The general stood like a frozen man, with the wind ruffling his iron-grey hair, with a lump, half pride, half thankfulness, rising in his throat.
Something touched his elbow.
"Prisoners," said the Flyer. "I told you by and by."
The general tried to speak, but the lump was there to stop him. He swallowed it and tried once again. "We didn't understand," he said.
"You did not have a taker," said the Flyer. "That why fight so rough."
"We couldn't help it," the general told him. "We didn't know. We never fought this way before."
"We give you takers," said the Flyer. "Next time, we play it right. You do much better with the takers. It easier for us."
No wonder, the general thought, they didn't know about an armistice. No wonder they were confused about the negotiations and the prisoner exchange. Negotiations are not customarily needed to hand back the pieces one had won in a game.
And no wonder those other races had viewed with scorn and loathing Earth's proposal to gang up on the Flyers.
"An unsporting thing to do," the general said aloud. "They could have told us. Or maybe they were so used to it."
And now he understood why the Flyers had picked this planet. There had to be a place where all the ships could land.
He stood and watched the landing ships mushing down upon the rock in clouds of pinkish flame. He tried to count them, but he became confused, although he knew every ship Earth had lost would be accounted for.
"We give you takers," said the Flyer. "We teach you how to use. They easy operate. They never hurt people or ships."
And there was more to it, the general told himself, than just a silly gamethough maybe not so silly, once one understood the history and the cultural background and the philosophic concepts that were tied into it. And this much one could say for it: It was better than fighting actual wars.
But with the takers, there would be an end of war. What little war was left would be ended once and for all. No longer would an enemy need to be defeated; he could be simply taken. No longer would there be years of guerrilla fighting on newly settled planets; the aborigines could be picked up and deposited in cultural reservations and the dangerous fauna shunted into zoos.
"We fight again?" the Flyer asked with some anxiety.
"Certainly," said the general. "Any time you say. Are we really as good as you claim?"
"You not so hot," the Flyer admitted with disarming candour. "But you the best we ever find. Play plenty, you get better."
The general grinned. Just like the sergeant and the captain and their eternal chess, he thought.
He turned and tapped the Flyer on the shoulder.
"Let's get back," he said. "There's still some drinking in that jug. We mustn't let it go to waste."