Battleground

                           By Lester del Rey

                   We know that the human race must
                     struggle to survive--and that
                   on the outcome may hang disaster.
                   But just how wide is Armageddon?

    _Lester del Rey would certainly be acclaimed by any unbiased critic
    as one of America's ten most gifted science fiction writers. His
    work has appeared in many magazines, and Hollywood, radio, and TV
    have all enhanced his ever-growing popularity. In_ BATTLEGROUND _he
    has found a theme worthy of his rare talents--the doom potential in
    an alien culture_.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                     Fantastic Universe July 1954.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Beyond the observation port of the hypercruiser _Clarion_ lay the utter
blackness of nothing. The ship was effectively cutting across space
without going through it, spanning parsecs for every subjective day of
travel.

There were neither stars, space nor time around them, and only the
great detectors built into the ship could keep them from being
hopelessly lost. These followed a trail of energy laid down on the way
out from Earth years before, leading them homeward, solar system by
solar system.

Acting Captain Lenk stood with his back to the other three, studying
their sullen reflections in the port. It was better than facing them
directly, somehow, even though it showed his own bald scalp, tautly
hollow face and slump-shouldered body.

"All right," he said at last. "So we vote again. I'll have to remind
you we're under orders to investigate all habitable planets on a line
back to Earth. I vote we follow orders. Jeremy?"

The xenologist shrugged faintly. His ash-blond coloring, general
slimness and refinement of features gave him a look of weakness, but
his voice was a heavy, determined bass. "I stand pat. We didn't explore
the last planet enough. I vote we go back and make a thorough job of
it."

"Home--at once!" The roar came from the squat, black-bearded
minerologist, Graves. "God never meant man to leave the world on which
He put him! Take us back, I say, where...."

"Aimes?" Lenk cut in quickly.

They'd heard Graves' violently fundamentalist arguments endlessly,
until the sound of his voice was enough to revive every antagonism and
hatred they had ever felt. Graves had been converted to the newest and
most rapidly expanding of the extreme evangelical faiths just before
they had left. And unfortunately for the others, he had maintained that
his covenant to go on the exploration could not be broken, even though
venturing into space was a cardinal sin.

Aimes glowered at the others from under grizzled eyebrows. Of them all,
the linguodynamicist took part in the fewest arguments and apparently
detested the others most. He turned his heavy body now as he studied
them, seemingly trying to make up his mind which he detested most at
the moment. Then he grunted.

"With you, Captain," Aimes said curtly.

He swung on his heel and stalked out of the control cabin, to go back
to studying the undeciphered writing of the planets they had visited.

Graves let out a single hiss and followed, probably heading for the
galley, since it was his period to cook.

Jeremy waited deliberately until the minerologist's footsteps could no
longer be heard, and then turned to leave.

Lenk hesitated for a second, then decided that monotony was worse than
anything else. "How about some chess, Jeremy?" he asked.

The other stopped, and some of the sullenness left his face. Apparently
the protracted arguments had wearied him until he was also feeling the
relief of decisive action. "Why not?" Jeremy said. "I'll set up the
board while you fiddle with your dials."

No fiddling was necessary, since Lenk had never cut them off their
automatic detecting circuit, but he went through the motions for the
other's benefit. Gravitic strain came faintly through hyperspace, and
the ship could locate suns by it. If approach revealed planets of
habitable size, it was set to snap out of hyperspace automatically near
the most likely world.

Lenk had been afraid such a solar system might be found before they
could resolve the argument, and his own relief from the full measure of
cabin fever came from the end of that possibility.

They settled down to the game with a minimum of conversation. Since
the other four members of the crew had been killed by some unknown
virus, conversation had proven less than cheerful. It was better when
they were on a planet and busy, but four people were too few for the
monotony of hypertravel.

Then Jeremy snapped out of it. He cleared his throat tentatively while
castling, grimaced, and then nodded positively. "I was right, Lenk. We
never did explore those other planets properly."

"Maybe not," Lenk agreed. "But with the possibility of alien raiders
headed toward Earth...."

"Bunk! No sign of raiders. Every indication was that the races on those
worlds killed themselves off--no technology alien to their own culture.
And there would have been with aliens invading."

"Time that way? Coincidence can account for just so much."

"It has to account for the lowering cultural levels in the colonizing
direction," Jeremy said curtly. "Better leave that sort of argument to
Aimes. He's conditioned to it."

Lenk shrugged and turned back to the chess. It was over his head,
anyhow.

