Who Goes Here?

4

At first Peace felt too self-conscious to double himself over, but he was quickly persuaded otherwise by the whine of metal fragments slicing through the air close at hand. He tried creeping after the others, but the roominess of his boots meant that he had a tendency to crawl right out of them, and he was reduced to proceeding in a hunkered down position, giving a grotesque imitation of a Ukranian dancer. The boots had proved extremely troublesome despite their splendid appearance, and he began to wish he had retained his snug-fitting civilian shoes.

From the lowly position Peace was able to see little of his surroundings, but his squad was moving across open ground which was uniformly covered with a single species of broadleaved plant. The only agreeable thing about the environment was the abundance of tobacco smoke, and he gratefully inhaled its fragrance while he laboured to catch up on the others. As the minutes went by he began to perspire with his efforts, and then came the realization that this was no localized gas attack. The Ulphans had made a tactical blunder in believing the nicotine-laden smoke would incapacitate all Earthmen, but the scale of their operation suggested they had no need to worry.

Peace risked standing up in an attempt to see the enemy. A warm breeze momentarily lifted the curtain of haze and he glimpsed an undulating plain, covered with the same yellowish vegetation from which protruded several low conical hills. One of the cones appeared to be glowing a rather pretty shade of pink. Entranced by this first vision of an alien planet, Peace shaded his eyes for a better look, scarcely noticing the abrupt swarming of metal hornets in his vicinity.

“Get down, you fool,” Merriman shouted. “You’re drawing their fire.”

Peace dropped into the cover of the vegetation and churned his way forward to where the rest of the squad had taken shelter behind some fresh earthworks. About twenty legionaries were already huddled there, a few wearing gasmasks, and Peace eyed them with interest. Apart from Lieutenant Merriman, who hardly counted, these were the first combat veterans he had seen, and even the filthiness of their clothing and equipment invested them with a rugged glamour. For their part, the veterans appeared not to notice the arrival of reinforcements. A captain who was with them began striding towards Merriman. He paused as he came close to Peace, and the part of his face not covered by his mask showed unmistakable contempt.

“Why are you crouching there like a frightened rabbit?” His eyes had triangulated on Peace.

“What sort of soldier are you? What has proud Terra come to?”

Peace began to salute, then changed his mind. “It was Lieutenant Merriman, sir. He told me…”

“Don’t try to blame an officer of the Legion for your lack of guts,” the captain hissed. “By Jupiter, you’re not fit to live on proud Terra, but I’ll make sure you die for her. That’s a promise.” He crawled away without waiting for a reply.

“Yes, sir,” Peace quavered to the captain’s departing figure.

“Tough luck,” Benger said, approaching on his hands and knees. His expression of sympathy was quickly ousted by one of puzzlement. “Hey, Warren, where’s this Terra these characters keep talking about?”

“How the hell would I know?” Peace was too alarmed by the new turn of events to be interested in the petty worries of others.

“It means Earth,” put in one of the battle-stained legionaries. “All officers say Terra when they mean Earth. Nobody knows why, but you better get used to it. And the ones that call it proud Terra are the worst.” His eyes flickered meaningfully in Peace’s direction.

Peace shivered. “Do you think the captain meant what he said? Has he got me down on his list?”

“Cap’n Handy won’t hold a personal grudge, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s a relief. For a minute I thought…”

“There’s no need for it,” the legionary continued. “He’s going to get the bloody lot of us killed, so he doesn’t have to give nobody no special treatment.”

Peace tightened his grip on his radiation rifle, and tried to bolster his courage. “Some of us mightn’t die so easily.”

“If they order you to march straight up to one of those machine gun posts out there, you’ll do it just like the rest of us—and you’ll die real easy.”

“I can’t listen to any more of this,” Benger said faintly. “I think I’m going to be sick.” He crawled away into the smoke, and there followed sounds which showed his premonition had been correct.

“But it isn’t in an officer’s own interests to squander his men.” Anxious to get all the information he could, Peace squirmed closer to the legionary. “Say, where’s your name badge?”

“The name’s Bud Dinkle, but my badge fell off ages ago—they don’t know how to make ‘em properly.”

