“Where did you hear that?” Johnson asked.
“One of the junior officers who was touring this flying antiquity,” Flynn said.
“Only goes to show the brass hats back home haven’t changed.” The opinion of the powers that be in the United States that Johnson expressed was not only irreverent but anatomically unlikely. He went on, “Yeager saved our bacon back there in the 1960s. He let us come talk with the Lizards now with our hands clean.”
“Indianapolis.” Stone pronounced the name of the dead city like a man passing sentence. Anyone who was in Lieutenant General Healey’s corner wasn’t going to be in Sam Yeager‘s.
“Yeah, Indianapolis,” Johnson said. “How many Lizards in cold sleep did we blow to hell and gone? We say ‘pulled a Jap.’ The Lizards must say ‘pulled an American.’ But we were the ones who ’fessed up, too, and they paid us back, and now things are pretty much square.”
“Those were Americans,” Stone said stubbornly. They’d been round this barn a good many times before.
“Okay. Have it your way. Suppose Yeager kept his mouth shut like a good little German,” Johnson said. Stone glared at him, but he plowed ahead: “Suppose he did that, and it’s now, and we’re here-somebody else is ambassador, natch, because Yeager wouldn’t have been anybody special then. We’re here, and the Commodore Perry gets here, and the Lizards are dithering about whether to make peace or go to war. And suppose they find out just now that we were the ones who fried their colonists all those years ago. What happens then, goddammit? What happens then? Four worlds on fire, that’s what, sure as hell. You think they could ever hope to trust us after they learned something like that? So I say hooray for Sam Yeager. And if you don’t like it, you can stick it up your ass.”
Stone started to say something. He stopped with his mouth hanging open. He tried again, failed again, and left the control room very suddenly.
Mickey Flynn eyed Johnson. “Your usual suave, debonair charm is rather hard to see,” he remarked.
Johnson was breathing hard. He’d been ready for a brawl, not just an argument. Now that he wasn’t going to get one, he needed a minute or two to calm down. “Some people are just a bunch of damn fools,” he said.
“A lot of people are fools,” Flynn said. “Ask a man’s next-door neighbor and you’ll find out what kind of fool he is.”
“We have to do something to get Yeager aboard the Commodore Perry if he wants to go home,” Johnson said. “We have to.”
Flynn pointed at him. “I advise you to have nothing visible to do with it. You’re under the same sort of cloud as he is.”
“Ouch,” Johnson said. That was altogether too likely. If his name showed up on any kind of petition, Lieutenant General Healey would do his goddamnedest to blacken it. For that matter, Healey would probably do the same for-to-Yeager. The commandant of the Admiral Peary was a son of a bitch, all right. Of course, the hotshots on the Commodore Perry might not want to pay attention to any of the geezers who’d made the trip before them. They were bound to be sure they had all the answers themselves. Johnson did some finger pointing of his own. “How about you, Mickey? You going to try and give Yeager a hand?”
He asked the question with real curiosity. He knew where Walter Stone stood on Yeager. He’d never been sure about the other pilot. Flynn’s deadpan wit made him hard to read.
Flynn didn’t answer right away. He didn’t seem happy about having to stand up and be counted. At last, he said, “They ought to let the man go home. They owe him that much. I wouldn’t leave a half-witted dog-or even a Marine-on Home for the rest of his days.”
“And I love you, too,” Johnson said sweetly. He was bound to be the longest-serving Marine in the history of the Corps.
“If you do, that proves you’ve been in space too long.” Yes, Flynn kept jabbing and feinting and falling back. Johnson wasn’t going to worry about it. However reluctantly, the other man had given him the answer he needed. It also happened to be the answer he’d wanted. So much the better, he thought. He hoped Yeager got back to Earth, and wondered what the place was like these days.
Two Lizards walked into the hotel in Sitneff. Sam Yeager sat in a human-style chair waiting for them. He got to his feet when they came in. “I greet you,” he called. “I greet both of you. It is good to see you again, Shiplord. And it is also good to see you again, Shuttlecraft Pilot.”
“You remember!” Nesseref said in surprise.
Yeager made the affirmative gesture. “I certainly do. You took my hatchling and me up to one of your ships in orbit around Tosev 3.”
“Truth-I did. I remembered, because I did not fly Tosevites very often, especially back then. That you should also recall the time-”
“We did not go up there all that often. Each time was interesting and exciting enough for every bit of it to be memorable.”
“Touching,” Straha said dryly, using the language of the Race. Then he switched to English: “It is very good to see you, old friend. I hope you are well.”
“As well as I can be, all things considered,” Sam answered.
“Good. I am glad to hear it. And here we are, together again: the two biggest traitors in the history of several worlds.”
“No. We did what needed doing.” Even though Sam was speaking English, he added an emphatic cough. Straha’s mouth dropped open in amusement. Sam went back to the Race’s language so Nesseref could follow, too: “And how is Tosev 3 these days? The two of you have seen much more of it than I have lately. That would be a truth even if you had come in cold sleep.”
“Since I came out of cold sleep myself, I have watched Tosevite technology change,” Nesseref said. “This is astonishing to me. I never would have expected to see the way individuals live change visibly in the course of part of a lifetime.”
Straha laughed again. “The change in the years between the coming of the conquest fleet and that of the colonization fleet was in some ways even larger, I think.”
“That may well be a truth,” Sam said. “We were adapting the Race’s technology in those first few years, and-”
“Stealing it, you mean,” Straha broke in.
“If you like.” Sam didn’t argue, not when that held so much truth. “But we did adapt it, too, and use it in ways you never thought of. You also have to remember that our technology had been changing rapidly even before the Race came to Tosev 3. If it had not been, you would have conquered us.”
“Well, that is a truth,” Straha said. “We should have conquered you, too-that is another truth. Atvar will tell you differently, but it is a truth. Had I been in command, we would have done it. But our officers were afraid of change, and so they went on doing the same old thing.” He laughed again. “Look how well that worked out.”
He’d been saying the same old thing ever since he went into exile in the United States. Maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong. Sam suspected he was wrong. To him, the only way the Race could have conquered Earth was by using enough nuclear weapons to leave it unfit for anyone to live on. With the colonization fleet already on its way, the Lizards couldn’t have done that. Sam didn’t argue with Straha. What point to it? All he said was, “No one will ever know now.”
“Atvar knows. In his liver, he knows. This is his fault, no one else‘s.” Straha spoke with a certain dour satisfaction.
Again, what point to arguing? Yeager knew Atvar would deny everything Straha said. How sincere would the fleetlord be when he did? That was hard to tell even with people, let alone with Lizards. Sam said, “Come into the refectory with me, both of you. We can eat together, and you can tell me about Tosev 3 these days-and about your trip here on the Commodore Perry. ”
“It shall be done, and on your expense account, too,” Straha said. “I shall order something expensive, something I have not tasted since before I went into cold sleep for the journey to Tosev 3.”