* * *

  Wing Alak was getting bored. He didn’t have much to do now but sit in his flagship and read the reports of his scouts and radio monitors. He welcomed the newcomer who had arrived with the last courier ship from home, even if it did mean a struggle.

  Jorel Meinz entered the vessel and followed Alak down a long corridor. His nose wrinkled a bit at the many odors that filled it. The crew of the battlewagon all came from terrestroid planets, but they had their characteristic smells and their own styles of cooking; no ventilation system could quite purify the air. But then, he reminded himself, a Terran probably didn’t smell any better to them.

  Alak’s cabin was a spacious one, sybaritically furnished. One large viewport showed the eerie hugeness of space, the rest of the room seemed devoted to human comfort just to offset that chilling spectacle. The Patrolman waited till he was alone with his guest before pouring out drinks.

  “Scotch,” he said. “It may not mean much to you, but out here it’s a real luxury.”

  “The Patrol seems to do itself well,” observed Meinz.

  “Quite,” nodded Alak. “When you’re out for months or years at a time, surrounded by total alienness, every comfort means a lot. It’s pure superstition that the being with a low standard of living is hardier.” He lifted his glass and sipped appreciatively.

  “Are you sure you won’t be found out here?” asked Meinz. “I imagine the enemy is ripping holes in space, hunting for you.”

  Alak grinned, which made him more than ever resemble a fox. “No doubt they are,” he said. “The harder they search, the better I like it, since it means a useless waste of their time, men, and matériel. Several thousand cubic light-years makes a pretty effective concealment. Anyway, if by some freak they should blunder across us, we need only run for it.”

  Meinz scowled. “That’s what I’m here about,” he said brusquely.

  “Aren’t they satisfied at home with my conduct of the operation?”

  “Frankly, no. Now I’m on your side, Alak. I was the one who pushed that approval through Parliament. But that was almost a year ago, and so far you’ve reported no results at all. Your dispatches have been so much meaningless verbiage, Finally certain political groups hired an investigating force of their own. They sent out observers—”

  “A wonder they weren’t nabbed, Hurulta has an efficient Intelligence Service and Secret Police.”

  “Well, they weren’t. They saw enough to send them hightailing back home, and the stink it’s raised on Terra—”

  “Ah-hah! That explains it. Hurulta must have foreseen that result and let the observers do as they pleased. He’s a canny lad, that old blueface.”

  “Well, you must admit there’s some justification for the complaints,” said Meinz with a hint of bitterness. “The authorization was of doubtful legality in the first place, and could only be justified at the next Council meeting if there were solid results to show. Instead, you’ve dawdled out here, skulking I might say. You haven’t fought one battle, not so much as a skirmish. You’ve let Ulugan occupy no less than seven planets besides Tukatan—”

  “At last reports, it was about twenty,” said Alak blandly. “We’ve got them scared, you see. They’re grabbing everything that might conceivably be of value to us.”

  “In other words,” said Meinz, “you’re pushing them in exactly the direction they want to go.”

  “Correct.”

  “Now look, Alak, I came out here myself, and it’s a long troublesome journey, to get your side of it. I have to tell them something at home, or they’ll pass a recall order in spite of everything I can do. Now I’m not even sure if I would resist such a move.”

  “Give me credit for some sense,” urged Alak. “I can’t tell you everything. The real reason why we operate this way is a Patrol secret. Let’s just say, which is true enough, that outright war is cruel and expensive, and that I don’t even think we could win one.”

  “But what are you doing then, man?”

  “Just sitting here,” laughed Alak. “Sitting here drinking Scotch, and letting nature take its course.”

  * * *

  The medical officer halted at the entrance to the tent. The steady, endless rain dripped off his shoulders and made a puddle about his muddy feet. By the one glaring lamp inside, he noticed that the fungus had begun to devour this tent, too. It would be a rag before the eight-day was out. And you couldn’t live in the metal barracks left by the Patrolmen—they were bake-ovens, and air-conditioning units rotted and rusted too fast to be of help.

