veeto-platform's pilot from spotting the Kansans lying in wait with -their blowguns. - -Hartford disposed his troops on the shelves, checking to see that -each man had a good field of fire and adequate cover. He glanced at -the sun, the Kansan timepiece. It was between six and eight in the -evening, he judged, the Hour of the Clock. He pressed his ear to the -radio-receiver. Short-range, the safety-suit radio picked up only -occasional orders from Axenite officers and non-coms. Twice Hartford -caught the name, "Lieutenant Felix." He smiled, feeling mixed emotions. -Felix had been his old Platoon Sergeant, and they would face each other -in an hour or so as enemies. Very likely the fifty troopers chasing Ito -Juro and his fellows toward the canyon included men of the Terrible -Third Platoon, his old command. Hartford checked to see his bitcher -worked and waited the arrival of the message-blabrigars with fresh news. - - - XI - -The first bird arrived a few moments before the radio began coming in -clear. - -"_Sakura_," Hartford said, this being the prompt-word to which the -blabrigar was trained to reply. - -"Fifty men, sir; fifty men, sir; on the way, sir; on the way, sir," the -bird chanted into Hartford's ear. He let the bird rest on his shoulder; -it would have to fly back to the scout who'd sent it soon, to tell him -to join the rest of them at the ambush-point. - -The sun was low in the sky. H-hour was near. The signals began coming -closer-together. "Saw one Stinker off your left flank, Miller.... Left -flank-guard reporting, sir. That Gook took off due east. Blabrigar on -his shoulder.... Lieutenant Felix here. Anything on the right flank?... -Nothing, sir.... Keep moving, Lieutenant." This last voice was the -colonel's. - -Hartford frowned. If Nasty Nef had come out in person, the game would -have to be played fast and dirty. - -Hartford set his bitcher low. "_Abunai yo!_" he said to his guerrillas, -sprawled out all along the ledge like figurines on a mantlepiece. "Be -cautious. Shoot your dart and get behind something. From now on, be -silent. The enemy is near." - -Takeko spoke: "You mean, Lee-chan, that our brothers draw near." The -other Kansans smiled. Some saluted, a gesture they'd observed among the -Axenites they'd been spying upon for the past few days. - -The first of the scouts came galloping up the gullet of the canyon. -Without a sound he signaled his watching comrades, invisible above him. -He made a circle with his hand, pointing up. That meant the Regiment's -veeto-platform was scouting ahead of the approaching Axenites. The -first man slapped his _giraffu_ to hasten it up the pass, past the -Daibutsu. Two other scouts, the foxes urging on the hounds, came -shouting into the canyon. Neither of them was Ito Jiro. As his name -signified, Jiro was the youngest son of Ito-san, the knife-maker. He -was the darling of the family. Where was he? Hartford worried. - -The radio, no longer masked by the rocks, was filled with information. -Hartford heard the veeto-pilot reporting: "They're headed up the gulch -past the big idol, sir," he said. "There's a village up there. That's -where they're probably headed. What do you want me to do, sir?" The -platform hovered over the canyon, unwilling to work its way into the -jagged, bamboo-and-pine-prickly fissure. - -"Keep in touch, Sky-Eye," Nef ordered. "We're coming right up." - -"Felix here, sir," the lieutenant reported. "We've got one of the Gooks -prisoner. He's just a kid. Doesn't seem to know a thing." - -"Hold him till we get someone who talks Stinker," Nef said. - -They got Jiro, Hartford thought. Damn. - - * * * * * - -The first of the troopers, an officer in the blue safety-suit, -spearheaded the column. "Nothing in sight yet," Felix's voice reported. -The officer signaled "Come on" with the sweep of his arm, and the -first squad of Axenites, dispersed as skirmishers, formed themselves -into a file to enter the canyon. The veeto-platform above kept the -foliage pressed down with its jet of air, stirring dust that both -improved concealment and threatened to trigger a sneeze from one of the -ambushers. - -Hartford peered cautiously over the edge of the shelf. He'd set his -forces far enough back in the canyon that the entire Axenite column -would be encased. "Sir, this is Felix," the radio said. "Do you agree, -sir, that I should place one squad in reserve till the rest get through -the gully?" - -"Peel off one squad and stay with it, Felix," Nef said. - -Felix's voice again: "Sir, it was our Lieutenant Hartford that the -Gooks got. I'd like to go in early." - -"Very well, Felix. Miller, hold your squad where it is. Disperse them -well, and wait my order before bringing them into the ditch. Confirm." - -"Done and done, sir," Miller snapped. - -The first two dozen troopers were in the canyon now, half the Axenite -force. Colonel Nef had shown the good sense to don an ordinary blue -safety-suit; his