. "Dr. Haer, my apologies for
intruding upon you in your time of bereavement." He turned to the new
Baron. "Baron Haer, my apologies for _your_ bereavement."

Balt Haer glowered at him.

Joe Mauser turned and marched for the door which he opened then closed
behind him.

On the street, before the New York offices of Vacuum Tube Transport, he
turned and for a moment looked up at the splendor of the building.

Well, at least the common shares of the concern had skyrocketed
following the victory. His rank had been upped to Major, and old
Stonewall Cogswell had offered him a permanent position on his staff in
command of aerial operations, no small matter of prestige. The
difficulty was, he wasn't interested in the added money that would
accrue to him, nor the higher rank--nor the prestige, for that matter.

He turned to go to his hotel.

An unbelievably beautiful girl came down the steps of the building. She
said, "Joe."

He looked at her. "Yes?"

She put a hand on his sleeve. "Let's go somewhere and talk, Joe."

"About what?" He was infinitely weary now.

"About goals," she said. "As long as they exist, whether for
individuals, or nations, or a whole species, life is still worth the
living. Things are a bit bogged down right now, but at the risk of
sounding very trite, there's tomorrow."

[Illustration]

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from _Analog_ April 1962. Extensive research
did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors
have been corrected without note.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mercenary, by Dallas McCord Reynolds

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MERCENARY ***

***** This file should be named 24370.txt or 24370.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/3/7/24370/

Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license,