--WINSTON NILES RUMFOORD
It has been said that Earthling civilization, so far, has created ten thousand wars, but only three intelligent commentaries on war--the commentaries of Thucydides, of Julius Caesar and of Winston Niles Rumfoord.
Winston Niles Rumfoord chose 75,000 words so well for his Pocket History of Mars that nothing remains to be said, or to be said better, about the war between Earth and Mars. Anyone who finds himself obliged, in the course of a history, to describe the war between Earth and Mars is humbled by the realization that the tale has already been told to glorious perfection by Rumfoord.
The usual course for such a discomfited historian is to describe the war in the barest, flattest, most telegraphic terms, and to recommend that the reader go at once to Rumfoord's masterpiece.
Such a course is followed here.
The war between Mars and Earth lasted 67 Earthling days.
Every nation on Earth was attacked.
Earth's casualties were 461 killed, 223 wounded, none captured, and 216 missing.
Mars' casualties were 149,315 killed, 446 wounded, 11 captured, and 46,634 missing.
At the end of the war, every Martian had been killed, wounded, captured, or been found missing.
Not a soul was left on Mars. Not a building was left standing on Mars.
The last waves of Martians to attack Earth were,-to the horror of the Earthlings who pot-shotted them, old men, women, and a few little children.
The Martians arrived in the most brilliantly-conceived space vehicles ever known in the Solar System. And, as long as the Martian troops had their real commanders to radio-control them, they fought with a steadfastness, selflessness, and a will to close with the enemy that won the grudging admiration of everyone who fought them.
It was frequently the case, however, that the troops lost their real commanders, either in the air or on the ground. When that happened, the troops became sluggish at once.
Their biggest trouble, however, was that they were scarcely better armed than a big-city police department. They fought with firearms, grenades, knives, mortars, and small rocket-launchers. They had no nuclear weapons, no tanks, no medium or heavy artillery, no air cover, and no transport once they hit the ground.
The Martian troops, moreover, had no control over where their ships were to land. Their ships were controlled by fully automatic pilot-navigators, and these electronic devices were set by technicians on Mars so as to make the ships land at particular points on Earth, regardless of how awful the military situation might be down there.
The only controls available to those on board were two push-buttons on the center post of the cabin--one labeled on and one labeled off. The on button simply started a flight from Mars. The off button was connected to nothing. It was installed at the insistence of Martian mental-health experts, who said that human beings were always happier with machinery they thought they could turn off.
The war between Earth and Mars began when 500 Martian Imperial Commandos took possession of the Earthling moon on April 23. They were unopposed. The only Earthlings on the moon at the time were 18 Americans in the Jefferson Observatory, 53 Russians in the Lenin Observatory, and four Danish geologists at large in the Mare Imbrium.
The Martians announced their presence by radio to Earth, demanded Earth's surrender. And they gave Earth what they described as "a taste of hell."
This taste, to Earth's considerable amusement, turned out to be a very light shower of rockets carrying twelve pounds apiece of TNT.
After giving Earth this taste of hell, the Martians told Earth that Earth's situation was hopeless.
Earth thought otherwise.
In the next twenty-four hours, Earth fired 617 thermonuclear devices at the Martian bridgehead on the moon. Of these 276 were hits. These hits not only vaporized the bridgehead--they rendered the moon unfit for human occupation for at least ten million years.
And, in a freak of war, one wild shot missed the moon and hit an incoming formation of space ships that carried 15,671 Martian Imperial Commandos. That took care of all the Martian Imperial Commandos there were.
They wore knee spikes, and glossy black uniforms, and carried 14-inch, saw-toothed knives in their boots. Their insignia was a skull and crossbones.
Their motto was Per aspera ad astra, the same as the motto of Kansas, U.S.A., Earth, Solar System, Milky Way.
There was then a lull of thirty-two days, the length of time it took for the main Martian striking force to cross the void between the two planets. This hammer blow consisted of 81,932 troops in 2,311 ships. Every military unit, save for the Martian Imperial Commandos, was represented. Earth was spared suspense as to when this terrible armada might arrive. The Martian broadcasters on the moon, before being vaporized, had promised the arrival of this irresistible force in thirty-two days.
In thirty-two days, four hours, and fifteen minutes, the Martian Armada flew into a radar-directed thermonuclear barrage. The official estimate of the number of thermonuclear anti-aircraft rockets fired at the Martian armada is 2,542,670. The actual number of rockets fired is of little interest when one can express the power of that barrage in another way, in a way that happens to be both poetry and truth. The barrage turned the skies of Earth from heavenly blue to a hellish burnt orange. The skies remained burnt orange for a year and a half.
Of the mighty Martian Armada, only 761 ships carrying 26,635 troops survived the barrage and landed on Earth.
Had all these ships landed at one point, the survivors might have made a stand. But the electronic pilot-navigators of the ships had other ideas. The pilot-navigators scattered the remnants of the armada far and wide over the surface of the Earth. Squads, platoons, and companies emerged from the ships everywhere, demanding that nations of millions give in.
A single, badly scorched man named Krishna Garu attacked all of India with a double-barreled shotgun. Though there was no one to radio-control him, he did not surrender until his gun blew up.
