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Title: Bullard Reflects
Author: Jameson, Malcolm (1891-1945)
Date of first publication: December 1941
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Astounding Science-Fiction, December 1941
   [New York: Street & Smith]
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 16 June 2016
Date last updated: 16 June 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1330

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






BULLARD REFLECTS

by Malcolm Jameson



    Commander Bullard had a team nicely trained in a harmless
    sport--but it turned out he also had a team well-trained in
    the dangerous sport of outlaw busting!




"Whee!  Yippee!  Yow!"

The crowd went crazy.  Staid, gold-braided captains and commanders
jumped up and down on their seats and yelled themselves hoarse.  Even
the admirals present dropped their dignified hand clapping for
unrestrained shouting.  Spacemen of all ratings tossed their hats away,
hugged whoever was next to them, find behaved generally like wild men.
Alan MacKay had scored his tenth successive goal!

"Castor Beans, Castor Beans--waw! waw! waw!" went the _Pollux_
bleachers derisively.

"Polliwogs, Polliwogs--yah, yah, yah!" came the prompt response from
the space cruiser _Castor's_ side of the arena.  But it was a weak and
disheartened chorus.  850 to 25 the wrong way at the end of the first
half was not the sort of score to inspire a cheering section.  The
_Pollux's_ Dazzle Dart team was mopping up--and how!

Captain Bullard of the _Pollux_ was no exception to the rest.  He
flopped back into his seat red of face and utterly exhausted.  His
vocal cords had gone long since, and now he could only gasp and speak
in weak whispers.  Captain Ellington, commander of the mine division,
leaned over and congratulated him.

"You've got the General Excellence Trophy in the bag," he said.  "That
is the third time in a row, isn't it?  That means you keep it."

"Yes," said Bullard, feebly.  "But, oh, boy, who would have dreamed of
picking up a player like this MacKay!  I asked for him on account of
the way he handled that Jovian surrender, but I had no idea he was such
a whiz at Dazzle Dart--"

Then Bullard's husky voice failed him altogether, and he turned to
watch the parades between halves.

The interfleet athletic meet, held for the first time since the Jovian
armistice, had been a howling success from his point of view from first
to last.  The hand-picked, well-trained skymen of the _Pollux_ had
taken every major sport.  The meteor-ball contest had been a pushover;
they earned over eight hundred of the possible thousand points at
saltation--that grueling competition of leaping from a stand at all
gravities from zero to two and a half.  They had outswum, outrun and
outplayed their competitors in practically every one of the events.
And now, in the most critical test of all, they had a walkaway.  He had
expected it, of course, but not by such a tremendous margin.

In the meantime the crowd milled and whooped on the plain at the bottom
of Luna's well-dome crater Ashtaroth which was the athletic field of
the great Lunar Base.  Captain Bullard regained his breath and sat
watching.  Good boys, his, he was thinking, all of them--whether at war
or at play.  Then there came another touch at his elbow and Lieutenant
Commander Bissel was there, aid to the commandant.

"I hate to inject a serious note into the festivities," he apologized,
"but there's something hot coming in over the transether.  Remember
Egon Ziffler, chief of secret police of the Jovian Empire--the
Torturer, they called him?"

Bullard nodded.

"He's been located, and at Titania, of all places.  He appeared in a
Callistan cruiser and took the place by surprise.  Apparently he
massacred the entire garrison in the most fiendish manner; the admiral
is talking now with the sole survivor who, somehow, managed to escape
to Oberon.  The worst of it is he is in possession of our experimental
arsenal and proving grounds--"

"Yes?" said Bullard.

"Yes.  It has not been released yet, but that deadly new electron gun
worked perfectly and there are hundreds of them there.  With those in
their hands they will be almost invulnerable.  Only the screens of a
star-class cruiser can resist the hand-size model, and I doubt if those
could stand up to the heavier Mark II we planned to build."

"That's bad," remarked Bullard, with a sigh.  It seemed that no matter
how much clean-up work they did, there was always trouble.

"Yes," agreed Bissel, soberly, "it is bad.  But I'll toddle along and
get the latest.  By the time this is over maybe I can give you the full
dope."

He slid out of the box, and Bullard turned his attention once more to
the field, only now his thoughts were inside the _Pollux_, parked in
her launching rack over at the sky yard.  Swiftly he surveyed mentally
every compartment in her, then he permitted himself to relax.  He could
find no fault.  She was ready to soar.  Just let them give the word.

