Chapter 2

So the weeks trotted by, the soldiers' camp expanding daily as the Traitor let the supply ships through the barrier. There are moods in war just as in people. This was a crucial point, the People's Republic had gained a slight edge by its gain on Kligor. So the usual pitch of anticipation was infused with the higher excitement of a sure victory.

The days were slipping furtively away as the Kligor garrison gathered itself together, crouched and got ready to spring into blind, violent action on the big day.

The laughter of the soldiers was tinged with nervous hysteria, but when they thought of that grim array of defense satellites, with its all-seeing eyes, its electronic brain, its steel guts and large parcel of hell in its fist, all this United Empire strength protecting them, their laughter grew louder and more sincere.

* * * * *

Aron thanked providence that Kligor didn't have any moons. This particular night called for every ebony patch of darkness that he could find.

He was on a nocturnal visit to the base, not using his flier. He knew there were guards posted near his station that would notify the camp when this craft was used. Slipping out the night before and avoiding the guards, Aron had begun the twenty mile hike to the base.

As he neared the base his precautions increased, his speed decreasing proportionately. Avoiding the outer ring of guards was easy, as they were spaced far apart. Moving in undetected, through the tighter nets of guards around the camp, required the skill and patience of a feline.

That this base should have foot soldiers patrolling the ground around it seemed absurd on the face of it, especially to the men who had to do it. The planet was uninhabited and their only worry was from the skies above where the TA satellites defended them.

The Intelligence officers knew better. They knew how easily one man could slip through these defences. One man at a time, for several weeks, and a sizable ground force could be built up in some remote spot on Kligor. It was a long shot probability, but it was their duty to protect against such a probability destroying what they had achieved.

There was also a traitor, one of those fluctuating spineless things, loose on the planet--a clever man who couldn't be trusted by anyone.

This lack of trust was justified as Aron crawled and inched his way through the last circle of sentries. His whole body was a detecting device, listening for footsteps, watching for dim figures in the dark, even his nose was waiting to detect the odor of a cigarette.

According to the paper he had been lucky enough to read in the Intelligence offices when they weren't looking, he knew the Captain of the guards should be making an inspection about then. The seconds hung suspended, reluctant to pass, and Aron waited.

The Captain finally showed up, walking briskly, a smile on his face. This smile was rudely erased and all future occasions for smiles removed by a swiftly moving figure that plunged a knife into his throat before his mind could translate the shock into a cry of alarm.

More movement on the path and a new Captain of the guards emerged, walking just as briskly, but in a new direction.

The People's Republic's base occupied the narrow end of the valley, with a canyon entrance serving as the apex of the triangle it covered. Near this apex were the buildings, the dozens of barracks and administrative buildings, all dwarfed by the massive concrete warehouses set around them against the hills. In these warehouses were the fuel, food and munitions of the enemy.

Below these buildings were the ships, first the rows of the 27 warships and then the 40 or so cargo and troop ships. These supply ships made up the base of the triangle. From the air these ships looked like a tiny forest of needles stuck upright in the ground, but from close range on the ground, where Aron walked in the captain's uniform, they were mammoth towers of steel--again, a matter of scale.

He emerged from the sentry lines near the cargo ships. These were all sealed and unoccupied and he passed the rows of them without a glance. It was a long walk, for the ships were hundreds of feet apart. The open field where they rested had the rough ground of a meadow, making his attempted military stride more of a burlesque jerky gait while he tried not to stumble.

There was a guard outside the airlock of each of the warships, for the crews remained aboard constantly. These guards were standing around talking to friends or moving restlessly about.

The sentries saluted Aron as he marched by, for they could see the brass on his uniform gleaming in the dark. He found what he wanted, a group of four guards talking by one airlock. They snapped to attention as he approached.

The base had expanded so rapidly, with new units and men being shifted constantly, that Aron counted on the men not knowing exactly who the Captain of the guards should be. All the sentries knew was the insignia of the Captain was before them and the man who wore them was to be obeyed.

His orders sent a chill of alarm through them. He said he had received a report of someone slipping through the guards and moving among the cargo ships. Since the soldiers were needed to patrol, he wanted these men to gather all the warship guards together and search the area of the cargo ships.

