away, back against your side or your hip. You have to disarm me and still stay far enough away so that I can't bother your aim."
Practice again. Draw and fire. Draw and fire. Soon I could hear a scuttling sound among the stones, draw my gun, and leave a rat smoking and twitching in the dust. After a moment Siller joined the game.
"Good shot!" he said, his eyes glittering. "The next one's mine."
The rodent population took a sharp and sudden drop.
Siller showed me how to hold and use a knife, how to silence an enemy quietly and finally, how to duel, how to deal with a man when you have a knife and he is weaponless and, more important, when the situation is turned around. He showed me how to make a sleeve scabbard and gave me a keen knife to slip into it. Finally, grudgingly, he admitted that I would have a chance of staying alive, even in a world of Agents.
After a late afternoon meal, Siller vanished with my clothes. He left a robe that strained at the seams and reached only to my knees. I searched the suite. I had already noted that the subterranean room had no windows and no doors, and I could find no others upstairs. There was only the one door, and it was locked.
I roamed the suite restlessly. Finally I looked through the bookcases. The majority of the titles seemed to be fiction. I passed them by. But at last I came upon a small case filled with more serious books. The wide range of subjects revealed a facet of Siller that I had not suspected.
There were a number of Jude's books. I might have taken down The Book of the Prophet, The Church, or Ritual and Liturgy, but I knew them by heart. And the others were meaningless to me, the technical ones like Principles, Energy and Basic Circuit Diagrams, Machines and Man's Inheritance, and so forth. I had received a religious, not a lay, education.
The book I finally pulled out had a battered cover and well-thumbed pages. There was no author listed and no publishing details. There was only the title, The Dynamics of Galactic Power. I settled down in a deep chair to read. I read slowly and carefully, but the time passed swiftly, because there was meat in the book, a strange new food that made my head swim with something close to intoxication. All of it was fascinating, but one passage I can remember still, almost word for word.
We must face the realities of power. The key to understanding is the fortress world, and there is no key to the fortress. Let us look at it, clearly, with eyes unglazed by dreams, unblinded by false hopes.
Defense is supreme. Its symbol is the fortress. Within the fortress are all the men and supplies necessary to defend it. Let the attack come. It comes over vast distances, over light years, bringing with it the vast army of men it needs, the arms it needs to fight with, the ammunition it must expend, the mountains of supplies necessary to clothe and feed its men. Let the attack cross the great moat, eating up its supplies, expending its energy on distance, losing its men through boredom, disease, and dissension. Let the attack come. And let the defenders be determined. The attack can never succeed.
Consider the expense, the economics of power. The demands of mounting an attack can drain a world of men and wealth. What does a world need to defend itself? A ring of pilotless, coasting rockets and an efficient monitor system. The attacking ships cannot pass until the rockets are swept out of the sky, and if the defense is properly geared to production, it can easily keep up with the losses. And the attackers must wait and disintegrate, if their home world does not first rebel against the insatiable demands of conquest.
And if the attack succeeds in spite of odds, in defiance of losses, count the cost. Behind it a broken planet, its resources squandered on conquest, its people impoverished, starving, rebellious. Count the gain. A world which cannot be exploited. The commander of the attacking force is inside a fortress which is now his. He is
Practice again. Draw and fire. Draw and fire. Soon I could hear a scuttling sound among the stones, draw my gun, and leave a rat smoking and twitching in the dust. After a moment Siller joined the game.
"Good shot!" he said, his eyes glittering. "The next one's mine."
The rodent population took a sharp and sudden drop.
Siller showed me how to hold and use a knife, how to silence an enemy quietly and finally, how to duel, how to deal with a man when you have a knife and he is weaponless and, more important, when the situation is turned around. He showed me how to make a sleeve scabbard and gave me a keen knife to slip into it. Finally, grudgingly, he admitted that I would have a chance of staying alive, even in a world of Agents.
After a late afternoon meal, Siller vanished with my clothes. He left a robe that strained at the seams and reached only to my knees. I searched the suite. I had already noted that the subterranean room had no windows and no doors, and I could find no others upstairs. There was only the one door, and it was locked.
I roamed the suite restlessly. Finally I looked through the bookcases. The majority of the titles seemed to be fiction. I passed them by. But at last I came upon a small case filled with more serious books. The wide range of subjects revealed a facet of Siller that I had not suspected.
There were a number of Jude's books. I might have taken down The Book of the Prophet, The Church, or Ritual and Liturgy, but I knew them by heart. And the others were meaningless to me, the technical ones like Principles, Energy and Basic Circuit Diagrams, Machines and Man's Inheritance, and so forth. I had received a religious, not a lay, education.
The book I finally pulled out had a battered cover and well-thumbed pages. There was no author listed and no publishing details. There was only the title, The Dynamics of Galactic Power. I settled down in a deep chair to read. I read slowly and carefully, but the time passed swiftly, because there was meat in the book, a strange new food that made my head swim with something close to intoxication. All of it was fascinating, but one passage I can remember still, almost word for word.
We must face the realities of power. The key to understanding is the fortress world, and there is no key to the fortress. Let us look at it, clearly, with eyes unglazed by dreams, unblinded by false hopes.
Defense is supreme. Its symbol is the fortress. Within the fortress are all the men and supplies necessary to defend it. Let the attack come. It comes over vast distances, over light years, bringing with it the vast army of men it needs, the arms it needs to fight with, the ammunition it must expend, the mountains of supplies necessary to clothe and feed its men. Let the attack cross the great moat, eating up its supplies, expending its energy on distance, losing its men through boredom, disease, and dissension. Let the attack come. And let the defenders be determined. The attack can never succeed.
Consider the expense, the economics of power. The demands of mounting an attack can drain a world of men and wealth. What does a world need to defend itself? A ring of pilotless, coasting rockets and an efficient monitor system. The attacking ships cannot pass until the rockets are swept out of the sky, and if the defense is properly geared to production, it can easily keep up with the losses. And the attackers must wait and disintegrate, if their home world does not first rebel against the insatiable demands of conquest.
And if the attack succeeds in spite of odds, in defiance of losses, count the cost. Behind it a broken planet, its resources squandered on conquest, its people impoverished, starving, rebellious. Count the gain. A world which cannot be exploited. The commander of the attacking force is inside a fortress which is now his. He is
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