Galactic Medal of Honor

by Mack Reynolds

  “Thank you, sir,” Don said. He added modestly, “Rather foolish of me, I suppose.”

  “Very much so, as everyone in Space Command has said. On such foolishness, however, are heroic deeds based, Colonel.” The commodore looked at him questioningly. “You undoubtedly had incredible luck. The only way we’ve been able to figure it was that his detectors, his sensors, were on the blink. Do you think that is what might have happened?”

  “Yes, sir,” Don nodded quickly. “That’s the way I figure it. And my first beaming must have disrupted his fire control, or whatever the equivalent to it is on Kraden cruisers. It was all a fluke.”

  The commodore said, “He didn’t get in any return fire at all?”

  “That’s the damnedest thing about it. I’m not really sure, possibly a few blasts. But by that time I was in too close and moving too fast. The fact of the matter is, sir, I don’t think they ever recovered from my first beaming of them. That’s the only way I can account for them not blasting me into molecules. All I would have taken was one minor hit.”

  “That’s probably it, all right,” the commodore said musingly. “It’s a shame you had to burn them so badly. We’ve never recovered a Kraden ship in good enough shape to give our techs something to work on. It might make a basic difference in the war, particularly if there was something aboard that we could decipher that would give us some indication of where they were coming from and how they get back and forth at the speed involved. We’ve been fighting this war for half a century—in our own backyard. It would help if we could get into their backyard for a change. It’s problematical how long we can hold them off at this rate. If they ever come through with another major fleet, like they did the first time, or, more likely, even a larger fleet…”

  Don Mathers said uncomfortably, “Well, it’s not as bad as all that, sir. We’ve held them thus far.”

  His superior grunted. “We’ve probably held them thus far because we’ve been able to keep out enough patrols to give us ample warning when one of their ships sneaks through. Do you know how much fuel that consumes, Colonel? How much uranium?”

  “Well, I know it’s a lot,” Don told him, very seriously, very earnestly. “I’ve been studying up on it lately.”

  The other nodded wearily. “So much so that Earth’s industry is switching back to petroleum and coal. Every ounce of radioactives is needed by the Space Service. Even so, it’s just a matter of time.”

  Don Mathers pursed his lips. “I didn’t know it was that bad. How is the work on nuclear fusion progressing? As far back as when I was a boy they were predicting a breakthrough any day.”

  A puzzled frown came over the small man’s face. He said, “Somehow or other the whole project seems under a hex. Accidents are continually happening; key scientists die, or become incapacitated for one reason or the other. One of our top physicists, a Hungarian chap, just disappeared. If we could just develop nuclear fusion, all our radioactives problems would be over.” He chuckled sourly. “And overnight all those artificial settlements on the satellites would become ghost towns.”

  A cold, suspicious finger traced its way up the spine of Don Mathers.

  The commodore said, “I’m afraid I’m being a wet blanket thrown over your big binge of a celebration, Colonel. Tell me, how does it feel to hold the system’s highest award?”

  Don shook his head, marveling. “Fantastic, sir. Of course, like any member of the Space Service I’ve always known of the Galactic Medal of Honor, but… well, nobody ever expects to get it.” He added, with a short laugh, “Certainly not while he’s still alive and in good health. Why, sir, do you realize that for all practical purposes I haven’t been able to spend one pseudo-dollar of my credit since?” There was an element of awe in his voice. “Sir, do you realize that not even a beggar will accept anything from me?”

  The commodore nodded in appreciation. “You must understand the unique position you occupy, Colonel. Your feat was inspiring enough, but that’s not all of it. In a way, you combine both a popular hero with an Unknown Soldier element. Awarding you the Galactic Medal of Honor makes a symbol of you, a symbol representing all the thousands of unsung heroes and heroines who have died or been disabled in our space effort. It’s not a light burden to carry on your shoulders, Colonel Mathers. I would imagine it a very humbling honor.”

  “Well, yes, sir,” Don said.