In answer to the question in their eyes, he said he knew the warships would be unguarded but he was ordering a special detail to replace them immediately.

The four dispersed and, in a few minutes, all of the lock guards had left their posts and were moving down to the cargo ships.

Time was the critical element now. Aron had taken a terrific chance by donning the Captain's uniform, but he had pulled off the bluff and now he had to capitalize on it--fast!

While the ship sentries were on their futile search, he ran from ship to ship, jumped into the open airlocks and worked quickly with pliers and a screwdriver. It was a little trick that he had learned from a talkative spaceman in a bar many years ago. It worked on any ship. Disconnect a tiny spring, cut a wire, and it was impossible to close the massive airlock door.

Aron wanted very badly to have those doors stay open.

Twenty-seven ships, hundreds of feet apart. He was on his last five when the search was abandoned and the sentries began returning. He hoped they would react normally, taking their time, dragging their feet and talking to each other in disgust about the wild goose chase.

On the last two ships he had to use different tactics. The sentinels had returned. When he walked up to them, they came to attention sullenly, waiting the chance to deride the usual stupidity of the soldiers and their Captain.

Instead, they had their throats cut.

Finishing the last airlock, Aron then walked through the post. Right up the main street he strode, his heart in his throat but his step and demeanor firm. The time of night helped him, for there were few soldiers about that might recognize him, and what few patches of light were thrown out from windows and doors were quickly swallowed by the black maw of darkness.

Up the main street, past the barracks, towards the last warehouse at the head of the valley. The two pillars of rock that marked the opening of the canyon served as a background for the massive blank walls of this warehouse.

At the little door set in the center of the front wall there was a sentry. He was grumbling to himself about having to do such a damn-fool thing as guard a warehouse when there wasn't an enemy within light years of the building.

He was wrong. And the enemy killed him.

Inside the warehouse, there being no lock on the door, Aron groped about in the stuffy, pitch blackness till he came to a little fire station set against a wall. There was a locker containing an insulated suit, hatchet and other fire-fighting equipment, at this station.

He donned the fire-fighting suit and helmet and went to one end of the building that was walled-off. In this separate room was the emergency power supply for the base. There was a turbine with a fuel supply and tiers of high-voltage storage batteries. There was also a fire hose on one wall because of the presence of the combustible turbine fuel.

* * * * *

Aron had to pause for a minute to gather his thoughts. He had come so far, so fast through the first steps of his plan and now he was ready for the final action.

What Aron now needed for success was three things. Sulphuric acid and salt water in large quantities and the right wind.

The first two had been thoughtfully provided by the People's Republic. The third was a matter of waiting. The land on Kligor was dry. What little water supplies were available weren't enough to maintain a base the size the garrison had built. Since the ocean was only fifteen miles from the valley where the base was located, it was a simple matter to pipe in water.

One of the mammoth cargo ships had been loaded with six inch flexible hose, tougher than steel, wound on drums. It was a matter of a day's work to fly the ship slowly from the ocean to the base, laying out fifteen miles of this flexible pipe on the ground.

It was salt water, then, that was received at the base. Most of it was filtered through a chemical plant in the valley to make fresh water, but it was salt water that was available to the fire hoses for the needed quantity and pressure.

The emergency power supply and the fire hoses were only normal safety precautions, but now, in the hands of the Traitor, they became deadly weapons.

By pushing the lever that removed the lids from the storage batteries automatically for inspection he had sulphuric acid--for the law of conservation of energy said that man had achieved the highest efficiency of electro-chemical conversion, in practical form, in the lead acid storage battery.

After finding the light switch and flipping it on, Aron found this lever and released it. Now all he needed was wind, and he had that, blowing a cool ten miles an hour down the canyon and over the valley. He had to consult the weather maps at his station for weeks to determine the probability of this wind occurring and the weather conditions that produced it. One small breeze to chart, when his recording instruments gave hourly descriptions of the whole planet's climate. It wasn't too hard a job.

Yet that breeze had to be at the right time, at night and on the night he wanted. Close enough to the attack date to be effective yet not too soon. Last night his instruments recorded the data that would produce this wind, so he was making his strike tonight.

He could not stand and gloat exultantly over his success. There were dead sentries and sprung airlocks that might be discovered.

With a twist of a nozzle, the fire hose came to life, throwing a pulsing stream of water on the batteries.

