“The Old Man’s got them calling their bases.”

  P’nina breathed a sigh of relief and settled back in her chair. “At least that part of the battle’s won,” she said.

  “Fourteen missiles with warheads of ten megatons or better. Do you really think our country can take that? ...”

  Two targets illuminated the screen. Zvi half rose from his seat. “Metzada!” he fairly screamed in perplexity.

  “Sit down, Putz!” cried P’nina. “It’s an old ruin! Nothing more!”

  But Zvi didn’t hear her. His mind hissed back the five years to the West Bank War. It had lasted only a few days. But it had been enough to destroy much of Western Jerusalem, as well as the old Knesset. Again he felt the surge of the Kfir C-5 under his command. The Fencer was flying low, dangerously low above the hills of the Judean desert. His Kfir followed. Ahead of the Su-19 was another C-5. In it was Yigal.

  Yigal had taken off after the Fencer when they broke up a squadron of the machines en route to Jerusalem. They had been flying at barely ten thousand feet. The Fencer was a speck ahead of Zvi, Yigal’s plane little more.

  Suddenly, the Su-19 lost altitude. “He opened his drogue chute!” came Yigal’s astounded voice. Zvi immediately swung his plane hard around, looping backward, so that the Soviet plane could not fall behind them both. As the Gs drained the blood from his face, Zvi’s mind clouded. A Soviet pilot? No. The Soviet Union had abandoned New Persia when it became evident that this too was to be a religious state, intent on carving out an empire of its own.

  Zvi’s mind spun. The drogue chute was only used in landing on the short airstrips of the Persian mountains. The deceleration must have nearly blacked out the two men in the Fencer’s cockpit. A desperate and risky maneuver. And one that insured that the Su-19 wouldn’t be returning to the airstrips of home.

  “He’s accelerating!” came Yigal’s voice. “He’s right on my tail! I can’t seem to shake him!”

  Below Zvi flashed a pattern of dry washes and hillsides. Like the legs of a many limbed, sleeping monster. Zvi bit his lower lip beneath the oxygen mask. Allah had performed a miracle for the other side. A miracle which kept the enemy plane from crashing below. He pushed forward on the stick, dropping lower. A faint glow of admiration touched Zvi as he spoke. The Arab pilots were improving and not above taking chances. The drogue chute had, no doubt, ripped to shreds and been discarded. It was a maneuver that the Su-19 would not try again. And it couldn’t try anything similar at the altitude it was now flying. “I’ll get in some shots at him, catch up and try to pass. He’s either got radar controlled or heat seeking missiles. I’ll drop some chaff and flares, then I want you to peel off in a loop. Are you ready to take some Gs?”

  “Ready when you are,” came back Yigal’s voice.

  “Great!” exclaimed Zvi. A faint shadow of green passed quickly below, showing that he was over Ein Gedi. The wind of the Fencer’s passing was already making the C-5 buck and yaw.

  Zvi turned on his afterburner, gaining speed. The air was clear. He could see the Dead Sea off to his left, like a shining mirror. As he moved up on the Fencer, he gained altitude, creeping above it. He could now see the glistening delta of the machine’s wings. He pushed forward on the Kfir’s wheel. It slid in easily. Zvi was diving toward it. A burst of tracers narrowly missed as the Su-19 rolled over on its side, presenting a smaller target1. As Zvi pulled back on the stick, bringing the C-5 out of the dive, the Fencer resumed its original position. And fired its own tracers.

  “I’m hit!” cried Yigal. “Those shots must have sliced through my control cables! I’ve still got my rudder, but I’ve lost my flaps!

  “Remember what I told that fat tourist, Zvi?”

  “I remember, Yigal.”

  A low chuckle answered Zvi as though some hidden irony were sensed.

  “Here it comes,” said Yigal.

  Nearly two thousand years before, Herod had built a refuge atop the butte of Metzada. A butte rising nearly four hundred and forty meters above the Dead Sea. Less than a century later, it was used as a fortress by the Zealots, who held it against the Roman hordes for nearly three years. When, at last, an earthen embankment was slowly built to its edge, the Romans entered to find a hollow victory. Rather than be sold into Roman slavery, the Zealots had committed suicide. Men, women and children.

