Collected Stories

Heaven Help Us

O great juju-kuxtil, take this sacrifice and give us a sign!

From the beginning of Time, Man has been on the move, ever outward. First he spread over his own planet, then across the Solar System, then outward to the Galaxies, all of them dotted, speckled, measled with the colonies of Man.

Then, one day in the year eleven thousand four hundred and six (11,406), an incredible discovery was made in the Master Imperial Computer back on Earth. Nearly 500 years before, a clerical error had erased from the computer’s memory more than 1000 colonies, all in Sector F.U.B.A.R.3. For half a millennium, those colonies, young arid struggling when last heard from, had had no contact with the rest of Humanity.

The Galactic Patrol Interstellar Ship Hopeful, Captain Gregory Stanndforth commanding, was at once dispatched to reestablish contact with the Thousand Lost Colonies and return them to the bosom of Mankind.

On the command deck of Interstellar Ship Hopeful, Lieutenant Billy Shelby watched the image of Heaven grow larger on the view screen. “We’re coming in,” he said. “Pam? All secure?”

Astrogator Pam Stokes, beautiful arid brainy and blind to passion, paused in her contemplation of her antique slide rule to check the webbing that held her to the pod. “All set.”

“What an exciting moment,” Billy said. A handsome young idealist, he was the Hopeful’s second-in-command and probably the person aboard who believed most fervently in the ship’s mission. “I wish the captain were up here.”

Captain Gregory Standforth himself wandered onto the command deck at that moment, holding a stuffed bird mounted on a black-plastic-onyx pedestal. “Isn’t she a beauty?” he asked and held up this unlovely creature that in death, as in life, was blessed with a big belly, a pink tuft on top of its orange head and a lot of bright scarlet feathers on its behind. The captain had bagged it on their last planet fall, Niobe IV, a.k.a. Casino. “I just finished stuffing her,” he explained. Taxidermy was all he cared for in this life, and only the long, glorious traditions of the Standforth family had forced him into the Galactic Patrol. Conversely, only those traditions had forced the patrol to accept him.

“Heaven ahead, sir,” Billy said. “Secure yourself.”

The captain studied his trousers for open zippers. “Secure myself?”

“Take a pod, Captain, sir,” Billy explained. “Landing procedure.”

“Ah.” Settling himself into a pod, the captain slid his bird onto a handy flat surface, thereby inadvertently pushing a lever. A red light flashed on all the control consoles, and there came a sudden, brief whoosh. “Oh, dear,” the captain said. “Did I do something?”

Billy studied his console. “Well, Captain,” he said, “I’m sorry, sir, but you just ejected the laundry.”

A long, long time ago, it had been a church; but now it was a roofless pagan temple, dominated by the tall, roughhewn wooden statue of a fat god figure with a blurred face. The altar was made of consumer materials, rusted and ancient and broken: TV sets, washing machines, a truck tire. A religious ceremony was under way, complete with nearly naked virgin ready for sacrifice, supine on the altar, resigned to her fate. The worshipers below were dressed in animal skins or rough cloth. Beside the altar stood Achum, the priest, holding a stone knife high, its point aimed at the virgin’s breast. This particular virgin was Achum’s own youngest daughter, Malya, but he would not hesitate in his priestly duty. He intoned:

“O great Juju-Kuxtil. Oh, take, we beseech you, this sacrifice of our youngest, our purest, our finest daughter. Find this sacrifice worthy of your mighty eyes and defend us from the yellow rain. If this sacrifice be good in your eyes, give us a sign.”

Achum bowed his head in unbroken silence. He prayed, “If she should be spared, who is my own daughter Malya of only sixteen summers, O great Juju-Kuxtil, give us a sign.”

The Hopeful’s laundry fell on everybody.

Pandemonium. Achum and Malya and the congregation all struggled and fought their way out from under the laundry. “Achum!” the worshipers cried. “Achum, what’s happening?”

“A sign!” Achum shouted, spitting out socks. “A sign!”

A worshiper with a greasy work glove rakishly atilt across his forehead cried, “Achum! What does it mean?”

“I’m not sure exactly what it means,” Achum answered, looking around at this imitation of a rummage sale, “but it sure is a sign.”

A worshiper pointed upward. “Achum, look! From the sky! Something huge is coming!”

“As I understand it, Ensign Benson, these are a religious people.”

Councilman Morton Luthguster, stout and pompous, representative of the Galactic Council on this journey of discovery and reunion, sat in his stateroom in prelanding conference with Ensign Kybee Benson, social engineer, the saturnine, impatient man whose job it was to study the lost colonies as they were found and prepare reports on what they had become in the half millennium of their isolation.

“Well, Councilman,” Ensign Benson said, “they were a religious people five hundred years ago. The colony here was founded by the Sanctarians, a peaceful, pious community determined to get away from the strife of the modern world. Well, I mean, what was then the modern world. They named their colony Heaven.”

“Charming name,” Luthguster said, nodding slowly, creating and destroying any number of chins. “And, from what you say, a simple, charming people. I look forward to their acquaintance.”

“Landing procedure complete,” said the loud-speaker system in Billy Shelby’s animated voice.

“Ah, good,” Luthguster said, heaving himself to his feet. “Come along, Ensign Benson. I wonder if I recall the Lord’s Prayer.”

The Hopeful’s automatic pilot had set the ship gently down on a wide, barren, rocky plain, similar in appearance to several unpopulated islands of the coast of Norway. A door in the side of the ship opened, a ladder protruded itself slowly from within, like a worm from an apple, and once it had pinged solidly onto the stony scree, Councilman Luthguster emerged and paused at the platform at the ladder’s top. Captain Standforth, Billy Shelby and Ensign Benson followed, and all four stared down at the welcoming committee below.

Who were Achum, his unsacrificed daughter Malya and all the worshipers, every last one of them decked out in the Hopeful’s laundry. And when Achum looked up at that fat figure atop the ladder and recalled the god statue in his church, hope became certainty: Prostrating himself, with his forehead on the ground, he cried out, in a voice of terror and awe, “Juju-Kuxtil! Juju-Kuxtil!”

The other worshipers, quick on the uptake, also prostrated themselves, and the cry went up from one and all: “Juju-Kuxtil! Juju-Kuxtil!”

“Not very much like my religion,” Luthguster said and led the group down the ladder to the ground, where the worshipers continued to lie on their faces and shout out the same name. The instant Luthguster’s foot touched rock, Achum scrabbled forward on knees and elbows to embrace the councilman’s ankles. “Here! Here!” cried Luthguster, not at all pleased.

Achum half rose. “Hear, hear!” he shouted. “Hip, hip—”

“Hooray!” yelled the worshipers.

“Hip, hip—”

“Hooray!”

“Hip, hip—”

“Hooray!”

Ensign Benson had approached one of the prostrate worshipers, and now he attracted the fellow’s attention with a prodding boot in the ribs. “Say, you. What’s going on around here?”

“Juju-Kuxtil!” answered the wide-eyed worshiper and nodded in awe at Luthguster. “God! It’s God!”

Achum was on his feet, prancing around, crying, “A feast for Juju-Kuxtil! A feast! A feast!”

Luthguster, beginning to get the idea, looked around and visibly became more enamored of it. Frowning at him, Ensign, Benson said, “That’s God?”

“He’s shorter in person, isn’t he” said the worshiper.

The feast was outdoors and vaguely Polynesian in effect, with the visitors and the natives all sitting in a great oval. At the head of the oval, at Councilman Luthguster’s right hand, the priest Achum stood and began the feast with a speech: “The time foretold by the sacred writings has come! Juju-Kuxtil is here to save us, as it was written! We have put on the sacred raiment, and we shall be saved from the yellow rain!”