What Aron had done by ingenuity, luck, daring and careful planning was finished. It was now nature's turn.

* * * * *

The next night after his one man attack on the base, Aron had a visitor at his weather station. The visitor was in sad shape. His clothing was disheveled, his face dirty and unshaven, his eyes bloodshot and he seemed to be on the verge of a mental collapse with a frantic gleam to his eye.

But he held a pistol in his hand and Aron didn't.

He was an officer of the Intelligence Corps of the People's Republic. It was not the officer who had first visited Aron, but one of the others that Aron had come vaguely to know, like picking out sheep from a flock.

He had been away from the base on a planetary reconnaissance mission the night before. Since then he had gone through a nightmare ordeal.

He had returned to his base to find sixty ships of the People's Republic about to fall into enemy hands without a struggle, because 200,000 men were dead or dying of chlorine gas poisoning.

The gas that had come pouring out of the warehouse at the head of the valley last night. It had billowed down the valley, its streamers and tentacles pushed by the gentle wind bringing the sleeping men awake coughing and gasping only to fall asleep again--permanently.

It had seeped through the barracks, the warehouses and into the open airlocks of ships, while dying men tried frantically to close those locks. They wouldn't close though, and the spacemen died puzzled as to why not.

In galactic warfare, with the emphasis on speed, maneuverability, range and power of space cannon, et cetera, everyone had forgotten an archaic weapon--gas. Aron hadn't.

After the horror of this discovery, the Intelligence officer had taken a flier to Aron's station.

He was feeling justifiably sorry for himself and his empire's thwarted plans for conquest, now completely impossible since the United Empire had been notified of the impending attack, and since the most strategic part of that attack, the Kligor task force, had been destroyed.

His military mind refused to admit that one man, the Traitor, Aron, could have caused this tragic defeat. He was willing, however, to vent his desire for revenge on this one man.

Aron was unmoved by his threats and denunciations. The Intelligence man was going to kill him, certainly, but the officer wanted to make him suffer first, to make him squirm.

When one man has defeated and completely made fools of a galactic empire, killing is too simple.

"We weren't stupid enough to try to coerce you with pure logic," the agent was saying to Aron. "We knew you must have a large amount of patriotism to even take such a thankless job as this Kligor post."

"There had to be something else, some stronger reason to make you reject your empire."

Aron watched him warily. He could tell by the malevolent gleam of the Intelligence man's eye and the sneer that he was playing a trump, that he had a choice bit of information he thought would hurt Aron. All Aron could do was listen.

"You came here happily married and full of patriotic zeal," the armed man said. "That way you were no prospect for us.

"We changed those conditions by a very simple act.

"We killed your wife."

The officer watched him like a hungry animal, waiting for the reaction.

The reaction was a pitying smile and the following words.

"Why don't you sit down. I know you are going to kill me, there's nothing I can do about it and, actually, I don't object. But I would like to say several things first and you might as well be comfortable while I'm talking.

"I want to speak my piece mostly to clarify my ideas before death, but also so that you, who will continue to live, will be able to think about them in the future."

While the agent sat down with a puzzled look, Aron continued, "That is why, when there is combat between men, it will always be in doubt. Even though one side may be outnumbered, outmaneuvered and have all the military laws of advantage against it, that side can still win.

"You have made the one mistake, the perpetual mistake, of combat. You forgot about the psychological factor. The force that can make a man surrender when the odds are with him, or fight like a demon when it is hopeless.

"So long as there is war, this psychological factor will make it an even, undecided combat despite all laws of logic.

"The psychological factor in this case, the one you overlooked, was that I love my empire more than my wife. She was merely a companion. You wouldn't know that, or the reasons for it, unless you knew my whole life--and not just the events of my life, my whole psychological life."

"Of course we couldn't know that," the enemy agent said, "but we could go on general rules of human behavior, and those rules deny the fact that a man can love a state more than a woman."

"Good God!" Aron exclaimed. "What training do you Snooper boys get? You don't even know the rudiments of psychology. Intelligence men--ha! All you know how to do is steal papers, kill in the dark and be suspicious of everyone all the time."

In a quieter tone, Aron went on, "It is easy to love a state like a woman, because a State is a woman.