Men had built only three other cruisers capable of exceeding the speed
of light, so far. The first had gone out in a direction opposite to
that of the _Clarion_ and had returned to report a regular decline in
culture as the distance of habitable worlds from Earth increased. The
nearest was in a medieval state, the next an early bronze culture, then
a stone-age one, and so on, down to the furthest explored, where the
native race had barely discovered fire.

It had been either impossible coincidence or the evidence of some law
nobody has been quite ready to accept, save for the newly spreading
fundamentalists, who maintained it proved that Earth was the center of
the universe.

The other two cruisers had not reported back when the _Clarion_ took
off.

And their own trip had only added to the mystery, and they had touched
on four habitable systems. And on each, there had been evidence of a
highly developed race and some vast struggle that had killed off that
race completely.

The furthest had lain fallow for an unguessable period of time, and in
each succeeding one, evidence indicated the time interval since the
destruction of the culture had been less. On the world they had left,
the end must have come not more than a few thousand years before.

"Suppose one race had gone along in a straight line, seeding the
systems with life," Lenk guessed. "Remember, every race we found had
similarities. And suppose another race of conquerors stumbled on that
line and is mopping up? Maybe with some weapon that leaves no trace."

Jeremy looked at him. "Suppose Graves is right, and his God wipes out
all wicked races. He keeps planting races, hoping they'll turn out
right, and wiping out the old ones?" he snorted. "Only, of course he
thinks Earth is the only world that counts. We're dealing with facts,
Lenk, not wild theories. And why should an alien race simply wipe out
another race, wait a thousand years or so, and move on--without using
the plant afterwards, even for a base for the next operation? Also, why
should we find plenty of weapons, but no skeletons?"

"Skeletons are pretty fragile. And if somebody had the mythical heat
ray...."

"Bunk! If it would vaporize calcium in the bones, it would vaporize
some of the parts of the weapons we found." Jeremy moved a rook,
considered it, and pointed. "Check. And there are always some parts of
skeletons that will last more than a thousand years. I've got a theory,
but it's...."

Pale light cut through the viewing port, and a gong sounded in the
room. Lenk jerked to his feet and moved to his screens.

"Maybe we'll know now," he said. "We'll be landing on a planet in
about an hour. And it looks pretty much like Earth, from here."

He cranked up the gain on the magnifiers, and studied it again,
scanning the surface of the planet below them. There were clouds in the
sky, but through a clear patch he made out enough evidence.

"Want me to set us down near a city?" he asked, pointing.

Jeremy nodded. Like all the other planets on this trip, the one below
was either inhabited or had been inhabited until recently.

They knew before the ship landed that the habitation was strictly past
tense, at least as far as any high level of culture was concerned. The
cities were in ruins.

At one time, they must have reared upwards to heights as imposing
as those of the free state of New York City or the commonwealth of
Chicago. But now the buildings had lost their top-most towers, and the
bases showed yawning holes in many places.

They landed in the center of the largest city, after a quick skim
over the surface to be sure that no smaller city had escaped. A quick
sampling of the air indicated it was breathable, with no poisons and
only a touch of radioactivity, too low to be dangerous.

Aimes and Jeremy went out, each in a little tractor. While making
explorations, they were capable of forgetting their antagonisms in
their common curiosity.

Graves remained on the ship. He had decided somewhere along the line
that setting foot on an alien planet was more sinful than travel
through space, and refused to be shaken.

Lenk finished what observations were necessary. He fiddled around,
bothered by the quiet city outside. It had been better on the other
worlds, where the ruins had been softened by time and weather. Here, it
was too easy to imagine things. Finally, he climbed into rough clothes,
and went out on foot.

Everything was silent. Grass almost identical with that of Earth was
growing through much of the torn pavement, and there were trees and
bushes here and there. Vines had climbed some of the ruined walls. But
there were no flowers. Much of the planet had apparently been overgrown
with forest and weeds, but this city was in a temperate zone, and clear
enough for easy travel.

Lenk listened to the wind, and the faint sighing of a few trees nearby.
He kicked over stones and rubble where they lay on patches of damp
earth. And he kept looking at the sky.

But it was no different from other worlds as far as the desolation
went. There were no insects, and no animals stared warily up from the
basements, and the grass showed no signs of having been grazed. It was
as if the animal kingdom had never existed here.

