The Star Fox Read Online Free PDF Page B

Not as prisoners, forever dangerous, forever an incitement that Earth deliver them. Yet if the entity France commanded them home: in their nerves, that were betrayal of folk who had not surrendered, and they must strive for a Federation government of males more brave. I look in the future and I see how they shame the others of you – yes, yes, Captain, such intangibles make your history, you are that kind of animal. Truth, there would not be war to gain back Europe Neuve. Those bones grow dry before leaders as I speak of come to power. But when the next debatable issue arises – ah-h-h.’
    So there is to be a next issue
, Heim thought.
Not that he’s told
me anything I hadn’t already guessed. I wonder, though, when the
second crisis is scheduled. Maybe not in my lifetime. But surely
in Lisa’s
.
    His voice came out flat and remote, as if someone else spoke: Then you’re not going to admit the colonists are alive. What will you do? Hunt them down piecemeal?’
    ‘I command space fleets, Captain, not groundlings.’ Astonishingly, Cynbe’s lashes fluttered and he looked down at his hands. The fingers twined together. ‘I have said more than needful, to you alone. But then, I am not Old Aleriona. My type was bred after the ships began their comings from Earth. And … I was at Achernar.’ He raised his eyes.
“Star Fox
captain, as Earth’s men do, will you clasp my hand farewell?’
    ‘No,’ said Heim. He turned on his heel and walked towards the compression chamber.

CHAPTER FOUR

    H IS escort of Peace Control troopers unsealed his eyes and let him off the official flyer at Port Johnson in Delaware. They’d taken longer on whatever circuitous route they followed than he had expected. There was barely time to make his appointment with Coquelin. He hurried to the beltway headed for the civilian garages, elbowed aboard through the usual crowd, and found he must stand the whole distance.
    Fury had faded during the hours he sat blind, exchanging banalities with the earnest young officer of his guards (Weather Reg really muffed the last hurricane, don’t you think?’ … ‘Yes, too bad about New Europe, but still, we’ve outgrown things like imperialism and revenge, haven’t we? Anyhow, the galaxy is big.’ … ‘I sure envy you, the way you’ve traveled in space. We get around in this job, of course, but seems like the places and people on Earth get more alike every year.’) or thinking his own thoughts. He hadn’t really expected to accomplish anything with the Aleriona. The attempt was nothing but a duty.
    Grayness remained in him. I
don’t see what I can do in Paris either
.
    A shabby man, unnecessarily aggressive, pushed him. He controlled his temper with an effort – he hated crowds – and refrained from pushing back. You couldn’t blame the poor devil for being hostile to one whose good clothes revealed him a member of the technoaristocracy.
    That’s why we’ve got to move into space
, he told himself for the thousandth time.
Room. A chance to get out of this horrible huddle on Earth, walk free, be our own men, try out new ways to live, work, think, create, wonder. There was more happiness on New Europe, divided among half a million people, than these ten billion could ever imagine
.
    What is it in them
–
fear? inertia? despair? plain old ignorance? – makes them swallow that crock about how the rest of the universe is open to us?
    Because it was a crock. Habitable planets aren’t that common. And most of those that exist have intelligent natives; a good many of the rest have already been colonized by others.Heim did not want his race forced to the nearly ultimate immorality of taking someone else’s real estate away.
    Though more was involved in the Phoenix affair. A loss of nerve; throughout history, yielding to an unjustifiable demand for the sake of a few more years of peace has been the first step on a long downward road. An admission of the essentially vicious principle of ‘interest