OFF TO THE COMMERCIAL WARS -WITH FULL VIDEO COVERAGE.

In the lotus-land of People's Capitalism, Earth circa 21st Century, where telly viewers popped dream-inducing trank pills, what could be wrong?

There were basic staples for everyone. Work was a forgotten pastime. Action was all in the flip of a switch. Nothing could be wrong in this Utopia for which men through the ages had strived.

Nothing, that is, but movement. The class system had petrified. You were born a Lower or a Middle ... or if you were one of the lucky few, an Upper, with certain special privileges.

But there's always an upstart rebel, like Joe Mauser, who'd risk life itself to rise in caste. And in lotus-land that's how it was. Only by hiring oneself out as a mercenary, to fight in the «prime-time programmed wars that telly viewers craved for their violence and gore, could Joe Mauser move up the social level. That is, if he lived that long....

Turn this book over for second complete novel

ACE BOOKS, INC. 1720 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10036

MERCENARY FROM TOMORROW

Copyright ©, 1968, by Mack Reynolds All Rights Reserved

Cover by Jack Gaughan.

THE KEY TO VENUDINE

Copyright ©, 1968, by Kenneth Bulmer

Printed in U.S.A.

These, in the day when heaven was falling,

The hour when earth's foundations fled,

Followed their mercenary calling

And took their wages and are dead.

'                                                            —A.E. Housman

'                                                      I

J OSEPH MAUSEH spotted the recruiting lineup from two or three blocks down the street, shortly after driving into Kingston. The local offices of Vacuum Tube Transport, undoubtedly. Baron Haer would be doing his recruiting for the fracas with Continental Hovercraft there if for no other reason than to save on rents. The Baron was watching pennies on this one and that was bad.

In fact, it was so bad that even as Joe Mauser let his sports hovercar sink to a parking level and vaulted over its side he was still questioning his decision to sign up with the vacuum tube outfit rather than with their opponents. Joe was an old pro and old pros do not get to be old pros in the Category Military without developing an instinct to stay away from the losing side.

Fine enough for Low-Lowers and Mid-Lowers to sign up with this outfit, as opposed to that, motivated by no other reasoning than the snappiness of the uniform and the stock shares offered, but an old pro considered carefully such matters as budget. Baron Haer was watching every expense, was, it was rumored, figuring on commanding himself and calling upon relatives and friends for his staff. Continental Hovercraft, on the other hand, was heavy with variable capital and was in a position to hire Stonewall Cogswell himself for their tactician.

However, the die was cast. You didn't run up a caste level, not to speak of two at once, by playing it careful. Joe had planned this out; for once, old pro or not, he was taking risks.

Recruiting lineups were not for such as he. Not for many a year, many a fracas. He strode rapidly along this one, heading for the offices ahead, noting only in passing the quality of the men who were taking service with Vacuum Tube Transport. These were the soldiers he'd be commanding in the field in the immediate future and the prospects looked grim. There were few veterans among them. Their stance, their demeanor, their . . . well, you could tell a veteran even though he be Rank Private, and few were. You could tell a veteran of even one fracas. It showed.

He knew the situation. The word had gone out. Baron Malcolm Haer was due for a defeat. You weren't going to pick up any lush victory bonuses signing up with him and you definitely weren't going to jump a caste. In short, no matter what Haer's past record, choose what was going to be the winning side—Continental Hovercraft. Continental Hovercraft and old Stonewall Cogswell who had lost so few fracases that many a Telly buff couldn't remember a single one.

Individuals among these men showed promise, Joe Mauser estimated even as he walked, but promise means little if you don't live long enough to cash in on it. On an average, in combat, you'd lose eight to ten of these bright faced first-timers for every veteran. They didn't have such know-how as taking cover. A fold in the terrain had to be ten inches or a foot high, before they even saw it. However, you kept your eye open for those who showed promise.

Take that small man up ahead. He'd obviously got himself into a hassle maintaining his place in line against two or three heftier would-be soldiers. The little fellow wasn't backing down a step in spite of the attempts of the other Lowers to usurp his place. Joe Mauser liked to see such spirit. You could use it when you were in the dill.

As he drew abreast of the altercation, he snapped from the side of his mouth, "Easy, lads. You'll get all the scrapping you want with Hovercraft. Wait until then."

He'd expected his tone of authority to be enough, even though he was in mufti. He wasn't particularly interested in the situation, beyond giving the little man a hand. A veteran would have recognized him as an old-timer and probable officer, and heeded, automatically.

These evidendy were not veterans.

"Says who?" one of the Lowers growled back at him. "You one of Baron Haer's kids, or something?''

Joe Mauser came to a halt and faced the Lower. He was irritated, largely with himself. He didn't want to be bothered. Nevertheless, there was no alternative now.

The line of men, all Lowers so far as Joe could see, had fallen silent in an expectant hush. They were bored with their long wait. Now something would break the monotony.

By tomorrow, Joe Mauser would be in command of some of these men. In as little as a week he would go into a full-fledged fracas with them. He couldn't afford to lose face. Not even at this point when all, including himself, were still civilian garbed. When matters pickled, in a fracas, you wanted men with complete confidence in you.

The man who had grumbled the surly response was a near physical twin of Joe Mauser, which put him in his early thirties, gave him five foot eleven of altitude and about one hundred and eighty pounds. There, resemblance ended. Joe Mauser bore himself with the dignity of he who has been in the clutch over and over again, and handled himself under such conditions as to satisfy himself. He was a moderately handsome man, his face not particularly disfigured by the two scars, one dh forehead, one on chin, which the cosmetic surgeons had not been completely able to eradicate.

The Lower was surly in expression as well as voice, his shoulders slumped in such a way he seemed to proclaim that fate had done him ill, through no fault of his own. His clothes casted him Low-Lower—nothing to lose. As with many who have nothing to lose, he was willing to risk all for principle. His face now registered that ideal. Joe Mauser had no authority over him, nor his friends.

Joe's eyes flicked to the other two who had been pestering the little fellow. They weren't quite so aggressive and as yet had come to no conclusion about their stand. Probably the three had been unacquainted before their bullying alliance to deprive the smaller man of his place. However, a moment of hesitation and Joe would have a trio on his hands.

He went through no further verbal preliminaries. Joe Mauser stepped closer. His right hand lanced forward, not doubled in a fist but fingers close together and pointed, spear-like. He sank it into the other's abdomen, immediately below the rib cage—the solar plexus.

He had misestimated the other two. Even as his opponent crumpled, they were upon him, coming in from each side. And at least one of them, he could see now, had been in hand-to-hand combat before, probably in the prize ring. In short, another pro, like Joe himself, though from a somewhat different field.

Joe Mauser took one blow, rolling with it, and his feet automatically went into the shuffle of the trained fighter. He retreated slightly to erect defenses, plan attack. They pressed him strongly, sensing victory in his withdrawal.

The one mattered little to him. Joe Mauser could have polished off the oaf in a matter of seconds, had he been allotted seconds to devote. But the second, the experienced one, was the problem. He and Joe were well matched and with the oaf as an ally really had all the best of it.

Support came from a forgotten source, the little chap who had been the reason for the whole hassle. He waded in now as big as the next man so far as spirit was concerned, but a sorry fate gave him to attack the wrong man, the veteran rather than the tyro. He took a crashing blow to the side of his head which sent him sailing back into the recruiting line, now composed of excited, shouting verbal participants of the fray.

However, the extinction of Joe Mauser's small ally had taken a moment or two and time was what Joe needed most. For a double second he had the oaf alone on his hands and that was sufficient. He caught a flailing arm, turned his back and automatically went into that spectacular hold of the wrestler, the Flying Mare. Just in time he recalled that his opponent was a future comrade-in-arms and twisted the arm so that it bent at the elbow, rather than breaking. He hurled the other over his shoulder and as far as possible, to take the scrap out of him, and twirled quickly to meet the further attack of his sole remaining foe.

That phase of the combat failed to materialize.

A voice of command bit out, "Hold it, you lads!"

The original situation which had precipitated the fight was being duplicated. But while the three Lowers had failed to respond to Joe Mauser's tone of authority, there was no similar failure now.

The owner of the voice, beautifully done up in the uniform of Vacuum Tube Transport, complete to kilts and the swagger stick of the officer of Rank Colonel or above, stood glaring at them Age, Joe estimated, even as he came to attention, somewhere in his late twenties—an Upper in caste. Bom to command. His face holding that arrogant, contemptuous expression once common to the patricians of Rome, the Prussian Junkers, the British ruling class of the Nineteenth Century. Joe knew the expression well. How well he knew it. On more than one occasion, he had dreamed of it.

Joe said, "Yes, sir."

"What in Zen goes on here? Are you lads overtranked?" "No, sir," Joe's veteran opponent grumbled, his eyes on the ground, a schoolboy before the principal. Joe said evenly, "A private disagreement, sir."

"Disagreement?" the Upper snorted. His eyes went to the three fallen combatants who were in various stages of reviving. "I'd hate to see you lads in a real scrap."

That brought a response from the noncombatants in the recruiting line. The bon mot wasn't that good, but caste has its privileges and the laughter was just short of uproarious.

Which seemed to placate the kilted officer considerably. He tapped his swagger stick against the side of his leg while he ran his eyes up and down Joe Mauser and the others, as though memorizing them for future reference.

"All right," he said. "Get back into the line, and you troublemakers quiet down. We're processing as quickly as we can." And at that point he added insult to injury with an almost word-for-word repetition of what Joe had said a few minutes earlier. "You'll get all the fighting you want from Hovercraft, if you can wait until then."

The four original participants of the rumpus resumed their places in various stages of sheepishness. The little fellow, nursing an aching jaw, made a point of taking up his original position even while darting a look of thanks to Joe Mauser, who still stood where he had when the fight was interrupted.

The Upper looked at Joe. "Well, lad, are you interested in signing up with Vacuum Transport or not?" There was a fine impatience in his voice.

"Yes, sir," Joe said evenly. Then, "Joseph Mauser, sir. Category Military, Rank Captain."

"Indeed." The officer looked him up and down all over again, his nostrils high. "A Middle, I assume. And brawling with recruits." He held a long silence. "Very well, come with me." He turned and marched off.

Joe inwardly shrugged. This was a fine start for his fling— a fine start. He had half a mind to give it all up, here and now, and head on north to Catskill to enlist with Continental Hovercraft. He was almost sure to be able to get a junior position on Stonewall Cogswell's staff. His big scheme would wait for another day. Nevertheless, he fell in behind the aristocrat and followed him to the offices which had been Joe's original destination.

Two Rank Privates with 45-70 Springfields and wearing the Haer kilts in such a way as to indicate permanent status in Vacuum Tube Transport came to the salute as they approached. The Upper preceding Joe Mauser flicked his swagger stick to his cap in easy nonchalance. Joe felt envious amusement. How long did it take to leam to answer a salute with just that degree of arrogant ease?

There were desks in here, and typers humming, key punchers clicking, sorters and collators flicking as Vacuum Tube Transport office workers, mobilized for this special service, processed volunteers for the company forces. Harried noncoms and junior grade officers buzzed everywhere, failing miserably to bring order to the chaos. To the right was a door with a medical cross newly painted on it. When it occasionally popped open to admit or emit a recruit, white-robed doctors, male nurses and half nude men could be glimpsed beyond. Joe had seen it all a hundred times over.

He followed the Upper through the press and to an inner office at which door the Upper didn't bother to knock. Instead, he pushed his way through, waved in greeting with his swagger stick to the single occupant, who looked up from the paper and tape strewn desk at which he sat.

Joe Mauser had seen the face before on Telly, though never so tired as this and never with the element of defeat to be read in the expression. Bullet-headed, barrel-figured Baron Malcolm Haer of Vacuum Tube Transport. Category Transportation, Mid-Upper, and strong candidate for Upper-Upper upon retirement. However, there would be few who expected retirement of the Baron in the immediate future. Hardly. Malcolm Haer found too obvious a lusty enjoyment in the competition between Vacuum Tube Transport and its stronger rivals. A roly-poly man he might be, physically, but he reminded one of Bonaparte rather than Humpty-Dumpty.

Joe came to attention, bore the sharp scrutiny of his chosen commander-to-be. The older man's eyes left him to go to the kilted Upper Officer who had brought Joe along. "What is it, Bait?" he said.

Bait gestured with his stick at Joe. "Claims to be Rank Captain. Looking for a commission with us, Dad. I wouldn't know why." The last sentence was added lazily.

The older Haer shot an irritated glance at his son. Tossibly for the same reason mercenaries usually enlist for a fracas, Bait." His eyes came back to Joe. They were small eyes and sharp.

Joe Mauser, still at attention even though in mufti, opened his mouth to give his name, category and rank, but the older man waved his hand negatively. "Captain Mauser, isn't it? I caught the fracas between Carbonaceous Fuel and United Miners, down on the Panhandle Reservation. Seems to me I've spotted you once or twice before, too."

"Yes, sir," Joe said. This was some improvement in the way things were going.

The older Haer was scowling at him. "Confound it, what are you doing with no more rank than captain? On the face of it, you're an old hand, a highly experienced veteran."

An old pro, we call ourselves, Joe thought to himself. Old pros, we call ourselves, among ourselves.

Aloud, he said, "I was born a Mid-Lower, sir."

There was understanding in the old man's face, but Bait Haer said loftily, "What's that got to do with it? Promotion is quick and based on merit in Category Military."

At a certain point, if you are good combat officer material, you speak your mind no matter the rank of the man you are addressing. On this occasion, Joe Mauser needed few words. He let his eyes go up and down Bait Haer's immaculate uniform, taking in the swagger stick of the Rank Colonel or above. Joe said evenly, "Yes, sir."

Bait Haer flushed quick temper. "What do you mean by your attitude? What..."

But his father was chuckling. "You have spirit, Captain. I need spirit now. You are quite correct. My son, though a capable field officer, I assure you, has probably not participated in a fraction of the fracases you have to yow credit. However, there is something to be said for the training available to we Uppers in the military academies. For instance, Captain, have you ever commanded a body of lads larger than, well, a company?"

Joe said flatly, "In the Douglas-Boeing versus Lockheed-Cessna fracas we took a high loss of officers when the Douglas-Boeing outfit rang in some fast firing French mitrailleuse we didn't know they had. As my superiors took casualties I was field promoted to acting battalion commander, to acting regimental commander, to acting brigadier. For three days I held the rank of acting commander of brigade." He took a breath. "We won that fracas, sir."

Aiii. How well he remembered. And now, bringing it back. He would be lucky if it didn't come to him in the dreams this night. He would be lucky. Aiii. That was where Jim, his comrade in arms for six years and more had taken a burst in his guts, all but cutting him in two.

Bait Haer snapped his fingers. "I remember that. Saw it at the time and then read quite a paper on it, in school." He eyed Joe Mauser, almost respectfully. "Stonewall Cogswell got the credit for the victory and received his marshal's baton as a result."

"He was one of the few other officers that survived," Joe said dryly.

"But, Zen!" Bait Haer blurted. "You mean you got no promotion at all?"

Joe said, "I was bounced to Low-Middle, from High-Lower, sir. At my age, at the time, quite a triumph."

Baron Haer was remembering, too. "That was the fracas that brought on the howl from the Sovs. They claimed those mitrailleuse were post-1900 and violated the Universal Disarmament Pact. Yes, I recall that. Douglas-Boeing was able to prove that the weapon was used by the French as far back as the Franco-Prussian War." He eyed Joe with new interest now. "Sit down, Captain. You too, Bait. Do you realize that Captain Mauser is the only recruit of officer's rank we've had today?"

"Yes," the younger Haer said. "However, it's too late to call the fracas off now. Hovercraft wouldn't stand for it, and the Category Military Department would back them. Our only alternative is unconditional surrender, and you know what that means."

"It means our family would probably be forced from control of the firm," the older man growled. "But nobody has suggested surrender on any terms, unconditional or otherwise. Nobody, thus far." He glared at his officer son, who took it with an easy shrug and swung a leg over the edge of his father's desk in the way of a seat.

Joe Mauser found a chair and lowered himself into it. Evidently, the foppish Bait Haer had no illusions about the spot his father had got the family corporation into. And the younger man was right, of course.

But the Baron wasn't blind to reality any more than he was a coward. He dismissed Bait Haer's defeatism from his mind and came back to Joe Mauser. "As I say, you're the only officer recruit today. Why?"

Joe said, "I wouldn't know, sir. Perhaps free-lance Category Military men are occupied elsewhere. There's always a shortage of trained officers."

Baron Haer was waggling a thick finger negatively. "That's not what I mean, Captain. You are an old hand. This is your category and you must know it well, to have survived for so long, coming up through the ranks as you obviously did. Then why are you signing up with Vacuum Tube Transport rather than Hovercraft?"

Joe Mauser looked at him for a moment without speaking. He knew what the other was thinking. Theoretically, there was no espionage between rival outfits in the fracases, but in actuality, often commanders as wily as Stonewall Cogswell deliberately infiltrated the enemy force with a knowledgeable officer to attempt to ferret out information. And Joe was known to have fought under Cogswell before.

"Come, come, Captain," the Baron rumbled. "I am an old hand too, in my category, and not a fool. I realize there is scarcely a soul in the West-world that expects anything but disaster for my colors. Pay rates have been widely posted.

I can offer only five common shares of Vacuum Tube for a Rank Captain, win or lose. Hovercraft is doubling that, and can pick and choose among the best officers in the hemisphere."

Joe said softly, "I have all the shares I need."

Bait Haer had been looking back and forth between his father and the newcomer, becoming more puzzled. He put in, "Well, what in Zen motivates you if it isn't the stock we offer?"

Joe glanced at the younger Haer to acknowledge the question but he spoke to the Baron. "Sir, like you said, you're no fool. However, you've been sucked in this time. When you took on Hovercraft, you were thinking in terms of a regional dispute. You wanted to run one of your vacuum tube deals up to Fairbanks from Edmonton, to get in on the lucrative Alaska trade. You were expecting a minor fracas involving possibly five thousand men per side. You never expected Hovercraft to parlay it up, through their connections in the Category Military Department, to a divisional magnitude fracas which you simply aren't large enough to afford. But Hovercraft was getting sick and tired of your corporation. You've been nicking away at them too long. So they decided to do you in. They've hired Marshal Cogswell and the best combat officers in North America, and they're hiring the most competent veterans they can find for his enlisted men. Every fracas buff who watches Telly figures you've had it They've been watching you come up the aggressive way, the hard way, for a long time, but now they're all going to be sitting on the edges of their sofas waiting for you to get it."

Baron Haer's heavy face had hardened as Joe Mauser went on relentlessly. He growled, "Is this what everyone thinks?"

"Yes. Everyone intelligent enough to have an opinion." Joe made a motion of his head to the outer offices where the recruiting was proceeding. "Those men out there are rejects from Catskill, where old Baron Zwerdling is recruiting. Either that or they're inexperienced. Low-Lowers, too stupid to realize they're sticking their necks out. Not one man in ten is a veteran. And when things begin to pickle, you want veterans."

Baron Malcolm Haer sat back in his chair and stared coldly at Captain Joe Mauser. He said, "At first I was moderately surprised that an old-time mercenary such as yourself should choose my colors rather than Zwerdling's. Now I am increasingly mystified at your motivation. So, all over again, I ask you, Captain: Why are you requesting a commission in my forces which you seem convinced will meet disaster?"

Joe Mauser was at the crucial point now. He had to tread carefully. He wet his lips. "Because, sir, I think I know a way you can win."

II

His PERMANENT RANK, decided upon by the Category Military Department, the Haers had no way to alter, but they were short enough of competent officers that they gave him an acting rating and pay scale of major and command of a squadron of cavalry. Joe Mauser wasn't interested in a cavalry command in this fracas, but he said nothing. Immediately, he had to size up the situation; it wasn't time as yet to reveal the big scheme. And, meanwhile, they could use him to whip the Rank Privates into shape.

He had left the offices of Baron Haer to go through the red tape involved in being signed up on a temporary basis in the Vacuum Tube Transport forces and reentered the confusion of the outer offices where the Lowers were being processed and given medicals. He reentered in time to run into a Telly team which was doing a live broadcast.

Joe Mauser remembered the news reporter who headed the team. He had run into the man two or three times in fracases. As a matter of fact, although Joe held the standard Military

Category prejudices against Telly, he had a basic respect for this particular newsman. On the occasions he'd seen the reporter before, the fellow was hot in the midst of the action even when things were in the dill. He took as many chances as did the average combatant, and you can't ask for more than that. Undoubtedly, he was bucking for a bounce in caste.

The reporter knew him too, of course. It was part of his job to be able to spot the celebrities and near celebrities. He zeroed in on Joe now, making flicks of his hand to direct the cameras. Joe, of course, was fully aware of the value of Telly and was glad to cooperate.

"Captain! Captain Mauser, isn't it? Joe Mauser, who held out for four days in the swamps of Louisiana with a single company while his ranking officers reformed behind him."

That was one way of putting it, but both Joe and the newscaster who had covered the debacle knew the reality of the situation. When the front had collapsed, his commanders—of Upper caste, of course—had hauled out, leaving him to fight a delaying action while they mended their fences with the enemy, coming to the best terms possible. Yes, that had been the United Oil versus Allied Petroleum fracas, and Joe had emerged with little either in glory or pelf.

The average fan wasn't on an intellectual level to appreciate anything other than victory. The good guys win, the bad guys lose—that's obvious, isn't it? Not one out of ten Telly followers of the fracases was interested in a well conducted retreat or holding action. They wanted blood, lots of it, and they identified with the winning side.

It was the fiesta brava of Spain and Latin America, all over again. The crowd identified with the matador, never the bull. Invariably the cheers went up when finally the wounded, bedeviled and bewildered animal went down to its death, its moment of truth. In the fracases, the fans might begin quite neutral, but as the action developed and it became obvious that the victors to be were going in for the kill, there was a quick identification with the winners.

Joe Mauser wasn't particularly bitter about this aspect. It was part of his way of life. In fact, his pet peeve was the real buff. The type, man or woman, who could remember every fracas you'd ever been in, every time you'd copped one, and how long you'd been in the hospital. Fans who could remember, even better than you could, every time the situation had pickled on you and you'd had to fight your way out as best you could. They'd tell you about it, their eyes gleaming, sometimes a slight trickle of spittle at the sides of their mouths. They usually wanted an autograph, or a souvenir such as a uniform button. He'd once had a fan maneuver his way into the hospital where Joe was laid up with a triple leg wound from a Maxim gun, and beg for a piece of bloody bandage. It was one of the great regrets in life that he'd been in no shape to get up and kick the cloddy down the stairs.

Now Joe said to the Telly reporter, "That's right, Captain Mauser. Acting major, in this fracas, ah . . ."

"Freddy. Freddy Soligen. You remember me, Captain . .

"Indeed I do, Freddy. How could I forget? We've been in the dill, side by side, more than once, and even when I was too scared to use my side arm, you'd be in there scanning away with your camera."

"Ha, ha, listen to the captain, folks. All I can say is, I hope my boss is tuned in. But seriously, Captain Mauser, what do you think the chances of Vacuum Tube Transport are in this fracas with Continental Hovercraft?"

Joe looked into the camera lens, earnestly, "The best, of course, or I wouldn't have signed up with Baron Haer, Freddy. Justice triumphs, as any schoolboy can tell you, and anybody who is familiar with the issues in this fracas, knows that Baron Haer is on the side of the true right."

Freddy Soligen said, holding any sarcasm he must have felt, "What would you say the issues were, Captain?"

"The basic North American free enterprise right to compete. Hovercraft has held a near monopoly in transport to Fairbanks. Vacuum Tube Transport, under its great director, Baron Malcolm Haer, wishes to lower costs and bring the consumers of Fairbanks better and cheaper service through running a vacuum tube to that area. What could be more in the traditions of the West-world? Continental Hovercraft stands in the way, and they have demanded of the Category Military Department a trial by arms. On the face of it, justice is on the side of Baron Haer."

Freddy Soligen said into the camera lens, "Well, all you good people of the Telly world, that's an able summation the captain has made, but it certainly doesn't jibe with the words of Baron Zwerdling we heard this morning, does it? However, justice will triumph and we'll see what the field of combat will have to offer. Thank you, thank you very much, Captain Joe Mauser. All of us, all of us tuned in today, hope that you personally will run into no dill in this fracas."

"Thanks, Freddy. Thanks, all," Joe said into the camera, before turning away. He wasn't particularly keen about this part of the job, but you couldn't underrate the importance of pleasing the buffs. In the long run, it was your career, your chances for promotion both in military rank and ultimately in caste, since the two went hand in hand. It was the way the fans took you up, boosted you, idolized you, worshiped you if you really made it. He, Joe Mauser, was only a minor celebrity; he appreciated every chance he had to be interviewed by such a popular reporter as Freddy Soligen.

Even as he turned away, he spotted the four men with whom he'd had his spat earlier. The little fellow was still to the fore. Evidently, the others had decided the one place extra that he represented wasn't worth the trouble he'd put in their way defending it.'

On an impulse Joe Mauser stepped up to the small man, who began a grin of recognition, a grin that transformed his fiesty face: A revelation of an inner warmth beyond average in a world which had lost much of its human warmth.

Joe said, "Like a job, soldier?"

"Name's Max. Max Mainz. Sure I want a job. That's why I'm in this everlasting line."

