The great ship from Earth roared down through the atmosphere. Hurtevert pointed out the leading city on the planet, the one from which all power emanated. That made it convenient. Vargas sent out five thousand shock troops armed with horrifying and instantaneous weapons. The remaining five thousand were kept in reserve .. As it turned out, they weren’t needed.
General Vargas wrote home soon after the successful conquest of Magellenic:
Dear Lupe, I promised to tell you about the invasion. It went very well. So well, in fact, that at first we suspected some sort of treachery. We airdropped a first force of a thousand picked men, armed to the teeth, into the big square in the middle of the main city here, which is called Magellopolis. Our boys landed during a folk dancing festival and there was quite a bit of confusion, as you can imagine, since the population thought our boys were demonstrating war dances. We cleared that up soon enough.
The remaining four thousand troopers of the first wave came down just outside the city, since there was no room to pack them into the town square. The lads marched into Magellopolis in good order, and they got an enthusiastic greeting from the citizens, who seemed delighted to see them.
The Magellenics took in the situation quickly, and had flowers and paper streamers handy to give our boys a proper welcome. There were no unfortunate incidents, aside from several local women getting trampled in their eagerness to show our boys a nice welcome.
Magellenic is a very nice planet, prosperous, and with a nice climate except at the poles where we don’t go. We have seen no signs of the alien invaders that Hurtevert told us about. Either they are holed up in the hills, or they all left when our ship approached.
Now it is a week later. We have been very busy and I am writing hastily so this letter can go out with the first load of booty which we ‘re sending to Earth.
Our Art Squads have done a find job of combing the planet. As we promised the men, the first haul is theirs.
Frankly, the stuff doesn ‘t look like much. But we’ve collected whatever we can find in the way of furniture, postage stamps, silver, and precious stones, and that sort of thing.
It’s too bad that we have to ship it all back to Earth at government expense and sell it for the troops. But that’s what we promised and otherwise they might mutiny.
We‘re also sending back some of the local food surpluses. I just hope there’s a market for cranko nuts and pubble fruit back on Earth. Personally, I can do without it.
I forgot to mention, we are sending back to Earth our first draft of Magellenic workers. We had no trouble collecting them. A lot of people on this planet have volunteered to do stoop labor in the fields and unskilled crap work in the factories for starvation wages. This is useful because nobody on Earth wants to do that stuff anymore.
I’ll write again soon. Much love, my baby vulture.
Six months later, Vargas received the following message from General Gatt, now on Earth fulfilling his duties as Supreme Leader and Total Commander:
Getulio, I’m dashing this off in great haste. We need a total change in policy and we need it fast. My accountants have just brought me the news that our occupation is costing us more than it is bringing in by a factor of ten. I don’t know how this happened. I always thought one made a profit out of winning a war. You know I’ve lived by the motto, “To the victor goes the spoils.“
But it isn‘t working that way here. The art treasures we brought back have brought in very little on Earth’s art market. In fact, leading art critics have declared that the Magellenics are in a pre-artistic stage of their development! We can’t sell their music, either, and their furniture is both uncomfortable to sit in, ugly to look at, and tends to break easily.
And as if that isn't bad enough, now we have all these Magellenics on Earth doing cheap labor. How can cheap labor not be cost-efficient? My experts tell me we’re putting millions of Earth citizens out of work, and using up all our tax revenue because the first thing a Magellenic does when he gets here is to go on the dole until he finds a really good job.
That’s the trouble, you see. They’re not content to stay in the cheap labor market. They learn fast and now some of them are in key positions in government, health, industry. I wanted to pass a law to keep them out of the good jobs, but my own advisors told me that was prejudiced and nobody would stand for it.
So listen, Getulio, stop at once from sending any more of them to Earth! Be prepared to take back all the ones I can round up and ship back to you. Prepare an announcement saying that the forces of Earth have succeeded in their goal of freeing the Magellenics from the cruel conquerers who had been pressing their faces into the dirt and now they ‘re on their own.
As soon as you can, sooner if possible, I want you to pull all our troops out, cancel the war, end the occupation, and get yourself and your men home as fast as you can.
I forgot to mention, these Magellenics are unbelievably fertile. The ones here on Earth need only about three months from impregnation to birth. They have a whole lot of triplets and quintuplets, too. Getulio, we have to get rid of these moochers fast, before they take over our planet and eat us out of house and home.
Close up and come home. Well think of something new.
When Vargas told the news to Captain Arnold Stone, his Chief Accountant, he asked for an accounting to show how much profit they had been showing during their stay on Magellenic.
“Profit?” Stone said with a short, sardonic laugh. “We’ve been running at a loss ever since we got here.”
“But what about the taxes we imposed?”
“Imposing is one thing, collecting is another. They never seem to have any money.”
“What about the Magellenic workers on Earth? Don’t they send back some of their wages?”
Stone shook his head. “They invest every cent of it in Earth tax-free municipal bonds. They claim it’s an ancient custom of theirs.”
“I never liked them from the start,” Vargas said. “I always knew they’d be trouble.”
“You got that right,” Stone said.
“AM right, get someone in Communications to prepare an announcement for the population here. Tell them that we’ve done what we came here to do, that is, free them from the cruel hand of whoever it was who was oppressing them. Now we’re going away and they can do their own thing and lots of luck.”
“That’s a lot,” Stone said. “I’d better get the boys in Intelligence to help with the wording.”
“Do that,” Vargas said. “And tell somebody to get the ships ready for immediate departure.”
That was the idea. But it didn’t work out that way.
That afternoon, as Vargas sat in his office playing mumbly-peg with his favorite Philippine bolo knife and dreaming of being back with Lupe, there was a flash of brilliance in the middle of the floor. Vargas didn’t hesitate a moment when he saw it. He dived under the desk to avoid what he assumed was an assassination attempt.
It was sort of nice, under the desk, even though it was not a particularly sturdy desk, Magellenic furniture-building being what it was. Still, it gave Vargas a feeling of protection, and time to unholster his ivory-handled laser blaster.