Apprehensively, too, the other man made his report. The captain scoffed first and then swore, including some select remarks on underhatched characters who knew all about a planet because they’d been there once. Finally he said, “We’ll see if a squad of real observers can find any trace of your egg-eating limbless monsters; and if we find them, they’re going to be God-damned sorry they were ever hatched.” It was no use, the man decided, trying to explain that it wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been limbless, like in the picture tapes; but just four limbs . . .
“What is a man?” Rabbi Acosta repeated, and Mule Malloy wondered why his subconscious synapses had not earlier produced the obvious appropriate answer.
“Man, ”he recited, “is a creature composed of body and soul, and made to the image and likeness of God. ”
“From that echo of childish singsong, Mule, I judge that is a correct catechism response. Surely the catechism must follow it up with some question about that likeness? Can it be a likeness in”—his hand swept up and down over his own body with a graceful gesture of contempt—“this body?”
“This likeness to God is chiefly in the soul. ”
“Aha!” The Sephardic sparkle was brighter than ever.
The words went on, the centers of speech following the synaptic patterns engraved in parochial school as the needle followed the grooves of an antique record.
“All creatures bear some resemblance to God inasmuch as they exist. Plants and animals resemble Him insofar as they have life . . .”
“I can hardly deny so profound a statement.”
“. . . but none of these creatures is made to the image and likeness of God. Plants and animals do not have a rational soul, such as man has, by which they might know and love God. ”
“As do all good hnaus. Go on; I am not sure that our own scholars have stated it so well. Mule, you are invaluable!”
Malloy found himself catching a little of Acosta’s excitement. He had known these words all his life; he had recited them the Lord knows how many times. But he was not sure that he had ever listened to them before. And he wondered for a moment how often even his Jesuit professors, in their profound consideration of the xn’s of theology, had ever paused to reconsider these childhood ABC’s.
“How is the soul like God? ” He asked himself the next catechistic question, and answered, “The soul is like God because it is a spirit having understanding and free will and is destined . . .”
“Reverend gentlemen!” The reverence was in the words only. The interrupting voice of Captain Dietrich Fassbander differed little in tone from his normal address to a buck private of the Martian Legion.
Mule Malloy said, “Hi, Captain.” He felt half relieved, half disappointed, as if he had been interrupted while unwrapping a present whose outlines he was just beginning to glimpse. Rabbi Acosta smiled wryly and said nothing.
“So this is how you spend your time? No Martian natives, so you practice by trying to convert each other, is that it?”
Acosta made a light gesture which might have been polite acknowledgment of what the captain evidently considered a joke. “The Martian day is so tedious we have been driven to talking shop. Your interruption is welcome. Since you so rarely seek out our company, I take it you bring some news. Is it, God grant, that the rotation rocket is arriving a week early?”
“No, damn it,” Fassbander grunted. (He seemed to take a certain pride, Malloy had observed, in carefully not tempering his language for the ears of clergymen.) “Then I’d have a German detachment instead of your Israelis, and I’d know where I stood. I suppose it’s all very advisable politically for every state in the UW to contribute a detachment in rotation; but I’d sooner either have my regular legion garrison doubled, or two German detachments regularly rotating. That time I had the pride of Pakistan here . . . Damn it, you new states haven’t had time to develop a military tradition!”
“Father Malloy,” the rabbi asked gently, “are you acquainted with the sixth book of what you term the Old Testament?”
“Thought you fellows were tired of talking shop,” Fassbander objected.
“Rabbi Acosta refers to the Book of Joshua, Captain. And I’m afraid, God help us, that there isn’t a state or a tribe that hasn’t a tradition of war. Even your Prussian ancestors might have learned a trick or two from the campaigns of Joshua—or for that matter, from the Cattle Raid on Cooley, when the Hound of Cullen beat off the armies of Queen Maeve. And I’ve often thought, too, that it’d do your strategists no harm to spend a season or two at quarterback, if they had the wind. Did you know that Eisenhower played football, and against Jim Thorpe once at that? And . . .”
“But I don’t imagine,” Acosta interposed, “that you came here to talk shop either, Captain?”
“Yes,” said Captain Fassbander, sharply and unexpectedly. “My shop and, damn it, yours. Never thought I’d see the day when I . . .” He broke off and tried another approach. “I mean, of course, a chaplain is part of an army. You’re both army officers, technically speaking, one of the Martian Legion, one in the Israeli forces; but it’s highly unusual to ask a man of the cloth to . . .”
“To praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, as the folk legend has it? There are precedents among my people, and among Father Malloy’s as well, though rather different ideas are attributed to the founder of his church. What is it, Captain? Or wait, I know: We are besieged by
