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historical
reasons which you may or may not "
"I've read some of the history of your system."
"Good. However, an all-out interplanetary war remains unthinkable, in this
system or elsewhere. There is simply too much "
"I've read the theories on that, too. What I have never read anywhere is any
reason for the Ungavans' fighting on if you stopped."
"Well you will have to ask them about that, I suppose."
"I intend to."
"Excuse me, Mr. Shen-yang, you said a moment ago that you did not see what
real threat they pose to us. Are you aware that they still have their own
strategic missiles?"
A silence began to grow. Shen-yang fingered his aching right ear, wondering if
it might have played him false. Then he understood, or thought he did. "You
mean they are starting now to build some? Or to import some from Shearwater?"
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"No. I mean that the Ungavans still have more than a thousand of their own
ICBMs emplaced, mostly in hardened sites have had them since before the war.
Some have been knocked out by our missiles, of course. I am not at liberty to
quote you our best intelligence estimates of how many remain but a thousand
would be a good, fair, round figure."
There was silence again. Shen-yang noticed that his chair squeaked if he
rocked in it.
His ears were evidently working fine. Either something in his brain was badly
askew, though, or something in this world. "Let me see if I understand. Your
official claim is that Ungava still possesses a sizable strategic strike
force, intact after more than forty years of pounding by nuclear missiles "
"Excuse me." The minister leaned forward. "It is important that you
understand, there has not been forty years of continuous pounding, as you call
it. If we had built missiles and fired them as fast as we could for forty
years, both we and the Ungavans would long since have perished from radiation
poisoning, and there would be no world of Lorenzoni to fight about no world
that anyone could live on."
"I understand that," said Shen-yang stiffly. "I have some military
experience."
"Ah? Very good. Proceed."
"You say they have a sizable strategic strike force, still intact.
But in more than forty years of war, in which you have hit them again and
again with similar weapons, they have never fired even one of these missiles
at you."
"That is correct."
"Can you explain why?"
"They fear to tip the environmental balance. You see, it can be shown
mathematically or so my experts tell me that the long-term effects of another
mass launching of missiles will be worse for Ungava than for us, regardless of
where the missiles land." Was there, in the minister's almost immobile face, a
glint of some brand of humor? "Of course for a first-hand answer, you will
have to ask the
Ungavans themselves."
His trip began next day with a flight from Vellore to an advanced military
base, set amid the chalky cliffs of the southern coast. The next leg of his
journey passed aboard a fast courier-recon plane, which deposited him upon a
barren ocean islet, then took off in a hurry, headed back the way it had come,
and vanished in a moment.
Surf pounded tranqualizingly, but then some wild sea creature screamed as if
in torment. Waiting on the flat, lichen-spotted rock, Shen-yang studied the
horizon and tried to use the time for thought. He still could not believe in
the existence of the
Ungavan strategic missiles those utter, bitter fanatics would have used them,
sometime in the past forty years. Themselves held on the rack of war, year
after year, by a merciless enemy they would have struck back as hard as
possible. No claim had ever been made that they were superhumanly forgiving,
and it was unreasonable that they should be so reluctant to add some pollution
to the atmosphere.
He could hear the Ungavan aircraft coming before he spotted it; it was moving
somewhat more slowly than the Condamine courier. Shenyang waved as the smooth
metal shape made one leisurely pass overhead. He felt a little foolish for his
wave when the aircraft had landed and he had walked to it and found it was
unmanned.
A glassy canopy had retracted, above an empty, spartan seat and a small space
for luggage. Shenyang climbed in, and as his weight came down into the seat,
the glass slid closed again above his head. A moment later he was airborne.
The plane flew at a good speed, close above the waves. It turned smoothly a
couple of times, avoiding a line of squalls.
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In time a coastline grew, ahead. He thought his vehicle slowed somewhat as the
land drew nearer to give him a good look?
There, just inland among rocky hills, was ground-zero of some horrendous
blast, a decade or more old. Glassy and sterile hectares were surrounded by
the stumps of crags and recent, tender life in the form of scattered,
stunted-looking greenery.
Farther from the central scar, the stumps of buildings, half-buried now in
drifted sand, made a larger ring. This, then, had been a city, and probably a
harbor. There were no signs that humans had ever tried to reoccupy the place.
He rode on. His homework-reading had informed him that the whole Ungavan
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