By that time the playing field was empty.  A whistle blew.  The second
half was about to begin.  It seemed a useless waste of time, but the
rules were unchangeable.  A fleet championship game could not be
conceded; it must be played out to the last second.



The Castoreans came onto the field in a somewhat more cheerful frame of
mind.  In this half they would have the advantage.  They had the
offensive.  Then the Polliwogs tramped in, still jubilant.  There was
an enormous margin to their credit.  They could hardly lose.

The game, essentially, was a simple one.  But it called for the utmost
a man could develop in alertness, agility and dexterity.  Moreover, to
get the best results, there must be instant teamwork, secured by long
practice, for there was scant time to interpret and act upon the
sharply barked code signals that demanded various degrees of
co-operation.

The elements of it were these: it was played on a court not much
different in layout from that required by basketball, football or
jai-alai.  There were two opposite goals, set high in backstops.  The
goals were six-inch, black holes in which were selenium units.  A
semicircular wall, four feet high, guarded a forbidden area at the foot
of each backstop.  The quarterback of the offensive team had a
flashlight--a superflashlight--which was loaded for each half with
exactly one hundred ten-second flashes of light.  The light was
delivered in a thin pencil of one centimeter in diameter, and the inner
mechanism of it was so designed that the operator could deliver it
flash at a time by simply pointing it and pressing a button.  But once
the button was pressed, the light stayed on for a full ten seconds and
then went out abruptly, counting as one serve.  The idea was to cast
the ray into the opposite goal hole.  If the bell rang, the quarterback
scored twenty-five points.

The defenders' aim was to intercept and deflect the light--into the
other goal, if possible.  Should they succeed, their score would be
double.  To effect this, they were equipped with as many slightly
convex mirrors as they thought they could handle.  The mirrors were not
dissimilar from the type worn on the brow of a throat specialist.
Players usually wore them strapped to their wrists, but stars could not
only manage those, but also ones strapped at their waists and on the
head as well.  A good jumper was a distinct asset to a team, and the
_Pollux's_ five saltatory champs had been of invaluable assistance.

They took their positions.  Weems, captain of the _Castor_ team, had
the torch.  His twenty guards were ranged about him.  The Polliwogs
scattered out at the other end of the court, tense and waiting.
Tackling, holding or slugging was barred, but a man could drop on all
fours and make an onrushing opponent stumble over him.  There was no
more to the game than that.

Weems maneuvered for position, then leaped unexpectedly into the air,
and it was a goodly leap, as they were playing on strictly Lunar
gravity.  At near the top of his flight his hand darted forth and he
sent a beam of light at his goal.  It struck the backstop not a foot
from the goal, but before the eagle-eyed Weems could shift his hand, a
Polliwog player was in the air and had caught it with one of his
reflectors.  A twist of the wrist sent it hurtling back to the other
side, a narrow miss.  The source of it--Weems--was falling now, and he
jerked his arm, throwing the light sharply downward, where one of his
own teammates caught it and shot it up at a steep angle under the
hovering Polliwog guards.  A bull's-eye!  And not an instant too soon,
for at that moment the light went out.  Twenty-five points for the
attackers.

So it went--so swiftly the eye could hardly follow.  Despite the fact
that it was customary to fill the arena dome with humid air and spray
dust in it so as to illuminate the darting beam throughout its length,
it took the glance of an eagle to keep pace with it.  A battery of
cameras, of course, recorded the play constantly, and the
selenium-cell-operated bell bonged from time to time as the light ray
hit it.

The second half was full of brilliant double and triple plays, where
often the quarterback would turn and flash his light directly behind
him to a confederate who relayed it across the court, who in his turn
shot it into a momentarily undefended goal.  The ultimate score,
though, was against the Castoreans.  Their defeat was so decisive as to
admit no quibbling.

The cheering lasted for minutes, but hardly had the final goal bell
rung before Bullard was aware that the grand admiral himself had
entered his box and was sitting beside him.

"Congratulations," said he, then addressed himself to serious business.
"You have already heard a little of what is going on on Titania?  I
sent Bissel.  It is a scurvy trick to recall your crew and send you out
on a desperate mission at an hour like this, but there is no other ship
ready.  Since the armistice it seems that there has been a letdown in
discipline.  Can you blast off in four hours?"

