LITMIR.BIZ

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usage in the United Galaxies. Portario saw me staring. He held his pipe and looked at it.

      “In a way, Commander,” the old man said, “this pipe is my story. On Nova-Maurania we liked a pipe. We liked a lot of the old habits. Maybe we should have died with all the others. You know, I was the one who found the error. Sometimes I’m not at all sure my friends here thank me for it. Our planet is dead, Commander, and so are we. We’re dead inside. But we have a dream. We want to live again. And to live again our planet must live again.” The old man paused as if trying to be sure of telling it right. “We mean no harm to anyone. All we want is our life back. We don’t want to live forever like lumps of ice circling around a dead heart. What we plan may kill us all, but we feel it is worth the risk. We have thousands of ionic power reactors. We have blasted out Venturi tubes. We found life still deep in the center of this planet. It is all ready now. With all the power we have we will break the hold of our dead sun and send this planet off into space! We ...”

      I said, “You’re insane! It can’t ...”

      “But it can, Commander. It’s a great risk, yes, but it can be done, my calculations are perfect! We want to leave this dead system, go off into space and find a new star that will bring life back to our planet! A green, live, warm Nova-Maurania once again!”

      Rajay-Ben was laughing. “That’s the craziest damned dream I ever sat still for. You know what your chances of being picked up by another star are? Picked up just right? Why ...”

      Portario said, “We have calculated the exact initial thrust, the exact tangential velocity, the precise orbital path we need. If all goes exactly, I emphasize, exactly, to the last detail as we have planned it we can do it! Our chances of being caught by the correct star in the absolutely correct position are one in a thousand trillion, but we can do it!”

      It was so impossible I began to believe he was right. “If you aren’t caught just right?”

      Portario’s black eyes watched me. “We could burn up or stay frozen and lifeless. We could drift in space forever as cold and dead as we are now and our ionic power won’t last forever. The forces we will use could blow the planet apart. But we are going to try. We would rather die than live as walking dead men in this perfect United Galaxies we do not want.”

      The silence in the room was like a Salaman fog. Thick silence broken only by the steady hum of the machines deep beneath us in the dead planet. A wild, impossible dream of one thousand lost souls. A dream that would destroy them, and they did not care. There was something about it all that I liked.

      I said, “Why not get Council approval?”

      Portario smiled. “Council has little liking for wild dreams, Commander. It would not be considered as advancing the future of United Galaxies’ destiny. Then there are the ionics.” And Portario hesitated. “And there is the danger of imbalance, Galactic imbalance. I have calculated carefully, the danger is remote, but Council is not going to take even a remote chance.”

      Yuan Saltario broke in. “All they care about is their damned sterile destiny! They don’t care about people. Well we do! We care about something to live for. The hell with the destiny of the Galaxies! They don’t know, and we’ll be gone before they do know.”

      “They know plenty now. O’Hara’s beamed them in.”

      “So we must hurry,” Portario said. “Three days, Commander, will you protect us for three days?”

      A Council offense punishable by instant destruction with United Galaxies reserve ionic weapons in the hands of the super-secret police and disaster teams. And three days is a long time. I would be risking my whole Company. I heard Rajay-Ben laugh.

      “Blast me, Red, it’s so damned crazy I’m for it. Let’s give it a shot.”

      I did not know then how much it would really cost us. If I had I might not have agreed. Or maybe I would have, it was good to know people could still have such dreams in our computer age.

      “Okay,” I said, “beam the full Companies and try to get one more. Mandasiva’s Sirian boys would be good. We’ll split the fee three ways.”

      Yuan Saltario said, “Thanks, Red.”

      I said, “Thank me later, if we’re still around.”

      We beamed the Companies and in twenty minutes they were on their way. Straight into the biggest trouble we had had since the War of Survival. I expected trouble, but I didn’t know how much. Pete Colenso tipped me off.

      Pete spoke across the light years on our beam. “Mandasiva says okay if we guarantee the payment. I’ve deposited the bond with him and we’re on our way. But, Red, something’s funny.”

      “What?”

      “This place is empty. The whole damned galaxy out here is like a desert. Every Company has moved out somewhere.”

      “Okay,” I beamed, “get rolling fast.”

      There was only one client who could hire all the Companies at one time. United Galaxies itself. We were in for it. I had expected perhaps ten Companies, not three against 97, give or take a few out on other jobs. It gave me a chill. Not the odds, but if Council was that worried maybe there was bad danger. But I’d given my word and a Companion keeps his word. We had one ace in the hole, a small one. If the other Companies were not here in Menelaus yet, they must have rendezvoused at Galaxy Center. It was the kind of “follow-the-book” mistake United would make. It gave us a day and a half. We would need it.

      They came at dawn on the second day. We were deployed across five of the dead planets of Menelaus XII in a ring around Nova-Maurania. They came fast and hard, and Portario and his men had at least ten hours work left before they could fire their reactors and pray. Until then we did the praying. It didn’t help.

      Mandasiva’s command ship went at the third hour. A Lukan blaster got it. By the fourth hour I had watched three of my sub-command ships go. A Sirian force beam got one, an Earth fusion gun got another, and the third went out of action and rammed O’Hara’s command ship that had been leading their attack against us. That third ship of mine was Pete Colenso’s. Old Mike would have been proud of his boy. I was sick. Pete had been a good boy. So had O’Hara. Not a boy, O’Hara, but the next to the last of old Free Companion from Earth. I’m the last, and I said a silent good-bye to O’Hara. By the sixth hour Rajay-Ben had only ten ships left. I had twelve. Five thousand of my men were gone. Eight thousand of Rajay-Ben’s Lukans. The Sirians of Mandasiva’s O Company were getting the worst of it, and in the eighth hour Mandasiva’s second in command surrendered. It would be over soon, too soon. And the dream would be over with the battle. I broke silence.

      “Red Stone calling. Do you read me? Commander Stone calling. Request conference. Repeat, request conference.”

      A face appeared on the inter-Company beam screen. The cold, blank, hard-bitten face of the only Free Company Commander senior to me now that O’Hara was gone, Jake Campesino of the Cygne Black Company. “Are you surrendering, Stone?”

      “No. I want to speak to my fellow Companions.”

      Campesino’s voice was like ice. “Violation! You know the rules, Stone. Silence cannot be broken in battle. I will bring charges. You’re through, Stone.”

      I said, “Okay, crucify me later. But hear me now.”

      Campesino said, “Close silence or surrender.”

      It was no good. We’d had it. And across the distance of battle Rajay-Ben’s face appeared on the screen. The colored lights that were a Lukan’s face and I knew enough to know that the shimmering lights were mad. “The hell with them, Red, let’s go all the damned way!”

      And a new face appeared on the screen. A face I knew too well. First Councillor Roark. “Stone! You’ve done a lot in your day but this is the end, you hear me? You’re defending a madman in a Council crime. Do you realize the risk? Universal imbalance! The whole pattern of galaxies could be destroyed! We’ll destroy you for this, Stone. An ionic

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