Although the actual processing time on “Day Million,” so to speak, way only a few hours, the programming and tooling-up ran quite a lot longer; I had been mulling over it, or parts of it, for at least four years. The reason it took so long is that it deals with what seemed to me hard questions. It deals with the future; and in the future, even the relatively near future, geologically speaking, we aren’t going to be quite the same breed of hominid we are today. Evolution is slow, but technology is rapid and we have shifted to the express.

  Where the express is going is what I have tried to say in “Day Million.” Maybe not there exactly, but somewhere like there, or at least somewhere quite as dissimilar from here and now…and, dear God, how fast we’re beginning to move.

  Frederik Pohl

  Retaliation

  by Mack Reynolds

  There was a light flashing red. Alex hit the release button with the heel of his hand, flicked his eyes to the dial in question.

  Animal heat.

  He dropped both the speed and altitude levers, banked steeply and dove. His eyes went to the screen, he reached up and increased magnification tenfold. His fingers danced over buttons, searching out the appropriate chart. It flashed onto the map-screen.

  Damn. The beetle was above that poorly mapped, all but unknown Balkan area where the Thrace of Greece and the Macedonia of Yugoslavia, met Bulgaria. The nearest cities of any size would have been Yugoslavian Skopje, Greek Salonika, Bulgarian Plovdiv, but he was far from the ruins of any of them.

  As the ground came up, his eyes shot to the dial again. Quite a bit of animal heat. Probably a man.

  A man in this area? Alex pursed his Ups. Possible, but not probable.

  He was less than two miles in altitude, now. He increased magnification again. The vicinity was highly wooded.

  He adjusted his metallic sensors, fossil fuel sensors, nuclear power sensors. For all he knew, this was a Comic trap and they were trying to suck his beetle in. Seemed unlikely, though. He hadn’t spotted a Comic in this area for a goodly time.

  When he was within a mile of the surface, he cut propulsion completely and hovered. His eyes went back to the chart and he enlarged it to ultimate. It still didn’t give him much. The area had been fought over, ravaged, destroyed and rebuilt since the days of Philip and Alexander but it had never really been charted in the modem sense. There were the remains of a small farming town to the south; however, he couldn’t make out if it might be Rodopolis in what had once been Greece, or Novo Selo in Macedonia.

  He scowled at the dial. There was more heat radiation than was called for by one person. Perhaps there were two or three. It was possible, no matter how unlikely. The human animal is gregarious; given any opportunity at all he will seek out his fellows, even though it might increase his chances of destruction.

  He flicked his eyes over to the cocking handles of the mini-rockets, though he knew he had checked them out before takeoff. Given life below, Alex was in a position to start snuffing it out like candles.

  The trouble was, exactly where was he, over Comic territory or their own?

  He had made that mistake with the fishing boat, off the coast of Cuba. He had thought, of course, that the two terrified occupants had been enemy civilians. It had been sickening to find his mistake later.

  He zeroed in on the source of body heat, brought the beetle up to a slow, careful speed. It might still be a Comic trap, but he could find no signs of the presence of mechanical equipment in the vicinity. He dropped lower, tense now. He was getting awfully close. He kept his right hand very near the trigger of one of the mini-rockets.

  Suppose it was some peasant, miraculously saved from the holocaust. How was he to know, in this area, if the man was Greek, Macedonian or Bulgar? As he recalled, the nationalities blended into each other at this point to such a degree that even borders made precious little difference.

  All of a sudden, he brought the beetle to a halt and began to chuckle. There in a small meadow—clearing would be the better term—browsed a woebegone cow.

  It had been a long time since he had seen a cow. Alex looked at it for a long moment, ruefully. In his youth, he had spent some time on a farm and had loved every minute. It had been fate that had put him into an educational bracket which had wound him up as the pilot of a beetle.

  He shook his head, even as he reached for the altitude lever. Had he become a farmer, he would now, without question, have been dead. And even though family, relatives, friends, sweetheart were now all passed away, life is to be lived.

  He shot into patrol pattern again, resetting his sensors. His chronometer told him that he had only a few more moments to go.

  When his time had elapsed, he put the beetle into orbit, threw the automatic control switch, then stood up, yawning. He stretched greatly, then massaged the back of his neck. He had a tendency to tighten up when on patrol.

  Alex turned and threw the cogs on the metal door behind him. He stepped into the corridor beyond and headed for the executive officer’s office.

  Nick was on the desk. He said, “How did it go?”

  Alex yawned again. “Nothing. I begin to suspect that there’s nobody left at all in my area. The fallout must have got those that survived.”

  Nick grunted. “The Comics would like it, if they knew we thought so. Don’t underestimate the human animal, Alex. He survives under some of the most impossible circumstances. Peter ran into a whole island of Eskimo in the northern Pacific.”

