Imperial Stars 3-The Crash of Empire Read online

  "But that's a contradiction! You can't distinguish between offensive and defensive weapons! And we have too small a planet to support a large-scale war!"

  The examiner looked him over coolly.

  "With due respect to your logic, your understanding is puny. Now, we have something here we call 'discipline.' Think carefully before you tell me again to my face that I am a fool, or a liar. I repeat, 'How do we avoid war? By simultaneously understanding the evils of war, and being prepared to wage it defensively on the greatest scale.' "

  Lance Phillips felt the objections well up, felt the overpowering certainty, the determination to brush aside nonsense.

  Simultaneously, he felt something else.

  He opened his mouth. No words came out.

  Could this be fear?

  Not exactly.

  What was it?

  Suddenly he recognized it.

  Caution.

  Warily, he said, "In that case . . . ah . . . how—"

  Iadrubel Vire scanned the fragmentary reports, and looked at Margash Grele. Grele's normally iridescent integument was a muddy gray.

  "This is all?" said Vire.

  "Yes, sir."

  "No survivors?"

  "Not one, so far as we know. It was a slaughter."

  Vire sat back dazed. A whole battle fleet wiped out—just like that. This would alter the balance of force all along the frontier.

  "What word from the Storehouses?"

  "Nothing, sir."

  "No demands?"

  "Not a word."

  "After a victory like this, they could—" He paused, frowning. They were pacifists, who believed in self-defense.

  That sounded fine, in principle, but—how had they reduced it to practice? After all, they were only one planet. Their productive capacity and manpower did not begin to approach that of Crustax and—

  Vire cut off that line of thought. This loss, with enough patience and craft, could be overcome. Two or three more like it would be the finish. There was just not enough potential gain to risk further attempts on that one little planet. He had probed the murk with a claw, and drawn back a stub. Best to avoid trouble while that grew back, and just keep away from the place in the future.

  "Release the announcement," said Vire slowly, "that Fleet IV, on maneuvers, has been caught in a meteor storm of unparalleled intensity. Communications have been temporarily cut off, and there is concern at headquarters over the fate of the fleet. It will be some time before we will know with certainty what has happened, but it is feared that a serious disaster may have occurred. As this fleet is merely a reserve fleet on maneuvers in the region of the border with the Federation, with which we have friendly relations, this, of course, in no way imperils our defenses, but . . . h'm-m-m . . . we are deeply concerned for the crewmen and their loved ones."

  Grele made swift notes, and looked up.

  "Excellency, might it not be wise to let this information out by stages? First, the word of the meteor shower—but our experts doubt the accuracy of the report. Next, a substantiating report has come in. Then—"

  "No, because in the event of a real meteor shower, we would make no immediate public announcements. We have to be liars in this, but let's keep it to the minimum."

  Grele bowed respectfully, and went out.

  "Damned gravitor," said Squadron A's 2nd-Flight leader over the communicator, "cut out just as we finished off the lobster fleet. I was signaling for assembly on my ship, and aimed to cut a little swath through crab-land before going home. Instead, we've been streaking off on our own for the last week, and provisions are slim on these little boats, I'll tell you that! What outfit did you say you are?"

  The strange, roughly minnow-shaped ship, not a great deal bigger than the scout answered promptly:

  "Interstellar Patrol. We have a few openings for recruits who can qualify. Plenty of chance for adventure, special training, top-grade weapons, good food, the pay's O.K., no bureaucrats to tangle things up. If you can qualify, it's a good outfit."

  "Interstellar Patrol, huh? Never heard of it. I was thinking of the Space Force."

  "Well, you could come in that way. We get quite a few men from the Space Force. It's a fair outfit, but they have to kowtow to Planetary Development. Their weapons aren't up to ours; but their training isn't so tough, either. They'd be sure to let you in, where we're a little more selective. You've got a point, all right. It would be a lot easier—if you want things easy."

  "Well, I didn't mean—"

  "We could shoot you supplies to last a couple of weeks, and maybe a Space Force ship will pick you up. If not, we could help—if we're still in the region. Of course, if not—"

  The flight leader began to perspire.

  "Listen, tell me a little more about this Interstellar Patrol."

  Lance Phillips stared at rank on rank of mirrorlike glittering forms stretching off into the distance, and divided into sections by massive pillars that buttressed the ceiling.

  "This is part of the storage plant?"

  "It is. Naturally, foreigners know nothing of this, and our own people have little cause to learn the details. You say a small planet can't afford a large striking force. It can, if the force is accumulated slowly, and requires no maintenance whatever. Bear in mind, we make our living by storing goods, with no loss. How can there be no loss? Obviously, if, from the viewpoint of the observer, no time passes for the stored object."

