no—
five enemy submarine—position 31°50′ North, 73°10′ West, proceeding northwest—roughly, toward Washington. Probably carrying an answer to Garson’s ultimatum. Get help out here. Over.”
He heard only a brief mutter this time. “… ordered not to proceed toward Washington. Return immediately to—”
“Not me! You fool! Listen! Five—enemy—submarines—” He repeated the message as slowly as he could, repeated it four times.
“… reading you S-1,” came the fading answer. “Are you in distress? I say again. Are you in distress? Over.”
Angrily Mitch keyed the carrier wave, screwed the button tightly down, and kicked on the four-hundred cycle modulator. Maybe they could get a directional fix on his signal and home on it.
The blips were gone from the radar scope. The subs had spotted him and submerged. In a moment he would be catching a torpedo, unless he moved. He started the engines quickly, and the surfaced sub lurched ahead. He nosed her toward the enemy craft and opened the throttle. She knifed through the water like a low-running P.T. boat, throwing a V-shaped fan of spray. When he reached the halfway point between his own former position and the place where the enemy submerged, he began jabbing a release at three second intervals, laying a trail of deadly eggs. He could hear the crash of the exploding depth-charges behind him. He swung around to make another pass.
Then he saw it—the wet metal hulk rearing up like a massive whale dead ahead. They had discovered the insignificance of their lone and pint-sized attacker. They were coming up to take him with deck guns.
Mitch reversed the engines and swung quickly away. The range was too close for a torpedo. The blast would catch them both. He began submerging quickly. A sickening blast shivered his tiny craft, and then another. He dropped to sixty feet, then knifed ahead.
God! Why was he doing this? There was no sense in it, if he meant to run away. But then the thought came: they’re returning Old Man Garson’s big-winded threat. They’re bringing a snootful of radiological hell, and that’s the damned bayonet-line across the road.
Depth charges were crashing around him as he wove a zigzag course. The computer was buzzing frantically. Then he saw why. The rocket launcher hadn’t retracted; there was still a rocket in it—with a snootful of Uranium 235. The thing was dragging at the water, slowing him down, causing the sub to shudder and lurch.
Apparently all the subs had surfaced, for the charges were falling on all sides. With the launcher dragging at him, they would get him sooner or later. He tried to nose upward, but the controls refused.
He knew what would happen if he tried to fire the rocket. Hell, he didn’t have to fire it. All he had to do was fuse it. It had a water-pressure fuse, and he was beneath exploding depth.
Don’t think about it! Do it!
No, you’ve got to think. That’s what’s wrong. Too much do, not enough think. They’re going to wreck mechanical civilization if they keep it up. They’re going to wreck Man’s tools, cut off his hands, and make him an ape again!
But what’s it to you? What can you do?
Dammit! You can destroy five wrong tools that were built to wreck the right tools.
Mitch, who wanted to quit an all-out war, reached for the fusing switch. This part was his war; destroy the destroyers, but not the producers. Even if it didn’t make good military sense—
A close explosion sent him lurching aside. He grabbed at the wall and pushed himself back. The switch—the damn double-toggle red switch! He screamed a curse and struck at it with both fists.
There came a beautiful, blinding light.
The Ties That Bind
“Why does your brand sae drop wi’ blude,
Edward, Edward?
Why does your brand sae drop wi’ blude,
And why sae sad gang ye, O?”
“O I hae kill’d my hawk sae gude,
Mither, mither;
O I hae kill’d my hawk sae gude,
And I had nae mair but he, O.”
Anonymous
The Horde of sleek ships arose in the west at twilight—gleaming slivers that reflected the dying sun as they lanced across the darkling heavens. A majestic fleet of squadrons in double-vees, groups in staggered echelon, they crossed the sky like gleaming geese, and the children of Earth came out of their whispering gardens to gape at the splendor that marched above them.
There was fear, for no vessel out of space had crossed the skies of Earth for countless generations, and the children of the planet had forgotten. The only memories that lingered were in the memnoscripts, and in the unconscious kulturverlaengerung, of the people. Because of the latter half-memory, the people knew, without knowing why, that the slivers of light in the sky were ships, but there was not even a word in the language to name them.
The myriad voices of the planet, they cried, or whispered, or chattered in awed voices under the elms. …
The piping whine of a senile hag: “The ancient gods! The day of the judging! Repent, repent. …”
The panting gasp of a frightened fat man: “The alien! We’re lost, we’re lost! We’ve got to run for the hills!”
The voice of the child: “See the pretty birdlights? See? See?”
And a voice of wisdom in the councils of the clans: “The sons of men—they’ve come home from the Star Exodus. Our brothers.”
The slivers of light, wave upon wave, crept into the eclipse shadow as the twilight deepened and the stars stung through the blackening shell of sky. When the moon rose, the people watched again as the silhouette of a black double-vee of darts slipped across the lunar disk.
Beneath the ground, in response to the return of the ships, ancient mechanisms whirred to life, and the tech guilds hurried to tend them. On Earth, there was a suspenseful night, pregnant with the dissimilar twins of hope and fear, laden with awe, hushed with the expectancy of twenty thousand years. The stargoers—they had come home.
“Kulturverlaengerung!” grunted the tense young man in the
