Part 8 (2/2)

It put down in the North African desert. Same general type, a bit newer and k.n.o.bbier and copper rather than gold. The same opening ceremonies, but these Siggies were definitely orange-Red Siggies as they were dubbed. As you can imagine, the welcoming committee was conspicuously absent.

”Reinforcements?” Tillie asked.

”I devoutly hope so,” I said. She gave me the look I was getting used to those days.

”I've got to see S'serrrop.”

”You'll kill him, Max.”

She was right. When S'serrrop saw the photos of the new Cygnians he went-or tried to go-into his s.h.i.+vering and stridulating act. It seemed to be involuntary, like uncontrollable sobs. He couldn't stop himself from knocking the dressings around. Not that they were doing him any good, but the result was horrible. In his agony he could barely be understood. What came through clearly at the end was: ”I trite!

I trite!” And then something so obviously a private prayer that I snapped the recorder off. He died that night.

I spent the night with that tape and was waiting on the chiefs doormat with my reconstruction in themorning. At noon he was still not in. His hotline girl told me about the fire-fight between Yellow Siggie and Red Siggie flyers, in which most of Ma.r.s.eilles had come up missing.

At 1500 the chief was still going 'round in the high level whirlwind. I decided to take-it says here on my citation-independent initiative. What the h.e.l.l, how much Cla.s.s A office furniture do you get in a catacomb? I had nothing to lose.

The independence took the form of a structure of tastefully forged directives and speciously worded coordinating concurrences, at the end of which chain of duplicity there emerged in about sixty hours' time one live Astromarine lieutenant. He looked exactly like a video s.p.a.ce hero except he had cold-sores. He contributed the action.

By this time the Red Siggies, who seemed to be faster workers and more practical-minded, had decided that it would make for more togetherness if we evacuated our lunar bases. There was to be just one shuttle-run per each, and Mersenius was unluckily scheduled as Number Two. You'd be up all night if I told you what it took to get that boy into a disguised cargo-pod. Harry, who knew I was nuts but was too far gone to argue, helped a lot. After that we could only hope.

By this point the bands were so loaded with Red and Yellow Siggie broadcasts and counter-broadcasts and doctrinal trumpetings and counter-counter-jamming that we were virtually blind and deaf, electronically speaking. To this day, I don't understand the difference between their versions of the Great Pupa religion. Something about the powers of the clergy and the existence of other lesser Pupas or prophets. Harry is making a study of it.

I was trying to keep score of the accidental damage sustained by Earth when the Yellow and Red missionary flyers tangled. You remember how the media kept saying that they were decimating each other? People outside really hoped that one faction would eliminate the other, at least; or maybe they might even kill each other off. The inside reports gave no such hope. We had no concrete evidence that they could do each other any serious damage and the side-effects on us were brutal. People were getting killed now, as well as churches. Ma.r.s.eilles was the start; next came Altoona, of all places, and poor old Coventry, and Tangiers. And a lot of smaller places.

”This phase won't last,” I pontificated. ”The history of religious wars is like any other. Your main attack is not on the enemy leaders but on their followers. That'll be us, when they get organized. We'll have to sign up with one lot or the other, and when we do we get it. What's the matter, Harry? In particular, I mean?”

”Houston's picked up a new type of transmission from both s.h.i.+ps, beamed off-planet.”

”Calling for reinforcements?”

”Probably.”

”And alles ganz kaput.... Did you ever identify that planet S'serrrop described?”

”Not positively. I personally think that was Cygnus 61. I don't believe these creatures are Cygnians; they just came from Cygnus 61 in the sense that that was the last place they stopped. Perhaps they were there quite some time-”

”Before they and their compet.i.tion managed to fracture the planetary crust.”

”I wonder what the real Cygnians were like,” sighed Tillie.

”What I wonder is where Lieutenant Sternhagen is. At least he wasn't brought down in the Mersenius evacuation.”

As it turned out, of course, Leiutenant Sternhagen was right where he was supposed to be. He had cleverly managed to unpack himself undetected after his ghastly trip in the pod and had slipped away on his trek around to the far side. All we had been able to give him was a d.i.n.ky personnel jato unit. After 120 hours of hoping, sliding, gliding and tumbling he reached George, who was blissfully holed up with his life work and a nice little hydroponics set-up he had w.a.n.gled out of his Mersenius pals. The young Marine, as directed, asked George one or two pointed questions.The answers being on the right trajectory, Lieutenant Sternhagen stayed not to argue but injected a little dream-juice into George's airlines. Then he had a busy time boosting the missile-carefully-out of the cave, carrying George over a couple of rim-walls and stowing him, and laying a remote-control laser line.

