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  Bleary-eyed, the young Marine looked up. He struggled to focus on the man in the doorway and finally decided the Marine with two chevrons on his dress reds sleeves and a lot of medals on his chest was someone he didn't know. "Can I help you with something, Corporal?" he asked as politely as his condition allowed.

  "You're MacIlargie," the corporal said. It didn't quite come out as an accusation.

  MacIlargie blinked rapidly. He started to shake his head but thought better of it. The way his head felt, shaking it would probably make it fall off, and then he'd really be in trouble.

  "I'm Mac," he confirmed. It slowly got through to him that this stranger knew who he was, but he didn't know who the corporal was. "Who're you?" he blurted, then groaned and clutched his throbbing head for speaking so suddenly.

  "I remember you!" came an excited voice from the adjoining door. "You're—"

  "I remember you too," the corporal interrupted. "You're Claypoole."

  "You're Corporal Kerr! Damn, I'm glad to see you back again." Claypoole stood, fresh from the shower, one hand holding around his waist the too-small towel the military has issued for as long as military organizations have issued towels. The shower had partly cleared his hangover.

  MacIlargie pivoted his head toward Claypoole. Corporal Kerr? Was he supposed to know him?

  "Hey," Claypoole said, hit with sudden inspiration, "are you back with third platoon? The platoon's been reorganized. Except, Mac and me, we don't have a fire team leader yet. We're supposed to be getting some hardass coming to be second fire team leader. If you're back with third platoon, you can be our fire team leader, how about it?"

  MacIlargie turned his head, more quickly than he should have, to stare ar Kerr. The moan that escaped his open mouth was partly from the increased throbbing in his brain case, partly because he caught on more quickly than Claypoole had. "You're our new fire team leader," he croaked. "You're the one. Sergeant Bladon said you'd make me wish I was in a different company."

  Kerr looked at him levelly. "You aren't as badly hungover as you put on, are you? Glad to hear that. Get dressed and go down to see Corporal Doyle. He'll show you my gear. Bring it up." He looked up at Claypoole. "You don't really expect me to live in a sty like this, do you? Get started on a field day. I expect to find this room at least halfway fit for human habitation by the time I get back." He shook his head and turned away. "That's what I get for doing something dumb and nearly getting myself killed," he said as though talking to himself, but loudly enough for Claypoole and MacIlargie to clearly hear him. "I come back and they stick me with the platoon's goddamn problem children as a test to see if I'm still good enough to be a Marine corporal."

  Kerr walked to the end of the corridor, to the room shared by third platoon's squad leaders, to see if any of them was awake.

  Claypoole and MacIlargie stared at each other, horrified. That wasn't the Corporal Kerr who Claypoole remembered. The wound Kerr got on Elneal should have killed him. Maybe it had, and when the doctors pieced the body back together a different person occupied it. MacIlargie didn't know anything about Kerr; he hadn't joined the company until after the campaign on Elneal. All he knew was, so far, the corporal was living up to every fear he had of a hardcase NCO.

  The squad leaders were awake, even if Ratliff and Bladon didn't look particularly alive. Sergeant Kelly, who as one of those designated to make sure the others made it back to base hadn't done nearly as much drinking as the other two, was the first to see and recognize Kerr. He jumped to his feet and crossed to the door in two long steps.

  "Kerr!" he said as he grasped Kerr's hand and pulled him far enough into the room to wrap an arm across his shoulders. "Damn, it's good to see you. Man, we thought you were just about dead. Welcome back."

  "I was just about dead," Kerr said leadenly. "It's good to be anywhere."

  Ratliff and Bladon managed to rouse themselves from their funereal state. Ratliff stopped moving once his feet were on the floor and let his body slump over his lap. "Welcome back, Kerr," he croaked.

  Bladon struggled all the way to his feet. He extended his hand to Kerr, overbalanced, jerked his hand back, and almost toppled backward before gaining a wobbly balance. He worked his mouth for a moment to find enough saliva to speak. "Kerr, I am so glad to see you." Overwhelmed by the effort required to talk while standing, Bladon plopped backward onto his rack, where he mimicked Ratliff's posture.

