“Just what it says, Major,” Kagen replied. He tried to shift his weight but the tractor beams held him rigid.
Grady noticed and gestured impatiently. “At rest,” he said. Most of the tractor beams snapped off, leaving Kagen free to move, if only at half his normal speed. He flexed in relief and grinned.
“My term of enlistment is up within two weeks, Major. I don’t plan to reenlist. So I’ve requested transportation to Earth. That’s all there is to it.”
Grady’s eyebrows arched a fraction of an inch but the dark eyes beneath them remained bored.
“Really?” he asked. “You’ve been a soldier for almost twenty years now, Kagen. Why retire? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Kagen shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m getting old. Maybe I’m just getting tired of camp life. It’s all starting to get boring, taking one damn mudhole after another. I want something different. Some excitement.”
Grady nodded. “I see. But I don’t think I agree with you, Kagen.” His voice was soft and persuasive. “I think you’re underselling the T.E.F. There is excitement ahead, if you’ll only give us a chance.” He leaned back in his chair, toying with a pencil he had picked up. “I’ll tell you something, Kagen. You know, we’ve been at war with the Hrangan Empire for nearly three decades now. Direct clashes between us and the enemy have been few and far between up to now. Do you know why?”
“Sure,” Kagen said.
Grady ignored him. “I’ll tell you why,” he continued. “So far each of us has been struggling to consolidate his position by grabbing these little worlds in the border regions. These mudholes, as you call them. But they’re very important mudholes. We need them for bases, for their raw materials, for their industrial capacity, and for the conscript labor they provide. That’s why we try to minimize damage in our campaigns. And that’s why we use psychwar tactics like the howlers. To frighten away as many natives as possible before each attack. To preserve labor.”
“I know all that,” Kagen interrupted with typical Wellington bluntness. “What of it? I didn’t come here for a lecture.”
Grady looked up from the pencil. “No,” he said. “No, you didn’t. So I’ll tell you, Kagen. The prelims are over. It’s time for the main event. There are only a handful of unclaimed worlds left. Soon now, we’ll be coming into direct conflict with the Hrangan Conquest Corps. Within a year we’ll be attacking their bases.”
The major stared at Kagen expectantly, waiting for a reply. When none came, a puzzled look flickered across his face. He leaned forward again.
“Don’t you understand, Kagen?” he asked. “What more excitement could you want? No more fighting these piddling civilians in uniform, with their dirty little atomics and their primitive projectile guns. The Hrangans are a real enemy. Like us, they’ve had a professional army for generations upon generations. They’re soldiers, born and bred. Good ones, too. They’ve got screens and modem weapons. They’ll be foes to give our assault squads a real test.”
“Maybe,” Kagen said doubtfully. “But that kind of excitement isn’t what I had in mind. I’m getting old. I’ve noticed that I’m definitely slower lately—even synthastim isn’t keeping up my speed.”
Grady shook his head. “You’ve got one of the best records in the whole T.E.F., Kagen. You’ve received the Stellar Cross twice and the World Congress Decoration three times. Every com station on Earth carried the story when you saved the landing party on Torego. Why should you doubt your effectiveness now? We’re going to need men like you against the Hrangans. Reenlist.”
“No,” said Kagen emphatically. “The regs say you’re entitled to your pension after twenty years and those medals have earned me a nice bunch of retirement bonuses. Now I want to enjoy them.” He grinned broadly. “As you say, everyone on Earth must know me. I’m a hero. With that reputation, I figure I can have a real screechout.”
Grady frowned and drummed on the desk impatiently. “I know what the regulations say, Kagen. But no one ever really retires—you must know that. Most troopers prefer to stay with the front. That’s their job. That’s what the War Worlds are all about.”
“I don’t really care, Major,” Kagen replied. “I know the regs and I know I have a right to retire on full pension. You can’t stop me.”
Grady considered the statement calmly, his eyes dark with thought.