  Alex was surprised. “What did he do?”

  “Blasted them, of course. They were Comics,”

  Alex wondered, inwardly. Eskimo. Possibly they didn’t have the vaguest knowledge of the war, nor why it was they were being killed. But Nick was right. Man had a fantastic ability to survive.

  Nick said, “You left your beetle in orbit?”

  “That’s right,” Alex said wearily. “It isn’t due for a checkout yet.” He turned to go, but then recalled the animal he had seen.

  He said, “You know what I saw today? A cow. I thought I was getting a heat indication of at least one man, but it was a cow. Wonder how it ever survived.”

  Nick said, “The last time I was on patrol, I saw four deer.”

  “Oh? What did you do?”

  “What could I do? I was over Comic territory. I blasted them.”

  “Blasted them! Well, why?” Alex felt a sinking sensation. With so precious little life left at all on Earth, who could wish to butcher deer?

  Nick was irritated. “I told you. It was Comic Territory. Had there been any human life hiding out, surviving somehow or other, the deer would have been potential food. I killed them. In the same way as if you saw a house standing, you’d blast it, so that it couldn’t be used for shelter.” He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Was she being milked?”

  The other’s mind had been on the deer. He said, “How do you mean?”

  “The cow. Was she being milked?”

  “How would I know?”

  “The udder, you ninny. If it was full, she was being milked, which would mean, in turn, that there’s somebody doing the milking.”

  “I didn’t get any indication of further animal heat.”

  “Could be in some sort of dugout. It’s surprising how quickly some of the survivors have adapted to protecting themselves against us. Not that they’re any smarter than our people. They’ve worked out a dozen ways of preserving themselves against those buzz-fighters the Comics use.”

  Alex grunted. He had long been of the opinion that the higher-ups would do better to spend more effort protecting their civilians who had survived, rather than continuing to seek out the pitiful remnant of the Comics who were still alive. However, he didn’t say anything. Nick had a monorail mind, when it came to official position. Anything the brass decided was gospel to Nick.

  Alex said, “I’ll take another look at the cow, tomorrow, if I can find it again. Even if it is being milked, I’m not sure it’s in what was formerly our own territory, or theirs.”

  Nick said, “Well, you know what the general said, when in doubt.”

  Alex shuddered as he headed back for his sleeping quarters. The general had never jockeyed a beetle in his life.

  Had never had to blast a noncombatant. Perhaps he wouldn’t be quite so devout a retaliationist, had he to follow his own orders.

  In the morning, going by the twenty-four-hour Earth Clock, Alex came awake slowly. There had been a time, when he had been an ambitious young officer, that he had tried to discipline himself away from this practice. Now he had given up. In truth, the half hour or so that he allowed to lapse between first stirrings of consciousness and full awakening was the happiest of his day. Happiest wasn’t quite the word. There was no such reality as happiness in the life now led. But at least his semi-dream state was the most nearly satisfying.

  In half control of his dream-thinking, he could steer his thoughts in what direction he would. Back over yesteryear when there had been ambitions, appetites, goals. When there had been arts to appreciate, crafts to study, entertainments to enjoy.

  There had been Anna to love. And what was Anna now? A cinder. If not a cinder, a terrified, underfed, underclothed, undersheltered fugitive from the Comic buzzfighters who patrolled, even as Alex patrolled, seeking out the last remnants of life.

  He had allowed his thoughts to go where he would rather they not stray. He came fully awake and swung his legs out over the edge of the bunk.

  He went through the usual routine of getting cleaned up and dressed, the never-ending sameness of it all, and made his way to the mess.

  As he ate the food of the hydroponic beds, the yeast cellars, he scanned the freshly printed day’s bulletin.

  An inspiration editorial by the general. The day would soon come when, the Comics utterly defeated, the personnel of moon-base would return to Earth and begin the task of reconstruction.

  Alex grunted. He sometimes suspected that the general had fed his ideas into (me of the typer-computors with standing orders that for each issue of the bulletin a new editorial be turned out, saying the same thing over and over again in a slightly altered version.

  The fact was, that there was precious little chance that the Comics would ever be utterly defeated. Their super-Sputnik, as the junior officers had dubbed it, was as impregnable to attack as was the moon-base. And this truth had long since been accepted. The efforts to eliminate their mutual bases had been so costly that neither side any longer attempted it. Such fighting as took place between them, were the rare meetings above the surface of Earth, when beetle met buzz-fighter, usually through inadvertence, and fought it out.

  If the truth were known, the general didn’t even encourage that. The two fighting craft were so equally matched that one side’s losses balanced the other’s, and they were running short on the beetles they needed to prosecute the retaliation.