Peace looked down at his own badge and noticed for the first time that the plastic rectangle was held in place by nothing more than a small safety pin and a piece of flesh-coloured surgical tape. The tape was already beginning to lose its adhesion, allowing the badge to hang sideways. He adjusted it to a proper angle and pressed it against his chest, hoping to effect a quick repair.

“That won’t help,” Dinkle said. “They tell you to wear your badges at all times, but they…”

He paused and gazed stoically at his fingernails until a series of ear-punishing explosions had died away. Peace, almost certain he had heard a short-lived scream amid the clamour, looked nervously about him, but the smoke had grown thick again and he could see only twenty or thirty paces in any direction.

He tugged Dinkle’s sleeve. “How long will the gas attack go on?”

“Gas?” Dinkle began fumbling urgently with his respirator. “Nobody flaming well told me about gas. What sort?”

“This stuff all around us.”

Dinkle dropped his mask and gave Peace a hard stare. “You trying to be funny?”

“No. It’s just that Lieutenant Merriman said…”

“That poop! Didn’t he tell you guys the whole planet’s like this?”

“The whole planet?”

“It’s the standard Ulphan atmosphere.” Dinkle tore up a piece of the ubiquitous yellow vegetation and held it under Peace’s nose. “Sniff that.”

Peace did as he was told. “Tobacco?”

“Correct, sonny. The entire surface of Ulpha is covered with it, and when you’ve got all those little volcanoes spreading lava and hot cinders about… What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” Peace said through cupped hands. “I didn’t expect things to be like this, that’s all.

Where’s the glory? Where’s the grandeur?”

“Search me,” Dinkle replied unfeelingly. “I’m just here to fight a war.”

“But why?”

“All I know is the Ulphans started the trouble. The only thing Earth expects from the other worlds in the Federation is that they honour the Common Rights Charter and the Free Trading Pact. That’s only fair, isn’t it?”

“I guess so,” Peace said, trying to feel reassured. “What were the Ulphans up to? Slavery?

Torture?”

“Worse than that, Warren. They were screwing up the whole Free Trading Pact. Refusing to import their quota of some Earth products.”

An off inflection in Dinkle’s voice aroused Peace’s interest. “What sort of products?”

“Cigarettes and cigars.”

“Cigarettes? Cigars?”

Dinkle nodded soberly. “Not only that—they wanted to flood the rest of the Federation with underpriced tobacco.” He scowled in patriotic anger. “People like that deserve all that’s coming to them.”

“But you can see their point of view,” Peace said. “I mean…”

“Who can see their point of view?” Dinkle narrowed his eyes. “What are you, Warren? A relativist? A greeno?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so. What’s a greeno?”

“I get it—this is an attitude test,” Dinkle said. “I thought you didn’t sound like an ordinary ranker, Warren, and if I called Lieutenant Merriman a poop just now, I want you to know that, with me, poop’s a term of endearment. I call all my best friends poops.” He tapped the legionary next to him on the shoulder. “Isn’t that right, poop?”

The legionary grabbed Dinkle’s throat. “Who are you callin’ poop?”

Dinkle tried to fight him off, but the struggle was cut short by an order from Lieutenant Merriman, who directed everybody to gather close to Captain Handy. The men, experienced combat veterans and raw recruits alike, formed a semicircle around the point where Handy and Merriman were sitting with their backs to the low earthen wall. Tobacco smoke floated steadily across the scene and hidden machine guns kept up their peevish snapping. Peace found it difficult to believe that only a few hours earlier he had been safely at home on Earth.

He had no idea what had been happening to him before he joined the Legion, but anything had to be better than his current predicament.

“Captain Handy wants to deliver a personal message to all of you,” Merriman fluted, cautiously raising his mask a little. He smiled, which meant that the ellipse of his mouth elongated to show one extra tooth at each end. “I know that, as I do, you respect Captain Handy as one of the finest officers in the entire Legion, and for that reason you’ll regard it as an honour and a privilege—just as I do—that he has found time to come here and direct this phase of the battle in person with all the superb leadership, skill and courage for which he is justly renowned.”

