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Kirel assumed the stooping posture of respect, a polite way to show he wished to speak. Atvar turned both eyes on him, relieved someone would say at least part of what he thought. The shiplord of the 127th Emperor Hetto said, “Is it certain we can successfully overcome the Tosevites, Fleetlord? Along with radio and radar, they have aircraft of their own, as well as armored fighting vehicles-our probes have shown them clearly.”
“But these weapons are far inferior to ours of similar types. The probes also show this clearly.” That was Straha, shiplord of the 206th Emperor Yower. He ranked next highest among the shiplords after Kirel, and wanted to surpass him one day.
Kirel knew of Straha’s ambitions, too. He abandoned the posture of respect to scowl at his rival. “A great many of these weapons are in action, however, and more being manufactured all the time. Our supplies are limited to those we have fetched across the light-years.”
“Have the Tosevites atomics?” Straha jeered. “If other measures fail, we can batter them into submission.”
“Thereby reducing the value of the planet to the colonists who will follow us,” Kirel said.
“What would you have us do?” Straha said. “Boost for home, having accomplished nothing?”
“It is within the fleetlord’s power,” Kirel said stubbornly.
He was right; abandoning the invasion was within Atvar’s power. No censure would fall on him if he started back-no official censure. But instead of being remembered through all the ages as Atvar World conqueror, an epithet only two in the long history of the Race had borne before him, he would go down in the annals as Atvar Worldfleer, a title he would be the first to assume, but hardly one he craved.
His the responsibility. In the end, his choice was no choice. “The awakening and orientation of the troops has proceeded satisfactorily?” he asked the shiplords. He did not need their hisses of assent to know the answer to his question; he had been following computer reports since before the fleet took up orbit around Tosev 3. The Emperor’s weapons and warriors were ready.
“We proceed,” he said. The shiplords hissed again.
“Come on, Joe!” Sam Yeager yelled in from left toward his pitcher. “One more to go. You can do it.” I hope, Yeager added to himself.
On the mound, Joe Sullivan rocked into his motion, wound up, delivered. Some days, Sullivan couldn’t find the plate with a map. What do you expect from a seventeen-year-old kid? Yeager thought. Today, though, the big curve bit the outside corner. The umpire’s right hand came up. A couple of people in the crowd of a couple of hundred cheered.
Sullivan fired again. The batter, a big left-handed-hitting first baseman named Kobeski, swung late, lifted a lazy fly ball to left. “Shit!” he said loudly, and threw down his bat in disgust Yeager drifted back a few steps. The ball smacked his glove; his other hand instantly covered it. He trotted in toward the visitors’ dugout. So did the rest of the Decatur Commodores.
“Final score, Decatur 4, Madison 2,” the announcer said over a scratchy, tinny microphone. “Winner, Sullivan. Loser, Kovacs. The Springfield Brownies start a series with the Blues here at Breese Stephens Field tomorrow. Game time will be noon. Hope to see you then.”
As soon as he got into the dugout, Yeager pulled a pack of Camels from the hip pocket of his wool flannel uniform. He lit up, sucked in a deep drag, blew out a contented cloud of smoke. “That’s the way to do it, Joe,” he called to Sullivan, who was ahead of him in the tunnel that led to the visitors’ locker room. “Keep the ball down and away from a big ox like Kobeski and he’ll never put one over that short right field they have here.”
“Uh, yeah. Thanks, Sam,” the winning pitcher said over his shoulder. He took off his cap, wiped his sweaty forehead with a sleeve. Then he started unbuttoning his shirt.
Yeager stared at Sullivan’s back, slowly shook his head in wonder. The kid hadn’t even known what he was up to; he’d just. happened to do the right thing. He’s only seventeen, the left fielder reminded himself again. Most of the Commodores were just like Joe, kids too young for the draft. They made Yeager feel even older than the thirty-five years he actually carried.
His “locker” was a nail driven into the wall. He sat down on a milking stool in front of it, began to peel off his uniform.
