Clifford Simak - Reunion On Ganymede

By cracky,' shouted Gramp Parker, 'you're tryin' to mess up all my plans. You're tryin' to keep me from goin' to this reunion.'

'You know that isn't true, pa,' protested his daughter, Celia. 'But I declare, you are a caution. I'll worry every minute you are gone.'

'Who ever heard of a soldier goin' any place without his side arms?' stormed Gramp. 'If I can't wear those side arms I'm not goin'. All the other boys will have 'em.'

His daughter argued. 'You know what happened when you tried to show Harry how that old flame pistol worked,' she reminded him. 'It's a wonder both of you weren't killed.'

'I ain't goin' to do no shootin' with 'em,' declared Gramp. 'I just want to wear 'em with my uniform.

Don't feel dressed without 'em.'

His daughter gave up. She knew the argument might go on all day. 'All right, pa,' she said, 'but you be careful.'

She got up and went into the house. Gramp stretched his old bones in the sun. It was pleasant here of a June morning on a bench in front of the house.

Little Harry came around the corner and headed for the old man. 'What you doing, grandpa?' he demanded. 'Nothin',' Gramp told him.

The boy climbed onto the bench. Tell me about the war,' he begged.

'You go on and play,' Gramp told him.

'Aw, grandpa, tell me about that big battle you was in!'

'The battle of Ganymede?' asked Gramp.

Harry nodded. 'Uh-huh, that's the one.'

'Well,' said Gramp, 'I can remember it just as if it was yesterday. And it was forty years ago, forty years ago the middle of next month. The Marshies were gettin' their big fleet together out there on Ganymede, figurin' to sneak up on us when we wasn't expectin' 'em around-'

'Who was the Marshies?' asked the boy.

'The Marshies?' said Gramp. 'Why that's what we called the Martians. Kind of a nickname for 'em.'

'You was fighting them?'

Gramp chuckled. 'You're dog-gone right we fit 'em. We fit 'em to a stand-still and then we licked 'em, right there at Ganymede. After that the peace was signed and there hasn't been any war since then.'

'And that's where you are going?' demanded the boy.

'Sure, they're havin' a big reunion out on Ganymede. First one. Maybe they'll have one every year or two from now on.'

'And will the Martian soldiers that you whipped be there, too?'

Gramp scowled fiercely. 'They been asked to come,' he said. I don't know why. They ain't got no right to be there. We licked 'em and they ain't got no right to come.'

'Harry!' came the voice of the boy's mother.

The boy hoped off the bench and trotted toward the house.

'What have you been doing?' asked his mother.

'Grandpa's been telling me about the war.'

'You come right in here,' his mother shouted. 'If your grandpa don't know better than to tell you about the war, you should know better than to listen. Haven't I told you not to ask him to tell you about it?'

Gramp writhed on the bench.

'Dog-gone,' he said. 'A hero don't get no honor any more at all.'

'You don't need to worry,' Garth Mitchell, salesman for Robots, Inc., assured Pete Dale, secretary for the Ganymede Chamber of Commerce. 'We make robots that are damn near alive. We can fill the bill exactly. If you want us to manufacture you a set of beasts that are just naturally so ornery they will chew one another up on sight, we can do it. We'll ship you the most bloodthirsty pack of nightmares you ever clapped your eyes on.'

Pete leveled a pencil at the salesman.

'I want to be sure,' he said. 'I'm using this big sham battle we are planning for big promotion. I want it to live up to what we promise. We want to make it the biggest show in the whole damn system. When we turn those robots of yours out in the arena, I want to be sure they will go for one another like a couple of wildcats on top of a red-hot stove. And I don't want them to quit until they're just hunks of broken-down machinery. We want to give the reunion crowd a fight that will put the real Battle of Ganymede in the shade.'

'Listen,' declared Mitchell, 'we'll make them robots so mean they'll hate themselves. It's a secret process we got and we aren't letting anyone in on it. We use a radium brain in each one of the robots and we know how to give them personality. Most of our orders are for gentle ones or hard workers, but if you want them mean, we'll make them mean for you.'

'Fine,' said Pete. 'Now that that's settled, I want to be sure you understand exactly what we want.

We want robots representing every type of ferocious beast in the whole system. I got a list here.'

He spread out a sheet of paper.

'They're from Mars and Earth and Venus and a few from Titan out by Saturn. If you can think of any others, throw them in. We want them to represent the real beasts just as closely as possible and I want them ornery mean. We're advertising this as the greatest free-for-all, catch-as-catch-can wild animal fight in history. The idea is from the Roman arenas way back in Earth history when they used to turn elephants and lions and tigers and men all into the same arena and watch what they did to one another. Only here we are using robots instead of the real article, and if your robots are as good as you say they are, they'd ought to put on a better show.'

Mitchell grinned and strapped up his brief case.

'Just forget about it, Mr. Dale,' he counseled. 'We'll make them in our factory on Mars and get them to you in plenty of time. There's still six weeks left before the reunion and that will give us time to do a fancy job.'

The two shook hands and Mitchell left.

Pete leaned back in his chair and looked out through the yard-thick quartz of the dome which enclosed Satellite City, Ganymede's only place of habitation. That is, if one didn't consider Ganymede prison, which, technically speaking, probably was a place of habitation. Other than for the dome which enclosed Satellite City and the one which enclosed the prison, however, there was no sign of life on the entire moon, a worthless, lifeless globe only slightly smaller than the planet Mars.

He could see the top of the prison dome, just rising above the western horizon. To that Alcatraz of Space were sent only the most desperate of the Solar System's criminals. The toughest prison in the entire system, its proud tradition was that not a single prisoner had escaped since its establishment twenty years before. Why risk escape, when only misery and death lurked outside the dome?

The Chamber of Commerce offices were located in the peak of the city's dome and from his outer office, against the quartz, Pete had a clear view of the preparations going forward for the reunion which was to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of Ganymede.

Far below, at the foot of the magnetically anchored dome, work was progressing on the vast outdoor arena, which would be enclosed in a separate dome, with heat and atmosphere pumped from the larger dome.

On one of the higher snow-swept hills, a short distance from the arena, reared a massive block of marble, swarming with space-armored sculptors. That was the Battle Monument, to be dedicated in the opening ceremonies.

Drift snow, driven by the feeble winds which always stirred restlessly over the surface of this satellite from which the atmosphere was nearly gone, swept over the brown, rolling hills and eddied around the dome. It was cold out there. Pete shivered involuntarily. Down close to 180 degrees below, Fahrenheit.

The snow was frozen carbon dioxide.

An inhospitable place to live, but Satellite City was one of the greatest resorts in the entire System.

To it, each year, came thousands of celebrities, tens of thousands of common tourists. The guest lists of the better hotels read like the social register and every show house and cafe, every night club, every concession, every dive was making money.