Handy nodded his agreement with everything that had been said, and tapped the cyst-like lump of the command enforcer on his throat. “Men, it may come as a surprise to you to learn that I don’t like wearing this thing. Not only is it an expensive contraption, but I happen to believe it is totally unnecessary. I know that, given the chance, each and every one of you would be prepared to lay down his life for proud Terra without any electronic coercion.”

“We’ve had it,” Dinkle whispered gloomily to those beside him. “This is where he starts blowing off about the daunting psychological impact on the enemy of seeing proud Terra’s warriors marching line abreast and unafraid into the mouths of the cannons.”

“Keep quiet,” Peace said. “No commander would be so stupid.”

“It’s the only tactic Cap’n Handy knows—he’s famous for it.” Dinkle punctuated his words by spitting savagely, realized too late that his foot was in the way, and began wiping saliva off his toecap. “I tell you, we’re buggered.”

“… going to level with you men,” Handy was saying. “Things are going badly in this sector.

Proud Terra’s thin red line is too thin and too … er … red. I can’t promise you a quick victory like the one we had on Aspatria. But we’ve got one tremendous advantage, one great weapon the enemy doesn’t possess—and that is our invincible spirit. These Ulphans are an undisciplined, cowardly rabble. The only way they can bring themselves to fight is by skulking under cover and firing from behind rocks.” Handy paused to register his contempt for what he obviously regarded as a lack of common decency.

“So what we’re going to do in this sector is to use our invincible weapon, our moral superiority, our spirit. The Ulphans expect us to fight in the same lily-livered way that they do—but we’re going to surprise them by going straight in. Straight in with our heads held high and our banners waving. Can you imagine the daunting psychological impact of seeing proud Terra’s warriors marching line abreast and unafraid into the mouths of the cannons?”

His audience shifted uneasily as their imaginations went to work.

“There’ll be casualties, of course,” Handy went on, perhaps disappointed by a lack of favor-able response. “There may even be heavy casualties before the enemy turns tail and flees, but the annals of military history are full of similar glorious episodes. Just think of the charge of the Light Brigade.”

Benger raised his hand. “Sir, I saw a movie about the charge of the Light Brigade. Didn’t they all get killed? Wasn’t it all a big mistake?”

“Ten tweaks, Benger,” Merriman ordered, his mouth sliding about with displeasure like a spotlight playing on a backdrop of teeth. Glad of the diversion, most of the audience turned to watch and listen to Benger sapping himself, but at that moment a shell exploded close by and they threw themselves flat. The shrapnel from it chittered through the vegetation, and when Peace sat up again he noticed that one man, only a few metres from him, was writhing in silent agony. Two others with Red Cross armbands picked him up and retreated as quickly as they could.

“I hope you all saw that,” Captain Handy said crisply. “I hope you all saw that and were comforted and encouraged. Thanks to their refusal to stay in the progressive interstellar society of the Federation the Ulphans are forced to rely on their obsolete projectile weapons. You soldiers of proud Terra, on the other hand, are armed with the finest radiation rifles available. Weapons of unlimited range and unsurpassed accuracy, each one worth a dozen of the enemy’s pathetic machine guns.

“Now I want you to go out there and use them. Use them well. Go out there, walking proud and tall and unafraid, and kill as many dirty Ulphans as you can and make the galaxy a fit place for all right-thinking beings to live in, that is, in which to live … er … in.”

Lieutenant Merriman, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it was unnecessary, paddled his hands in the manner of a man damping down applause. “Men, I’m sure that, just as I am, you’re inspired and uplifted by those words from Captain Handy. But now, men, the time for talking is over—it’s time to go over the top.”

“It’s all right for him,” Peace muttered, an icy coldness growing in his stomach. “While we’re going over the top he’ll be back here.”

“No, he won’t,” Dinkle said, tightening the chinstrap of his helmet. “Those young loonies who’ve been through military academy lead all the charges. That’s why they don’t last long—I’ve never seen one older than about twenty.”

“What makes them do it?”

