The Wheels of If And Other Science-Fiction

THE WARRIOR RACE

They were serious these days, the young men who gathered in Prof. Tadeusz Lechon's room to drink his mighty tea and set up propositions for him to knock down. Between relief that the war was over without their having come to harm personally, and apprehension for the future, and some indignation at the prospect of foreign rule, there was not much room left for undergraduate exuberance and orneriness. Something was going to happen to them, they thought.

"Whatever it is," said Tadeusz Lechon, "it is not cowardice, I am sure." He moved his large bald head forward to a cup of tea the color of an old boot, his big gold-plated earrings hobbling. He sucked noisily, watching Frederick Merrian.

Fred Merrian, a sandy-haired sophomore with squirrel-teeth, looked grateful but still defiant. He was in civilian clothes. Baldwin Dowling, the co-ed's dream, was in a very new U. S. Army uniform. The uniform was so new because, by the time Dowling had reached his unit in Los Angeles, the war was over, and he had been told to return home, free, on anything he liked. He had taken the next 'plane back to Philadelphia.

Lechon continued: "It is rather an example of the conviction of most thoughtful young men, that human problems must have a solution. Those problems being what they are, one cannot prove that any of them has no solution, the way Abel proved the problem of solving quintic equations algebraically impossible. So they try one idea after another, these young men; it may be Adrenalism or Anarcho-Communism OI Neo-Paganism. In your ease it was non-resistance. Perhaps it is well that they do—"

"But—" said Fred Merrian.

Lechon stopped the waiting flood of impassioned argument with a wave. "We have been over all this before. Some day you will tire of Centaurian rule, and join some other movement with equally impractical ideals. Our Centaurian is nosing around the campus. He may visit us. Suppose we let Baldwin tell us what he has learned about them."

"Yeah, what are they like?" asked Merrian.

"Much like other people," said Baldwin Dowling. "They're pretty big. I guess the original group of colonists that went to Proxima Centauri were a pretty tall bunch. They have a funny manner, though; sort of as if they ran by clockwork. You don't get palsy with a Bozo."

Arthur Hsi smiled his idiotic smile. His name was really Hsi A-tsz, and he was Dot at all idiotic. "I came half way und the world so I could study away from the Bozos. Not far enough, it seems."

Dowling asked: "Heard anything from China?"

"Bozos are busy, trying to make everything sternly efficient and incorruptible, like themselves. May be the greatest fighters on earth, but don't know China. My father writes—"

"Shh!" hissed Lechon, his big red face alert. Then he relaxed "I thought it was our Centaurian." There was an uncomfortable pause; nobody had much enthusiasm left for chatter, even if the superman failed to appear. Finally Lechon took it up: "Everybody I talk to says what an impossible thing it was, that war. But if you read your history, gentlemen, you will see that it was nothing new. In 1241 the Hungarians never dreamed the Mongols had things like divisional organization and wig-wig signals. So they were swamped. Our government never dreamed the Centaurians had an oxidizing ray, and airplanes with fifteen centimeter armor. So we were swamped. You follow mc? The tune is always different, but the notes stay much the same."

He broke off again, listening. A brisk step approached. Somebody knocked. The history professor said to come in. The Centaurian came.

"My name," he said in a metallic voice, "is Juggins." He was about thirty, with a lantern jaw, high cheekbones, and outstanding ears. He wore the odd plum-colored uniform of the Centaurians: descendants of those hardy souls who had colonized a planet of Proxima Centauri, had fought a three-generation battle against hostile environment and more hostile natives, and had finally swarmed back to earth fifty-odd years ago. Australia had been turned over to them, and their science had made this second most useless continent the world's most productive area. Their terrible stay on the other planet had made them something more and something less than men. Now they ruled the earth.

"Hello, Mr. Jug—" began Dowling. The Centaurian cut him off: "You will not use 'mister' in speaking to a Centaurian. I am Juggins."

"Will you sit down?" invited Lechon.

"I will." The Bozo folded his long legs, sat, and waited for somebody to say something.

Somebody finally did. Dowling asked: "How do you like Philly?"

"You mean Philadelphia?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Then kindly say so. I don't like it at all. It's dirty, corrupt, and inefficient. But we shall fix that. You will do well to cooperate with us. We shall give you a much healthier life than you have ever known." He got this out with some difficulty, as if saying more than one sentence at a time made him self-conscious.