Sotto voce, while the speech went on, Councilman Luthguster asked Ensign Benson, beside him at his other hand, “What’s happening here?”

“Apparently,” Ensign Benson murmured, “some physical disaster struck this colony quite some time ago and drove these people from an advanced society, with modern religion, back to primitive paganism.”

“But what should we do?”

“Go along with them, at least for a while. Until we learn more.”

“But what’s this yellow rain he’s going on and on about?”

“We can’t ask questions,” Ensign Benson said. “We’ll find out later.”

Achum was finishing his speech: “Soon the great Juju-Kuxtil shall begin his mighty work; but first, we shall feast. A feast of welcome to Juju-Kuxtil and his angels!”

Cheers rose from the assembled natives. Achum took his seat, and platters of food — lumpy, anonymous brown stuff that smelled rather like mildew — were distributed. Hospitably, Achum said to Luthguster, “I hope you like dilbump.”

Luthguster blinked at his plate. “It looks quite, um, filling.”

Billy Shelby had seated himself next to the prettiest girl at the feast, who happened to be Achum’s daughter Malya. Smiling at her, he said, “Hi. My name’s Billy.”

“Malya.”

“What’s the matter? You aren’t eating.”

“I wasn’t planning on dinner today,” Malya explained, “so I had a big lunch.”

“No dinner? Why not?”

“I was about to be sacrificed when you all got here.”

Billy stared. “Sacrificed! Why?”

Wondering but not quite suspicious, Malya said, “For Juju-Kuxtil, of course. Don’t you know that?”

“Oh! Um. Well, I’m glad it worked out this way, and now you don’t have to be sacrificed, after all.”

She pouted prettily. “Don’t you want me to live forever with you on the Great Cloud?”

Sincerely, he said, “I’d like you anywhere.”

She gave him a sidelong look. “You don’t seem very much like an angel.”

“I can be surprisingly human,” he told her.

The fourth voyager on the Hopeful also at the feast was Chief Engineer Hester Hanshaw, a 40ish, blunt-featured, blunt-talking person who was much happier with her engines than at any social occasion, including religious feasts. She kept her eyes firmly down and did little more than poke at her soup and her dilbump until the native on her left said, “Excuse me.”

Hester looked at him. He was middle-aged, with a keen look about the eyes and the gnarled hands of a worker. “Yeah?”

“I was looking at that cloud you all fly around in.”

“I hope you didn’t mess it up,” Hester said.

“It’s hard to the touch. I thought clouds were soft and fluffy.”

“It isn’t a cloud,” said Hester, who didn’t believe in going along with other people’s misconceptions. “It’s a ship.”

“Make a nice lamp.”

Hester stared. “What?”

“I’m a carpenter,” the native said. “Name of Keech.”

“I’m Hester Hanshaw. Ship’s engineer.”

“What’s that?”

“I keep the engines running.”

Keech looked impressed. “All the time?”

“I mean I fix them,” Hester told him, “if something goes wrong.”

Looking skyward, Keech said, “All those clouds have engines? Fancy that.”

Covering her exasperation by a change of subject, Hester said, “What kind of carpentry do you do?”

“Oh, the usual. Sacrificial altars, caskets, suspended cages to put sinners in.”

“Cheerful line of work.”

“Tough to build things that last,” Keech commented, “with the yellow rain all the time. But we won’t have that anymore, will we, now that Juju-Kuxtil is here?”

“You mean Councilman Luthguster?”

“The million names of God,” Keech said solemnly. “Which one is that?”

“Number eighty-seven,” Hester said. “What’s in this soup? No, don’t tell me.”

On Achum’s other side sat Captain Standforth, brooding at his soup, and on his other side sat Astrogator Pam Stokes, brooding at her slide rule. “Fascinating,” she mumbled. “That asteroid belt.”

“Pam?” The captain welcomed any distraction from that soup; things seemed to be moving in it. “Did you say something?”

“This system contains an asteroid belt,” Pam told him, “much like the one in our own Solar System.”

“Oh, the asteroid belt,” the captain said, his mind filling with unhappy reminiscence. “I always have a terrible time navigating around that. You barely take off from Earth, you’re just past Mars, and there it is. Millions of rocks, boulders, bits of broken-off planet all over the place. What a mess!”

“Well, the asteroid belt in this system,” Pam said, “has an orbit that’s much more erratic. In fact…” Swiftly, she manipulated her slide rule. “Hmm. It seems to me…” She gazed skyward, frowning.

So did the captain, though without any idea what he was supposed to be looking at. He blinked, and a yellow stone dropped into his soup, splashing oily liquid in various directions.

“Of course!” said Pam, pleased with her calculations.

A stone bounced off the table near Councilman Luthguster’s right hand. A stone thunked into a platter of dilbump and slowly sank. A paradiddle of stones rattled in the center of the circle of feasters.

“The yellow rain!” cried Achum in sheerest horror.

Screams. Terror. The natives fled into handy burrows while the people from the Hopeful stared at one another in wild surmise. More stones fell. Achum dropped to his knees beside Councilman Luthguster, hands clasped together: “Juju-Kuxtil, save us! Save us!”

“It’s a meteor shower!” Ensign Benson cried.

“No,” Pam said, utterly calm, “it’s the asteroid belt. You see, its eccentric orbit must from time to time cross this—”

Clambering clumsily to his feet, Luthguster shouted, “Asteroids? We’ll all be killed!”

Taken aback, Achum settled on his haunches and gaped at the councilman. “Juju-Kuxtil?” Meantime, more stones fell.

Bewildered, the captain said, “Pam? Shouldn’t we take cover?”

“According to my calculations,” Pam answered, “this time we’re merely tangential with—”

A good-sized boulder smacked into the earth at Luthguster’s feet. In utter panic, spreading his arms to keep from losing his balance, he shrieked, “Stop!”

Still calmly explaining, Pam said, “it should be over almost at once. In fact, right now.”

She was right; no more rocks fell. Slowly, the natives crept back out of their burrows, peeking skyward. Achum, faith restored, bellowed, “Juju-Kuxtil did it! He did it!”

“Juju-Kuxtil! Juju-Kuxtil!” the natives all agreed. Then they joined hands and danced in a great circle around Luthguster, singing, “For he’s a jolly good savior: for he’s a jolly good savior.”

After the adoration, Luthguster and the captain and Pam and Ensign Benson met on the command deck of the Hopeful for a conference. “I think it’s obvious what’s happened here,” Ensign Benson began.

“They think I’m God,” Luthguster said complacently.

“Heaven has become debased, degenerate.”

“I beg your pardon,” Luthguster said.

Captain Standforth cleared his throat. “Uh, Billy says they have human sacrifice.”

Luthguster assumed his most statesmanlike look. “I don’t believe we should be too harsh in our judgments, Captain. These people aren’t all bad. We shouldn’t condemn a whole society out of hand.”

“Of course not,” Ensign Benson said. “First, we have to understand why a society behaves a certain way. Then we condemn it.”

“According to the old records,” the captain said, “they were perfectly nice people when they left Earth — cleaned up after their farewell picnic and everything.”

“But no small settlement,” Ensign Benson said, “could survive a constant, unpredictable barrage of rocks from the sky. Everything they ever built was knocked down. Every machine they brought with them was destroyed. Every crop they planted was pounded flat. No wonder they returned to barbarism. You have to be hit on the head with a lot of rocks to think the councilman here is God.”

Luthguster puffed himself up like a frog preparatory to an answering statement; but before he could make it, Hester came in with Keech. Each carried an armload of yellow rocks. “Captain,” Hester said, “request permission to show a visitor around the ship.”

