George O. Smith

“ That is extermination."
"The Loard-vogh should be exterminated!" thundered Indan Ko. The little man's thunder was slightly high-pitched to the Terran and not at all awe-inspiring. Billy merely smiled.
"It is not for any race to render sterile of life one quarter of the Galaxy. Extermination is not victory. War by proper definition is a measure used to impose your will upon a non-co-operative government. Even the Loard-vogh understand that a dead slave is no good. Extermination may be your will, Tlemban, but you will fail in your conquest. Therefore I ask that you use intelligence. ”

“ Save for three or four times in the past—before Vorgan's time—when Tlembo had created minor riots, the Loard-vogh conquest had been lightning fast and completely unheralded. A sector would be overrun, a star cluster at a time, and no word would go out ahead of their plans. Races fell before their might, and then lived in slavery. A slave has no position, and no right nor ability to offer terms. ”

“ Third came the heavy supercraft, the backbone of the grand fleet of the Loard-vogh. A day behind came the mop-up transports, crammed to the space cocks with fighting men, their nerves already on edge after a short day or two of flight.
And bringing up the rear were the myriad upon myriad of supply ships, replacement carriers, machine-shop craft, and even space-going foundries. Heavy ships laden with munitions and generating equipment; craft that could anchor to the sunward side of an inner planet and hurl megawatt after megawatt of power to the fighting ships for their power-coffers. ”

“ Micro-organisms that defy your best instruments can not defy your evolution. Giants that defy your imagination can not defy your science. The cold and forbidding planets themselves bow to Terran domination. Lane, born on Venus; a world of violent insect life and rife with micro-organisms is populated by Terrans. Downing was born of Mars. Mars is cold and forbidding. Life cannot survive there. Life cannot, gentlemen. Oh, life in the sense that regeneration and self-sustenance is life, can. After all, Mars is bathed in the same radiation that produces hardy mutations. ”

“ The air above Terra grew less turbulent, the energy died. Loard-vogh ships found less opposition as they landed at will on the former Planet of Terror. By hundreds and by thousands they landed—and by thousands they died as they tried to flip back their helmets and breathe the air of Terra. They turned black, they fell down, and the growths of ravaging microscopic life raced and built into horrid green mold and whispy hair as the growths of fungus found absolutely no opposition.
But with better direction, the Loard-vogh roamed the planet without death, though fungus-spores drifted freely. ”

“ To fight a war on many fronts is death. To warn a thousand races between the Loard-vogh and Terra might be the balance."
"Then we must hope," said Vorgan. "And only as a last resort will we drive forward."
"Face the fact," smiled Lindoo. "Kregar has—will have soon—the Little Man in his power. The cohort of the Little Man comes next. Dispose of them and the Planet of Terror will never know what it missed, in spite of the destruction of the suppressor. If nothing more than that happens, we are still safe. The Extremes fight one another—or fought one another. ”

“ But look, Indan Ko. You will be taxed terribly. You will be forced into handing over a certain percentage of your wealth. You will work for them, and for little remuneration. Yet your hardships will actually be less than the cost of fighting them. Now you must maintain a fleet, arm your cities against invasion, and always prepare for war. If you submit to the Loard-vogh banner you will be protected by the Loard-vogh, and may Heaven help any race that attacks Tlembo? The income you spend in being a nominal slave will be less than the amount spent in being an armed free-world. ”

“ Besides, you do not understand."
"I understand this!" exploded Hotang Lu. "You are invaded. You will be conquered. You will join the slaves of the Loard-vogh. They will strip you from your homes and make you work for them. You will be driven and killed, for they have no compassion. They have no need of frugality in slaves. Terra will die."
"It is not yet time."
"Your judgment is faulty!" shouted Hotang Lu.
He hurled himself from the house and into his tiny spacecraft. He paused for only an instant to view the grave of Toralen Ki on the broad green lawn, and then he drove upward in superdrive. ”

