This is the true story of our defeat, which I give without prejudice to my defense before this Court. I make it, as I have said, to counteract the libels that have been circulating against the men who fought under me, and to show where the true blame for our misfortunes lay.
Finally, my request, which as the Court will now realize, I make in no frivolous manner and which I hope will therefore be granted.
The Court will be aware that the conditions under which we are housed and the constant surveillance to which we are subjected night and day are somewhat distressing. Yet I am not complaining of this: nor do I complain of the fact that shortage of accommodation has made it necessary to house us in pairs.
But I cannot be held responsible for my future actions if I am compelled any longer to share my cell with Professor Norden, late Chief of the Research Staff of my armed forces.
HINDSIGHT
Jack Williamson
SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH THE CIGAR.
But Brek Veronar didn’t throw it away. Earth-grown tobacco was precious, here on Ceres. He took another bite off the end, and pressed the lighter cone again. This time, imperfectly, the cigar drew - with an acrid, puzzling odor of scorching paper.
Brek Veronar - born William Webster, Earthman - was sitting in his big, well-furnished office, adjoining the arsenal laboratory. Beyond the perdurite windows, magnified in the crystalline clarity of the asteroid’s synthetic atmosphere, loomed a row of the immense squat turret forts that guarded the Astrophon base - their mighty twenty-four-inch rifles, coupled to the Veronar autosight, covered with their theoretical range everything within Jupiter’s orbit. A squadron of the fleet lay on the field beyond, seven tremendous dead-black cigar shapes. Far off, above the rugged red palisades of a second plateau, stood the many-colored domes and towers of Astrophon itself, the Astrarch’s capital.
A tall, gaunt man, Brek Veronar wore the bright, close-fitting silks of the Astrarchy. Dyed to conceal the increasing streaks of gray, his hair was perfumed and curled. In abrupt contrast to the force of his gray, wide-set eyes, his face was white and smooth from cosmetic treatments. Only the cigar could have betrayed him as a native of Earth, and Brek Veronar never smoked except here in his own locked laboratory.
He didn’t like to be called the Renegade.
Curiously, that whiff of burning paper swept his mind away from the intricate drawing of a new rocket-torpedo gyropilot pinned to a board on the desk before him, and back across twenty years of time. It returned him to the university campus, on the low yellow hills beside the ancient Martian city of Toran - to the fateful day when Bill Webster had renounced allegiance to his native Earth, for the Astrarch.
Tony Grimm and Elora Ronee had both objected. Tony was the freckled, irresponsible redhead who had come out from Earth with him six years before, on the other of the two annual engineering scholarships. Elora Ronee was the lovely dark-eyed Martian girl - daughter of the professor of geodesics, and a proud descendant of the first colonists-whom they both loved.
He walked with them, that dry, bright afternoon, out from the yellow adobe buildings, across the rolling, stony, ocher-colored desert. Tony’s sunburned, blue-eyed face was grave for once, as he protested.
“You can’t do it, Bill. No Earthman could.”
“No use talking,” said Bill Webster, shortly. “The Astrarch wants a military engineer. His agents offered me twenty thousand eagles a year, with raises and bonuses - ten times what any research scientist could hope to get, back on Earth.”
The tanned, vivid face of Elora Ronee looked hurt. “Bill - what about your own research?” the slender girl cried. “Your new reaction tube! You promised you were going to break the Astrarch’s monopoly on space transport. Have you forgotten?”
“The tube was just a dream,” Bill Webster told her, “but probably it’s the reason he offered the contract to me, and not Tony. Such jobs don’t go begging.”
Tony caught his arm. “You can’t turn against your own world, Bill,” he insisted. “You can’t give up everything that means anything to an Earthman. Just remember what the Astrarch is - a superpirate.”
Bill Webster’s toe kicked up a puff of yellow dust. “I know history,” he said. “I know that the Astrarchy had its beginnings from the space pirates who established their bases in the asteroids, and gradually turned to commerce instead of raiding.”
His voice was injured and defiant. “But, so far as I’m concerned, the Astrarchy is just as respectable as such planet nations as Earth and Mars and the Jovian Federation. And it’s a good deal more wealthy and powerful than any of them.”
Tense-faced, the Martian girl shook her dark head. “Don’t blind yourself, Bill,” she begged urgently. “Can’t you see that the Astrarch really is no different from any of the old pirates? His fleets still seize any independent vessel, or make the owners ransom it with his space-patrol tax.”
She caught an indignant breath. “Everywhere - even here on Mars—the agents and residents and traders of the Astrarch have brought graft and corruption and oppression. The Astrarch is using his wealth and his space power to undermine the government of every independent planet. He’s planning to conquer the system!”
Her brown eyes flashed. “You won’t aid him, Bill. You - couldn’t!” Bill Webster looked into the tanned, intent loveliness of her face-he wanted suddenly to kiss the smudge of yellow dust on her impudent little nose. He had loved Elora Ronee, had once hoped to take her back to Earth. Perhaps he still loved her. But now it was clear that she had always wanted Tony Grimm.
Half angrily, he kicked an iron-reddened pebble. “If things had been different, Elora, it might have been - ” With an abrupt little shrug, he looked back at Tony. “Anyhow,” he said flatly, “I’m leaving for Astrophon tonight.”
That evening, after they had helped him pack, he made a bonfire of his old books and papers. They burned palely in the thin air of Mars, with a cloud of acrid smoke.
That sharp odor was the line that had drawn Brek Veronar back across the years, when his nostrils stung to the scorched-paper scent. The cigar came from a box that had just arrived from Cuba, Earth - made to his special order.
He could afford such luxuries. Sometimes, in fact, he almost regretted the high place he had earned in the Astrarch’s favor. The space officers, and even his own jealous subordinates in the arsenal laboratory, could never forget that he was an Earthman - the Renegade.
The cigar’s odor puzzled him.
Deliberately, he crushed out the smoldering tip, peeled off the brown wrapper leaves. He found a tightly rolled paper cylinder. Slipping off the rubber bands, he opened it. A glimpse of the writing set his heart to thudding.
It was the hand of Elora Ronee!
Brek Veronar knew that fine graceful script. For once Bill Webster had treasured a little note that she had written him, when they were friends at school. He read it eagerly:
DEAR BILL:
This is the only way we can hope to get word to you, past the Astrarch’s spies. Your old name, Bill, may seem strange to you. But we - Tony and I - want you to remember that you are an Earthman.
You can’t know the oppression that Earth now is suffering, under the Astrarch’s heel. But independence is almost gone. Weakened and corrupted, the government yields everywhere. Every Earthman’s life is choked with taxes and unjust penalties and the unfair competition of the Astrarch traders.