  Which brought him to another item in the bulletin. A sneak landing had been made hurriedly in the Antarctic and a sizeable amount of supplies loaded upon one of the freighter-craft. The supplies had been left over from the days when the nations had in considerable cooperation been exploring that remote continent.

  Alex grunted. So that’s where so many of the beetles had been, protecting the scavenging raid. It was a minor victory In fact, more than balanced by the Comic Raid earlier when they had dispatched an equivalent space freighter to one of the Pacific islands where they had managed to locate a supply of fuel.

  He wondered at the need of secrecy here on the moon-base. It was hard to believe that any Comic agents might be among them. And even if there was, how in the world could such an agent ever get a message to the enemy? No, Alex suspected that their rigid security measures were nonsense, left over methods of an earlier period. The military mind was slow to change, even in the age of space war.

  And here was the story of Peter’s successful attack upon the Eskimo. Evidently there had been at least a score of them. Alex shook his head. How could it possibly have been known that they were from Comic territory, originally? The Eskimo were nomadic. Food supply, such as it was, would dictate that they move as much as a hundred miles a week.

  It was the same problem he had faced on the patrol yesterday.

  Even had he spotted a survivor of the world debacle, how could he know whether the person was originally a resident of Comic territory? In desperate search of food and shelter, and protection from the ruthless attacks of beetles and buzz-fighters, such a refugee might travel many a mile from his place of origin.

  The speaker called his name.

  He was to report for immediate patrol.

  That was only mildly surprising. The men who had covered the Antarctic sneak landing had probably been on duty for long hours beyond the usual. They would need rest. He was comparatively fresh.

  He came to his feet, adjusted his tunic on the off-chance that he might meet one of the brass hats in the corridors and be dressed-down for sloppy appearance, and started for the cubicle which he usually occupied when piloting a remote-control beetle.

  At this hour he met only one other person. One of the women scientists. He saluted her, as regulations called for, but she ignored him and bustled on.

  It came to Alex, sourly, even as he continued, that this horse-faced, cow-figured specimen was probably one of the few remaining females of his species who might survive to help replenish the Earth. If any at all survived. Briefly, he wondered if the high-ups had decided upon a program of breeding. If they had, it should best get underway even while they were still here on Luna. Most of these women scientists were by no means youngsters. Some must already be past the menopause.

  He reached the executive officer’s preserve, reported, got his assignment, which was identical to yesterday’s, saluted, and continued to his cubicle. He wondered how many beetles were out today. He hadn’t seen any of the other fellows in the corridors, or in the mess. Probably everybody who could be spared was on patrol. The Comics were probably in a tizzy over the Antarctic raid, and would be speeding up their retaliation.

  He hung his jacket up and seated himself at the control chair, before the screens, the panels, the dials, switches, triggers, gauges and all the rest of it. And even as he went through the standard routine of taking over the beetle, now in fast orbit, his memory went back to the long studies that had been involved in learning this business of eliminating every unit of human life in the lands of the enemy. At the time of his training, he had never expected it to ever come to this. But, then, he doubted if anyone else had, either.

  At the very last, he threw the cocking handles of the mini-rockets, threw off the automatic control, and accepted the piloting of the vicious little beetle.

  It was a full hour later, an hour of carefully scanning over a large area of southern Europe, when he came to the vicinity where he had spotted the cow the day before.

  He had little doubt that he could find the animal again. And yes, there it was. The indicator flashed animal heat.

  He increased the magnification of his viewing screen, and sent the beetle darting toward the little meadow the cow had been grazing in the day before.

  For the moment, engrossed in his object, he had failed to keep a constant eye on his other screens and scanning devices. Thus it was that his first warning of attack was a flashing ball of fire which, he realized, must have missed the miniature craft he was piloting from afar, by a scant half mile.

  Automatically he upped the speed lever, and pulled the directional stick backward, slamming for altitude. He banged open all screens, darted his head around, seeking the source of the attack. The nuclear-power sensor was flashing green warning, the alarm siren was whining. Impatiently, he brushed them both to inoperation. He decreased magnification on all screens, desperately seeking the foe over the broadcast area, even as he took standard evasive action.

  Wherever and whoever his enemy, the Comic wasn’t the man he might be. Alex’s beetle should have been crisped by now. As it was, he hadn’t even been nicked.

  And yes, there it was! A one-man buzz-fighter, of course.

  It was their one big advantage over the Comics. The enemy craft contained a living pilot who died in defeat. The beetles, piloted remotely from the moonbase, could be destroyed surely enough, but it was impossible for a pilot to be lost. War in air and space had come a long way since the Fokkers and Spads of World War One fought it out over the Western Front.

  The buzz-fighters, comparatively large and cumbersome, must needs come down from their artificial satellite base before taking over their retaliation patrols. It was a time-consuming, man-consuming matter and Alex had a secret admiration for the stamina involved.

 

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