  "How could that be unless the object were moving at near the velocity of light?"

  "How does an object increase its speed to near the velocity of light?"

  "It accelerates."

  The examiner nodded. "When you see much of this, you have a tendency to speculate. Now, we regularly add to our stock of fighting men and ships, and our ability to control the effects of time enables us to operate, from the observers viewpoint, either very slowly, or very fast. How is not in my department, and this knowledge is not handed out to satisfy curiosity. But—it's natural to speculate. The only way we know to slow time, from the observer's viewpoint, is to accelerate, and increase velocity to near the speed of light. A great ancient named Einstein said there is no way, without outside references, to distinguish the force of gravity from acceleration. So, I think some wizardry with gravitors is behind this." He looked thoughtfully at Lance Phillips. "The main thing is, you see what you have to know to be one of our apprentice strategists. We accumulate strength slowly, take the toughest, most generally uncivilizable of each generation, provided they have certain redeeming qualities. These are our fighting men. We take a few standard types of ships, improve them as time goes on, and when we are attacked, we accelerate our response, to strike with such speed that the enemy cannot react. We obliterate him. He, mortified, blames the defeat on something else. His fleet was caught in a nova, the gravitors got in resonating synchrony, something happened, but it didn't have anything to do with us. Nevertheless, he leaves us alone."

  "Why not use our process to put his whole fleet in stasis, and use it as a warning?"

  "That would be an insult he would have to respond to, and we are opposed to war. In the second place, we agreed to give you an opportunity to fight for the planet, and then live your life elsewhere. There has to be some outlet somewhere. We can't just keep stacking ships and warriors in here indefinitely."

  "After we get out—then what happens?"

  "It depends on circumstances. However, fighting men are in demand. If, say, a properly keyed signal cut power to the engines, and after some days of drifting, the warrior were offered the opportunity to enlist in some outfit that meets our standards—"

  "Yes, that fits." He hesitated, then thrust out his jaw. "I know I'm not supposed to even think about this, but—"

  The examiner looked wary: "Go ahead."

  "With what we have here, we could rival the whole works—Federation, Crustax Empire—the lot. Well—why not? We could be the terror of all our opponents!"

  The examiner shook his head in disgust. />
  "After what you've experienced, you can still ask that. Let's go at it from another direction. Consider what you know about the warlike character of our populace, and what we have to do to restrain it. Now, just ask yourself: What could such a stock as this be descended from?"

  A great light seemed to dawn on Lance Phillips.

  "You see," said the examiner, "we've already done that. We had to try something a little tougher."

  Editor's Introduction To:

  The Only Thing We Learn

  Cyril Kornbluth

  "The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history."

  George Bernard Shaw, The Revolutionist's Handbook

  It probably doesn't matter to those killed in the Korean and Vietnam wars that Western Civilization has enjoyed the second longest period of peace in history; but it is so. Since 1945 there have been minor conflicts but no major wars among the western powers.

  The last era of extended peace was under the Roman Empire. It is usually called the Pax Romana; it might with as much justice be known as the Peace of the Legions.

  The legionnaires of that time were career soldiers, liable for duty anywhere on the frontiers. They built their camps in the afternoon, and destroyed them the next morning, seldom staying in one place for long. They could look forward to permanent settlement and perhaps their own small plot of farmland when they retired; not before. Their life was hard, but they protected the peace.

  Like all soldiers throughout history, the legionnaires would take any benefits the government offered. Successive candidates for Emperor offered; and eventually the legionnaires came to believe that soldiering was more a matter of accumulating rights than discharging duties.

  That road led to the fall of Rome, an event that still dominates much of Western history. Rome still dictates our ideal of what the world should be: a place of quaint diversity, but united by a common language, and sharing a common set of basic rules of decency.

  Cyril Kornbluth was a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, where he received the injuries that ultimately killed him. Kornbluth's reflections on the only thing we learn from history were written shortly after that War.

  The Only Thing We Learn

  Cyril Kornbluth

  The professor, though he did not know the actor's phrase for it, was counting the house—peering through a spyhole in the door through which he would in a moment appear before the class. He was pleased with what he saw. Tier after tier of young people, ready with notebooks and styli, chattering tentatively, glancing at the door against which his nose was flattened, waiting for the pleasant interlude known as "Archaeo-Literature 203" to begin.

  The professor stepped back, smoothed his tunic, crooked four books on his left elbow, and made his entrance. Four swift strides brought him to the lectern and, for the thousandth-odd time, he impassively swept the lecture hall with his gaze. Then he gave a wry little smile. Inside, for the thousandth-odd time, he was nagged by the irritable little thought that the lectern really ought to be a foot or so higher.