  He saluted wearily. The commandant of Garvish Base looked up from his game of galanzu solitaire. “What is it?” he asked listlessly.

  “Fifteen more men down with fever, sir,” said the medical officer. “And ten of the earlier cases are dead.”

  The commandant nodded. Light gleamed off his wet bald head. The blue face was haggard, unhealthily flushed, and the smart uniform was a sodden ruin. “The sanitators don’t work, eh?” he asked.

  “Not against this stuff, sir,” said the doctor. “It seems to be a virus which isn’t bothered by the vibrations, but I haven’t been able to isolate it yet.”

  “We just aren’t built for this climate.” The commandant wagged his head, and one shaky hand reached for a bottle. “We’re cold-world dwellers.”

  A beast screamed out in the jungle. “Poison plants got several more this eight-day,” said the doctor.

  “I know. I’ve begged and pleaded with headquarters to send us air domes and space armor. But they claim it’s needed elsewhere.”

  A faint hope flickered in the medical officer’s eyes. “When that planet Umung really gets to producing—”

  “Yes, yes. But we’ll probably be dead then, you and I.” The commandant shivered. “I feel cold.” His voice was suddenly high and thin.

  “Sir—” The doctor took a nervous step forward. “Sir, let me look at you—”

  The commandant stood up. For a moment he leaned on the table, then something buckled within him and he went toppling to the floor.

  * * *

  There was forest, endless forest, and beyond it the plains and mountains and sea, and all of it was full of death.

  The Patrol wound slowly through the woods. Every detector they had was straining itself—metal, mental pulses, the thermal radiation of living bodies. But still eyes were restless, shifting under the big square helmets, and hands strayed nervously toward guns.

  In an armored car near the middle of the column, the Ulugani Patrol chief was sounding off to his aide. “It’s no good,” he said. “These Hwari are just too tough for us.”

  “They can’t stand up to us, sir,” said the aide. “Not in open battle.”

  “And they don’t try. What can you do with a people who’re willing to scorch their earth and evacuate their own dwellings before we get there? What’s the point of silly little actions like this one—going out, burning a city in reprisal, what does the enemy care? It’s just a chance for him to harass us some more.”

  “We’ll teach them manners, sir,” said the aide.

  “Oh, in time, of course. In time. When we get enough troops and supplies here. But curse it, I can’t get enough!”

  An explosion cracked before them. The chief saw three men fall screaming from the grenade. A heavy machine gun began to clatter.

  “Guerrillas!” he roared.

  He glimpsed the big green forms dashing in out of the brush. They could gallop like the wind, those devils, and they could carry as much armament on their backs as a small truck. The war whoop sent a brief tingle of fear along his nerves.

  The tanks began to speak, throwing flame and thunder at the enemy. One of the machines was suddenly wrapped in red smoke—a fire bomb. The Ulugani infantry had thrown themselves to the ground and were shooting up at the trampling, yelling centauroids.

  “Drive ’em back!” screamed the chief. “Drive ’em back!”

  The Patrol did, after a short interval of utter ferocity. But not before a bomb had struck the command car and incinerated its contents.

  * * *

  The colonel looked out of the thick plastic port and shivered. Beyond it, the landscape was one vast gloom. Poisonous mists curled between him and the unseen horizon, like a wall. He thought he could see the sudden red spouting of a volcano, somewhere in the fog. A moment later, the floor quivered under his feet.

  “You fool!” he raged. “You utter imbecile!”

  The base geologist stood his ground. “‘We did our best, sir,” he answered. “As far as we could tell, the terrain here was stable.”

  “One whole base has already been destroyed in a quake. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  The wind slapped monstrously at the dome. They had never seen such gales as blew endlessly across Shang V. A blind whirl of sleet—solid ammonia—hid the outside view.

  “Sir,” said the geologist, “this planet is utterly crazy. The probes gave readings that on any normal world would mean safe, solid ground.”

