MacMaine, actually have any
friends? He looked around him, suddenly clearly conscious of the other
men in the room. He searched through his memory, thinking of all his
acquaintances and relatives.

It was an even greater shock to realize that he would not be more than
faintly touched emotionally if any or all of them were to die at that
instant. Even his parents, both of whom were now dead, were only dim
figures in his memory. He had mourned them when an aircraft accident
had taken both of them when he was only eleven, but he found himself
wondering if it had been the loss of loved ones that had caused his
emotional upset or simply the abrupt vanishing of a kind of security he
had taken for granted.

And yet, he felt that the death of General Polan Tallis would leave an
empty place in his life.

Colonel VanDeusen was still holding forth.

"... So I told him. I said, 'Look, Lootenant,' I said, 'don't rock the
boat. You're a kid yet, you know,' I said. 'You got equal rights with
everybody else,' I said, 'but if you rock the boat, you aren't gonna
get along so well.'

"'You just behave yourself,' I said, 'and pull your share of the load
and do your job right and keep your nose clean, and you'll come out all
right.

"'Time I get to be on the General Staff,' I told him, 'why, you'll be
takin' over my job, maybe. That's the way it works,' I said.

"He's a good kid. I mean, he's a fresh young punk, that's all. He'll
learn, O.K. He'll climb right up, once he's got the right attitude.
Why, when I was----"

But MacMaine was no longer listening. It was astonishing to realize
that what VanDeusen had said was perfectly true. A blockhead like
VanDeusen would simply be lifted to a position of higher authority,
only to be replaced by another blockhead. There would be no essential
change in the _status quo_.

The Kerothi were winning steadily, and the people of Earth and her
colonies were making no changes whatever in their way of living. The
majority of people were too blind to be able to see what was happening,
and the rest were afraid to admit the danger, even to themselves. It
required no great understanding of strategy to see what the inevitable
outcome must be.

At some point in the last few centuries, human civilization had taken
the wrong path--a path that led only to oblivion.

It was at that moment that Colonel Sebastian MacMaine made his
decision.

_The Escape_

"Are you sure you understand, Tallis?