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_The _Arrow_ lanced down out of the night like a spear offlame, vengeful and deadly._]
_The legends of Jaq Merril are legion--but legends. Hark, ye, then to the true story of the pirate benefactor of Mankind!_
THE PEACEMAKER
By Alfred Coppel
Illustrated by BOB MARTIN
We humans are a strange breed, unique in the Universe. Of all the racesmet among the stars, only _homo sapiens_ thrives on deliberateself-delusion. Perhaps this is the secret of our greatness, for we aregreat. In power, if not in supernal wisdom.
Legends, I think, are our strength. If one day a man stands on the rimof the Galaxy and looks out across the gulfs toward the seetee suns ofAndromeda, it will be legends that drove him there.
They are odd things, these legends, peopled with unreal creatures,magnificent heroes and despicable villains. We stand for no nonsensewhere our mythology is concerned. A man becoming part of our folklorebecomes a fey, one-dimensional, shadow-image of reality.
Jaq Merril--the Jaq Merril of the history books--is such an image.History, folklore's jade, has daubed Merril with the rouge of myth, andit does not become him.
The Peacemaker, the chronicles have named him, and that at least, isaccurate in point of fact. But it was not through choice that he becamethe Peacemaker; and when his Peace descended over the worlds of space,Merril, the man, was finished. This I know, for I rode with him--hislieutenant in a dozen and more bloody fights that earned him hisironically pacific laurels.
* * * * *
Not many now living will remember the Wall Decade. History, everpliable, is rewritten often, and facts are forgotten. When it was gone,the Wall Decade was remembered with shame and so was expunged from therecord of time. But I remember it well. It was an era compounded ofstupidity and grandeur, of brilliant discovery and grimy politicalmaneuver. We, the greedy men of space--and that includes JaqMerril--saw it end with sorrow in our hearts, knowing that we had killedit.
If you will think back to the years immediately preceding the Age ofSpace, you may remember the Iron Curtain. Among the nations of the Eartha great schism had arisen, and a wall of ideas was built between eastand west. Hydrogen bombs were stockpiled and armies marched andcountermarched threateningly. Men lived with fear and hatred anddistrust.
Then, suddenly, came the years of spaceflight and the expandingfrontiers. Luna was passed. Mars and Venus and the Jovian Moons felt thetread of living beings for the first time since the dawn of time. Thelarger asteroids were taken and even the cold moonlets of Saturn andUranus trembled under the blast of Terran rockets. But the Iron Curtainstill existed. It was extended out into the gulf of space, an intangiblewall of fear and suspicion. Thus was born the Wall Decade.
Jaq Merril was made for that epoch. Ever in human history there arethose who profit from the stupidity of their fellows. Jaq Merril soprofited. He dredged up the riches of space and took them for his own.And his weapon was man's fear of his brothers.
* * * * *
It was in Yakki, down-canal from the Terran settlement at Canalopolis,that Merril's plan was born. His ship, the _Arrow_, stood on the redsands of Syrtis Major, waiting for a payload to the Outer System. Itstood among a good many like it: the _Moonmaid_, the _Gay Lady_, the_Argonaut_, and my own vessel, the _Starhound_.
We, the captains, had gathered in the Spaceman's Rest--a tinklinggin-mill peopled with human wrecks and hungry-eyed, dusty-skinned womenwho had come out to Mars hoping for riches and had found only the samesqualor they had left behind. I remember the look in Merril's eyes as hespoke of the treasures of space that would never be ours, of the goldand sapphires, the rubies and unearthly gems of fragile beauty and greatprice. All the riches of the worlds of space, passing through our handsand into the vaults of the stay-at-homes who owned our ships and ourvery lives. It seemed to me that Merril suffered as though from physicalpain as he spoke of riches. He was nothing if not rapacious. Greedy,venal, ruthless. All of that.
"Five of us," he said in a hard voice, "Captains all--with ships andmen. We carry the riches of the universe and let it slip through ourfingers. What greater fools could there be?"
