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diff --git a/31767.txt b/31767.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9f82d50 --- /dev/null +++ b/31767.txt @@ -0,0 +1,933 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Peacemaker, by Alfred Coppel + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Peacemaker + +Author: Alfred Coppel + +Illustrator: Bob Martin + +Release Date: March 25, 2010 [EBook #31767] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PEACEMAKER *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: _The _Arrow_ lanced down out of the night like a spear of +flame, vengeful and deadly._] + + + _The legends of Jaq Merril are legion--but legends. Hark, ye, then + to the true story of the pirate benefactor of Mankind!_ + + +THE PEACEMAKER + +By Alfred Coppel + +Illustrated by BOB MARTIN + + +We humans are a strange breed, unique in the Universe. Of all the races +met among the stars, only _homo sapiens_ thrives on deliberate +self-delusion. Perhaps this is the secret of our greatness, for we are +great. In power, if not in supernal wisdom. + +Legends, I think, are our strength. If one day a man stands on the rim +of the Galaxy and looks out across the gulfs toward the seetee suns of +Andromeda, it will be legends that drove him there. + +They are odd things, these legends, peopled with unreal creatures, +magnificent heroes and despicable villains. We stand for no nonsense +where our mythology is concerned. A man becoming part of our folklore +becomes a fey, one-dimensional, shadow-image of reality. + +Jaq Merril--the Jaq Merril of the history books--is such an image. +History, folklore's jade, has daubed Merril with the rouge of myth, and +it does not become him. + +The Peacemaker, the chronicles have named him, and that at least, is +accurate in point of fact. But it was not through choice that he became +the Peacemaker; and when his Peace descended over the worlds of space, +Merril, the man, was finished. This I know, for I rode with him--his +lieutenant in a dozen and more bloody fights that earned him his +ironically pacific laurels. + + * * * * * + +Not many now living will remember the Wall Decade. History, ever +pliable, is rewritten often, and facts are forgotten. When it was gone, +the Wall Decade was remembered with shame and so was expunged from the +record of time. But I remember it well. It was an era compounded of +stupidity and grandeur, of brilliant discovery and grimy political +maneuver. We, the greedy men of space--and that includes Jaq +Merril--saw it end with sorrow in our hearts, knowing that we had killed +it. + +If you will think back to the years immediately preceding the Age of +Space, you may remember the Iron Curtain. Among the nations of the Earth +a great schism had arisen, and a wall of ideas was built between east +and west. Hydrogen bombs were stockpiled and armies marched and +countermarched threateningly. Men lived with fear and hatred and +distrust. + +Then, suddenly, came the years of spaceflight and the expanding +frontiers. Luna was passed. Mars and Venus and the Jovian Moons felt the +tread of living beings for the first time since the dawn of time. The +larger asteroids were taken and even the cold moonlets of Saturn and +Uranus trembled under the blast of Terran rockets. But the Iron Curtain +still existed. It was extended out into the gulf of space, an intangible +wall of fear and suspicion. Thus was born the Wall Decade. + +Jaq Merril was made for that epoch. Ever in human history there are +those who profit from the stupidity of their fellows. Jaq Merril so +profited. He dredged up the riches of space and took them for his own. +And his weapon was man's fear of his brothers. + + * * * * * + +It was in Yakki, down-canal from the Terran settlement at Canalopolis, +that Merril's plan was born. His ship, the _Arrow_, stood on the red +sands of Syrtis Major, waiting for a payload to the Outer System. It +stood among a good many like it: the _Moonmaid_, the _Gay Lady_, the +_Argonaut_, and my own vessel, the _Starhound_. + +We, the captains, had gathered in the Spaceman's Rest--a tinkling +gin-mill peopled with human wrecks and hungry-eyed, dusty-skinned women +who had come out to Mars hoping for riches and had found only the same +squalor they had left behind. I remember the look in Merril's eyes as he +spoke of the treasures of space that would never be ours, of the gold +and sapphires, the rubies and unearthly gems of fragile beauty and great +price. All the riches of the worlds of space, passing through our hands +and into the vaults of the stay-at-homes who owned our ships and our +very lives. It seemed to me that Merril suffered as though from physical +pain as he spoke of riches. He was nothing if not rapacious. Greedy, +venal, ruthless. All of that. + +"Five of us," he said in a hard voice, "Captains all--with ships and +men. We carry the riches of the universe and let it slip through our +fingers. What greater fools could there be?" + +Oh, he was right enough. We had the power to command in our hands +without the sense to grasp it firmly and take what we chose. + +"And mark you, my friends," Merril said, "A wall has been built around +Mars. A wall that weakens rather than