The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Peacemaker, by Alfred Coppel

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Title: The Peacemaker

Author: Alfred Coppel

Illustrator: Bob Martin

Release Date: March 25, 2010 [EBook #31767]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: _The _Arrow_ lanced down out of the night like a spear of
flame, vengeful and deadly._]

_The legends of Jaq Merril are legion--but legends. Hark, ye, then
to the true story of the pirate benefactor of Mankind!_

THE PEACEMAKER

By Alfred Coppel

Illustrated by BOB MARTIN

We humans are a strange breed, unique in the Universe. Of all the races
met among the stars, only _homo sapiens_ thrives on deliberate
self-delusion. Perhaps this is the secret of our greatness, for we are
great. In power, if not in supernal wisdom.

Legends, I think, are our strength. If one day a man stands on the rim
of the Galaxy and looks out across the gulfs toward the seetee suns of
Andromeda, it will be legends that drove him there.

They are odd things, these legends, peopled with unreal creatures,
magnificent heroes and despicable villains. We stand for no nonsense
where our mythology is concerned. A man becoming part of our folklore
becomes a fey, one-dimensional, shadow-image of reality.

Jaq Merril--the Jaq Merril of the history books--is such an image.
History, folklore's jade, has daubed Merril with the rouge of myth, and
it does not become him.

The Peacemaker, the chronicles have named him, and that at least, is
accurate in point of fact. But it was not through choice that he became
the Peacemaker; and when his Peace descended over the worlds of space,
Merril, the man, was finished. This I know, for I rode with him--his
lieutenant in a dozen and more bloody fights that earned him his
ironically pacific laurels.

* * * * *

Not many now living will remember the Wall Decade. History, ever
pliable, is rewritten often, and facts are forgotten. When it was gone,
the Wall Decade was remembe