  "I am really sorry I missed that party," Kerr said. He shook his head at the two new sergeants.

  "You think they're bad?" Kelly said. "You should see Juice and Stevenson. I don't think they're going to come to until tomorrow." He snorted. "Hell, they might not even be sobered up in time for morning formation the day after that."

  Bladon ratcheted his head up and tried to focus on Kerr. It took too much effort; he closed one bloodshot eye and found he could fix the other on Kerr. "You're in my squad." His breath was heavy with the effort of speaking. "Second fire team leader. You got Claypoole and MacIlargie."

  An expression that might have been pain, might have been dismay, washed quickly across Kerr's face. "My squad leader," he said in the same dull voice he'd spoken in before. "Last time I saw you, you were a corporal and I was senior to you." He shrugged. "Things like that happen when you almost get killed." He shook off the momentary moroseness and continued in a more lively voice, "Yeah, I already know about Claypoole and MacIlargie. I saw Sta—Gunny Bass, and—" He paused half a beat to make sure he got it right the first time. "—Staff Sergeant Hyakowa in the company office. They told me." He shook his head. There had been a lot of changes in third platoon since Elneal. They were going to take some getting used to.

  "How'd Hyakowa look?" Ratliff asked, not really believing that the platoon sergeant could already be up and about.

  "Not too bad," Kerr said. "Gunny Bass forced the detoxifiers down him a little while ago."

  Ratliff and Bladon turned bleary eyes toward each other. Detoxifiers, that sounded good. Each wondered if the other had the strength to get up and go get some, because he didn't.

  A memory flashed through Kerr's mind, and he staggered and had to put a hand on the wall to balance himself. The others were too unsteady themselves to notice.

  Again, in little longer than the blink of an eye, he saw that scene. Third platoon was in the village of Turlak Yar on Elneal. Suddenly, two old Raptors, the ground-support aircraft, swooped down and fired plasma guns on the village, murdering people and setting their houses ablaze. The Marines raced madly for their defensive positions around the village. The Raptors made three passes before they turned and flew away. As they did, a horde of horsemen boiled over the bluff and charged into the burning village. Horsemen! Wielding projectile rifles with fixed bayonets, like something out of a historical vid!

  Horsemen with rifles and fixed bayonets were so archaic, the Marines had never given serious consideration to the possibility of anyone attacking them that way. And no one had any idea the Siad rebels had Raptors.

  Hundreds of horsemen were milling about, others racing randomly from spot to spot, firing their rifles with deadly accuracy, stabbing with their fixed bayonets. The Marines fought furiously and were killing large numbers of the horsemen, but there were so many of them. Then Kerr and McNeal were mobbed by a mass of snorting, stomping horses.

  The next thing Kerr knew, he was in postsurgical intensive care in a hospital. When he recovered enough for the doctors to carry on a conversation with him, they told him they were surprised he'd lived through his injuries. And they expressed admiration for the enlisted medical personnel who served with the Marines. "I know the corpsmen the navy medical corps assigns to Marine FISTs are top-notch," said the head physician on Kerr's case. "You're proof that they're even better than I thought. You owe your life to the corpsman who stabilized you on the scene." The doctors expected him to regain full use of all his limbs and faculties. They expected him to be as good as new once his therapy was complete.

  Physically, he was. Menta
lly... Every now and again, though, that memory flashed through his mind and for a moment nearly incapacitated him. He was usually able to shake it off before anyone noticed. Secretly, he wondered if he'd ever be able to fight again, and he wondered if he'd always be able to recover from the memory so quickly. He also secretly wondered if he was still fit to be a Marine corporal; he wondered if he could still lead men at all, much less lead them in combat. He'd come so close to death, he wasn't sure he could go in harm's way again without cracking.

  Quickly, as always, Kerr recovered.

  "So, Tam," he said in a steady enough voice, "my squad leader, what's our training schedule look like?"

  Bladon fixed one bloodshot eye on Kerr and gingerly searched through his mind for an answer that would be intelligible to both of them.