Even Dowling, who though a native was not bothered by an excess of local pride, was taken aback by such candor. He murmured: "You guys don't pull any punches."

"I think I grasp the meaning of your slang expression. We are taught to tell the truth." He made telling the truth sound like a most unattractive occupation.

Hsi spoke up: "I hope you do something about the water system. This morning when I turned on the faucet, I got a live eel, a size twelve rubber, and about a cubic meter of chlorine gas before the water came through."

The Bozo stared at him coldly. "Young man, that is an unpardonable exaggeration. A rubber could not possibly pass through the water-pipes."

"He is juckink," said Lechon helplessly, the stress of conflicting emotions bringing out his Polish accent.

Juggins shifted his glare. "I understand. That's what you call a joke, is it? Very funny."

"Have a cigarette," suggested Dowling.

"We never use the filthy weed. It's unhealthy."

"Some tea, then," sighed Lechon.

"Hmm. It is a drug."

"Oh, I would not say that. Juggins. It does contain caffein, which is a stimulant, but most foods have one or more things like that in them."

"Very well, if you'll make it weak. And no sugar."

Hsi poured, and added some very hot water. The Bozo stirred it suspiciously. He looked up to say: "I want you, and everybody in the University, to look on me as a kind of father. There's no sense in your taking a hostile attitude, because you can't change conditions. If you will cooperate—Gaw!" He was staring popeyed at his spoon.

The lower half of the spoon had melted all at once and run down into a puddle of molten metal at the bottom of the cup.

"You stirred too hard," said Hsi.

"I—" said Juggins. He glared from face to face. Then he carefully put down his cup, laid the unmelted half of the spoon in the saucer, rose, and stalked out.

Lechon mopped his red forehead. "That was terrible, Arthur! You shouldn't play jokes on him. He might have us all shot."

Hsi let a long-suppressed giggle escape. "Maybe so. But I had that Wood's-metal spoon handy, and it was too good to miss."

"Is he real?" asked Merrian.

"Yeah," said Dowling. "A lot of people have wondered if the Bozos weren't robots or something. But they're real people; reproduced in the normal fashion and everything.

They're a new kind of man, I guess."

"No," said Lechon. "Read your history, gentlemen. The warrior race. The latest example of what can be done with men by intensive training and discipline. The Spartans and the Osmanli Turks did it in their time. Our Centaurian is more like a Spartan Peer than a Turkish Janissary. Lycurgus would know our father Juggins for a true Spartiate at once ..."

He went on. The three undergraduates listened with one ear. Merrian was in the throes of a soul-search. Was force an evil when used against creatures like these?

Dowling and Hsi, not introspective idealists, were concerned with the recasting of their personal plans. Dowling guessed that there would still be local Philadelphia politics to get into when he finished his course, Bozos or no Bozos. There'd have to be go-betweens between the supermen and their subjects.

Hsi was thinking of the soft job in the Sino-American Transport Co. that his father would shoe-horn him into when he finished college. If he could, by hard work and family influence, worm his way to the Directorate, there were some big deals he had in mind ... There would be the omnipresent and allegedly incorruptible Bozos. But that incorruptibility was, to his mind, still only alleged.

Class reunions, like weddings and funerals, bring together a lot of people who would not ordinarily cross the street to speak to one another. So when the class of '09 broke up after the formalities, Hsi and Dowling and Merrian drifted together and wandered off to a restaurant to compare biographies.

Baldwin Dowling had filled out a bit, though he still had the wavy black hair and flashing smile. He had acquired a wife and one child. Arthur Hsi looked much the same, but had acquired a wife and six children. Fred Merrian had lost most of his sandy hair, and had received in exchange two wives, two divorces, and a thin feverish look.

Hsi had just come from a trip to Australia, and was full of it. "It's a wonderful place. Everything goes just like clockwork. No tips, no bribes. No fun, either. Every Bozo is a soldier of some sort, even the ones who run elevators and sell dog-biscuit."

Fred Merrian showed signs of building up argumentative back-pressure. "You mean you approve of them?" he snapped.

Hsi looked stupidly amused. "I wouldn't say that, Fred. But we have to get along with them. The Sino-American Transport Company is a huge organization, with subsidiaries all over the Pacific: hotels and airlines and whale-hatcheries and things. So must get along with them. What have you been doing last ten years?"

Merrian looked bitter. "I'm trying to make a living as a writer. But I won't write the sort of trash the cheap magazines buy, so—" He shrugged.