  The commodore twisted in a movement of embarrassment, and said, “It is with apology that I confess I had completely misjudged you… Donal. Very frankly, I thought you a cop-out, after that second to the last patrol of yours. You have amply proven how wrong I was.”

  Don played it very sincere. “I don’t blame you, sir,” he said. “In fact, to some extent you were correct. I was beginning to decide that you were right, that I should be psyched.”

  “You proved otherwise,” Bernklau said and then switched his tone of voice. “That brings us to the present and what your next assignment is to be. Obviously, it wouldn’t do for you to continue in a One Man Scout, particularly with your present rank. Space Command seems to be in favor of using you for morale projects and——”

  Don Mathers cleared his throat and interrupted. “Sir, I’ve decided to drop out of the Space Service.”

  “Drop out!” The other stared at him, uncomprehendingly. “We’re at war, Colonel!”

  Don nodded seriously. “Yes, sir. And what you just said is true. I couldn’t be used any longer in a One Man Scout, and I don’t have the background to command a larger vessel. I’d wind up selling bonds and giving talks to old ladies’ clubs.”

  “Well, hardly that, Colonel.”

  “No, sir. I think I’ll be of more use out of the services. I’m tendering my resignation and making arrangements to help in the developing of Callisto and the other Jupiter satellites.”

  The commodore said nothing. His lips seemed to be whiter than before.

  Don Mathers said doggedly, “Perhaps my prestige will help bring in volunteers to work the new mines out there. If they see me, well, sacrificing, putting up with all of the hardships…”

  The commodore said evenly, “Mr. Mathers, I doubt if you will ever have to put up with hardships again, no matter where you make your abode. However, good luck. You deserve it.”

  XIII

  Inwardly laughing, Don Mathers made his way out of the building. He would never forget the way the commodore’s eyes popped when he announced that he was dropping out of the Space Service. Had he made such an announcement a month ago, he would have been dropped all right, all right, right into the laps of a bunch of psych doctors’ laps. But now? Now there was absolutely nothing the brass could do. He was out! At long last, he was out! No more three week patrols in deep space. No more space cafard. No more toadying to officers who ranked him. No more scorn to be seen in the eyes of his chief mechanic when he came in prematurely from an aborted patrol.

  No more of the damned military, period! He got his full salute at the entrance to the administration buildings again and stood there for a moment on the curb, waiting for the hovercart he summoned on his transceiver. While he waited, half a dozen passing officers stopped to shake hands and congratulate him. He recognized several of them, but none too well. They were all of different squadrons than his own. However, the way they gushed, you would have thought they were lifelong buddies. It was a relief when the hovercart pulled up and he got into it.

  He dialed the living quarters of the Third Division and got out before the non-residents’ dressing rooms. On his way over he’d had to answer to a few score waves of passers-by who recognized him. All right, it was part of the game and to be truthful it gave him a bit of ego-boo.

  He made his way to his locker and opened it. He had been away only a couple of weeks or so, but already the contents looked foreign to him, as though he had never seen them before.

  He brought out the several personal things that he wanted to retain, but left most of the locker’s contents where they were. Anybody who wanted
them could scrounge them. Probably quite a few would want to, as souvenirs of such a celebrity.

  He undressed, threw the colonel’s uniform aside, and brought forth the civilian suit he customarily kept in the locker. If he had anything to say about it, that was the last time he’d ever be seen in a uniform. The civilian suit was a bit on the proletarian side, he recognized now, but he could remedy that as soon as he got to an order box. From now on, Don Mathers was yearly going to make the Ten Best Dressed Men of the Solar System list.

  Then, even as he redressed, something either Demming or Rostoff said came back to him. They were going to sponsor a “simplicity look” with some far-out plan in mind to lower the standard of living, and with it wage and salary standards. Well, he could think about that later.

  Among the things in his locker had been his wrist chronometer, which he had never taken with him into space. For one thing, there was a chronometer in the cockpit of his V-102, and secondly he didn’t want to run the risk of batting it against something while in free fall.

