Since the ship was completely automated, Otrov and I were the only crew members aboard. The single doorway to the troop area was sealed and my friend the surly colonel had the only key. He visited us once or twice which was no pleasure at all. On the seventh day he was standing behind us glowering at the back of my neck when we broke out of warpdrive and back into normal space.

“Take this, inspect here, sign that,” he snapped and we did all those things before he broke the seal on the flat case. This was labeled INVASION in large red letters which rather suggested that things would be honing up soon. My instructions were simple enough and I switched on the circuits as ordered so the ship could home on the squadron leader. A yellowish sun shone brightly off to one side and the blue sphere of a planet was on the other. The colonel glared at this planet as though he wanted to reach out and grab it and take a bite out of it, so future developments seemed obvious enough without asking questions.

The invasion began. Most of the fleet was ahead of us, lost in the night of space and visible only occasionally as a network of sparks when they changed course. Our squadron of transports stayed together, automatically following the course set by the lead ship, and the planet grew in the screens ahead. It looked peaceful enough from this distance, though I knew the advance units of the fleet must be attacking by this time.

I was not looking forward to this invasion—who but a madman can enjoy the prospect of approaching war?—but I was hoping to find out the answer to the question that had brought me here. I believed that interplanetary invasions were still impossible, despite the fact that I was now involved in one myself. I felt somewhat like the man who, upon seeing one of the most exotic animals in the zoo, said ‘there ain’t no such animal. ’ Interplanetary invasions just don’t work.

The interplanetary invading force rushed on, a mighty armada giving the lie to my theories. As the nameless planet grew larger and larger, filling the forward screens, I could see the first signs of the war that I knew was already in progress; tiny sparkles of light in the night hemisphere. Otrov saw them too and waved his fist and cheered.

“Give it to them boys,” he shouted.

“Shut up and watch your instruments,” I snarled. Suddenly hating him. And instantly relenting. He was a product of his environment. As the twig is bent so grows the bough and so forth. His twig had been bent nicely by the military boarding school into which he had been stuffed as a small child. Which, for some unknown reason, he still thought well of although every story he told me about it had some depressing or sadistic point to make. He had been raised never to question, to believe God had created Cliaand a bit better than all the other planets, and that they were therefore ordained to take care of the inferior races. It is amazing the things people will believe if you catch them early enough.

Then we were turned loose as the individual transports scattered to home in on their separate targets. I fiddled with the radio and Silently cursed the Cliaandian passion for security and secrecy. Here I was landing a shipload of troops—and I didn’t even know where! On the planet below, surely, they could not very well disguise that fact, but on what continent? At what city? All I knew was that pathfinder ships had gone in first and planted radio beacons. I had the frequency and the signal I was to listen for, and when I detected it I was to home in and land. And I knew that the target was a spaceport. With the final instructions I had received some large and clear photographs—the Cliaandian spies had obviously been hard at work—of a spaceport; aerial and wound views. A big red X was marked near the terminal buildings and I had to set the ship down as close to this site as I could. Fine.

“That’s the signal!” The dah-dah-dit-dah was loud and clear.

“Strap in—here we go,” I said, and fed instructions to the computer. It worked up landing orbit almost instantly and the main jets fired. “Give the colonel the first warning, then feed him proximity and altitude reports while I bring her in.”

We were dropping towards the terminator, flying into the dawn. The computer had a fix on the transmitter and was bringing us down in a slow careful arc. When we broke through the cloud cover and the ground was visible far below I saw the first sign of any resistance. The black clouds of explosions springing up around us.

“They’re shooting at us!” Otrov gasped, shocked.

“Well it’s a shooting war, isn’t it?” I wondered what kind of a veteran he was to be put off by a little gunfire, and at the same time I hit the computer override and turned off the main jets. We dropped into free fall and the next explosions appeared above and behind us as the gun computer was thrown off by our deceleration change.

I caught sight of the spaceport below and hit the lateral jets to move us in that direction. But we were still falling. Our radar altimeter readings were being fed into the computer which kept flashing red warnings about the growing proximity of the ground. I gave it a quick program to hold landing deceleration as long as possible, to drop us at 10 G’s to zero altitude. This meant we would be falling at maximum speed and slowing down for minimum time, which would decrease the time we would be exposed to ground fire And I wanted the colonel to have the 10 G’s he had once warned me about.

The jets fired at what looked like treetop height, slamming us down into our couches. I smiled, which is hard to do with ten gravities pulling at you, thinking about the expression on the colonel’s face at that moment. Watching the screen I added some lateral drift until we were just over the hardstand which was our target area. After this it was up to the computer which did just fine and killed the engines just as our landing struts crunched down. As soon as all the engines cut off I hit the disembark button and the ship shivered as the ramps blew out and down.

“That takes care of our part,” I said, unbuckling and stretching.

Otrov joined me at the viewport as we watched the troops rush down the ramps and run for cover. They did not seem to be taking any casualties at all which was surprising. There were some bomb craters visible nearby and heaps of rubble, while fighter-bombers still roared low giving cover. But it didn’t seem possible that all resistance had been knocked out this quickly. Unless this world did not have much of a standing army. That might be one answer to explain the Cliaandian invasion success; only pick planets that are ripe for plucking. I made a mental note to look into this. Well behind his troops came the colonel in his command car. I hoped that his guts were still compressed from the landing.

“Now we have to find some drink,” Otrov said, smacking his lips with anticipation.

“I’ll go, “I said, taking my sidearm from the rack and buckling it on. “You stay with the radio and watch the ship.”

“That’s what all the first pilots always say,” he complained, so I knew I had called this one right.

“Privilege of rank. Someday you will be exercising it too. I shouldn’t be long.”

“Spaceport bar, that’s where it usually is,” he called after me.

“Don’t teach your grandpa to chew cheese,” I sneered, having already figured that one out.

All of the interior doors had unlocked automatically when we landed. I climbed the ladders down to the recently vacated combat deck and kicked my way through the discarded ration containers to the nearest ramp. The fresh sweet air of morning blew in, carrying with it the smell of dust and explosives. We had brought the benefits of Cliaandian culture to another planet.

I could hear firing in the distance and a jet thundered by and was gone, but after this it was very quiet. The invasion had fanned out from the spaceport leaving a pocket of silence in its wake. Nor was anyone in sight when I walked, unexamined, through the customs area and, with reflex skill, found the bar. The first thing I did was to drain a flask of beer, then poured a small Antarean ladevandet to hold it down. There were ranked bottles behind the bar, new friends and old ones, and I made a good selection. I needed something to carry them in and opened one of the sliding doors beneath, looking for a box or a bag, and found myself staring into the frightened eyes of a young man.