The Arrow lanced down out of the nightlike a spear of flame, vengeful and deadly.
THE PEACEMAKER
By Alfred Coppel
Illustrated by BOB MARTIN
We humans are a strangebreed, unique in the Universe.Of all the races met amongthe stars, only homo sapiens thriveson deliberate self-delusion. Perhapsthis is the secret of our greatness,for we are great. In power, if notin supernal wisdom.
Legends, I think, are ourstrength. If one day a man standson the rim of the Galaxy and looksout across the gulfs toward theseetee suns of Andromeda, it willbe legends that drove him there.
They are odd things, theselegends, peopled with unreal creatures,magnificent heroes and despicablevillains. We stand for nononsense where our mythology isconcerned. A man becoming partof our folklore becomes a fey, one-dimensional,shadow-image of reality.
Jaq Merril—the Jaq Merril ofthe history books—is such an image.History, folklore's jade, hasdaubed Merril with the rouge ofmyth, and it does not become him.
The Peacemaker, the chronicleshave named him, and that at least,is accurate in point of fact. But itwas not through choice that he becamethe Peacemaker; and whenhis Peace descended over theworlds of space, Merril, the man,was finished. This I know, for Irode with him—his lieutenant in adozen and more bloody fights thatearned him his ironically pacificlaurels.
Not many now living will rememberthe Wall Decade. History,ever pliable, is rewritten often, andfacts are forgotten. When it wasgone, the Wall Decade was rememberedwith shame and so was expungedfrom the record of time.But I remember it well. It was anera compounded of stupidity andgrandeur, of brilliant discovery andgrimy political maneuver. We, thegreedy men of space—and that includesJaq Merril—saw it end withsorrow in our hearts, knowing thatwe had killed it.
If you will think back to theyears immediately preceding theAge of Space, you may rememberthe Iron Curtain. Among the nationsof the Earth a great schismhad arisen, and a wall of ideas wasbuilt between east and west. Hydrogenbombs were stockpiled andarmies marched and countermarchedthreateningly. Men livedwith fear and hatred and distrust.
Then, suddenly, came the yearsof spaceflight and the expandingfrontiers. Luna was passed. Marsand Venus and the Jovian Moonsfelt the tread of living beings forthe first time since the dawn oftime. The larger asteroids weretaken and even the cold moonletsof Saturn and Uranus trembledunder the blast of Terran rockets.But the Iron Curtain still existed.It was extended out into the gulfof space, an intangible wall of fearand suspicion. Thus was born theWall Decade.
Jaq Merril was made for thatepoch. Ever in human history thereare those who profit from the stupidityof their fellows. Jaq Merrilso profited. He dredged up theriches of space and took them forhis own. And his weapon was man'sfear of his brothers.
It was in Yakki, down-canalfrom the Terran settlement atCanalopolis, that Merril's plan wasborn. His ship, the Arrow, stood onthe red sands of Syrtis Major, waitingfor a payload to the Outer System.It stood among a good manylike it: the Moonmaid, the GayLady, the Argonaut, and my ownvessel, the Starhound.
We, the captai