there was a great empire, so great that all the stars you see at night were only part of it. And then, as things do when age rests too heavily on them, it began to crumble. Commanders fell to fighting among themselves and the Emperor grew weak. The battalion was set down here to operate a forward maintenance station for his ships. We waited but no ships came. For five hundred years no ships have come,” said the colonel somberly. “Perhaps they tried to relieve us and couldn’t, perhaps the Empire fell with such a crash that we were lost in the wreckage. There are a thousand perhapses that a man can tick off in his mind when the nights are long and sleep comes hard! Lost… forgotten… who knows?”
Kurt stared at him with a blank expression on his face. Most of what the colonel had said made no sense at all. Wherever Imperial Headquarters was, it hadn’t forgotten them. The I.G. still made his inspection every year or so.
The colonel continued as if talking to himself. “But our operational orders said that we would stand by to give all necessary maintenance to Imperial warcraft until properly relieved, and stand by we have.”
The old officer’s voice seemed to be coming from a place far distant in time and space.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Kurt, “but I don’t follow you. If all these things did happen, it was so long ago that they mean nothing to us now.”
“But they do!” said Colonel Harris vigorously. “It’s because of them that things like your rediscovery of the tableland to the north have to be suppressed for the good of the battalion! Here on the plateau the living is hard. Our work in the fields and the meat brought in by our hunting parties give us just enough to get by on. But here we have the garrison and the Tech Schools—and vague as it has become— a reason for remaining together as the battalion. Out there where the living is easy we’d lose that. We almost did once. A wise commander stopped it before it went too far. There are still a few signs of that time left—left deliberately as reminders of what can happen if commanding officers forget why we’re here!”
“What things?” asked Kurt curiously.
“Well, son,” said the colonel, picking up his great war bonnet from the desk and gazing at it quizzically, “I don’t think you’re quite ready for that information yet. Now take off and strut your feather. I’ve got work to do!”
IV
At War Base Three nobody was happy. Ships that were supposed to be fight-months away carrying on the carefully planned search for General Carr’s hideout were fluttering down out of the sky like senile penguins, disabled by blown jets, jammed computers, and all the other natural ills that worn out and poorly serviced equipment is heir to. Technical maintenance was quietly going mad. Commander Krogson was being noisy about it.
“Schninkle!” he screamed. “Isn’t anything happening anyplace?”
“Nothing yet, sir,” said the little man.
“Well
“No better than we are,” said Schninkle. “Commander Snork of Sector Six tried to pull a fast one but he didn’t get away with it. He sent his STAP into a plantation planet out at the edge of the Belt and had them hypno the whole population. By the time they were through there were about fifteen million greenies running around yelling ‘Up with General Carr!’ ‘Down with the Lord Protector!’ ‘Long Live the People’s Revolution!’ and things like that. Snork even gave them a few medium vortex blasters to make it look more realistic. Then he sent in his whole fleet, tipped off the press at Prime Base, and waited. Guess what the Bureau of Essential Information finally sent him?”
“I’ll bite,” said Commander Krogson.
“One lousy cub reporter. Snork couldn’t back out then so he had to go ahead and blast the planet down to bedrock. This morning he got a three-line notice in
“That’s better than the nothing we’ve got so far!” said the commander gloomily.
“Not when the press notice is buried on the next to last page right below the column on ‘Our Feathered Comrades’,” said Schninkle, “and when the citation is posthumous. They even misspelled his name; it came out Snark!”
V
As Kurt turned to go, there was a sharp knock on Colonel Harris’ door.
“Come in!” called the colonel.
Lieutenant Colonel Blick, the battalion executive officer, entered with an arrogant stride and threw his commander a slovenly salute. For a moment he didn’t notice Kurt standing at attention beside the door.
“Listen, Harris!” he snarled. “What’s the idea of pulling that cleanup detail out of my quarters?”
“There are no servants in this battalion, Blick,” the older man said quietly. “When the men come in from work detail at night they’re tired. They’ve earned a rest and as long as I’m CO. they’re going to get it. If you have dirty work that has to be done, do it yourself. You’re better able to do it than some poor devil who’s been dragging a plow all day. I suggest you check pertinent regulations!”
“Regulations!” growled Blick. “What do you expect me to do, scrub my own floors?”
“I do,” said the colonel dryly, “when my wife is too busy to get to it. I haven’t noticed that either my dignity or my efficiency have suffered appreciably. I might add,” he continued mildly, “that staff officers are supposed to set a good example for their juniors. I don’t think either your tone or your manner are those that Lieutenant Dixon should be encouraged to emulate.” He gestured toward Kurt and Blick spun on one heel.
“Mine,” said the colonel mildly. “In case you’ve forgotten I am still commanding officer of this battalion.”
“I protest!” said Blick. “Commissions have always been awarded by decision of the entire staff.”
“Which you now control,” replied the colonel.
Kurt coughed nervously. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but I think I’d better leave.”
Colonel Harris shook his head. “You’re one of our official family now, son, and you might as well get used to our squabbles. This particular one has been going on between Colonel Blick and me for years. He has no patience with some of our old customs.” He turned to Blick. “Have you, Colonel?”
“You’re right, I haven’t!” growled Blick. “And that’s why Tm going to change some of them as soon as I get the chance. The sooner we stop this Tech School nonsense and put the recruits to work in the fields where they belong, the better off we’ll all be. Why should a plowman or a hunter have to know how to read wiring diagrams or set tubes. It’s nonsense, superstitious nonsense. You!” he said, stabbing his finger into the chest of the startled lieutenant. “You! Dixon! You spent fourteen years in the Tech Schools just like I did when I was a recruit. What for?”
“To learn maintenance, of course,” said Kurt.
“What’s maintenance?” demanded Blick.
“Taking stuff apart and putting it back together and polishing jet bores with microplanes and putting plates in alignment and checking the meters when we’re through to see the job was done right. Then there’s class work in Direc calculus and subelectronics and—”
“That’s enough!” interrupted Blick. “And now that you’ve learned all that, what can you do with it?”
Kurt looked at him in surprise.
“Do with it?” he echoed. “You don’t
“And this,” said Blick, turning to Colonel Harris, “is one of your prize products. Fourteen of his best years poured down the drain and he doesn’t even know what for!” He paused and then said in an arrogant voice, “I’m here for a showdown, Harris!”