strengthens. A wonderful, stupid, +wall...." He laughed and glanced around the table at our faces, flushed +with wine and greed. "With all space full of walls," he said softly, +"Who could unite against us?" + +The question struck home. I thought of the five ships standing out there +on the rusty desert across the silted canal. Five tall ships--against +the stars. We felt no kinship to those at home who clung to creature +comforts while we bucketed among the stars risking our lives and more. +We, the spacemen, had become a race apart from that of the home planet. +And Merril saw this in our faces that night so long ago, and he knew +that he had spoken our thoughts. + +Thus was born the Compact. + +Gods of space, but I must laugh when I read what history has recorded of +the Compact. + + "_Merril, filled with the wonder of his great dream, spoke his mind + to the Captains. He told them of the sorrow in his heart for his + divided fellow men, and his face grew stern when he urged them to + put aside ideology and prejudice and join with him in the Compact._" + +So speaks Quintus Bland, historian of the Age of Space. I imagine that I +hear Merril's laughter even as I write. Oh, we put aside ideology and +prejudice, all right! That night in Yakki the five Captains clasped +hands over the formation of the first and only compact of space-piracy +in history! + + * * * * * + +It was an all or nothing venture. Our crews were told nothing, but their +pockets were emptied and their pittances joined with ours. We loaded the +five ships with supplies and thundered off into the cobalt Martian sky +to seek a stronghold. We found one readily enough. The chronicles do not +record it accurately. They say that the fleet of the Compact based +itself on Eros. This is incorrect. We wanted no Base that would bring us +so close to the home planet every year. The asteroid we chose was +nameless, and remained so. We spoke of it seldom aspace, but it was ever +in our minds. There was no space wall, there to divide us one from the +other. It was a fortress against the rest of mankind, and in it we were +brothers. + +When we struck for the first time, it was not at a Russian missile post +as the histories say. It was at the _Queen of Heaven_, an undefended and +unsuspecting merchantman. The records of Earth say the _Queen_ was lost +in space between Uranus and Mars, and this is so. But she was listed +lost only because no Russian or American patrol found her gutted hulk. I +imagine that at this very moment she hangs out beyond Pluto, rounding +the bend of the long ellipse we sent her on that day we stripped her +bones. + +She carried gold and precious stones--and more important yet, women +being furloughed home after forced labor in the mines of Soviet Umbriel. +The _Starhound_ and the _Arrow_ bracketed her a million miles above the +plane of the ecliptic near Saturn's orbit, and killed her. We drew +abreast of her and forced her valves. We boarded her and took what we +chose. Then we slaughtered her men and sent them on their long voyage. +That was the beginning. + +The attack against Corfu was our next move. This is the battle that +Celia Witmar Day has described in verse. Very bad verse. + + "_Corfu slumbered, gorged and proud-- + While _Arrow_, _Hound_ and _Maid_ marshalled + Freedom's might above the tyrant's ground, + And rained down death--_" + +There is much more, of course. Brave phrases of emotion and fanciful +unreality written by one who never saw the night of space agleam with +stars. + +There was no talk of tyranny or liberty aboard the _Hound_ that day we +leveled with the _Maid_ and the _Arrow_ a thousand miles over the +Russian Base of Corfu. There _was_ talk of the bullion stored under the +fortress' turrets. + +Merril's face appeared in my visor screen, superimposed on the image of +the grimy little asteroid floating darkly against the starfields. + +"Their radar has picked us up by now, and they're wondering who we are," +he said, "Take the _Hound_ out on tangent left and join the _Maid_. +Cover my attack and stand by to put a landing party aground." + +I watched the image of the _Arrow_--a sliver of darkness against the +crescent of Corfu--lancing down at the fortress. Her forward tubes were +glowing with the familiar pre-discharge emanation. + +Below us, confusion reigned. For the first time in memory an asteroid +Base was under attack. Merril brought the _Arrow_ in to within fifty +miles and then unleashed the fury of his forward tubes. Hellfire +coruscated over the steel turrets and stone walls of Corfu. It splashed +like a liquid flame over men and metal and twisted the towers and +buttresses into spidery tendrils of glowing thread. Corfu died without +firing a shot. + +We put a party from the _Hound_ aground ten hours later. Even then, we +had to wear insulated suits to walk in that still molten inferno. +Charred bodies had become one with the stuff of the fortress, and +nothing living was left within the keep. We looted Corfu's treasure and +lifted into space heavy with gold. + + * * * * * + +Time passed in an orgy of looting for the men of the Compact. We grew +rich and arrogant, for in space we were kings. Torn by suspicion of one +another, America and Russia could do nothing