“Tradition, I guess. They’re all the same— crazy as loons.”

“That’s great,” Peace said bitterly as he watched Lieutenant Merriman get to his feet, give his windmill signal with one arm and scramble over the bank of churned earth. The sound of gunfire intensified immediately. Peace thought briefly about crouching down and refusing to move, but the invisible wire brushes went to work inside his head and, before he really knew what was happening, he was on his feet and running towards the Ulphan positions.

As before, the excessive roominess of his footwear made progress difficult and he saw the rest of his unit disappear into the smoke ahead of him. He curled his toes in an effort to hold the boots in place, and one of the odd interior projections he had noticed earlier moved downwards slightly. An instant later he was sailing through the air, like an Olympic ski-jumper making a fantastic leap, borne by the upwards pressure of his boots. Too astonished to cry out, Peace fought to maintain his balance and to keep his legs together as the boots tried to go off in different directions, threatening to pull him apart. They carried him, unseen, in a precarious parabola far above the heads of his companions, and for a few seconds he lost sight of the ground altogether. Suddenly the planet was rushing up to meet him and he landed with an undignified, one-legged, arm-swirling skid which ended when he pitched sideways into a clump of tobacco plants.

Winded and totally unnerved by his experience, he sat up and examined the red-and-gold boots with awe. The supply clerk at Fort Eccles had called them Startrooper Sevenleague boots, and Peace was belatedly realizing why—each had a miniature antigravity machine built into it. He was wondering if it would be safe to stand up again when a twig snapped some distance ahead of him. Peace looked up and saw a man in a tan uniform advancing cautiously through the haze. He was carrying an old type of firearm, which at once identified him as an Ulphan soldier, and he seemed almost as lost and bewildered as Peace felt.

Appalled and sickened by what he was doing, yet unable to disobey the command implanted in his mind, Peace raised his own vastly superior weapon. Anxious to give the Ulphan a quick, clean death, he aimed for the heart and pulled the trigger, unleashing a bolt of lethal radiation. A part of his mind was praying he would miss, but the deadly purple ray found its mark. The Ulphan clapped a hand to his chest, at the same time emitting a yelp of pain and surprise, then he spun round, levelled his rifle and squeezed off a burst of automatic fire in Peace’s direction.

Unable to understand why his supposed dinosaur gun had been unable to knock over a medium-sized man, Peace hunkered down into cover. There was no time for speculation about what had gone wrong, because—obsolete or not —the Ulphan soldier’s rifle was rapidly scything down his screen of vegetation, and it could only be a matter of seconds before a bullet ended Peace’s brief career in the Legion. He decided, in desperation, that the Sevenleague boots which had got him into this predicament represented his only hope of escape.

Making himself ready for flight, he began wiggling his toes and felt the control buttons click downwards.

Peace snatched a deep breath as the antigrav units came into operation, but—in place of the dizzy ascent he had been expecting—the boots propelled him directly forward in a flat trajectory. The Ulphan’s jaw sagged as he saw Peace, still in an undignified squatting position, zooming towards him through the murk. Dismayed by the further wayward behaviour of his footwear, Peace tried to stay on an even keel, but the boots surged ahead of his centre of gravity, tilting him backwards in the process. He felt a fierce impact on his behind and an instant later found himself rested squarely on the enemy soldier’s chest. His red-and-gold boots were dislodged in the collision and, relieved of any load, soared off into the sky like frightened parakeets. He watched with mixed feelings as they disappeared towards the zenith, then became aware that he no longer had his rifle and was probably in mortal danger. He made a belated grab for his opponent’s throat, but released it apologetically when he saw that the Ulphan, badly winded and unable to move, was gazing up at him in abject terror.

“Don’t try anything,” Peace said, getting to his feet. He located the two fallen rifles and was picking them up when the figures of Dinkle, Ryan and Farr emerged from the surrounding smoke.

“Warren! How did you get ahead of us? I thought you were…” Ryan’s eyes widened as he noticed the recumbent form of the Ulphan soldier. “Is he dead?”