Joe said, "First fracas for you, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but I had my basic training in school, like everybody else."

"What do you weigh, Max?"

Max's face soured. "About one-twenty."

"Fine. Did you check out on semaphore in school?"

"Well, sure. I'm Category Food, Subdivision Cooking, Branch Chef, but, like I say, I took basic military training."

"I'm Captain Joe Mauser. How'd you like to be my batman?"

Max screwed up his already not overly handsome face. "Gee, I don't know. I kinda wanted to see some of the real action. Get into the dill. You know what I mean."

Inwardly, Joe Mauser winced, but he said, his voice dry, "See here, Mainz, you'll probably find more pickled situations next to me than you'll want—and you'll come out alive, or, at least with a better chance of it than if you go in as infantry man."

The recruiting sergeant looked up from the desk. It was Max Mainz's turn to be processed. The sergeant said, "Lad, take a good opportunity when it drops in your lap. The captain is one of the best in the field. You'll leam more, get better chances for promotion, if you stick with him."

Joe couldn't remember ever having run into the man before, but he said, "Thanks, Sergeant."

The sergeant realizing Joe didn't recognize him, said, "We were together on the Chihuahua Reservation, in the jurisdictional fracas between the United Miners and the Teamsters, sir."

It had been almost fifteen years. About all that Joe Mauser remembered of that fracas was the abnormal number of casualties they'd taken. His side had lost, but from this distance in time Joe couldn't even remember what force he had been with. But now he said, "That's right. I thought I recognized you, Sergeant. It's been a long time."

"It was my first fracas, sir." The sergeant went businesslike. "If you want I should hustle this lad through, Captain . . ."

"Please do, Sergeant," Joe told him. He turned to Max. "I'm not sure where my billet will be. When you're through all this, locate the officers' mess and wait for me there."

"Well, okay," Max said doubtfully, still scowling but evidently a servant of an officer, if he wanted to be or not.

The sergeant looked at him and said, "Sir," in an ominous tone. "If you've had basic, you know enough how to address an officer."

"Well, yes, sir," Max said hurriedly.

Joe began to turn away, but then sported the man immediately behind Max Mainz. He was one of the three with who Joe had tangled earlier, the one who had had previous combat experience. He pointed the man out to the sergeant. "You'd better give this lad at least temporary rank of corporal. He's a veteran and we're short of veterans."

The sergeant said, "Yes, sir. We sure are. Step up here, lad."

Joe's former foe looked properly thankful.

Joe Mauser finished off his own red tape and headed for the street to locate a military tailor who could do him up a set of the Haer kilts and fill his other dress requirements. As he went, he wondered vaguely just how many different uniforms he had worn in his time. A hundred? He kept no records of his jobs, perhaps subconsciously wishing to reject them, impossible as that might be.

In a career as long as his own, from time to time you took semi-permanent positions in bodyguards, company police, or possibly the permanent combat troops of this corporation or that. There was an element of security in such positions. However, largely, if you were ambitious, you signed up for the fracases and that meant into a uniform and out of it again in as short a period as a couple of weeks.

At the door he tried to move aside but was too slow for the quick moving young woman who caromed off him. He caught her arm to prevent her from stumbling, and she looked at him with less than thanks.

Joe took the blame for the collision. "Sorry, he said. "I'm afraid I didn't see you, miss."

"That's on the obvious side," she said coldly, pulling her arm free. Her eyes went up and down him and for a moment he wondered where he had seen her before. Somewhere, he was sure.

She was dressed as they dress who have never considered cost and she had an elusive beauty which would have been even more if her face hadn't projected quite such a serious outlook. Her features were more delicate than those to which he was usually attracted. Her lips were less full, but still-She said, "Is there any particular reason why you should be staring at me, Mr.—"

"Captain Mauser," Joe said hurriedly. "I'm afraid I've been rude, miss. But, well, I thought I recognized you."

She took in his civilian dress, typed it automatically, and came to an erroneous conclusion. She said, "Captain? You mean that with everyone else I know drawing down ranks from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general, you can't manage anything more than captain?"

Joe winced. He said carefully, "I came up from the ranks, miss. Captain is quite an achievement, believe me. Few make it beyond sergeant."

"Up from the ranks!" She took in his clothes again. "You mean, you're a Middle? You neither talk nor look like a Middle, Captain." She used the caste rating as though it were not quite a derogatory term.

Not that she meant to be deliberately insulting, Joe knew, wearily. How well he knew. It was simply born in her.

He said, very evenly, "Mid-Middle now, miss. However, I was born in the Lower caste."

An eyebrow went up, half cynical, half mocking, as though amused at a social climber. "Zen! You must have put in many an hour studying. You talk like an Upper, Captain." She dropped all interest in him and turned to resume her journey.

"Just a moment," Joe said. "You can't go in there, miss . . ."

She half turned and her eyebrows went up again. "The name is Haer," she said. "And just why can't I go into my father's offices, Captain?"

Now it came to him why he had thought he recognized her. She had basic features similar to those of that overbred poppycock, Bait Haer. With her, however, they came off superlatively.

"Sorry," Joe said, beating his retreat. "I suppose that under the circumstances you can. I was about to tell you that they're recruiting in there, with lads running around half naked. Medical inspections, that sort of thing."

She made a noise through her nose and said over her shoulder, even as she sailed on. "Besides being a Haer, I am an M.D., Captain. At the ludicrous sight of a man shuffling about in his shorts, I seldom blush."

She was gone.

Joe Mauser looked after her. Her figure had been superlative from the rear, as Grecian classic as her face. "I'll bet you don't," he muttered.

Had she waited a few minutes he could have explained his Upper accent to her, along with his unlikely education. When you'd copped one you had plenty of time, plenty of opportunity, in hospital beds to read, to study, to contemplate —and to fester away in your own schemes of rebellion against fate. And Joe had copped many in his time.

Ill

BY THE TIME Joe Mauser called it a day and retired to his quarters, he was exhausted to the point where his basic dissatisfaction with the trade he followed was heavily upon him. Such was the case increasingly often, these days. He was no longer a kid. There was no longer romance in the calling— if there had ever been for Joe Mauser.

He had met his immediate senior officers, largely dilettante Uppers with precious little field experience, and he had been unimpressed. And he had met his own junior officers and was shocked. By the looks of things at this stage, Captain Mauser's squadron would be going into this fracas both undermanned with Rank Privates of any experience, and with junior officers composed largely of temporarily promoted noncoms. If this was typical of Baron Haer's total force, then Bait Haer's pessimism had been correct; unconditional surrender was to be considered, no matter how disasterous to Haer family fortunes.

Joe had no difficulty securing his uniforms. Kingston, as a city on the outskirts of the Catskill Reservation, was well supplied with tailors who could turn out uniforms on a twenty-four hour delivery basis. He had even been able to take immediate delivery of one kilted uniform. Now, inside his quarters, he began stripping out of his jacket. Somewhat to his surprise, the small man he had selected earlier in the day to be his batman, entered from an inner room, resplendent in the Haer uniform.

He helped his superior out of the jacket with an ease that held no subservience but at the same time was correctly respectful. You'd have thought him a batman specially trained.

Joe grunted, "Max, isn't it? I'd forgotten you. Glad you found our billet all right."

Max said, "Yes, sir. Would the captain like a drink? I picked up a bottle of applejack. Applejack's the drink around here, sir. Makes a topnotch highball with ginger ale and a twist of lemon."

Joe Mauser looked at him. Evidently his tapping this man for orderly had been sheer fortune. Well, Joe Mauser could use some good luck on this job. He hoped it didn't end with selecting a barman.

He said, "An applejack highball sounds wonderful, Max. Got ice?"

"Of course, sir." Max left the small room.

Joe Mauser and his subordinate officers were billeted in what had once been a motel on the old road between Kingston and Woodstock. There was a shower and a tiny kitchenette in each cottage. That was one advantage in a fracas held in an area where there were plenty of facilities. Such military reservations as that of the Litde Big Horn in

Montana and particularly some of those in the Southwest and Mexico were another thing.

Joe lowered himself into the room's easy-chair and bent down to untie his laces. He kicked his shoes off. He could use that drink. He began wondering, all over again, if his scheme for winning this Vacuum Tube Transport versus Continental Hovercraft fracas would come off. The more he saw of Baron Haer's inadequate forces, the more he wondered. He hadn't expected Vacuum Tube to be in this bad a shape. Baron Haer had been riding high for so long that one would have thought his reputation for victory would have lured many a veteran to his colors. Evidendy, they hadn't bitten. The word was out all right.

Max Mainz returned with the drink.

Joe said, "You had one yourself?"

"No, sir."

Joe said, "Well, Zen, go get yourself one and come on back and sit down. Let's get acquainted."

"Well, yes, sir," Max said. He disappeared back into the kitchenette to return almost immediately. The little man slid into a chair, drink awkwardly in hand.

His superior sized him up, all over again. Not much more than a kid, really. Surprisingly aggressive for a Lower who must have been raised from childhood in a trank bemused, Telly entertained household. The fact that he'd broken away from that environment at all was to his credit; it was considerably easier to conform. But then it is always easier to conform, to run with the herd, as Joe well knew. His own break hadn't been an easy one.

"Relax," he said now, sipping the applejack highball which turned out to be as good as Max had claimed.

Max said, "Well, this is my first day."

"I know. And you've been seeing Telly shows all your life showing how an orderly conducts himself in the presence of his superior officer." Joe took another pull and yawned. "Well, forget about it. With any man who goes into a fracas with me, I like to be on close terms. When things pickle, I want him to be on my side, not nursing some peeve brought on by his officer trying to give him an inferiority complex."

The little man was eyeing him in surprise.

Joe finished his highball and came to his feet to get another one. He said, "On two occasions I've had an orderly save my life. I'm not taking any chances but there might be a third opportunity."

"Well, yes, sir. Does the captain want me to get him—" "I'll get it. You want yours freshened?"

Max cleared his throat. "No, sir. I'll keep working on this here."

When Joe Mauser had returned to his chair he said, "Why'd you join up with Baron Haer, Max?"

The other shrugged it off. "I don't know. The usual, I guess. The excitement. The idea of all those fans watching me on Telly. The share of common stock I'll get. And, you never know, maybe a promotion in caste. I wouldn't mind making Upper-Lower."

Joe said sourly, "One fracas and you'll be over that desire to have the buffs watching you on Telly while they sit around in their front rooms sucking on tranks. And you'll probably be over the desire for the excitement, too. Of course, the share of stock is another thing."

"You aren't just countin' down, Captain," Max said, an almost surly overtone in his voice. "You don't know what it's like being born with no more common stock than a Mid-Lower."

Joe held his peace, sipping at his drink, taking this one more slowly. He was moderately fond of alcohol, but could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he had really overindulged. An old pro in the Category Military doesn't foul up his reflexes, certainly not on the eve of a fracas. He let his eyebrows rise to encourage Max to go on.

Max said doggedly, "Sure, they call it People's Capitalism and everybody gets issued enough shares of Common Basic to insure him a basic living all the way from the cradle to the grave, like they say. But let me tell you, you're a Middle and you don't realize how basic the basic living of a Lower can be."

Joe yawned. If he hadn't been so tired, there would have been more amusement in the situation.

Max was still dogged. "Unless you can add to those shares of stock, it's pretty drab, Captain. You wouldn't know."

Joe said, "Why don't you work? A Lower can always add to his stock by working."

Max stirred in indignity. "Work? Listen, sir, that's just one more field that's been automated right out of existence. Category Food Preparation, Subdivision Cooking, Branch Chef. I'm a junior chef, see? But cooking isn't left in the hands of slobs who might drop a cake of soap in the soup. It's done automatic. The only new changes made in cooking are by top experts, almost scientists like. And most of them are Uppers, mind you."

Joe Mauser sighed inwardly. So his find in batmen wasn't going to be as wonderful as all that, after all. The man might have been bom into the food preparation category from a long line of chefs, but evidently he knew precious litde about his field. Joe might have suspected. He himself had been born into Clothing Category, Subdivision Shoes, Branch Repair—Cobbler. A meaningless trade since shoes were no longer repaired but discarded upon showing signs of wear. In an economy of complete abundance, there is little reason for repair of basic commodities. It was high time the government investigated category assignment and reshuffled and reassigned half the nation's population. But then, of course, there was the question of what to do with the technologically unemployed.

Max was saying, "And the only way I could figure on a promotion to a higher caste, or the only way to earn stock shares, was by crossing categories. And you know what that means. Either Category Military or Category Religion, and I sure as Zen don't know nothing about religion."

Joe said mildly, "Theoretically, you can cross categories into any field you want, Max."

Max snorted. "Theoretically is right . . . sir. You ever heard about anybody bom a Lower, or even a Middle, like yourself, cross categories to, say, some Upper category like banking?"

Joe chuckled. He liked this peppery little fellow. If Max worked out as well as Joe thought he might, there was a a possibility of taking him along to the next fracas. He had once had a barmen for a period of almost three years, until the man had finally copped one that led to an amputation and retirement on a Category Military pension.

Max was saying, "I'm not saying anything against the old-time way of doing things or talking against the government, but 111 tell you, Captain, every year goes by it gets harder and harder for a man to raise his caste or to earn some additional stock shares."

The applejack had worked enough on Joe for him to rise against one of his pet peeves. He said, "That term, the old-time way, is strictly Telly curd, Max. We don't do things the old-time way. No nation in history ever has—with the possible exception of Egypt which got into the most permanent rut of all time. Socioeconomics are in a continual flux and here in this country we no more do things in the way they did fifty years ago, than fifty years ago they did them the way the American Revolutionists outlined back in the Eighteenth Century."

Max was staring at him, completely out of his depth. "I don't get that, sir."

Joe said impatiently, "Max the politico-economic system we have today is an outgrowth of what went earlier. The welfare state, the freezing of the status quo, the Frigid Fracas between the West-world and the Sov-World, industrial automation until useful employment is all but needless—all these were to be found in embryo more than fifty years ago."

"Well, maybe you're right, but you gotta admit, sir, that mostly we do things the old way. We still got the Constitution and the two-party system and ..."

Joe was wearying of the conversation now. You seldom ran into anybody, even in Middle caste, interested enough in such subjects to be worth arguing with. He said, "The Constitution, Max, has got to the point of the Bible. Interpret it the way you wish, and you can find anything. If not, you can always make a new amendment. So far as the two-party system is concerned, what effect does it have when there are no differences between the two parties? That phase of pseudo-democracy was beginning as far back as the Nineteen-Thirties when they began passing State laws hindering the emergence of new political parties. By the time they were insured against a third party working its way through the maze of election laws, the two parties had become so similar that elections became almost as big a farce as over in the Sov-world. Here we put up two men and say to the electorate, which one of these two do you want? Over there they put up one and say, which one of this one do you want? But actually, what is the difference if our two men stand for exacdy the same thing?"

"A farce?" Max ejaculated indignantly, forgetting his servant status. "That means not so good, doesn't it? Far as I*m concerned, election day is tops. The one day a Lower is just as good as an Upper. The day how many shares you got makes no difference. Everybody has everything. Everybody's just as equal as everybody else."

Joe inwardly groaned at the unintentional humor. "Sure, sure, sure." He sighed. "The modern equivalent of the Roman bacchanalia. Election day in the West-world when no one, for just that one day, is freer than anyone else."

"Well, what's wrong with that?" Max was all but belligerent. "That's the trouble with you Middles and Uppers, you don't know how it is to be a Lower and ..."

Joe snapped suddenly, "I was bom a Mid-Lower myself, Max. Don't give me that nonsense."

Max gaped at him, utterly unbelieving.

Joe's irritation fell away. He held out his glass. "Get us a couple of more drinks, Max, and 111 tell you a story."

By the time the fresh drink came, Joe Mauser was sorry he had made the offer. He thought back. He hadn't told anyone the Joe Mauser story in many a year. And, as he recalled, the last time had been when he was well into his cups, one of the rare occasions, on an election day at that, and his listener had been a Low-Upper, a hereditary aristocrat, one of the one percent of the upper strata of the nation. Zenl How the man had laughed. He'd roared his amusement till the tears ran.

However, Joe said now, "Max, I was born in the same caste you were—average father, mother, sisters and brothers. They subsisted on the basic income guaranteed from birth, sat and watched Telly to keep themselves happy. And thought I was crazy because I didn't. Dad was the sort of man who'd take his belt off to a child of his who questioned such school taught slogans as: What was good enough for Daddy is good enough for me.

"They were all fracas fans, of course, even the girls. Perhaps I should say, especially the girls. As far back as I can remember the picture is there of them gathered around the Telly, screaming excitement as the lens zoomed in on some poor cloddy bleeding his life out on the ground. That's something the Roman arena never provided the mob, a close-up of the dying gladiator's face." Joe Mauser sneered, uncharacteristically.

"You don't sound much like you're in favor of your trade," Max said.

Joe came to his feet, putting down his still half-full glass. "I'll make this epic story short, Max. As you said, the two actually valid methods of rising above the level in which you were bom are in the Military and Religious Categories. Like you, even I couldn't stomach the latter."

Joe Mauser hesitated, then finished it off. "Max, there have been few societies man has evolved which didn't allow in some manner for the competent or sly, the intelligent or the opportunist, the brave or the strong, to work his way to the top. I don't know which of these I personally fit into, but I rebel against remaining in the lower categories of a stratified society. Do I make myself clear?"

"Well, no, sir, not exactly."

Joe said flatly, "I'm going to fight my way to the top and nothing is going to stand in the way. Is that clearer?"

"Yes, sir," Max said, taken aback by the vehemence in his superior's voice.

After routine morning duties, Joe Mauser returned to his billet and mystified Max Mainz by not only changing into mufti himself but having Max do the same.

In fact, the new batman protested faintly. He hadn't nearly, as yet, got over the glory of wearing his kilts and was looking forward to parading around town in them. He had a point, of course. The appointed time for the fracas was getting closer and buffs were beginning to stream into Kingston to bask in the atmosphere of threatened death. Everybody knew what a military center, on the outskirts of a fracas reservation such as the Catskills, was like immediately preceding a clash between rival corporations. The high-strung gaiety, the drinking, the overtranking, the relaxation of mores. Even a Rank Private had it made. Admiring civilians to buy drinks and hang on your every word, and more important still, sensuous eyed women, their faces slack in thinly suppressed passion. It was a recognized phenomenon, even Max Mainz knew—this desire on the part of women Telly fans to date a man, and then watch him later, killing or being killed.

"Time enough to wear your fancy uniform latere" Joe Mauser growled at him. "In fact, tomorrow's a local election day. Parlay that up on top of all the fracas fans gravitating into town and you'll have a wingding the likes of nothing you've seen before."

"Well, yes, sir," Max begrudged. "Where're we going now, Captain?"

"To the airport. Come along."

Joe Mauser led the way to his sports hovercar and as soon as the two were settled into the bucket seats, hit the lift lever with the butt of his left hand. Air cushion borne, he pressed down on the accelerator.

Max Mainz was impressed. "You know," he said. "I never been in one of these swanky jobs before. The kinda car you can afford on the income of a Mid-Lower's stock isn t...

"Knock it off," Joe said wearily. "Carping we'll always have with us, evidently, but in spite of all the beefing in every strata from Low-Lower to Upper-Middle, I've yet to see any signs of organized protest against our present politico-economic system."

"Hey," Max said. "Don't get me wrong. What was good enough for Dad, is good enough for me. You won't catch me talking against the government."

"Hmm," Joe murmured. "And all the other cliches taught to us to preserve the status quo, our People's Capitalism." They were reaching the outskirts of town, crossing the Esopus. The airport lay only a mile or so beyond.

The sarcasm was too deep for Max, and since he didn't understand, he said, tolerantly, "Well, what's wrong with People's Capitalism? Everybody owns the corporations. Damn-sight better than the Sovs have."

Joe said sourly, "We've got one optical illusion; they've got another, Max. Over there they claim the proletariat owns the means of production, distribution and communication. Great. But the Party members are the ones who control it, and, as a result, they manage to do all right for themselves. The Party hierarchy over there is like our Uppers over here."

"Yeah." Max was being particularly dense. "I've seen a lot about it on Telly. You know, when there isn't a good fracas on, you tune to one of them educational shows, like."

Joe winced at the term educational, but held his peace.

"It's pretty rugged over there. But in the West-world the people own a corporation's stock and they run it and get the benefit."

"At least, it makes a beautiful story," Joe said dryly. "Look, Max. Suppose you have a corporation that has two hundred thousand shares out and they're distributed among one hundred thousand and one persons. One hundred thousand of these own one share apiece, and the remaining stockholder owns the other hundred thousand."

"I don't know what you're getting at," Max said.

Joe Mauser was tired of the discussion. "Briefly," he said, "we have the illusion that this is a People's Capitalism, with all stock in the hands of the people. Actually, as ever before, the stock is in the hands of the Uppers, all except a mere dribble. They own the country and they run it for their own benefit."

Max shot a less than military glance at him. "Hey, you're not one of these Sovs yourself, are you?"

They were coming into the parking area near the Administration Building of the airport. "No," Joe said, so sofdy that Max could hardly hear his words. "Only a Mid-Middle on the make."

Followed by Max, he strode quickly to the Administration Building, presented his credit identification at the desk and requested a light aircraft for a period of three hours. The clerk, hardly looking up, began going through motions, speaking into telescreens.

The clerk said finally, "You might have a short wait, sir. Quite a few of the officers involved in this fracas have been renting out taxi-planes almost as fast as they're available."

That didn't surprise Joe Mauser. Any competent field officer made a point of an aerial survey of the battle reservation before going into a fracas. Aircraft, of course, couldn't be used during the fray, since they postdated the turn of the century, and hence were relegated to the cemetery of military devices along with such items as nuclear weapons, tanks, and even gasoline propelled vehicles of sufficient size to be useful.

Use an aircraft in a fracas, or even build an aircraft for military usage and you'd have a howl go up from the military attachés of the Sov-world that would be heard all the way to Budapest. Not a fracas went by but there were scores if not hundreds of military observers, keen eyed to check whether or not any really modern tools of war were being illegally utilized. Joe Mauser sometimes wondered if the West-world observers, over in the Sov-world, were as hair fine in their living up to the rules of the Universal Disarmament Pact. Probably. But, for that matter, they didn't have the same system of fighting fracases over there, as in the West.

Joe Mauser took a chair while they waited and both thumbed through fan magazines. From time to time, Joe Mauser found his own face in such publications. He was a third-rate celebrity, really. More as a result of having been around so long, than anything else. Luck hadn't been with him so far as the buffs were concerned. They wanted spectacular victories, murderous situations in which they could lose themselves in vicarious sadistic thrills. Joe had reached most of his peaks while in retreat, or commanding a holding action. His officers appreciated him and so did the ultra-knowledgeable fracas buffs, but he was all but an unknown to the average dimwit who spent most of his life glued to the Telly set, watching men butcher each other.

On the various occasions when matters had pickled and Joe had to fight his way out against difficult odds, using spectacular tactics in desperation, he was almost always off camera. Purely luck. On top of skill, determination, experience and courage, you had to have luck in the Military Category to get anywhere.

This time, Joe told himself, he was going to manufacture his own.

A voice said, "Ah, Captain Mauser."

Joe looked up, then came to his feet quickly. In automatic reflex, he began to come to the salute but then caught himself. He was not in uniform. He said stiffly, "My compliments, Marshal Cogswell."

The other was a smallish man, but with a strikingly strong face and strongly built. His voice was clipped, clear and had the air of command as though bom with it. He, like Joe, wore mufti and now extended his hand to be shaken.

"I hear you have signed up with Baron Haer, Captain. I was rather expecting you to come in with me. Had a place for a good aide-de-camp. Liked your work in that last fracas we went through together.

"Thank you, sir," Joe said. Stonewall Cogswell was as good a tactician as free-lanced and he was more than that. He was a judge of men and a stickler for detail. And right now, if Joe Mauser knew Marshal Cogswell as well as he thought he did, Cogswell was smelling a rat. There was no reason why old pro Joe Mauser should sign up with a sure loser like Vacuum Tube when he could have earned more shares taking a commission with Hovercraft, especially in view of the fact that as an aide-de-camp it was unlikely that he would run the chance of getting into the dill.

He was looking at Joe brightly, the question in his eyes. Three or four of his staff were behind a few paces, looking polite, but Cogswell didn't bring them into the conversation. Joe knew most by sight. Good men all. Old pros all. He felt another twinge of doubt.

Joe had to cover. He said, "I was offered a particularly good contract, sir. Too good to resist."

The other nodded, as though inwardly coming to a satisfactory conclusion. "Baron Haer's connections, eh? He's probably offered to back you for a bounce in caste. Is that it, Joe?"

Joe Mauser flushed. Stonewall Cogswell knew what he was talking about. He'd been bom into Middle status himself and had become an Upper the hard way. His path wasn't as long as Joe's was going to be, but long enough and he well knew how rocky the climb was.

Joe said stiffly, "I'm afraid Ym in no position to discuss my commander's military contracts, Marshal. We're in mufti, but after all. . ."

Cogswell's lean face registered one of his infrequent grimaces of humor. "I understand, Joe. Well, good luck and I hope things don't pickle for you in the coming fracas. Possibly we'll find ourselves aligned together again at some future time."