against us. They had built +an Iron Curtain in space, and it kept them divided and weak. + +Endymion felt our blasts, and Clio. Then came Tethys, Rhea, Iapetus. We +cared nothing for the flag these Bases flew. They were the gathering +points for all the gold and treasure of space and we of the Compact took +what we wished of it, leaving a trail of blood and rapine behind us. No +nation claimed our loyalty; space was our mother and lust our father. + +Thus, the Peacemakers. + + * * * * * + +For five full years--the long years of the Outer Belt--the _Arrow_, the +_Starhound_, the _Moonmaid_, the _Lady_ and the _Argonaut_ were the +scourges of the spacelanes. No patrol could find us, and no defense +could contain us. I recall how we laughed at the angry sputtering of +Earth's radio. Vast sums were spent in searches and new weapons to +protect the meek and the mutually distrustful from Merril and the men of +the Compact. Budgets, already strained to the breaking point by +generations of the cold war, creaked and groaned as Russians and +Americans spent furiously to build up their defenses against our +depredations. But though we were few and they many--space was large and +it hid us well. + +And then one darkling day, Jaq Merril and I stood on the thin methane +snow that carpeted our Base's landing ramp, waiting under our own +blue-black sky for the return of the _Argonaut_. Merril had sent her +sunward to strike at the mines of Loki, an asteroid where Russian +_komisars_ rolled in mountains of blood-red rubies. + +We waited through the day and into the sable night, but the _Argonaut_ +did not return. For the first time since the formation of the Compact, +we had lost a ship, and something like unease crept into our hearts. The +carousal that night had no gaiety, and there was the sound of bereaved +women weeping. + +Merril could learn nothing of the _Argonaut's_ fate. It was as though +she had dropped through a hole in the fabric of space itself and +vanished from the ken of men. To me he said: "I fear a new weapon." But +to the rest, he kept his peace and let the work of the Compact continue. +There was nothing else to be done. Our Wall Decade was waning, and when +a man or a Compact outlives the age that gave him or it birth, there is +nothing to do but go forward and meet the new day dawning. + +So it was with the Compact. We lived on as we had lived before: looting +and killing and draining the wealth of space into our coffers. But in +the back of our minds a shadow was lurking. + +On the next raid, the _Lady_ was lost. I saw it happen, as did Merril. +There was nothing we could do to help her, and she died, spilling men +into the void as she ruptured in her last agony. + +It was off Hyperion, whence we had come to loot the trove built there by +the prospectors of the Saturnian Moons. And it was a trap. + +The _Arrow_, the _Hound_ and the _Lady_ circled the moonlet, swinging +inward to the attack. It was the _Lady_ who was to put aground the +raiding party, and her valves hung open while men readied the +assault-boats. Our radar screens showed nothing of danger. There was +only the bloated giant in the sky, a ringed monster of yellow gold +against the starry velvet of space. + +The _Lady_ dropped her boats, the _Hound_ and the _Arrow_ hovering by to +watch over their sister. And suddenly, the jagged moonscape below +erupted--belching streaks of fire that sought us like probing fingers. I +knew in one single instant of terror that this was the new weapon that +had killed the _Argonaut_, for it sliced into the _Lady's_ flanks as +though the steelite hull were cheese. + +She bulged, glowing like an ember. There was a sudden nimbus of snow +about her as her air escaped and froze, and then she rolled into her +death-dance, open from bow to stern, spilling scorched corpses into the +void. + +The _Arrow_ and the _Hound_ drove off into space like furies leaving the +spinning body of their sister ship behind, not waiting to watch her +crash down onto the rocky face of Hyperion. And now the five of the +Compact were only three, and again there was the sound of weeping among +our women. + + * * * * * + +Two months after that engagement, a single assault-boat returned to +Base. It was the lone survivor of the _Lady's_ landing party. By some +miracle, the three men aboard had escaped the holocaust. They had landed +and been captured and then they had fought their way free and into the +void once more. They were half-dead from starvation and exposure, but +they had brought word to Merril that the wall that had so long protected +us was crumbling. + +Merril sought me out, his lean hard face grim and set. + +"There was a Russian among the Americans on Hyperion," he said. + +"A prisoner?" It was my hope that spoke so, not my sure knowledge of +what was to come. + +Merril shook his head slowly. "A technician. They developed the beam +that killed the _Argonaut_ and the _Lady_--together." His voice was +harsh and bleak. Then suddenly he laughed. "We've touched them," he +said, "Touched them on their tender spot--their purses." He bowed low, +filled with bitter mockery. "Behold the diplomats, the men who are +accomplishing the impossible!" + +And I knew that his words spelt doom. Doom