"What about you, Baldwin? I seem to hear about you in politics."

Dowling said: "Yeah, maybe you have. Tm the official mediator for the city of Philadelphia. When one of my—ah—flock gets into trouble with the Bozos, I try to get him out."

"You look prosperous," said Hsi.

"I haven't done so badly." Dowling's smile had a trace of leer. "Sort of like a tribune of the people, as Professor Lechon explained it to me."

"Lechon?" said Hsi. "Is he still here?"

"Yep, and still dishing out the love-life of the ancient Parthians." He noted Merrian's expression, and said: "Fred no doubt thinks I'm a raw renegade. But as you said, the Bozos are here, and we've got to get along with them. By the way, I met a man who knows you; Cass Young. Said your Chinese business methods had nearly driven him crazy."

"What didn't he like?"

"Oh, the way you never mean exactly what you say, and act hurt when some sucker objects to it. And the—ah—dryness of the Oriental palm, as he expressed it. Oh, remember the Bozo Juggins? The first administrator of the University of Pennsylvania? He's still here; administrator for the whole metropolitan area."

"Really?" said Hsi. "By the way, did Mr. Young tell you what he had been seeing me about?"

"No."

"Well, I want to talk to you about it." Hsi looked questioningly at Fred Merrian. Merrian looked at his watch, and reluctantly took his leave.

"Too bad," said Dowling. "He's the most decent and upright guy I know. But he isn't practical." He lowered his voice. "I could swear he was mixed up in some anti-Bozo movement."

"That would account for the hungry-wolf look," said Hsi. "Do you know about such movements?"

"I know a lot of things I don't let on. But what's this deal you have in mind?"

"I say nothing about a deal." Hsi paused to giggle. "But I see I can't fool you, Baldwin. You know the Morehouse project?"

"The mailing-tube unification plan? Yeah."

"Well, Sino-American controls the Philadelphia-Baltimore tube, as perhaps you don't know. And the tubes from Boston to Miami can't be unified without the Philadelphia-Baltimore link, obviously. But we don't want to sell our stock in the link outright."

"What, then?"

"If exchange of stock could be arranged—some good friends of ours already hold 45 per cent of the stock in the new Boston-Miami company—it would give us a strong voice in the affairs of the new company."

"In other words, majority control?"

"I would not say that. A strong voice."

Dowling grinned. "Don't try to kid me into thinking these 'good friends' aren't Sino-American dummies. How much stock of the new company do you want? Six per cent?"

"Seven and a fraction would look better."

"I get you. But you know how we do things here. The Bozos have their fingers in everything. If you make anything, they grab it; if you lose, that's your hard luck. AH the disadvantages of socialism without the advantages. And it's as much as your life's worth to try to hush one of them up. Still, I might be able to handle Juggins."

Hsi giggled. "So they are still incorruptible here, eh? How much of that 'healthier life' they promised have you gotten?"

"Well," said Dowling dubiously, "they did clean things up somewhat."

"Have you a new water-system yet?"

"No, though they've been talk—"

Boom! Far off across the Schuylkill, a yellow flash tore the night sky. Other explosions followed in quick succession. Broken glass tinkled. Hsi and Dowling gripped their table. Dowling muttered: "The fools!"

"A revolution?" asked Hsi.

"That's what they think." The faint tapping of gunfire became audible.

A pair of hard-looking men in uniform appeared in the doorway. Dowling murmured: "Watchdogs." He did not have to describe these police, whose list of virtues stopped after bravery and loyalty to their masters, the warrior race.

There was nothing to do but sit and listen. When the noise abated, Dowling went over to one of die watchdogs and spoke in a low voice.

The watchdog said: "Didn't recognize you, Mr. Dowling. I guess you can go home, and take your friend."

As the two men left the restaurant, Hsi was conscious of the hostile glares of the other customers. Outside, Dowling grinned wryly. "Nobody likes special privilege, except when he's the guy who's got it. We're walking."

"But your car—" wailed Hsi, a completely unathletic person.

"I'm leaving it here. If we tried to drive, the watchdogs would shoot first and ask questions afterwards. If we see anybody, we raise our hands and walk slowly."

Off to the northeast, the sky was red. A lot of houses in North Philadelphia had been set afire by the oxidizers ...

