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Updated: May 3, 2025
Watching the positions on the screens carefully, MacMaine called out a series of numbers in an unhurried voice and watched as the orders, relayed by the Kerothi staff, changed the position of parts of the Kerothi fleet. Then, as the computer-led Earth fleet jockeyed to compensate for the change in the Kerothi deployment, MacMaine called out more orders.
It was a standard opening for breaking the pause of adjustment, but it presaged good news rather than bad. "I await your word," MacMaine said. Even after all this time, he still felt vaguely proud of his ability to handle the subtle idioms of Kerothic. "I think," Tallis said carefully, "that you may be offered a commission in the Kerothi Space Forces."
Tallis shook his head as though he were puzzled. "Live forever? That's twice or three times you've said something about that. I don't understand you." "Would you consent to live forever as a filthy curse on the lips of every Kerothi old enough to speak?
Tallis, like the rest of the Kerothi, was unbelievably humanoid. There were internal differences in the placement of organs, and differences in the functions of those organs.
He had known that Kerothi society was, in its own way, as much a slave society as that of Earth, but it had the advantage over Earth in that the system did allow for advance by merit. If a man had the determination to get ahead, and the ability to cut the throat either literally or figuratively of the man above him in rank, he could take his place.
He knew his Kerothic was bad, since it had been learned from the Kerothi spaceman who had been captured with the general, and the man had been badly wounded and had survived only two weeks. But that little bit of basic instruction, plus the work he had done on the books and tapes from the ruined Kerothi ship, had helped him. "Ah?" The general blinked in surprise. Then he smiled.
When the protecting Earth fleet was reduced to tatters, the Kerothi would go on to Houston's World as the first step in the big push toward Earth itself. But MacMaine wasn't thinking of that phase of the war. That was still in the future, while the hellish space battle was still at hand.
But, externally, a Kerothi would need only a touch of plastic surgery and some makeup to pass as an Earthman in a stage play. Close up, of course, the job would be much more difficult as difficult as a Negro trying to disguise himself as a Swede or vice versa. But Tallis was "I would have a word," Tallis said, shattering MacMaine's carefully neutral train of thought.
I said that such an act would strike terror into the minds of Earthmen. "And it did, Tallis; it did. But that terror was just the goad they needed to make them fight. They had to sit up and take notice. If the Kerothi had gone on the way they were going, taking one planet after another, as they planned, the Kerothi would have won.
He pushed the thought from his mind and picked up the questionnaire form that had been made out for that morning's session with the Kerothi general. Might as well get it over with. He glanced down the list of further duties for the day. It looked as though the routine interrogation of the Kerothi general was likely to provide most of the interest in the day's work at that.
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