for the Compact and for the +Wall Decade that was our life. + +Yet we did not stint. In that year we raided Dione, Io, Ganymede, and +even the American naval Base on Callisto. We gutted six Russian and four +American rockets filled with treasure. And we ventured sunward as far as +the moons of Mars. + +We dared battles with patrol ships and won. We killed the destroyer +_Alexei Tolstoi_ off Europa and we shattered an American monitor over +Syrtis itself, and watched the wreckage rain down on Yakki, the place +where the Compact was born. + +And we lost the _Moonmaid_. + + * * * * * + +The radio told us the story. Other new weapons were being developed +against us, and here and there American and Russian spacecraft were seen +in company for the first time in the history of the Age of Space. +Convoys were formed from ships of both flags to protect spatial commerce +from the imagined "great fleet" of the Compact. None knew that only the +_Arrow_ and the _Starhound_, small ships, weary ships, were left to face +the slowly combining might of Earth. + +And then at last, the pickings--growing slimmer always--diminished to +the vanishing point. Merril stood before us and gave the assembled crews +their option. + +"The treasure hunt is over," our captain told us, "And those who wish +may withdraw now. Take your women and the space-boats and return to +Mars. You have your shares, and you can live in comfort wherever you +may choose. If you wish it, go now." + +Some few did go, but most remained. I watched Merril's face, and saw one +last plan maturing there. Then he spoke again and we all understood. One +last raid ... to take Luna and command the world! + + * * * * * + + "_Still the unity of Mankind was not secure, and Merril, filled with + impatience for his great dream, decided on one final stroke. He + would descend on Luna Base itself with his fleet, and commanding all + Earth, he would drive men together--even though it might mean his + own death. With this plan of self-immolation in his heart, the + Peacemaker ordered his hosts and sought the pumice soil of the + mother planet's moon...._" + +This is the way Quintus Bland, historian and scholar, puts it down for +posterity. I, one of "his hosts," would say it another way. + +We had gutted the Solar System of its treasure and at last men were +uniting against us. Our "fleet" was reduced to two small ships and a +bare handful of men and women to fight them. Jaq Merril could see the +handwriting on the wall and he knew that all must be gambled on one last +throw of the dice. Only with Terra herself under our guns could we hope +to continue sucking the juice of the worlds into our mouths. It was all +or nothing, for we had grown used to our life and we could no longer +change it to meet the demands of the dawning age of Soviet-American +amity. + + * * * * * + +Side by side the _Arrow_ and the _Hound_ slanted sunward. Mars behind +us, ahead lay the Earth-Moon system. Ten years had passed since any of +us aboard the Compact ships had seen the home world, and though we no +longer felt a part of it, the sight of the silvery cloud-flecked globe +touched our hearts. Touched them as the sapphires of Mimas or the gold +of Corfu touched them. We saw the planet that gave us birth and we were +filled with hunger for it. To own it, command it, make it our own. + +Luna's mountains were white and stark under our keels as Merril led us +across the curve of the southern horizon, seeking to put us into +position to attack the UN Moon Base in Clavius from the direction of the +Moon's hidden face. + +We swung low across unnamed mountain ranges and deep sheer valleys +steeped in shadow. The voice of the ranger in the _Arrow_ came softly +through the open intercom into the tiny control room of the _Hound_. A +woman's voice, tense with excitement, but disciplined and controlled. + +"Range five hundred miles, four seventy five, four fifty--" + +And then Merril's voice, calm and reassuring, giving heart to all the +untried ones aboard with his steady conning commands. + +"Four o'clock jet, easy, hold her. Drivers up one half standard. Steady +goes. Meet her. Steady--" + +Line astern now, the two ships flashing low across the jagged lunar +landscape, and a world in the balance-- + +An alarm bell ringing suddenly, and my screen showing the fleeting +outline of a Russian monitor above, running across our stern. My own +voice, sharp with command: + +"Gun pointer!" + +"Here, sir!" + +"Get me that gunboat." + +The _Hound's_ turret wound about with agonizing slowness as the monitor +reached for the sky, clawing for altitude and safety. And then there +came a searing blast of fire and the fragments of the Russian gunboat +raining down lazily, seeking their eternal rest in the pumice of Luna's +hidden face. + +But they had been warned at the UN Base. The monitor had left one dying +shriek in the ether, and the waiting garrison had heard. Merril knew it, +and so did I. We moved forward calmly, into the jaws of hell. + + * * * * * + +The _Arrow_ attacked from ten o'clock, low on the horizon, the _Hound_ +from twelve o'clock high. We swept in over the batteries of pulsating +projectors, raining down our bombs. The ground shuddered and shook with +the fury of exploding