"A love for State fulfills all emotional needs. The censorship of yourself by your super-ego, manifested in a desire for repentance or masoschism, this need is effected by dedication such as my lonely watch here.

"Your destructive tendencies, half of the love-hate primary drive of life, can be expressed by fighting and destroying an enemy. You can't destroy your wife because of laws, yet everyone wants to.

"The other half of the ambivalent drive, your love desire can be committed in a platonic admiration or a patriotic zeal as you call it.

"Sure, the State is a woman. It'll kick you around, neglect you and abuse you; but when she rewards you, she does so lavishly. And this, plus the self-satisfaction of having protected her from her enemies and helping her to survive--this is all the consumation of a love affair that a man could want.

"I know, what about the physical love? If all your other emotional needs are so well satisfied, you can be happy without that, especially if you're used to it--"

The agent interrupted. Aron knew he was not comprehending what he was saying, the man was still in a state of shock. But Aron knew the words were there, in the man's brain till he died. He could reason them out later.

"All right, all right," the agent said, "I am not here to argue philosophy. I just want to know why our plans failed."

"Since your wife's death didn't make you disillusioned enough to be receptive to treason, weren't you at least impressed with our offers of fabulous wealth and release from this prison?"

Aron rose from his chair and walked to the window. He didn't notice the agent and his menacing gun. He didn't care.

He looked out at the lifeless sunset of the world that sported the bare minimum of vegetation so it couldn't be insulted with the word "barren".

"Just another case of Intelligence men's stupidity," Aron said so quietly that the other man had to lean forward to hear. "Don't you know anything about your own territorial administration or ours? Do you know how they choose their men for these stations?"

"No, that isn't our department," was the answer.

Aron turned from the window and looked at him, seeming surprised to see him and hear him.

"Well, what sort of men would they choose? Where could they get men with the intelligence and ability required to operate one of these stations and cope with situations such as I've faced here? Where would they get such men to renounce the brilliant careers they could have amongst civilization with such capabilities?"

"Damn it! Stop playing games. Spill what you've got to say!"

Aron looked at him coldly, searchingly, "Since you are attached to the Navy I imagine you've clocked many hours in space." When the agent nodded, Aron said, "Then, if you are lucky and show enough sense, you will become a TA man."

Slowly, comprehension came to the Intelligence man. The gun clutched in his hand lowered, his whole body slumped as he caught on to the fact they had overlooked. The fact that caused the failure of their plans. The fact that was his grim future.

"Fermi radiations!" Aron barked. "They rot your cells, weaken the blood, ruin the body. A man can spend about five years as a spaceman, about twenty months of which is spent in actual space. Twenty months and the man is doomed.

"If the man is smart he can become a space officer, then when he retires at twenty-five, he can land a good job with the TA. He doesn't want anything to do with civilization. That five years has made him love space, love isolation. So, they are willing to take these jobs, to be put out to pasture on wayward planets until they die at thirty-five." It was said with all the bitterness of a condemned man.

"What use would I have of your offers, even if they were true. When I finish, or rather, if I had finished my stay on Kligor, I'd only have a few months till I die. Your pleasant little cries of adventure, luxury, women, meant nothing.

"I just wanted to be alone to die."

Now it was the enemy agent's turn to speak bitterly. "Then you planned it all along. You led our men on, pretending you were going to aid us while you were in our midst learning everything about us to destroy us.

"You finally found the method, God knows where you dug up that fiendish idea of sulphuric gas, but you planned and watched. I'll never know how you were so lucky--and it was pure luck, but you did it. You destroyed our base."

With a smile, "Yes, I was lucky, I had a chance to end my life in a final battle and victory. That's all a man can ask for."

Aron was still smiling when the blast of the Intelligence man's gun blew his head off.

As he left the station, all the agent could think of was one phrase he had heard many times jokingly; but now it became a grim accompaniment for his footsteps. Though he didn't want to hear it, it kept whispering through his mind every few seconds.

"Live fast, fight hard, die young--and have a radiation-rotted corpse."

Two hours later the United Empire fleet landed on Kligor. They came to claim the sixty ships lying waiting--waiting--in the peaceful valley that was still tainted with the smell of chlorine.

End of Project Gutenberg's For Every Man A Reason, by Patrick Wilkins