He made his way back from the section of largest buildings, toward what
might have been a park at one time. Here there was less danger of being
trapped in any collapsing ruin, and he moved more confidently. The low
buildings might have been public sites, but they somehow seemed more
like homes.

He stumbled on something, and leaned down to pick it up. At first, the
oddness of its design confused his vision. Then he made out a barrel
with rifling inside, and a chamber that still contained pellets, now
covered with corrosion. It would have fitted his hand oddly, but he
could have used the pistol.

Beyond it lay a line of rust that might have been a sword at one time.
Coiled over it was a heavy loop of thick plastic that ended in a group
of wires, apparently of stainless steel. Each wire ended in a row of
cutting points. It might have been a cross between a knout and a bolas.
He had a vision of something alien and sinister coming at him with one
of those, and shuddered.

There was a ruin of rust and corroded parts further on that might have
been a variation of a machine gun. Lenk started for it, to be stopped
by a shout.

"Hold it!" It was Jeremy's voice, and now the tank came around a
corner, and headed toward him. "Stay put, Lenk. That thing may be
booby-trapped. And we can't be sure here that there has been time
enough to make it safe."

Lenk shuddered again, and climbed in hastily as Jeremy held open the
door. It was tight inside, but reasonably safe, since the tank had been
designed for almost anything. Jeremy must have seen him leaving the
ship and followed.

But by noon they had abandoned the fear of booby-traps. Either there
had never been any or time had drawn their stings.

Lenk wandered through the section already roughly surveyed, and
declared safe. He felt convinced the inhabitants of this world once had
been more like men than most other races. They had been two-legged,
with arms and heads in a human position on their upright bodies.

Judging from the size of the furniture, they had been slightly larger
than men but not enough to matter. The pictures on the walls were odd
mostly for the greenish tints of the skin and the absence of outward
noses or ears. With a little fixing and recoloring, they might have
been _people_.

He came to a room that had been sealed off, pried open the door,
and went in. It smelled stale enough to indicate that it had been
reasonably air-tight. Benches and chairs ran along one wall, and
a heavy wooden table occupied the middle. On that were piled bits
and pieces in a curious scramble. He studied them carefully--belts,
obviously, buttons, the inevitable weapons, scraps of plastic material.

A minute later, he was shouting for Jeremy over the little
walkie-talkie. The xenologist appeared in less than five minutes. He
stared about for a second, then grinned wryly.

"Your first, eh? I've found a lot of them. Sure, those were corpses
there once." He saw Lenk's expression, and shrugged. "Oh, you were
right to call me. It proves we weren't crazy. Wood and some cloth still
preserved, but no bones. I've got a collection of pictures like that."

"A corrosive gas--" Lenk suggested.

Jeremy shook his head vigorously. "No dice, Captain. See that belt?
It's plant fiber--something like linen. No gas strong enough to eat up
a body would leave that unharmed. And they had skeletons, too--we've
found models in what must have been a museum. But we can't even find
the fossil skeletons that should be there. Odd, though."

He prodded about among the weapons, shaking his head. "All the weapons
in places like this show evidence of one homogeneous design. And all
the ornaments are in a T shape, like this one."

He lifted a stainless metal object from the floor and dropped it.
"But outside in the square, there are at least two designs. For once,
it almost looks as if your idea of an alien invader might be worth
considering."

The radio at his side let out a squawk, and he cut it on listening to
the thin whisper that came from it. Abruptly, he swung about and headed
toward his tractor outside, with Lenk following.

"Aimes has found something," Jeremy said.

They found the linguodynamicist in the gutted ruins of a building into
which great concrete troughs led. A rusty ruin in one of the troughs
indicated something like a locomotive had once run in it, apparently
on great ball bearings. The fat man was pointing excitedly toward
something on one of the walls.

At first glance, it seemed to be a picture of more of the green people,
apparently undergoing some violent torture. Then their eyes swept
on--and they gasped.

Over the green people, three vaguely reptilian monstrosities were
hovering, at least twice the size of the others, all equipped with the
fanged whips Lenk had seen. One of the green men was apparently trying
to defend himself with a huge T-shaped weapon, but the others were
helpless. The reptilian monsters sprouted great ugly wings of glaring
red from their shoulders.

"The invaders," Lenk said. They were horrible things to see. "But their
weapons weren't that big...."

"A war poster!" Aimes said bitterly. "It doesn't tell a thing except
that there were two groups."

Jeremy studied it, more closely. "Not necessarily even that. It's
designed for some emotional effect. But at least, it's a hint that
there may have been enemies unlike the ones who lived here. Lenk, can I
take the scout ship out?"