“No.” Peace looked curiously at the Ulphan’s tan uniform and saw only a faint scorch mark on the left side of the chest. He turned to Dinkle and proffered his radiation rifle. “Do you see anything wrong with this? I shot him from about twenty metres and all it did was make him mad.”

Dinkle shrugged. “That always happens.”

“But we were told the rifles had unlimited range and…”

“Not in smoke—too much energy absorption by particles in the air. And it’s the sarnie in fog.”

Dinkle savored the morose pleasure that comes from imparting bad news. “In fact, any time there’s a touch of mist you could defend yourself better with a croquet mallet. And when there’s smoke…”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Ryan put in, “but aren’t battlegrounds usually covered with smoke?”

“Only because the opposition generally uses obsolete equipment like guns and bombs and flame-throwers.”

“This is worse than I thought,” Ryan said, his plump face growing paler. “Isn’t anybody else equipped with radiation equipment?”

“Only our allies—the ones we’ve equipped with advanced arms.”

Dinkle glanced at his three companions to see if they appreciated the irony of his words, then went on to belabour the point. “If we could just set up a system where we were friends with our enemies—and where we only fought our friends—we’d be all right. The trouble is…”

“I don’t believe all this crap,” Farr said, giving a characteristic scowl. “We beat Aspatria, didn’t we? Cap’n Hardy said it was a quick victory, too.”

Surprisingly, Dinkle showed signs of apprehension. “If you ask me, it wasn’t us or the Aspatrians who ended that war—it was the throwrugs. The throwrugs and the Oscars.”

The words had no sinister connotation that Peace knew of, yet he felt a flicker of unease.

“What are throwrugs and Oscars?”

“Be glad you don’t know—I saw a throwrug get one of my buddies.” Dinkle’s eyes seemed to lose focus, as though horrific memories were parading in front of him. “Dropped out of a tree, it did. Straight on to him. Covered him up, just like a big rug, and started digesting him. I’ll never forget those screams. It was a good thing for him I was right there. Lucky, he was.”

“You managed to pull it off him,” Ryan prompted.

Dinkle shook his head. “I managed to shoot him before he’d suffered more’n a few seconds.

Took a risk waiting around that long, but it was the least I could do for a pal.”

Ryan edged away from Dinkle. “Don’t do me any favors, will you? Any time you see me suffering just look the other…”

“What’s going on here?” Lieutenant Merriman’s voice was muffled by his gas mask as he came stumbling through the layered curtains of smoke. “Why aren’t you men moving up front?”

“Private Peace took a prisoner, sir.” Dinkle pointed at the recumbent Ulphan, who was showing the first signs of getting his breath back. “We were just about to interrogate him.”

“Good work, Peace. Good thinking.” Merriman gave Peace an approving glance. “I’ll be sure to keep you up front in future.”

“Thank you, sir.” Peace was less than happy about this fresh development, but the combat incident just described by Dinkle had had a strangely disturbing effect on him, and the prospect of stopping an Ulphan bullet no longer seemed so terrible. His thoughts on the matter were interrupted by the discovery that his feet, unprotected by boots or shoes, seemed to have glued themselves to the ground. He looked down at them and saw he was standing in a patch of black goo which appeared to have seeped upwards through the soil. Holding his socks on with difficulty, he moved to a better position.

“I’ll question the prisoner now.” Merriman nudged the Ulphan soldier with his toe. “Listen to me, you cowardly extraterrestrial dog, you’d better tell me all you know about the strength and disposition of your forces in this area.”

The Ulphan raised himself on one elbow. “Are you going to shoot me or torture me?”

“How dare you!” Merriman gave the others a scandalized glance. “Terra doesn’t treat her prisoners in that way.”

“In that case,” the Ulphan said comfortably, “get lost.”

Merriman pulled his gas mask down in fury, received a lungful of the smoky atmosphere, and was forced to cover up again. He began choking and coughing, the rubberized mask clapping in and swelling horribly with each spasm, and what could be seen of his face turned a plummy crimson.

“You shouldn’t have told him what you did, sir.” Dinkle pounded the lieutenant on the back.

“Let me try a different approach.”

“What can…?” Merriman wiped tears from his eyes. “What can you do?”

