IT IS WAR! That was the answer to everything. It governed their every activity, their every thought. From birth to death they knew nothing but war. Their every activity was directed at the one purpose of making their country more fit for war.
“I should think you would hate war,” I said to Balzo Jan.
He looked at me in surprise. “Why?” he demanded. “What would we do with ourselves if there were no war?”
“But the women,” I said. “What of them?”
“Yes,” he replied, “it is hard on them. The men only have to die once, but the women have to suffer always. Yes; it is too bad, but I can’t imagine what we would do without war.”
“You could come out in the sunshine, for one thing,” I said, “and you could rebuild your cities, and devote some of your time to cultural pursuits and to pleasure. You could trade with other countries, and you could travel to them; and wherever you went you would find friends.”
Balzo Jan looked at me skeptically. “Is that true in your world?” he asked.
“Well, not when I was last there,” I had to admit, “but then, several of the countries were at war.”
“You see,” he said, “war is the natural state of man, no matter what world he lives in.”
We were over the southern tip of Unis now. The majestic peaks of the Mountains of Loras were at our left, and at our right the great river which rises in the mountains south of Orvis emptied into the sea, fifteen hundred miles from its source. It is a mighty river, comparable, I should say, to the Amazon. The country below us was beautiful in the extreme, showing few effects of the war, for they have many buried cities here whose Labor Corps immediately erase all signs of the devastating effects of Kapar raids as soon as the enemy has departed.
Green fields stretched below us in every direction, attesting the fact that agriculture on the surface still held its own against the Kapars on this part of the continent; but I knew at what a price they raised their crops with low-flying Kapar planes strafing them with persistent regularity, and bombers blasting great craters in their fields.
But from high above this looked like heaven to me, and I wondered if it were indeed for me the locale of that after-life which so many millions of the people of my world hope and pray for. It seemed to me entirely possible that my transition to another world was not unique, for in all the vast universe there must be billions of planets, so far removed from the ken of Earth men that their existence can never be known to them.
I mentioned to Balzo Jan what was passing in my mind and he said, “Our people who lived before the war had a religion, which taught that those who died moved to Uvala, one of the planets of our solar system which lies upon the other side of Omos. But now we have no time for religion; we have time only for war.”
“You don’t believe in a life hereafter, then?” I asked. “Well, I didn’t either, once, but I do now.”
“Is it really true that you come from another world?” he asked. “Is it true that you died there and came to life again on Poloda?”
“I only know that I was shot down by an enemy plane behind the enemy lines,” I replied. “A machine-gun bullet struck me in the heart, and during the fifteen seconds that consciousness remained I remember losing control of my ship and going into a spin. A man with a bullet in his heart, spinning toward the ground from an altitude of ten thousand feet, must have died.”
“I should think so,” said Balzo Jan, “but how did you get here?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know any more about it than you do,” I replied. “Sometimes I think it is all a dream from which I must awake.”
He shook his head. “Maybe you are dreaming,” he said, “but I am not. I am here, and I know that you are here with me. You may be a dead man, but you seem very much alive to me. How did it seem to die?”
“Not bad at all,” I replied. “I only had fifteen seconds to think about it, but I know that I died happy because I had shot down two of the three enemy planes that had attacked me.”
“Life is peculiar,” he said. “Because you were shot down in a war on a world countless millions of miles away from Poloda, I am now alive and safe. I can’t help but be glad, my friend, that you were shot down.”
It was a quiet day over Unis; we reached the mountains south of Orvis without sighting a single enemy plane, and after crossing the mountains I dropped to within about a hundred feet of the ground. I like to fly low when I can; it breaks the monotony of long flights, and we ordinarily fly at such tremendous altitudes here that we see very little of the terrain.
As we dropped down I saw something golden glinting in the sunshine below us. “What do you suppose that is down there?” I said to Balzo Jan, banking so that he could see it.