"Thank you, sir," Joe said, once more having to catch himself to prevent an automatic salute.

Cogswell and his staff went off, leaving Joe looking after them. Even the marshal's staff members were top men any one of whom could have conducted a divisional magnitude fracas. Joe felt the coldness in his stomach again. Although it must have looked like a cinch, the enemy wasn't taking any chances whatsoever. Cogswell and his officers were undoubtedly here at the airport for the same reason as Joe. They wanted a thorough aerial reconnaissance of the battlefield to be, before the issue was joined.

Max was standing by his elbow. "Who was that, sir? Looks like a real tough one."

"He is a real tough one," Joe said sourly. "That's Stonewall Cogswell, the best field commander in North America."

Max pursed his lips. "I never seen him out of uniform before. Lots of times on Telly, but never out of uniform. I thought he was taller than that; he's no bigger than me."

"He fights with his brains," Joe said, still looking after the craggy field marshal. "He doesn't have to be any taller."

Max scowled. "Where'd he ever get that nickname, sir?"

"Stonewall?" Joe was turning to resume his chair and magazine. "He's supposed to be quite a student of a top general back in the American Civil War. Uses some of the original Stonewall's tactics."

Max was out of his depth. "American Civil War? Was that much of a fracas, Captain? It musta been before my time."

"It was quite a fracas," Joe said dryly. "Lots of good lads died. A hundred years after it was fought, the reasons it was fought seemed about as valid as those we fight fracases for today. Personally, I. .

He had to cut it short. They were calling him on the address system. His aircraft was ready. Joe made his way to the hangars, followed by Max Mainz. He was going to pilot the airplane himself and old Stonewall Cogswell would have been surprised at what Joe Mauser was looking for.

IV

JOE MAUSER banked the Mini-Jet steeply and began his descent to the airfield below. His face was thoughtful. He had requested as slow an aircraft as was available, and one with as wide a wingspread, for an undisclosed reason, but the clerk hadn't been able to do much for him. The others hiring rental craft had also been more interested in hover-ability than speed, and Joe had had to take what came up.

Max Mainz, seated next to him, gulped, "Hey, Captain, take it easy."

Joe looked at him.

"I ain't never been up in anything this small before."

"Oh," Joe grunted. He leveled out and continued the the descent a bit less steeply. "When we get around to it, we'll have to check you out on flying, Max."

His batman was taken aback. "You mean, me? A pilot?"

Joe said, "One of the things you want to leam early in the game, Max, is that the mercenary's life isn't exactly as portrayed on the Telly screens. What the fracas buff sees is the combat, and, actually, not even very much of that, since most combat is on the drab and colorless side, and most of the time spent crouched in some hole, or facedown behind whatever cover you can locate. The lens is on the immediate action, especially the hand-to-hand stuff. The buff isn't interested in such matters as the artillery laying down a barrage. He's not even interested in a cavalry squadron making a sweep around a flank to execute some bit of strategy that might, actually, be the winning of the fracas. He wants gore."

Max, although his stomach was rising as the small aircraft dropped, managed to get out, "I don't think I know whatcha talking about, sir."

Joe Mauser flicked his hands over wheel and controls expertly, and straightened out for the runway which was speeding up at them. He had already received his landing instructions from the robo control tower.

He said, "The more you know about seemingly remote matters pertaining to your trade, the better off you'll be, Max. It doesn't show on the Telly screen, but it sure as Zen helps for you to be as near an M.D. as you can make yourself. Any medical knowledge you have on tap is priceless. It helps to be as good a swimmer as you can, as good a horseman, as competent a mountain climber. Above all, a survival expert who can find a meal in a swamp, a desert, a forest, or on top of a seemingly barren mountain. You want to be a mechanical wizard, capable of repairing not only every weapon allowable under the Universal Disarmament Pact, but every other gadget from a telegraph to a mechanical semaphore. You want to be a better ditch digger than the most competent Low-Lower who ever spent his life making with a shovel."

Max was staring at him. "Ditch digger? Who wants to be a ditch digger? I didn't cross categories to become any ditch digger."

Joe interrupted him mildly. "We call them trenches, Max. And the sooner you leam to burrow like a mole, the better off you'll be, particularly when they ring mortars in on you."

"Oh," Max said weakly. "Yeah, of course."

"And you'd better learn to climb trees faster than any lumberjack, and to shore up a shaft better than any miner." The Mini-Jet was now touching down. "Over the years, such skills are more important than being a crack shot, or an expert with a knife in close personal combat. The fact of the matter is, you might go through a half dozen standard fracases and never get into personal combat, but I've never been in one that didn't involve digging entrenchments."

"Well, yeah," Max said doubtfully. "But what good's flying? Nobody's allowed to use aircraft in action, Captain. Even I know that."

Joe was taxiing toward the hangars.

"Max, even on your level Rank Private, you can't afford not to stack the cards in your own favor to every extent possible. When you're in there, if you've managed to swing percentages your way just one percent, just one percent, Max, it might be the difference between copping the final one, or surviving. Every old pro who's going to be in this fracas has been studying the terrain, Max. Stonewall Cogswell has fought this reservation three times that I know of, and probably more. But where is he, right this minute? He and his whole field staff are up in a transport going over and over and over again, the whole reservation. Why? Because possibly he's forgotten the exact layout, although that's not very likely with the marshal. But possibly since he fought this reservation last, a new road has been cut from one point to another. Possibly the streams are so high that fords he's used before can't be utilized, or maybe the streams are so low that new fords are practical. Maybe a forest fire has leveled some clumps of trees that were formerly suitable for gun emplacements. Maybe a lot of things, Max, and Stonewall Cogswell is going to have every bit of information he can cram in, before entering the fracas proper."

"Zen!" Max muttered. "I was thinking Military was one category where education didn't make much difference. Way you sound, Captain, you gotta be like an Education Category professor in every field there is before you make even Rank Sergeant."

They came to a hält before the hangars, and Joe cut the exchange short, in the business at hand. He turned the craft over to the field's employees, gathered up the charts and the papers upon which he had scribbled notes. His face was thoughtful. The morning had been profitably spent, but if he could possibly work it in, he would want to take at least one more flight over the reservation. What he had been telling Max was all too true. You became a real pro, an old pro, in the Category Military, by taking infinite pains. But this was more than just the old survival bit. This was his big try.

He was walking toward the administration building, to wind up his account for the Mini-Jet's rental when a voice behind him whined, "Captain Mauser, could I have your autograph?"

He began to turn, wearily bringing a smile to his face, for the sake of the fracas buff, and even beginning to fumble in his jerkin pocket for a stylus.

But then the man laughed.

It was Freddy Soligen, the Telly reporter who had briefly interviewed him the day before. Back aways, in the shadow of one of the hangars, Joe Mauser could" now see the litde man's crew, taking advantage of the shade in between interviews of the notables that were coming and going.

Joe grinned. "Hello, Freddy. It works both ways. Could I have yours? Somebody ought to collect the autographs of Telly reporters who've been in as much of the dill as you have." He came to a halt to exchange a few words with the veteran Category Communications reporter. Obviously, Freddy Soligen was out here at the airport getting preliminary material, as he had been in the recruiting offices in Kingston.

Joe knew it was all part of the game. The really far-out buffs couldn't expect to see a top fracas every day, nor even every week. And a major conflict such as this one between Vacuum Tube Transport and Continental Hovercraft, would only develop, say, ten or a dozen times a year. In between, the buffs had to be happy with pseudo-fracas shows, which were fiction, of course, or with the sort of thing Freddy was doing now. Building up to the fracas to come, or, following it, rehashing and commenting upon the action. A true buff not only subscribed to a half dozen fracas magazines, fan publications, but collected Tri-Di photos of his particular stars, biographies of the top officers and combat men, scrapbooks dealing with outstanding conflicts of the past, and, most of all, endless trivia accumulated in the mind about the personal affairs of his favorite celebrities.

At the moment, he didn't expect Soligen to want to interview him again. It was too soon after the other one. Joe Mauser wasn't really that well-known. Somebody like Stonewall Cogswell or Jack Altshuler, the cavalryman, you could do as often as they would submit; in fact, the marshal was notoriously uncooperative with the Telly men. He could afford to be, he was as high in the Category Military as it was possible to get, and he needed publicity like he did a head wound.

However, on Joe Mauser's level, the better he was in with the combat lensman, the more apt he was to become a known, and in the long run it was the fracas buffs who led to promotion and a bounce in caste.

Freddy said, in sour cynicism, "That'll be the day, when somebody asks a Telly reporter for an autograph. The stupid cloddies don't even realize that somebody has to be there directing the camera, as near the action as it's possible to get."

"Face it, Freddy; usually your colleagues aren't as near as all that. That's why cement Telly pillboxes are spotted all around a military reservation. Some of you boys are as safe as the buffs sitting in front of their idiot boxes watching the show."

Freddy flared slighdy, in defense of his profession. "A lot of my friends might be interested in what you say, Captain —if they hadn't copped the final one."

Joe nodded. "I'll take that. I wasn't talking about you, Freddy, nor a few of the others. I haven't forgotten the time the two of us were pinned down on that damn knoll."

The other snorted in memory. "Yeah. Hotter than blue jazus, and me with a mini-ball through my camera so I couldn't even get any footage. And we were thirstier than all hell and nothing to drink but that littie half pint of whatever you had."

"Tequila," Joe said. "Mexican tequila." He shook his head. "That's the last time I ever took anything stronger than water into combat. It tasted all right for the minute, but Kipling was right."

"Kipling?" Freddy said. His eyes went about the tarmac, checking to see if he was missing anyone he might approach for some Telly footage, to be played back later on the air.

Joe said, "Old-timer British poet. He used to write about the fighting in India.

'When it comes to slaughter, "You'll do your work on water, "And you'll lick the bloomin' boots "If 'im that's got it."

The reporter's eyes came back to him, speculatively. "Where'n Zen did you leam to quote poetry?"

Joe laughed it off. "In hospital beds, Freddy. In hospital beds."

Freddy Soligen was looking at him as though for the first time. "You know," he said. "Now that I think about it, I've known you about as long as anybody I can think of in Category Military, and my memory must go back at least fifteen years. I haven't seen a great deal of you, perhaps, but over the years you've always been around. What in Zen are you doing, still a captain?"

Joe Mauser couldn't completely repress the flush. He said, "What are you doing still in charge of a combat camera crew after fifteen years? By this time, you ought to at least be in charge of covering this whole fracas."

Freddy wasn't to be put off that easily. He shook his head. "You know better. There's precious little promotion in Category Communications; it's frozen. The stute in charge of this coverage sits back in Kingston in an air-conditioned office giving commands to units such as mine on the portable phone-screens. He's never been in the dill in his life and doesn't expect to be, knowing better. He's an Upper, of course, and was born into a top job. But it's different in Category Military. Given it on the ball, you can get bounced in rank."

Joe shrugged it off. "Maybe I'm not photogenic, Freddy. The buffs don't take to me."

The Telly reporter cocked his head to one side and peered up at Joe, speculatively. "No, it's not that," he said seriously. "As a matter of fact, that beautiful withdrawn air of yours . .."

Joe's eyebrows went up.

Soligen snorted. "Don't you even know about it? Most of the phonies I come in contact with cultivate this craggy, military dignity that fits you like a glove. You look like the kind of officer a bunch of Lower riflemen would like to have in command when the situation pickles. I'm just wondering why you've never hit the big time. What you ought to do is pull something out of the hat that'd give us cameramen the chance to zero-in on you." He grinned deprecation. "Capture old Stonewall Cogswell, or something."

For a moment, Joe Mauser wondered if Soligen had sensed his secret. Suspected that Joe was about to do exactly what the Telly reporter was recommending, that is, pull something out of the hat that would bring the attention of every fracas buff onto Joe Mauser. But no, ridiculous. Joe had confided, through it all, in no one. Perhaps had Jim still been alive, yes. But as it was, no. Not even the vaguest of suggestions. It might take no more to blow the whole plan.

He said, before thinking it through to conclusions, "Freddy, possibly you're right. Can you keep something under your hat?"

Freddy Soligen tilted his head to one side again and cocked an eye on Joe. "I've kept so many items under my hat in my time, Captain, that sometimes there's been damn little room left for my head."

"I'm sure you have. In your own field, Soligen, you're an old pro. As much as I am in mine."

"Okay. Okay. There's no violins handy. So what do I keep under my nonexistent hat?"

Joe said slowly, "If there's any way you can swing it, have that camera crew of yours as near my vicinity as possible."

Freddy Soligen said in near disgust, "This is the big deal to keep under my hat? For crissake, Captain, you're not that green. You must know that every Category Military cloddy on the make tries to suck up to every Telly team covering the fracas. You'd think most of them were Tri-Dex sex symbol kids, trying to edge near enough the camera to get their kissers on lens." He snorted again, and there was a near contemptuous tone in his voice; that, and a certain disappointment. "This is the first time you've braced me, though."

Joe was suddenly weary of it. He now realized he'd made a mistake. He couldn't put it over in this manner. He either had to tell Freddy Soligen, or forget about it. And he had no intention of telling Freddy Soligen a thing. He couldn't afford to.

He said, "Forget about it. The hell with it, Freddy. See you in there, later." He turned and walked off. Max Mainz, who had been standing off a score of yards, carrying some of their things, followed.

The Telly reporter frowned at his back, but called after him, "Yeah. See you in there later, Captain. Hope you run into no personal dill."

"Same, Freddy," Joe called over his shoulder.

Soligen continued to scowl after him. His reporter instinct told him something was off, here. It wasn't like Captain Joe Mauser to be smirking up to a Telly man, trying to get on lens for a moment or two for the publicity value. Of course, he, Soligen, had possibly precipitated it with his crack about Mauser pulling something out of the hat to become newsworthy. But. . .

Freddy Soligen noted the landing of Stonewall Cogswell's transport, and started off to round up his crew, but his tight little face still registered suspicious thought.

They drove back to their motel billet in silence, Max Mainz respecting Joe's desire to mull over the morning's developments, whatever they were. Max still wasn't quite sure what had been accomplished by the flight over the military reservation. From several thousand feet altitude, he had been able to make out precious little below, and couldn't understand why they had gone up and down the mountain ridges hovered at this point, or that, for five or ten minutes at a time.

His captain pulled the little sports air cushion car up before the motel and left Max to bring their things in.

Joe Mauser entered the front door, pulled his jerkin off and threw it over the back of a chair. He went on through the front room and into the kitchenette. There were several bottles standing on the cabinet. He picked up one of them and scowled at it. Tequila. It brought to mind what Soligen had said about the knoll they'd been pinned down on, years ago, down on the Chihuahua Military Reservation in what had once been Mexico.

He'd been a top sergeant at that time, and had picked up a taste for the fiery Mexican spirits. He remembered how they drank it there. You put a little salt on the back of your hand, and a quarter of a lime on the bar before you. You picked up the shot glass of tequila and tossed its contents back over your tonsils, after licking the salt. You then grabbed up the lime and bit into it, in way of a chaser.

He didn't have any limes here in Kingston, nor the patience to go through the routine. He poured a glass of the colorless potable and tossed it off, stiff wristed. He began to pour another, but then caught himself. At this time of day? He put the bottle back down and returned to the living room, scowling. He didn't think of himself as a drinker.

He knew the drinkers. You didn't remain one long, in the Category Military. You needed your reflexes at top peak in the military.

He reentered the living room and went to the phone-screen and flicked the message repeat.

The screen lit up and the expressionless face of a girl clerk, in the Haer uniform, was there. Probably an office worker, drafted for special work during the fracas, Joe decided. It wasn't the best thing in the world for Baron Haer to be doing. Even clerks, in anything pertaining to the military, should be old hands. Silly mistakes, made by tyros, could lose a fracas.

She said, "Captain Mauser, please report soonest to the offices of Reconnaissance Command."

It was a recording, so there was no manner in which he could reply to her.

There were no other messages. Joe Mauser shrugged and went into his bedroom to get back into his cavalry major uniform. He was sorry now he had taken the drink. It would be on his breath when he showed up at headquarters. But then he shrugged impatiently at himself. Why should he give a damn? For that matter, probably every officer in the Haer forces was doing a bit more than usual drinking. They had something to drink about.

As he dressed, he called through the door to Max, Tve got to go into Kingston. Take the rest of the day off, if you want. You'll be able to use the rest. Tomorrow, we'll start whipping this outfit into a unit." He added, sotto voce, "If possible."

Max said, "I guess I'll get into my own kilts and go on into town to see what's jelling, sir."

Joe Mauser grinned, remembering his own first days in the Category Military, and the glory of wearing combat attire. But then he grunted self-deprecation. He had been lucky to survive the first year or so as a mercenary. You had a very good chance, indeed, of becoming a casualty long before you learned the tools of your trade. He shrugged into his tunic and left the motel, still buttoning it.

Let poor Max have his moment of glory, strutting the streets of downtown Kingston in his spanking new Haer kilts, to the admiring gaze of the fracas buffs who were pouring into town to get as near as possible to the Category Military officers and men who all too soon would be spilling their blood on the Catskill hills.

Joe Mauser vaulted into the driver's seat of his sports hover and slapped the lift lever.

V

HE HAD NO difficulty finding the offices of Reconnaissance Command. They were immediately across the street from the buildings where the recruiting had been going on the day before, and, indeed, was still progressing. This top was bad, Joe Mauser reflected. Baron Haer was obviously having his work cut out to raise the troops necessary for the fracas. They were going to be recruiting up until the last moment, with all that meant in lack of time to whip the force into some sort of unity.

He answered the salute of the two kilted Haer guards who stood before the entry to the office he had been instructed to report to, and strode in.

There was a harried captain of cavalry at a desk. Joe said, "Major Mauser, reporting as instructed." The other nodded. "Go right in, Major. The colonel is expecting you."

Joe went through the indicated inner door and came to the salute. He might have known. The officer commanding reconnaissance turned out to be none other than Bait Haer, natty as ever, arrogantly tapping his swagger stick against his leg. He answered the salute, all but insultingly, by tapping the stick to his head.

"Zen! Captain," he complained. "Where have you been? Off on a trank kick? We've got to get organized."

Joe Mauser was an old hand. He failed to take umbrage. "No, sir, I went to the airport and rented an aircraft to scout out the terrain over which we'll be fighting. I might mention to the colonel that I noticed Marshal Cogswell and his whole field staff there, doing the same."

"Indeed. And what were your impressions of the terrain, Captain?" There was an overtone which suggested that it made little difference to him what impressions an acting major of cavalry might have gained.

Joe shrugged. "Largely mountains, hills, woods, small streams. No rivers worthy of the name. Good reconnaissance is going to make the difference in this one, sir. And in the fracas itself, cavalry is going to be more important than either artillery or infantry. A Nathan Forrest type fracas, sir. A matter of getting there fustest with the mostest."

Bait Haer said in amusement, "Thanks for your opinions, Captain. Fortunately, our staff had already come largely to the same conclusions. Undoubtedly, they'll be glad to hear your wide experience bears them out."

He took this as it came, having been through it before. The dilettante amateur's dislike of the old pro. The amateur in command who knew full well he was less capable than many of those below him in rank.

He wondered what the veteran Parmenion had thought when the news was brought him that the twenty year old Alexander had taken over the Macedonian host from his father, the murdered Philip. Parmenion, who, shoulder to shoulder with Philip of Macedon, had whipped together the Macedonian phalanx, the most efficient military machine the world had ever seen. A military machine conceived and created, first, to unite Greece into one force, and then to take on the Persian Empire which extended from the Mediterranean to the Indus Valley and beyond. Parmenion. Who except the historian even knew that general's name? Actually, little about him came down through the ages, other than the snide rumors that he and the other veteran field officers of the Macedonian army made a practice in the earlier battles, when Alexander supposedly commanded, of getting the youth drunk so that he would be out of the way. And other than the fact that later Alexander the Great had him killed on a trumped up conspiracy charge.

But now Bait Haer was saying, as he flicked his swagger stick impatiently, "Of course, Captain. Very obvious. But to the point. Your squadron is to be deployed as scouts under my overall command. You've had cavalry experience, I assume."

"Yes, sir. In various fracases over the past fifteen years. Both cavalry and infantry. Some artillery, too, for that matter, but largely cavalry and infantry, sir."

"Very well. Now then, to get to the reason I have summoned you. Yesterday, in my father's office, you intimated that you had some grandiose scheme which would bring victory to the Haer colors. But then, on some thin excuse, refused to divulge just what the scheme might be."

Joe Mauser looked at him unblinkingly.

Bait Haer said, "Now I'd like to have your opinion on just how Vaccuum Tube Transport can extract itself from what would seem a poor position, at best."

Joe Mauser's eyes went about the room. It, like the other military offices of the Haer forces, had been improvised from rented business quarters, only a week or so before. There were military charts of the Catslall Reservation on the walls. A mild effort toward a military decor, consisting of two sets of crossed sabers, and a battle flag which had obviously seen action, being torn and rent. In all, there were four others in the office, two women clerks fluttering away at typers, and two of Bait Haer's junior officers. They seemed indifferent to the conversation between Bait and Joe, and continued about their own affairs as the two talked.

Joe wet his lips carefully. The Haer scion was his commanding officer, after all. He said, "Sir, what I had in mind is a new gimmick. At this stage of the game, if I told anybody and it leaked, it'd never be effective, not even this first time."

Haer observed him coldly. "And you think me incapable of keeping your secret, ah, gimmick, I believe is :the idiomatic term you used?"

Joe Mauser's eyes shifted about the room again, taking in the other four who were now looking at him, the men, at least, taking their cue from their commanding officer and reflecting his hauteur.

Bait Haer rapped, "These members of my staff are all trusted Haer employees, Captain Mauser. They are not fly-by-night free-lancers hired for a week or two."

Joe said, "Yes, sir. But it's been my experience that one person can hold a secret. It's twice as hard for two, and from there on it's a decreasing probability in a geometric ratio."

The younger Haer's stick rapped the side of his leg impatiently. "Suppose I inform you that this is a command, Captain? I have little confidence in a supposed trick that will rescue our forces from disaster and I rather dislike the idea of an acting major of one of my squadrons dashing about with such a bee in his bonnet when he should be obeying my commands."

Joe kept his voice respectful. "Then, sir, I'd request that we take the matter to the commander in chief, your father."

"Indeed!"

Joe said, "Sir, I've been working on this a long time. I can't afford to risk throwing the idea away."

Bait Haer glared at him. "Very well, Captain. Til call your bluff. Come along, we shall see the commander in chief." He turned on his heel and headed from the room.

Joe Mauser shrugged in resignation and followed him. Behind, he heard a low titter of laughter. Some more amateurs, all done up in their pretty uniforms for this fracas. He doubted strongly that the two men would see any action, any more than would the two women.

The old Baron wasn't much happier about Joe Mauser's secrets than was his son. It had only been the day before that Joe had seen him, but already the Baron seemed to have aged in appearance. Evidently, each hour that went by made it increasingly clear just how perilous a position he had assumed. Vacuum Tube Transport had elbowed, buffaloed, bluffed and edged itself up to the outskirts of the really big time in the transportation field. The Baron's ability, his aggressiveness, his flair, his political pull, had all helped, but now the chips were all down, the bets all made. He was up against one of the biggies, and this particular biggy was tired of ambitious little Vacuum Tube Transport.

He listened to his son's words, listened to Joe's dogged defense.

He said, looking at Joe, "If I understand this, you have some scheme which you think will bring victory in spite of what seems to be a disasterous situation."

"Yes, sir."

The two Haers looked at him, one impatiendy, the other in weariness.

Joe said, "I'm gambling everything on this, sir. I'm no Rank Private in his first fracas. I deserve to be given some leeway."

Bait Haer snorted. "Gambling everything! What in Zen would you have to gamble, Captain? The whole Haer family fortunes are tied up. Hovercraft is out for blood. They won't be satisfied with a token victory and a negotiated compromise. They'll devastate us. Thousands of mercanaries killed, with all that means in indemnities. Millions upon millions in expensive military equipment, most of which we've had to hire and will have to recompense for. Can you imagine the value of our stock after Stonewall Cogswell's veterans have finished with us? Why, every two by four trucking outfit in North America will be challenging us, and we won't have the forces to meet a minor skirmish,"

Joe reached into an inner pocket of his tunic and brought forth a sheaf of papers. He laid them on the desk of Baron Malcolm Haer. The Baron scowled down at the documents.

"What in Zen's this?"

Joe said simply, "I've been accumulating stock since the age of eighteen and I've taken good care of my portfolio, in spite of taxes and the various other pitfalls which make the accumulation of capital practically impossible. Yesterday, I sold all of my portfolio I was legally allowed to sell and converted to Vacuum Tube Transport." He added dryly, "Getting it at a very good rate, by the way."

Bait Haer mulled through the papers, unbelievingly. "Holy Jumping Zen!" he ejaculated. "The fool really did it. He's sunk a small fortune into bur stock."

Baron Haer growled at him, "You seem considerably more convinced of our defeat than the captain. Perhaps I should reverse your positions of command."

His son grunted, but said nothing.

Old Malcolm Haer's eyes came back to Joe. "Admittedly, I thought you on the romantic side yesterday, with your hints of some scheme which would lead us out of the wilderness, so to speak. Now I wonder if you might not really have something. Very well, I respect your claimed need for secrecy. Espionage is not exactly an antiquated military field, and it's quite possible that your idea, whatever it is, might be leaked if you revealed it."