“Nice cloud you got here,” Keech said.

“His name’s Keech,” Hester explained. “He’s a carpenter; seems a little brighter than most. Thought I’d try to explain engines to him.”

“Certainly, Hester,” the captain said. He never denied anybody anything. “What are you doing with all those rocks?”

“Going to analyze them,” Hester said.

“Very good idea,” the captain said. He didn’t know what analyze meant.

Hester and Keech left, and Ensign Benson turned to Pam, saying, “Do these rockfalls happen often?”

“Very.”

“Every day?”

Pam shook her head. “Not necessarily. According to my calculations, the planet’s orbit intersects the asteroid’s orbit so frequently, in such a complex pattern, that to most people, it would seem utterly erratic.”

“Could you work out the pattern?”

“Of course. As a matter of fact, there should be another brief shower later today.”

“Then I’m glad,” Luthguster said, we’re all in the ship.”

“Billy isn’t,” the captain said. “He asked permission to go for a walk with the human sacrifice.”

“Bad,” Ensign Benson said. “When the rocks fall, the natives will lose faith in the councilman. They’ll want revenge.”

In the engine room, Hester explained engines to Keech, who looked bewildered but interested. “And from the generator,” she was saying, “electricity is stored in these cells for later use.”

“Pretty clever,” Keech admitted. “Given the right education and equipment, a human being could do the same stuff you angels do.”

“You’re beginning to catch on.”

Bong, said the ship. Keech look startled, Hester annoyed. Bong, bong, bong, bongbongbong. “Yellow rain!” Keech cried.

“I wish it would lay off,” Hester muttered.

“Do you realize,” Keech demanded, what all this is doing to my faith?”

On a blasted plain, amid evidence everywhere of prior bombardments, Billy and Malya reclined and kissed. All at once, she pulled back, frowning at him, saying, “Are you sure you’re a supernatural being?”

“I’m really not,” Billy confessed. “What I really am is a human being.”

“A human being?”

“Just like you. Well, not exactly like you. You’re a girl and I’m a boy.”

“I was beginning to suspect that,” Malya said. “But why does Juju-Kuxtil travel around with humans?”

“Well,” said Billy. “About Juju-Kuxtil…”

In rapture, she said, “He saved us from the yellow rain.”

“Ahhhh, yes and no,” Billy said, scuffing his foot in the rocks.

She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Of course,” she lied.

Nerving himself up to blurt out the real story, Billy said, “Well the truth is—”

Bong; a good-sized rock landed on his head. He fell over, unconscious. Rocks suddenly started bouncing all over the place. Flinging herself onto Billy to protect him, Malya cried, “I think I know what you were trying to tell me, Billy!”

In the roofless temple, Achum led a community discussion, “Now that Juju-Kuxtil has come and stopped the yellow rain,” he said, “Heaven is ours. We can build, travel, everything.” He gestured with broadly spread hands, smiling. The worshipers smiled back. A small yellow rock landed on Achum’s right palm.

Five minutes later, when the rockfall had ended, Achum and the worshipers came crawling back out of their burrows and none of them were happy. Juju-Kuxtil lied!” several shouted.

“Yes!” Achum thundered.

“Achum is a false priest!” one shouted.

“Wait a minute,” Achum said. “Hold on there.”

“You’re a false priest.”

“Now, hold on. In the first place, I’m not a false priest, and I’ll knock you down if you say that again. And in the second place, that’s a false god!”

“A false god?”

“That isn’t Juju-Kuxtil,” Achum explained. “It’s a demon trying to lead us astray. A demon disguised as Juju-Kuxtil!”

“A demon disguised as a god,” mused a worshiper. “Hmm. That makes sense.”

The captain had decided to go out looking for Billy while the others waited on the command deck. He had barely left when rocks started bonging again. “That’s funny,” Pam said, bending over her slide rule.

Ensign Benson said, “What’s funny?”

The captain entered, looking ruffled, saying, “Gee, are they sore.”

“Pam? What’s funny?”

“There shouldn’t be another asteroid fall,” she said, “for two days.”

“That isn’t asteroids,” the captain told her. “They’re throwing rocks at the ship.”

“Rocks at the ship!” Luthguster was incensed. “That’s Galactic property!”

“Actually, it’s mine,” Ensign Benson said.

“They were hollering, ‘Demon! Demon!’ ” the captain explained. “They think you’re a false Juju-Kuxtil.”

Luthguster gaped. “Me?”

“Councilman,” Ensign Benson said, “you’ve set back superstition on this planet four hundred years.”

Hester and Keech entered, Hester saying, “Captain, I—”

Luthguster ran around behind a pod, crying, “Look out! There’s one of them!”

“What?” Hester shook her head. “Oh, Keech is all right. I told him the whole story.”

“I’m the soul of discretion,” Keech said.

Hester turned to the captain. “Which do you want first, the good news or the bad?”

“Hester, I hate making decisions.”

“Start with the bad,” Ensign Benson said. “Then we’ll have the good for dessert.”

“Fine. The bad news is, the rocks damaged our lateral rockets. ‘We can’t navigate.”

“Oh, my goodness,” said the captain. “Can it be fixed?”

“I’ll have to go outside on a ladder.”

“Wear a hat,” Ensign Benson advised. “The weather’s getting worse out there.”

Pam, looking at a view screen, said, “What’s this?”

So they all looked and saw several natives approaching, pulling a wooden-wheeled cart filled with cloth.

“They’re bringing back our laundry,” the captain said.

Ensign Benson said, “I don’t think they cleaned it.”

“I’ll go get it,” Pam said.

Ensign Benson, whose dream that someday Pam would discover she was a human female had not yet died, said, “I’ll go with you.

They left, and the captain said, “Hester? You had good news?”

“I would be more than happy,” Luthguster said, “to hear good news.”

“I did a mineral analysis on those rocks,” said Hester. “The reason they’re yellow, every one of them is at least part gold.”

The natives had dumped the laundry at the foot of the ladder and had gone away with the cart, expressing their contempt. Pam and Ensign Benson cautiously descended, and when they reached the bottom, a hand reached out of the laundry and grabbed Pam’s ankle. “Eek!” she said, naturally.

Malya’s lovely face appeared among the shirts and the shorts. “Shh! It’s me, Malya; I’m on your side! Sneak me in before anybody sees!”

“My laundry never came back with a girl in it before,” Ensign Benson said.

Out of a cave onto the blasted plain staggered Billy, rubbing his head. “Ooh, that hurts,” he mumbled. “What kind of Heaven is this?” Raising his face and his voice, he cried, “Malya! Malya?”

A dozen natives leaped on him from all sides, pummeled him and, carried him away.

“So I have him hidden,” Malya said. She was on the command deck with the five Earthpeople and Keech.

“We’ll have to move the ship at once,” Luthguster said, “to his hiding place. This young lady can direct us.”

“We can’t navigate,” Hester reminded him “till I fix the lateral rockets.”

“We have a saying here,” Keech commented. “‘Into each life a little rock must fall.’”

The captain said, “It was a mistake to pretend to be gods.”

“I agree, Captain,” Ensign Benson said. “My error. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But as long as we’ve made the mistake, we’ll have to live with it. Councilman, you’ll have to go out there and reconvince them that you’re Juju-Kuxtil.

“Me? They’ll stone me!”

“The hand that cradles the rock rules this world,” Hester said.

“That isn’t nice,” Pain said. “People shouldn’t throw stones.”

“Why not?” Keech asked, “We don’t live in glass houses.”

The captain said, “if we tell them about the gold, won’t—”

Ensign Benson said, “The what?”

