There Won't Be War

“Yessir,” Vargas said. The trouble was, he couldn’t think of anything to use ships for, now that everything was conquered. But he didn’t want to come out and say that. He could see there was a little smile on General Gatt’s face, so he guessed that he was about to be told something he hadn’t known before, but which he would find of considerable interest. He waited for a while, and then decided that Gatt wanted him to ask, so he said, “Now, about all these ships, sir ...”

“Yesss?” said Gatt.

“We need these,” Vargas hazarded, “for security—”

Gatt nodded.

“—and to take care of our enemies.”

“Perfectly correct,” Gatt said.

“The only thing that perplexes me,” Vargas said, “is, who exactly are our enemies? I mean, sir, that I was under the impression that we don’t really have any of them left on Earth. Or are there some enemies I haven’t heard about?”

“Oh, we don’t have any enemies left on Earth,” Gatt said. “They have gone the way of the buffalo, the cow, the Airedale, and other extinct species. What we have now, General Vargas, is the God-given opportunity to go forth into space, our Earth troops unified for the first time in history, ready and willing to take on anything that comes along.”

“Anything! In space!” Vargas said, amazed at the size of the idea.

“Yes! Today Earth, tomorrow, the Milky Way, or at least one hell of a good-sized hunk of it.”

“But can we just do that? Take what we want?”

“Why not? If there’s anything out there, it’s just aliens.”

“It’s a wonderful dream, sir. I hope I may be permitted to do my bit for the cause.”

Gatt grinned and punched Vargas on the arm.

“I’ve got a pretty good bit for you, Getulio. How would you like to be my first Marshall of Space, with command of this ship and orders to go forth and check out some new planets for Earth?”

“Me? Sir, you do me too much honor.”

“Nonsense, Getulio. You’re the best fighting general I’ve got. And you’re the only one I trust. Need I say more?”

Gatt made the announcement to the other generals. First he showed them the spaceship. Then he told them he was going into space on a fact-finding mission, with good old Vargas along to actually run the ship. He and Vargas would take a lot of fighting men along, just in case they ran into anything interesting. Gatt was sure there were new worlds to explore out there, and these new worlds, in the manner of new worlds since the beginning of recorded history, were going to bring in millions.

The generals were enthusiastic about the expansion of Earth military power and the promise of a good return on the military business.

Working night and day, the ship was soon provisioned. Not long after that, the armament was all bolted into place. When they tried it out it worked perfectly, all except for one missile which unaccountably got out of control and took out Kansas City. A letter of regret to the survivors and a posthumous medal for all concerned soon put that to rights, however. Shortly afterwards, ten thousand heavily armed shock troops with full equipment marched aboard. It was time for Earth to make its debut in space.

* * *

The ship went through its trial runs in the solar system without a problem. Once past Neptune, Vargas told the engineers to open her up. Space was big; there was no time to dawdle. The ship ran up to speed without a tremor.

Lastly, the hyper-space jump control worked perfectly. They popped out of the wormhole into an area rich with star systems, many of which had nice-looking planets.

Time passed. Not too much of it, but enough so you know you’ve really gone somewhere.

Soon after this passage of time, the communications officer reported a tremble of movement on the indicator of the Intelligence Detector. This recent invention was a long-range beam which worked on something the scientists called Neuronal Semi-Phase Amplification, or NSPA. The Military-Scientific Junta in charge of technology felt that a detector like this would be useful for finding a race that might be worth talking to.

“Where’s the signal coming from?”

“One of them planets out there, sir,” the communications officer said, gesturing vaguely at the vast display of stars visible through the ship’s transparent shield.

“Well, let’s go there,” Vargas said.

“Have to find what star it belongs to first,” the communications officer said. “I’ll get right on it.”

Vargas noticed Gatt, who, from the luxury of his suite which was supplied with everything a fighting man could want—women, guns, food, booze, dope—told him to carry on.

Vargas gave the orders to carry on at best speed.

The big spaceship drilled onward through the vacuum of space.

DeepDoze technology let the soldiers pass their time in unconsciousness while the ship ate up the parsecs. The special barbarian shock troops were stacked in hammocks eight or ten high. The sound of ten thousand men snoring was enormous but not unexpected. One man from each squad was detailed to stay awake to brush flies off the sleepers.