followed out instructions. And the shambles he had seen there couldn't have been done by human beings. Four thousand soldiers and close to a hundred thousand civilians killed. Would you call the people who had been responsible for that human beings or ... aliens? Which name fit best?

The Berlin war ...

A dozen different outbreaks, starting with Korea so long ago ...

And then you were supposed to admit that they were blood brothers after all, and that in the face of a mutual threat you should forget your differences and pool your resources against the common enemy.

"There goes another one!"

So in fifteen minutes the Josef would go down. And from him it would bring only cheers, not tears.

But you didn't make decisions on a personal basis, he thought slowly. You had to look at it from the viewpoint of a thousand years. You had to develop a certain detachment, even though one man's lifetime was far too short a period to develop it in.

"Message for you, Captain."

It was a voice message that had been picked up in CIC. It was brief and to the point.

He had a brief mental picture of a young man lying in the shambles of Berlin calling out the same words. And what had he received?

He buried the thought.

The detached viewpoint. Political systems evolved, he thought, they never remained the same. The French Revolution had spawned a thousand human monsters and the blood had run in the streets. But out of it all had come a democratic nation. And a thousand years from now, what would the Combine be? A turn of the wheel and perhaps it would be a peace-loving democracy while the United States would be the abattoir of human hopes. Who could tell? A thousand years from now the present bloodbaths and tortures and mass deaths would be history.

But if the aliens won you ran the chance of there being no history at all.

The wheelhouse was silent. The Captain could feel a dozen pairs of eyes watching him, waiting for his decision. Outside the ports, on the far horizon, there came a steady, golden pulsing.

He looked up at McCandless and Davis. McCandless was young, too inexperienced to realize that situations where today's enemies are tomorrow's friends are the order of the day and not the exception. You adjusted to it or you became bitter. Davis, the gutless bastard, had adjusted to it. He was probably already to make the switch, to go back to drinking toasts in vodka.

The detached viewpoint.

"Send up the jets," the Captain said slowly. "And send a message to the Captain of the Josef, telling him we'll render all the assistance that we can."

The wheelhouse broke into a flurry of activity and a moment later he could hear the sounds of the jets taking off the flight deck. He walked out on the bridge deck and leaned on the railing, staring at the horizon where the alien ship and the Josef were fighting it out. And where planes from the Oahu would shortly be helping the Josef.

But I still hate them, he thought. I hate their goddamned souls!

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction September 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.