  Zvi remembered what Yigal had told the tourist. A quirk of irony passed through him as well. The Fencer and his own plane passed over Metzada’s side. Herod’s Northern Palace, carved out of Metzada’s cliff, dissolved as Yigal’s plane plunged into its face. A rearview mirror showed fingers of flame, explosive, wreckage and fuel oil arc above the plateau.

  And Zvi remembered what Yigal had told the tourist. “Forget Metzada!” he said said. “There will be no more Metzada! From now on, if a Jew dies, it will be because he had died fighting! It will not be because we are faced with overwhelming odds. It will be because freedom or death are the only end! If that were today, every woman would be given a sword and every child a knife!”

  “Shalom, Yigal,” Zvi said.

  “Shezor?” said P’nina. “Not a military target…” She swiveled in her seat and began punching keys. “A farming community in Galilee,” she said.

  “And B’nai Nairn,” answered Zvi. “Also, we’ve got four additional launches from Hamadan.”

  “Switch to primary backup computers,” came a voice over the loudspeaker.

  “At this point, that sounds like a good idea,” said P’nina. She flipped a switch. “Readings haven’t changed.”

  “A first reading on one of the Jidda targets,” said Zvi. His forehead wrinkled. “Ziorah,” he said.

  “These aren’t military targets, Putz. They’re total nonsense! Some of these targets are little more than post offices. And an old ruin! What purpose could be served by the destruction of Metzada?”

  Another target silently illuminated itself.

  Zvi’s forehead wrinkled. “Could they be trying to confuse us? Definite readings of launches, and definite targets.”

  “But they’re destroying the things that they would need! Any occupying force is going to need food!”

  Zvi settled back in his chair. “I don’t think that there will be an occupying force. Remember the words of the Caliph? ‘Our shrines are walked in sandaled feet. They must be purified so that this abomination cannot take place again.’ ”

  “And that’s why the UN got out?”

  “Not officially, but probably.”

  P’nina straightened in her chair, looking at the readout screen. “Hebron!” she exclaimed. “A military target! Activate condition yellow and arm!”

  Both of them activated a yellow switch. They watched as pilot lamps illuminated themselves. Machinery took over.

  Twenty feet overhead, locks slammed shut in the irrigation canals. Underground pumps moved the trapped water into hidden tanks. Seals broke and sections of ditch formed on concrete and steel moved upward and over on powerful hydraulic jacks, uprooting orange and grapefruit trees.

  “Five more launches from Tabriz.”

  P’nina’s voice was swift and certain. The upper row of pilot lamps indicated that the portals were opened. “Arm!” she barked.

  For the first time in close to three years, the enameled surfaces of the Yoshua’im gleamed in the early morning sun. Carriages moved upward, pointing noses toward the sky. The stubby wings began to unfold as soon as the Yoshua’im cleared the ground.

  “The Old Man says that they’ve called their bases. They deny charges of launching an attack.”

  “My board reads a total of thirty launches. We shouldn’t expect any strikes until six thirty five,” put in Zvi.

  “Yes, sir,” said a voice. There was a pause. “I’ll patch you through.”

  “This is the Minister of Defense. I request that you switch to your remaining backup computers at one minute intervals. I assume that you are already on primary backups for confirmation. Each of you is equipped with your own input system, so at this point, I would have to place the likelihood of a mistake at literally billions to one. Our condition is now yellow. If I don’t see you again, die bravely, Haverim Shelli. Switch to secondary backups… Now!”

  “Five from Mastura,” said Zvi. “A definite pattern is showing itself. The launch areas are getting closer.”

  “And I suppose they sneaked in Hebron, Jaffa and Haifa thinking we wouldn’t notice?” asked P’nina.

  “You’re forgetting that the Yoshua’im and our detection systems are secrets that we’ve kept for three years. They know there’s a missile base here, but they don’t know what kind. All of their bases are part of a single detection net. Things can go wrong on that. What the Persians and Arabs don’t know is that our system, by its very nature, has a hundred backups with twenty separate systems of input. There is no mistake, tziporah katanah. This is the second Holocaust.”