  He took it up now and sneered slightly as he compared it to the one that had been given him in Geneva.

  There was an enlisted man nearby, idly supervising a half a dozen automatic floor waxers. Don called him over and proffered the chronometer.

  “Could you use this, spaceman? I don’t need it any more.”

  The other goggled. “Your own personal wrist chronometer?”

  Don said impatiently, “Yes, of course. I have a new one. Take it if you want it.”

  The other all but grabbed in his anxiousness. He blurted, “Almighty Ultimate! Imagine! I’ll be able to show it to my grandkids and tell them it was the chronometer of Colonel Donal Mathers and he gave it to me personally!”

  Don remembered that the German girl had said something similar. She was going to be able to tell her grandchildren that she was the first woman Don had laid after winning his fight over the Kraden, while she was on her honeymoon.

  He’d had a small bag in his locker. He put his things into it and left.

  He summoned another hovercart and dialed the entrance of the base, but the screen of the small vehicle said, the computer voice metallic, “This transportation is restricted to space base personnel.”

  Don said laconically, “I am Colonel Donal Mathers.”

  “Yes, sir. Apologies.” The hovercart took off.

  At the entry of the base, the guard sprang to attention, but Don ignored them. So far as he was concerned, if he never gave or received a salute again, it would still be too soon.

  He dismissed the cart and summoned a hovercab and, after a moment’s hesitation, dialed Harry Amanroder’s Nuevo Mexico Bar. It wasn’t, of course, very far. He could have walked it. However, he’d just as well not be spotted. He’d wind up leading a host into the bar and spend his time there shaking hands and writing autographs.

  At least, he was less conspicuous in civvies. He brought out his Universal Credit Card when they arrived at the bar and put it in the slot. The cab’s screen voice said, “Company’s orders. The credit card of Colonel Mathers is not to be recognized.”

  He assumed that meant he wasn’t expected to pay. He got out of the cab and hustled into the bar, wanting to get off the street before being spotted.

  At this time of the morning, there was only one customer present, a Space Service lieutenant sitting on a stool at the bar. Harry Amanroder, of course, presided, and was idly wiping the space before him with a soiled bar rag. His pudding face brake when he saw who the newcomer was.

  “Lieutenant… I mean, Colonel Mathers! I… I never expected to see you ever come in this dump again!”

  Don took a stool, two down from the lieutenant, and said, smiling, “This is my favorite bar, Harry. Besides, I have a tab here that’s been accumulating for months. Hell, for all I know, for years.”

  Harry stood before him, tears in his eyes. “No, sir. That tab’s been picked up.”

  Don scowled at him. “By whom?”

  “Byrne.”

  Don shook his head. “No, sir, Harry. A hundred times you’ve put my guzzle on the cuff when I was broke. I’ve got more credits in my account than I’ve ever had before, and I’m having no luck at all spending them. But I’m going to pay your bill. I’ll consider it a special favor, if you’ll let me.”

  Harry said, his voice all but breaking, “All right, sir. But from then on in, the same thing applies in this bar as anywhere else in the Solar System. A holder of the Galactic Medal of Honor doesn’t pay no tab.”

  “All right,” Don said, in acceptance of the inevitable. “But let me have my accounting.” He stuck his Universal Credit Card into the payment slot before him.

  Harry went and got the bill from a sheaf of bills in a confusion of fellow bills in a drawer. Don wondered how in the hell the man stayed in business when he wouldn’t turn down the credit requests of any man in space uniform.

  Actually, Don was surprised at the magnitude of his own. Hadn’t he ever paid up even part of his bar tab? Not that he gave a damn. He made the credit transfer and then said, “How about a tequila, for old time’s sake, Harry? I haven’t had a tequila since I was in here last.”

  The lieutenant down the bar from him said, in a woozy voice, “How about one with me, Don?”

  It was Eric Hansen, who had been here the last time Don had dropped by. A fellow One Man Scout pilot and a member of Don’s squadron—Don’s former squadron, he amended thankfully. Eric was already obviously drenched. At this time of the morning? He was asking for it. It wouldn’t be long before he was ordered psyched, if he wanted it or not.