The only Martian military success was the capture of a meat market in Basel, Switzerland, by seventeen Parachute Ski Marines.
Everywhere else the Martians were butchered promptly, before they could even dig in.
As much butchering was done by amateurs as by professionals. At the Battle of Boca Raton, in Florida, U.S.A., for instance, Mrs. Lyman R. Peterson shot four members of the Martian Assault Infantry with her son's .22 caliber rifle. She picked them off as they came out of their space ship, which had landed in her back yard.
She was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously.
The Martians who attacked Boca Raton, incidentally, were the remains of Unk's and Boaz's company. Without Boaz, their real commander, to radio-control them, they fought listlessly, to say the least.
When American troops arrived at Boca Raton to fight the Martians, there was nothing left to fight. The civilians, flushed and proud, had taken care of everything nicely. Twenty-three Martians had been hanged from lamp posts in the business district, eleven had been shot dead, and one, Sergeant Brackman, was a grievously wounded prisoner in the jail.
The total attacking force had been thirty-five.
"Send us more Martians," said Ross L. McSwann, the Mayor of Boca Raton.
He later became a United States Senator.
And everywhere the Martians were killed and killed and killed, until the only Martians left free and standing on the face of the Earth were the Parachute Ski Marines carousing in the meat market in Basel, Switzerland. They were told by loudspeaker that their situation was hopeless, that bombers were overhead, that all streets were blocked by tanks and crack infantry, and that fifty artillery pieces were trained on the meat market. They were told to come out with their hands up, or the meat market would be blown to bits.
"Nuts!" yelled the real commander of the Parachute Ski Marines.
There was another lull.
A single Martian scout ship far out in space broadcast to Earth that another attack was on its way, an at
tack more terrible than anything ever known in the annals of war.
Earth laughed and got ready. All around the globe there was the cheerful popping away of amateurs familiarizing themselves with small arms.
Fresh stocks of thermonuclear devices were delivered to the launching pads, and nine tremendous rockets were fired at Mars itself. One hit Mars, wiped the town of Phoebe and the army camp off the face of the planet. Two others disappeared in a chrono-synclastic infundibulum. The rest became space derelicts.
It did not matter that Mars was hit.
There was no one there any more--not a soul.
The last of the Martians were on their way to Earth.
The last of the Martians were coming in three waves.
In the first wave came the army reserves, the last of the trained troops--26,119 men in 721 ships.
A half an Earthling day behind them came 86,912 recently-armed male civilians in 1,738 ships. They had no uniforms, had fired their rifles only once, and had no training at all in the use of any other weapons.
A half an Earthling day behind these wretched irregulars came 1,391 unarmed women and 52 children in 46 ships.
That was all the people and all the ships that Mars had left.
The mastermind behind the Martian suicide was Winston Niles Rumfoord.
The elaborate suicide of Mars was financed by capital gains on investments in land, securities, Broadway shows, and inventions. Since Rumfoord could see into the future, it was easy as pie for him to make money grow.
The Martian treasury was kept in Swiss banks, in accounts identified only by code numbers.
The man who managed the Martian investments, headed the Martian Procurement Program and the Martian Secret Service on Earth, the man who took orders directly from Rumfoord, was Earl Moncrief, the ancient Rumfoord butler. Moncrief, given the opportunity at the very close of his servile life, became Rumfoord's ruthless, effective, and even brilliant Prime Minister of Earthling Affairs.
Moncrief's facade remained unchanged.
Moncrief died of old age in his bed in the servants' wing of the Rumfoord mansion two weeks after the war ended.
The person chiefly responsible for the technological triumphs of the Martian suicide was Salo, Rumfoord's friend on Titan. Salo was a messenger from the planet Tralfamadore in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Salo had technological know-how from a civilization that was millions of Earthling years old. Salo had a space ship that was crippled--but, even in its crippled condition, it was by far the most marvelous space ship that the Solar System had ever seen. His crippled ship, stripped of luxury features, was the prototype of all the ships of Mars. While Salo himself was not a very good engineer, he was none the less able to measure every part of his ship, and to draw up the plans for its Martian descendants.
Most important of all--Salo had in his possession a quantity of the most powerful conceivable source of energy, UWTB, or the Universal Will to Become. Salo generously donated half of his supply of UWTB to the suicide of Mars.
Earl Moncrief, the butler, built his financial, procurement, and secret service organizations with the brute power of cash and a profound understanding of clever, malicious, discontented people who lived behind servile facades.
It was such people who took the Martian money and the Martian orders gladly. They asked no questions. They were grateful for the opportunity to work like termites on the sills of the established order.
They came from all walks of life.
The modified plans of Salo's space ship were broken down into plans for components. The plans for the components were taken by Moncrief's agents to manufacturers all over the world.
The manufacturers had no idea what the components were for. They knew only that the profits on making them were fine.
The first one hundred Martian ships were assembled by Moncrief's agents in secret depots right on Earth.
These ships were charged with UWTB given to Moncrief by Rumfoord at Newport. They were put into service at once, shuttling the first machines and the first recruits to the iron plain on Mars where the city of Phoebe would rise.