Hester explained, “The yellow rain is mainly gold. If this colony went into the export business, it could become rich.”

Keech said, “What’s gold?”

“I know you’re primitive,” Luthguster told him, “but that’s ridiculous.”

“I may be primitive,” Keech answered, “but it’s you wiseacres that’re in trouble.”

Ensign Benson said, “Pam, the rockfall pattern repeats, doesn’t it? You could do a yearly calendar with the rockfalls.”

“It’s a very complex pattern, but yes, of course.”

“Could you do it in an hour?”

“Oh, my goodness,” Pam said. “I’ll try.”

The captain said, “You have a plan to help Billy, Ensign Benson?”

“If Malya and Keech will help.”

“I’ll help,” Malya said. “I don’t want anybody to hurt Billy.”

Keech said, “Is gold something that makes you rich?”

Grinning, Hester said, “I told you he was smart.”

This time, in the roofless temple, it was Billy who was about to be sacrificed. He was tied and gagged and lying on the altar, with Achum holding the stone knife over him and the worshipers eagerly watching below. Achum prayed, “Great Juju-Kuxtil, we’re sorry we were misled. Please accept this demon as a token of our esteem.” He poised with the knife.

Keech came running in, crying, “Wait! I have come from Juju-Kuxtil’s cloud! I have much to tell you!”

“After the services,” Achum told him. “First the sacrifice, then the collection, then you can talk.”

“No, I have to talk now,” Keech insisted. “That is the real Juju-Kuxtil.”

Achum shook his head and waggled the stone knife. “Stuff and nonsense. There was more yellow rain after he supposedly made it stop.”

“He was testing our faith,” Keech said.

A worshiper mused, “A god pretending to be a demon disguised as a god to test our faith. Hmm. That makes sense.”

Achum wasn’t convinced. “How can you know that, Keech?”

“They took me to their ship. I mean the cloud. Also your daughter Malya; they took her there, too.”

“Malya?” Achum looked around, called, “Malya!”

“She’s still in the cloud,” Keech said. “And Juju-Kuxtil is going to come out and talk to us.”

Achum lowered. “Oh, he is, is he?”

“He sent me to get everybody to come hear his speech.”

“Oh, we’ll come,” Achum said. “Gather rocks, everybody! This time we’ll pelt him good! And bring along the sacrifice; we’ll finish the services later.”

In a corridor of the Hopeful, by an exit hatch, the captain, Pam and Ensign Benson prepared Councilman Luthguster for his public. “Now, do remember to turn on your microphone,” the captain said, yet again. “Your words will be transmitted through the ship’s loud-speaker.”

“Yes, yes,” said the extremely nervous Luthguster.

Handing the councilman a sheaf of papers, Pam said, “Just remember, it’s an eight-month cycle, and this planet has a sixteen-month year, so the cycle runs twice a year.”

“Young lady,” Luthguster said, clutching the papers, “I have no idea what you think you’re saying.”

“Now, Councilman,” Ensign Benson said, “there’s nothing to worry about.”

“There’s nothing for you to worry about. You’ll be in the ship.”

“You’ll be behind this shield.” Ensign Benson rapped the clear-plastic shield with his knuckles. “Just give them one of the speeches you’re famous for, and they’ll calm right down. They’ll sleep for a week.”

“I do have some small reputation as a peacemaker,” Luthguster acknowledged, though he continued to blink a lot. “Very well. For the future of mankind on this planet.” And he stepped onto the small platform that would swing out onto the side of the ship once the hatch was opened.

“Knock ‘em dead,” Ensign Benson advised him and pushed the button.

A frozen smile of panic on his face, Luthguster permitted himself to be swung slowly out into plain sight high on the side of the gleaming, cigar-shaped Hopeful. And below, bearing armloads of rocks and carrying the trussed-up Billy on a long pole, came the natives. They did not look particularly reasonable.

“People of Heaven,” Luthguster said, but, of course, he had forgotten to turn on his microphone, so nobody heard him. Flicking the thing on, he tried again:

“People of Heaven.”

“There he is! There he is!”

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

A thousand stones hit the plastic shield. Luthguster ducked, then recovered, crying out, “Surely, some of you have sinned.”

“The stones bounce off him!” Keech shouted. “You see? It is Juju-Kuxtil!”

Achum, poised to throw another stone, hesitated, becoming uncertain. “Could I have been wrong?”

The other worshipers had already prostrated themselves, noses in the pebbles, and were wailing, “Juju-Kuxtil! Juju-Kuxtil!”

Privately to Achum, Keech said, “Would you rather be safe or sorry?”

“Juju-Kuxtil!” Achum decided and prostrated himself with the rest.

Quickly, Keech released Billy, while Luthguster delivered his speech:

“People of Heaven, I have tested you, and your faith is not strong. But I am merciful, and I will not return my golden rain to you for” — he consulted Pam’s papers — “two days. At ten-fifteen next Tuesday morning, watch out!”

“There you go, kid,” Keech said to the freed Billy. “Get to the ship before the councilman louses up.”

Billy scampered to the Hopeful while Luthguster rolled on:

“I will never be more than a stone’s throw from you all. Achum shall remain my representative here on Heaven, but I won’t need any more human sacrifices.”

“Drat,” the worshipers muttered. “No fun anymore.”

“Also, the man who is known among you as Keech will henceforth carry this list, which will tell you the times of all the golden rains that will ever be, from this day forward. You will be smart enough to get in out of the rain, but after every rain, there will be a time to gather stones together. The streets of Heaven are paved with good investments, and I will want them returned. Heaven knows what I’m talking about. Upon these rocks we shall build a mighty nation. Right on this spot here, I want these rocks of ages left for me. Keech will be in charge of all that. I will send ships from Earth to Heaven, and they will trade you machinery, medical supplies, technical advisors and everything else you need, in exchange for my rolling stones. Earth helps those who help themselves. Together, we shall make an Earth right here on Heaven. And remember, a vote for Juju-Kuxtil is a vote for peace, progress and sound financial practice.”

Keech led the worshipers in a resounding cheer as Luthguster was wheeled, waving and smiling, back into the ship, where, once the hatch was shut, Ensign Benson said, “Councilman, that may have been your finest hour.”

Luthguster was dazzled. “By Heaven, he said, “what a constituency!”

•

Near the foot of the ladder, Billy made a reluctant farewell to Malya. “Gee, I wish you could come along.”

“So do I,” Malya admitted. “Earth must be a wonderful place after Heaven.”

“Any place is Earth,” Billy told her, “With you there.”

They were deep in embrace when Ensign Benson appeared at the head of the ladder, calling, “Come on, Billy, or we’ll take off without you.”

“They can’t take off without me,” Billy confided to Malya. “I fly it.”

“But you must go. Goodbye, Billy.”

“Goodbye, Malya.”

Malya walked to a nearby rubble heap, where she and Keech watched the Hopeful prepare for take-off. “Gee, what a swell bunch,” Malya said.

“That Hester,” Keech said, “was the most sensible woman I ever met.”

“I wouldn’t call Billy exactly sensible,” Malya said, “but he was swell.”

“Lift-off,” Billy said. All six Earthpeople were present on the command deck.

“Captain,” Pam said, studying her console, “the ship is overweight.”

Diplomatically careful but with an edge of sarcasm, Ensign Benson said, “I believe the councilman smuggled gold aboard.”

“Smuggled?” Luthguster was all pompous bluster. “Merely a few souvenirs.”

“I’m sorry, Councilman Luthguster,” the captain said, “but you’ll have to eject them.”

“Humph,” said Luthguster.