"I can blast off in one hour if you'll give me an all-Moon hookup on
the public-address system," said Bullard, without batting an eye.  He
had not only been expecting the detail, but hoping for it.  Ziffler was
a creature he loathed from the bottom of his heart--treacherous, cruel
and unprincipled, of a breed that extermination is the only cure for.

Within five minutes Bullard was making his appeal to his skymen.

"On the double!" were his last words, and he slammed down the
transmitter.



The burned and looted fortress of Caliban lay directly under.  Bullard
pushed his navigator aside and took the controls himself.  He set the
antigravs at half strength and slowly lost altitude, constantly
searching.  At last he found them.  There was a parked cruiser of the
_Dernfug_ class, and a horde of men camped outside alongside it.
Phosphorescent flares burned, and he saw they were celebrating.  Kegs
of the type used as containers for the potent _snahger_ liquor rolled
all about, and the thickest of the rioting throng were gathered about
others yet upright.

"The ship, first," said Bullard, grimly, and his gunnery
officer--Fraser--said only, "Aye, aye, sir."

The searing, blinding beam of incredible power leaped downward, played
a moment on the cruiser, then flickered out.  On the ground there was
left only a mass of running molted metal, sputtering a valedictory of
brilliant sparks.

"Cease firing!" was Bullard's next crisp order.  "The grand admiral
wants them brought in alive, if possible."  He reached for the antigrav
control and pushed the deflectors on hard swing.

The _Pollux_ came down a mile away to an easy landing on the dark
plain.  The people in her could plainly see the floodlamps of the
rollicking bandits and the sharp reflections that glinted on the smooth
terrain between.  There was nothing to impede the progress of the
landing force.

But by the time the landing force was ready for its trip, the lookout
reported a new development.  A party of men was approaching, and they
were stretching their arms over their heads in gesture of surrender.  A
close scrutiny of them could discover no arms worth worrying about.
The new electron projectors were said to be quite heavy, each requiring
two men to carry and operate.  Any less potent weapon the veterans of
the _Pollux_ could deal with, and deal with well.

"Find out who they are and what is their proposition," ordered Bullard.
"If it sounds reasonable, let three in for a parley.  No more.  He is
full of slimy tricks, that Ziffler.  I wouldn't trust his words under
any circumstances."

It was not Ziffler, but Skul Drosno, former vice premier, of the Jovian
regime, together with two high aids.  They wanted to arrange terms of
surrender, they said.  Their story was that they had revolted against
the atrocities of Ziffler and had him a prisoner in their camp.  They
would trade him--trussed up as he was--for personal immunity and a
general pardon for their followers.  They would willingly submit to
trial, knowing now how they had been hoodwinked.

"Let them in."  said Bullard, though he was still a trifle doubtful.
"I will talk with them."

Skul Drosno began his appeal.  Bullard recognized it at once as rank
sophistry, but he continued to listen.  Then, to his astonishment,
Drosno suddenly slumped in his chair.  His eyes were crossed to a
painful degree, and his hands wavered uncertainly in the air.  The next
moment he pitched forward onto the deck and sprawled, apparently
unconscious.  One of his aids looked sick, and staggered to his feet,
weaving about ridiculously.

"What an act!" thought Bullard, and sprang to his own feet, alert.  He
shot a glance to his side and saw that his executive, Moore, who had
been with him, was an inert heap.  And at that moment things began to
blur before his own eyes.  His knees wobbled, and he heard a harsh,
metallic ringing in his ears.  He fought for air, then choked.  The
floor plates rushed upward and struck him squarely in the face.  After
that Bullard remembered no more.



The next voice he heard was the high-pitched cackling of the
unspeakable Ziffler.

"Can such things be!" crowed the vile Callistan.  "A great personage,
no less.  I find as my prisoner the inimitable, the invincible, the
incorruptible Bullard--hero of the nine planets!"

Bullard opened his eyes, ignoring the pounding in the back of his head.
He was seated in a chair, strapped hand and foot, and the swaggering
ex-police chief who had terrorized the Jovian satellites was standing
before him, exulting.

"Perhaps he is not so invincible," pursued his tormentor, calmly
lighting a cigarette and seating himself.  "We have never seen him
outside his formidable _Pollux_.  But now that he is in our hands, I am
curious to see how good he is.  Hagstund!  Come here!"

A big brute of a former convict strode forward.