Hsi and Dowling spent the next day at the latter's home, without news of any kind. Edna Dowling tried to pump Hsi on the subject of ancient Chinese art. Arthur Hsi grinned foolishly, and spread his hands. "But Mrs. Dowling, I don't know anything about art. I'm a businessman!"

The next morning a newspaper did arrive over the ticker. It told of outbreaks, and their suppression, in Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, St. Louis ...

Baldwin Dowling was shown into Juggins' office. The Centaurian looked much the same, except that his hair was turning prematurely gray.

"Hello, Juggins," said Dowling. Then he sniffed. He sniffed again. There was an unmistakable smell of tobacco-smoke.

Dowling looked accusingly at Juggins. Juggins looked back, at first blankly, then uncomfortably. "What is it?" he barked.

Dowling grinned easily. "Don't worry, Juggins. I won't—"

"You will kindly mind your own business!"

"What are you sore about? I didn't say anything. And I have every intention of minding my own business. That's what I came here about." He explained about the stock exchange proposed by Hsi. He put the most favorable interpretation on it. But Juggins was not fooled.

Juggins thoughtfully studied the ornate penholder that marred the Spartan simplicity of his office. He said: "Your plan may be sound. But if my superiors heard of it, they might take a—an excessively rigid view." Silence. "I try to be fair. Haven't I always been fair with the Philadelphians?"

"Of course, Juggins. And it's about time we showed our gratitude, don't you think?"

"Of course we Ccntaurians aren't swayed by material considerations."

"Sure. Utterly incorruptible. But it would make me happy if I could show my appreciation. I'm not one of you selfless supermen, you know."

"What had you in mind?"

Dowling told him. Juggins took a deep breath, pursed his lips, and nodded somberly. He kept his eyes on the penholder.

"By the way," said Dowling, "now that that's settled, there's another little favor you might do for me. I believe one of the people you captured in the recent uprising was an old classmate named Frederick Merrian."

"What about him?"

"What are the Centaurians' plans for disposing of the rebels?"

"The leaders will be shot, and the others blinded. I don't think your Merrian was a leader; I'd recognize his name if he were."

"For old times' sake, I wondered if you couldn't do something for Merrian."

"Is he an intimate friend of yours?" Juggins looked at Dowling keenly.

"No; I've seen him only occasionally since we finished college. He means well, but he goes off on crazy tangents."

"I don't know what I could do. I couldn't have him turned loose."

"You don't have to. Put in a death certificate for him. Say he died of natural causes. Then substitute for him one of the regular prisoners in the Lancaster prison farm. They're dying all the time anyway."

"I'll see."

When Dowling picked up Arthur Hsi, his grin answered the Transport Director's question before it was asked.

"I offered him a hundred thousand, and he took it without argument."

Hsi whistled. "I was authorized to pay ten times that much! Our Bozo doesn't know own value yet."

"Maybe it's the first real bribe he's taken."

"Really? Well, we don't put him wise to what he could have got, eh? He'll learn soon enough."

Fred Merrian shambled into the visitors' room, looking beaten but brightened a bit at the sight of Dowling, Hsi, and Dr. Lechon.

He sat down, then looked puzzled. "How come the guard went out? They don't do that ordinarily."

Dowling grinned. "He's not supposed to hear what we've got to say." He explained the plan for shifting Merrian to the Lancaster farm under a new name.

"Then—then I'm going to keep my eyes? Oh—"

"Now, now, don't break down, Fred."

They got the overwrought writer calmed. He said: "I still don't understand why the uprising failed. You have no idea how careful we were. We thought of everything."

Dowling said: "Guess you just didn't have the stuff. As long as the Bozos have a large and well-armed corps of watchdogs—" He shrugged.

"You mean it's hopeless?"

"Uh—huh. Knowing you, Fred, I know you'll find that a hard thing to reconcile yourself to."

"I'll never be reconciled to it. There must be something"

"I'm afraid not."

"I am not too sure," said Lechon. "Armed uprising, no. With the complicated weapons used nowadays, civilians can do little. It is like trying to stop a—a buzz-saw with your bare hands. But there are other possibilities."

"What?" asked the three younger men together.

"Read your history, gentlemen. Read your history." And that was all they could get out of him.

"I'm not worrying," said Juggins. "We can trust each other." He leaned back in his chair and sucked on a cigar. He coughed a bit, and said: "Damn, I keep forgetting that one doesn't inhale these things." He had taken to the American fashion of men's earrings.