scarlet command-suit would have made him a splendid -target. Another squad entered, their Dardick-rifles held at the ready. -This would have to be quick, Hartford thought, or he'd lose his entire -corps at their first volley. He raised his hand, a signal visible only -to Takeko. She cupped her hands around her mouth and whistled the call -of the nightingale, "Ho-o-kekyo ... kekyo!" - -Before the echoed notes had died, the darts had found their targets. - -The radio was a clutter of undisciplined Damn's, cries of "I've been -hit!" One trooper, quicker than the rest, caught sight of a Kansan. He -raised his rifle and purred out a stream of Dardick-pellets. Yoritomo, -apprentice to the paper-maker, tumbled over the lip of the ledge, his -blowpipe falling with him like a jack-straw. There was a babble on the -radio. Nef overrode all other circuits to command: "At ease! Rake the -ledges with sustained fire." - -The canyon was blasted with a confetti of metal and spalled rock as the -troopers hosed the shelves with bullets. - -The angle made aiming impossible. But by luck and the intensity of the -barrage another man, the carpenter's son, had toppled to his death. - -"Sky-Eye! Get your butt down here!" Nef bellowed. "Decontamination -Team! Bring the vehicle to the mouth of the canyon. We've got men -septic." He tongued-on his bitcher and bellowed at the troopers. "On -the double, through the ditch." - -"_Yuke!_" Hartford shouted to the men far up the wall, in the niche -that held the Daibutsu. "Go!" - - * * * * * - -The sappers at the back of the giant bronze statue bent to their -levers. The tons of metal scooted slowly forward, hit the fat-smeared -edge of the shelf. As quietly as a man rocking forward in prayer, the -Daibutsu dropped head-down into the ravine. It struck the bottom with -the sound of a great gong, and rocked, unshattered, plugging the throat -of the canyon, standing as a dam. The hands of the Enlightened One were -held in the positions of Protection and of Giving; His face bore still -a quiet smile. About the head of the image a fountain of water burst, -squeezed up from the stream below. "_Namu Amida Butsu!_" Takeko said, -cuddled against Hartford, staring down. - -"Keep down," he said. He lifted his suit-radio and flicked on the -transmission-switch. "This is Lee Hartford, late of the First -Regiment," he announced. "The safety-suits of most of you have -been breached. There is not room for more than three of you in the -Decontamination Vehicle. You are not septic. I repeat: you have not -been contaminated. Kansas is as safe for you as the Barracks, or Titan, -or the M'Bwene planets, or in the cells at Luna. You do not need your -safety-suits on Kansas." - -"Find that man and gun the traitor down," Nef's voice demanded from the -speaker on his suit. - -"I am coming out unarmed," Hartford radioed. - -"Fire the moment you see him," Nef said. One of the officers had his -Dardick-pistol drawn, his eyes traversing the canyon walls. - -"No, sir!" Felix's voice snapped from his bitcher. "You can't shoot the -man till he's had a chance to speak." - -"Go to the rear at once, Private Felix," Nef bellowed. - -Felix pointed his handgun toward Nef. "No, sir," he replied. "Hartford -was my C.O., and an honest man. I'll hear him before I see him killed. -Or by my life, sir, I'll kill you after him." - -"This is treason," Nef said. - -"Drop your pistol, sir, or I'll have to try to shoot it from your hand. -Excuse me, sir," Felix said. - -Nef's gun dropped. - -"You all hear me?" Felix bitched. "Hear me out there, Miller?" There -was a chorus of "Roger!" Felix went on: "I'm going to unclamp my -helmet, troopers. I'm going to take off my safety-suit. That's how much -I trust Lee Hartford, troopers. The man who tries to stop Hartford -better begin with me." Felix opened his helmet, removed it, and placed -it on the rocks beside him. He went up to drink from the fountain that -sparkled about the head of the Daibutsu, cupping his hands. "It's good -water, men," he said. "Come on down, Hartford," he shouted through the -clear night air. - - * * * * * - -Lee Hartford twisted over the edge of the shelf, held himself by his -finger-tips, and dropped. He stood before his old comrades in arms -dressed as a country Kansan. His head bore only a stubble of hair, and -a scarlet blabrigar came down to settle familiarly on his shoulder. "I -caused your suits to be breached for good reason," he said, speaking -into the bitcher he'd recovered from his safety-suit. "If any of you -has a sore backside because of the darts my men sent at you, please -accept my apologies." Two more Axenites removed their helmets, and -stood grinning uncertainly at Hartford. "I have lived on Kansas for -two weeks, living like a native. I've breathed Kansan air, eaten their -wonderful food and even kissed one of their girls." There was a murmur -of laughter. "I'm as healthy as ever I was inside the