“The old sympathetic bit, sir. It never fails. Just watch.” Dinkle took two flat packages from his pocket and knelt beside the prisoner. He opened one of the packages, exposing a row of slim white cylinders which appeared to be cigarettes, and held it out to the Ulphan. “Have one of these.”

“Thanks.” The Ulphan took one of the cylinders, placed it between his lips and sucked eagerly. A contented expression spread over his face.

“What’s going on here?” Merriman demanded. “That thing isn’t even lit. What have you just given the prisoner?”

“The Ulphans use them instead of cigarettes, sir.” Dinkle stood up and showed the package to the officer. “We captured a truckload last week. The locals breathe tobacco smoke all the time, but they get a lift by sucking pure air through these long filters. This brand is just for hardened air-puffers, though—some of the Ulphans, specially the women, go in for these weaker ones.” He opened the second package and displayed a row of cylinders which looked like Earth-style filter cigarettes in reverse, each being mainly white filter with a short tobacco-packed section at one end.

“Disgusting habit,” Merriman said. “See what you can get out of him.”

Dinkle returned to the prisoner and dropped the two packages into his hand. “Have the lot, pal— compliments of the Legion.”

“Thanks.” The Ulphan slid open the flat trays and glanced inside. “No coupons?”

Looking rather guilty, Dinkle handed over a bundle of blue chits. “Now—how about some co-operation?”

The Ulphan inhaled deeply. “Get lost.”

Peace, who felt a proprietory interest in the prisoner, started forward angrily to relieve him of the anti-smokes. The Ulphan promptly cowered away, his face distorted by fear.

“Don’t let that one near me,” he babbled, his eyes pleading with Merriman. “Don’t let him jump on me.”

Merriman stared suspiciously at Peace. “What did you do to this man?”

“I just … ah … jumped on him, sir. You know—unarmed combat.”

“I told you Warren was something special,” Ryan said to Copgrove Farr. “I bet you Warren can get all the information we need.” He turned to Peace. “Go ahead, Warren, let’s see you jump on him.”

“I’ll talk,” the Ulphan said, clutching at Merriman’s leg. “Look, I’m talking already. We haven’t any men in this sector, apart from a few technicians and scouts. All the fire is coming from robot weapons, and if you detour round the back you can switch ‘em all off.”

“No men?” Merriman said. “Why’s that?”

“It’s that stuff.” The Ulphan pointed at the tacky patch in which Peace had been standing.

“This is a high tar area—most of our boys refuse to breathe the sort of smoke you get around here. Personally, I say it doesn’t do you any harm. My grandfather breathed it every day and he lived to be ninety. What I say is, if you’re…”

“Be quiet,” Merriman ordered. “I’m not sure about this story of yours—it might be a cunning Ulphan trick. Robot weapons would be as big a danger to you as they would to us.”

The prisoner shook his head. “We carry transmitters which broadcast a coded identity signal.

You can have mine if you want—as long as I’m allowed to stay near it.”

“It definitely has gone quiet since he’s been around,” Peace said. “Not a shot or shell anywhere near us.”

“You’ve done well, Private Peace,” Merriman’s thin voice was almost lost within his respirator, but his excitement was unmistakable. “This could be a turning point in the battle, in the whole war. I’ll report to Captain Handy immediately.” He raised his wrist communicator to the general region of his mouth. While he was talking to the captain, Ryan grasped Peace’s hand and shook it energetically, and even Farr looked reluctantly amiable.

“Great stuff, Warren,” Ryan said. “The way things were going here we wouldn’t have lasted a week. Now it looks like victory celebrations all the way. I’ve always fancied riding into town on the side of a tank. Girls throwing flowers at me … girls throwing cigarettes at me … girls throwing girls at me…” He broke off, his attention caught by the slight but unmistakable argumentative tone which was creeping into Lieutenant Merriman’s radio conversation. The note of dissension was all the more noticeable for being completely unexpected.