  Chapter 8

  Dr. Blossom Enderle, Chief of the Confederation Bureau of Human Habitability Exploration and Investigation (BHHEI), was worried. For nearly a century, starting out as a field scientist, Dr. Enderle had devoted her life to the exploration and investigation of new worlds for the ever-expanding populations and entrepreneurs of the Confederation of Worlds. For the last twenty years she had been chief of BHHEI, or "Behind," to its scientists and technicians, because the bureau's communications with its field teams, due to the distances involved, always lagged months behind.

  Dr. Enderle had weathered many crises during all those years. Hundreds of lives had been lost; entire teams and their vessels had simply disappeared in deep space without a trace. Other teams had met with disaster on the new worlds. In each of those many incidents, BHHEI had investigated and organized mostly successful rescue efforts of teams in distress.

  The criterion for authorizing a rescue operation was simple. Exploratory teams were required to maintain constant communication with BHHEI via Beamspace drones launched according to a rigid schedule. Whenever a scheduled drone was missed, the bureaucratic wheels began to turn. Most often the drones failed for mechanical reasons, but the BHHEI had no choice—when a drone was not received on time, the worst was assumed and the navy was asked to investigate.

  Society 437 was now overdue on its six-month report, and Society 437 was different. One of the biggest—hence most expensive—teams had been sent to that world, almost a thousand of the best scientists and technicians the bureau could gather. The scale of resources devoted to Society 437 was important because BHHEI's budget was always threatened by Confederation politicians anxious to divert money to their pet projects, and if some disaster had befallen that mission in particular, serious cuts would be called for—and probably effected.

  But most important of all was that the leader of this expedition, Dr. Nikholas Morgan, was a scientist of preeminent standing in the Confederation of Worlds. He was also the brother of Henri Morgan, the most powerful member of the Space and Exploration Committee of the Confederation Congress, the man who could single-handedly cut BHHEI's purse strings. And he would, because he despised deep-space exploration as a waste of money. He argued there were plenty of ways to spend money on the populated worlds of Human Space without spending trillions to find new planets for colonization. But basically, Senator Henri Morgan hated scientists. Technicians were fine; they fixed things. Scientists were arrogant intellectuals who considered themselves superior to the majority of mankind because they "understood" things the common man could never comprehend. Scientists were the "priests" of an esoteric religion whose arcane body of knowledge gave them "insight" into how the universe worked. To Henri Morgan it was all bogus mumbo jumbo perpetrated by people who'd avoided real work all their lives.

  Dr. Nikholas Morgan did not quite fit that profile. No retiring intellectual, Nikholas was an assertive and outspoken crusader who had little patience with people who disagreed with him. His acerbic tongue had earned him countless enemies, but also countless admirers, people who worshiped him because he disdained and discomfited the rich and powerful, who were helpless when confronted by his wit and intelligence. Henri was very happy his brother had not gone into politics.

  Dr. Enderle now had two visits to make, both unpleasant, in ascending order. The first was to Admiral Horatio Perry, Chairman of the Combined Chiefs of Staff. In cases of emergency, the Chief of BHHEI was authorized to communicate directly with the Chiefs, to expedite a response by cutting through the normal bureaucratic chain. On matters of routine liaison, Dr. Enderle would go through the Minister for Colonization who in turn would take the matter to the Confederation Council on which Admiral Perry sat as an adviser to Madame Chang-Sturdevant, Council President.

  For his part, Admiral Perry considered BHHEI a pain in the behind. Since he had been chairman, the Confederation Navy had launched no fewer than twenty-five rescue missions to bail out egghead scientists who for one reason or another had neglected proper drone maintenance or otherwise stumbled into predicaments any well-organized military man would have anticipated and avoided. He considered the operations an unnecessary drain on his resources, already spread thin throughout Human Space on legitimate military tasks.

  Dr. Enderle had decided to visit each man personally. That would take time out of her busy schedule, and she regretted that. Many details still had to be worked out regarding the rescue mission, the public relations angles being most important. Approval of the mission was assured, regardless of how she opted to contact Admiral Perry or Senator Morgan. But because of the seriousness of the situation, she felt it necessary to meet with the men face-to-face. It was especially important to meet with Senator Morgan, who, while often at odds with his brother, was still Nikholas Morgan's closest living kin. He deserved to hear the news in person instead of over a vidscreen from some bureaucrat sitting in an office miles away. And he controlled funding for BHHEI. Dr. Enderle was honest enough to admit to herself that it was the funding that motivated her. Personally, she considered Senator Morgan an odious demagogue, living proof that democracy doesn't work.

