HE LISTENED to the dry-grass rustle of the old witches’ voices beneath his open window:
“Ettil, the coward! Ettil, the refuser! Ettil, who will not wage the glorious war of Mars against Earth!”
“Speak on, witches!” he cried.
The voices dropped to a murmur like that of water in the long canals under the Martian sky.
“Ettil, the father of a son who must grow up in the shadow of this horrid knowledge!” said the old wrinkled women. They knocked their sly-eyed heads gently together. “Shame, shame!”
His wife was crying on the other side of the room. Her tears were as rain, numerous and cool on the tiles. “Oh, Ettil, how can you think this way?”
Ettil laid aside his metal book which, at his beckoning, had been singing him a story all morning from its thin golden-wired frame.
“I’ve tried to explain,” he said. “This is a foolish thing, Mars invading Earth. We’ll be destroyed, utterly.”
Outside, a banging, crashing boom, a surge of brass, a drum, a cry, marching feet, pennants and songs. Through the stone sheets the army, fire weapons to shoulder, stamped. Children skipped after. Old women waved dirty flags.
“I shall remain on Mars and read a book,” said Ettil. A blunt knock on the door. Tylla answered. Father-in-law stormed in. “What’s this I hear about my son-in-law? A traitor?”
“Yes, Father.”
“You’re not fighting in the Martian Army?”
“No, Father.”
“Gods!” The old father turned very red. “A plague on your name! You’ll be shot.”
“Shoot me, then, and have it over.”
“Who ever heard of a Martian not invading? Who!”
“Nobody. It is, I admit, quite incredible.”
“Incredible,” husked the witch voices under the window.
“Father, can’t you reason with him?” demanded Tylla.
“Reason with a dung heap,” cried Father, eyes blazing. He came and stood over Ettil. “Bands playing, a fine day, women weeping, children jumping, everything right, men marching bravely, and you sit here! Oh, shame!”
“Shame,” sobbed the faraway voices in the hedge.
“Get the devil out of my house with your inane chatter,” said Ettil, exploding. “Take your medals and your drums and run!”
He shoved Father-in-law past a screaming wife, only to have the door thrown wide at this moment, as a military detail entered.
A voice shouted, “Ettil Vrye?”
“Yes!”
“You are under arrest!”
“Good-by, my dear wife. I am off to the wars with these fools!” shouted Ettil, dragged through the door by the men in bronze mesh.
“Good-by, good-by,” said the town witches, fading away….
The cell was neat and clean. Without a book, Ettil was nervous. He gripped the bars and watched the rockets shoot up into the night air. The stars were cold and numerous; they seemed to scatter when every rocket blasted up among them.
“Fools,” whispered Ettil. “Fools!”
The cell door opened. One man with a kind of vehicle entered, full of books; books here, there, everywhere in the chambers of the vehicle. Behind him the Military Assignor loomed.
“Ettil Vrye, we want to know why you had these illegal Earth books in your house. These copies of
Ettil shook him free. “If you’re going to shoot me, shoot me. That literature, from Earth, is the very reason why I won’t try to invade them. It’s the reason why your invasion will fail.”
“How so?” The assignor scowled and turned to the yellowed magazines.
“Pick any copy,” said Ettil. “Any one at all. Nine out of ten stories in the years 1929, ‘30 to ‘50, Earth calendar, have every Martian invasion successfully invading Earth.”
“Ah!” The assignor smiled, nodded.
“And then,” said Ettil, “failing.”
“That’s treason! Owning such literature!”
“So be it, if you wish. But let me draw a few conclusions. Invariably, each invasion is thwarted by a young man, usually lean, usually Irish, usually alone, named Mick or Rick or Jick or Bannon, who destroys the Martians.”
“You don’t believe that!”
“No, I don’t believe Earthmen can actually do that—no. But they have a background, understand, Assignor, of generations of children reading just such fiction, absorbing it. They have nothing but a literature of invasions successfully thwarted. Can you say the same for Martian literature?”
“Well——”
“No.”
“I guess not.”
“You know not. We never wrote stories of such a fantastic nature. Now we rebel, we attack, and we shall die.”
“I don’t see your reasoning on that. Where does this tie in with the magazine stories?”
“Morale. A big thing. The Earthmen know they can’t fail. It is in them like blood beating in their veins. They cannot fail. They will repel each invasion, no matter how well organized. Their youth of reading just such fiction as this has given them a faith we cannot equal. We Martians? We are uncertain; we know that we might fail. Our morale is low, in spite of the banged drums and tooted horns.”
“I won’t listen to this treason,” cried the assignor. “This fiction will be burned, as you will be, within the next ten minutes. You have a choice, Ettil Vrye. Join the Legion of War, or burn.”
“It is a choice of deaths. I choose to burn.”
“Men!”
He was hustled out into the courtyard. There he saw his carefully hoarded reading matter set to the torch. A special pit was prepared, with oil five feet deep in it. This, with a great thunder, was set afire. Into this, in a minute, he would be pushed.
On the far side of the courtyard, in shadow, he noticed the solemn figure of his son standing alone, his great yellow eyes luminous with sorrow and fear. He did not put out his hand or speak, but only looked at his father like some dying animal, a wordless animal seeking rescue.
Ettil looked at the flaming pit. He felt the rough hands seize him, strip him, push him forward to the hot perimeter of death. Only then did Ettil swallow and cry out, “Wait!”
The assignor’s face, bright with the orange fire, pushed forward in the trembling air. “What is it?”
“I will join the Legion of War,” replied Ettil.
“Good! Release him!”
The hands fell away.
As he turned he saw his son standing far across the court, waiting. His son was not smiling, only waiting. In the sky a bronze rocket leaped across the stars, ablaze….
“And now we bid good-by to these stalwart warriors,” said the assignor. The band thumped and the wind blew a fine sweet rain of tears gently upon the sweating army. The children cavorted. In the chaos Ettil saw his wife weeping with pride, his son solemn and silent at her side.
They marched into the ship, everybody laughing and brave. They buckled themselves into their spiderwebs. All through the tense ship the spiderwebs were filled with lounging, lazy men. They chewed on bits of food and waited. A great lid slammed shut. A valve hissed.
“Off to Earth and destruction,” whispered Ettil.
“What?” asked someone.