The thing went up beautifully as demonstrated, three shorts and a long, but of course we couldn't see from Earth. After that the young Marine, who had received only minor radiation burns in addition to his previously acquired contusions, had nothing to do except hop, slide and tumble 120 hours back to the empty Mersenius base hauling a hysterical George, who was undamaged except in his aspiration-level.

By a miracle, Mersenius had registered our covert signal and left sufficient supplies to allow the pair to survive until rescue, during which time George had the opportunity to say everything he wanted to, about fifteen thousand times. It doesn't tell half enough on Lieutenant Sternhagen's medal.

After this, there was nothing at all to do but wait. And wait. And wait. The rest of the world, who weren't waiting for anything, just reacted. You know. Fortunately the loss of human life was relatively low as yet, except for Ma.r.s.eilles, Jaipur, and Altoona where the Yellow Siggies had been holding a ma.s.s outdoor Great Pupa baptism ceremony.

I'll say this for the Siggies, they were brave. The Yellow Siggie conducting services didn't even look up when the Red flyer came over-just sang harder. Glory, glory.

The weapon they chiefly used was a variant of the catalytic vaporizer business. R&D had not guessed that it could be produced as a rather bountiful fuel by-product. We counted a total of only five actual missiles expended to date. If the Red Siggies had brought in another fifty, that left ninety-five to go.

Their fallout proved to be rather more copious than the best art, too.

During the next week, two of our tracking stations got melted and we were down to our last ear-flaps when we caught a new s.h.i.+p coming in.

”The reinforcements,” Harry said. He had taken to shadow-boxing the eraser, very softly.

”Why?”

”Both Siggie s.h.i.+ps are transmitting nonstop.”

But it wasn't their reinforcements.

The little blue s.h.i.+p made one orbit and then came in low over North Africa and on to Quebec.

When it had pa.s.sed, both Siggie s.h.i.+ps were still there and apparently undamaged, but they had lost some of their s.h.i.+ne. On the ground the Siggie groups were scrambling first for cover and then for their s.h.i.+ps.

We only caught part of the saurian transmission in Cygnese-something about one planetary rotation.

Thirty hours later both Red and Yellow Siggies were on their way out of our system, leaving us with five smashed cities, innumerable wrecked houses of religion, and more maypole effigies of the Great Pupa than could be counted before they were melted down. The blue lizards left too-we still don't know where they're from.

”You guessed they were cops... how?” said Harry. We were at Rapa's back table, celebrating George's return. After blowing out his outrage on Sternhagen, George had more or less run down about the criminal destruction of his galactic key.

”My glands. Primitive response to the fuzz aura. Once you saw them as two guys in a squad car it all fit. They couldn't stick around. They set up call-boxes. One demonstration of how to work it, good-bye.

Holler if you need help, right, George? Tell me, old brother, how long had you known? Never mind, don't answer that. I respect a man who values knowledge more than the mere survival of his culture, not to say his race. I won't ask you if you would ever have got 'round to triggering it-”

”Max!” shouted Tillie.

”All right.... Say there was a report that these so-called Cygnians and such are messing around with backward planets. Somewhere, there's a minor policy directive. Pressure from a Society to Save Our Seminoles. Low budget. Two guys to cover a sector. Probably left a set of flares around any number oflikely planets. The Siggies knew d.a.m.n well what they were, too.”

”Is that like history?” ventured Mrs. Peabody.

”Not really. Certainly not in the old days. The poor benighted heathen caught in sectarian wars just suffered. Did any of you read about what happened to people who happened to be in the path of a crusade, by the way? We've missed that, so far.”

”Their religion was sort of poetic in a way. I mean, changing to wings-”

I saw Harry wince.

”Tell you what isn't so beautiful, if you want more history. This is all early-stage stuff, informal. Like when Tahiti or the Congo were months away from Europe, and North America was half wild. A few private schooners wild-catting around. What happens now we got saved? Do we go back to our palm trees and peace?”

”Why not?” shrugged Tillie. Then she said, ”Oh.”

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