Dowling smiled. "You mean, we'll have to."

"You might put it that way, yes. What's the proposal this time?"

Arthur Hsi explained: "You know the Atlantic City project Sino-American is trying to promote? Our subsidiary is all ready to set up."

"Yes."

"Well, first, there's a Society for Preservation of Ancient Monuments objecting. Say if we modernize Atlantic City we'll ruin it. Say Hotel Traymore has been there three hundred years and it would be sacrilege to tear it down."

Juggins waved his cigar. "I can shoot a few of this Society. That'll shut them up."

"Oh, no," said Hsi, shocked. "Cause all kinds of trouble. People would boycott the project."

"Well, what do you want me to do then?"

"If you could have some of these old ruins moved, as a government project—"

"Hmm. That would cost money."

"Perhaps my company could see its way to sharing the expense."

Juggins still frowned. "My superior, the Centaurian MacWhirtle, would have to approve. I think he's suspicious of me."

Dowling broke in: "Is MacWhirtle married?"

"Yes, but his wife's back in Australia. Why?"

"I just had an idea. Go on, Arthur."

Hsi continued: "Then there's matter of financing improvement company. We thought we could have it issue some common stock, some non-cumulative preferred. Sino-American could buy most of former; public latter. You and MacWhirtle would have a chance at former also, before it was put on market."

Juggins frowned again. "I seem to remember some rule against non-cumulative preferred. Though I never knew why."

Hsi explained: "This wouldn't be called non-cumulative; some fancy name, but would mean same thing. You sell so much non-cumulative to public, mid hold common. Then year comes along, you tell preferred stockholders, conditions are very bad, can't pay any dividends at all, on common or preferred. Then next year you say conditions are better. You pay preferred stockholders their regular seven percent—for that year only. You pay yourself regular dividend on common, plus the common stock dividend you didn't pay previous year, plus seven percent preferred stock dividend you didn't pay previous year also. It's wonderful."

"I see," said Juggins. "I see why there's a rule against it. But I suppose that sort of thing is necessary in modern finance."

"Oh, absolutely," said Dowling.

"I try to be fair," said Juggins. "Some of my fellow-Centaurians lean over backward. I think they do more harm than good."

"Sure," said Dowling. "And do you suppose we could meet MacWhirtle? Socially, I mean."

Dowling dialled his wrist-phone. "Helen? This is Baldwin ...Yep, the old political wizard himself. Doing anything next week-end? ... No, no. It's a party ... In New York ... Uh—huh, got a Bozo for you to waggle your alabaster torso at ...Yep, a very big shot indeed. It's all very discreet, understand ... No, no, I will not! I've told you I'm very well satisfied with the woman I have. Love her, in fact. This is business. Right. See you Saturday."

The Centaurian MacWhirtle was n smaller and older edition of Juggins. Although his manner still retained most of the clockwork stiffness of the uncontaminated Bozo, it was evident he was under a strain of some kind.

"Sit down!" he barked.

Dowling sat.

MacWhirtle leaned forward. "I understand you're —you and that Chinaman Hsi are—are willing to let me have some common stock in the Atlantic City Improvement Company below the price it'll be offered the public at."

"Yep." Dowling grinned. "Reminds me, can my friend Osborn have his secretarial job back?"

"Why? What do you know about Osborn?"

"He was fired for using a preposition to end a sentence with. If we're offering the stock to the public at—"

The Bozo purpled. "I'll do what I—why you insolent—" The sentence died in sputters, while Dowling mentally kicked himself for breaking his long-standing rule never to joke with a Bozo.

MacWhirtle calmed himself enough to ask for more details about the stock. Dowling explained.

MacWhirtle looked intently at his finger-nails. He said, barely audibly: "I could use force, but she'd hate me—" He realized that Dowling was listening to him, and yelled: "Get out! I won't have men spying on my private—"

Dowling, annoyed but not discouraged, got up to leave. MacWhirtle shouted: "Sit down, you silly ass! I didn't mean it seriously. I admit I've got to have money. You said ..."

Dowling walked from the hotel where he had met MacWhirtle to the Perm Station. It was after four, and the only time of day or night when New York's streets are almost deserted. MacWhirtle had shown a bargaining ability incongruous with the financial innocence expected of a true Bozo.

On West 35th he approached a group of men. He recognized the uniform of the watchdogs. One of the national police saw him, whipped out a pistol, and fired. Dowling dived down a set of basement steps. He yelled up: "What the hell's the matter with you?"