"Thank you, sir."

But the Baron was still staring at him. "However, there's more to it than that. Why not take this great scheme of yours to Marshal Cogswell? I understand that you have served with him in the past. And yesterday you mentioned that the Telly sets of the nation would be tuned in on this fracas, and obviously you are correct. The question becomes, what of it?"

The fat was in the fire now. Joe Mauser avoided the haughty stare of young Bait Haer and addressed himself to the older man. "You have political pull, sir. Oh, I know you don't make and break presidents. You couldn't even pull enough wires to keep Hovercraft from making this a divisional magnitude fracas—but you have enough pull for my needs."

Baron Haer leaned back in his chair, his barrel-like body causing that article of furniture to creak. He crossed his hands over his stomach. "And what are your needs, Captain Mauser?"

Joe said evenly, "If I can bring this off, I'll Be a fracas buff celebrity. I don't have any illusions about the fickleness of the Telly fans, but for a day or two I'll be on top. If at the same time I had your all-out support pulling what strings you could reach—"

"Why then, you'd be bounced up in caste to the ranks of the Uppers, wouldn't you, Captain?" Bait Haer finished for him, amusement in his voice.

"That's what I'm gambling on," Joe said evenly.

The younger Haer grinned at his father superciliously. "So our Captain Mauser says he will defeat Stonewall Cogswell in return for you sponsoring his becoming a member of the nation's elite."

"Good Heavens, is the supposed cream of the nation now selected on no higher a level than this?" There was sarcasm in the words.

The three men turned. It was the girl Joe had bumped into the day before. The Haers didn't seem surprised at her entrance.

"Nadine," the older man growled. "This is Captain Joseph Mauser, who has been given a commission as acting major in our forces."

Joe went through the routine of a Middle of officer's rank, being introduced to a lady of Upper caste. She smiled at him, somewhat mockingly, and failed to make the standard response. In fact, she responded not at all to his amenities.

Nadine Haer said, "I repeat, why is this service the captain can render the house of Haer so important that pressure should be brought to raise him to Upper caste? It would seem unlikely that he is a noted scientist, an outstanding artist, a great teacher—"

Joe said uncomfortably, "They say the military is a science, too."

Her expression was almost as haughty as that of her brother. "Do they? Who is they? I have never thought so."

"Really, Nadine," her father grumbled. "This is hardly your affair."

She wasn't having any, even from her parent. "No? In a few days, I shall be repairing the damage you have allowed, indeed sponsored, to be committed upon the bodies of possibly thousands of now healthy human beings."

Bait said nastily, "Nobody asked you to join the medical staff, Nadine. You could have stayed in your laboratory, figuring out new methods of preventing the human race from replenishing itself."

The girl was not the type to redden, but her anger was manifest. She spun on her brother. "tf the race continues its present maniac course, possibly more effective methods of birth control would be the most important development we could make. Even to the ultimate discovery of preventing all future conception."

Joe caught himself in mid-chuckle.

But not in time. She spun on him, in his turn. "Look at yourself in that silly skirt. A professional soldier! A mercenary! A killer! In my opinion, the most useless occupation ever devised by man. Parasite on the best and most useful members of society. Destroyer by trade!"

Joe began to open his mouth but she overrode him. "Yes, yes. I know. I've read all the nonsense that has accumulated down through the ages about the need for, the glory of, the sacrifice of the professional soldier. How they defend their country. How they give their all for the common good. Zen! What nonsense."

Bait Haer was smirking sourly at her. "The theory today is, Nadine, old thing, that professionals such as the captain are gathering experience in case a serious fracas with the Sovs ever develops. Meanwhile, his training is kept at a fine edge fighting in the inter-corporation, inter-union, or union-corporation fracases that develop in our private enterprise society."

She laughed her scorn. "And what a theory! Limited to the weapons which prevailed before 1900. If there ever was real conflict between the Sov-world and our own, does anyone really believe either would stick to such arms? Why, aircraft, armored vehicles, yes, and nuclear weapons and rockets, would be in overnight production."

Joe was fascinated by her furious attack. He said, "Then what would you say was the purpose of the fracases, Doctor ... ?"

"Circuses," she snorted. "The old Roman games, all over again, and a hundred times worse. Blood and guts sadism. The quest of a frustrated person for satisfaction in another's pain. Our Lowers of today are as useless and frustrated as the Roman proletariat, and potentially they're just as dangerous as the mob that once dominated Rome. Automation, the second industrial revolution, has eliminated for all practical purposes the need for their labor. So we give them bread and circuses. And every year that goes by the circuses must be increasingly sadistic, death on an increasing scale, or they aren't satisfied. Once it was enough to have fictional mayhem, cowboys and Indians, gangsters, or G.I.'s versus the Nazis, Japanese or Commies, but that's passed. Now we need real blood and guts."

Baron Haer snapped finally, "All right, Nadine. We've heard this lecture before. I doubt if the captain is interested, particularly since you don't seem to be able to get beyond the protesting stage and have yet to come up with an answer."

"I have an answer!"

"Ah? Bait Haer raised his eyebrows mockingly.

"Yes! Overthrow this absurd status society. Resume the road to progress. Put our people to useful endeavor, instead of sitting in front of their Telly sets, taking trank pills to put them in a happy daze and watching sadistic fracases to keep them in thrills, and their minds from their condition."

Joe had figured on keeping out of the controversy with this firebrand, but now, really interested, he said, "Progress to where?"

She must have caught in his tone that he wasn't needling. She frowned at him. "I don't know man's goal, if there is one. I'm not even sure it's important. It's the road that counts. The endeavor. The dream. The effort expended to make a world a better place than it was at the time of your birth."

Bait Haer said mockingly, "That's the trouble with you, Sis. Here we have reached Utopia and you don't admit it."

"Utopia!"

"Certainly. Take a poll. You'll find nineteen people out of twenty happy with things just the way they are. They have full tummies and security, lots of leisure and trank pills to make matters seem even rosier than they are—and they're rather rosy already."

"Then what's the necessity of this endless succession of bloody fracases, covered to the most minute bloody detail on Telly?"

Baron Haer cut things short. "We've hashed and rehashed this before, Nadine, and now we're too busy to debate further." He turned to Joe Mauser. "Very well, Captain, you have my pledge. I wish I 'felt as optimistic as you seem to be about your prospects. However, if through your efforts this coming fracas is seriously affected to our benefit, I shall—ah, as you put it—pull what strings I can in your behalf toward a double bounce in your caste rating."

Joe took a deep breath, saluted and executed an about-face.

In the outer offices, when he had closed the door behind him, he rolled his eyes upward in mute thanks to whatever powers might be. He had somehow gained. the enmity of Bait, his immediate superior, but he had also gained the support of Baron Haer, himself, which counted considerably more.

He thought about, for a moment, Nadine Haer's words. She was a malcontent, but, on the other hand, her opinions of his chosen profession weren't too very different than his own. However, given this victory, this upgrading in caste, and Joe Mauser would be in a position to retire, with all goals won, in the game of life.

The door opened and shut behind him and he half turned.

Nadine Haer, evidently still caught up in the hot words between herself and her relatives, glared at him. AH of which stressed the beauty he had noticed the day before. She was an almost unbelievably pretty young woman, particularly when flushed with anger.

It occurred to him suddenly that, if his caste was raised to Upper, he would be in a position to woo such as Nadine Haer.

He looked into her furious face and said, "I was intrigued, Dr. Haer, with what you had to say and I'd like to discuss some of your points. I wonder if I could have the pleasure of your company at some nearby refreshment."

"My, how formal an invitation, Captain. I suppose you had in mind sitting and flipping back a few trank pills."

Joe looked at her. "I don't believe I've had a trank in the past twenty years, Dr. Haer. Even as a boy, I didn't particularly take to having my senses dulled with drug induced pleasure."

Some of her fury was abating, but she was still critical of the professional mercenary. Her eyes went up and down his uniform in scorn. "You seem to make pretenses of being cultivated, Captain. Then why your chosen profession?"

He'd had the answer to that for long years. He said now, simply, "I told you I was born a Lower. I doubt if you can realize just what that means, in view of the fact that you, yourself, were born in the highest ranks of our culture. Having been bom into the ranks of the Lowers, little counts until I fight my way out. Had I been bom into a feudalistic society, I would have attempted to batter myself into the nobility. Under classical capitalism, I would have done my utmost to accumulate a fortune, enough to reach an effective position in society. Had I been bom in a communist nation, I probably would have done all I could to become a member of the party bureaucracy. But as it is, under People's Capitalism ..."

She interrupted, "Industrial Feudalism would be the better term."

He ignored that and continued his sentence. "... I realize I can't even start to fulfill myself until I am a member of the Upper caste."

Her eyes had narrowed, and the anger was largely gone. "But you chose the military field in which to better yourself? Why not something more worthy? The medical category, one of the arts. Almost anything, except the military."

"Government propaganda to the contrary, Dr. Haer, it is practically impossible to raise yourself in other fields. I didn't build this world, possibly I don't even approve of it, but since I'm in it I have no recourse but to follow the rules."

Her eyebrows arched at that, but her voice had changed its combative tone. She said, "Why not try to change the rales?"

Joe blinked at her.

Her eyes turned speculative, and in a small girl's mannerism, she took her lower lip in her teeth, as she considered him. She evidendy reached some sort of a conclusion since she said, "Let's look up that refreshment you were talking about. In fact, there is a small coffee bar around the comer where it would be possible for one of Baron Haer's brood to have a cup with one of her father's officers of Middle caste."

VI

AT THE exact moment that acting Major Joseph Mauser was bringing his first cup of pseudo-coffee to his lips, across the table from Dr. Nadine Haer, who was doing likewise,

Telly reporter Freddy Soligen, who had been leaning at the bar of the Upper Officers' Club in the town of Saugerties, looked across the room at a newcomer in awakened interest.

Saugerties was located approximately halfway between Kingston, center for the Haer forces, and Catskill, base of the Continental Hovercraft mercenaries of the aging but aggressive Baron Zwerdling. Previous to the actual beginning of the fracas itself, there was nothing to keep man nor officer of one force from the staging city of the other; however, there was an unwritten law which made it more or less bad form.

But men in any trade like to talk shop, be they mechanics, scientists, farmers, artists—or professional soldiers. Thus it was that the senior officers of whatever rival concerns were staging a fracas on the Catskill Military Reservation spent many of their leisure hours, during the preliminaries and before the combat itself was joined, at the Officers' Club in Saugerties. It was considered unseeming to discuss, in any detail at all, the immediate fracas in prospect, but there were no restrictions on the combats of yesteryear, nor prospective ones of the future.

Freddy Soligen was present by the sufferance traditionally awarded the newsman down through the centuries. For not even a member of the higher castes of society was apt to be free of the lure of publicity. At least so it was among the lesser ranking Upper officers. When one reached the ratified altitudes occupied by such as Field Marshal Stonewall Cogswell, one could at least pretend immunity.

Not only was Freddy Soligen suffered in the Upper Officers' Club, but he invariably found himself hard put to order a drink at the bar to be credited to his own card. Low-Uppers of the rank of major, lieutenant colonel, or colonel there were aplenty to treat a combat reporter who, the following week, might jockey his camera about to put an ambitious officer on lens, when he was in there looking good, or, more important still, keep him off lens when the going was not quite so favorable.

But Soligen was not interested in the fawnings of even a colonel. Stonewall Cogswell had entered the room, for once unaccompanied by even a single member of his staff. He marched toward his favorite table, which traditionally remained unoccupied whenever the marshal was in the vicinity of the Catskill Reservation. He walked stiff legged, knees unbending, as a man walks who has spent long years in cavalry boots, and it came back to Freddy Soligan that the marshal had won his early successes in that service. In his time, Cogswell had been an even more celebrated cavalryman than General Jack Altshuler was these days.

Officers present of brigadier rank and higher were bold enough to greet the celebrated strategist, but the older man seldom answered beyond a flick of his marshal's baton.

He sat down at his table and a waiter scurried up with glass, bottle and the ancient siphon which was an affectation of the marshal.

Freddy Soligen knew the story. The marshal drank old-fashioned bourbon, supposedly such a purist that there was only one type he would accept produced by a small distillery, located near the Kentucky River. It was practically a handicraft operation, in a day when handicrafts were unknown, and the Telly reporter had heard such terms as pot still and sour mash but hadn't the vaguest idea of what they meant.

Soligen put down his own half finished glass, a vodka sour, and made his way over to the seated marshal.

Soligen stood there a moment at the marshal's table, until Cogswell looked up.

"Beg your pardon, sir," Freddy said. "I wonder if I could have a word with you."

The Telly reporter was in mufti, of course, and, if nothing else, his lack of the educated in his voice would have branded him less than an Upper. The marshal typed him immediately.

Cogswell said, in minor irritation, "I don't give interviews."

"No, sir. I know you don't. Not ordinarily. But I haven't got my equipment along anyway."

"Then what in Zen do you want?"

Actually, Freddy Soligen didn't exactly know. He'd had several drinks at the bar and, on the spur of the moment, had approached the famous strategist.

He said now, "Well, Marshal, I thought maybe something off the record. Something that might give me an angle for the coverage of this fracas. A man likes to have something besides just straight shots of the action. You know, kind of a theme."

It had never occurred to Marshal Cogswell that there were any particular angles involved in covering a fracas for the Telly buffs. It simply was out of his field. The Telly reporters had always been more of a nuisance than anything else and as an old pro in the Category Military, he had the standard contempt for them.

He said suddenly, "Sit down. Don't I recognize you?"

Freddy Soligen, somewhat surprised, sat. "Yes, sir," he said. "Maybe you do at that. I've covered several of your fracases, sir."

"Yes, I do recall. You were at that Lockheed-Cessna fracas. I was commanding the right flank. Your camera crew got caught up in the cross fire of those damned mitrailleuse and took several casualties."

"Yes, sir," Freddy said. "Three of them were killed."

The marshal took a pull at his bourbon. "Ah? Too bad. You lads aren't supposed to get into the dill."

"Sometimes we do, though," Freddy said softly.

"Have a drink?"

Once again, mildly surprised, Freddy Soligen took up the bottle proffered and looked about for a waiter. The Upper Officers* Club affected live waiters. One materialized, glass on tray. Freddy poured a slug, added siphon as he had seen the marshal do.

Stonewall Cogswell was evidently in a nostalgic mood. He said, "That was a long time ago."

"Sir?"

"The Lockheed-Cessna, Douglas-Boeing fracas. You have to be long in the game to remember that far back. On an average, this isn't a category you remain in for that many years."

Freddy Soligen tried the whiskey and found he didn't particularly like it. He wondered vaguely if this was one of the endless eccentricities perpetuated by so many of the Category Military pros who were on the make. Something to draw the attention of the buffs. Like the swashbuckling Captain Jerry Sturgeon prancing around on the beautiful palomino which was his trademark. Like Colonel Ted Sohl, who had his boots so built that they gave him a romantic looking limp, although he had never copped a wound in his life. But no, Marshal Stonewall Cogswell didn't need any gimmicks. He didn't need publicity, nor the plaudits of the buffs. He was at the very top, and through his own efforts at that, which was more than passingly offbeat in itself.

Freddy said, "Come to think of it, 1 saw another veteran of that fracas today. Another old pro. Let's see . . . you were on the Lockheed-Cessna side. So was Joe."

"Joe?" Cogswell said politely.

"Captain Joe Mauser."

"That's right, he was there. A second lieutenant at the time, as I recall." He pulled at his glass. "Rather surprised that Mauser didn't sign up with me for this one, since he was available. Damn good man. One of the old breed."

Freddy Soligen was feeling his drinks slightly. He said now, "Funny thing, today. Mauser isn't one of the lens hogs. I've never known Joe Mauser to suck up to us Telly crewmen."

Cogswell looked at him.

Freddy shrugged his shoulders in deprecation. "Today, he said to keep an eye on him. You know, have the camera handy in his vicinity."

Cogswell poured himself another drink, carefully. He made a policy on the eve of a fracas, never to take more than two in an evening.

He said now, "What did you mean, earlier, when you said you needed an angle for shooting this fracas?"

Freddy Soligen shifted in his chair and leaned forward hopefully. "Well, sir, this one is such a setup for Continental Hovercraft, that unless there's something to hang it on, some kinda departure, it's gonna be just short of boring to watch, even for some real drivel-happy fracas buff. I thought maybe there'd be some special angle you might think of. Should I devote full time, maybe, to the cavalry? Should I kinda stick around you an' your staff? You know, I need something to hang on, a gimmick."

"A gimmick," Stonewall Cogswell said distantly, thoughtfully.

"Yes, sir."

Afterwards, after the Telly reporter had left, the head of Continental Hovercraft's forces thought about it. He hadn't been able to help Freddy Soligen. Frankly, he was of much the same opinion that the reporter held. This fracas should be one of the easy ones. If any fracas was easy. However, you achieved the easy ones only by sticking to your standards, this Cogswell knew all too well. It wasn't genius that counted, would-be military experts to the contrary, but endless attention to tedious detail; it was after Bonaparte got fat and began taking naps in the middle of the day, that he lost Waterloo.

He looked about the hall, located the man he had noticed earlier, and made a motion to him with his head.

Lieutenant Colonel Fodor came over and stood at easy

attention before his commanding officer's table. After all,

they were in the informal atmosphere of the Officers' Club.

Besides which, Michael Fodor was a Low-Upper in caste, and

although Stonewall Cogswell carried the same status, he had

come up from the ranks of the Middles, and was thus eligible

to be regarded with a slightly supercilious air—just so long

as the marshal wasn't aware of it, of course.                   I

"Yes, sir," Fodor said.

Cogswell looked up at him thoughtfully. Lieutenant Colonel Fodor wasn't one of his regular staff but had been wished on him by Baron Zwerdling, who had, of course, a small standing military staff of his own. However, the man had a fairly good reputation as an intelligence officer.

The marshal said, "Are you acquainted with a Captain Joseph Mauser?"

"I know of him, sir."

Lieutenant Colonel Fodor might have added, and didn't, that his contacts with Captain Joe Mauser had not been happy ones. To the contrary. On one occasion, the captain had captured him under somewhat ludicrous conditions. Ludicrous, that is, so far as it had appeared on the Telly screens. His colleagues had derided Fodor for some months after, and it had actually taken years to completely live down. There had been another occasion, too, in which Mauser, with an inferior force, had held the colonel up for long hours, leading to a complete upset of the plans of the commanding officer of the forces to which the colonel had been assigned at the time. Happily, on that occasion, the Telly crews had not been near enough to register the action, and Mauser had not been able to reap the glory, nor Lieutenant Colonel Fodor the ignominy, of the confrontation.

The marshal nodded. "I want you to put a man on him." He thought about it some more, then added slowly, "Mauser's an old-timer. It had better be a tough operator."

Lieutenant Colonel Fodor was mildly surprised. This was the first time he had served under Stonewall Cogswell, but the marshal had his reputation; it didn't include strong-arm tactics before a fracas.

It didn't occur to Michael Fodor that he had misunderstood the marshal.

Joe Mauser had returned to his billet that evening in a state of euphoria and thus was only vaguely surprised and irritated when he found his batman absent. After all, he had given Max Mainz the rest of the day off. It was no longer day by now, but the little man hadn't returned from his trip into town.

Joe Mauser shrugged it off and went into the kitchenette. He hadn't eaten in Kingston, being too caught up in his relationship with Nadine Haer. Well, relationship wasn't quite the word. With his conversation with Dr. Haer.

He sat at the tiny auto-chef table and stared down at the built-in limited menu. Joe Mauser didn't feel particularly hungry, but he made a point of eating very regularly on the eve of going into a fracas. You wanted your reflexes to be as good as possible. It was all too easy to get jittery, and compound it by failing to take care of your body's needs.

He dialed a steak and was surprised when the auto-chef failed to produce it.

He grunted disgust. Evidently, this motel was being affected by the fracas to come. During a fracas, there were no facilities on a reservation that hadn't existed prior to the year 1900. That would include auto-chefs, of course. Evidently, this service had already been discontinued.

He came to his feet and opened the small refrigerator set into the wall.

He might have known. The only thing it contained was the makings of drinks. In mild irritation, he fished out the bottle of applejack and a plastic of ginger ale. That drink Max had made had been excellent.

Joe Mauser duplicated it, as best he could, forgetting the lemon twist, and carried it back into the living room. He had a lot to think about and worked away at the drink as he did. Later, he got up and made another. Max still didn't show. He wondered vaguely if the little man had found himself some fracas buff mopsy to shack up with for the night. If so, his batman might as well enjoy it while he could. Immediately before a fracas, the Category Military was composed of gods; during it, they were entertainment stars, in the ultimate entertainment thrill, the sadistic observing of vicarious death; after it, they were nothing—until the next fracas.

He made himself a nightcap finally, and went off to bed, having forgotten his rule against drinking after supper, and after forgetting that he hadn't had supper.

One of the dreams came, as they so often came. One of the bad ones.

It had been down on the Guanajuato Reservation in what had once been called Mexico, a regimental magnitude fracas between Pemex, the petroleum complex concern, and Texas

Oil. He and Jim had been with the latter outfit under a Colonel Ed Bomoseen, a supercilious Upper, who was later lost in a fracas in Montana on the Little Big Horn Reservation. At the time, Jim had out-ranked his long-time buddy slightly, holding a master sergeant's rating to Joe's staff sergeant.

It had been a foul-up of a fracas from the beginning. The Guanajuato Reservation was much too large, even for divisional magnitude affairs. With no more than regimental forces involved, the commanders were hard put to operate. In fact, they had spent the better part of a month in feints, small-scale skirmishes, and, literally, in trying to find and keep track of each other. Both commanders were under pressure from their principals to join the action, and bring to an end the drain on resources.

Jim and Joe Mauser had been sent out on a patrol with a troop of sixteen men, veterans all, to feel out the enemy presence, and up to the point where they entered the ruins of the Spanish Colonial town, nesded high in the hills of Guanajuato, had drawn a blank.

However, Jim, in command, was an old pro, and took no chances.

They had entered the town, avoiding the main streets, and proceeded in the direction of the Zocalo, the central plaza which dominates practically all Mexican towns, circumspectly. Jim Hawldns and eight of the men rode cautiously along one side of the street, hugging the buildings; Joe and his eight, along the other side.

They were armed with 30-30 Winchesters, that carbine of the Old West, which had seen so much usage in the Nineteenth Century development of both the States and Mexico.

With the instinct of the old hand, Jim Hawkins had felt qualms about the situation. The town was quiet. Too damn quiet. They hadn't flushed any of the Pemex forces in two days of patrol in this direction, which didn't mean that they might not run into hostile fire at any moment. However, had there been enemy in the vicinity, there should have been some Telly crews, and there was no sign of these, either.

Joe Mauser's carbine was in his hands, at the ready, his horse being directed by knee pressure alone, and Joe's eyes were going here, there, unhappily. He had the same premonition as did his sidekick. It was mid-day and too damn quiet.

But it was Jim who caught a flicker of sun on something in the church tower ahead and snapped off a shot in a blur of movement. The squad began to scurry into doorways, finding immediate shelter in the large, half-ruined buildings, mansions and palaces of silver rich Spaniards of another era.

But Jim called, "On the doublel For the church!"

Joe Mauser didn't immediately get his plan of action, but Jim was in command. He dug heels into his animal's side and led his squad of eight forward in a rush.

There was a high side door; they galloped in, flung themselves to the ground, firing at anything that moved; firing usually from the hip, not taking the time to bring carbine to shoulder.

It hadn't taken more than moments from when Jim Hawkins had first shot the man in the tower. Some of the Pemex men hadn't even had guns at hand. Without orders, the troop sped through the building, finishing off the enemy detachment before it had time to reform, or be reinforced, if reinforcements were available.

Jim Hawkins hesitated only momentarily, then snapped orders, right and left. "Clark, Samuels. Get those horses under cover. Somewhere in the back. Someplace with a roof. Johnson, Hammarby, get up into the tower."

There was a Vickers gun on a tripod at one of the windows.

"Joe! You and one of your men, get on that gun."

Johnson complained, "The tower! Holy Zen, Sarge, there's no cover up there. We'll get our asses shot off." But already he and Hammarby were on their way. The stairs were in good enough shape to climb in comparative speed.

Jim stood at the window, next to Joe Mauser and his gun assistant. His long-time combat wise eyes were drawn. He called out further orders to the remaining men, spotting them around the building. The Pemex force had numbered seven. All were dead. Jim Hawkins had lost one man dead, one with a revolver slug in his side. The wounded man, swearing, was bandaging himself as best he could, for the time not expecting aid from his comrades in arms.

Joe Mauser said, "What'd you think?"

But Johnson yelled down from the tower, "Hey, Sarge, there's another Vickers up here!"

Jim yelled, "Get on it, and keep your eyes open. There's got to be more of them."

There were. They came spilling across the Zocalo, in a disorganized rush.

Joe's gun began to sputter in short bursts, and the Pemex men went down, two, three at a time. The other gun was sounding from the bell tower.

Jim standing there, carbine to shoulder, snapping out fire as fast as he could lever, laughed down to Joe. "What kind of lads are those? They act like we caught them with their pants down."