  “Sure, Eric,” Don said.

  The other slid off his stool and climbed shakily up on the one next to Don Mathers.

  Harry said worriedly, “You sure you need any more, Lieutenant Hansen? Dint you tell me you were due to go on patrol today?”

  “Shut up,” Eric said. “That’s why I need another one. Ill have tequila, too, though why I should drink that rotgut is a holy mystery. How’s it going, Don, you lucky son-of-a-bitch?”

  Don said, a little irritated, “I didn’t ask for the damn decoration.”

  “That’s not what I was talking about. I mean you’re lucky to be alive.”

  “That I am,” Don admitted, going into his usual modesty routine. “But anybody else would have done the same thing.”

  “Go up against a Miro Class cruiser? Like hell I would. I would have hung back out of range on his flanks as long as I could keep him in my sensors and reported to Command. In fact, that’s exactly what I did do when I spotted mine.”

  Don said uncomfortably, “You didn’t have time to close in. You hardly more than glimpsed yours.”

  “Thank the Almighty Ultimate I only glimpsed him,” Eric slurred. “I nearly shit myself as it was.”

  Don ignored that. He took up his salt and tequila and toasted the other. “Cheers,” he said.

  They went through the tequila ceremony and Eric Hansen reeled to the point Don was afraid he’d fall off the stool. Harry looked at him worriedly.

  He said to Don, “Won’t they throw him into the brig?”

  Don said, trying to keep bitterness from his voice, in his new role as hero, “No. They’ll throw him into space, with an initial double dose of oxygen. He’ll sober up out there. What percentage of Scouts do you think go up completely drenched?”

  Harry didn’t answer that, but he looked distressed.

  Eric said, “You wanta know something, Don?”

  “Sure, Eric.”

  “Well, you know that last time I saw you asked if I really saw that Kraden I reported that time? You told me about that friend of yours who didn’t think they were really coming back. And you know, I got around to believing that he was right. I had a touch of cafard, knock on wood…” he knocked on the bar which wasn’t wood but plastic “… and just imagined it. But now I know I was wrong. If you knocked one of them out, they’re still coming back.”

  Don couldn’t think of anything to
say.

  Eric looked at his chronometer and slurred, ” I gotta be getting over to the base. Listen, Don, what are you doing in mufti?”

  “I just resigned.”

  “I wish the hell I could,” Eric Hansen said, slipping from his stool. He looked about the bar, his eyes finally coming to rest on the two tired potted cactus plants flanking the door. “Well, adios, guys. Isn’t that what they say in Mexico?”

  Neither Don nor Harry knew what they said in Mexico.

  They watched the space pilot stumble toward the entrance.

  “He drinks too much,” Harry said worriedly. “Don’t you guys have to be sharp all the time out in deep space?”

  “Not for a day or so,” Don told him. “It’s all pretty automated at first. Not until you get to your own patrol sector.” He was sorry now he had come here.

  Eric Hansen had hardly left before the door swung open again and a king-sized redhead entered. Both Don and the bartender looked up.

  In surprise, Don recognized the newcomer. What in the hell was his name? Thor, something or other. The big man had rescued him from the drunken footpads and then took him back to his apartment to sleep off his own load of guzzle. It came back to Don Mathers. A present-day pacifist who didn’t believe in the all out effort against the Kradens.

  The overgrown Viking came up with a grin on his square face. He held out a hand and said, “Thor Bjornsen. Remember me?”

  Don shook and said, “Sure I remember you. You saved my neck. What in the world are you doing here?”

  The other looked around the barroom, noting it was empty, and spotting a booth in the furthest corner. “Looking for you,” he said. “Could I have a few minutes of your time?”

  “You can have, all of my time you want. How about a drink?”

  “Okay. Let’s go over to that booth. I’d like to keep it private.”

  They ordered their drinks and carried them over to the booth and got in it across from each other.

  Don said, “How’d you know I was in here?”