“ In that year, you must devise a means of gathering Sscantoo into the Loard-vogh empire. It must be done without battle. It must be done without losing a man—no, that is expecting too much," smiled the Lord of All nastily, "it must be done without losing more than one hundred men! That does not include Sscantovians, of course."
"Within one year," said Billy Thompson, "we will hand you Sscantoo as a willing part of the Loard-vogh empire. It will be done without battle, without losing more than one hundred men in the process. ”

“ Faintly there came the raucous rattle of a rivet gun, the rumble of a sky train passing overhead on its way to the antipodes. He slid the section shut, closing the sounds of this alien world of monsters from his ears. He pressed a button and the steel shutter closed off the light that was so much like his own Tlemban sunshine.
It seemed wrong that such a familiar sun should shine down upon buildings of such vastness, glint against skycraft of such magnitude, and give warmth and life to a race so huge and so very, very young. ”

“ Our secret weapon is our minds and our ability to employ logic and data to a problem and come up with an answer. The personnel snatcher is but one phase of this weapon we possess. You admire it. It is, of course, yours by right of conquest. Other developments will be yours, also. But they would be lost if we had been merely trampled over and our interesting facets ignored by the high councils of the Loard-vogh. You have a horde of problems, Lord of All. A myriad of problems that we of Terra may solve. I offer you the Solar Sector as a research area! ”

“ Mutation has been rapid, and evolution has taken swift advances."
"Meaning exactly what?" demanded Stellor Downing.
"I can tell you that one," laughed Thompson. "We are tougher than hell."
"Terra's evolution has been vicious and swift," said Hotang Lu. "The natural enemies of life have also evolved rapidly. Clifford Lane destroyed one of the minor animals of Sscantoo by merely holding it—so did Stellor Downing. The things that Terrans live with in peace—or even symbiosis—are feared by the rest of the Galaxy. Insect life—many thousands of kinds of insects. Fungus—a myriad of types, all hardy. ”

“ We'll destroy the menace immediately, and from then on, all we'll have to do is to hold that sector against any possible enemy."
"A long and dismal prospect," said Vorgan. "But we must not give them time."
"They will have no time to do more than plan," said Lindoo. "It takes time to put a new skill into practice. We shall conquer them!"
"We shall conquer them," echoed Vorgan, the Lord of All.
"And we shall have to force the catmen, too, Lord of All."
"Why?" thundered the Lord of All.
"Because the catmen of Sscantoo are unsympathetic to all forms of alliance." ”

“ Toralen Ki shook his head. "Fate is like that. To carry out the plan properly, they must co-operate. In order to tell them what they must do, the suppressor must first be destroyed. And were it not for the suppressor in the first place, the mental capability of this race would require no assistance from the like of you and I or any other member of any other race. The Loard-vogh were very brilliant, Hotang Lu. To hurl suppressors of mental energy through the Galaxy was a stroke of genius." ”

“ Thompson looked up. "What they need is to have their heads knocked together," he said sourly. "A fine rotten pair."
"Look," started Downing.
"Now listen," grated Lane.
"Shut up!" snapped Thompson. "You've both heard what Toralen Ki said. You know what's heading this way. You are aware of just what can happen on Sol if Sol isn't smart. And you sit there like a pair of flat-headed imbeciles, prating about your own petty fight. Patricia was right. It is a sorry day for civilization when it must depend upon the likes of you. Why don't you get smart? Where is your good sense?" ”

“ And there is a saturation point in the manpower curve; just because one man can dig a well in sixty days, it is no sign that sixty men can dig the well in one day. They could, mathematically, but you can't get sixty men with shovels in a three-foot circle either mathematically or physically.
So time bore on relentlessly. Time that for the Loard-vogh seemed endlessly droning by was racing like fury for the laboring Terrans.
For at the same instant that Vorgan was groaning about the four-month wait, Thompson was complaining about the utter impossibility of getting anything done in four months. ”

“ Vorgan groaned at the thought of all the races of the Galaxy asking terms, and getting certain conditions of servitude. Better to give a little to this one race than to go on trying to keep a galaxy full of races satisfied.
No, he thought, not one race. That makes two! Terra had certain advantages asked and offered. But Terra had been defeated, and only her very brilliant ability had won her the right to a certain freedom. And, of course, Terrans were helping the Loard-vogh on a myriad of planets, doing things that the Loard-vogh found difficult, mentally. ”