  “Nevertheless, one of our domes has just been cracked open. Every man within it died instantly. You and your team are due for court-martial.”

  The geologist nodded.

  “As the colonel says. But may I suggest that we find another site? This one is obviously dangerous after all.”

  “And do you realize what it means, in terms of effort and materials, to break camp on this planet?”

  “I can’t help that, sir. I am officially proposing that we move.”

  “Headquarters will have my skin, too,” said the colonel gloomily. He looked out again at the sinister land. “How could we know? How could anyone have foretold it would be like this?”

  The Patrol knew! laughed his mind. They knew! Now all I can do is submit a recommendation that we evacuate. The other commanders here will back me up. But that’s an invitation to the enemy to return.

  The floor trembled. He heard a paperweight jump on his desk. Outside, not five meters off, a hole opened in the ground—slowly, hugely, with all the time in the universe to do its work. Fire spilled from it, and magma crawled forth toward the dome.

  * * *

  The Elgash family had come up the hard way, from the peasant stock of a conquered land; it had been ennobled only fifty years ago. For that, and for its owning the Munitions Trust, Hurulta despised it. But he did not underestimate the being who sat across from his desk. The present Elgash was fat and wheezy and dandified, but there was a hard drive and a cold brain in him.

  “I speak for several others, your excellency,” he said. “I need not mention their names.”

  “The money barons,” replied Hurulta sullenly. “The industrialists and financiers. What of it?”

  “Shall I speak plainly?” asked Elgash.

  “Go ahead. We’re alone.”

  “The group I represent is not at all satisfied with the conduct of the war.”

  “Oh? And you have constituted yourselves the new General Staff?”

  “Spare the sarcasm, your excellency. It was understood that Tukatan would be subjugated within six months. Now, after almost a year, we are still fighting there.”

  “They could be bombarded from space,” said Hurulta, “but as you well know, that would destroy the whole value of the planet. We have to go slowly. Then the Patrol appeared to complicate matters.”

  “I realize all that.” The insolence was more marked than ever. “And rather than concentrate on Tukatan and the Patrol, and get them safely out of the way, your ministry has tried to take on the whole star cluster. You have blundered disastrously into planets we hardly knew a thing about.”

  “To keep the Patrol from using them against us.” Hurulta checked his temper. “All right, I admit we’ve had our troubles. But we’re making progress. The over-all timetable for the establishment of our hegemony has been accelerated enormously. In the long run, that will mean a saving.”

  “Will it now? Even your successes are dubious. Take that forsaken little pill of sand, Yarnaz IV. There’s been no trouble in occupying it. But the expense of maintaining bases under such alien conditions is fantastic. The commoners are being taxed to the limit, and your new tax on the leading groups of society is outrageous.”

  “It has to be done. Or would you rather have the Patrol come in and run things?”

  “Of course,” said Elgash coldly, “your most inexcusable blunder was the occupation of Umung.”

  “What?” For a moment Hurulta could find no words. Slowly, then, he gulped down his rage, and when he spoke it was with thin precision. “That was the one operation which went off like clockwork. At a negligible cost in men and money, we have already doubled our war production. Inside another year, we can expect to quadruple it.”

  “I thought you were a realist, your excellency,” said Elgash. “I thought you understood the economic foundation on which the empire rests. Or are you deliberately ruining my class?”

  “Are you mad? First you complain about taxes, then when I find a way to increase production, a way that costs us hardly one crown, you—”

  “Your excellency, we have only so many soldiers and there is a limit to the amount of war matériel they can use. When Umung is producing all of it, what will become of Ulugan’s factories?”

  * * *

  Fear.

  Shamuvaz, soldier of the empire, looked around him. He moved his head very slowly, lest he see something behind his back. There was only the landscape-distorted trees, murmuring reddish grass, a remote waterfall that echoed the furious clamor of his heart.

  He felt ill. He wanted to vomit. Looking at the faces of his companions, he thought that they were impossibly alien. They were evil. They were made evil by the same horror that rode on him, and in their panic they might turn and tear him.

