Citizen in Space

“I suppose there’ll be a presentation or something,” he said vaguely.

“You mean we will meet — Him?” General Dell asked.

“Don’t really know,” Fetterer said. “But I should think so. After all — I mean, you know what I mean?”

“But what should we wear?” General MacFee asked, in a sudden panic.

“I mean, what does one wear?”

“What do the angels wear?” Fetterer asked Ongin.

“I don’t know,” Ongin said.

“Robes, do you think?” General Dell offered.

“No,” Fetterer said sternly. “We will wear dress uniform, without decorations.”

The generals nodded. It was fitting. And then it was time. Gorgeous in their battle array, the legions of Hell advanced over the desert. Hellish pipes skirled, hollow drums pounded, and the great host moved forward. In a blinding cloud of sand, General MacFee’s automatic tanks hurled themselves against the satanic foe. Immediately, Dell’s automatic bombers screeched overhead, hurling their bombs on the massed horde of the damned. Fetterer thrust valiantly with his automatic cavalry. Into this mêlée advanced Ongin’s automatic infantry, and metal did what metal could. The hordes of the damned overflowed the front, ripping apart tanks and robots. Automatic mechanisms died, bravely defending a patch of sand. Dell’s bombers were torn from the skies by the fallen angels, led by Marchocias, his griffin’s wings beating the air into a tornado. The thin battered line of robots held, against gigantic presences that smashed and scattered them, and struck terror into the hearts of television viewers in homes around the world. Like men, like heroes the robots fought, trying to force back the forces of evil. Astaroth shrieked a command, and Behemoth lumbered forward. Bael, with a wedge of devils behind him, threw a charge at General Fetterer’s crumbling left flank. Metal screamed, electrons howled in agony at the impact. Supreme General Fetterer sweated and trembled, a thousand miles behind the firing line. But steadily, nervelessly, he guided the pushing of buttons and the throwing of levers. His superb corps didn’t disappoint him. Mortally damaged robots swayed to their feet and fought. Smashed, trampled, destroyed by the howling fiends, the robots managed to hold their line. Then the veteran Fifth Corps threw in a counter-attack, and the enemy front was pierced. A thousand miles behind the firing line, the generals guided the mopping up operations.

“The battle is won,” Supreme General Fetterer whispered, turning away from the television screen. “I congratulate you, gentlemen.”

The generals smiled wearily. They looked at each other, then broke into a spontaneous shout. Armageddon was won, and the forces of Satan had been vanquished. But something was happening on their screens.

“Is that — is that —” General MacFee began, and then couldn’t speak. For The Presence was upon the battlefield, walking among the piles of twisted, shattered metal. The generals were silent. The Presence touched a twisted robot. Upon the smoking desert, the robots began to move. The twisted, scored, fused metals straightened. The robots stood on their feet again.

“MacFee,” Supreme General Fetterer whispered. “Try your controls. Make the robots kneel or something.”

The general tried, but his controls were dead. The bodies of the robots began to rise in the air. Around them were the angels of the Lord, and the robot tanks and soldiers and bombers floated upward, higher and higher.

“He’s saving them!” Ongin cried hysterically. “He’s saving the robots!”

“It’s a mistake!” Fetterer said. “Quick. Send a messenger to — no! We will go in person!”

And quickly a ship was commanded, and quickly they sped to the field of battle. But by then it was too late, for Armageddon was over, and the robots gone, and the Lord and his host departed.

Skulking Permit

Tom Fisher had no idea he was about to begin a criminal career. It was morning. The big red sun was just above the horizon, trailing its small yellow companion. The village, tiny and precise, a unique white dot on the planet's green expanse, glistened under its two midsummer suns.

Tom was just waking up inside his cottage. He was a tall, ta

"It's supposed to have a red roof!" he heard Billy Painter shouting outside.

"Churches never have red roofs!" Ed Weaver shouted back.

Tom frowned. Not being involved, he had forgotten the changes that had come over the village in the last two weeks. He slipped on a pair of pants and sauntered out to the village square.

The first thing he saw when he entered the square was a large new sign, reading: NO ALIENS ALLOWED WITHIN CITY LIMITS. There were no aliens on the entire planet of New Delaware. There was nothing but forest, and this one village. The sign was purely a statement of policy.

The square itself contained a church, a jail and a post office, all constructed in the last two frantic weeks and set in a neat row facing the market. No one knew what to do with these buildings; the village had gone along nicely without them for over two hundred years. But now, of course, they had to be built.

Ed Weaver was standing in front of the new church, squinting upward. Billy Painter was balanced precariously on the church's steep roof, his blond mustache bristling indignantly. A small crowd had gathered.

"Damn it, man," Billy Painter was saying, "I tell you I was reading about it just last week. White roof, okay. Red roof, never."

"You're mixing it up with something else," Weaver said. "How about it, Tom?"

Tom shrugged, having no opinion to offer. Just then, the mayor bustled up, perspiring freely, his shirt flapping over his large paunch.

"Come down," he called to Billy. "I just looked it up. It's the Little Red Schoolhouse, not Churchhouse."

Billy looked angry. He had always been moody; all Painters were. But since the mayor made him chief of police last week, he had become downright temperamental.

"We don't have no little schoolhouse," Billy argued, halfway down the ladder.

"We'll just have to build one," the mayor said. "We'll have to hurry, too." He glanced at the sky. Involuntarily the crowd glanced upward. But there was still nothing in sight.

"Where are the Carpenter boys?" the mayor asked. "Sid, Sam, Marv — where are you?"

Sid Carpenter's head appeared through the crowd. He was still on crutches from last month when he had fallen out of a tree looking for threstle's eggs; no Carpenter was worth a damn at tree-climbing.

"The other boys are at Ed Beer's Tavern," Sid said. "Where else would they be?" Mary Waterman called from the crowd.

"Well, you gather them up," the mayor said. "They gotta build up a little schoolhouse, and quick. Tell them to put it up beside the jail." He turned to Billy Painter, who was back on the ground. "Billy, you paint that schoolhouse a good bright red, inside and out. It's very important."

"When do I get a police chief badge?" Billy demanded. "I read that police chiefs always get badges."

"Make yourself one," the mayor said. He mopped his face with his shirttail. "Sure hot. Don't know why that inspector couldn't have come in winter. Tom! Tom Fisher! Got an important job for you. Come on, I'll tell you all about it."

He put an arm around Tom's shoulders and they walked to the mayor's cottage past the empty market, along the village's single paved road. In the old days, that road had been of packed dirt. But the old days had ended two weeks ago and now the road was paved with crushed rock. It made barefoot walking so uncomfortable that the villagers simply cut across each other's lawns. The mayor, though, walked on it out of principle.