Malya found Achum in the roofless temple, frowning at the statue of Juju-Kuxtil. She said, “What’s wrong, Father?”

“I’m still not sure about that crowd,” Achum told her. “No more human sacrifices. Would the real Juju-Kuxtil talk like that?”

Luthguster’s souvenirs crashed to the altar beside him. Achum froze, then his eyes swiveled to look at the fresh rocks on the altar. Still moving nothing but his eyes, he looked up at the statue. “Ahem,” he said. “I guess maybe he would.”

“Come along, Father,” Malya said. “Dilbump for lunch.”

Don’t You Know, There’s a War Going On?

There are two kinds of people — those who think there are two kinds of people and those who don’t.

From the beginning of Time, Man has been on the move, ever outward. First he spread over his own planet, then cross the Solar System, then outward to the Galaxies, all of them dotted, speckled, measled with the colonies of Man.

Then, one day in the year eleven thousand four hundred and six (11,406), an incredible discovery was made in the Master Imperial Computer back on Earth. Nearly 500 years before, a clerical error had erased from the computer’s memory more than 1000 colonies, all in Sector F.U.B.A.R.3.

For half a millennium, those colonies, young and struggling when last heard from, had had no contact with the rest of Humanity. The Galactic Patrol Interstellar Ship Hopeful, Captain Gregory Standforth commanding, was at once dispatched to reestablish contact with the Thousand Lost Colonies and return them to the bosom of Mankind.

The two armies were massed in terrible array, banners flying, the hosts facing each other across the verdant valley. The tents of the generals were magnificently bedecked, pennons whipping in the breeze. Down below, clergymen in white and black blessed the day and the pounded grass and the generals and the banners and the archers and the horses and those who sweep up behind the horses. Filled with a good breakfast, the soldiers on the slopes stood comfortably, happy to be a part of this historic moment, while the supreme commanders of both forces marched with their aides and their scribes down through their respective armies and out across the green sweep of neutral territory toward the table and the altar set up in the very center of the valley under a yellow flag of truce.

This was the first time these two supreme commanders had met, and they studied each other with a pardonable curiosity while the various aides exchanged documents and provided signatures. Is he fiercer-looking than me? the supreme commanders wondered as they eyed each other. Is his jaw firmer and leaner? Do his eyes flash more coldly and cruelly? Is his backbone more ramrod-stiff?

The ministers sprinkled holy water over the papers. The supreme commanders firmly shook hands — very firmly shook hands — and a great cheer went up from the multitudes on the slopes. The ceremony was complete. The name had been changed. The 300 Years’ War was now officially the 400 Years’ War.

“Look out!” someone shouted.

Soldiers gaped. Horses neighed and pawed the ground. Clergy and aides fled with cassocks and tunics flapping, Supreme commanders took to their heels and the great long silver bullet of the spaceship settled slowly, delicately, almost lazily into the very center of the valley, the massive base of the thing gently mashing the main altar into a dinner mat.

“Remember, Councilman,” Ensign Kybee Benson said, pacing the councilman’s cabin, “these are intelligent and subtle people, the descendants of philosophers.”

“Hardly a problem,” Councilman Morton Luthguster responded. “I’m something of a philosopher myself.”

Ensign Benson and Councilman Luthguster meshed imperfectly. Ensign Benson was almost painfully aware that the reason the councilman had been chosen to represent the Galactic Council on this endless, trivial, boring mission to the universal boondocks was simply that nobody at the Galactic Council could stand the man’s porposities anymore. Luthguster didn’t realize that; nor did he realize that it was Ensign Benson’s sharp-nosed personality that had won him a berth on the Hopeful (neither did Ensign Benson); but he’d certainly noticed that all his conversations with Ensign Benson left him with the sense that his fur had been rubbed the wrong way.

Ensign Benson’s face now wore the expression of a man eating a lemon. “Councilman, would you like to know which particular philosophy these philosophers philosophized about?”

“You’re the social engineer,” Luthguster pointed out, getting a bit prickly himself. “It’s your job to background me on these colonies.”

“Dualists,” Ensign Benson said. “They were dualists.”

“You mean they fought each other.

Lieutenant Billy Shelby, the Hopeful’s young second in command, knocked on the open door and entered the cabin, saying, “Sir, the ship has landed.”

“Just a second, Billy.” Taking a deep breath, displaying his patience, Ensign Benson said, “Not duelists, Councilman, dualists. They believed in the philosophy of dualism. Simply stated, the idea that there are two sides to every story.”

“At the very least,” Luthguster said. “Back in the Galactic Coun—”

“Gemini,” Ensign Benson interrupted. “That’s what they named their colony, after the twins of the zodiac. They’d originally considered Janus, after the two-faced god, but that suggested a duplicity they didn’t intend. Discussion and debate; that’s the core of their approach to life.”

“A civilized and cultured people, obviously.” Luthguster preened himself, patting his big round belly. “We shall get along famously.”

“No doubt,” Ensign Benson said. “Shall we begin?”

They followed Billy Shelby down to the main hatch, where the ladder had already been extruded, but the door was not yet open. Waiting beside’ it was Captain Standforth, tall and thin and vague, his stun gun ready in his hand. Pointing to the weapon, Luthguster said, “We won’t be needing that, Captain. These are peaceful scholars.”

“I thought I might shoot some birds,” said the captain. “For stuffing.” Bird taxidermy was the only thing in life the captain really cared about. Seven generations of Standforths had, unfortunately, made such magnificent careers in the Galactic Patrol that this Standforth had had no choice but to sign up when he’d attained the proper age, but the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, which everybody now knew — and which was why he had been assigned to the Hopeful.

“Shoot birds later,” Luthguster said, somewhat stiffly. “Let us begin peacably. Open the door, Billy.”

Billy pushed the button, the door opened and Luthguster stepped out onto the platform at the head of the ladder. ‘Fellow thinkers,” he cried out and fell back into the ship with seven arrows stuck in him.

“Rotten aim,” Chief Engineer Hester Hanshaw said, wiping her hands on a greasy rag, then dropping it onto the cluster of pulled arrows. “You’ll live.”

“At least you could sound happier about it,” Luthguster told her. Lying here on the engine-room table, he was so enswathed in bandages that he looked like a gift-wrapped beach ball.

“It’s mostly all that blubber protected you,” Hester said unsympathetically. “You’re a very inefficient design.”

“Well, thank you very much.”

There was no doctor on the Hopeful, there being room for only five crew members and the councilman. Hester Hanshaw, 40ish, blunt of feature and speech and hand and mind, had taken a few first-aid courses before departure, with the attitude that the human body was merely a messier-than-usual kind of machine and that most of its ills could be repaired with a few turns of a screwdriver or taps of a hammer. (Pliers had been useful in the current case, plucking the arrows out of the councilman.) Hester never gave her engines sympathy while banging away at them, so why should she give sympathy to Luthguster? “I’ll give you some coffee,” she offered grudgingly.

Luthguster knew Hester’s coffee from hearsay. “No, thank you!”

“Don’t worry, you won’t leak. I plugged all the holes.”

Luthguster closed his eyes. A moan leaked out.

Lieutenant Billy Shelby, handsome, romantic, idealistic, bright as a bowling ball, clutched the microphone in his left hand, white flag in his right, and said, “Ready, sir.”

The captain hesitated. “Are you sure, Billy?”

“He already volunteered, Captain,” Ensign Benson pointed out. “Obviously we have to make contact with the Geminoids somehow.”

“I’m sure, Captain,” Billy said.

So the captain pushed the button, the door opened and Billy marched out onto the platform with the white flag high and the loud-speaker microphone to his mouth: “People of—” his voice boomed out over the valley, and a cannon ball ripped through the white flag to carom off the silver hull.