“With all due respect, sir,” Merriman was saying, “I don’t believe the Ulphans would feel any daunting psychological impact when they heard we had marched line abreast and unafraid against their robot guns. As a matter of fact, I think they would laugh their heads off. I realize how disappointed you must be at not getting another chance to prove your tactical theories, but…”

Merriman had to stop and listen for a moment, nodding his head. “I didn’t mean to imply that you were…”

He listened again, still nodding, and— incredibly—his shoulders began to droop. “Yes, sir. I know it’s a privilege to die for Terra.”

Ryan clutched Peace’s arm. “I don’t like the sound of this, Warren.”

Lieutenant Merriman signed off and turned to face the others. He removed his gas mask, somehow managing not to cough, and his mouth travelled upwards and to the right on the fire curtain of teeth, assuming a comma-shape which was indicative of blighted illusion. Peace suddenly felt sorry for him.

“Captain Handy sends his congratulations,” the lieutenant said after a brief pause. “You have proved yourselves such a valuable and resourceful combat team that you’re to be trans-shipped immediately to the planet Threlkeld. You’ll be there in a couple of hours. I’m going with you, of course.”

Ryan wiggled his fingers to attract the lieutenant’s attention. “Is Threlkeld an R&R world, sir?”

“Not unless you’ve got your own ideas about how to spell death and destruction—we’re losing men there faster than we can ship them in.”

“Oh, God!” Ryan turned to Peace and his eyes hardened with accusation. “This is your fault, Warren—we’re on our way to a second war and we haven’t even had a cup of coffee yet.”

Peace replied with the crudest swear word he could summon to mind, but he did it in an abstracted manner. It had become clear to him that he had only one chance of achieving a reasonable life span. No matter how impossible the task might appear, no matter how many difficulties lay in the way, he would have to regain his memory and thus invalidate his contract with the Legion. The problem was that there was simply nowhere for him to begin, and now that he was no longer on Earth the chances of finding someone who had known him in his previous existence seemed vanishingly small.

While he was trudging with the rest of the unit towards the embarkation point, Peace’s thoughts returned to the mystery surrounding his past. People kept assuring him that he must have been steeped in evil, but—on taking mental inventory—he was unable to find any antisocial urges within himself. This set him a philosophical poser—would he be able to recognize a criminal tendency if it was handed to him on a plate? Did any individual consciously think of himself as “bad”? When even the most hardened wrongdoer was setting out to commit a misdeed, did he not feel as justified and as “good” as any other member of society?

His speculations came to an end when the ship appeared, an angular dumb-bell which came down from the sky in a blurred arc and clumped into place on the soft ground. Its central doors sprang open without any visible human agency and Merriman gave the order for everybody to go on board.

Peace trooped into the ship, wincing as his unshod feet encountered the chill of the metal floor, and dropped dejectedly onto a bench without taking part in the scramble for serviceable seat belts. The hazards of space flight were negligible compared to those of the battle zone and, being coldly realistic, he had less hope of escape than any other ranker in the entire Legion. Without a single clue to help him solve the mystery of his past, he was doomed to flit about the galaxy in ugly, identical-seeming ships and…

Peace’s eyes suddenly focused on a small blue object on the floor in front of him, and he realized the ship was actually the same one which had brought him to Ulpha. The last time he had seen the little plastic toad it had been squashed flat, but its molecular memory had enabled it to return to its original shape. Wishing he could be equally indestructible, Peace gathered up the little toad and gazed at it with something akin to affection—had it been able to speak it might have told him something about the person he used to be.

“What did you find?” Dinkle, who had sat down near him unnoticed, leaned sideways for a better look. “Huh! Somebody’s been living it up.”

Peace gripped the toad just in time to prevent it springing away. “What do you mean?”

“They give those things out at the Blue Toad on Aspatria.”

“The Blue Toad?” Peace felt a stirring of excitement. “Is that a bar? Restaurant? Night Club?”

Dinkle nodded. “The fanciest in Touchdown City. In fact, on the whole of Aspatria. It beats me why anybody would want to go to a place like that on a ranker’s pay.”

“It all depends on how you look at things,” Peace said, dropping the toad safely into his pocket as he reached a secret decision. “Some people can’t stay away from places like that.”