in their identical uniforms, crew-cuts and young, arrogant faces.

"Hello Mr. Myers," one of them said. "Won't you join us in a drink?"

When he started to demur, they interrupted, "But we insist, Mr. Myers." One took him by an arm and led him to a table.

"After all," they said as the drinks came up, "We owe you at least a drink for giving us such a nice new base and everything, now don't we." It was sarcasm, and hammy sarcasm at that, Aron thought.

He recognized the situation as another case of hazing, but this time by a group of soldiers made even more obnoxious and bellicose by the liquor in their guts.

"You don't owe me anything," Aron said, "I gave it to you for my own reasons and not for money." Sure enough, they even came out with the corny laughter.

He let them play out their little satire without protest. Their grandiose courtesy towards him, the toasts drunk in his honor. That is, until one of them, more drunk than the others, said, "Mr. Myers, I hope you don't mind my telling you,[Pg 22] but you are a—." The epithet was a new slang word but its vileness stemmed from prehistoric days.

[Pg 22]

Aron replied with blazing eyes. "I can't insult you back and you know it. I don't want to be killed that badly. All I can say is:

"Who are you to judge me? You are blind little men in a cage trying to judge someone on the outside.

"Your hearts and minds have been forged in the crucible of duty and battle. You live for your uniforms and the distinction those uniforms bring you. You live to fight and die, to spend your spare time in dank, noisy holes like this. Drinking and lying to each other about your adventures and love-life.

"Then you try to judge galactic politics and the decisions of a man caught up in the rip tides of these politics, when all you know is your own vicious lives. You are traitors as much as any man, for you have sacrificed your normal lives to dedicate yourself to the violent dead-end of a soldier of space.

"Yes, you know what I am talking about, the Fermi radiations! The hard radiations of space that make every person who stays in space any length of time a sure candidate for an early grave.

"You're young now, so terribly young, only twenty or so years old in a possible life-span of a hundred years.

 Prev. P 10/21 next