Bobby Fiore landed heavily on the stool beside him. The second baseman was a veteran, too, and Yeager’s roommate. “I’m getting too old for this,” he said with a grimace.
“You’re what? Two years younger than I am?” Yeager said. “I guess so. Something like that.” Fiore’s dark, heavily bearded face, full of angles and shadows, was made to be a mask of gloom. It also made him a perfect contrast to Yeager, whose blond, ruddy features shouted farmboy! to the world. Gloomy now, Fiore went on, “What the hell’s the use of playing in a lousy Class B league when you’re as old as we are? You still think you’re gonna be a big leaguer, Sam?”
“The war goes on long enough, who can say? They may draft everybody ahead of me, and they don’t want to give me a rifle. I tried volunteering six months ago, right after Pearl Harbor.”
“You got store-bought teeth, for Christ’s sake,” Fiore said.
“Doesn’t mean I can’t eat, or shoot, either,” Yeager said. He’d almost died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. His teeth, weakened by fever, rotted in his head and came out over the next few years; he’d worn full upper and lower plates since before he started shaving. Ironically, the only teeth of his own he had now were his four wisdom teeth, the ones that gave everyone else trouble. They’d come in fine, long after the rest were gone.
Fiore just snorted and walked naked to the shower. Yeager followed. He washed quickly; the shower was cold. It could have been worse, he thought as he toweled himself dry. A couple of Three-I League parks didn’t even have showers for the visiting team. Walking back to the hotel in a sticky, smelly uniform was a pleasure of bush-league ball he could do without.
He tossed his uniform into a canvas duffel bag, along with his spikes and glove. As he started getting into his street clothes, he picked up the conversation with Fiore: “What am I supposed to do, Bobby, quit? I’ve been going too long for that. Besides, I don’t know a lot besides playing ball.”
“What do you need to know to get a job at a defense plant that pays better’n this?” Fiore asked. But he was slinging his jock into his duffel bag, too.
“Why don’t you, if you’re so fed up?” Yeager said.
Fiore grunted. “Ask me on a day when I didn’t get any hits. Today I went two for four.” He slung the blue bag over his shoulder, picked his, way out of the crowded locker room.
Yeager went with him. The cop at the players’ entrance tipped his cap to them as they walked past; by his white mustache, he might have tried volunteering for the Spanish-American War.
Both ballplayers took a long, deep breath at the same time. They smiled at each other. The air was sweet with the smell of the rolls and bread baking at Gardner’s Bakery across the street’ from the park. Fiore said, “I got a cousin who runs a little bakery in Pittsburgh. His place don’t smell half as good as this.”
“Next time I’m in Pittsburgh, I’ll tell your cousin you said that,” Yeager said.
“You ain’t going to Pittsburgh, or any other big-league town, not even if the war goes on till 1955,” Fiore retorted. “What’s the best league you ever played in?”
“I put in half a season for Birmingham in 1933,” Yeager said. “The Southern Association’s Class A-1 ball. Broke my ankle the second game of a Fourth of July doubleheader and I was out for the rest of the year.” He knew he’d lost a step, maybe a step and a half, when he came back the next season. He also knew any real chance he’d had of making the majors had snapped along with the bone in his ankle.
“You’re ahead of me after all. I put in three weeks at Albany-the Eastern League’s Class A-but when I made three errors in one game they shipped me right on out of there. Bastards.” Fiore spoke the word without much heat. If you screwed up, anothe
r ballplayer was always ready to grab your place. Anybody who didn’t understand that had no business playing the game for money.
Yeager stopped at a newsstand around the corner from the hotel and bought a magazine. “Something to look at on the train back to Decatur,” he said, handing the fellow at the stand a quarter. The year before, he would have got a nickel back. Now he didn’t. When you got a Three-I league salary, every nickel counted. He didn’t think going from digest size up to bedsheet was worth the extra five cents.
Fiore’s lip curled at his choice of reading matter. “How can you stand that Buck Rogers stuff?”