"Go ahead," Lenk told him. He frowned at the poster. "Jeremy, if that
means the human race is going to have to face an alien invasion from
monsters like that...."

"It means nothing!"

Jeremy went off, with Aimes apparently in agreement for a change. Lenk
stood studying the poster. Finally he ripped it down, surprised to find
how strong it still was, and rolled it up to carry back to the ship.

Each world had been razed more recently, and each with the same curious
curse. The race had risen to a high culture, and then had seemingly
been wiped out in a few brief years. The destruction had accounted for
all life on the planet, other than vegetable--and had wiped out even
the bones. All that had been left was a collection of weapons and
relics of more doubtful use.

The pattern was the same. The direction was steadily toward Earth,
leaping from planet to planet at jumps of thousands of years apart,
or perhaps mere hundreds. This planet must have been attacked less
than five hundred years before, though it was hard to tell without
controlled study of decay here.

Even now Earth might be suffering the invasion! They had been gone
nearly three years. And during that time, the monsters might have
swooped down hideously out of space.

They might return to find the Earth a wasteland!

His thoughts were a turmoil that grew worse as he stared at the
poster. The unknown artist had done his job well. A feeling of horror
poured out of it, filling him with an insensate desire to find such
monstrosities and rend and maim them, as they had tormented the
unfortunate green people.

Graves came stomping up to the control room, carrying lunch, and took
one look at the picture. "Serves the heathens right," he grumbled.
"Look at them. In hell, suffering from the lashes of the devils of the
pit. And still holding up that heathen charm."

Lenk blinked. But Graves' idea wasn't too fantastic, at that. The
creatures did look like devils, and the T-shaped object might be a
religious symbol. Hadn't some faith or other used the tau cross in
its worship? And those objects on the third world back had resembled
swastikas, which were another religious symbol on Earth.

That part fitted. During periods of extreme stress or danger, man
sought some home in his faith. Was it so unnatural that alien races
might do the same?

"Isn't there anything hopeful in your religion, Graves?" he asked
bitterly, wondering what the man had been like before his conversion
to the rigidity he now possessed. He'd probably been as violent an
atheist. Usually, a fanatic who switched sides became doubly fanatical.

The revival of religious devotion had begun some fifteen years before,
and from what Lenk had seen, the world had been a better and more
kindly place for it. But there would always be those who thought the
only true devotion lay in the burning of witches. Or maybe Graves
needed psychiatric treatment for his morose moods were becoming
suspiciously psychotic, and his fanaticism might be only a sign of
deeper trouble.

The man went off muttering something about the prophecy and the time
being at hand for all to be tried in fire. Lenk went back to staring
at the poster until he heard the scout come back. He found Aimes and
Jeremy busy unloading what seemed to be loot enough to fill two of the
scouts.

"A whole library, almost intact," Aimes spoke with elation. "And plenty
of it is on film, where we can correlate words and images! In two
weeks, I'll speak the language like a native."

"Good!" Lenk told him. "Because in about that time, we'll be home on
Earth. As long as there's any chance that our people should be warned
about invaders, I'm not delaying any longer!"

"You can forget the alien invaders," Jeremy objected.

Then he exploded his thunderbolt. The horrible aliens had proved to be
no more than a group of purple-skinned people on the other side of the
planet with a quite divergent culture, but of the same basic stock as
the green-skinned men. They also exaggerated in their drawings, and to
about the same degree.

Fortunately the treasure-trove from the library would give the two men
enough for years of work, and required the attention of a full group.
They were eager now to take off for Earth and to begin recruiting a new
expedition, taking only enough with them for the first basic steps.

Lenk headed directly for the control room. He began setting up the
proper directions on the board while Jeremy finished the account.

"But _something's_ hitting the planets," he objected. His hand found
the main button and the _Clarion_ began heading up through the
atmosphere on normal gravity warp, until she could reach open space,
and go into hyperdrive. "Your monsters prove to be only people--but it
still doesn't explain the way disaster follows a line straight toward
Earth! And until we know...."

"Maybe we'd be better off not knowing," Jeremy said. But he refused to
clarify his statement.

Then the hyperdrive went on.

The homeward trip was somewhat different from the others. There were
none of the petty fights this time.

Aimes and Jeremy were busy in their own way, decoding the language and
collating the material they had.

