It would be too an exaggeration to say that the three of them—well, they three plus Jonah Matthieson—had won the war; but it wouldn't be too large an expansion of the truth to say that without them the war would have been lost.
"Heroes are not without honor," Claude said. "Save in their own countries. Perhaps we should write a book to tell our true story."
"Sure," Harold said. "That would really make that ARM bastard happy. Right now he's happy, but—"
Claude's knowing grin stopped him. "Yes, of course. No books." He shrugged. "So we know, but no one else does."
And at that General Early had been tempted to make all four of them vanish, no matter their service to the UN. There would have been no trials. Freedom or a quiet disappearance, and for some reason—perhaps Early really had some human emotions—they'd been turned loose with their memories more or less intact.
They all frowned; Harold thoughtfully, looking down at the wineglass he rolled between his palms.
"I don't like it," Ingrid said. "Oh, I don't miss the fame—more trouble than it's worth, we'd have to beat off publicity-seekers and vibrobrains with clubs. I don't like General Buford Early—remember, I worked for him back in Sol System”—Ingrid had escaped the original kzin attack on Alpha Centauri and made the twenty-year trip back to Sol in suspended animation—“and I don't like the ARM getting a foothold here. What did our ancestors come here for, if not to get away from them?"
Both men nodded agreement. In theory, the ARM were the technological police of the United Nations, charged with keeping track of new developments and controlling those that menaced social peace. That turned out to be all new technology, and the ARM had grown until it more-or-less set UN policy. For three centuries they had kept Sol System locked in pacifistic stasis, to the point where even the memory of conflict was fading and a minor scuffle got people sent to the psychists for "repair." That placid changelessness and the growing sameness of life in the overcrowded, overregulated solar system had been a strong force behind the interstellar exodus.
The ARM had kept Solar humanity from making ready after the first kzinti warship attacked a human vessel, right up to the arrival of the First Fleet from conquered Alpha Centauri. The operators of the big launch-lasers on Mercury had had to virtually mutiny to fight back, even when the kzin battlecruisers started beaming asteroid habitats.
"I don't like the way Early's so cozy with the new government," Harold growled.
"In the long run, luck goes only to the efficient," Claude said, and the others nodded again, because it wasn't hard to guess his train of thought.
The war was ended by pure luck: the weird aliens who sold the faster-than-light spacedrive to the human colonists on We Made It had really won the war for Sol. The kzin Fifth Fleet would have crushed all resistance, if there had been time for it to launch from Alpha Centauri and cover the 4.3 light-years at .8c. Chuut-Riit, the last kzin Governor, had been a strategic genius; even more rare in his species, he never attacked until he was ready. Fortunately for humanity, that Chuut-Riit hadn't lived to send that fleet.
It had been Buford Early's idea to send in an assassin team with the scoopship Yamamoto's raid as a cover. Jonah, and Ingrid, and an intelligent ship that had gone insane. A mad scheme, one that shouldn't have worked, but it was all Earth could try—and it had worked. Was General Early a military genius, or incredibly lucky?
Now the hyperdrive would open the universe to Man. The problem was that it eliminated the moat of distance; the hyperwave, the communications version of the device, gave contact with Earth in mere hours. Cultures grown alien in centuries of isolation were thrown together . . . and serious interstellar politics became possible once more, and ARM General Buford Early was right in the middle of it all.
"I thoroughly agree," Claude said. "He's got Markham under his thumb, and a number of others. It's already unwise to cross him."
"As Jonah found out," Ingrid sighed.
Harold felt a prickle of irritation. True, Ingrid had chosen him—when both Claude and the Sol-Belter were very much available—but he didn't like to be reminded of it. Even less he didn't want to be reminded that she and Jonah had been lovers as well as teammates. It hadn't helped that the younger man refused all help from them, later.
She shook her head. "Poor Jonah. He should not have been so . . . so brusque with General Early. Buford is older than the Long Peace, and he can be . . . uncivilized."
CHAPTER TWO
Jonah Matthieson belched and settled his back against the granite of the plinth. The long sunset of Wunderland was well under way. Tall clouds hung hot-gold nearly to the zenith of the pale blue sky, where the dome of night was darkening. Along the western horizon bands of purple shaded down to crimson and salmon pink. War had done that, the Yamamoto's raid two years ago pounding the northern pole with kinetic-energy missiles at near light speed, then the fighting with the Crashlander armada later, which had included a fair number of high-yield weapons on kzinti holdouts. There was a lot of dust in the atmosphere. Wunderland is a small planet, half Earth's diameter and much less dense, a super-Mars; the gravitational gradient was small, and the air extended proportionately farther out. Hence there was a lot of atmosphere for it to fill.
And a wonderful sunset for one mustered-out stingship pilot to sit and savor, particularly if he was drunk enough. Unfortunately the bottle was empty.
A sudden spasm of rage sent it flying, out to crash among the other debris along the front of the Ritterhaus. The
