"Men can take it," he began quietly. "Women are different. They can take it if they want to, but it's hard to find the right woman; and even then she must want to take it by being with the man she loves, or perhaps it is psychological—martyring themselves to gain a subtle control of that man, which they all want to do.

"When you get a woman who can't, or doesn't want to take it, she can pull a beautiful crack-up. Without friends to appreciate her martyrdom, with a husband who refuses to acknowledge it, she sometimes uses the supreme martyrdom to gain recognition."

"Instinct tells me to slug you in the teeth," Aron said, "but apathy forbids me."

"Couldn't it be that you refuse to slug me because you want me to keep talking? Because you recognize the truth, that your wife committed suicide because of the loneliness and now your devotion to state has become meaningless? 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away' was the old maxim, but 'the State only taketh away' is the new."

There was more talk and some drinking, for the agent had conveniently brought some choice liquor.

The next morning, after they had arisen from where they had fallen asleep in a stupor, the agent proposed his plan. With the disgust and despair of the hangover, the agent's biting attack on his pride and his state, Aron listened. Later the agent was no longer the enemy, but a partner in a deal.

The next week the ships came. Twenty-seven proud cruisers of the People's Republic; also troop and supply ships. They landed in the broad valley on the main continent of Kligor, twenty miles from Aron's station.

The professional fighters emerged from their tools of war, the dull hulls of the ships and the dark uniforms lapping up the pleasant sunshine. The only reflection was from the polished bits of metal that hung at their sides, bits of metal that could spit destruction in ten different forms.

They looked at the planet but did not see it, it was just their newly gained base. They did not see the poignant beauty of the seemingly senescent hills covered with wisps of green and bathed in blazing sunshine. They only saw strategic positions, avenues of approach and tactical advantages.

The pebble had become a pawn. War had come to Kligor. The slow, subtle weavings of individual threads of human psychology were ripped and snarled as the Mass Effort took over.

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