“ Hotang Lu smiled. "I know," he said. "The end-product of it all will be that little change is visible. You see, the avaricious of your race will be of greater mental power, true enough. But those of you who try to see that things are run right will have the same increase in mental stature. When I spoke of the human race as a slumbering giant, I meant that all facets of human nature were equally smothered." ”

“ To die for an ideal is all right. Toralen Ki died happy, at least! He believed that he had done his part, and no more could he do. Fine! The Loard-vogh would have ignored us for another three thousand years if you had not come here and stirred us up. Now we reap the seed of your foolishness.
"Terra writhes under the energies poured out by more ships than we have men! Gone and lost are our hopes, and our peaceful future. Our secret weapon? Our secret weapon will be successful—and from then on Terra must ever be alert and on guard. Think you the Loard-vogh will bow to us? ”

“ As I gather it, the Solar sector of the Galaxy is alive with a violent evolution of fungus. We live in it, we breathe it, and we—eat it. They cringed in horror at what they found on the microscope slides, and this is the fourth pig I've killed. But I'm completely fungicided now, and I can handle 'em. But you see, Downing, you are alive with fungus spores looking for a place to live. They can't live on you, but what few that do escape the bactericidal action of the skin find it quite easy to go to work on an animal that has never been required to strive for life against fungi. ”

“ It passed through your system thousands of years ago and it held sway over your mental ability to now.
"Your race," said Toralen Ki, "is best equipped to fight the Loard-vogh."
"I don't feel any more intelligent than I did before," objected Thompson.
"No, because you have been under the influence of the suppressor for countless generations. It has become an inherited trait. It will remain an inherited trait until the mentality of the human race is energized, or triggered by a rather powerful wave of mental energy.
"The Loard-vogh will enslave the Galaxy if they are not stopped. ”

“ Sscantoo will reap the benefits of a Galaxy-wide culture. Sscantoo will reap the benefits created by Terra, and without the battle scars that Terra will bear forever. Fight them, and you will die. There is little sense in being dead, Linzete. Never again will the Loard-vogh conquer and enslave. From now on in, they will find their selected victims prepared and allying with them, offering them facts and facets of culture, and sponsored by Terra. Terrans are already high in the councils of the Loard-vogh as technical advisors. ”

“ And then across the plains of Planet IV, of Procyon, there rolled endless, countless mile after mile of ground equipment. The heavy portables started to hurl their might as soon as they came in sight, and the Terrans were pinched.
Pinched between an embattled circle and a closing circle. The inner circle expanded, the outer circle contracted.
Downing's ship roared into the concentric fire, its turrets whipping back and forth and spitting sheer energy. Behind him there sped the twenty-four ships of his command. Into the holocaust they drove, piercing the Loard-vogh line momentarily. ”

“ The Loard-vogh swept into Terra.
Terra, the home of man. Terra, the mighty. Terra, defended as few planets were defended against the legions of Vorgan, Lord of All.
Despite the humans on Venus and Mars, they were still colonies compared to the home planet. Knowing that massed energy might hold out, all Solar defenses had been moved to Terra. Let Terra hold out and eventually mankind would recover, expand, and then drive the enemy back. ”

“ The intellectual apex, the Little Man known as Toralen Ki, the key to their future, is now being attacked by the Susceptible One, through Kregar's control."
"Excellent. And the outcome?"
"Obvious. Toralen Ki will die. So will his cohort Hotang Lu. Thus dies those who understand their intellectual limitations and the will to lift others above them. The Extremes, upon whom the Little Men pinned their hopes, will be split forever. One will certainly die—perhaps both."
"It is best. Shall we then attack the Planet of Terror?" ”

“ For the Loard-vogh were a quarrelsome race, and their fighting men trained to viciousness. It is not strange that with four months, cooped up in shells of steel, they should take to fighting among themselves. It was strictly against the regulations, of course, because the Lord of All wanted his fighting men to kill the enemy. Yet a fighting man will fight if he has nothing else to do, and for four long months there would be absolutely nothing to do. The Loard-vogh fighting man knew little else but battle. ”