There were mutterings in the dark. A deep voice addressed the world at large: "The first open window gets a bullet through it. Go back to bed, all of you." Then the owner of the voice appeared, rocking a bulbous body along on huge flat feet.

The watchdog flashed a light at Dowling's face, and said: "Glory be, if it isn't Mr. Dowling, the Philadelphia mediator! Come out, Mr. Dowling. I'm sorry one of the boys got nervous and took a shot at you. You see—some of them Bozos was look sick, and we was helping them. Naturally we didn't want nobody to see them in that condition."

"You'd have been a hell of a lot sorrier if he'd hit me," grumbled Dowling. He followed the watchdog down to the knot. The three Bozos were sick, all right. The reek of regurgitated alcohol implied the nature of their sickness.

One of the other watchdogs was muttering: "So these' are the supermen, who never have any fun, eh? Well, well. Well, well."

Weathered granite disintegrates, but it takes time. Dowling, as he helped Arthur Hsi to spin their web, reflected that he was getting a paunch. People might refer to him as a "rising young man" still, but without unduly stressing the "young." His daughter was in high-school. He was not altogether pleased to observe that she was turning into a beauty. He'd have to keep her out of sight of the Bozos with whom he was in constant contact.

Hsi complained: "If we cut a few more Bozos in on this space-port deal, Sino-American might just as well sell out its American holdings and go back to China."

Dowling grinned. "We've got 'cm where we want 'em, haven't we?"

"Oh, yes. They follow our—suggestions ---like little lambs. But—"

Dowling's wrist-phone rang. Juggins' voice said hoarsely: "Dowling! A terrible thing has happened! MacWhirtle has just shot Solovyov!"

"Killed him?"

"Yes!"

Dowling whistled. Solovyov was Administrator for all of North America. Juggins continued: "It was a quarrel over—you remember that girl, that Miss Helen Kistler, whom you introduced to MacWhirtle last year? It was a quarrel over her!"

"What'll happen?"

"I don't know, but Australia will come down on us.

They'll send investigators. God knows what they won't do."

"Well," soothed Dowling, "We'll just have to stick together. Pass the word along to the others."

Australia came down on them all right. In a week the Middle Atlantic States swarmed with Bozo investigators, stiff, grim, and arrogant. The plain citizens, whose hatred for their masters had become a bit dulled with familiarity, awoke to find their newspapers plastered with drastic new decrees—to "tighten up the incredibly lax moral standards prevailing in North America." "Absolute prohibition of intoxicating liquors." "No married women shall work for pay." "No smoking in public places, the same to include public thoroughfares, hotels, restaurants ..."

Baldwin Dowling entered Juggins' office—the Philadelphia Administrator now had a huge one with rugs in which one practically sank ankle-deep. Juggins and five other local Bozos were facing one of the investigators, a small waspish man.

"Get over there with the others," snarled the little man, evidently mistaking Dowling for another Centaurian. The investigator continued his tirade: "And here I find you fallen into the slime of corruption and depravity! Tea! Coffee! Tobacco! Liquor! Women! Bribery! Ccntaurians, eh? Rotten, filthy, weaklings! You're coming with me now. We're taking a special plane to Australia, where you shall stand trial for enough corruption and immorality to hang a continent. Don't worry about packing; you won't need anything but a coffin. Come on!"

He strode to the door and yanked it open. The six Bozos, looking dazed, started to file out. The frightful discipline of their childhood still told.

Dowling caught Juggins' eye. Juggins returned his look dully. Dowling muttered: "Going to let him get away with it?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're bigger'n he is."

Light slowly dawned. Juggins faced, his small tormentor. The other Bozos stopped and faced him too.

"Well?" barked the little man. It did not seem to have occurred to him for an instant that his order might be disobeyed.

The six moved toward him. He looked puzzled, then incredulous, then furious, then alarmed. He reached for his pocket. The Bozos rolled over him in a wave. A gun went off, once. The Bozos untangled themselves. The investigator lay with half his face shot off.

"What now?" panted Juggins. "What'll they do when they hear of this? Where can we go? What's that?"

"That" was the noise of an angry mob, flowing along the street outside and smashing things for no reason other than that it was angry.

The Bozos raced downstairs, Dowling after them.

A dozen watchdogs lounged around the entrance of the building. The mob kept clear of them, though none of them had a weapon out.