Joe's machine gun fell silent, through lack of further target. The enemy was either fallen, or had taken cover, and there was precious little cover in the plaza. He looked up at Jim and snorted. "You know what happened? They were out to lunch. Look around. This is where they were bivouacked. But they're the same as us. Haven't seen anybody in days. They got lazy. You must've winged their only lookout, up in the tower. The rest of them were off eating, all except those we caught here. Their mess must be across the square."

There was desultory shooting now from across the plaza; ineffective, since their shelter in the church ruins was excellent.

From the tower, Hammarby yelled, "Hey, Sarge, there's damn little cover up here."

"What'd you see?" Jim yelled back. There was the combat spark in his eye. Unlike Joe Mauser, Jim was in his glory in action. He lived for it.

"This is the center of town," Hammarby yelled down. "There's four main streets. You can see a couple miles in nny direction."

"That sentry must've been sleeping," Jim muttered. "Great institution, the siesta." He looked around the ruined building of religion. He and Joe's gun crew were in an apsidal chapel jutting from a passage leading off the area where once the congregation had sat, giving thanks to their god. There were stacked guns, a considerable amount of gear and ammunition, as well as other supplies.

"You know," he grinned. "We've taken their base. This squadron in town."

The fire against them increased.

"I'll bet there's fifty of them out there," Joe said.

Johnson yelled, "Sargel Hammarby's copped one."

Jim snapped out, "Fowler, get up there."

The Rank Private named Fowler looked over at him from where he lay, firing out of a door. He licked his dry lips, unhappily, but slid backward, out of line of fire, came to his feet and headed for the steps to the tower.

Jim left, returning in a few minutes with a military chart of the Guanajuato Reservation. He said to Joe, "You know where we are?" He put the map down on the floor, and traced with his finger.

"This is San Miguel de Allende. You're on historic ground, lad."

"Great," Joe growled. "I take it back, there must be a hundred men out there, but if we're on historic ground, it's all right. What in Zen makes it historic?"

Jim laughed. "This is the town where Ignacio Allende started the Mexican revolution against Spain. Over there"— he stabbed with a finger against the map—"that's Celaya, where Pancho Villa met his Waterloo. A good commander of horses, but cavalry shouldn't charge barbed wire and trenches with Maxim guns. And over here"—he stabbed again at a point a few miles from where they were—"is Queretaro where the Emperor Maximilian fought his last battle, was captured and shot."

Joe Mauser let off a short burst, bringing down two men who had burst from a building across the Zocalo, attempting to dash across a street for a better vantage point.

"So . . . P" Joe said. To their right, one of the cavalrymen screamed agony as he took a hit. Their force was melting away, in spite of the comparative strength of their position.

Jim said, over his shoulder, "Perkins, Samuels, get your mounts and make a break for it. Get back to Colonel Bomo-seen and tell him it looks as though the Pemex outfit is coming through the pass from Queretaro. If we can hold them here, hell have them caught before they can deploy out into the valley."

"Not Samuels," Perkins called back. "He's copped one." "Then you go, Hazelton," Jim called. "Get moving, men!" From the tower, the machine gun chattered once, twice, fell silent.

Johnson yelled, "Sarge! Fowler's copped his last one."

Joe looked at his friend. "It's too exposed up there, Jim."

Jim Hawkins' face worked, but he was grinning still. "We've got to keep check on that street leading up the hill. If the main body comes, that's where they'll come from." He called, "Clark. Up into the tower."

"Zen! You think I'm drivel-happy?"

Jim went over to the man. "Up in the bell tower, We've got to keep that gun going. And we've got to keep our eye on that street."

"Our, he says," Clark muttered, glaring. However, he scurried over to the steps.

The fire from the area across the plaza was intensifying and the foe was beginning to infiltrate to both the right nnd left flank, since some of the shooting was coming from a new direction.

Jim, hunkered down next to Joe and his helper at the belt of the Vickers gun, squinted out through the atrium nt the square.

He said, "They don't know how many of us there are. For all they know, more of us are coming up. Their main body won't dare enter town until they've eliminated us."

Joe said, "The way we're taking casualties, they'll damn soon know there's only a dozen of us left."

Jim thought about that, the happy gleam still in his eye. He called over his shoulder, "Corporal, take three of the men and pick out some rifles from those they left stacked. Different calibers from our 30-30s. Scoot around the whole damn church, shooting out every window. Try to make enough noise, whether or not you hit anything, to make it sound like there's two or three times as many of us."

He pulled his own revolver from its holster and emptied it at random across the square, then his carbine. As he reloaded, he called out, "Everybody keep up a heavy fire. If you run out of ammo, replenish it from their supplies. If you can't find our caliber, pick out one of their guns. But keep up a heavy fire."

The Vickers up in the bell tower chattered, chattered again.

"Hey, Sarge," one of the men up in the tower called, "Twenty or thirty horses, up the street, coming into town." "Let 'em have itl" The Vickers chattered.

There was a clattering of hooves as Hazelton and Perkins made their dash for it.

Clark called down, "Hazelton's horse took a hit, Sarge. Dick is pinned under him." Then, "One of those Pemex bastards finished him."

Jim Hawkins called, "Perkins get through?"

"I think so," the other yelled back. "So far."

"Keep that damn street clear! Keep up the heavy fire. We want them to think there's a million of us."

Joe fired, fired again. He wished the gun was a Maxim, rather than a Vickers. The German guns had a better cooling jacket than the British. He had to watch the length of his bursts, and their frequency.

His companion, feeding the belt into the Vickers, flinched, groaned. "I copped one," he moaned.

Jim hauled him back into the corridor, returned shortly with two new canisters of Vickers rounds. He took over feeding the belt himself.

Between bursts, Joe said to him, "What do you think, Jim? Should we make a run for it? They're being reinforced by the minute. We can't hold out at this rate. Half the men are already gone, and this whole building's going to be surrounded."

Jim Hawkins grinned at Itiim. "I thought you were hot for a bounce in caste, Joe. What the hell. If we can keep them held up here for a few hours, the old man'H come up and trim their pants. We'll both make lieutenant, and maybe Middle caste."

VII

JOE MAUSEB, in a sweat, came awake at that point. There was a feeling of thankfulness at that, at least. He had been saved the worst of it.

Neither he nor Jim Hawkins had made lieutenant at that time. Sergeants they remained.

The others had brought up some mountain guns on pack mules and sat back and shelled the church until it was unrecognizable as a house of god. When their relief finally came, only Joe Mauser and Jim Hawkins were left in shape to be carrying on, and both of them had minor wounds. Nine men had been shot out of the tower, before it had completely collapsed. AH the rest were at least bit once, all incapacitated. The old church stank of death.

When they counted the dead the Pemex people had left behind, they found thirty-four in the Zocalo and the streets surrounding. How many more there might have been in the half ruined buildings that surrounded the plaza, they never knew, since they only held the town for another hour or so. Colonel Bomoseen didn't come through then, when all the chips were down. The situation had completely pickled, and the Texas Oil forces took a beating.

The part Jim and Joe Mauser had played was forgotten. Certain it was that none of it whatsoever had gotten on lens, so far as Telly coverage was concerned. It had been one of the most gory, meaningless frays Joe Mauser was ever to experience, and it was the one that came back almost as often as the worst one of all, the one that predominated in his nightmares: the time Jim had copped the last one.

Awake now, he shook his head, stared up at the ceiling, wide-eyed. From the side of his eyes, he could see it was dawn.

He had been through this before. He knew it was possible to have it in his mind the rest of the day, to have it come back and over and over again. He knew what he had to do. He had to concentrate on something else. Get his thinking onto something else.

It wasn't hard.

He put his hands on the pillow under his head, and rehashed his session with Nadine Haer.

It hadn't taken him ten minutes, in the coffee bar, to come to the conclusion that he was in love with the girl, but it had taken the balance of the evening to keep himself under rein and not let the fact get through to her.

He wanted to talk about the way her mouth tucked in at the comers, but she was hot on the evolution of society and the theories of Lewis Henry Morgan and Adolphe Bandelier. He would have liked to have kissed that impossibly perfectly shaped ear of hers, but she was all for exploring the reasons why man had reached his present impasse. Joe Mauser was all for holding hands, and staring into each other's eyes; she was for delving into the differences between the West-world and the Sov-world and the possibility of resolving them.

Of course, to keep her company at all it had been necessary to suppress his own desires and to go along. It obviously had never occurred to her that a Mid-Middle, such as Joe Mauser, might have romantic ideas involving Nadine Haer. It had simply not occurred to her, no matter the radical teachings she advocated.

Most of their world, she pointed out strongly, was predictable from what had gone before. In spite of popular fable to the contrary, the division between classes had become increasingly clear. Among other things, tax systems were such that it became all but impossible for a citizen born poor to accumulate a fortune. Through ability, he might rise to the point of earning fabulous sums—and wind up in debt to the tax collectors. A great inventor, a great artist, had little chance of breaking into the domain of what finally became the small percentage of the population now known as the Uppers.

She had claimed that as far back as the early part of the Twentieth Century, scientists of the caliber of Albert Einstein died no more than comfortably well-off. That even a successful inventor such as Edison had died a comparatively poor man. She pointed out sports figures of approximately the same period, such as prizefighter Joe Louis, who had probably, on paper, earned over a million in his time, had wound up deeply in debt to the Internal Revenue Department.

Then, too, the rising cost of a really good education became such that few other than those bom into the Middle or Upper castes could afford the best of schools, and the long years education involved. Castes tended to perpetuate themselves.

Not sparing her own class, she pointed out that one bom into the wealthiest levels of society was hard put not to remain there. Suppose an idiot inherited one of the larger fortunes. His wealth would be put into a trust, and he into a very comfortable institution—if he wasn't cared for in his own mansion. Fifty years later, perhaps, he would die, possibly such a mental case that he couldn't even read and write, but, in spite of all expenses involved in maintaining him for a long lifetime, at his death his fortune might well be many times what he had inherited.

Politically, the nation had fallen increasingly deeper into 11 m two-party system, both parties of which were tightly controlled by the same group of Uppers. Elections had become a farce, a great national holiday in which stereotyped patriotic speeches, pretenses of unity between all castes, picnics, beer busts and trank binges predominated for one day.

For it was all very well that the electorate decided by majority vote who was to lead the nation, but the nominations were made by a handful of professional politicians.who represented the great wealthy families, the corporations, in short, the real powers that were. In theory, a Rockefeller's vote was worth no more than that of a janitor working in one of the skyscrapers owned by that family, but that was the theory, not the actuality.

Economically, too, the augurs had been there. Production of the basics had been so profuse that poverty in the old sense of the word had become nonsensical. There was a abundance of the necessities of life for all. Social Security, socialized medicine, unending unemployment insurance, old age pensions, pensions for veterans, for widows and children, for the unfit, had doubled and doubled again, until everyone had security for life. The Uppers, true enough, had opulence far beyond that known by the Middles and lived like gods compared to the Lowers, but all had security.

They had largely agreed, thus far, Joe and Nadine. But then had come the debate.

"Then why," Joe had asked her, "haven't we achieved what your brother called it? Why isn't this Utopia? Isn't it what man has been yearning for, down through the ages? Where did the wheel come off? What happened to the dream of plenty and security?"

Nadine had frowned at him—beautifully, he thought.

^It's not the first time man has found abundance in a society, though never to this degree. The Incas had it, for instance."

"I don't know much about them," Joe admitted. "An early form of communism with a sort of military-priesthood at the top."

She had nodded, her face serious, as always. "It isn't largely known, but at the time of the Spanish conquest, the so-called Incas—they didn't call themselves that, you know—had a higher standard of living than did contemporary Europeans.

That is, they had better and a wider variety of food. They probably lived in at least as good homes as did the average European, and dressed at least as well. And certainly their medicine was as good or better. But above all they had a security unknown in Spain or the rest of Europe at the time. There was no such thing as poverty. From the cradle to the grave, the Inca people had all the requirements of life, and even, given special abilities, the opportunity to develop themselves. Those art objects that amazed the conquistadores were not produced by dumb brutes.

"And for themselves, the Romans more or less had it. Abundance, that is. At the expense of the nations they conquered, of course."

"And ..." Joe prodded.

"And in these examples the same thing developed. Society ossified. Joe," she said, using his first name for the first time, and in a manner that set off a new countdown in his blood, "a ruling case and a socioeconomic system perpetuates itself, just so long as ever it can. No matter what damage it may do to society as a whole, it perpetuates itself even to the point of complete destruction of everything."

"I don't think I follow that," Joe had said. "What's an example?"

"Remember Hitler? Adolf the Aryan and his Thousand Year Reich? When it became obvious that he had failed and the only thing that could result from continued resistance would be the destruction of Germany's cities and millions of her people, did he and his clique resign or surrender? Certainly not. They attempted to bring down the whole German structure in a Götterdämmerung."

Nadine Haer was deep into her theme, her eyes flashing her conviction. "A socioeconomic system reacts like a living organism. It attempts to live on, indefinitely, agonizingly, no matter how antiquated it might have become. The Roman politico-economic system continued for centuries after il should have been replaced. Such reformers as the Gracchus brothers were assassinated or thrust aside, so that the entrenched elements could perpetuate themselves, and when

Rome finally fell, darkness descended for a thousand years on Western progress."

Joe had never gone this far in his thoughts. He said now, somewhat uncomfortably, "Well, what would replace what we have now? If we took power from you Uppers, who could direct the country? The Lowers? That's not even funny. Take away their fracases and their trank pills and they'd go berserk. They don't want anything else."

Her mouth worked. "Admittedly, we've already allowed things to deteriorate much too far. We should have done something long ago. I'm not sure I know the answer. All I know is that in order to maintain the status quo, we're not utilizing the efforts of more than a fraction of our people. Nine out of ten of us spend our lives sitting before the Telly, sucking tranks. Meanwhile, the motivation for continued progress seems to have withered away. Our Upper political circles are afraid of seemingly minor changes avalanching; so more and more we lean upon the old ways of doing things."

Joe had put up mild argument. "I've heard the case made that the Lowers are fools and the reason our present socioeconomic system makes it so difficult to rise from Lower to Upper is that you cannot make a fool understand he is one. You can only make him angry. If some, who are not fbols, are allowed to advance from Lower to Upper, the vast mass who are fools will be angry because they are not allowed to. That's why the Military Category is made a channel of advance. To take that road, a man gives up his security and he'll die if he's a fool."

Nadine had been scornful. "If an Upper is inadequate, he nevertheless remains an Upper. An accident of birth makes him an aristocrat; environment, family, training, education, friends, traditions and laws maintain him in that position. But a Lower who is potentially of the greatest value to society is born handicapped and he's hard put not to wind up before a Telly set, in a mental daze from trank. Sure he's a fool, he's never been allowed to develop himself."

Yes, Joe reflected now, it had been quite an evening. In a life of more than thirty years devoted to rebellion, he had never met anyone so outspoken as Nadine Haer, nor one who had thought it through as far as she had.

He grunted. His own revolt was against the level at which he had found himself in society, not the structure of society itself. His whole raison d'etre was to lift himself to Upper status. It came as a shock to him to find a person he admired who had been born into Upper caste desirous of tearing the entire system down.

His thoughts were interrupted by the door opening and the face of Max Mainz grinning in at him. Joe was mildly surprised at his orderly not knocking before opening the door. Max evidently had a lot to learn.

The little man blurted, "Come on, Joe. Let's go out on the town I"

"Joe?" Captain Joe Mauser raised himself to one elbow and stared at the other. "Leaving aside the merits of your suggestion, for the moment, do you think you should address an officer by his first name, soldier?"

Max Mainz came fully into the bedroom, his grin wider still. "You forgotl It's election dayl"

"Oh." Joe Mauser relaxed into his pillow. "So it is. No duty for today, eh?"

"No duty for anybody," Max crowed. "What'd you say we go into town and have a few drinks in one of the Upper bars?"

Joe grunted, but began to rise. "What'Il that accomplish? On election day, most of the Uppers who don't stay home behind closed doors get done up in their oldest clothes and go slumming down in the Lower quarters. It's the one day of I he year they figure they're not demeaning themselves by picking up some trank happy lower kid and giving her the llnill of a quick roll in the hay with an aristocrat."

Max wasn't to be put off so easily. "Well, wherever we yp, let's get going. ZenI 111 bet this town is full of fracas buff (himes from as far as Philly. And on election day, to boot."

Joe laughed at him, even as he headed for the bathroom.

As a matter of fact, he rather liked the idea of going into town for the show. It had been a long time since Joe Mauser had done much in the way of relaxing. In fact, as he thought back, he couldn't recall getting really drenched since Jim Hawkins had copped the last one. And how long had it been since he'd relaxed with a woman?

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Fodor looked at the man speculatively.

"So you're Smith. John, I assume." "Are there any others?"

"Sit down," Fodor said, not amused. He came to his own feet and walked over to the small bar built into the wall of his office.

Smith took the straight chair that sat to one side of the intelligence officer's desk and fished in his jerkin pocket for a small tin container. He opened it and extracted a white pill, aspirin size. He was a man of middles, quite undus-tinctive. In his early middle years, medium of height and weight, colorless in costume and in facial expression. There was an empty something about him, especially in his eyes.

Michael Fodor said sharply, "Is that trank? This assignment doesn't admit of being bemused."

The other shook his head very slightly and popped the pill into his mouth. The effect seemed almost instantaneous, as though psychological rather than physiological. His eyes had come alive, his skin took on a new life.

Fodor splashed an inch of liquid from a bottle into a tall glass, reached for a carafe of water, but then decided against it and returned with the glass to the swivel chair behind his desk.

He said, "You were recommended to me."

Smith said nothing to that. He crossed his legs and sat there looking at Fodor.

Michael Fodor was unhappy. There was a quality about this Smith he didn't like. However, time was running out; he didn't have enough to locate another operative of this type. He took a pull at his drink and launched into the meat of the thing.

"You won't have to have much background."

"The less the better," Smith said. "Just tell me what you want. I get paid for ... for the operation, not for knowing the reason for it."

Fodor finished the drink, put the glass down on his desk and leaned back in his chair.

"AH right, this is it. Very shortly now, there's going to be a fracas on the CatskiH Reservation here. Suffice to say, I represent one of the contestants."

Smith took in Fodor's uniform, that of the Baron Zwerd-ling's permanent staff, but said nothing.

An edge of irritation in his voice, Lieutenant Colonel Fodor said, "It is of no interest to you to even know which side."

"All right."

Michael Fodor looked at Smith impatiently. The man inspired exactly nothing, neither confidence, respect, nor, certainly, even a modicum of liking. Fodor began to have qualms about this. However ...

"Suffice to say that there is a certain Captain Joseph Mauser, who has become a . . . say a sore thumb. It has become necessary to eliminate him from the fracas to come."

"All right."

"This Captain Mauser is tough. He's seen a great deal of combat."

"Nobody's tough," Smith said emptily. "Some think they are, but nobody's tough. You'd be surprised, Colonel."

Fodor got up and went back to the bar for another drink. As before, he didn't offer one to the other man. One didn't <liink with one's inferiors. Certainly, an Upper didn't drink with hired hoodlums. He told himself he didn't like this. Besides that, he was surprised and somewhat disgusted willi Field Marshal StonewaU CogsweU. It simply wasn't playing the game, eliminating even a junior officer, such as Mauser, from the fracas, for whatever reason must be motiva-ling the marshal. He suppressed the fact, that he, himself, hated the mercenary in question, hated his guts as much as he had hated anyone since he had reached adulthood.

He said snappishly, "You don't seem to have the build to take on an old combat man such as Joe Mauser."

Smith had a distant amusement in him. "Size doesn't count, Colonel. You'd be surprised."

The intelligence officer was miffed by Smith's condescension, no matter how distant the air.

"You have assistance?"

Smith shifted very slightly in his chair and shook his head. "Wouldn't you rather this be done with as few knowing about it as possible?"

"Of course."

"All right. Nobody will know about it except you and me."

Fodor resumed his seat. He told himself he liked this less and less. He said, "There's one share of Common Basic stock in it for you."

"Two," Smith said without inflection at all. "Two shares of Convertible Common Basic. Untraceable."

Fodor was irritated again. The marshal! hadn't mentioned how much expenditure he could go to. Fodor had thought he had understood his commanding officer's reticence. The marshal didn't want to know the details. Supposedly, such matters were beneath the famed Stonewall Cogswell. He hadn't told Fodor why it was that he wanted Mauser eliminated from the fracas, had left all the details to his intelligence aide. However, intelligence had a certain leeway when it came to funds; it was universally expected that certain opportunities might come up in any fracas which would involve undercover expenditures.

"Very well," he snapped. "Two shares of Convertible Common Basic, payable upon your report of success."

Smith recrossed his legs, shook his head. "Payable now," he said softly. "You'll never even have to see me again."

Fodor stared at him. "Do you think me drivel-happy? How do I know you'll perform successfully?"

Smith's smile was distant again. "Who recommended me, Colonel?"

Fodor looked at him testily. It seemed a confounded large amount just for beating' one man up to the point where he would be hospitalized for, say, a week or two.

However, once again, time was running out.

Fodor snapped, "Very well." He came to his feet still once again and went over to a wall safe.

Smith stood also, fishing in his pocket again for his tin of white pills.

After he had received his wages of violence and had left, Michael Fodor looked after him, or, at least, at the door which had closed on the colorless man.

It hadn't occurred to Michael Fodor that Smith had misunderstood him. But perhaps that was because his subconscious was censoring him. He truly hated Captain Joseph Mauser beyond the point of sense.

VIII

IN A FAB distant past, Kingston had once been the capital of the United States. For a short time, when Washington's men were in flight after the debacle of their defeat in New York City, the government of the United Colonies had held session in this Hudson River town. It had been its one moment of historic glory, and afterwards Kingston had slipped back into being a minor city on the edge of the Catskills, approximately halfway between New York and Albany.

Of more recent years, it had become one of the two recruiting centers which bordered the Catskul Military Reservation, which in turn was one of the score or so population cleared areas through the North American continent where rival corporations or unions could meet and settle their differences in combat—given permission of the Category Military Department of the government. And permission was becoming ever easier to acquire.

It had slowly evolved, the resorting to trial by combat to settle differences between competing corporations, disputes between corporations and unions, disputes between unions over jurisdiction. Since the earliest days of the first industrial revolution, conflict between these elements had often broken into violence, sometimes on a scale comparable to minor warfare. An early example was the union organizing in Colorado when armed elements of the Western Federation of Miners shot it out with similarly armed "detectives" hired by the mine owners, and later with the troops of an unsympathetic state government. Indeed, the whole history of the Wobblies, the I.W.W., and its efforts to organize the One Big Union, was a history of violence. Nor did it end with the Wobblies. The organizing of the C.I.O. during the depression years of the Nmeteen-thirties was replete with conflict, and scores died.

By the middle of the Twentieth Century, unions had become one of the biggest businesses in the country, and, as with all other types of business, were being operated for the benefit of they who controlled them—the labor leaders. A considerable amount of the industrial conflict had shifted to fights between them for jurisdiction over dués-paying members. Battles on the waterfront, assassination and counter assassination by gun toting goon squads dominated by gangsters, industrial sabotage, frays between pickets and scabs —all were the most common of occurences.

Perhaps one of the first inklings of what was to come was to be seen in the early cinema. While still in the days of silent films, the taste for violence was nurtured and developed. That first great feature length classic, The Birth of a Nation, thrilled the country with its Civil War battle scenes and its depiction of the race conflict between the Ku KIux Klan and the newly emancipated slaves who were attempting to realize, under Reconstruction, that which had been so sweep-ingly promised them. Then came the great war movies such as What Price Glory, The Big Push and All Quiet on the Western Front, the latter unique only in that the protagonists were German rather than American heroes. And the films of the opening of the West, which stressed the strife between frontiersmen and the Amerinds, or between cowboy and rustler.

A great breakthrough in the realm of violence, was the spate of gangster films of the Thirties, launched by Scarface, that tale of Al Capone and the beer baron rivals of Chicago. The Dillinger era followed, when Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, the. Barker Boys, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were immortalized to the point where the movie-goer was hard put to decide who was the villain, who the hero, bank robber or F.B.I, agent.

The movie moguls had soon found that it was easy to create a prime demand for the film depicting violence and death, combat and murder. Even the production supposedly devoted to the youngest of children, must needs have its terrifying elements of violence. Bambi must be chased by the hunters and dogs through the forest fire; Pinocchio must go through the horror of being turned into a jackass, and later being swallowed by the whale; even Snow White and her dwarfs must experience the frightening chase scene when her stepmother, the witch, pursues them.

Nor were the movies and radio alone in the purveying of death, war and violence. The toy stores of the nation were soon overflowing with first six shooters and then submachine guns, and still later with play bazookas, mortars, war tanks and hand grenades. Later still, with the coming of the space age, there were to be zap guns and disintegrator ray guns, but always the play was directed at violence, violence, violence. A child was born into the atmosphere, his toys, his comic books, his radio programs, his movies—violence, violence, violence.

But it was the coming of Telly which actually brought real violence, not make-believe, increasingly before the public eye. Preceded by the newsreel reporters of the Second War and even before, the zealous Telly reporters made every effort to bring the actual mayhem to the eyes of their violence orientated viewers, and never were efforts more highly rewarded.