  “After all this time,” said P’nina. “They wouldn’t let their hatred die.”

  “Six from Mastura,” corrected Zvi.

  “Backup Gimmel,” said a voice.

  “No change,” said P’nina. “It’s in our hands now, Putz. Do we fire?”

  Zvi shook his head. “Not until the last minute, P’nina.”

  Her face paled. “It’s this waiting,” she said. “Hey, Putz?”

  “Yes, P’nina?”

  “Could you call in a replacement? I’m going to be sick.”

  When he heard her words, Zvi swallowed the taste of his own bile. “No, P’nina. Use one of your drawers, if you have to. I want you here,” he added truthfully. “With me.”

  A blush colored the paleness of her features.

  Zvi turned back to the screen. “Five more Baghdad,” he said.

  With this, P’nina turned away from him and opened a drawer.

  “Backup Heth,” said an electronic voice.

  “This is Slik Mispar Aleph. No change,” said another distorted voice.

  “Slik Mispar Heth. No change.”

  P’nina came up, wiping her mouth on a sleeve. A question mark was on her face.

  “Final confirmations,” Zvi answered her unspoken question. “We’re being told when to fire.”

  Zvi picked up a mike and added his voice to the electronically sobered hysteria of the rest. “Slik Mispar Gimmel,” he said. “No change.”

  “Slik Mispar Heth. No change.”

  The laughter of Zvi’s father again filled the room. “There is nothing wrong with being a farmer!” the voice rang out. “If it weren’t for farmers, what would we eat? Eh?”

  “Slik Mispar Yod Gimmel. No change.”

  “Would I be happier as a farmer?” wondered Zvi.

  “Slik Mispar Yod Daleth. No change.”

  “Would I be happier not knowing?”

  Something teased at Zvi’s brain. A hazy memory from three years in the past. The turtle. An affectionate name given a general with a beak of a nose that joined with his forehead.

  “Fire!” came the order.

  Automatically, he and P’nina both pressed the red firing stud.

  In thirty eight sealed chambers, far overhead, nitric acid poured over cores of powdered aluminum in a rubber matrix. Solid fuel boosters roared to life. At a forty five degree angle, all of the missiles, save one, soared upward.

  At two hundred feet, the missiles leveled off. Robot control surfaces adjusted themselves. Jet engines caught the wind and fired into keening life. Although they had all been launched in the same general direction, as winds caught ailerons and rudders, they began to turn.

  “All birds off save one,” commented P’nina. “Yoshua Heth is our dead bird.”

  ‘Hatzav.’ The aged general who had trained them. Half his face had been destroyed by napalm in the war of ‘85. He wore a partial mask of black satin. But his nickname, “The Turtle,” came from his large beak of a nose.

  Hatzav had pulled him aside during a preliminary inspection of the installation. “Zvi,” he had said in a dry whisper. “You are a bright boy! And very brave! I know that you are one we can trust with the responsibility you are given. It is not a usual thing that those in the Slikim should know their targets. But should you ever… May the Master of the Universe make it not so. Should you ever have to push that button, the target on this card should help you in your last moments. Attah talmid tov, Zvi. Shalom.”

  “Shalom,” Zvi whispered back. He took the sealed envelope which the old man extended and put it into his pocket.

  Zvi was pulled back to the present by another whisper.

  “Oh, my God!!” said P’nina.

  The second screen illuminated itself, doubling the number of Persian and Arab missiles. These were launched from Israel’s very borders.

  The speed with which Zvi rummaged through the coffee and tea stained reports increased. At last, his hand grasped the yellowed envelope.

  “Zvi,” P’nina said. “Number fifty three.”

  Zvi looked to see that the target under number fifty three was their own base.

  “Shalom aleichem, Captain Sivan,” said P’nina.

  “Aleichem shalom, Captain Horowitz,” Zvi returned He held up a file card. “P’nina?” On the file card was written in ‘Hatzav’s’ spidery Hebrew script; “Target-Mecca!!”