Barracks," -Hartford said. "And I'm a good deal happier." - -There was louder laughter among the Axenites, and more helmets -opened. Hartford turned to look behind him. Takeko was hanging by her -finger-tips off the shelf, trying to work up the courage to drop. He -went over to stand below her. "Fall to me, darling," he said. "Fall -into my arms." - -"I hear, _shujin_, and obey," Takeko squeaked, and dropped. - -When Hartford released Takeko and turned to face the troopers, every -helmet but Nef's was opened. Half a dozen of the men had already -stripped to their Class B's. They had their faces tilted into the wind -that was sweeping up the gullet of the canyon, smelling for the first -time in their lives the scents of open nature, the spice of green -life in the air. They were seeing the Kansas sky; a mosaic of stars, -unfiltered by helmets. They were breathing air not humid with their -own perspiration. Holding Takeko's hand in his, Hartford walked up to -Felix. "You saved the day, old buddy," he said. - -There was the cough of a tapped-off Dardick-round. - -Felix fell. Colonel Nef, his pistol held at the hip, tilted it toward -Hartford. He looked startled for a moment, then dropped the pistol. -In his wrist were three blowgun-darts. Clustered across his chest -were half a dozen more. Hartford waved at the Kansans on the ledge. -"_Arigato!_" he shouted, and told them to come down. - -Two men had died in the engagement: Yoritomo the paper-maker and -Sannosuke the carpenter's son. Felix's thigh-bone had been broken by -Nef's shot; and Colonel Nef's right wrist would require attention. A -medical officer had been sent for from the Barracks to set Felix's leg. -The dead men were carried on litters up to the shelves and around the -fallen Daibutsu to the village. Hartford splinted his friend's broken -leg. "What now, Hartford?" Felix asked. - -"I suggest that you all become guests in Yamamura." - -"Done and done," Felix said. - -Takeko came up to lay a bunch of flowers on his chest. "They smell -sweet," she said. "Courage such as yours smells sweet in the nostrils -of heaven." - -"Thank you, Ma'am," Felix said. He turned his head to follow the girl -as she took a second handful of flowers to place it beside the fountain -that jetted about the head-standing Daibutsu. "I can see where this -will be a popular planet to do duty on, Lieutenant," he said. "What you -discovered here will pretty well wipe out the Brotherhood." - -"You're right," Hartford said. "The Brotherhood is doomed." - -They watched as Takeko knelt before the inverted image. "_Namu Amida -Butsu_," she said. "All men are the same in the sight of Amida, the -Lord of Boundless Light." - -"Maybe I'm wrong, Lieutenant," Felix said. "Maybe the Brotherhood just -got started." - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Chemically Pure Warriors, by Allen Kim Lang - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHEMICALLY PURE WARRIORS *** - -***** This file should be named 61316.txt or 61316.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/1/3/1/61316/ - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive -specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this -eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook -for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, -performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given -away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks -not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the -trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the -Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country outside the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no - restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it - under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this - eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the - United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you - are located before using this ebook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain -Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation." - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The -Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the -mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its -volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous -locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt -Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to -date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and -official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -For additional contact information: - - Dr. Gregory B. Newby - Chief Executive and Director - gbnewby@pglaf.org - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide -spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. - diff --git a/old/61316.zip b/old/61316.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 45528e3..0000000 --- a/old/61316.zip +++ /dev/null |