Billy gaped at the hole in the flag. “Gee whizz,” his amplified voice told the sunny day. “Don’t you guys believe in a flag of truce?”

“That ain’t no flag of truce!” a voice yelled from upslope. “It’s white!”

“Well, what color do you want?”

“Yellow! The color of cowards!”

“Wait right there,” Billy told the two encircling armies and went back into the ship. Carom! went a cannon ball in farewell.

“After dark,” Supreme Commander Krraich said, “we’ll deploy a patrol to sneak up on the thing and set fire to it.”

“I suspect, sir,” said an aide carefully (Krraich was known to dislike correction), “the thing is made of metal.”

Krraich glowered. Sneaking up on things and setting fire to them was one of his favorite sports. “It’s a fort, isn’t it?” he demanded. “Could be just shiny paint.”

“Sir, uh, cannon balls bounce off.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s metal. Could be rubber.”

“Rubber won’t burn, sir.”

Krraich turned his gaze full upon this pestiferous aide, whose name was Major Invercairnochinchlie. In the bloodshot eye of his mind, Krraich watched Major Invercairnochinchlie burn to the ground — kilt, sporran, gnarled pipe, tam and all. “What do you suggest, Major?”

Invercairnochinchlie swallowed. “Acid, sir?”

The other aides, also in formal officers’ kilts, all snickered and shifted their feet, like a corralful of miniskirted horses; aides liked to see other aides in trouble. But then, Krraich’s least favorite and most intelligent aide (the two facts were not unconnected), a colonel named Alderpee, said, “Sir, if I may make a suggestion?”

“You always do,” Krraich said, irritated because the suggestions were usually good.

“That thing out there is a fort,” Alderpee said. “A traveling fort. Think how we could use such a thing.”

Krraich had no imagination. “Your suggestion?”

“They’re about to send out a party under a flag of truce. We kidnap that party, apply torture and learn how to invade the fort. Then we take it over.”

Krraich was appalled and showed it. “Violate a yellow flag of truce?”

“Those people aren’t a part of our war,” Alderpee pointed out. “They’re innocent bystanders. The rules of battle don’t apply.”

“Ah.”

“And if we don’t do it,” Alderpee added, “the Antibens will.”

“How do you do? I’m Lieutenant Billy Shelby of the Interstel— Mmf!”

“There!” Colonel Alderpee cried. “I told you the Antibens would do it”

The chaplain, in his black dress uniform, sprinkled holy water over Billy, who sneezed. “Gesundheit,” said the chaplain.

“Thank you.”

“I am the Right Reverend Beowulf’ Hengethorg,” the chaplain explained. “I am here to ready you for torture.”

“Torture?” Billy gaped around at all the big, mean-looking, bulgy-armed men lining the periphery of the large, torchlit tent. “Gee whizz,” he said, “we’re here to be friendly. We came all the way from Earth just to—”

“Earth?” Wide-eyed, Reverend Hengethorg leaned close. “You wouldn’t lie to a reverend, would you?”

“Oh, no, sir You see, you were lost, and—”

“And on Earth,” the chaplain said, voice tensely trembling, “do they believe in Robert Benchley?”

“I’m the only possible volunteer. The councilman is wounded, Hester keeps the engines going, Pam Stokes astrogates and you understand the mission. I’m not necessary at all.”

“Well, Captain,” Ensign Benson said as they strode doorward together, “I have to admit you’re right. All captains are unnecessary; you’re one of the rare ones who know it.”

“So I’ll try to make peace with the other army,” the captain went on, “and ask them to help us rescue Billy.”

“And find out what’s going on here.”

“Well, I’ll certainly ask,” the captain said.

They had reached the door, where firmly the captain pushed the button. “There’s no point in carrying any flags,” he said. “These people don’t seem to respect any color.” He stepped outside.

“Good luck, Captain.”

The captain looked back over his shoulder. “Did you say some—” He dropped from sight. Thump crumple bunkle bong kabingbing thud.

Ensign Benson leaned out. to gaze down at the captain, all in a heap at the foot of the stairs. “I said, good luck.”

“Another one!” cried Colonel Alderpee. “Men, get that one or we’ll be using your heads for cannon balls!”

“The ultimate proof!” the Right Reverend Hengethorg was saying. “This fine young chap here has never even heard of Robert Benchley, much less read his work.”

Proud of his ignorance, Billy smiled in modest self-satisfaction at Supreme Commander Mangle. “That’s right, sir. What I mostly read is The Adventures of Space Cadet Hooper and His Pals Fatso and Chang. They just have the most—”

Supreme Commander Mangle, a knife of a man — a tall, glinty-eyed, bony, angry knife of a man — growled deep in his throat; a distant early warning. Billy blinked and decided after all not to give the supreme commander a plot summary of Cadet Hooper and His Pals Go to Betelgeuse.

Mangle turned his laser eyes on Hengethorg. “Reverend,” he said. His voice needed oiling. “Explain.”

“The people of Earth are Antibens like us,” the chaplain explained. “Must be! Not only does that prove the truth of our philosophy but we can ally ourselves with Earth and destroy the Bens, forever!”

Mangle brooded. Apparently, he was considering the advantages and disadvantages of allying himself with people like Billy Shelby, because when next he asked, “Are there any more at home like you?”

“So you’re from Earth,” Colonel Alderpee said.

Yes, I am,” Captain Standforth told him. “I’m terribly sorry, but would you mind scratching my nose? Just the very tip.” The captain had been tied with a lot of rope immediately upon arriving in this army’s camp, so now his fingers (and their nails) were imprisoned behind him.

Colonel Alderpee at first looked confused, then seemed on the verge of scratching the captain’s nose, then obviously bethought himself and snapped to several nearby soldiers, “Untie this man, I believe there are enough of us quell him if necessary.”

“Oh, I won’t need quelling,” the captain promised. “Just scratching.”

So the ropes were removed and the captain indulged in a good scratch while Colonel Alderpee went off to consult with Supreme Commander Krraich and a couple of chaplains in a far corner of the tent. Returning a minute later looking as though his own nose were now a bit out of joint, he said, “Well, Captain Standforth, I wouldn’t do it this way — I think it’s a waste of time — but before we get to the subject of our conversation, I am required to ask, you, an absolute alien, your position on the Benchley Paradox. So listen carefully.”

The captain listened, idly scratching his nose (now more for fun than for need).

“There are two kinds of people in the world,” Colonel Alderpee began.

“This world?” the captain asked. “Or Earth?”

“Any world! This is the Benchley Paradox; now, listen.”

“I do beg your pardon.”

“There are two kinds of people in the world,” the colonel repeated. “They are, Robert Benchley claimed, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t believe there are two kinds of people in the world. Now. Do you agree with that?”

“Absolutely,” the captain said. “Seems perfectly clear to me.”

Ensign Benson did not entirely believe it. Billy and the captain were both back, and each had made a tentative alliance with the locals — with different sets of locals. Upon their return, Ensign Benson had brought them both up to the command, deck and, while the wounded councilman and Hester and even the usually distracted Pam had all sat around listening, he had questioned both ex-prisoners. Their stories had dovetailed so thoroughly that Ensign Benson really had no choice but to accept the reality. “They are fighting,” he said at last, “over Robert Benchley.”

“A philosopher, I guess,” Billy said, scratching his head.

“Very important, anyway,” the captain added, scratching his nose.

“A smart-aleck, to judge from his paradox,” Ensign Benson said. “Perhaps even, a deliberate humorist.”

“Dangerous people, humorists,” Luthguster opined. “They should not be taken lightly.”

