The Last Victory
(1957)*
If Worlds of Science Fiction – August 1957
Tom Godwin
He had only two aims in life: first to get what he wanted;
and after that to enjoy it. But to achieve the one he'd have
to give up the other ... or would he?
The transport ship, bound for Capella with Outlander colonists from Earth and Frontier Guards from Arcturus, struck the hyperspace vortex without warning. It seized her, wrenching and twisting her, and flung her across its gigantic rim at thousands of times the speed of light. She emerged into normal space in an unknown region of the galaxy, broken and driveless, but near enough a planet that she could descend by means of her antigravity plates before the last of her air was gone.
It was sunset when she settled heavily to earth on a grassy slope beside a forest, leaning at a dangerous angle with only her failing antigravity plates to held her from falling. The dead had been disposed of in space and the living filed out of her: fifty Outlander men, women and children, eighteen ship's crewmen, and ten Frontier Guards.
The Guard officer and the ship's captain came last, of equal rank and already appraising each other with cold calculation.
The Howling things in the dark forest were coming closer. Thane listened as he watched Curry, the ship's captain, approach across the strip of land that separated the two camps; standing back from his fire as he waited, where he would make an uncertain target for an assassin's blaster.
No one could be seen near any of the fires in the two camps on the hill. Only the unarmed Outlanders, at their fires in the swale below, moved about without wariness. And it was not yet three hours from the landing of the ship.
Curry stopped before him, restrained anger on his arrogantly handsome face.
"You failed to report to me and turn your Frontier Guards over to my command as you were ordered."
"Since your rank is no higher than mine I saw no reason to do so," Thane answered.
Curry smiled, very thinly. "Perhaps I can show you a reason."
"Perhaps. Let's have it."
"First, I want to remind you of our circumstances," Curry said. "The ship will never lift again and we're marooned her for centuries to come. You know what the reaction of the Outlanders will be."
The Outlanders were the outcasts fo a society that could not tolerate individuality. Two hundred years before the complexities of civilization had combined technocracy with integration and produced Technogration. Technogration had abolished race, creed, and color, nations and borders, had welded all into a common mass and prohibited all individual pursuits that did not contribute to the Common Good. The Outlanders, refusing to come under Technograte domination, lived as best they could in the deserts, plateaus and jungles that Technogration could not use. The ones on the ship had been bound for Capella Five where men accustomed to wrestling a living from hostile environments were needed. Under such circumstances Outlanders were given certain rights and freedoms. Until they were no longer needed. Then, again, they became a people without a world ...
"For two hundred years the Outlanders had hated Technogration and wanted a world where they could set up their own archaic form of society," Curry said. "Now, those down there will think their millennium has arrived and they can refuse to recognize Technograte authority."
"I see," Thane said. "And you want my cooperation so that Technogration won't fall by the way-side?"
"Your willingness to accept a subordinate position would give me in intact force of both crewmen and Guardsmen." Curry's lips thinned. "But there will be Technogration, with or without your support. There will be no retrogression back into the Outlander's hallowed Dark Ages."
"There is no argument—we both want Technogration," Thane said. "We only disagree over who should be in command."
"There is a slight difference in our qualification. Your present rank was gained by your ability to kill and not be loyalty to Technogration."
"Yes, of course," Thane agreed. "We'll say that I'm a materialistic opportunist while you're a noble idealist. But it's still the same identical whip that we're both going to reach for."
"As I said, I would prefer a peaceful transfer of your Guardsmen to my command. But my crewmen outnumber them almost two to one and they are expendable if necessary." The thin smile came back, almsot mocking in is confidence. "You haven't much choice but to cooperate and accept a subordinate role, have you?"
The subordinate role would be very brief; it would end with a blaster beam in the back as soon as his Guardsmen were transferred to Curry's command ...
"Try again, Curry. I can't bite on that one."
The smile faded from Curry's face, leaving it icily cold. "That was the only opportunity you'll ever get."
The howling sounded again in the forest and Thane said:
"We understand each other, now. But the Outlanders are unarmed and it may require our full forces to hold off whatever is out there. I suggest a truce until morning."
The iciness remained on Curry's face and he did not reply at once. "Perhaps you are right. You will order your men to observe a truce for the rest of the night."
He turned back to his camp.
Thane made the rounds where his guards patrolled with their searchlights probing out into the darkness. All of Curry's men but two had been added to reinforce the guard ring around the Outlander camp; most of the crewmen along the east and south lines, leaving the more experienced Guardsmen to patrol the two lines facing the forest.
Guardsmen and crewmen patrolled in silence, watching one another with the calculating regard of men who knew they might soon be ordered to kill one another. Apparently it was obvious to all of them that two officers of equal rank was a situation that could not for long exist.
His return to his camp took him through the scattered camp fires of the Outlanders. There were not many men to be seen; most of the survivors were women and children whom the Outlander leader had ordered into the safer inner compartments when the ship began breaking up.
Thane met him at the second fire; a gaunt old man with a jutting gray beard and sharp blue eyes under bristling gray brows. He stepped out from the fire and spoke:
"Captain Thane—I'd like to ask a question."
Thane stopped. "What is it?"
"My name is Paul Kennedy and I speak for all of us," the old man said. "Captain Curry has locked up all arms from us—he's already starting the regimentation for a permanent Technograte colony here and making sure we can't object. For two hundred years Technogration has failed on Earth except to turn men into robots. Here we could have a new chance and live like humans again."
"The question," Thane reminded him.
"You were in the Frontier Guards, where men still have to think for themselves to survive, and we were hoping you would understand why we don't want to start another ant hill here."
He could understand—but now, after thirty years of planning and fighting, he was only one step from the top.
"There will be Technogration," he said.
