Bob Shaw - Who Goes Here?

Peace tightened his grip on his radiation rifle, and tried to bolster his courage. “Some of us mightn’t die so easily.”

“If they order you to march straight up to one of those machine gun posts out there, you’ll do it just like the rest of us—and you’ll die real easy.”

“I can’t listen to any more of this,” Benger said faintly. “I think I’m going to be sick.” He crawled away into the smoke, and there followed sounds which showed his premonition had been correct.

“But it isn’t in an officer’s own interests to squander his men.” Anxious to get all the information he could, Peace squirmed closer to the legionary. “Say, where’s your name badge?”

“The name’s Bud Dinkle, but my badge fell off ages ago—they don’t know how to make ‘em properly.”

Peace looked down at his own badge and noticed for the first time that the plastic rectangle was held in place by nothing more than a small safety pin and a piece of flesh-coloured surgical tape. The tape was already beginning to lose its adhesion, allowing the badge to hang sideways. He adjusted it to a proper angle and pressed it against his chest, hoping to effect a quick repair.

“That won’t help,” Dinkle said. “They tell you to wear your badges at all times, but they…”

He paused and gazed stoically at his fingernails until a series of ear-punishing explosions had died away. Peace, almost certain he had heard a short-lived scream amid the clamour, looked nervously about him, but the smoke had grown thick again and he could see only twenty or thirty paces in any direction.

He tugged Dinkle’s sleeve. “How long will the gas attack go on?”

“Gas?” Dinkle began fumbling urgently with his respirator. “Nobody flaming well told me about gas. What sort?”

“This stuff all around us.”

Dinkle dropped his mask and gave Peace a hard stare. “You trying to be funny?”

“No. It’s just that Lieutenant Merriman said…”

“That poop! Didn’t he tell you guys the whole planet’s like this?”

“The whole planet?”

“It’s the standard Ulphan atmosphere.” Dinkle tore up a piece of the ubiquitous yellow vegetation and held it under Peace’s nose. “Sniff that.”

Peace did as he was told. “Tobacco?”

“Correct, sonny. The entire surface of Ulpha is covered with it, and when you’ve got all those little volcanoes spreading lava and hot cinders about… What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” Peace said through cupped hands. “I didn’t expect things to be like this, that’s all.

Where’s the glory? Where’s the grandeur?”

“Search me,” Dinkle replied unfeelingly. “I’m just here to fight a war.”

“But why?”

“All I know is the Ulphans started the trouble. The only thing Earth expects from the other worlds in the Federation is that they honour the Common Rights Charter and the Free Trading Pact. That’s only fair, isn’t it?”

“I guess so,” Peace said, trying to feel reassured. “What were the Ulphans up to? Slavery?

Torture?”

“Worse than that, Warren. They were screwing up the whole Free Trading Pact. Refusing to import their quota of some Earth products.”

An off inflection in Dinkle’s voice aroused Peace’s interest. “What sort of products?”

“Cigarettes and cigars.”

“Cigarettes? Cigars?”

Dinkle nodded soberly. “Not only that—they wanted to flood the rest of the Federation with underpriced tobacco.” He scowled in patriotic anger. “People like that deserve all that’s coming to them.”

“But you can see their point of view,” Peace said. “I mean…”

“Who can see their point of view?” Dinkle narrowed his eyes. “What are you, Warren? A relativist? A greeno?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so. What’s a greeno?”

“I get it—this is an attitude test,” Dinkle said. “I thought you didn’t sound like an ordinary ranker, Warren, and if I called Lieutenant Merriman a poop just now, I want you to know that, with me, poop’s a term of endearment. I call all my best friends poops.” He tapped the legionary next to him on the shoulder. “Isn’t that right, poop?”

The legionary grabbed Dinkle’s throat. “Who are you callin’ poop?”

Dinkle tried to fight him off, but the struggle was cut short by an order from Lieutenant Merriman, who directed everybody to gather close to Captain Handy. The men, experienced combat veterans and raw recruits alike, formed a semicircle around the point where Handy and Merriman were sitting with their backs to the low earthen wall. Tobacco smoke floated steadily across the scene and hidden machine guns kept up their peevish snapping. Peace found it difficult to believe that only a few hours earlier he had been safely at home on Earth.

He had no idea what had been happening to him before he joined the Legion, but anything had to be better than his current predicament.

“Captain Handy wants to deliver a personal message to all of you,” Merriman fluted, cautiously raising his mask a little. He smiled, which meant that the ellipse of his mouth elongated to show one extra tooth at each end. “I know that, as I do, you respect Captain Handy as one of the finest officers in the entire Legion, and for that reason you’ll regard it as an honour and a privilege—just as I do—that he has found time to come here and direct this phase of the battle in person with all the superb leadership, skill and courage for which he is justly renowned.”

Handy nodded his agreement with everything that had been said, and tapped the cyst-like lump of the command enforcer on his throat. “Men, it may come as a surprise to you to learn that I don’t like wearing this thing. Not only is it an expensive contraption, but I happen to believe it is totally unnecessary. I know that, given the chance, each and every one of you would be prepared to lay down his life for proud Terra without any electronic coercion.”

“We’ve had it,” Dinkle whispered gloomily to those beside him. “This is where he starts blowing off about the daunting psychological impact on the enemy of seeing proud Terra’s warriors marching line abreast and unafraid into the mouths of the cannons.”

“Keep quiet,” Peace said. “No commander would be so stupid.”

“It’s the only tactic Cap’n Handy knows—he’s famous for it.” Dinkle punctuated his words by spitting savagely, realized too late that his foot was in the way, and began wiping saliva off his toecap. “I tell you, we’re buggered.”

“… going to level with you men,” Handy was saying. “Things are going badly in this sector.

Proud Terra’s thin red line is too thin and too … er … red. I can’t promise you a quick victory like the one we had on Aspatria. But we’ve got one tremendous advantage, one great weapon the enemy doesn’t possess—and that is our invincible spirit. These Ulphans are an undisciplined, cowardly rabble. The only way they can bring themselves to fight is by skulking under cover and firing from behind rocks.” Handy paused to register his contempt for what he obviously regarded as a lack of common decency.

“So what we’re going to do in this sector is to use our invincible weapon, our moral superiority, our spirit. The Ulphans expect us to fight in the same lily-livered way that they do—but we’re going to surprise them by going straight in. Straight in with our heads held high and our banners waving. Can you imagine the daunting psychological impact of seeing proud Terra’s warriors marching line abreast and unafraid into the mouths of the cannons?”

His audience shifted uneasily as their imaginations went to work.

“There’ll be casualties, of course,” Handy went on, perhaps disappointed by a lack of favor-able response. “There may even be heavy casualties before the enemy turns tail and flees, but the annals of military history are full of similar glorious episodes. Just think of the charge of the Light Brigade.”