"What do you say?  Shall we have a little sport?  Why not put these men
in spacesuits and turn them loose for twenty-four hours?  Then we can
have a hunt.  This man, in particular, has a gr-r-reat reputation for
cleverness.  Let's see what he can do on a barren and resourceless
planet.  We have counted them, so we know their numbers.  I will give a
prize, prizes.  Ten thousand sols for this one, to whoever brings him
down.  Another ten thousand for the last man of the lot and another
five for the next to the last.  It'll be good fun, eh?"

Ziffler took a swig of _snahger_ and delivered himself of an elaborate
wink.  Bullard did not believe for a moment he was drunk.  Ziffler was
too clever a scoundrel for that.  It was a gesture meant to raise false
hopes.  Bullard knew all too well what the wastes of Titania were.  He
had been there before.  Except for the port of Caliban, the arsenal and
a few scattered stations which no doubt had been plundered by now,
there was nothing but bleak, frozen plains, broken by rugged meteor
craters.

"Swell, chief," agreed the henchman.  "What about the ship?"

"Leave her lie as she is.  They'll not send another for days.  I don't
want you baboons monkeying around inside her.  Let's give these guys a
run, then we'll get down to business.  There's plenty of time."

Rough hands pulled Bullard to his feet, and at the point of one of the
new and deadly electron guns they made him put an ordinary spacesuits.
As the mists cleared away in his throbbing head, he saw that he was in
a large hall, and that other men and officers of his crew were being
similarly treated.

"Oh, by the way," remarked Ziffler, offhandedly.  "They say I am
unkind.  I'll save you one bit of mental torture.  What got you down
was our new hypnotic dust.  It's very clever, really.  Powder a coat
with it, for example, then expose it to air.  It vaporizes and puts
everyone to sleep.  My emissaries went out, too--naturally.  All but
one, that is, who had been heavily doped with an antidote beforehand.
He survived long enough to open the door for us, then, unfortunately,
died.  It was regrettable, but in my business I find it necessary to do
such things."

Bullard said not a word.  He was ready.  The outlook was black, but he
had seen other outlooks that were quite as black.

"I'll be seeing you, Ziffler," he said, and hoped it was not mere
braggadocio.  Ziffler had a reputation for sadism, but not for courage.
There was the bare chance that that single psychological shot in the
dark might in time be digested and unsettle him.  "Let's go.  I prefer
anything to your presence."

"Yeah?" said Ziffler, but he beckoned to his strong-arm squad.



The entire crew of the _Pollux_ was there.  They were pushed out
through the portal of the dome in squads of four and told to get going.
Bullard was let out last of all.  Their captors promised tauntingly
that they had a full Earth day before pursuit.

"Stay together, men," called Bullard into his helmet microphone, the
moment the portal closed behind him.  "All officers come up close to
me."

The light on Titania is dim, even in full daytime.  But it was good
enough for his officers to read the swift manipulations of his fingers.
Their skipper was using the sign language all trained Space Guards men
used when they feared their words might be overheard.

"Poleward from here."  Bullard told them, "some thirty miles, is a
meteorite crater.  For several years we have maintained a secret
laboratory there and it is possible that these ruffians have not
discovered it.  That will be our destination.  Under this gravity we
should reach it within a few hours, though I am uncertain of its exact
direction.  Have the men spread out and hunt.  There should be flares
there, and the first man in should light one.  The last time I visited
the place it had a staff of eight or ten scientists, and an excellent
interplanetary radio.  They may have weapons, but at least we can flash
an alarm."

Rapidly waved arms acknowledged, and the Polliwogs dispersed in the
semidarkness.

It was Lieutenant Alan MacKay who reached the spot first.  He had
trouble in finding a flare, but eventually he found one and lit it.
The laboratory was a shambles.  The vandals had found the place,
despite his captain's hopes to the contrary, and turned it upside down.
The bodies of the physicists and chemists lay all about, and the
unhappy director's corpse was discovered nailed to the wall, crucifix
style.  Torn papers, broken glass and tangled wire littered the floor.
The radio had been smashed almost out of recognition.  MacKay, a
newcomer to the service, shuddered, but he carried out his orders.

Bullard arrived shortly after, and his face was not pretty to see as he
viewed the wreckage.  Now he regretted the flare.  _They_ undoubtedly
had seen it, too.  He had hoped to warn these people, send a message to
the System in general, then have his forces scatter.  A few of them
might have hoped to survive the ruthless man hunt that was to follow.

But the situation was changed, and since any alternative seemed as
hopeless as any other, he let the flare continue to burn.  By keeping
together, some resistance might be improvised.  While he was waiting
for the stragglers to come up, he busied himself with reassembling the
torn pages of the notebooks and journals strewn about the floor.