  Shamuvaz whimpered, deep in his throat, and thought of his wife and children. They were so far away, so many centuries away, he would never see them again. He would rot on Gyreion, the wind would blow through his ribs and the small beasts of the field would nest in his empty, empty skull.

  They said it was harmless. They said it was only that the natives—so thoroughly indoctrinated by the Patrol that there was no dealing with them…or was it that, being telepaths, they knew Ulugan meant them for pawns?—the natives were afraid, and you yourself heard their fear. Nothing to it. Ignore it. You are a soldier of the empire, and fear of nothingness is unworthy of you.

  Only the generals didn’t have to live with fear. They didn’t have to torment themselves, night after night, to stay awake, for fear of the dreams; and when they finally did sleep, in spite of everything, they weren’t brought up within minutes, screaming. They didn’t see their comrades break, one by one, and be sent home muttering idiot words, and wonder when their turn would come.

  Fear, panic, terror, blind howling horror. Shamuvaz groaned to himself.

  When a hand touched his shoulder, he leaped up, cursing, and spun around. His pistol was out before he saw that it was only Armazan. Armazan had been his best friend once. But you couldn’t trust anyone now. Shamuvaz held the gun leveled on Armazan’s belly.

  “Don’t do that,” he choked. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “Listen.” Armazan spoke swiftly, a whisper that was blurred with his own trembling. “Listen, Sham, we’re meeting after taps, down by the river. Sneak out of the barracks and join us.”

  “What, what, what? Go out after dark? You’re crazy! This planet has driven you crazy.”

  “No, not that, not that. Listen, a lot of us have decided we aren’t going to take any more of this. The empire can’t ask it of us. It’s too much. Can’t trust those officers. Get them out of the way—a shot in the back, it’s easy if we just stick together, and then we can grab the base spaceship—”

  * * *

  Hurulta had been sleeping poorly in the last month, and drugs no longer seemed to whip up his vitality. He clasped a ringing head in his hands and leaned on the desk.

  “It’s no use,” he said aloud. “We’ll have to pull out of Gyreion. Every regiment there has been ruined for service. It’ll take months to restore them to usefulness.”

  “But the Patrol, lord—” faltered Sevulan.

  “Patrol! We’ll maintain a base on the neighboring planet, and a few orbital scouts around Gyreion itself. Should have done that in the first place.”

  “But then a strong attack could come in, wipe out our forces, take over the whole system—”

  “I know. What of it? A chance we’ll have to take. If only the busybodies would come out of hiding and fight! It’s like shadowboxing, this.”

  “Lord, I understand the General Staff plans to overrule you and order the evacuation of Garvish and Shang. They say it’s too costly to hold them, they’re just consuming men badly needed elsewhere—”

  “Don’t tell me that!” shouted Hurulta. “I know it, you idiot! I know all of it! The blind, bloody fools! Shortsighted—aaargh!” His fists clamped together. “But by all the hells, we’re hanging on to Umung. Let the moneybags squawk. I’ll lodge treason charges if they say much more.”

  The telescreen buzzed. Hurulta flicked a switch, and the excited voice gabbled out.

  “Lord, a report just came in from space. Patrol activity around Ustuban VII. They seem to be rendezvousing—”

  “Ustuban VII! They can’t! It’s a giant planet. It’s surrounded by a meteor belt. It…no!”

  “Lord, the report says—”

  “Shut up! Send me the full report at once.” Hurulta whirled on the general. His eves were feverish.

  “Action,” he gasped. “I think we’re going to see some action. The populace has been complaining about our retreats, have they? Their morale is bad, is it? All right, we’ll give them something to talk about. We’ll send the fleet and seize Ustuban VII, and just let the Patrol dare try to stop us!”

  “Lord, it’s impossible,” whispered Sevulan. “We’re spread so thin already that we could never mount such an undertaking. It’s just a trick of theirs to lure us out—”