  The irritation did not show. He was out to win the audience, and he did. A dead silence, the supreme tribute, gratified him. Imperceptibly, the lights of the lecture hall began to dim and the light on the lectern to brighten.

  He spoke.

  "Young gentlemen of the Empire, I ought to warn you that this and the succeeding lectures will be most subversive."

  There was a little rustle of incomprehension from the audience—but by then the lectern light was strong enough to show the twinkling smile about his eyes that belied his stern mouth, and agreeable chuckles sounded in the gathering darkness of the tiered seats. Glow lights grew bright gradually at the students' tables, and they adjusted their notebooks in the narrow ribbons of illumination. He waited for the small commotion to subside.

  "Subversive—" He gave them a link to cling to. "Subversive because I shall make every effort to tell both sides of our ancient beginnings with every resource of archaeology and with every clue my diligence has discovered in our epic literature.

  "There were two sides, you know—difficult though it may be to believe that if we judge by the Old Epic alone—such epics as the noble and tempestuous Chant of Remd, the remaining fragments of Krall's Voyage, or the gory and rather out-of-date Battle For the Ten Suns." He paused while styli scribbled across the notebook pages.

  "The Middle Epic is marked, however, by what I might call the rediscovered ethos." From his voice, every student knew that that phrase, surer than death and taxes, would appear on an examination paper. The styli scribbled. "By this I mean an awakening of fellow-feeling with the Home Suns People, which had once been filial loyalty to them when our ancestors were few and pioneers, but which turned into contempt when their numbers grew.

  "The Middle Epic writers did not despise the Home Suns People, as did the bards of the Old Epic. Perhaps this was because they did not have to—since their long war against the Home Suns was drawing to a victorious close.

  "Of the New Epic I shall have little to say. It was a literary fad, a pose, and a silly one. Written within historic times, the some two score pseudo-epics now moulder in their cylinders, where they belong. Our ripening civilization could not with integrity work in the epic form, and the artistic failures produced so indicate. Our genius turned to the lyric and to the unabashedly romantic novel.

  "So much, for the moment, of literature. What contribution, you must wonder, have archaeological studies to make in an investigation of the wars from which our ancestry emerged?

  "Archaeology offers—one—a check in historical matters in the epics—confirming or denying. Two—it provides evidence glossed over in the epics—for artistic or patriotic reasons. Three—it provides evidence which has been lost, owing to the fragmentary nature of some of the early epics."

  All this he fired at them crisply, enjoying himself. Let them not think him a dreamy litterateur, or, worse, a flat precisionist, but let them be always a little off-balance before him, never knowing what came next, and often wondering, in class and out. The styli paused after heading Three.

  "We shall examine first, by our archaeoliterary technique, the second book of the Chant of Remd. As the selected youth of the Empire, you know much about it, of course—much that is false, some that is true, and a great deal that is irrelevant. You know that Book One hurls us into the middle of things, aboard ship with Algan and his great captain, Remd, on their way from the triumph over a Home Suns stronghold, the planet Telse. We watch Remd on his diversionary action that splits the Ten Suns Fleet into two halves. But before we see the destruction of those halves by the Horde of Algan, we are told in Book Two of the battle for Telse."

  He opened one of his books on the lectern, swept the amphitheater again, and read sonorously.

  "Then battle broke

  And high the blinding blast

  Sight-searing leaped

  While folk in fear below

  Cowered in caverns

  From the wrath of Remd—

  "Or, in less sumptuous language, one fission bomb—or a stick of time-on-target bombs—was dropped. An unprepared and disorganized populace did not take the standard measure of dispersing, but huddled foolishly to await Algan's gunfighters and the death they brought.

  "One of the things you believe because you have seen them in notes to elementary-school editions of Remd is that Telse was the fourth planet of the star, Sol. Archaeology denies it by establishing that the fourth planet—actually called Marse, by the way—was in those days weather-roofed at least, and possibly atmosphere-roofed as well. As potential warriors, you know that one does not waste fissionable material on a roof, and there is no mention of chemical explosives being used to crack the roof. Marse, therefore, was not the locale of Remd, Book Two.

  "Which planet was? The answer to that has been established by X-radar, differential decay analyses, video-coring, and every other resource of those scientists still quaintly called 'diggers.' We know and can prove that Telse
was the third planet of Sol. So much for the opening of the attack. Let us jump to Canto Three, the Storming of the Dynastic Palace.

  "Imperial purple wore they