A society based upon private endeavor, private enterprise, is as jealous of a vacuum as is Mother Nature. Give a desire, a need, a taste, that can be filled profitably, and the means can somehow be found to realize it.

At one point in the nation's history, the agricultural plantation owners had dominated the country, later it was to be the railroads lords, and still later the petroleum princes of Texas and elsewhere. But toward the end of the Twentieth Century the communications industries slowly gained promin-inence, as advertising blanketed the American way of life. Nothing was more greatly in demand then feeding the insatiable maw of the Telly fan; nothing, ultimately, became more profitable.

And increasingly, the Telly buff endorsed the more sadistic of the fictional and nonfictional programs presented him. Even in the earliest years of the industry, producers had found that, as with the movies, murder and mayhem, war and frontier gunfights, took precedence over less gruesome subjects. Music was drowned out by gunfire, the dance replaced by the shuffle of cowboy and rustler advancing down a dusty street toward each other, their fingertips brushing the grips of their six shooters. The comedian's banter fell away before the chatter of the tommy gun.

And increasing realism was demanded. The Telly reporter on the scene of a police arrest, preferably a murder; a rumble between rival gangs of juvenile delinquents; a longshoreman's fray in which scores of workers were hospitalized. When attempts were made to suppress such broadcasts, the howl for freedom of speech and the press went up, financed by tycoons clever enough to realize the value of the subjects they covered so adequately.

Perhaps it was the Asian war and the-race riots of the Sixties that proved the final touch. Here now was real, real death before the very eye. Here one witnessed the ultimate in the thrill of vicarious destruction. Here one was all but participating in the kill. A whole people watched and thrilled.

The vacuum was there, the desire, finally even, the need. Bread the populace already had. Trank was available to all. But the need was for the circus, the vicious, sadistic circus, and bit by bit, over the years and decades, the way was found to circumvent the country's laws and traditions to supply the need.

The final Universal Disarmament Pact which had totally banned all weapons invented since the year 1900 and provided for complete inspection, had not ended the fear of war, only the immediate Cold War and the international arms race. And thus there was excuse to give the would-be soldier, the potential defender of the country in some future conflict, practical experience on the field of battle.

Slowly tolerance grew to allow union and corporation to fight it out, hiring the services of mercenaries. Slowly rules grew up to govern such fracases, as they came to be known. Slowly a department of government evolved. The Category Military became as acceptable as the next, and the mercenary a valued, even idolized, member of society. And the field became practically the only one in which a status quo orientated socioeconomic system allowed for advancement in caste.

Joe Mauser had restrained Max's enthusiasm long enough to get a hearty meal beneath their belts. It was his experience that things didn't really get underway until noon or after, save for the element of trank addicts and drunks that couldn't wait and thus eliminated themselves from the fun, before the fun commenced.

They ate their breakfasts, which were whipped up by Max after a quick shopping trip to the Haer supply depot, and then headed into town in Joe Mauser's hovercar.

Max Mainz, holding the vividly colored beret which was I he headgear of the Rank Private of the Haer forces, tightly to his scalp, was impressed all over again by the vehicle.

He said, "Zen, Captain, you musta had to pay plenty to get a private license for this job."

"As a matter of fact, it didn't cost anything."

Max shot a look of disbelief at him. "Gosh, I know better than that, sir. Getting a private license for a car is almost like impossible. It was the only way to get all the cars off the roads. Everybody had one, no room to park, the roads all cluttered up. So the government passed this here law where you could use all the taxis you wanted, or you could rent a car for the time you needed it, but you couldn't have one all your own."

"Ummm," Joe said, his mind half on his driving, half on his plans for the fracas to come.

Max said argumentively, "It was a good idea, too. Most people didn't use their cars most of the time, anyway. It was parked in the garage, or in front of the house, in the street, or in front of wherever the guy was working, or whatever he was doing. Now, the only time you get a car is when you really need it. You call up the garage and order whatever kinda car you need, maybe a little two-seater, if you're just running around town, maybe a big station wagon that'll carry a dozen people if maybe you've got a lot of kids and wanta go on a picnic. And you just keep it, as long as you want it. It's always in good shape, always got good tires, always just been oiled and greased and all. But most of all, you don't have to have one or two cars for every family. And it's kind of democratic, like. Nobody is allowed to have a car all of their own."

Joe shook his head wearily. "Max, you have a lot to leam about People's Capitalism as a social system. Rank has its privileges, as it always had. Laws are, as ever, made to benefit those who own the country and run the country, not, as is popularly supposed, to benefit everyone. You've probably never heard of Anatole France; he once wrote about the impartiality of the law, pointing out that it was as illegal for a millionaire to sleep under a bridge as it was for a poor man."

Max didn't get it.

Joe said impatiently, swerving to avoid a horse-drawn army ambulance heading back in the direction of the reservation, "Suppose there's an accident. Both are at fault, an Upper and a Lower. The judge is impartial. He fines both ten credits. All right. For the Upper, it's nothing. The price of a bottle of sparkling wine from France, say. To the Lower,

It's a tragedy. He misses out paying the rent that month, has to postpone having some dental work done, and getting a pair of new shoes for one of his children. So, has the law really been impartial?"

Max said, complaint in his voice, "But you just said so, yourself. They both got the same fine. It didn't make no difference the one guy was a Upper. Besides, what's that got to do with getting a private license to have a car like this?"

Joe sighed. They were pulling into Kingston. He said, "Cars of this model, Max, come with built-in private licenses. Once again, all is impartial. If you bought one, you too would have a privately licensed car, whereas most people aren't allowed to, due, as you say, to such problems as parking."

"Well there," Max said triumphantly. "You said it yourself. If I bought one of these, I'd automatically get the built-in private license too."

"Umm," Joe said, heading for town center. "But only an Upper can afford one of these, Max."

"Then where'd you get it?"

Joe Mauser grunted. "It was given to me by a real gone fracas buff. I'll tell you about it, some day."

He drove the vehicle into a Vacuum Tube Transport parking basement reserved for Haer forces vehicles. Internal combustion engines, whether wheeled or air cushion, trucks and cars were not allowed on a military reservation during an actual fracas, but they were not barred from the vicinity of a reservation, either before or after the actual combat.

Joe Mauser vaulted over the side of his trim sports model, and flicked a quick salute to a Rank Private who stood guard. The man looked unhappy, having had the bad luck to draw guard duty on election day.

Joe Mauser and Max Mainz strolled the streets of Kingston in an extreme of atmosphere seldom to be enjoyed in this age and under the aegis of People's Capitalism. Not only was the advent of a divisional magnitude fracas but a short time nway, but the freedom of an election day as well. Election day, when each aristocrat, free of all society's artificially conceived caste perpetuating rituals and taboos, was no better than anyone else.

The Roman institution of the Saturnalia, held on December 17th and extending over several days, was no mistake on the part of those great masters governing an enslaved society. Once a year, the world turned upside down, and slave sat down with master at table; on the streets, a handsome field worker, in town for the holidays, might well steal a kiss from the wife or daughter of a patrician; wine flowed, love was for the asking; all men were equal. With such an institution, the lot of the underdog was the more bearable, for during that brief time he could forget his society imposed inferiority. He was the equal of, as good as, the senator, the consuls, the Emperor himself! —Or so he was told, and so, it was hoped, he believed. A satisfied slave is a safe slave.

Carnival! The day was young, but already the streets were thick with revelers, with dancers, with drunks, with amateur musicians who paraded in small bands, rendering their tunes—to render means to tear apart. Youngsters, in particular, ran about attired in costume, usually military, for even the very young were saturated in the atmosphere of the fracas. There were barbecues, food stands, automat distributors of those festival treats of old, hotdogs and hamburgers. Above all, there were flowing beer kegs, where each man helped himself; and all costs, on this level, were borne by the government.

On the outskirts of town, there were roller coasters and ferris wheels, fun houses and drive-it-yourself miniature cars, gambling games to play, side shows to see. For those who simply couldn't refrain for such an extended period from their favorite Telly shows, but still wished to attend the election day celebrations, there were large tents with benches and huge Telly screens.

Carnival!

Max said happily, "You drink, Joe? Or maybe you like trank, better." Obviously, he loved to roll Joe's first name over his tongue.

Joe wondered in amusement how often the little man had found occasion to call a Mid-Middle, such as Captain Joe Mauser, by his first name. For that matter, how often Max had occasion in the past to even have talked with someone that far above him in caste level. Except in the Category Military, where lines were of necessity not quite so strictly drawn, under People's Capitalism, one could easily go through life without coming in close contact with fellow citizens more than one or two castes above or below the class into which he had been born.

"No trank for me," he said. "I've tried it once or twice, and I have enough elusions and delusions without resorting to hallucinogens. Alcohol for me. Mankind's old faithful."

"Well," Max debated, even as his eyes swept about the streets, seeking out excitement, "get high on guzzle and bingo, you got a hangover in the morning. But trank? You wake up with a smile."

"And a desire for more trank to keep the mood going," Joe said wryly. "Until finally you keep yourself on the stuff every waking hour. It's the old argument going back to the early hallucinogens, such as marijuana. No hangover. But possibly man is better off with a hangover resulting from his excesses; it keeps him from indulging in them too often. When you get drenched on alcohol, you suffer for it comes the dawning."

"Well, that's one way of looking at it," Max argued happily. "So let's start off with a couple of quick ones in this here Upper joint. You wanta know something? I never been in an Upper bar in my life. I never had the guts to go in before, even on election day. But now, I've crossed categories to Military, I figure my blood's as red as the next guy's." He looked at his commanding officer from the side of his eyes. "Ilesides, I guess you know all about it."

Joe looked the place over. He didn't know Kingston overly well, but by the appearance of the building and by the entry, it seemed the swankest hotel in town, albeit on the elderly side. He shrugged. So far as he was concerned, he appreciated I lie greater comfort and the better service of his Middle caste bars, restaurants and hotels over the ones he had patronized when a Lower. However, his had never been the immediate desire to push into the preserves of the Uppers, not until he had won rightfully to their status. He was not a ragged child, peering wistfully in the window of a toy shop; he wanted to march in the front door of the shop and take to himself those playthings that appealed.

However, on this occasion, the little fellow wanted to drink in an Upper bar. Very well, it was election day. If the ruling class of the nation was in favor of the Lowest elements being able to enter the preserves of the most privileged this day, who was he to argue? "Let's go," he said to Max.

In the uniform of a Rank Major of the Military Category, there was nothing to indicate caste level, and ordinarily, given the correct air of nonchalance, Joe Mauser, in uniform, would have been able to go anywhere, without so much as a raised eyebrow—until he presented his credit card, which indicated his caste, and was not legal tender in establishments devoted to the elite. But Max was another thing. He was obviously a Lower and probably a Low-Lower at that.

But space was made for them at a bar packed with election day celebrants, politicians involved in the day's speeches and voting, higher ranking officers of the Haer forces, a sprinkling of those of Baron Zwerdling, down from Catskill, all having a day off from military duties, and various Uppers of both sexes, in town for the excitement of the fracas to come. One or two representatives of Middle or even Lower caste were also defiantly present, on this one day of days, when they were tolerated. However, Joe knew that the thousands who teemed outside on the streets would have liked to have entered such places, but couldn't rise above the embarrassment of being in the presence of their betters. As Max had expressed himself but a few moments before, they didn't have the guts to intrude.

"Beer," Joe said to the bartender.

"Not me," Max crowed. "Champagne. Only the best for Max Mainz on election day. Give me some of that champagne liquor I always been hearing about."

Joe put his credit card on the pay screen and had the amount credited to his account, and they took their bottles and glasses to a newly abandoned table. The place was too packed to have the immediate services of a waiter, although poor Max, who had probably never been attended to by a live waiter in his life, would have loved such attention. Lower, and even Middle bars and restaurants were universally automated, and the waiter or waitress a thing of yesterday. Max would have to be satisfied, even here, with a bartender, instead of an auto-bar.

The little batman looked about the room in awe. "This is really living," he announced. "I wish my folks could see me now. Out on the town with like a fracas celebrity, having cliampagne in an Upper bar." He thought about it happily. "I wonder what they'd say if I went to the desk and ordered a room."

Joe Mauser wasn't as highly impressed as his orderly. In fact, he had often stayed in the larger cities, such as Greater Washington, in hostelries as sumptuous as this, though only of Middle status. Kingston's best was still on the mediocre side, small town that it was.

He said, "They'd probably tell you they were filled up, Max."

The little man was indignant. "Because I'm a Lower? It's election day."

Joe said mildly, "Because they probably are filled up. But lor that matter, they might brush you off. It's not as though you were an Upper who went to a Middle or Lower hotel and asked for accommodations. But what do you want,

justice?"

Max dropped it. He looked down into his glass. "Hey, lie complained, "what'd they give me? This stuff tastes like weak hard cider."

Joe, who had been enjoying his own beer, an imported dark from Common Europe, chuckled at him. "What did you think it was going to taste like? I ordered you an excellent vintage year brut."

Max took another unhappy sip. "I thought it was supposed to be the best drink you could buy. You know, really strong. It's just bubbly wine."

A voice nearby said, dryly, "Your companion doesn't seem to be a connoisseur of the French vintages, Captain."

Joe turned. Bait Haer, in his colonel's kilts, and with his inevitable swagger stick on the table before him, occupied the place next to them. He was with two others, and all had mixed drinks before them.

Joe chuckled amiably, in view of the day and the circumstances, and said, "Truthfully, it was my own reaction, the first time I drank sparkling wine, sir."

"Indeed," Haer said, his voice indicating his lack of interest. "I can certainly imagine." He fluttered a hand. "Lieutenant Colonel Paul Warren of Marshal Cogswell's staff, and Colonel Lajos Arpad, of Budapest—Captain Joseph Mauser, acting major in my father's house."

Joe Mauser came to his feet and clicked his heels, bowing from the waist in approved military protocol. The other two didn't bother to stand, but each did condescend to shake hands, in a sort of limp manner.

The Sov officer said, disinterestedly, "Ah yes, this is one of your fabulous customs, is it not? On an election day, everyone is quite entitled to go anywhere. Anywhere at all. And, ah"—he made a sound somewhat like a school girl's giggle—"associate with anyone at all."

Joe Mauser resumed his seat, then looked at him. "That is correct, Colonel. A custom going back to the early history of our country when all men were considered equal in such matters as law and civil rights. Gentlemen, may I present Rank Private Max Mainz, my orderly?"

Bait Haer, who had obviously already had a few, took up his glass, sipped at it, and looked at Joe Mauser over the drink dourly. "You can carry these things to the point of the ridiculous, Captain. For a man of your ambitions, I am surprised."

The infantry officer of the Zwerdling forces, Lieutenant Colonel Warren, of Stonewall Cogswell's staff, said idly, "Ambitions? Does the captain have ambitions, Bait? How in

Zen can a Middle have ambitions? Sounds almost like a contradiction in terms." He stared at Joe Mauser superciliously, but then his expression shifted, and he scowled. "Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

Joe said evenly, "Yes, sir. Five years ago we were both with the marshal in a fracas on the Little Big Horn reservation. Your company was pinned down by a battery of field artillery. The marshal sent me to your relief. We snaked our way up an arroyo, and were able to get most of you out."

"I was wounded," the lieutenant colonel said, the superciliousness gone and a strange element in his voice above the alcohol there earlier.

Joe Mauser said nothing to that. Max Mainz was stirring unhappily now. These officers were talking above his head, even as they ignored him. He had a vague feeling that he was being defended by Captain Mauser, but he didn't know how, or why. Suddenly, the fun was out of it, and Max was no longer happy in this domain of the Uppers.

Bait Haer had been occupied in shouting fresh drinks. Now he turned back to the table. "Well, Colonel, it's all very secret, these ambitions of Captain Mauser. I understand he's been an aide-de-camp to Marshal Cogswell in the past, but the marshal will be distressed to learn that on this occasion Captain Mauser has a secret by which he expects to rout your forces. Indeed, yes, the captain is quite the strategist." Bait Haer laughed abruptly. "And what good will this do the captain? Why, on my father's word, if he succeeds, all efforts will be made to make the captain a caste equal of ours. Not just on election day, mind you, but all three hundred and sixty-five days of the year."

Joe Mauser was on his feet, his face expressionless. He said, "Shall we go, Max? Gentlemen, it has been a pleasure. (Colonel Arpad, a privilege to meet you. Colonel Warren, a pleasure to renew acquaintance." He looked at his superior officer. "Sir, with your permission." Joe Mauser turned, and, trailed by his bewildered orderly, left

IX

LIEUTENANT COLONEL WARREN, the alcohol completely out of him now, and his face pale, was on his feet too. For a moment he half raised his right hand, as though to detain the departing Joe Mauser.

Bait Haer was chuckling in deprecation. "Sit down, Paul. Do sit down and have another drink. Not important enough to be angry about. The man is a clod, but what in the world would you expect?"

Warren looked at him bleakly. "I wasn't angry, Bait. The last time I saw Captain Mauser, I was slung over his shoulder. He carried, tugged and dragged me some two miles through enemy fire."

Bait Haer carried it off with a shrug. "Well, that's his profession, is it not? Category Military. A mercenary for hire. I assume he received his pay."

The lieutenant colonel sank back into his chair. "He could have left me to bleed to death. Common sense dictated that he leave me."

Bait Haer was annoyed. "Well then, we see what I've contended all along. The ambitious captain doesn't even have common sense."

Paul Warren shook his head. "You're wrong there, Colonel Haer. Common sense Joseph Mauser has. He is one of the best combat men in the field, and is generally recognized as such by the old pros in the Category Military, including Stonewall Cogswell. But I'd hate to serve under him when things got into the dill in a fracas."

The Hungarian was interested. "But why?"

"Because he doesn't have luck, and in the dill you need luck," Warren grunted in sour memory. "Had the Telly cameras been focused on Joe Mauser, there at the Little

Rig Horn, he would have been a month long sensation to the Telly buffs, with all that means." He grunted again. "There wasn't a Telly team within a mile."

"The captain probably didn't realize that," Bait Haer snorted. "Otherwise his heroics would have been modified. The captain is an ambitious man, Paul."

Warren flushed his displeasure and sat down. He said, "Possibly we should discuss the business before us. If your father, Baron Haer, is in agreement, the fracas can begin in three days." He turned to the representative of the Sov-world. "You have satisfied yourself that neither force is violating the Disarmament Pact?"

Lajos Arpad nodded. "We will wish to have observers on the field, itself, of course, but preliminary observation has been satisfactory." He had been interested in the play between these two and the lower caste officer. He said now, "Pardon me. As you know, this is my first visit to the, ah West. I am fascinated. If I understand what just transpired, our Captain Mauser is a capable junior officer ambitious to rise in rank and status in your society." He looked at Bait Haer. "Why are you opposed to his so rising?"

Young Haer was testy about the whole matter. He took up his new drink and knocked half of it back. "Of what purpose Is an Upper caste if every Tom, Dick and Harry enters it at will? In theory, I am not opposed to genuinely suitable Middles being bounced in caste, but his man is an obvious clod, as you undoubtedly could see. Imagine entering a respectable public room in the presence of his batman."

Warren looked at the door through which Joe Mauser mid Max Mainz had exited from the cocktail lounge. He opened his mouth to say something, closed it again and held his peace.

The Hungarian said, looking from one of them to the oilier, "In the Sov-world we seek out such ambitious persons and utilize their abilities."

Lieutenant Colonel Warren laughed abruptly. "So do we In-re theoretically. We are free, whatever that means. However," he added sarcastically, "it does help to have good schooling, good connections, relatives in positions of prominence, abundant shares of good stocks, that sort of thing. And these things one is born with, in this free world of ours, Colonel Arpad."

The Sov military observer clucked his tongue. "An indication of a declining society. An elite frozen into its position of power."

Bait Haer turned on him. "And is it any different in your part of the world?" he said aggressively. "Is it merely coincidence that the best positions in the Sov-world are held by Party members, and that it is all but impossible for anyone not born of Party member parents to become one? Are not the best schools filled with the children of Party members? Are not only Party members allowed to keep servants? And isn't it so that..."

"Gentlemen," Lieutenant Colonel Warren said, holding up a hand, in humor. "Let us not start World War Three at this spot and at this late date."

It was at that moment a harried hotel employee approached and said, "Colonel Arpad? Are one of you gentlemen Colonel Lajos Arpad?"

Warren said, indicating, "This is Colonel Arpad."

"You are wanted on the phone, sir."

The Hungarian seemed somewhat surprised. However, he shrugged slight shoulders in his tight uniform tunic and came to his feet. "If you gentlemen will excuse me ..." He bowed from the waist, turned and followed the bellhop.

He was taken to a small room leading off the reception offices and containing little save a phone-screen, small desk and several chairs.

The bellhop said, "It should be fairly quiet in here, sir," and left, closing the door behind him.

The phone-screen was blank. The Hungarian took the chair before it, frowning now. He said, "Colonel Arpad."

The screen said, "Scrambled."

The colonel's eyebrows, so thin as to be suspect of having been plucked, went up. He looked about the room, came back to his feet and checked the door. He shrugged again, returned to the phone and, taking a device from an inner tunic pocket, attached it to the screen.

The phone-screen lit up and the man who had introduced himself to Lieutenant Colonel Fodor as Smith said, "Comrade Arpad, please excuse this intrusion."

Arp&d was scowling puzzlement now. "Very well, Troll. How in the world did you know where I was? And what are you doing away from Greater Washington?"

"I spotted you, Comrade Colonel, quite by accident. You've been in the company of a man I was . . . assigned to."

"I see. Well?"

"There are some uncommon angles, Comrade Colonel. In view of you being on the scene, I thought I had better check with you."

"I see. Well?"

"This Captain Mauser. I have been given the assignment of . . . eliminating him."

"Eliminating him! Eliminating him from what? That is, lor what reason?"

"Evidently, from the Continental Hovercraft, Vacuum Tube Transport fracas, Comrade Colonel."

"But why? Who wants him eliminated, as you say?"

"Evidently, the orders came indirectly from Field Marshal Cogswell, in command of Continental Hovercraft."

Arpad stared at Smith's image in the screen. "Marshal Cogswell doesn't order the assassination of junior officers of the forces opposing him."

He who had named himself Smith said nothing.

Lajos Arpad thought about it, scowling his disbelief. He ran a manicured thumbnail along a moustache so trim as to be all but pretty. He said, "Why? Why does Cogswell wish I his Captain Mauser eliminated from the fracas?"

Smith shook his head. "I don't know, Comrade Colonel."

"Obviously something to do with the fracas coming up, eh? There could be no other reason."

"I don't know, Comrade Colonel. I was hired by their chief of intelligence. It is obviously very hush-hush. The pay was excellent."

Colonel Lajos Arpad was unhappy. His little moustache twitched. "When were you to accomplish this, Troll?" "Just so it is before the fracas, Comrade Colonel." "I don't like it."

"Comrade Colonel, if I fail in the assignment, I am afraid it will affect my cover. As it is, my reputation is such that I am beginning to make the inner contacts we wished. I am infiltrating with considerable success and being used by the highest of their power elite in their more desperate confrontations with each other. This is a relatively mild assignment, but I cannot afford to fail in it. It would destroy the image I have so carefully built."

"I understand all that," Arpad said impatiently. "See here. I want to know why it is deemed necessary to eliminate this junior officer."

Now it was Smith-Troll who was unhappy. "That won't be easy, Comrade Colonel. You . . . you think possibly it has something to do with violating the Disarmament Pact?"

"Very possibly," the Hungarian mused. "Don't read more into the Pact than is to be found there, Troll. For instance, did you know that rockets were in use, long, long before the turn of the Nineteenth Century into the Twentieth? They were invented by the Chinese, who used these so-called arrows of flying fire against the Mongols as far back as 1232 A. D. After Sir William Congreve drastically increased their range and developed an incendiary warhead, his rockets helped defeat the French Navy during the Bonaparte Wars. Right here in North America, the British rockets were used extensively in the attack on the American Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. Of course, they more or less faded from usage after that, until the Second World War."

Smith-Troll, said, puzzlement in his voice, "Yes, Comrade Colonel."

Arpad said impatiently, "The point I was making is that Budapest would not like to discover that on the pretext of utilizing weapons in use a hundred years and more ago, that the West-world was experimenting in rockets to the extent of turning them out in factories supposedly devoted to the fracases. I am not saying that this is what Mauser is up to, and is what Cogswell fears. I am simply pointing out that we must keep constant track of such mysterious matters as these. Find out why it is that the captain has been ordered destroyed, Troll."

"Yes, Comrade Colonel. I will try."

The colonel's face was suddenly both empty and cold. "You will do better than simply try, Comrade Troll."

Joe Mauser and Max Mainz made their way down the street, pushing and wedging themselves through the flocks of revelers, many of whom were already either full of trank or drunk. Joe was inwardly fuming, but Max Mainz had nlready forgotten the hassle in the hotel, in view of the fun nt hand.

"Hey, Joe, he chortled. "Lookit those two mopsies over there giving us the eye, eh? What'd'ya say? Should we give 'cm a fling?"

Joe Mauser growled, without looking at the girls in question, "No. There's more where they came from. Pick up a couple of curves now and you'll have them on your hands for the rest of the day."

"Well, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. That little fat one's got a lot of sparkle, Joe."

