Joel's great bulk, pitted with new scars bright against the old, loomed up beside me in the compound.
"All the fellows are here now, Jones—we lost seventy-one, the Major says. A couple dozen more are disabled, like you and Aethelbert, but still alive. The maintenance machines have gone to work on 'em. We got plenty of spares, anyway. We'll have you rolling again in no time."
"Good work, Joel." I widened my contact to take in all of the hundred and eight intact survivors of the original group of freed slaves.
"Every one of you will have his hands full, rounding up the new men and organizing them. We have no way of knowing how soon our late enemies' home base will start inquiring after them—and when they do, we want to be ready."
"What about going home, chief?" called a man who had taken a bullet in the knee at the Hurtgen Forest. "How we going to get back?"
"You off your onion, mate?" a one-time British sailor growled. "What kind o' show you think we'd make waltzing into Piccadilly in these get-ups?"
"We got to go back, to kill off the rest of these devils, haven't we?"
"Mum, my masters," Thomas interrupted. "Hear out our captain."
"Two days ago I used the aliens' equipment to call Earth," I told them. "I managed a link-up to the public visiscreen system, and got through to the Central Coordinating Monitor of an organization called the Ultimax Group. I gave them the full picture; they knew what to do. The aliens are outnumbered a million to one down there; a few thousand troops wearing special protective helmets and armed with recoilless rifles can handle them."
"Yeah, but what about us?" the soldier burst out. "What are we going to do—stay on this godforsaken place forever? Hell, there's transports at the depots; let's use 'em! I got a wife and kids back there!"
"Art daft, fellow?" a dragoon of Charles the Second inquired. "Your chicks are long since dust, and their dam with them—as are mine, God pity 'em."
My old woman's alive and cursing yet, no doubt," said a Dutch UN platoon leader. "But she wouldn't know me now—and keeping me in reaction mass'd play hell with her household budget. No, I can't see going back."
"Maybe—they could get us human bodies again, some way . . ."
"Human body, indeed!" the dragoon cut him off. "Could a fighting man hope for a better corpse than this, that knows naught of toothache, the ague nor the French disease?"
Another voice cut into the talk—the voice of Ramon Descortes of the Ultimax Group, listening in from Earth on the circuit I held open.
"General Bravais," he said excitedly—and I channeled his transmission through my circuitry, broadcasting it to every man within range—"I've been following your talk, and although I find it unbelievable, I'm faced with the incontrovertible evidence. Our instruments indicate that your transmissions are undoubtedly coming from outside the Solar System—how and why you will explain in due course, I hope. You've told me that you and the others have been surgically transplanted into robot bodies. Now you wish to be restored, naturally. Let me urge you to return—and we will have for each of you a new body of superb design—not strictly human, admittedly—but serviceable, to say the least!"
I had to call for order to quell the uproar.
"Some kind of android?" I asked.
"We have on hand a captive—an alien operative of the humanoid type. We will capture more—alive. They will be anesthetized and placed in deep freeze, awaiting your return. According to the present estimate, there are some ten thousand of them working here on Earth—sufficient for your needs, I believe."
"Say, how's the fighting going there?" someone called.
"Well. The first Special Units have gone into action at Chicago, Paris, and Tamboula, with complete success. Governments are falling like autumn leaves, well-known figures are suiciding in droves, and mad dogs are reported everywhere. It is only a matter of hours now."
"Then—there's nothing to stand in the way—"
"Broadway, here I come—"
"Paris—without a king? Why—"
"An end to war? As well an end to living—"
"What about you, General?" someone called, and others joined in.
"I'll order the transports made ready immediately," I said. "Every man that wants to go back can leave in a matter of hours."
"Jones—I mean, General—" Joel started.
"Jones will do; I won't need the old name any more."
"You're not going back?"
"We fought a battle here," I said. "And we won. But the war goes on—on a hundred worlds; a thousand—we don't know how many. The demons rule space—but Man is on his way now. He'll be jumping off Earth, reaching out to those worlds. And when he reaches them—he'll find the armored brigades of the aliens waiting for him. Nothing can stand against them—except us. We've proved that we can outfight twice our number in slave machines—and we can free the minds that control those machines, turn them against the aliens. The farther we go, the bigger our force will be. Some day, in the far future, we'll push them off the edge of the galaxy. Until then, the war goes on. I can't go home again—but I can fight for home, wherever I find the enemy."
"General Bravais," a new voice cut in. "Surely you can't mean that? Why, your name will be on every tongue on Earth! You're the hero of the century—of any century! You'll be awarded every decoration—"
"A battle-scarred five-thousand-ton battle unit would be ill at ease in a procession down Pennsylvania Avenue," I said. "For better or worse, my chromalloy body and I are joined. Even if I had a human body again, I couldn't sit on a veranda and sip a whiskey sour, knowing what was waiting—out there. So I'm going to meet it, instead. How many are going with me?"
And the answer was a mighty roar in many tongues, from many ages—the voice of Man, that would soon be heard among the stars.