All around, the captain’s stuffed birds glared down from their perches, unwinking glass eyes peering from among feathers and beaks and claws of every color in the rainbow and a few colors outside the known rainbow of Earth. “All right,” Ensign Benson said. “I begin to see what happened. One of those original philosopher settlers, with that heavy-handed light touch professors love so well, introduced the Benchley Paradox, in which you prove Benchley right by disagreeing with him. Because if everybody agreed with the paradox, then there’d be only one kind of person in the world, and the paradox would be wrong. Are any of you pinbrains getting this?”

“Certainly,” said Luthguster, while the captain and Billy and Hester shook their heads and Pam doggedly worked her slide rule. The stuffed birds gaped down as though the very thought of the Benchley Paradox made them furious.

“The Gemini philosophers,” Ensign Benson went on, “had found a topic without the usual comforting weight of precedent behind it. Rather than cite old texts at one another, they were forced to think for themselves. Unable to appeal to prior authority, they couldn’t end the quarrel at all. Each succeeding generation became more rigid and less scholarly, until, by now—”

“Total war,” Luthguster finished, demonstrating his grasp of the situation.

“They sure don’t like each other much,” Billy agreed. “Boy, what they said about the Bens.”

“The Bens said some things, too,” the captain said, as though he felt it his job to defend his side in the war. “About the Antibens, I mean.”

Ensign Benson cleared his throat in a hostile manner. When every person and bird in the room was looking at him, he said, “All right. The first question is, What do they want from us?”

“An alliance,” Billy said. “To help them destroy the Bens.”

“Well, no,” the captain said. “Actually, they want an alliance to help them destroy the Antibens.”

Luthguster sighed, his wounds creaking. “Dealing with one colony at a time is trouble enough,” he said. “When they begin to multiply—”

“Divide,” corrected Ensign Benson. “We’re dealing here with mitosis, not sexual reproduction.”

“Mitosis,” Pam said, looking bright. “I know what that is.”

“You would,” Ensign Benson told her. “All right, let’s concentrate on the problem at hand. Obviously, Earth can’t send technical assistance or start trade programs while this war is going on, so our first job is to bring peace. Any suggestions?”

“Once my wounds heal,” Councilman Luthguster said, “I shall engage in shuttle diplomacy. I’ll speak with the political leaders, deliver their demands, conduct negotiations, and, eventually, I’ll find the happy middle ground where the language is vague enough so each side can believe it has won. Yes.” The councilman gazed radiantly at some wonderful image of himself in the middle distance.” “ ‘The Luthguster Peace,’ ” he quoted from some future history text.

“In the first place,” Ensign Benson said, “there are no political leaders on Gemini. From what Billy and the captain say, the society has been taken over entirely by the two groups of military commanders, with the assistance of the religious establishment. In the second place, this isn’t a war of territory or trade routes or anything else rational that can be negotiated. A war of philosophical difference is something else again. And in the third place, Councilman, I’ve seen you in action with local citizens before, and I don’t want to unite the bloodthirsty factions on Gemini by making them form an alliance against Earth.”

“Well, really,” Luthguster said, indignantly scratching his wounds.

“If you want a thing done right,” Ensign Benson said in disgust, “you have to do it yourself. Unfortunately.”

“The Right Reverend Beowulf Hengethorg,” Billy said, on his best behavior, “I’d like you to meet Ensign Kybee Benson, social engineer of the Interstellar Ship Hopeful.”

“Ensign,” echoed Reverend Hengethorg, as he grasped Ensign Benson’s outstretched hand in a grip of steel. “Is that a clerical rank, or military?”

“Somewhere between the two,” Ensign Benson said through clenched teeth; it was the first time since elementary school that he’d tried to out-squeeze another person in a handshake.

They were standing in the sunlight outside the large command tent while dozens of men armed with arrows and broadswords and maces and battle-axes and clubs and knives and metal-toed shoes sat around their several other tents, watching the two Earthlings with the flat expressions of carnivores looking at meat.

Ensign Benson had understood it was his job to visit both encampments, being introduced first to the Antibens by Billy and later to the Bens by the captain in his own effort at shuttle diplomacy — or shuttle philosophy. Now, feeling all those martial eyes on him, he reminded himself that this was, after all, the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances; pity he’d been smart enough to know it.

“It was a great moment for us all,” Reverend Hengethorg was saying, as he at last released Ensign Benson’s hand with a little superior smile, “when Lieutenant Shelby confirmed what we have for so long believed: that Earth is firmly Antiben. I may say I took it as a personal vindication.”

“Actually,” Ensign Benson said, massaging his fingers and speaking with caution, “Earth’s philosophical position anent the Benchley Paradox is somewhat more sophisticated than that. Essentially, I would say Earth’s position encompasses elements of both the Ben and the Antiben points of view.”

Reverend Hengethorg’s frown had something of the Inquisition in it. “Both points of view? How can a position encompass absolute contradictions?”

“Well, we don’t see the Bens and the Antibens as being absolutely contradictory,” Ensign Benson explained.

“They are on Gemini,” the reverend said. “But you must come with me to the chaplains’ tent and explain Earth’s position to the reverend fathers.”

“I’d like that.”

With the smiling, unconscious Billy trailing after, they walked together toward the chaplains’ tent, safely placed on the far side of the slope, and Ensign Benson said, “This is quite a large encampment. How many of your people are here?”

“Why, all of us,” Reverend Hengethorg said in some surprise. “Except for a few spies in the Bens’ camp, of course. Where else would we be?”

“Don’t you have a town? Forts?”

“I don’t know what you mean by town,” the reverend said. “We have had forts, but they were vulnerable to fire and siege and difficult to move, unlike that fort of yours, which we all admire very much.”

“So the women are right here with the army.”

“The women are in the army. We are all in the army.”

“Children?”

“Military school, just over there,” the reverend said, pointing toward a nearby copse from which came the shrieks of childish savagery.

“What about farms? Food?”

“We have our herds. We hunt and we pick fruits and so on in season.”

They walked past a smithy, where metal bits for harnesses were being hammered into shape. “How many of you are there?” Ensign Benson asked.

“That’s a military secret.”

“More than five hundred, I’d guess,” Ensign Benson said, looking around. “Fewer than a thousand.”

“If you say so.” The reverend clearly didn’t like having his military secret guessed at so easily and accurately.

“But as the population grows—”

“Why should it grow?” Gesturing around them, the reverend said, “We and the Bens have had stable populations for four hundred years.”

Ensign Benson nodded. “Birth control?”

The reverend shook his head. “War,” he said.

They had reached the chaplains’ tent. “My colleagues will be delighted to meet with you,” the reverend said. “There’s nothing we all like more than lively philosophical debate.”

“That’s fine.”

“Of course,” the reverend went on, “the liveliest philosophical debates take place under torture. But there’s no question of that here,” he said, holding open the tent flap, smiling wistfully to show how bravely he was taking the deprivation, “is there — Earth being our ally against the Bens.”

“Indeed,” Ensign Benson said and followed Reverend Hengethorg into the tent.

“Captain,” Pam said, tapping her finger tips against the frame of the cabin’s open door,

Captain Standforth looked up. A knife was in his right hand, a palmful of desiccated guts in his left, and a pitiful lump of orange feathers lay before him on the desk, oozing green blood. “Yes, Pam? I’m very busy. I must finish stuffing this Nibelungen nuthatch before it dries out.”

“There’s someone here,” Pam told him. “To see you. A man named Colonel Alderpee.”

“Oh, yes,” the captain said, rising, wiping green phlug from his hands onto his uniform jacket. “I told him he could drop by. He was very interested in the ship.”