When Phoebe did rise, every wheel was turned by Salo's UWTB.
It was Rumfoord's intention that Mars should lose the war--that Mars should lose it foolishly and horribly. As a seer of the future, Rumfoord knew for certain that this would be the case--and he was content.
He wished to change the World for the better by means of the great and unforgettable suicide of Mars.
As he says in his Pocket History of Mars: "Any man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people's blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed.
"Every failure of Earthling leadership has been traceable to a lack on the part of the leader," says Rumfoord, "of at least one of these three things.
"Enough of these fizzles of leadership, in which millions die for nothing or less!" says Rumfoord. "Let us have, for a change, a magnificently-led few who die for a great deal."
Rumfoord had that magnificently-led few on Mars--and he was their leader.
He had showmanship.
He was genially willing to shed the blood of others.
He had a plausible new religion to introduce at the war's end.
And he had methods for prolonging the period of repentance and horror that would follow the war. These methods were variations on one theme: That Earth's glorious victory over Mars had been a tawdry butchery of virtually unarmed saints, saints who had waged feeble war on Earth in order to weld the peoples of that planet into a monolithic Brotherhood of Man.
The woman called Bee and her son, Chrono, were in the very last wave of Martian ships to approach Earth. Theirs was a wavelet, really, composed, as it was, of only forty-six ships.
The rest of the fleet had already gone down to destruction.
This last incoming wave, or wavelet, was detected by Earth. But thermonuclear devices were not fired at it. There were no more thermonuclear devices to fire.
They had all been used up.
And the wavelet came in unscathed. It was scattered over the face of the Earth.
The few people who were lucky enough to have Martians to shoot at in this last wave fired away happily-fired away happily until they discovered that then-targets were unarmed women and children.
The glorious war was over.
Shame, as Rumfoord had planned it, began to set in.
The ship carrying Bee and Chrono and twenty-two other women was not fired upon when it landed. It did not land in a civilized area.
It crashed into the Amazon Rain Forest in Brazil.
Only Bee and Chrono survived.
Chrono emerged, kissed his good-luck piece.
Unk and Boaz weren't fired upon either.
A very peculiar thing happened to them after they pressed the on button and took off from Mars. They expected to overtake their company, but they never did.
They never even saw another space ship.
The explanation was simple, though there was no one around to make it: Unk and Boaz weren't supposed to go to Earth--not right away.
Rumfoord had had their automatic pilot-navigator set so that the ship would carry Unk and Boaz to the planet Mercury first--and then from Mercury to Earth.
Rumfoord didn't want Unk killed in the war.
Rumfoord wanted Unk to stay in some safe place for about two years.
And then Rumfoord wanted Unk to appear on Earth, as though by a miracle.
Rumfoord was preserving Unk for a major part in a pageant Rumfoord wanted to stage for his new religion.
Unk and Boaz were very lonely and mystified out there in space. There wasn't much to see or do.
"God damn, Unk--" said Boaz. "I wonder where the gang got to."
Most of the gang was hanging, at that moment, from lamp posts in the business district of Boca Raton.
Unk's and Boaz's automati
c pilot-navigator, controlling the cabin lights, among other things, created an artificial cycle of Earthling nights and days, nights and days, nights and days.
The only things to read on board were two comic books left behind by the shipfitters. They were Tweety and Sylvester, which was about a canary that drove a cat crazy, and The Miserable Ones, which was about a man who stole some gold candlesticks from a priest who had been nice to him.
"What he take those candlesticks for, Unk?" said Boaz.
"Damn if I know," said Unk. "Damn if I care."
The pilot-navigator had just turned out the cabin lights, had just decreed that it be night inside.
"You don't give a damn for nothing, do you?" said Boaz in the dark.
"That's right," said Unk. "I don't even give a damn for that thing you've got in your pocket."
"What I got in my pocket?" said Boaz.
"A thing to hurt people with," said Unk. "A thing to make people do whatever you want 'em to do."
Unk heard Boaz grunt, then groan softly, there in the dark. And he knew that Boaz had just pressed a button on the thing in his pocket, a button that was supposed to knock Unk cold.
Unk didn't make a sound.
"Unk--?" said Boaz.
"Yeah?" said Unk.
"You there, buddy?" said Boaz, amazed.
"Where would I go?" said Unk. "You think you vaporized me?"
"You O.K., buddy?" said Boaz.
"Why wouldn't I be, buddy?" said Unk. "Last night, while you were asleep, old buddy, I took that fool thing out of your pocket, old buddy, and I opened it up, old buddy, and I tore the insides out of it, old buddy, and I stuffed it with toilet paper. And now I'm sitting on my bunk, old buddy, and I've got my rifle loaded, old buddy, and it's aimed in your direction, old buddy, and just what the hell do you think you're going to do about anything?"
Rumfoord materialized on Earth, in Newport, twice during the war between Mars and Earth--once just after the war started, and again on the day it ended. He and his dog had, at that time, no particular religious significance. They were merely tourist attractions.
The Rumfoord estate had been leased by the mortgage holders to a showman named Marlin T. Lapp. Lapp sold tickets to materializations for a dollar apiece.