  The target couldn’t have been Mecca itself. Israel’s powerful religious party would never have allowed it. Probably the missile sites north of there. Zvi saw comprehension enter P’nina’s face and the beginnings of a smile. Before the flesh was seared from his bones by a brilliant...FLASH!!!

  Editor's Introduction to:

  HIS TRUTH GOES MARCHING ON

  by Jerry Pournelle

  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

  —George Santayana

  The “future history”—a series of stories that share common assumptions about the future—has become a popular form of science fiction. My future history of the CoDominium era assumes that the United States and the Soviet Union continue to hate each other, but have decided that it is better that they rule jointly than that they share power with any third party.

  The two major powers create the CoDominium as their instrument for preserving the peace. Shortly thereafter, new means for space travel are discovered. New worlds are settled: some by unwanted people sent away against their will, some by adventurers, some by those who will always seek the new frontiers. This story takes place after the Second Exodus is well under way.

  For some older readers, and younger ones with a better education than most get today, there will be hauntingly familiar elements in this story, for it is frankly derived from incidents that took place in a conflict of the past. Nearly every incident in this story actually happened to people much like those I picture here.

  The Spanish Civil War was, to a generation of American liberals, a matter of evil vs. good. The Falangists were evil; the Republicans were good; and there were no compromises. Hemingway tried to show that it wasn’t that stark, although his sympathies remained with the Republicans. George Orwell went into more detail. He showed the naked cynicism of the Communist elements of the Republic, but no one wanted to hear his message, and to this day most believe that his (largely unread) HOMAGE TO CATALONIA condemns only Franco.

  The world could never forget Guernica, and to prove it we had Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece hung in the Museum of Modern Art. Guernica was a Basque fishing village bombed by units of the Luftwaffe’s Condor Legion. The town was largely destroyed, and the incident was seen as one more illustration of the utter moral worthlessness of both Spain and Germany. Picasso’s violent painting, showing men and animals disjointed and scattered, was very effective in stirring up sympathy for the Republicans and hatred for both the Germans and Franco.

  Later it came out that the town had been occupied by Republican military units, that at least part of the destruction came from the detonation of Republican munitions stored there, and there was a strong suggestion that retreating Republican engineers had dynamited other structures not damaged by the air raid. Whatever the truth of Guernica, the destruction there was not large compared to the damage sustained by Sidon, Tyre, and Beirut during the 1982 Israeli campaign, and was trivial compared to the damage done Tokyo in the fire raids, or the devastation of Hamburg and Dresden.

  Those who wonder why I sometimes use historical models for stories are referred to the Santayana quotation that opens this introduction.

  HIS TRUTH GOES MARCHING ON

  by Jerry Pournelle

  “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free…”

  The song echoed through the ship, along gray corridors stained with the greasy handprints of the thousands who had traveled in her before; through the stench of the thousands aboard, and the remembered smells of previous shiploads of convicts. Those smells were etched into the steel despite strong disinfectants which had only added their acrimony to the odor of too much humanity with too little water.

  The male voices carried past crew work parties, who ignored them, or made sarcastic remarks, and into a tiny stateroom no larger than the bunk bed now hoisted vertical to the bulkhead to make room for a desk and chair.

  Peter Owensford looked up to blank gray and beyond it to visions within his own mind. The men weren't singing very well, but they sang from their hearts. There was a faint buzzing discord from a loose rivet vibrating to a strong base. Owensford nodded to himself. The singer was Allan Roach, one-time professional wrestler, and Peter had marked him for promotion to noncom once they reached Santiago.

  The trip from Earth to Thurstone takes three months in a Bureau of Relocation transport ship, and it had been wasted time for all of them. It was obvious to Peter that the CoDominium authorities aboard the ship knew that they were volunteers for the war. Why else would ninety-seven men voluntarily ship out for Santiago? It didn't matter, though. Political Officer Stromand was afraid of a trap. Stromand was always suspecting traps, and was desperate to “maintain secrecy”; as if there were any secrets to keep.