“He certainly is,” said Pam.

He certainly was. The captain and Pam met him in a corridor well within the ship, one level above the entry port. Colonel Alderpee, looking very happy, was accompanied by a small, skinny scribe who earnestly scribbled notes to the colonel’s directives: “Granaries along here, I think. Horse stalls below; we’ll need straw. Oh, and moat detail to report at fifteen hundred hours.”

Seeing the captain and Pam, Colonel Alderpee said, “Ah, Captain, delighted! It’s a different fort from anything I’ve seen before, but very adaptable.”

“Colonel, what are you—” the captain began, then stopped with a squawk when he saw, ambling around the far corner of (the corridor, a purple cow, closely followed by a yellow-and-white polka-dotted dog. “What— What’s that?”

“Eh? Oh, the herd,” the colonel answered.

And it was. It was the herd and the herders and the herders’ dogs and the herders’ wives and children. And the army, with banners, marching to the squeal of bagpipes. And the clergy, with collection baskets, and the cooks and the smithies and the leatherworkers and the teachers and the glee club and the magicians and the storytellers and the horses and the hay and the forges and the whips and the thumbscrews and the tents (folded) and the extra arrow feathers and the cooking pots and the bits of string that might be useful someday and the unfinished wooden statues of horses and the supreme commander, Krraich, who shook the captain’s hand very hard and said, “I shall take command now.”

“Oh, my goodness,” the captain said to Pam. “We’ve got the Bens!”

Ensign Benson sat on a low stool in the chaplains’ tent, in the midst of the reverend fathers, both hearing them and asking them questions. And what he’d already heard had not been at all encouraging. He’d entered this den of iniquity intending by easy stages to lead the Antibens around to a more open point of view, but he’d soon seen it was hopeless. Never in his life had he met so many firmly closed minds.

Every approach he’d made to broaden the Benchley Paradox had brought angry frowns and mutterings of Heresy. Ensign Benson could imagine — far too well — what happened to heretics on Gemini, so by now he was simply vamping along, trying to figure out some way to get out of there alive. “if we accept the Runyon Postulate,” he was saying, “that all of life is six to five against, as glossed by Sturgeon’s Second Law, that ninety percent of everything is crud, we can then see that Benchley’s Paradox merely acknowledges that there will at all times be unenlightened people who—”

Were they mumbling “Heresy” again, for God’s sake? Was the word blasphemy being bandied about? “What I’m trying to say—” Ensign Benson began again, wondering what he was trying to say, and Billy came into the tent, crying, “Ensign Benson! Come look!”

“Look?”

“The ship!”

More trouble? “Excuse me,” Ensign Benson told the chaplains. “I must be about my captain’s business.” And he marched right on out of the chaplains’ tent.

To see, down in the center of the valley, the Hopeful filling up with Bens. “Oh, now what?” Ensign Benson cried, at the end of his tether.

“You,” said a knife-thin, harsh-faced resplendently uniformed man pointing a bony finger at Ensign Benson, “shall pay for this treachery.”

“Supreme Commander Mangle,” Billy said, with his party manners again, “may I present Ensign Kybee Benson.”

“Hello,” the supreme commander said. “You die now.”

“Wait a minute! I had nothing to do with that,” Ensign Benson said, pointing at the spaceship. Some clowns down there had started digging a moat. “I’ll take care of it right now.”

Mangle’s thin lips curled. “You expert us to permit you to return to your Fort?”

Ensign Benson looked at Billy, Who sighed but managed a brave little smile. “I know,” he said. “This is where I volunteer to stay as a hostage.”

“I don’t care who you are,” Hester said. “You can’t start a lot of fires in my engine room.”

“I’m the smithy,” the burly man explained, stacking his firebricks near the reactor, “and the sergeant says this is where I set up.”

“Well, you can tell your ser—”

Ensign Benson entered the engine room. “Hester.”

“Would you tell this—”

“Ssh! Come here!”

So Hester went there, and Ensign Benson said, “Forget him. Start the engines. Don’t worry about a thing.”

“Billy will be worried,” Pam said.

“Billy will be all right,” Ensign Benson told her. “We’ll all be all right. You just plot the course. As for you, Captain, surely you know how to drive this thing.”

Pam and Ensign Benson and the captain were together on the command deck with a lot of squalling babies; Colonel Alderpee had decreed this space was the nursery. Councilman Luthguster was off making a courtesy call on Supreme Commander Krraich.

“Well,” said the captain doubtfully, “I have driven it, but that was a long time ago.”

“Just take her up,” Ensign Benson said, “and head southeast. Right, Pam?”

“Mm,” Pam said, lost, in her slide rule.

“Build boats,” Supreme Commander, Mangle said. “Tonight, we cross that moat.”

“Sir,” said an aide, coming into the tent, “the fort is leaving.”

They all went outside. The fort was gone. The moat remained, a ring of muddy water around a crushed altar.

“Sir? Do you still want the boats?”

“Kill that idiot,” Mangle said. “And bring me the hostage Earthling.”

Ensign Benson went to the commander’s tent (a.k.a. dining room) to explain the situation to a suspicious Colonel Alderpee and a glowering Supreme Commander Krraich. “The fort,” the colonel Pointed out, “is moving.”

“Plague,” Ensign Benson said.

They stared at him. They recoiled from each other. “Plague! Where?”

“Back where we came from. The ship’s instruments showed there was a breakout just due. Congratulations, gentlemen,” Ensign Benson continued, “you have at last won your war. Within a week, there won’t he a living Antiben on Gemini.”

Southeast across the surface of the planet ran the Hopeful, guided by Pam’s slide rule and steered erratically by Captain Standforth, who had to keep picking babies out of the controls. Diagonally ran the ship, down from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern, around from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western. Exactly opposite the original encampment, in similar climate and terrain, where they would be easy for Earth’s supply ships to find but where they would never again meet their enemies, the Hopeful set down and unloaded the Bens. “You’ve done a fine thing for Robert Benchley,” Colonel Alderpee said as the Bens and their beasts, their tents and their babies all deshipped.

“It was the least we could do,” Ensign Benson assured him. “After all, you had reached a stalemate in what was clearly a war of total extermination. Something had to be done.”

“Peace, it’s wonderful,” the colonel said, then frowned. “At least, I’ve heard it is.”

Councilman Luthguster made a speech promising wonders in aid and technical assistance to come from Earth. Some archers playfully lofted arrows in his direction, but they were only fooling, and the one flesh wound that resulted was easily patched by Hester with a snippet of stick-on plaster, meant for stemming leaks in boilers.

“I was beginning to rather like all those babies,” Captain Standforth said, a faraway look in his eye. “I wonder how you… Hmmmm.” He went away, to study his taxidermy books.

“Plague,” Ensign Benson said, as Billy was untied from the rack. “You’ll never see a living Ben on Gemini again.”

“And you took them away,” Reverend Hengethorg said, “so they couldn’t infect us.”

“That’s right.”

“You’ve done wonders.”

“I know,” Ensign Benson said.

Billy came over, massaging his chafed wrists. He looked taller. “Gosh, Kybee,” he said.

“Well, ta-ta,” Ensign Benson told the Antibens. “You’ll be hearing from Earth. Our job here is finished now.”

“Sir,” an aide said to Colonel Alderpee, “there’s a dispute among the men.”

The colonel gazed over the new encampment, the tents still being raised, the thud-thud of posts being driven into the virgin ground. “Dispute? Over what?”

“Well, some of the men say those people in the fort were from Earth, and some say they weren’t.”

“Really? Call a meeting. We’re mature adults; we’ll discuss it.”