Mack Reynolds: Galactic Medal of Honor

“All right,” Don said, “but you don’t bring into this fanciful story the fact that from time to time they come back.”

“I don’t believe it,” Thor said.

Don was glaring at him now. “Damn it,” he said, “you make less sense by the minute. They’re continually being spotted. Sometimes one at a time, sometimes a small group, sometimes a larger one. What do you think our Sector Scouts are out for, fun and games, or just the ride?”

“Remember the Flying Saucers?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sometimes they called them UFOs, Unidentified Flying Objects. About the middle of the last century, a regular craze went through the United States, in particular. Hundreds and even thousands of UFOs were spotted. They were popularly assumed to be visitors from space. Some viewers went to the extreme of seeing them land and sometimes little green men, or whatever, would come out. In a few cases, crackpots would claim that they were taken aboard and flown off to Jupiter, or wherever, where, surprise, surprise, they spoke Earth languages. But to boil it down, no real proof was ever presented that these UFOs were from other worlds. They never did explain all of them, but there was never proof that they were extraterrestrial.”

Don said belligerently, “Do you mean that all these patrol reports our Space Scouts send in are hysteria, or just plain lying or mistakes?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Don said, “Sometimes our spacecraft fire on these Kradens they spot.”

“Maybe they fire, and at what, I wouldn’t know. But I doubt if they’re firing at Kradens or any other extraterrestrials. I suspect it’s largely trigger-happy space pilots, at nerve’s end, or possibly touched with space cafard.”

Don had another protest. “You forget that some of our ships are missing. Totally missing.”

“I’m not at all surprised at accidents in space. Our ships aren’t that advanced as yet. The fact that a Space Scout disappears is no proof that a Kraden destroyed it.”

Don said, belligerently again, “That could happen on some occasions, but remember Vico Chu and Arch Windemere? They both reported spotting Kradens, and both reported going in to attack, and both were never seen again. We didn’t even find debris from their scouts.”

Thor said stubbornly, ” I have a theory that they spotted each other, took each other for Kradens, panicked, both fired and destroyed each other.”

“Almighty Ultimate,” Don said in disgust.

Thor said, “Where in the hell do we get such names as Kradens? We’ve never been in any kind of contact with them whatsoever.”

Don snorted. “The names just sort of materialized. Nobody seems to know who dreamed up the name Kraden for their species. But their fleet was photographed during that first action and their spaceships were different sizes, so the military gave them different names, just so they’d have some sort of label to work with.”

The big man said, “At any rate, we have no particular reason to think them belligerent. For all we know, maybe they didn’t want anything more than to trade.”

“Trade what?” Don said in rejection. “If they can cross interstellar space, they’re so far ahead of us that we couldn’t have anything they want.”

But the other shook his head. “Possibly they’ve run out of some of the more rare metals or other elements. If their civilization is far beyond our own, it’s probably much older. Even in our own economy, we’re running desperately short of some basic elements. For that matter, possibly they’re highly cultured, and fascinated with the art and artifacts of alien cultures. Possibly they would like to pick up such little items as Leonardo da Vinci’s, or whatever.”

“No,” Don said. “It’s out of the question. If there aren’t any Kradens coming through any more, and they weren’t even belligerent when they turned up half a century ago, it would have come out by now. A whole solar system isn’t so stupid as to fight bogeymen, who don’t exist, for fifty years.”

The big man looked at him thoughtfully and threw his biggest bombshell. He said, “Perhaps there are elements who profit by the false alarm.”

Don Mathers didn’t leave the big man’s apartment until afternoon. They’d had a huge breakfast, and by the time it was over Don had thoroughly recovered.

He asked the other guardedly about the doctor, who would provide you with a false illness that could result in your honorable discharge from the military, for free. Thor explained that he wasn’t alone in opposing the all-out efforts of Earth and its solar system colonies to gird for defense against the Kradens. To him it was madness that the human race was devoting every effort to prepare for fighting an enemy that didn’t exist.

“It reminds me of the race to the moon,” he said in disgust.

Don said, over his coffee, “How do you mean?”

“Back in the very early days of space travel. The United States got a slow start but then dramatically announced that they were going to beat the Russians to the moon by landing there before the decade was out. Billions of dollars were spent, many of them squandered due to haste. Millions of man hours of the best scientists and technicians the country could boast were tossed into the supposed race to the moon. As a result, sure enough, they got there first and before the decade was out. The only thing was, there was no race. The Russians had made no attempt to land men on Luna. They were devoting their efforts to less frenetic experiments in establishing space platforms and sending out probes to Venus and Mars, and spending a damn sight less money and effort in doing so.”

“Well,” Don said, “back to this doctor.”

“The doctor feels the same as I do. The whole thing’s a farce. He believes that any man who devotes his career to the Space Service, or anything else connected with supposed defense, is wasting his life. And he’s willing to help get anybody out who wants it. Are you interested?”

“Let me think about it,” Don said evasively.

How did he know he could trust this big, seemingly generous man? He hardly knew him and the situation was a dangerous one. Theoretically, the human race was at war. Deliberate desertion could be punished with a firing squad. Suppose the doctor changed his mind, sometime in the future, and reported him. Or suppose someone else informed on the doctor and he was arrested and psyched. He’d spill everything he knew, including Thor Bjornsen’s name and that of Don Mathers.

Don thanked the other again and offered to transfer some of his pseudo-dollar credits to him in payment. Thor Bjornsen laughingly refused and told him to think over the doctor’s proposition. The big man was between jobs and could usually be located at the apartment. The trouble with his finding another position was that he didn’t want anything even remotely connected with the war effort, and there were precious few jobs these days that weren’t either directly or indirectly so connected.

Don Mathers was at loose ends. He had gone through quite a few of his pseudo-dollars the night before and so was deprived of the wherewithal to spend his three weeks leave in the manner he ordinarily would have. Besides, he was still glum about the treatment he had received from Dian Keramikou and apprehensive about the commodore and the possibility that his commander would send him to the medicos.

So he made his way to Harry’s Nuevo Mexico Bar. At least he had credit there and could drink without drawing on his pseudo-dollar supply.

The bar, this early in the afternoon, was almost empty. Don spotted a fellow One Man Scout pilot on a stool and went over to join him. It was Eric Hansen, who held down a full lieutenant’s rank, in spite of the fact that he was still assigned to the tiny scouts.