"Why don't you shoot?" yelled one of the Bozos to the commander of the police.

The watchdog yawned ostentatiously. "Because, Jack, we don't like not being able to smoke in public no more'n they do." And he turned his back on the Centaurian.

That was all the encouragement the mob needed. But by the time they reached the portals, the six Bozos were not there. They had departed for the rear exit with an audible swish.

Baldwin Dowling, prudently keeping out of the mob's way, dialled his wrist-phone. "Hey, Arthur! Juggins and his friends killed the investigator, and skipped! It looks like maybe they've cracked. I'll try to raise New York, and see if I can start a rumpus there. They're a pushover! See if you can find out what's doing in China! I've got to organize an interim government for Philly. Boy, oh boy!"

A telephone call to New York informed Dowling that a mob had formed there—several mobs, in fact—and that the Centaurians had fled or been lynched. Their leader, the new New York Administrator, had been dead drunk, and had failed to give orders at the critical time ...

The New York mob, like the Philadelphia mob, was not actuated by noble motives of daring all for freedom. They were rioting because they had been forbidden to smoke in public.

The same four men who had met in Professor Lechon's rooms in the University of Pennsylvania dormitories, so many years ago, met there again. Fred Merrian was tanned and husky, but subdued. The treatment at the Lancaster camp had almost killed him, but ended by hardening him.

He said: "The latest radio news is that the Second Garrison Corps is retreating through Russia."

"Uh—huh," said Dowling. "When they pulled them out of Europe to use against us, Europe went whoosh."

"Isn't it wonderful?" said Merrian. "It'll be a cleaner, finer world when we've gotten rid of them." He looked at his watch. "I've got to run. Everybody I ever knew wants to pinch me to see if I'm real."

When he had gone, Tadeusz Lechon (he was quite old now) said: "I didn't want to disillusion him again. You know how he is. It won't be a cleaner, finer world. It'll be the same old world, with rascals like you two running it."

"If we get rid of them," said Dowling. "They still hold Australia and most of southern Asia. It looks like years of war to me. And if we get rid of the Bozos, a lot of countries will be ruled by watchdogs, who won't be much improvement."

Arthur Hsi asked: "Why did they fold up so easily? One man with machine-gun could have dispersed that mob here last month."

Dowling said: "The Bozos didn't have the guts, and the watchdogs didn't want to. So there wasn't anybody to use the machine-gun. But it still seems goofy. Professor Lechon. Why could they beat us twenty years ago, and we beat them now, when they're at least as strong as they were then and we're very much weaker."

Lechon smiled: "Read your history, gentlemen. The same thing happened to the Spartans, remember, when Epaminondas beat them. Why? They were a warrior race, too. Being such, they were unfitted to live among civilized people. Civilized people are always more or less corrupt. The warrior race has a rigid discipline and an inhumanly high standard of conduct. As long as they keep to themselves they are invincible. When they mix with civilized people, they are corrupted by the contact.

"When a people that has never known a disease are exposed to it, it ravages them fearfully, because they have acquired no immunity to it. We, being slightly corrupt to begin with, have an immunity to corruption, just as if it were a bacterial disease. The Centaurians had no such protection. When exposed to temptation, from being much higher morally than we are, they fell much lower.

"The same thing happened to them as to the Spartans. When their government called on them to go to war to preserve its rule over the earth, most of them were too busy grafting off the civilized people to obey. So the Centaurian government found itself with the most powerful military machine on earth, but only a fraction of the men needed to man it. And many of those they did call home were rotten with dissipation, or were thoroughly unreliable watchdogs whose loyalty to their masters had turned to contempt.

"Aristotle said something on the subject a long time ago, in his Politics. If I remember the quotation rightly, it ran:

'Militaristic states are apt to survive only so long as they remain at war, while they go to ruin as soon as they have finished making their conquests. Peace causes their metal to decay; and the fault lies with a social system which does not teach its soldiers what to make of their lives when they are off duty.'

"All of which will not bring back the people the Centaurians killed, or give eyes back to those they blinded. Aristotle's statement, if true, is no ground for complacency. We have a grim time ahead of us yet.

"But to a historian like me it is interesting, from a long-range point of view. And it is somewhat comforting to know that my species' faults, however deplorable, do in fact afford it a certain protection.

"Read your history, gentlemen. The tune is always different, but the notes, as I once remarked, are always the same."