uranium and the sky was laced with a net of fiery +death. The _Hound_ shrieked her protest as I swung her about for another +attack. + +There was a sickening swerve and the smell of ozone in my ship. +Somewhere, deep within her, a woman screamed and I felt the deck under +me give as one of the questing beams from the fortress below cut into +the hull. Airtight doors slammed throughout the wounded vessel, and I +drove her to the attack again, hard. The last of the bombs clattered out +of the vents, sending mushrooms of pumice miles into the black sky. One +battery of guns below fell silent. + +The _Arrow_ vanished into the night above and as suddenly reappeared, +her forward tubes spewing red fire onto the Base below. Then Merril +pulled her up again and disappeared among the pale stars. + +The _Hound's_ hurt was mortal, I could feel her dying under my hands, +and tears streaked my face. Below decks, she was a shambles where the +cutting beam from the ground had torn part of her heart out. Still I +fought her. There was no retreat from this last raid, nor did I wish +any. There was a madness in us--a blood-lust as hot and demanding as +ever our lust for gold and treasure might have been. + +I lashed the face of the fortress with the _Hound's_ forward tubes, +frantically, filled with a hateful anguish. I felt my ship losing way, +twisting and seeking rest on the jagged ground below, and thinking he +had deserted us, I cursed Merril in an ecstasy of blind fury. + +Again and again the _Hound_ was hit. I knew then that Merril's plan had +been madness, a last gesture of defiance to the new age of unity among +men. The _Hound_ fell at last, spitting fire and gall in a futile dance +of death. + +She struck on a high plateau, grinding into the pumice, rolling with +macabre abandon across the face of the high tableland. Then at last she +was still, hissing and groaning fitfully as she died, her buccaneering +days gone forever. + +I donned a suit and staggered, half dazed, out into the lunar night. A +half-dozen men and women from the crew had survived the impact and they +stood by the wreckage, faces under the plastic helmets turned skyward. +They were one and all stunned and bleeding from the violence of the +_Hound's_ end, but they looked neither back nor around them. Their eyes +were filled with the insane glory of the drama being enacted in the sky. + +The _Arrow_ had returned. She lanced down out of the night like a spear +of flame, vengeful and deadly. Straight into the mouth of the screaming +guns she dove, death spilling from her tubes. She bathed the Moon Base +in fire, searing the men within--Russian and American alike--into the +brotherhood of death. + +Miraculously, she pulled up out of her encircling net of flame. We +watched in openmouthed wonder as she reached with sobbing heart for the +sky just once again--and then, failing, crippled and dying, she hung +above the crater's rim, framed with deadly beams from below, but radiant +in her own right--gleaming in the light of the sun. + +This was defeat. We knew it as we stood by the tangled pile of steelite +that had been the _Hound_ and watched the _Arrow_ die. But nothing in +this life that I have lived ever told me so grandly that the Wall Decade +was ended--and our life of buccaneering with it--as the thing that +happened next. + +The _Arrow's_ valve opened and a tiny figure stepped out--into space. I +did not need to be told that Jaq Merril was coming to meet the men he +had welded together against him. + +Lazily, unreally, the tiny shape twisted over and over as it fell, until +at last it vanished amid the raw welter of craters and ridges beyond the +razor wall of Clavius.... + + * * * * * + +I have told a true tale, though one that will not be believed. I have +taken the Peacemaker of the histories and painted him _as he was_. + +But men are ashamed, and the chronicles of history must be rewritten to +hide their weaknesses, Jaq Merril has become a legend, and the man that +I knew is forgotten. + +Merril--pirate, fighter, grandiose dreamer. That was my captain. Not the +colorless do-good creature of the legend. Merril fought for lust and +greed, and these are the things that will one day take men to the stars. +He knew this truth, of course, and that was the substance of his great +dream. Because of it, there are no longer walls in space, and the men +who united to fight the Peacemaker will one day rule the universe. + +Meanwhile, chroniclers will write lies about him, and Jaq Merril's +laughter will echo in some ghostly Valhalla beyond the farthest star. + + +THE END + + + + +Transcriber's Note: + + This etext was produced from _If: Worlds of Science Fiction_ January + 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. + copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and + typographical errors have been corrected without note. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Peacemaker, by Alfred Coppel + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PEACEMAKER *** + +***** This file should be named 31767.txt or 31767.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/7/6/31767/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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