“I don’t know,” he said, “but it looks amazingly like a woman lying there; but what a woman would be lying out in the open for, so far from the city, I can’t imagine.”
“I am going down to see,” I said.
I spiraled down and as we circled over the figure I saw that it was indeed a woman, lying upon her face—an unmarried woman, I knew, for her suit was of golden sequins. She lay very still, as though she were asleep.
I put the plane down and taxied up close to her. “You stay at the controls, Balzo Jan,” I said, for one must always think of Kapars and be ready to run, or fight, or hide.
I dropped to the ground and walked over to the still form. The girl’s helmet had fallen off, and her mass of copper red hair spread over and hid that part of her face which was turned up. I knelt beside her and turned her over, and as I saw her face my heart leaped to my throat—it was Harkas Yamoda, little Harkas Yamoda, crushed and broken.
There was blood on her lips, and I thought she was dead; but I didn’t want to believe it, I wouldn’t believe it; and so I placed my ear against her breast and listened—and faintly I heard the beating of her heart. I lifted the little form in my arms, then, and carried it to the ship.
“It is Harkas Yamoda,” I said to Balzo Jan, as I passed her up to him; “she is still alive. Put her in the after cockpit.” Then I sprang to the wing of the ship and told Balzo Jan to take the controls and bring the ship in.
I got in with Harkas Yamoda and held her in my arms as gently as I could, while the ship bumped over the rough ground during the take-off. I wiped the blood from her lips; that was all I could do, that and pray. I had not prayed before since I was a little boy at my mother’s knee. I remember wondering, if there were a God, if He could hear me, so very far away, for I had always thought of God as being somewhere up in our own heaven.
It was only a matter of fifteen or twenty minutes before Balzo Jan set the ship down outside of Orvis and taxied down the ramp to our underground airdrome.
There are always fleets of ambulances at every airdrome, for there are always wounded men in many of the ships that come in. Also, close by is an emergency hospital; and to this I drove with Harkas Yamoda, after telling Balzo Jan to notify her father.
The surgeons worked over her while I paced the floor outside. They worked very quickly and she had only just been carried to her room when Harkas Yen, and Don, and Yamoda’s mother came. The four of us stood around that silent, unconscious little form lying so quietly on her cot.
“Have you any idea how it happened?” I asked Harkas Yen.
He nodded. “Yes,” he said, “she was on an outing with some of her friends when they were attacked by Kapars. The men put up a good fight and several of them were killed. The girls ran, but a Kapar overtook Yamoda and carried her away.”
“She must have jumped from the plane,” said Don.
“Planes!” said Yamoda’s mother bitterly. “Planes! The curse of the world: History tells us that when they were first perfected and men first flew in the air over Poloda, there was great rejoicing, and the men who perfected them were heaped with honors. They were to bring the peoples of the world closer together. They were to break down international barriers of fear and suspicion. They were to revolutionize society by bringing all people together, to make a better and happier world in which to live. Through them civilization was to be advanced hundreds of years; and what have they done? They have blasted civilization from nine-tenths of Poloda and stopped its advance in the other tenth. They have destroyed a hundred thousand cities and millions of people, and they have driven those who have survived underground, to live the lives of burrowing rodents. Planes! The curse of all times. I hate them. They have taken thirteen of my sons, and now they have taken my daughter.”
“It is war,” said Harkas Yen, with bowed head.
“This is not war,” cried the sad-faced woman, pointing at the still form upon the cot.
“No,” I said, “this is not war—it is rapine and murder.”
“What else can you expect of the Kapars?” demanded Harkas Don. “But for this they shall pay.”
“For this they shall pay,” I, too, swore.
Then the surgeons came in and we looked at them questioningly. The senior surgeon put his hand on the shoulder of Yamoda’s mother and smiled. “She will live,” he said. “She was not badly injured.”
Yes; planes used in war are curse to humankind, but thanks to a plane Balzo Maro’s brother had been returned to her, and little Yamoda would live.
Listen! The sirens are sounding the general alarm.