Joe's mind wasn't on the conversation. He was fuming over IFaer's attempt to humiliate him. Thank whatever gods applied, he hadn't told the young fop his plans. Had he, by now, undoubtedly, they would have been flung to the winds.

He said, "Let's go in here and get a man's drink."

Max tore his eyes away from the girls. "What's this, a Middle bar? I never was even in a Middle bar before. Let's go. This is our day to blast."

Inside it was as crowded as had been the hotel, but here wore to be found a wider selection of caste celebrants, evidently, those of Lower status found it easier to intrude on a Middle caste establishment, than an Upper one. For lliat matter, a few Uppers on a slumming expedition were nlso present. The fact that they were wearing their older clothing couldn't disguise mannerisms. Moreover Scottish and Irish tweeds, no matter the age, are a far cry from textile fibers derived from coal or wood.

Joe and Max had to wait only a moment before achieving an empty booth. Without waiting to ask Max his choice, Joe Mauser dialed two double Demara rums. The center of the table sank and came up again with the double shot glasses. He hadn't bothered to dial mixtures or even chasers.

Joe held up his drink to Max, "Here's to the Upper caste," he toasted, sneering deprecation.

"Yeah, okay," Max said, uncomprehending. "We gotta have somebody smart to run the country. You won't hear me saying anything against the government or the old-time way of doing things. It was good enough for my Daddy and ..."

"Shut up," Joe snarled. He knocked the large drink back over his palate.

Max blinked at him, took down half of his own rum. This time he blinked at the glass. "Wow," he said. "That packs a boot, eh, Joe?"

Joe said, "Want another?"

"Well, not till I finish this. Zen, I don't wanta get drenched this early in the day, and that champagne wine, it's stronger than it tastes."

Joe dialed another double for himself. It came back to him that he had picked up his taste for dark rum down in the islands, that time with Jim Hawkins when they'd fought on the Jamaica Military Reservation. The whole fracas had been a farce, a continuing comedy with both sides hard put to come to contact in the island's inland tropical jungles. But, at least, there'd been few casualties. Hangovers, yes, and quite a few mercenaries missing who had gone off A.W.O.L. with the dark complected mopsies who had infiltrated the reservation, right while the fracas was supposedly in progress. Jim had been disgusted, having evidently looked forward to fighting in this new environment.

Max said, "Zen, you taking still another one, Captain? You sure can put 'em down."

Joe had put his credit card on the payment screen and left it there. But now, suddenly, he took it up in self-disgust, finished his last drink and snapped, "Let's get out of here."

"Well, okay," Max said. "I wonder if them two curves found anybody yet."

Even as they pushed their way through the crowd toward ihe door, Joe growled over his shoulder, "Max, never run niter a bus or a girl, there'll be another one along in a few minutes."

Max laughed unnecessarily long and happily at that one, nnd was still chuckling as they emerged into the street. There it was found that the numbers of celebrants had doubled since their entry to the bar.

"Wow," Max said. "This is life. Zenl I shoulda crossed over to Category Military years ago."

"In which case, chances are you'd be dead now," Joe told him.

"Well, you're not, and you been in it a long time."

Joe said soberly, "Borrowed time, Max. Time borrowed from a lot of lads I've known down through those years, who aren't around now."

A bevy of girls, at least a dozen of them, in their late teens or early twenties, all attired in a feminine version of the Haer uniform, a nonofficial version, swarmed around them. One threw a handful of confetti in Joe's face, and laughed nl him when he grumbled protest. Her eyes were bright with trank.

"Surrender! Surrender!" they were yelling. "You've copped one!"

The mob ebbed, flowed, ebbed, calling, yelling, laughing, ii nd when things had cleared a bit, Max was nowhere to be seen. That wasn't exactly unexpected. It was probable Max had taken off with one of the girls, impatient with Joe's humor. And possibly Joe Mauser would run into him ngain, sometime during the day or the evening to come. Meanwhile, he wasn't particularly sorry to be left to his own devices. He wasn't in the frame of mind to keep pace with I lie smaller man's acceptance of the election day fete.

Joe pushed and wedged his way on down the street, standing in doorways, from time to time, to avoid the larger bands of drunks, screaming kids or the parades of amateur musicians. He came eventually to another bar—there seemed to be an inordinate number of them in Kingston, even for a military reservation staging town—and entered, grateful to get out of the press.

There were no empty tables, nor should he have taken one if there had been. He was only one and he neither wished to monopolize that amount of room, nor share the space, since that would have inevitably led to conversation with strangers. Instead, he found a corner at the bar and fished out his credit card. He looked about. It was another Middle establishment which, in his present frame of mind, suited him. He wanted neither the more plush atmosphere of an Upper resort, nor the noise, confusion and unkempt qualities of a Lower dive.

He put the card on a payment screen and began to dial.

There was someone in civilian dress standing next to him. The other said, "Can I buy you a drink, soldier?"

Joe grunted, "No," then added, still without looking at the man, "Thanks."

"Why not?"

That irritated Joe Mauser. But, for that matter, almost anything the stranger might have said probably would have irritated him. Joe looked up and said flatly, "Because I don't particularly like buffs who come to a town like this just before a fracas to get their kicks associating with combat men, who are possibly going to cop their last one in a day or two."

"I don't blame you," the other said. "Neither do I."

Joe looked at him. "Neither do you what?"

"Look," the stranger said. "I'm in town on business. I don't follow the fracases. I haven't seen one in, oh, ten years or more. There's enough violence in the world without fracases."

Joe grunted and took the man in, in more detail. He saw a rather wiry type, conservatively dressed, not particularly outstanding in any respect and who seemingly meant what he was saying.

Joe said, "What're you drinking?" There was a pony sized glass in front of the stranger.

"Barack," the man said. "Try one. Name's Smith."

"Mine's Mauser. What's barack?"

"A brandy made from apricots. Very good."

Joe twisted his face. "Sounds sweet. I've been drinking rum."

"Have a rum, then. But barack's not sweet. It's distilled, and redistilled, until there's no sweet left. Very distant flavor of apricots, but no sweetness."

"All right," Joe said. "I'll have a barack."

The drink was delivered from the automatic bar lift, and Joe made a half motion toward Smith with the glass, as though in toast, and knocked it back. He was somewhat surprised. The stuff was as strong as any potable he could remember drinking, stronger than the potent rum he'd had earlier.

Smith said, "Zen! You're not supposed to toss it off like (hat. Barack's sipping liqueur."

"It is at that," Joe admitted. "The next one's on me. I'm In no mood for slow drinking, though."

"Something wrong?"

"Why don't you like the fracases?"

"I told you. There's enough violence in the world without asking for it."

"Is at that," Joe repeated. He was beginning to feel his drinking. After all, he had nothing beyond breakfast on his slomach and it must have been well into the afternoon by now. He added, "I don't like them either," and was mildly surprised to find he had a slight slur in his voice.

"Oh?" Smith said, an inflection of understanding in his lone. "But you're scheduled for this one coming up?"

Joe finished the new barack and blinked to see there was n fresh one before him. He took it up. "Yeah. But this is 1110 last one. This is the last fracas for Mauser."

"That's interesting," Smith said. "Have enough savings (o call it quits, eh?"

"Not yet," Joe chortled, more to himself than aloud. "But niter this one. After this one, old pro Mauser calls it quits."

He tossed back the new drink and looked at the order screen owlishly. He had really been knocking them back, these past few minutes. But then, what the hell. Why not? He seldom overindulged, and this was election day. There was no duty. Tomorrow, he'd be elbow deep in work, whipping those inexperienced, trank-happy yokes into some semblance of Rank Privates. Tomorrow was another day. Besides, he was still irritated by that puppy, Bait Haer.

His newfound friend put his credit card on the payment screen and dialed still once again.

"Figure on making your bundle on this one, eh?" Smith said, pushing the new drink in Joe's direction.

"Yeah," Joe confided. "I got a new gimmick that'll really set them back." He scowled, trying to bring something to mind, that he knew he should have in mind, but failing. Something was wrong somewhere. He took half the drink down.

"You're not drinking," he accused Smith.

Smith held up his own glass, which was half full. "Yes, I am. What kind of gimmick? I'm afraid I'm not knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the fracas."

Joe said, "What'd you say the name of this drink was?"

"Barack."

"Where's it from? Never heard of it," Joe said sourly.

Smith hesitated only momentarily. "I think originally from Hungary. But they must make it over here now. I don't imagine they import it from the Sov-world."

"Hungary?" Joe said slurringly. Then it came to him why he had thought something was wrong. He had glimpsed, fleetingly, Smith's credit card. The name on it hadn't been Smith. He hadn't been able to make it out, but it hadn't been Smith, that was for sure.

He said, "Your name isn't Smith."

Smith looked at him and took a small tin from his jerkin pocket. He opened it and took one of the white pills inside. "What difference does it make? We'll never see each other again after today. What was it you were saying about a special gimmick that was going to pay off so well in this

fracas?"

Joe's eyes narrowed. He began to take up his glass to finish it off, but then sat it down abruptly. "Screw off, you funker," he snarled.

"What's the matter, Joe?"

Joe Mauser looked at him. He shook his head to clear some of the brandy fumes. "How'd you know my name was Joe?" "You told me."

"Like hell I did. I told you my name was Mauser." Joe Mauser turned abrupdy and made his way in the direction of the door.

Smith looked after him and swore beneath his breath.

X

OTTT ON the street, the change in temperature hit him hard. It had been cool and comfortable in the bar. Out on the street, the midsummer day was now at its full. Nor did the mobs of milling, perspiring drunks and trank bemused celebrants help to throw off the heat.

For a period, the fog rolled in on him.

When it rolled out, he was at least several blocks away Tiom the bar where he had met the civilian who had called himself Smith. Largely, Joe Mauser had forgotten the man, save for a slight irritation. He had been shooting off his mouth like an inebriated Rank Private on his first victory hinge.

Somebody was saying to him, "Hi, Major you look a bit worse for wear."

She was a bouffant type, strictly in current style, with a pile of flaming red curls on her head, very blue eyes, now squinted in amusement, a small alert face and skin like cream. Her figure was nicely hearty, with a hand-span waist, swelling richly both above and below. And she was wearing a takeoff on the Haer uniform, as so many of the female contingent of the celebrating crowds were today. On her, Joe Mauser decided, the Vacuum Tube Transport kilts looked fetching, particularly since the material and the tailoring were no product of mass production textile industry.

"I feel a bit the worse for wear," Joe told her ruefully. "Take it from an old hand, don't mix rum and barack."

She stood there before him, her knuckles on her hips, legs spread slightly. "I could ask you what barack is," she grinned, "but the hell with it. I can guess. Major, I feel a good deed coming on. How would you like a sandwich, or maybe two, and a cold plastic of beer to sober up on?"

The situation was not exactly new to him, only a slight variation on the theme. He shook his head to achieve a modicum more of clarity. She was as attractive an item as he had seen this day, her voice denoted education, she was most certainly neither drunk nor under trank, and she seemed to have a sense of humor. The way he was feeling, a sense of humor he could appreciate.

For the briefest of moments, the thought of Nadine Haer came to him. But he shook his head again, this time angrily. One of the Haer family, sister to Bait. An hereditary aristocrat. She hadn't the vaguest idea in the world that Joe Mauser even existed. By this time she had forgotten her earnest conversation of the day before. She was a crusader, sure, willing to discuss her particular fixation with anybody who would listen, regardless of caste, background, education or anything else. But so far as having any interest in Joe Mauser as an individual was concerned—don't be amusing, Captain. Besides being a supremely attractive woman, undoubtedly with the usual vanity pertaining to such, I am a Haer. A Mid-Upper. A doctor of medicine. And what are you? A mercenary. A killer by trade. A Mid-Middle in caste, and even that only through the most ruthless of caste-climbing, for you are a Lower by birth, Captain Mauser.

Now this girl was another thing. Joe Mauser took her in again. There was a glint of amusement, and something else in her eye.

Joe took a deep breath. "A sandwich, I could use. Where can we buy one?"

She laughed and took his arm, swinging in beside him, and leading the way. "Major, I wouldn't wish a restaurant-bought snack on you in this town today, even if I were a secret agent for old Baron Zwerdling."

He was mildly surprised. "You mean you'll make it yourself?" He didn't know where she was taking him and didn't particularly care.

"Zen forbid] Here we are."

She had led him slightly up a side street and to where a natty, low-slung hoverlimousine was parked. He recognized it vaguely as a model produced in Common Europe, in that area once known as Italy.

She opened the door for him in a mock gesture, and helped Iiim in as though he were elderly, then went around the car and slid in behind the driver's controls.

He tried to rally. "Where away?" he said.

"I'll never tell," she told him, dropping the lift lever. Air cushion borne, the vehicle slipped slowly ahead, slowly gathered speed.

She touched a button and his window opened and he breathed in the cool air gratefully. "That's better," he said.

She looked over at him from the side of her eyes. "Any-lliing'd be better. You should have seen yourself coming up the street, tacking to starboard."

They were quickly out of town and heading up the road that bordered the Hudson River, through endless apple orchards. After a few miles, she turned to the left, over an nir cushion strip that seemed to be private.

"Where're we going?" he asked again.

"To my place," she said easily.

"Oh?" He looked over at her. She was a bit older than he had at first thought. Probably in her early thirties, rather than her mid-twenties. There were the very slight lines at tlie sides of her eyes, very slight wrinkles at her throat

However, she evidently had the wherewithal to fight off time —for awhile. In the long run, of course, it is a battle that cannot be won. She was probably a fairly well-to-do Upper-Middle, Joe guessed. All of which was for the good. He had certain masculine qualms about the young girls on the make that often turned up in the fracas staging cities.

He said, "You live here in the Catskills?"

"Sometimes." She brushed it off. "You don't appear to be the bottle-baby type, Major. Some special event?"

He was mildly irritated by her prying. "Not really. Just got going too early on the election day festival."

They whooshed before a sizable establishment, and got only a fast view of gardens, lawns, tennis courts, an extensive swimming pool, before they were at the door. It was on the ultra-modern side, and Joe Mauser wasn't particularly taken by the trend of architecture was on this past decade or two. However, who was he to complain? Offhand, he couldn't remember ever having been in quite this opulent an establishment before.

"You live here?" he said.

"As ever was," she said, popping open her door. She was out and around and going through the mocking motions of helping him again.

"All right, all right," he grumbled.

She ran her eyes up and down him, calculatingly. "Recovering already, eh?" she said. "Without my ministrations, even. You're a fake, Major. I don't think you were really in distress at all."

She turned and skipped up the steps of the entry, and he plodded along behind. He wasn't feeling as recovered as all that. Somewhat to his surprise, he noted that the day was well along. He couldn't remember what had happened to it all. Possibly he had been blanked out longer than he thought. Or possibly he had been in some of the bars longer than he had thought. Or in more of them. This wasn't like Joe Mauser. He hadn't blacked out from alcohol a half dozen times in his whole life.

Now that they were inside, the place didn't seem as extensive as all that. Lush, yes. But only moderately large. Joe looked about them as they progressed down a hall. There was a library to one side, a dining room to the other. Somehow, it all had an unlived in quality. He had run into the same thing before in the homes of the very rich, a sterile something that gave you the feeling that nobody, even the proud owner of the overly swank house or apartment, was really comfortable there.

He wondered vaguely what type of home man would gravitate toward if nothing but his real desire, his real idea of comfort, was involved. No status symbolism, no keeping up with the neighbors, no artificial stimulus to own or control rooms far outnumbering need. He grunted inward amusement. He had known Uppers, in the Category Military, whose idea of the best of all possible times was to retreat to Alaska and spend a few weeks there in a one room log cabin.

"What's funny?" she said. "By the way, I'm Ann."

"I'm Joe. This is a pretty luxurious layout you've got here."

"Like it?" she said, leading him into a sunken living room, complete with a monstrous fireplace and other anachronisms from yesteryear.

"No."

He had decided by now that she wasn't an Upper-Middle. Not with this kind of wealth to throw around. She was probably at least a Low-Upper.

While he sank into a comfort-couch, she put her knuckles on her hips again, in the stance in which he had first seen her, and looked at him speculatively.

"Hmm," she said, "at least you've sobered up enough to make cracks. You want some food first, or a drink?" She made a motion with her head. "The bar's over there. Do you know how to mix your own, or have you used auto-bars all your life?"

There had been a slight tone of deprecation in that last. Joe looked at her. "I can mix my own," he said gently. "However, I think Yd prefer the sandwich right now."

She made a mock salute, did an about-face and marched from the room, the Haer kilts swaying bewitchingly about her full hips.

She was gone for a sufficient period for Joe Mauser to have second thoughts about that drink she had offered. He was either going to have to get some food on his stomach, or take up the blast where he had left off.

When she did return, his eyebrows rose.

She carried a tray; on it were three smaller platters, each piled high with sandwiches. They were elaborate productions, and he doubted that she had made them. There were also smaller dishes with nuts, potato chips, cheese crackers and such. All in all, it seemed the land of food to settle an alcoholic stomach on the quick—if it wasn't too far gone.

She placed the tray before him with a gesture for him to dig in.

But it hadn't been the food he was staring at.

Ann had gotten into something more comfortable, in this warm weather, and still be considered clothed. She was even barefooted.

He selected a sandwich of Virginia ham and Swiss cheese, and eyed her speculatively as he took the first bite. He wasn't completely unknowledgeable about food, although he made no pretense of being a gourmet. The cheese was undoubtedly from Switzerland and the ham had never seen a Food Category establishment.

She said brighdy, "Beer? I have some real pivo from Belgrade."

"What's pivo?"

"The best beer in the world. Serbian. Very strong, very dark, very heavy."

He took up another sandwich. "From the Sov-world, eh? You do have expensive tastes. There doesn't seem to be anybody else around at all. Do you own this place?"

"I rent it, Joe," she said, her face expressionless. "I let the servants off for the day."

Joe said slowly, around the sandwich, "You rent it just for a few weeks, immediately before and during a fracas?"

The shine he had noticed in her eyes earlier, and hadn't quite understood, was there again. She leaned forward, her tongue, very pink, showed its tip, and licked the full lower lip. She had slid slightly closer to him, and her new position was even more revealing. She was an unbelievably attractive woman.

"How did you guess?" she said. "I'm a real gone fracas buff, Joe. I ... I love it. The Telly's all right, but—you know what? This house is built very advantageously. From the lower, With the telescope, you can see an amazing amount of the reservation. If you have the good luck for the fighting to swing down this way, you can often pick it up alive." I see.

She moved slightly, even closer.

She said, "Joe. Captain Joe Mauser. The old pro of them all. Joe, I've followed the fracases since I was a kid. I simply can't get enough. I love it. I love everything about it. Joe, you know why I brought you here? I know what you lads like before a fracas."

He said, "How'd you know my name? All I told you was Joe." There was a weariness in his voice now.

She smiled slowly at him, her mouth slack.

"I've known your face, your figure, your walk, the tone of your voice even, for more than ten years, Joe Mauser. Since you were no more than a lance corporal. I can remem-hcr that time on the Big Sur Reservation in California, when you copped three mini balls and they left you for dead for several hours. And then you spent almost six months in I he hospital. I can remember that. It was the first time you were ever written up in the buff magazines."

Yes, Joe could remember it, too.

"The articles weren't really about you, though. They dealt mostly with the man in the bed next to yours, Jim Hawkins. You got in on the stories because you became his friend. I remember it all, Joe."

And Joe could too. Yes, that's where he had met Jim. Off and on for the next six years or so they had remained Imddies, participating in a dozen fracases together. Jim. (lame to think of it, Jim wasn't only the best friend he had ever had, he had probably been the only real one he had ever had.

She was saying, "I know what you lads like, before a fracas, Joe Mauser, and I don't mind putting out. But first, let's talk about combat a little. Do you remember the first man you ever killed, Joe?"

He remembered, all right. But it wasn't exactly a man. The kid couldn't have been more than seventeen, and it was obviously his first fracas. He had jumped into a shell hole trying to find cover and had found Joe there instead. Joe had finished him with a trench knife, but it had taken several hours for the boy to die. Several hours during which Joe couldn't leave, since the whole area was pinned down by a barrage.

Joe said, ^No, I can't remember that."

She laughed throatily. "That's the way it is with you Category Military mercenaries. A good buff can remember better than you can."

She leaned forward again, her eyes hot now, smoldering. "Joe Mauser, I can remember the biggest one you were ever in. I'll tell you about it. Then . . . then you can do whatever you want to me .. . Joe."

He looked at her emptily.

She said, "It was those two big aircraft concerns. Lockheed-Cessna and Douglas-Boeing. Do you remember what they were fighting about?"

"No," Joe said. "I suppose not. I seldom know what they're fighting about, even at the time."

"Stonewall Cogswell—they were already beginning to call him that—was commanding your flank of the Lockheed-Cessna forces, but he was only a general then."

Joe said nothing. She licked her lower hp again and went on. "You were a second lieutenant."

So had Jim Hawkins been. Shavetails.

She was knowledgeable. Far beyond the type of buff who watched Telly without actually knowing what was going on beyond the pure violence of it all.

She was saying, "You people were doing all right until r.angenscheidt—he was commanding Douglas-Boeing—brought In those light, easily portable, French machine guns. What do they call them?" "Mitrailleuse."

"Yes. Up until then, in the fracases, machine guns were I lie heavy type, as was usual pre-Twentieth Century. Gat-ling guns, and Maxims with water-cooled jackets, which have I heir shortcomings in the field. You can't always find water."

No, you can't always find water when your gun has a water-cooled jacket. Joe could remember the time on the Chihuahua Reservation when his battalion was completely surrounded and- they hadn't even water to drink and were down to one Maxim gun. They had to keep it going or the enemy, largely cavalry, would have overrun them. They had passed a helmet around, and each man had urinated it in. It had kept the gun going and postponed their surrender lor a full forty-eight hours.

"But somebody on General Langenscheidt's staff had done some research and came up with the fact that the French had used a light machine gun back in the Franco-Prussian War of Eighteen-Seventy-One, the mitrailleuse. And they had them all ready for you."

Joe said nothing.

Her eyes were wide and shining.

"Cogswell made his mistake when he ordered that charge up the hill. He couldn't have known that a dozen rapid lirers were up there. He thought the fracas was in the hat, that one determined charge would end it."

Joe shook his head, as though refuting what was to come.

"You went up in the first wave, you and your company. You were the only officer that survived."

"Yes," Joe said dully.

"There shouldn't have been a second wave. But you'd copped one. Not bad, as it turned out later, but your buddy, Lieutenant Hawkins, didn't know that. He came after you."

Joe closed his eyes.

"I remember it, as though it were an hour ago. There was a Telly pillbox only a few yards away; it was all very clear. Beautiful coverage, wonderful color tones. Hawkins came running, bent almost double, the way you men run when you're going into fire, trying to make yourself as small as possible, I suppose. Trying to be as small a target as possible. He came running, and by the time he got to the shell hole where you had fallen, he was alone. His squad had all either taken cover, or had copped one."

She hesitated or a long moment, then said, "He got to the edge of the shell hole before the burst hit him. He was almost to you."

"Shut up," Joe said, so lowly as hardly to be heard. "Shut up, you bitch. You bitch—bitch."

She muttered hody, "Joe Mauser. Take me now. Anything you want. Anyway you want. Then the next few days, when you're in there, think about me, Joe. Be thinking about me!"

He could have taken her hoverlimousine. It was still parked there before the house. But he didn't. He walked down the air cushion strip toward the highway. It would be completely dark in another half hour or so, but he didn't care. Kingston was a few miles, but he could use the walk.

Very briefly, he wondered if he had broken her nose or jaw, but he didn't really care. All he wanted was to get completely away from her.

He was cold sober now. He would have expected his mind to be bitterly full of it all, but it wasn't. He was tuned off completely. Thinking of nothing whatsoever. The highway wasn't quite so far as he had remembered. He swung out onto the edge of it and turned right and began to walk toward Kingston.

He heard the sound of the a car behind him and walked further to the side to avoid it.

But it pulled up to a stop and a voice called out, "Want a ride, soldier?"

Joe shook his head and went on walking. It was a rented car, one of the standard models. "No thanks," he said.

"You better get in, Joe," the voice said.

Joe Mauser came to a halt and peered into the vehicle. For a moment he didn't recognize the man, but then it came hack to him. The fellow next to him in the bar, the one who had introduced him to that Hungarian drink, barack. Joe had been pretty well drenched but there was something else about the guy, something Joe hadn't liked. He couldn't quite remember what it was.

"No thanks," he said again.

"Come on, come on," the man said impatiently. "I have something I want to talk to you about."

The hell with it. Joe shrugged, half angrily, and climbed into the car through the door the driver had opened for him.

"I've forgotten your name," he said ungraciously. He was in no mood for amenities.

"Smith," the driver said. "And you're Major Joe Mauser."

Then it came back to Joe. Earlier that day, the man had used Joe's name, in spite of the fact that Joe had introduced himself only as Mauser. He felt an edge of caution. It was one thing, the girl knowing him, since she was a fracas buff, but this fellow claimed that he didn't like them.

Smith was saying, "You know, it's lucky I ran into you like this. I have been thinking of something you were saying, there in the bar."

It came to Joe Mauser that it wasn't luck that this fellow had run into him again; it had been planned. He had heard the car start up behind him, after he had come down the side road from Ann's rented house. Smith had obviously trailed him.