“All right,” he said after a long pause. “Let’s be reasonable about this. You’ll retire with full pension and bonuses. We’ll set you down on Wellington in a place of your own. Or Rommel if you like. We’ll make you a youth barracks director—any age group you like. Or a training camp director. With your record you can start right at the top.”
“Uh-uh,” Kagen said firmly. “Not Wellington. Not Rommel. Earth.”
“But why? You were born and raised on Wellington—in one of the hill barracks, I believe. You’ve never seen Earth.”
“True,” said Kagen. “But I’ve seen it in camp telecasts and flicks. I like what I’ve seen. I’ve been reading about Earth a lot lately, too. So now I want to see what it’s like.” He paused, then grinned again. “Let’s just say I want to see what I’ve been fighting for.”
Grady’s frown reflected his displeasure. “I’m from Earth, Kagen,” he said. “I tell you, you won’t like it. You won’t fit in. The gravity is too low—and there are no artificial heavy gravity barracks to take shelter in. Synthastim is illegal, strictly prohibited. But War Worlders need it, so you’ll have to pay exorbitant prices to get the stuff. Earthers aren’t reaction trained, either. They’re a different kind of people. Go back to Wellington. You’ll be among your own kind.”
“Maybe that’s one of the reasons I want Earth,” Kagen said stubbornly. “On Wellington I’m just one of hundreds of old vets. Hell, every one of the troopers who does retire heads back to his old barracks. But on Earth I’ll be a celebrity. Why, I’ll be the fastest, strongest guy on the whole damn planet. That’s got to have some advantages.”
Grady was starting to look agitated. “What about the gravity?” he demanded. “The synthastim?”
“I’ll get used to light gravity after a while, that’s no problem. And I won’t be needing that much speed and endurance, so I figure I can kick the synthastim habit.”
Grady ran his fingers through his unkempt hair and shook his head doubtfully. There was a long, awkward silence. He leaned across the desk.
And, suddenly, his hand darted toward the laser pistol.
Kagen reacted. He dove forward, delayed only slightly by the few tractor beams that still held him. His hand flashed toward Grady’s wrist in a crippling arc.
And suddenly wrenched to a halt as the tractor beams seized Kagen roughly, held him rigid, and then smashed him to the floor.
Grady, his hand frozen halfway to the pistol, leaned back in the chair. His face was white and shaken. He raised his hand and the tractor beams let up a bit. Kagen climbed slowly to his feet.
“You see, Kagen,” said Grady. “That little test proves you’re as fit as ever. You’d have gotten me if I hadn’t kept a few tractors on you to slow you down. I tell you, we need men with your training and experience. We need you against the Hrangans. Reenlist.”
Kagen’s cold blue eyes still seethed with anger. “Damn the Hrangans,” he said. “I’m not reenlisting and no goddamn little tricks of yours are going to make me change my mind. I’m going to Earth. You can’t stop me.”
Grady buried his face in his hands and sighed.
“All right, Kagen,” he said at last. “You win. I’ll put through your request.”
He looked up one more time, and his dark eyes looked strangely troubled.
“You’ve been a great soldier, Kagen. We’ll miss you. I tell you that you’ll regret this decision. Are you sure you won’t reconsider?”
“Absolutely sure,” Kagen snapped.
The strange look suddenly vanished from Grady’s eyes. His face once more took on the mask of bored indifference.
“
Very well,” he said curtly. “You are dismissed.”
The tractors stayed on Kagen as he turned. They guided him—very firmly—from the building.
“You ready, Kagen?” Ragelli asked, leaning casually against the door of the cubicle.
Kagen picked up his small travel bag and threw one last glance around to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. He hadn’t. The room was quite bare.
“Guess so,” he said, stepping through the door.
Ragelli slipped on the plastoid helmet that had been cradled under his arm and hurried to catch up as Kagen strode down the corridor.
“I guess this is it,” he said as he matched strides.
“Yeah,” Kagen replied. “A week from now I’ll be taking it easy back on Earth while you’re getting blisters on your tail sitting around in that damned duralloy tuxedo of yours.”