Much of them dealt with routine analysis, but on a page written in red
ink and numbered "97" he found a fragment that brought him to eager
attention.


    Unlike most meteorites, the one that made this crater failed to
    disintegrate upon impact--or rather, not all of it disintegrated.
    We have discovered a number of fragments, slightly curved, that
    indicate it was stratified, and that the stratum of radius, of
    about thirty meters and of one and a fraction inches in thickness,
    simply broke into bits instead of molecules.  In the storehouse in
    the crater bottom there are more than a hundred of these fragments,
    running up to as high as twenty centimeters across.  They are of a
    jadelike substance, subject to abrasion by ordinary methods and can
    be drilled by steel drills, and are not hard and ultradense as
    might have been expected.  The curious thing about these fragments
    is that they defy X-ray analysis.  For some odd reason they wreck
    every tube that is brought to bear upon them.  They backfire, so to
    speak.  Can it be that--


The page was at an end.  Bullard sought frantically for page 98, but he
could not find it.  He called the trusty Benton.

"Take a gang of men and go down and search the crater.  You ought to
find a storehouse and in it a bunch of junky-looking rock fragments
that look like jade.  If you do, bring a flock of them up here.  Quick!"

To the others standing around, he said:

"Clear out the wreckage in the workshop and see if those breast drills
can be made to work.  Strip the boots off of those dead men and cut
them up into straps.  As soon us you have done that, take off your own
and cut them up, too.  We haven't got time to lose."

Presently Lieutenant Benton came back, and a number of men were with
him.  They all bore armfuls of slightly curved pieces of a
moss-colored, glasslike substance.  Each was fairly large, but all had
irregular and jagged edges.  Bullard examined one hurriedly, hefting it
critically.

"Get MacKay up here--quickly," he barked, suddenly.  Then he wheeled on
Benton.  "Take all of these and drill two pairs of holes through
each--here and here"--and he showed him.  "Then affix straps, just as
you would to those mirrors you use in the Dazzle Dart game."

Benton looked at him wonderingly, but he had learned a long time before
to put his trust in his remarkable commander.  He piled the shiny
fragments of meteor stuff together and went out to call in his men.

Bullard felt better.  What he was about to attempt was a wild gamble,
but it was immeasurably better than waiting like a sheep for the
slaughter or fleeing hopelessly across the cold wastes of Titania.  He
was very thankful, too, that on the occasion of his last visit to that
satellite he had cut the governor general's party and ball and visited
this secluded laboratory instead.  For the day he had been there was
shortly after the experiments described on the isolated page he now
held in his hand.  At that time nothing had been definitely determined
as to the structure of the mysterious crystalline substance salvaged
from the crater, but he recalled the speculations of the now dead
scientists concerning it.

Lieutenant MacKay reported.

"Yes, sir?"

"Tell Commander Moore to have all the members of the Dazzle Dart team
report to you here at once, and that means the men on the second team
and the scrubs as well.  Tell him to have everyone else find pits in
the crater bottom and take shelter there until further orders.  Clear?"



The ruffians of the Ziffler gang did not play entirely fair, as was to
be expected.  They beat the gun by several hours.  It was Benton, in
charge of the lookout, who sighted the mob advancing across the plain.
They were in fairly close formation, as if by direction finders or some
other means they already knew that the _Pollux_ men were not scattered,
but together at the so-called "Mystery Crater."

"Take stations," ordered Bullard, crisply.  He was standing in the
semidarkness on the crater rim, some distance away from the damaged
laboratory.  To the right and left of him his victorious Dazzle Dart
team were lying behind the irregular parapet made by the crater wall.

"Benton!" he called.  "Scatter your squad both ways from me.  When that
gang of hoodlums is halfway up the hill, let 'em have your flame-gun
blast.  Then duck and beat it for the bottom of the crater and hide out
until I call 'all clear.'"

Benton had found eight old flame guns in a work shed.  They had been
obsolete us fighting weapons for many years, but could deliver a nasty
burn.

Captain Bullard had another look at the advancing hunting party.  He
saw that they had brought along a number of the new electron guns and
were beginning to struggle up to the talus with them.  The yelling mob
reached a sort of ledge and waited for the guns to be brought up.  A
jeering voice, louder than the rest, called up:

"Will you come down and take it, you lice, or do we have to come up
there and get you?"