  Dr. Enderle called for her car. It would take twenty minutes' surface travel to reach Admiral Perry's office on the other side of town. She wanted to see the sun and breathe fresh air on the way to the meetings. It was springtime in North America, and the city of Fargo, in what had once been the state of North Dakota, was particularly attractive in that season.

  The Confederation Council, in effect the government of the Confederation of Worlds, had established itself in Fargo at the request of the United States government. A generation after the city of Washington had been obliterated, during the Second American Civil War, the government abandoned the new metropolis that had risen from its ruins and reestablished the federal enclave in the far western reaches of its territory. Fargo was selected as the new seat of government because it offered plenty of room for expansion. Years later, when the Confederation of Worlds was established, the U.S. government, which had led the way in the exploration and colonization of space and was a charter member of the Confederation, invited the Council to establish itself in Fargo as well. By the beginning of the 25th century the seat of the Confederation government had grown from a small city of 100,000 into a megalopolis of more than ten million people occupying the entire 1,200 square miles of what had been Cass County, North Dakota.

  Now, on a fine spring morning, Dr. Blossom Enderle was on her way to the office of the Chairman of the Combined Chiefs to formally solicit his aid, as required by law, to find out what had happened on Society 437. She wondered idly as her landcar sped along the immaculate streets what the ancient peoples who had once inhabited that land would think could they see it. As far advanced as civilization had become, she often reminded herself, human nature had not changed one iota from the way it must have been in the Stone Age. She understood that scientists like Nikholas Morgan occasionally forgot that.

  The Marine guards on duty at the main entrance to the Combined Chiefs' office complex snapped to attention when Dr. Enderle presented herself at the guard desk. She had called ahead, and, as ever, the military establishment was ready for any important visitor
. A lance corporal, stunningly handsome in his immaculate dress red uniform, politely conducted her through a maze of corridors to Admiral Perry's office. Once turned over to one of his aides, an army major, she was asked to have a seat. The major bustled about officiously and offered her refreshments. Dr. Enderle noted that his uniform did not fit him well. The man was at least forty pounds overweight. She noted again that the enlisted personnel around the headquarters always looked so sharp, while the officers got away with a less than perfect military appearance. An admiral had once told her the reason: "Enlisted people have adult leadership; noncoms and chief petty officers are responsible for the enlisted people, but the officers are on their own."

  "A cup of coffee, Major?" she replied to the offer of refreshments.

  "Immediately, Doctor," the major replied, and pressed a button on the console beside his desk. An autosteward rolled from its closet and served the beverage. It was strong, sweet and hot, just the way she liked it. Before she was half finished, Admiral Perry came into the reception area.

  "Good afternoon, Doctor," the admiral said, bowing slightly and gesturing toward his office. She followed him in and took the seat he offered. "How's everything at Behind these days?" Admiral Perry smiled. He knew what was coming and wanted to get in a dig before, as the law required, he was forced to do what Dr. Enderle would request of him.

  "We have a Priority One," Enderle said tightly. The major followed her into the admiral's office and quietly set the coffee cup beside her chair before withdrawing. Briefly she outlined the situation.

  "Are you sure Dr. Morgan just didn't, uh, forget to dispatch his drone on time," Admiral Perry said. "You know how wrapped up these guys get in what they're doing out there."

  "I know Morgan, Admiral. You know him too. He would never let something as important as that slip. He knows what a stink a false alarm would cause in the, uh, community." Admiral Perry winced at the word "community," which to him meant the closed and very select society of scientists and intellectuals who usually considered the military an unnecessary nuisance and expense. At a recent Council meeting Enderle had argued strongly, and ill-advisedly in the admiral's opinion, for cutting fleet construction in favor of more funding for exploration and colonization. It was an old argument from her that fell flat on Madame Chang-Sturdevant, a staunchly promilitary President. The political climate could easily change one day; Blossom Enderle never would.