Oh, he was right enough. We had the power to command in our handswithout the sense to grasp it firmly and take what we chose.
"And mark you, my friends," Merril said, "A wall has been built aroundMars. A wall that weakens rather than strengthens. A wonderful, stupid,wall...." He laughed and glanced around the table at our faces, flushedwith wine and greed. "With all space full of walls," he said softly,"Who could unite against us?"
The question struck home. I thought of the five ships standing out thereon the rusty desert across the silted canal. Five tall ships--againstthe stars. We felt no kinship to those at home who clung to creaturecomforts while we bucketed among the stars risking our lives and more.We, the spacemen, had become a race apart from that of the home planet.And Merril saw this in our faces that night so long ago, and he knewthat he had spoken our thoughts.
Thus was born the Compact.
Gods of space, but I must laugh when I read what history has recorded ofthe Compact.
"_Merril, filled with the wonder of his great dream, spoke his mind to the Captains. He told them of the sorrow in his heart for his divided fellow men, and his face grew stern when he urged them to put aside ideology and prejudice and join with him in the Compact._"
So speaks Quintus Bland, historian of the Age of Space. I imagine that Ihear Merril's laughter even as I write. Oh, we put aside ideology andprejudice, all right! That night in Yakki the five Captains claspedhands over the formation of the first and only compact of space-piracyin history!
* * * * *
It was an all or nothing venture. Our crews were told nothing, but theirpockets were emptied and their pittances joined with ours. We loaded thefive ships with supplies and thundered off into the cobalt Martian skyto seek a stronghold. We found one readily enough. The chronicles do notrecord it accurately. They say that the fleet of the Compact baseditself on Eros. This is incorrect. We wanted no Base that would bring usso close to the home planet every year. The asteroid we chose wasnameless, and remained so. We spoke of it seldom aspace, but it was everin our minds. There was no space wall, there to divide us one from theother. It was a fortress against the rest of mankind, and in it we werebrothers.
When we struck for the first time, it was not at a Russian missile postas the histories say. It was at the _Queen of Heaven_, an undefended andunsuspecting merchantman. The records of Earth say the _Queen_ was lostin space between Uranus and Mars, and this is so. But she was listedlost only because no Russian or American patrol found her gutted hulk. Iimagine that at this very moment she hangs out beyond Pluto, roundingthe bend of the long ellipse we sent her on that day we stripped herbones.
She carried gold and precious stones--and more important yet, womenbeing furloughed home after forced labor in the mines of Soviet Umbriel.The _Starhound_ and the _Arrow_ bracketed her a million miles above theplane of the ecliptic near Saturn's orbit, and killed her. We drewabreast of her and forced her valves. We boarded her and took what wechose. Then we slaughtered her men and sent them on their long voyage.That was the beginning.
The attack against Corfu was our next move. This is the battle thatCelia Witmar Day has described in verse. Very bad verse.
"_Corfu slumbered, gorged and proud-- While _Arrow_, _Hound_ and _Maid_ marshalled Freedom's might above the tyrant's ground, And rained down death--_"
There is much more, of course. Brave phrases of emotion and fancifulunreality
written by one who never saw the night of space agleam withstars.
There was no talk of tyranny or liberty aboard the _Hound_ that day weleveled with the _Maid_ and the _Arrow_ a thousand miles over theRussian Base of Corfu. There _was_ talk of the bullion stored under thefortress' turrets.
Merril's face appeared in my visor screen, superimposed on the image ofthe grimy little asteroid floating darkly against the starfields.
"Their radar has picked us up by now, and they're wondering who we are,"he said, "Take the _Hound_ out on tangent left and join the _Maid_.Cover my attack and stand by to put a landing party aground."
I watched the image of the _Arrow_--a sliver of darkness against thecrescent of Corfu--lancing down at the fortress. Her forward tubes wereglowing with the familiar pre-discharge emanation.
Below us, confusion reigned. For the first time in memory an asteroidBase was under attack. Merril brought the _Arrow_ in to within fiftymiles and then unleashed the fury of