Ragelli laughed. “Maybe,” he said. “But I still say you’re nuts to go to Earth of all places, when you could command a whole damned training camp on Wellington. Assuming you wanted to quit at all, which is also crazy—”
The barracks door slid open before them and they stepped through, Ragelli still talking. A second guard flanked Kagen on the other side. Like Ragelli, he was wearing light battle armor.
Kagen himself was in full dress whites, trimmed with gold braid. A ceremonial laser, deactivated, was slung in a black leather holster at his side. Matching leather boots and a polished steel helmet set off the uniform. Azure blue bars on his shoulder signified field officer rank. His medals jangled against his chest as he walked.
Kagen’s entire third assault squad was drawn up at attention on the spacefield behind the barracks in honor of his retirement. Alongside the ramp to the shuttlecraft, a group of high officers stood by, cordoned off by defensive screens. Major Grady was in the front row, his bored expression blurred somewhat by the screens.
Flanked by the two guards, Kagen walked across the concrete slowly, grinning under his helmet. Piped music welled out over the field, and Kagen recognized the T.E.F. battle hymn and the Wellington anthem.
At the foot of the ramp he turned and looked back. The company spread out before him saluted in unison on a command from the high officers and held position until Kagen returned the salute. Then one of the squad’s other field officers stepped forward, and presented him with his discharge papers.
Jamming them into his belt, Kagen threw a quick, casual wave to Ragelli, then hurried up the ramp. It lifted slowly behind him.
Inside the ship, a crewman greeted him with a curt nod. “Got special quarters prepared for you,” he said. “Follow me. Trip should only take about fifteen minutes. Then we’ll transfer you to a starship for the Earth trip.”
Kagen nodded and followed the man to his quarters. They turned out to be a plain, empty room, reinforced with duralloy plates. A viewscreen covered one wall. An acceleration couch faced it.
Alone, Kagen sprawled out on the acceleration couch, clipping his helmet to a holder on the side. Tractor beams pressed down gently, holding him firmly in place for the liftoff.
A few minutes later a dull roar came from deep within the ship and Kagen felt several gravities press down upon him as the shuttlecraft took off. The viewscreen, suddenly coming to life, showed the planet dwindling below.
The viewer blinked off when they reached orbit. Kagen started to sit up but found he still could not move. The tractor beams held him pinned to the couch.
He frowned. There was no need for him to stay in the couch once the craft was in orbit. Some idiot had forgotten to release him.
“Hey,” he shouted, figuring there would be a com box somewhere in the room. “These tractors are still on. Loosen the damned things so I can move a little.”
No one answered.
He strained against the beams. Their pressure seemed to increase. The blasted things were starting to pinch a little, he thought. Now those morons were turning the knob the wrong way.
He cursed under his breath. “No,” he shouted. “Now the tractors are getting heavier. You’re adjusting them the wrong way.”
But the pressure continued to climb and he felt more beams locking on him, until they covered his body like an invisible blanket. The damned things were really starting to hurt now.
“You idiots,” he yelled. “You morons. Cut it out, you bastards.” With a surge of anger he strained against the beams, cursing. But even Wellington-bred muscle was no match for tractors. He was held tightly to the couch.
One of the beams was trained on his chest pocket. Its pressure was driving his Stellar Cross painfully into his skin. The sharp edge of the polished medal had already sliced through the uniform and he could see a red stain spreading slowly through the white.
The pressure continued to mount and Kagen writhed in pain, squirming against his invisible shackles. It did no good. The pressure still went higher and more and more beams came on.
“Cut it out!” he screeched. “You bastards, I’ll rip you apart when I get out of here. You’re killing me, dammit!”
He heard the sharp snap of a bone suddenly breaking under the strain. Kagen felt a stab of intense pain in his right wrist. An instant later there was another snap.
“Cut it out!” he cried, his voice shrill with pain. “You’re killing me. Damn you, you’re killing me!”
And suddenly he realized he was right.
Grady looked up with a scowl at the aide who entered the office.