Instinctively, Joe fell into an act. He slumped back into the corner of his side of the car and muttered, "Zen, am I drenched. Haven't got another drink in this car, have you?"

"No," Smith said, even as they surged ahead. "I am afraid not. Undoubtedly, the bars will still be open in Kingston. I'll buy you one there. But meanwhile, Joe, this idea I've had. There's a way we can both accumulate some Variable Common Basic stock shares."

"How?" Joe slurred. However, he was cold sober beneath

US

the act he was putting on. If this so-called Smith had actually followed him since he had left the bar where they had been drinking together, then the last time Smith had seen Joe, just before he had entered the house with Ann, Joe had been well under the weather. Smith probably believed that Joe had had still more to drink inside the house. In short, Smith thought he was completely drunk. Well, let him.

Smith said earnestly, "I don't suppose you know that the odds against Baron Haer are something like ten to one."

"That bad?" Joe slurred.

"Yes. At least that bad. Now, it so happens I have a bit of Variable Basic Common that I could immediately convert for wagering. At ten to one, even if we split fifty-fifty, Joe, that would mean that each of us would have five times the amount I would bet."

"Whatcha gonna bet on?" Joe muttered. "I feel awful."

"Why, you intimated, back there in the bar, that you knew of something that was going to make you rich. That this was to be your last fracas. You were going to be able to retire after it. Now, obviously, the only thing that could make you rich so quickly would be some inside information about this fracas, probably something that will enable the Baron Haer to win. You've probably got everything you, yourself, can get hold of wagered on the outcome. All I'm suggesting is that you let me in on it, and I'll split my earnings with you, fifty-fifty."

Joe pretended to be thinking about it, slowly, sluggishly, as a drunk thinks.

He said finally, " Suppose I don't have any . . , any inside dope?"

"But you have, Joe Mauser."

"How do you know?"

"I just know. And I think it would be wisest if you told me."

"Well, I don't." "You refuse?"

"I haven't anything to tell you. So let's forget about it." Joe Mauser could see the gleam of the hand gun in Smith's grip. Nor was it the kind of weapon Joe Mauser was used to in the fracases, a Colt or Smith and Wessen .44 or .45 caliber, of the type used before the turn of the century. Smith's small gun was ultra-modern, and, by the dim look at it Joe could get, was probably of Sov-world manufacture. So, the man drank barack from Hungary, and carried a Sov-world gun. Very interesting, indeed.

"Don't move, Captain Mauser," Smith said. "I'm going to inject you with a hypodermic."

"Hpodermic?" Joe slurred, still maintaining the air of a drunk. "I don't wanta take nothing, except maybe another drink."

Smith said, his voice smooth, but dangerous, "It's Scop, Captain Mauser. Truth serum, so called. And I'll put this to you very clearly. You either take it, or I'll shoot you square in the stomach, and dump you out at... "

It was Smith's first sizable mistake, in a long career of avoiding serious mistakes. He had no way of knowing Joe was cold sober. Nor was he aware of the abnormally fast reflexes of old pro Joe Mauser, reflexes that had seen him through the dill a score of times and more in the past two decades when military situations had pickled.

Joe's left flicked, chopped the Smith's gun hand in a blur of judo motion.

Smith grunted surprise, tried to lurch after the weapon, but Joe Mauser caught it with his right hand before it had hit the floor.

He ground the gun into the agent's side. "Pull up," he snarled.

But Smith was no coward, and no fool. He knew he couldn't afford to be taken before the West-world authorities. They too had Scop, or its equivalent. His whole career would be out in the open, given suspicion on the part of the Category Security branch of the government.

He lunged.

And Joe Mauser pressed the trigger, once, twice, three times. Then he dropped the gun and with his left hand steered the vehicle to the side of the road. The man who had called himself Smith was very dead. Joe managed to bring the car to a stop, got out and walked around it to the driver's side. He opened the door and pulled the agent free. It was all luck, now. All whether or not another car came along while he was disposing of the body.

Of course, he had killed in self defense, but that wasn't it. He had no doubt that ultimately he would be exonerated by the authorities. The thing was, it might take time, and he didn't have time. He had to be in the action when the forces of Barons Haer and Zwerdling clashed.

XI

BARON MALCOLM HAER'S field headquarters were in the ruins of a farm house in a town once known as Bearsville. His forces, and those of Marshal Stonewall Cogswell, were on the march but as yet their main bodies had not come in contact. Save for skirmishes between cavalry units, there had been no action. The ruined farm house had been a victim of an earlier fracas in this reservation which had seen in its comparatively brief time more combat than Belgium, that cockpit of Europe.

There was a sheen of oily moisture on the Baron's bulletlike head and his officers weren't particularly happy about it. Malcolm Haer characteristically went into a fracas with confidence, an aggressive confidence- so strong that it often carried the day. In battles past, it had become a tradition that Haer's morale was worth a thousand men; the energy he expended was the despair of his doctors, who had been warning him for a decade. But now, something was missing.

A forefinger traced over the military chart before them. "So far as we know, Marshal Cogswell has established his command here near Saugerties. Anybody have any suggestions as to why?"

"It doesn't make much sense, sir," a major grumbled. "You know the marshal. It's probably a fake. If we have any superiority at all, it's our artillery."

"And the old fox wouldn't want to join the issue on the plains, down near the river," a colonel added. "It's his game to keep up into the mountains with his cavalry and light infantry. He's got Jack Altshuler's cavalry. Most experienced veterans in the field."

"I know who he's got," Haer growled in irritation. "Stop reminding me. Where in the devil is Bait?"

"Coming up, sir," Bait Haer said. He had entered only moments earlier, a sheaf of signals in his hand. "Why didn't they make that date Nineteen-ten instead of Nineteen-hundred? With radio, we could speed up communications ..."

His father interrupted testily, "Better still, why not make it Nineteen-forty-five? Then we could speed up to the point where we could polish ourselves off. What have you got?"

Bait Haer said, "Some of my lads based in West Hurley report concentrations of Cogswell's infantry and artillery near Ashokan reservoir."

"Nonsense," somebody snapped. "We'd have him."

The younger Haer slapped his swagger stick against his bare leg and kilt. "Possibly it's a feint," he admitted. "That would be typical of Cogswell."

"How much were you lads able to observe?" bis father demanded.

"Not much, sir. They were driven off by a superior squadron. The Hovercraft forces are screening everything they do with heavy cavalry units. I told you we needed more horse, sir. I can't..."

"I don't need your advise at this point," his father snapped. The older Haer went back to the map, scowling still. "I don't see what he expects to do, working out of the Sauger-ties area."

A voice behind them said, "Sir, may I have your permission to ..."

Half of the assembled officers turned to look at the newcomer. It was Joe Mauser.

Bait Haer snapped, "Major Mauser, why aren't you in the field with your lads?"

"I turned them over to my second in command, sir," Joe Mauser said. He was standing at attention, looking at Baron Haer, the commander in chief.

The Baron glowered at him. "What is the meaning of this cavalier intrusion, Major? Certainly, you must have your orders. Are you under the illusion that you are part of my staff?"

"No, sir," Joe Mauser clipped. "I came to report that I am ready to put into execution ..."

"The great plan!" Bait Haer ejaculated. He laughed brit-tly. "The second day of the fracas, and nobody really knows where old Cogswell is, or what he plans to do. And here comes the captain with his secret plan, the big gimmick to win the battle."

Joe looked at him. He said, evenly, "Yes, sir."

The Baron's face had gone dark, as much in anger at his son, as with the upstart acting cavalry major. He began to growl ominously. "Major Mauser, rejoin your command and obey your orders."

Joe Mauser's facial expression indicated that he had expected this. He kept his voice level however, even under the chuckling scom of his immediate superior, Bait Haer.

He said, "Sir, I will be able to tell you where Marshal Cogswell is, and every troop at his command."

For a moment there was silence, all but a stunned silence. Then the major who had suggested the Saugerties field command headquarters was a fake, blurted a curt laugh.

"This is no time for levity, Captain," Bait Haer clipped. "Get to your command."

A colonel said unhappily, "Just a moment, sir. I've fought with Joe Mauser before, both on his side and against him. He's a good man."

"Not that good," someone else huffed. "Does he claim to be clairvoyant?"

Joe Mauser said flatly, "Have a semaphore man posted here this afternoon. I'll be back at that time." He spun on his heel and left them.

Bait Haer rushed to the door after him shouting, "Captain! That's an order! Return at once to your command and obey the orders I. . . "

But Joe had disappeared. Enraged, the younger Haer began to shrill commands to a noncom in the way of organizing a pursuit.

His father called wearily, "That's enough, Bait. Mauser has evidently taken leave of his senses. We made the initial mistake of encouraging this idea he had, or thought that he had."

"We?" his son snapped in return. "I had nothing to do with it."

"All right, all right, confound it," Baron Haer growled. "Let's tighten up here. Now, what other information have your scouts come up with? Above all, we've got to locate Marshal Cogswell's main force."

At the Kingston airport, Joe Mauser rejoined Max Mainz, his face drawn now.

"Everything go all right?" the little man said anxiously.

"I don't know," Joe said. "I still couldn't tell them the story. Old Cogswell is as quick as a coyote. We pull this little caper today, and he'll be ready to meet it tomorrow."

He looked at the two-place sailplane which sat on the tarmac. "Everything all set? Have you got everything into it?"

"Far as I know," Max said. He looked at the motorless aircraft. "You sure you been checked out on these things, Captain?"

Joe snorted sour amusement. "Yes," he said. "Don't worry about that angle. I bought this particular soaring glider more than a year ago, and I've put almost a thousand hours in it. That's a lot of gliding, Max. Now, where's the pilot of that li<xht plane?"

A single-engined sports plane was attached to the glider by a fifty foot nylon rope. Even as Joe spoke, a youngster poked his head from the plane's window and grinned back at them. "Ready?" he yelled. "Let's get this show on the road. I want to get back to my Telly set. The biggest fracas of the year's going on."

"Come on, Max," Joe said. "Let's pull the canopy off this thing. We don't want it in the way when you're doing your semaphoring."

A figure was approaching them, without haste, from the airport's Administration Building. A uniformed man, and somehow familiar.

"A moment," Captain Mauserl"

Joe placed him now. The Sov-world representative he had met at Bait Haer's table in the Upper bar at the hotel a couple of days ago. What was the man's name? Colonel Arpâd. Lajos Arpàd from Budapest, capital of the Sov-world.

The Hungarian approached and looked at the sailplane in interest. "As a representative of my government, a military attaché checking upon possible violations of the Universal Disarmament Pact, may I request what you are about to do, Captain Mauser?"

Joe looked at him emptily. "How did you know I was here, and what I was doing?"

The Sov-world colonel smiled gently. "I received the hint from Marshal Cogswell. He is a great man for detail, isn't it so? It disturbed him that an . . . what did he call it? ... an old pro like yourself should join with Vacuum Tube Transport, rather than Continental Hovercraft. He didn't think it made sense and suggested that possibly you had in mind some scheme that would utilize weapons of a post Nineteen-hundred period in your efforts to bring success to Baron Malcolm Haer's forces. So I have gone to the bother of investigating, Captain Mauser."

"And the marshal knows about this sailplane?" Joe Mauser's face was blank. Surely it couldn't have all gone to pot at this late date, not after all the planning, all the time and expense.

"I didn't say that, did I?" The Hungarian was shaking his head, even as he continued to stare at the glider, flicking his manicured thumbnail over his dainty moustache. "So far as I know, he doesn't."

"Then, Colonel Arpad, with your permission, I'll be taking off."

The Hungarian's eyes narrowed. "With what end in mind, Captain Mauser?"

"Using this glider as a reconnaisance aircraft, obviously," Joe said.

The Sov-world officer shook his head. "Captain, I warn you! Aircraft was not in use in warfare, until past the turn of the century. They were first utilized by the Italians in the Balkan Wars."

But Joe Mauser cut him off, equally briskly. "As a matter of fact, Colonel, they were used even earlier than that by Pancho Villa's forces in Mexico during the revolution that started in Nineteen-ten. But those were powered craft, as were the Italian planes used against the Turks. This is a glider, invented and in use before the year nineteen-hundred and hence open to utilization."

The Hungarian clipped, "But the Wright Brothers didn't fly even gliders until the year .. ."

Joe looked at him full in the face. "But we weren't talking about the Wright Brothers. You of the Sov-world do not admit that the Wrights were the first to fly, do you?"

The Hungarian closed his mouth abruptly. He stared at Joe Mauser, blinking.

Joe said evenly, "But even if Ivan Ivanovitch, or whatever you claim his name was, didn't invent flight of heavier than aircraft, the glider was flown variously before Nineteen-hundred, including Otto Lilienthal in the Eighteen-nineties. For that matter, a glider was designed as far back as Leonardo da Vinci, although admittedly, that model was never flown."

The Sov-world colonel continued to stare at him for a long pregnant moment, then gave an inane giggle. He stepped back and flicked Joe Mauser a salute.

"Very well, Captain. As a matter of routine, I shall report this use of an aircraft for reconnaissance purposes, and undoubtedly a commission will meet to investigate the propriety of the departure. Meanwhile, good lucid"

Joe returned the salute and swung a leg over the cockpit's side. Max was already in the front seat, his semaphore flags, maps and binoculars on his lap. He had been staring in dismay at the Sov officer, now was relieved that Joe had evidently pulled it off.

Joe waved to the plane ahead. Two mechanics had come up to steady the wings of the glider for the initial ten or fifteen feet of the motorless craft's passage over the ground behind the towing craft.

Joe said to Max, "Did you explain to the pilot that under no circumstances was he to pass over the line of the military reservation, that we'd cut before we reached that point?"

"Yes, sir," Max said nervously. He had flown before, on the commercial lines, and for that matter in the small craft with Joe several days before, but he had never been in a glider previous to this day.

They began lurching across the field, slowly, then gathering speed. And as the sailplane took speed, it took grace. After it had been pulled a hundred feet or so, Joe eased back the stick and it slipped gently into the air, four or five feet off the ground. The towing airplane was still taxiing, but with its tow airborne, it picked up speed quickly. Another two hundred feet and it, too, was in the air and beginning to climb. The glider behind held it to a speed of sixty miles or so.

At ten thousand feet, the plane leveled off and the pilot's head swiveled to look back at them. Joe Mauser waved to him and dropped the release lever which ejected the nylon rope from the glider's nose. The plane dove away, trailing the rope behind it. Joe knew that the plane pilot would later drop it over the airport where it could easily be retrieved.

In the direction of Mount Overlook, he could see cumulus clouds and the dark turbulence which meant strong updraft. He headed in that direction.

Except for the whistling of wind, there was complete silence in the soaring glider. Max Mainz began to call to his superior, lint was taken aback by the volume, and dropped his voice. He said, "Look, Captain. What keeps it up?"

Joe grinned. He liked the buoyance of glider flying, the nearest approach of man to the bird, and thus far everything was going well. He told Max, "An airplane plows through the air currents; a glider rides on top of them."

"Yeah, but suppose the current is going down?"

"Then we avoid it. This sailplane only has a gliding angle ratio of one to twenty-five, but it's a workhorse with a pay-load of some four hundred pounds. A really high" performance glider can have a ratio of as much as one to forty."

Joe had found a strong updraft where a wind ran up the side of a mountain. He banked, went into a circling turn. The gauge indicated they were climbing at the rate of eight meters per second, nearly fifteen hundred feet a minute.

Max hadn't got the rundown on the theory of the glider. That was obvious in his expression.

Joe Mauser, even while searching the ground below keenly, went into it further. "A wind up against a mountain will give an updraft, storm clouds will, even a newly plowed field in a bright sun. So you go from one of these to the next."

"Yeah, great, but when you're between," Max protested.

"Then, when you have a am to twenty-five ratio, you go twenty-five feet forward for each one you drop. If you started a mile high, you could go twenty-five miles before you touched ground." He cut himself off quickly. "Look, what's that down there? Get your glasses on it." He pointed at the ground.

Max caught his ■ excitement. His binoculars were tight to his eyes. "Soldiers. Cavalry. They sure ain't ours, Captain. They must be Hovercraft lads. And look—over there—field artillery."

Joe Mauser was piloting with his left hand, his right smoothing out a military chart on his lap. He growled, "What are they doing there? That's at least a full brigade of cavalry. Here, let me have those glasses."

With his knees gripping the stick, he went into a slow circle, as he stared down at the column of men.

"Jack Altshuler," he whistled through his teeth in surprise. "The marshal's crack heavy cavalry. And several batteries of artillery." He swung the glasses in a wider scope and the whistle turned into a hiss of comprehension. "They're going to hit Baron Haer from the rear, from the direction of Phoen-ecia."

Marshal Stonewall Cogswell directed his old-fashioned telescope in the direction his chief of staff had indicated a moment earlier.

"What is it?" he grunted.

"It's an airplane, sir," the other said, shock in his voice.

"Airplane? Don't be ridiculous. Over a military reservation with a fracas in progress?"

"Yes, sir," the chief of staff said unhappily and as though unconvinced. He put his own glasses back to his eyes, and directed his view back to the circling object. "Then what is it, sir? Certainly not a free balloon."

"Balloons," the marshal snorted, as though to himself. "Legal to use. The Union forces had them at the siege of Richmond toward the end of the Civil War. But they're practically useless in a fracas of movement. Can't get them up and down quickly enough."

They were standing before the former resort hotel which housed the field marshal's headquarters. Other staff members were streaming from the building, and one of the ever-present Telly reporting crews was hurriedly setting up its cameras.

The marshal turned and barked, "Does anybody know what in Zen that confounded thing, circling up there, is?"

Baron Zwerdling, the aging Category Transport magnate, head of Continental Hovercraft, hobbled onto the wooden veranda and stared with the others. "An airplane," he croaked. "Haer's gone too far this time. Too far, too far. This will strip him. Strip him, understand." Then he added, "Why doesn't it make any noise?"

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Warren stood next to his commanding officer. "It looks like a glider, sir."

"A what?" Cogswell glowered at him.

"A glider, sir. It's a sport not particularly popular these days. For that matter, what sport is? Practically everybody spends their full leisure time in front of their Telly sets."

"What keeps it up, confound it?"

Paul Warren looked at him. "The same thing that keeps a hawk up, an albatross, a gull..."

"A vulture, you mean," Cogswell snarled. He put his glass back to his eye and watched it for another long moment, his face working. He whirled on his chief of artillery. "Jed, can you bring that thing down?"

The other had been viewing the craft through his field binoculars, his face as shocked as the rest of them. Now he faced his chief and lowered the glasses, shaking his head. "Not with the artillery of pre-Nineteen-hundred. No, sir."

"What can you do?" Cogswell barked.

The artillery man was shaking his head. "We could mount some Maxim guns on wagon wheels, or something. Keep him from coming low."

"He doesn't have to come low," Cogswell growled in disgust. He spun on Lieutenant Colonel Warren again. "When were they invented?" He jerked his thumb upward. "Those things."

Warren was twisting his face in memory. "Some time about the turn of the century."

"How long can the things stay up?"

Warren looked at the surrounding mountainous countryside. "Indefinitely, sir. A single pilot, as long as he is physically able to operate. If there are two pilots up there to relieve each other, they could stay until food and water ran out."

"How much weight do they carry?"

"I'm not sure. One that size, certainly enough for two men and any equipment they'd need. Say, five hundred pounds."

Cogswell had his telescope glued to his eye again. He muttered under his breath, "Five hundred pounds! They could even unload dynamite over our horses. Stampede them all over the reservation."

"What's going on?" Baron Zwerdling shrilled. "What's going on, Marshal Cogswell?"

Cogswell ignored him. He watched the circling, circling craft for a full five minutes, breathing deeply. Then he lowered his glass and swept the assembled officers of his staff with an indignant glare. "Fodorl" he snapped.

The intelligence officer came to attention, "Yes, sir."

Cogswell said heavily, deliberately, "Under a white flag. A dispatch to Baron Haer. My compliments and request for terms. While you're at it, my compliments also to Captain Joseph Mauser—unless I am strongly mistaken."

Zwerdling was bug-eyeing him. "Terms!" he rasped.

The marshal turned to him. "Yes, sir. Face reality. We're in the dill. I suggest you sue for terms as short of complete capitulation as you can make them."

"You call yourself a soldier ... !" the transport tycoon began to shrill.

'Tes, sir," Cogswell snapped. "A soldier, not a butcher of the lads under me." He called to the Telly reporter, who was getting as much of this as he could. "Mr. Soligen, isn't it?"

The reporter scurried forward, flicking signals to his cameramen for proper coverage. "Yes, sir, Freddy Soligen, Marshal. Could you tell the Telly fans what this is all about, Marshal Cogswell? Folks, you all know the famous Marshal Stonewall Cogswell, who hasn't lost a fracas in nearly ten years, now commanding the forces of Continental Hovercraft."

"I'm losing one now," Cogswell said grimly. "Vacuum Tube Transport has pulled a gimmick out of the hat and things have pickled for us. It will be debated before the Military Category Department, of course, and undoubtedly the Sov-world military attachés will have things to say. But as it appears now, the fracas as we knew it, has been revolutionized."

"Revolutionized?" Even the Telly reporter was flabbergasted. "You mean by that thing?"' He pointed upward, and the lenses of the cameras followed his finger.

"Yes," Cogswell growled unhappily. "Do all of you need a blueprint? Do you think I can fight a fracas with that thing dangling above me, throughout the day hours? Do you understand the importance of reconnaissance in warfare?" His eyes glowered. "Do-you rliink Napoleon would have lost Waterloo, if he'd had the advantage of perfect reconnaissance such as that thing can deliver? Do you think Lee would have lost Gettysburg? Don't be ridiculous." He spun on Baron Zwerdling, who was stuttering his complete confusion.

"As it stands, Baron Haer knows every troop dispensation I make. All I know of his movements are from my cavalry scouts. I repeat, I am no butcher, sir. I will gladly cross swords with Baron Haer another day, when I, too, have . . . What did you call the confounded things, Paul?"

"Gliders," Lieutenant Colonel Warren said.

XII

MAJOR JOSEPH MAUSER, now attired in his best off-duty Category Military uniform, spoke his credentials to the receptionist. "I have no definite appointment, but I am sure the Baron will see me," he said.

"Yes, sir." The receptionist did the things that receptionists do, then looked up at him again. "Right through that door, Major."

Joe Mauser gave the door a quick double rap and then entered before waiting an answer.

Bait Haer, in mufti, was standing at a far window, a drink in his hand, rather than his customary swagger stick. Nadine Haer sat in an easy chair. The girl Joe Mauser loved had been crying.

Joe, suppressing his frown, made with the usual amenities.

Bait Haer, without answering them, finished his drink in a gulp and stared at the newcomer. The old stare, the aloof stare, an aristocrat looking at an underling as though wondering what made the fellow tick. He said, finally, "I see you have been raised to permanent rank of major."

"Yes, sir," Joe said.

"We are obviously occupied, Major. What can either my sister or I possibly do for you?"

Joe kept his voice even. He said, "I wished to see the Baron."

Nadine Haer looked up, a twinge of pain crossing her face.

"Indeed," Bait Haer said flady. "You are talking to the Baron, Major Mauser."

Joe Mauser looked at him, then at his sister, who had taken to her handkerchief again. Consternation ebbed up and over him in a flood. He wanted to say something such as, "Oh no," but not even that could he utter.

Haer was bitter. "I assume I know why you are here, Major. You have come for your pound of flesh, undoubtedly. Even in these hours of our grief ..."

"I... I didn't know. Please believe ..."

". . . You are so constituted that your ambition has no decency. Well, Major Mauser, I can only say that your arrangement was with my late father. Even if I thought it a reasonable one, I doubt if I would sponsor your ambitions myself."

Nadine Haer looked up wearily. "Oh, Bait, come off it," she said. "The fact is, the Haer fortunes contracted a debt to you, Major. Unfortunately, it is a debt we cannot pay." She looked into his face. "First, my father's governmental connections do not apply to us. Second, six months ago my father, worried about his health and attempting to avoid certain death taxes, transferred the family stocks into Bait's name. And Bait saw fit, immediately before the fracas, to sell all Vacuum Tube Transport stocks and invest in Hovercraft."

"That's enough, Nadine," her brother snapped nastily. "I see," Joe said. He came to attention. "Dr. Haer, my apologies for intruding upon you in your time of bereavement." He turned to the new Baron. "Baron Haer, my apologies for tjour bereavement."

Bait Haer glowered at him.

Joe Mauser turned and marched for the door.

On the street, before the New York offices of Vacuum Tube Transport, he turned and for a moment looked up at the splendor of the building.

Well, at least the common shares of the concern had skyrocketed following the victory. His rank had been upped to Major, and old Stonewall Cogswell had offered him a permanent position on his staff in command of aerial operations, no small matter of prestige. The difficulty was, he wasn't interested in the added money, nor the higher rank—nor the prestige, for that matter.

He turned to go to his hotel.

An unbelievably beautiful girl came down the steps of the building. She said, "Joe." He looked at her. "Yes?"

She put a hand on his sleeve. "Let's go somewhere and talk, Joe."

"About what?" He was infinitely weary now.

"About goals," she said. "As long as they exist, whether for individuals, or nations, or a whole species, life is still worth the living. Things are a bit bogged down right now, but at the risk of sounding very trite, there's tomorrow."