Graves was with them, grumbling at being around the heathen things, but
apparently morbidly fascinated by them.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lenk could offer no help, and his duty lay with the ship. He pondered
over the waves of destruction that seemed to wash toward Earth, and the
diminishing cultural levels on the planets beyond. It couldn't be pure
coincidence. Nor could he accept the idea that Earth was the center of
the universe, and that everything else was necessarily imperfect.

Surprisingly, it was Graves who gave him his first hopeful suggestion.
A week had passed, and they were well into the second when the men
really caught his attention. Graves was bringing his lunch, actually
smiling. He frowned.

"What gives?" he asked.

"It's all true!" Graves answered, and there was an inner glow to him.
"Just as it's prophesied in _Revelations_. There were times when I had
doubts, but now I know. God has set the heathens before me as proof
that Armageddon will come, and I have been singled out to bring the
glad tidings to His faithful!"

"I thought you didn't believe God would have anything to do with
heathens!" Lenk objected. He was trying to recall whether a sudden
phase of manic joy was a warning symptom or not.

"I misunderstood. I thought God had forbade space flight. But now it is
proved how He loves us. He singled us out to teach us to fly through
space that we could learn." Graves gathered up the dishes without
noticing that Lenk hadn't touched them and went off in a cloud of
ecstasy.

But his point had been made, and Lenk turned it over. Then, with
a shout, he headed toward the headquarters of the two remaining
scientists. He found them sitting quietly, watching a reel of some kind
being projected through an alien device.

"I hear it's Armageddon we're facing," he said.

He expected grins of amusement from them--or at least from Jeremy. But
none came. Aimes nodded.

"First progress in all directions. Then a period when religion seems
to be in the decline. Then a revival, and a return to faith in the
prophecies. All religions agree on those prophecies, Lenk. Revelations
refer to the end of Armageddon, when the whole world will wipe itself
out before the creation of a better world, in one planet-wide war. The
old Norse legends spoke of a Fimbulvetr, when the giants and their gods
would destroy the earth in war. And these green-skinned peoples had the
same religious prophecies. They came true, too. Armageddon. Contagious
Armageddon."

Lenk stared from one to the other, suspecting a joke. "But that still
leaves coincidence--the way things move from planet to planet...."

"Not at all," Jeremy said. "These people didn't have space travel,
but they had some pretty highly developed science. They found what we
thought we'd disproved--an ether drift. It would carry spores from
planet to planet--and in the exact direction needed to account for what
we've seen. Races were more advanced back that way, less so the way we
first went, simply because of the time it took the spores to drift."

"And what about the destruction?" Lenk asked woodenly. Their faces were
getting him--they looked as if they believed it. "Is there another
disease spore to drive races mad?"

"Nothing like that. Just the natural course of cultures when they pass
a certain level," Jeremy answered. "I should have seen that myself.
Every race follows the same basic pattern. The only question is how
much time we've got left--a week or a thousand years?"

They turned back to their projection device, but Lenk caught the
xenologist by the shoulder and swung him back. "But they didn't have
space travel! That doesn't fit their pattern. Even if you're right...."

Jeremy nodded. "We don't have the secret of immortality, either. And
this race did. But, damn it, I'd still like to know what happened to
all those skeletons?"

Lenk went back to his control room. And perversely, his thoughts
insisted on accepting their explanation. It would be like man to think
that important things could only happen on his own home planet, and
prophecy an end for his own race, never dreaming it could happen to
others.

It would be normal for him to sense somehow out of his own nature what
his inevitable end must be--and then to be completely amazed when he
found the same end for other races.

But....

Space travel--travel at faster than light speeds--had to make a
difference. There were the other worlds on the other side of the sun,
where men were already planning to colonize. Even if a world might
normally blow up in a final wild holocaust, it would have its whole
racial pattern changed when it began to spread out among the stars. It
would have to have a revival of the old pioneering spirit. There had
been the beginnings of that when they left. And with that, such a war
could be prevented forever.

He heard Graves moving about in the galley, singing something about
graves opening, and grimaced.

Besides, Jeremy had admitted that they didn't have all the answers.
The mystery of the vanished skeletons remained--and until that was
accounted for, nothing could be considered explained.

He forgot about the skeletons as he began planning how he'd wangle his
way into one of the colonies. Then, even if catastrophe did strike
Earth in another thousand years or so, the race could go on. Ten more
years, and man would be safe....

He was feeling almost cheerful as they finally came out of hyperspace
near Earth ... and landed....

The skeletons--lay scattered everywhere.