“Yes? What is it?”
The aide, a young Earther in training for high officer rank, saluted briskly. “We just got the report from the shuttlecraft, sir. It’s all over. They want to know what to do with the body.”
“Space it,” Grady replied. “Good as anything.” A thin smile flickered across his face and he shook his head. “Too bad. Kagen was a good man in combat but his psych training must have slipped somewhere. We should send a strong note back to his barracks conditioner. Though it’s funny it didn’t show up until now.”
He shook his head again. “Earth,” he said. “For a moment he even had me wondering if it was possible. But when I tested him with my laser, I knew. No way, no way.” He shuddered a little. “As if we’d ever let a War Worlder loose on Earth.” Then he turned back to his paperwork.
As the aide turned to leave Grady looked up again.
“One other thing,” he said. “Don’t forget to send that PR release back to Earth. Make it War-Hero-Dies-When-Hrangans-Blast-Ship. Jazz it up good. Some of the big com networks should pick it up and it’ll make good publicity. And forward his medals to Wellington. They’ll want them for his barracks museum.”
The aide nodded and Grady returned to his work. He still looked quite bored.
THE EXIT TO SAN BRETA
It was the highway that first caught my attention. Up to that night, it had been a perfectly normal trip. It was my vacation, and I was driving to L.A. through the Southwest, taking my own sweet time about it. That was nothing new; I’d done it several times before.
Driving is my hobby. Or cars in general, to be precise. Not many people take the time to drive anymore. It’s just too slow for most. The automobile’s been pretty much obsolete since they started mass-producing cheap copters back in ’93. And whatever life it had left in it was knocked out by the invention of the personal gravpak.
But it was different when I was a kid. Back then, everybody had a car, and you were considered some sort of a social freak if you didn’t get your driver’s license as soon as you were old enough. I got interested in cars when I was in my late teens, and have stayed interested ever since.
Anyway, when my vacation rolled around, I figured it was a chance to try out my latest find. It was a great car, an English sports model from the late ’70s. Jaguar XKL. Not one of the classics, true, but a nice car all the same. It handled beautifully.
I was doing most of my traveling at night, as usual. There’s something special about night driving. The old, deserted highways have an atmosphere about them in the star
light, and you can almost see them as they once were—vital and crowded and full of life, with cars jammed bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see.
Today, there’s none of that. Only the roads themselves are left, and most of them are cracked and overgrown with weeds. The states can’t bother taking care of them anymore—too many people objected to the waste of tax money. But ripping them up would be too expensive. So they just sit, year after year, slowly falling apart. Most of them are still drivable, though; they built their roads well back in the old days.
There’s still some traffic. Car nuts like me, of course. And the hovertrucks. They can ride over just about anything, but they can go faster over flat surfaces. So they stick to the old highways pretty much.
It’s kind of awesome whenever a hovertruck passes you at night. They do about two hundred or so, and no sooner do you spot one in your rearview mirror then it’s on top of you. You don’t see much—just a long silver blur, and a shriek as it goes by. And then you’re alone again.
Anyway, I was in the middle of Arizona, just outside San Breta, when I first noticed the highway. I didn’t think much of it then. Oh, it was unusual all right, but not that unusual.
The highway itself was quite ordinary. It was an eight-lane freeway, with a good, fast surface, and it ran straight from horizon to horizon. At night, it was like a gleaming black ribbon running across the white sands of the desert.
No, it wasn’t the highway that was unusual. It was its condition. At first, I didn’t really notice. I was enjoying myself too much. It was a clear, cold night, and the stars were out, and the Jag was riding beautifully.
Riding too beautifully. That’s when it first dawned on me. There were no bumps, no cracks, no potholes. The road was in prime condition, almost as if it had just been built. Oh, I’d been on good roads before. Some of them just stood up better than others. There’s a section outside Baltimore that’s superb, and parts of the L.A. freeway system are quite good.
But I’d never been on one this good. It was hard to believe a road could be in such good shape, after all those years without repair.
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