his hands together, but didn’t move. Both men turned to Somers.
“Captain, it’s your responsibility.”
“Go ahead, Captain!”
Somers looked with loathing at his engineer and navigator. His responsibility, everything was his responsibility. Would they never leave him alone?
He went up to the machine, pulled the tape free, read it with slow deliberation.
“What does it say, sir?” Rajcik asked.
“Is it—possible?” Watkins urged.
“Oh, yes,” Somers said. “It’s possible.” He laughed and looked around at the hot, smelly, low-ceilinged little room with its locked doors and windows.
“What is it?” Rajcik shouted.
SOMERS said, “You figured a few thousand years to return to the Solar System, Rajcik? Well, the computer agrees with you. Twenty-three hundred years, to be precise. Therefore, it has given us a suitable longevity serum.”
“Twenty-three hundred years,” Rajcik mumbled. “I suppose we hibernate or something of the sort.”
“Not at all,” Somers said calmly. “As a matter of fact, this serum does away quite nicely with the need for sleep. We stay awake and watch each other.”
The three men looked at one another and at the sickeningly familiar room smelling of metal and perspiration, its sealed doors and windows that stared at an unchanging spectacle of stars.
Watkins said, “Yes, that’s the sort of thing it would do.”
Dead World, by Jack Douglas
... although the most recent star to die, RNAC 89778 in the distant Menelaus galaxy (common name, Menelaus XII), had eight inhabited planets, only some one thousand people of the fifth planet escaped and survived as a result of a computer error which miscalculated the exact time by two years. Due to basic psycho-philo maladjustments the refugees of Menelaus XII-5 are classified as anti-social-types-B-6 and must be considered unstable. All anti-social-types-B-6 are barred from responsible positions in United Galaxies by order of the Inter-Galactic Council.
—Short History of The United Galaxies
YUAN SALTARIO started it. He was serving in my Company and he was one of them. A Menelaus XII-5 “unstable,” and don’t ever call that damned little planet by its number if you meet one of them. They call it Nova-Maurania. But you won’t meet one of them. Or maybe you will, maybe they did make it. I like to think they did.
There were a lot of them in the Companies in 3078. Restless men. The Companies were the logical place for them. We’re still classified anti-social-B-6, too. Every year it’s harder to get recruits, but we still have to be careful who we take in. We took Yuan Saltario. There was something about him from the very start.
“Why do you want to join a Free Company?” He was a short, humanoid type with deep black eyes and a thin, lipless mouth that never smiled.
“I’m an anti-social. I like to fight. I want to fight.”
“A misfit joining the misfits? A grudge against the Council? It’s not good enough, mister, we live on the Council. Try again.”
Saltario’s black eyes stared without a flicker. “You’re Red Stone, Commander of the Red Company. You hate the Council and I hate the Council. You’re the ...” Saltario stopped.
I said, “The Traitor of the Glorious War of Survival. You can say it, Saltario.”
The lipless mouth was rigid. “I don’t think of it that way. I think of a man with personal integrity,” Saltario said.
I suppose I should have seen it then, the rock he carried deep inside him. It might have saved thirty thousand good men. But I was thinking of myself. Commander Red Stone of the Red Company, Earthmen. Only we’re not all Earthmen now, every year there are fewer recruits, and it won’t be long before we die out and the Council will have the last laugh. Old Red Stone, the Traitor of the War of Survival, the little finger of my left hand still missing and telling the Universe I was a very old soldier of the outlawed Free Companies hanging onto life on a rocky planet of the distant Salaman galaxy. Back at the old stand because United Galaxies still need us. In a way it’s a big joke. Two years after Rajay-Ben and I had a bellyfull of the Glorious War of Survival and they chased us all the way out here, they turned right around and made the peace. A joke on me, but sometimes I like to think that our runout was the thing that made them think and make peace. When you’ve been a soldier for thirty-five years you like to win battles, but you like to feel you helped bring peace, too.
I said, “Personal integrity. That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? So you like personal integrity? All right, Saltario, are you sure you know what you’re getting into? We’re 60 million light years from Galaxy Center, 10 million from the nearest United Galaxy city. We’ve got no comforts, no future, nothing to do but fight. A woman in her right mind won’t look at us, if they see you in uniform they’ll spit on you, if they catch you out of uniform they’ll kill you.”
Saltario shrugged. “I like to eat. I’ve got nowhere to go. All I’ve got is myself and a big piece of ice I called home.”
I nodded. “Okay. We fight small wars for good profits. It’s not Earth out here, but we’ve got four nice suns, plenty of Lukanian whisky Rajay-Ben taught the locals to make, and we’re our own masters. The United Galaxies leaves us pretty much alone unless they need us. You do your job, and your job is what I tell you to do, period. You got that straight?”
Saltario very nearly smiled. “It sounds good to me, sir.”
“I hope it’ll sound good in a year, Saltario, because once you’re in you don’t get out except feet first. Is that clear? I have life and death rights over you. You owe allegiance to the Red Company and me and to no one else. Got that? Today your best friends are the men of Rajay-Ben’s Lukanian Fourth Free Patrol, and your worst enemies are the men of Mandasiva’s Sirian O Company. Tomorrow Rajay-Ben’s boys may be your worst enemies, and Mandasiva’s troops your best friends. It all depends on the contract. A Company on the same contract is a friend, a Company against the contract is an enemy. You’ll drink with a man today, and kill him tomorrow. Got it? If you kill a Free Companion without a contract you go to court-martial. If you kill a citizen of the United Galaxies except in a battle under contract I throw you to the wolves and that means you’re finished. That’s the way it is.”
“Yes, sir.” Saltario never moved a muscle. He was rigid.
“Right,” I said, “get your gear, see the Adjutant and sign the agreement. I think you’ll do.”
Saltario left. I sat back in my chair and thought about how many non-Earthmen I was taking into the Company. Maybe I should have been thinking about this one single non-Earthman and the something he was carrying inside him, but I didn’t, and it cost the Companies thirty thousand men we couldn’t afford to lose. We can’t afford to lose one man. There are only a hundred Companies now, twenty thousand men each, give or take a few thousand depending on how the last contract went. Life is good in the United Galaxies now that they’ve disarmed and outlawed all war again, and our breed is dying out faster than it did in the 500 years of peace before the War of Survival. Too many of the old Companions like me went west in the War of Survival. The Galactic