"We thought you would say that." Kennedy's expression did not change. "We hoped we would be wrong."
An ecstatic yelping sounded suddenly from nearby and something brown and white raced across the firelit ground with a laughing boy in pursuit. Thane stared.
It was a dog.
He had not seen one for thirty years. Technogration prohibited the owning of pets as an unnecessary drain upon the planned economy and as non-contributive to the Common Good.
"We knew about the regulations," Kennedy said, "but children need pets to love and be loved by. She's going to have pups—only she and Lornie's kitten were left." The old man's eyes watched him closely, questioningly. "Surely, no one will object to them?"
The dog circled back and a dark haired young woman beyond another fire called to it: "Binkie—come here!"
The dog obeyed, its tail drooping a little, and the woman looked uncertainly in Thane's direction before she disappeared back in the shadows, the dog close behind her. The boy followed, asking, "Why did you stop us, Blanche?"
Thane watched them go, the sight of the boy and the dog bringing back with unwanted vividness the memory of another Outlander boy who had played with his dog, long ago; bringing back the past that necessity had forced him to forget ...
He put the dangerous weakness from his mind and spoke to Kennedy:
"You Outlanders were bound for a Technograte world when you left Earth. You now stand on a Technograte world. You will do as you are ordered to do. As for your pets—you may have as many as you want so far as I'm concerned."
He stepped past Kennedy and continued on through the camp. The conversation of the Outlanders froze as he drew near, letting him walk in a little sea of silence that moved along with him. It was the usual reaction to the presence of a Technograte officer.
A little girl was out beyond the last fire; her back turned to him as she knelt in the grass and worked at something. He came closer and saw she was trying to tie a white cord around the neck of a half grown kitten. It sat with resigned patience as she struggled with earnest, inexperienced fingers to tie a knot that would not fall apart. She was talking to it as she worked:
"—and maybe the things in the forest kill cats. So you'll have to stay tied up, Tommy, and close to me because you're the only kitten on this whole world—"
His shadow fell across her and she looked up. Black curls framed a startled little face and gray eyes went wide at the sight of his uniform. She seized the surprised kitten and held it protectively in her arms, the know falling apart again on the ground.
"Please—Tommy won't ever hurt anything—"
Two women and a man were watching him from beyond the fire with frozen-faced hatred. Technograte regulations required the immediate killing of any animals found smuggled aboard a ship ...
"I won't harm your kitten," he said. He smiled sardonically at the Outlanders beyond the fire. "My horns aren't quite that long yet."
He met Curry when he was almost back to his camp. Curry had two bodyguards with him and passed without speaking.
The hours went by and the night was like a cold October night on Earth but for the strange constellations that crept across the sky. The Outlander fires burned lower and the things in the forest became silent, as though massing for a surprise attack. Twice the wind shifted, to bring the scents from the forest, and each time he heard the dog growl uneasily while the woman tried to quiet her.
He was going down the south guard line, the western horizon touched with the light of coming moonrise, when the monsters attacked the north line.
They broke suddenly from the forest with a demonic howl of command from their leader, a boiling wave of them. They were green, hard to see against the green grass, racing low to the ground like giant tigers, their long, serpentine necks thrust forward and eyes blazing yellow in hyena faces.
The blaster fire of the Guardsmen met them, pale blue beams that blossomed into brief incandescence when they struck. Curry's guards added their fire, their reactions slower than those of the Guardsmen. The guards along the other three lines turned to help halt the attack, the south line guards firing across the Outlander camp.
The front rank of monsters went down, with them the leader. For an instant the onslaught slowed, leaderless and uncertain, then the monster that had been behind the leader gave the commanding howl and the others surged ahead again.
At that moment, when the attention of every guard in every guard line was on the north perimeter attack, the Outlander dog broke loose from whoever had been holding her. She ignored the attack from the north and was a blur as she went through the south guard line, screaming a snarl of warning and her lash whipping in the air behind her. She vanished behind the guard line and Thane swung his searchlight.
Five monsters were almost upon the backs of the unsuspecting guards, charging without sound.
His blaster beam raked at them and two went down. The others struck three guards with their bodies, knocking them to the ground before they could fire. Then the monsters passed on, to lurch a dozen steps and fall limply to the ground. They did not even twitch after they fell.
He saw, when he reached the first one, that it was dead. So were the other two.
Yet there was not a blaster mark on them.
Then he saw another thing. One of the monsters had fallen with its jaws slackly open and its teeth were visible. They were blunt and even.
Despite their ferocious appearance, the monsters were only herbivores.
The three fallen guards were getting to their feet, apparently unharmed. Along the north perimeter the attack was over as suddenly s it had begun; the leader of the monsters lying dead against the guard line and all the others still alive fleeing wildly back into the forest. Quiet came, broken only by the growling of the dog out near the two monsters Thane had killed.
He turned his light on her, then went closer to make sure he had seen rightly.
She was fighting something on the ground, green-eyed with fury as she ripped and tore at it. But there was nothing there. Nothing.
"Binkie!"
The dark haired woman was coming toward them, wraithlike in a white sleeping garment. The dog turned away, with a last rip at the nothing it fought, and saw the three guards the monsters had knocked down. She froze, like as though she saw something she could not believe.
Then, deadly with menace, a growl vibrated in her throat and she crouched to attack.
"Binkie—don't!" The voice of the girl was shrill with urgency. "Come here—come here!"
The dog hesitated, then obeyed, going past the guards in a swift lope, her head turned to watch them and her teeth bared in a snarl. The girl seized the leash and girl and dog disappeared back into the Outlander camp, both of them running.
Curry loomed out of the darkness, his two bodyguards with him, and flashed his light over the fallen monsters.
...
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