"Now!" said Bullard softly into his microphone.

Eight feeble heat machines spat their ruddy blasts, then went out with
a jerk as their operators let go of them and slid down the inner wall
to safety.  It was well that Bullard had foreseen the reply they would
get for the counterblast came almost instantaneously.  A score of
bright stars flamed out downhill and from them thin streams of almost
invisible violet fire lashed upward and played along the crater rim.
The rock sprang into incandescence and inches of it melted and flowed
as bubbling, sparkling slag down the slope, where it quickly dulled to
red and congealed.

"Now?" asked MacKay, anxiously.  He was crouched beside the skipper.

"Not yet.  Wait until they are closer."

The assault went on for a moment, then stopped.  Bullard took a
cautious peep and saw the Callistans had resumed their climb.

"What's the dirtiest thing you can call a Callistan?" whispered
Bullard, grinning unseen in the dark.  "You know the lingo."

"_Froahbortlen_," replied MacKay without hesitation.  The Callistan
language was rich in epithets, but that one was the most comprehensive
and unequivocal ever coined in any language.  Even a depraved criminal
of the lowest grade would resent it.

"Invite them up," said Bullard, grimly.  "When they answer, do your
stuff."

"On your toes, men," MacKay warned his teammates.  Then he opened his
mike wide and issued his sizzling, triple-barreled, insulting
invitation.

Bullard involuntarily caught his breath.  The die was cast.  For an
instant one of the qualms of uncertainty that rarely came to him held
him in its grip.  Was he right, or would they fail?  Which side would
be the victims of the massacre about to begin?  Well, in a couple of
seconds he would know.

The properties of the strange meteor substance was still unknown.  It
stopped Gamma and other hard rays.  It wrecked the X-ray tubes focused
upon it.  How could that be, unless it also possessed that long-hunted,
but never found, property of being able to deflect and reflect the
high-pressure beams?

MacKay's helmet still vibrated with the last vile words of his superb
taunt when the answering salvo of electric fire came.  But that time
there was more than inert rock to receive it.  A row of alert young men
stood on the crest, and a weird-looking crew they were.  Glistening
bits of rock were strapped to their wrists, to their foreheads, their
belts, and even their ankles.  In an instant they were leaping, dancing
and twisting like mad dervishes, deftly parrying every violet pencil
that struck above the rock at their feet.  The devastating power was
being hurled back whence it came.

The ruffians must have been amazed at the swift return of fire from men
they thought to be totally disarmed, but they hung on doggedly for a
few seconds more.  Then their fire ceased altogether, and all that the
observers on the rim could see was a few scared survivors scrambling:
down the way they had come.

"Too bad we haven't a weapon," sighed Bullard.  "We could make a clean
sweep."



He whipped out a flashlight and strode down to the ledge.  There were
many of the abandoned electron guns standing about on tripods, or
overturned by the fleeing gangsters.  Something soft gave under
Bullard's boot.  He played his light along the ground and saw a sight
that under other circumstances would have been revolting.  Loose hands
and feet, attached to charred stumps of arm or leg, were strewn widely.
Other and less readily identifiable fragments of disintegrated humanity
lay among them.  Ziffler's strong-arm squad, once the terror of the
outer planets, had been dispersed in the fullest sense of the word.

Bullard turned on his amplifier.

"O.K., Moore.  Round up the men and bring them down.  We're going back."

The trek back across the icy waste seemed infinitely shorter and easier
than it had on the outward journey.  Men's hearts were light now, and
not leaden as before.  To the Polliwogs, the knowledge they had lost
their ship had been as dispiriting as the seeming certainly of their
impeding doom.  Now all that was changed.  A mile ahead of them lay the
_Pollux_, just as they had left her.

The search for Ziffler and the stragglers took some time, but they
found them, cowering and whimpering behind a boulder.

"Iron them well and throw them into the brig," snapped Bullard, and
went into his ship.

He grabbed a signal pad and wrote a brief report.

A little later the grand admiral at Lunar Base stretched out his hand
for the flimsy bit of yellow paper his orderly had brought him.  He
read if, then read it again.  He frowned a little and scratched his
head.

"Has Bullard gone highbrow on us, or what the hell?" he asked, tossing
the message over to Bissel.  Bissel picked it up and read:


    After reflection, the enemy succumbed.

    BULLARD.



THE END.






[End of Bullard Reflects, by Malcolm Jameson]
