William Tenn - Down Among the Dead Men

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Down Among the Dead Men

William Tenn

I stood in front of the junkyard's outer gate and felt my stomach turn over slowly, grindingly, the way it

had when I saw a whole terrestrial subfleet—close to 20,000 men—blown to bits in the Second Battle of

Saturn more than eleven years ago. But then there had been shattered fragments of ships in my visiplate

and imagined screams of men in my mind; there had been the expanding images of the Eoti's box-like

craft surging through the awful, drifting wreckage they had created, to account for the icy sweat that

wound itself like a flat serpent around my forehead and my neck.

Now there was nothing but a large, plain building, very much like the hundreds of other factories in

the busy suburbs of Old Chicago, a manufacturing establishment surrounded by a locked gate and

spacious proving grounds—the Junkyard. Yet the sweat on my skin was colder and the heave of my

bowels more spastic than it had ever been in any of those countless, ruinous battles that had created this

place.

All of which was very understandable, I told myself. What I was feeling was the great-grandmother

hag of all fears, the most basic rejection and reluctance of which my flesh was capable. It was

understandable, but that didn't help any. I still couldn't walk up to the sentry at the gate.

I'd been almost all right until I'd seen the huge square can against the fence, the can with the slight

stink coming out of it and the big colorful sign on top:

Don't Waste Waste

Place All Waste Here

Remember—

Whatever is Worn Can Be Shorn

Whatever is Maimed Can Be Reclaimed

Whatever is Used Can Be Reused

Place All Waste Here

—Conservation Police

I'd seen those square, compartmented cans and those signs in every barracks, every hospital, every

recreation center, between here and the asteroids. But see-ing them, now, in this place, gave them a

different meaning. I wondered if they had those other posters inside, the shorter ones. You know: "We

need all our re-sources to defeat the enemy—and garbage is our biggest natural resource."

Decorating the walls of this particular building with those posters would be down-right ingenious.

Whatever is maimed can be reclaimed...I flexed my right arm inside my blue jumper sleeve. It felt

like a part of me, always would feel like a part of me. And in a couple of years, assuming that I lived that

long, the thin white scar that circled the elbow joint would be completely invisible. Sure. Whatever is

maimed can be re-claimed. All except one thing. The most important thing.

And I felt less like going in than ever.

And then I saw this kid. The one from Arizona Base.

He was standing right in front of the sentry box, paralyzed just like me. In the center of his uniform

cap was a brand-new, gold-shiny Y with a dot in the center: the insignia of a sling-shot commander. He

hadn't been wearing it the day before at the briefing; that could only mean the commission had just come

through. He looked real young and real scared.

I remembered him from the briefing session. He was the one whose hand had gone up timidly during

the question period, the one who, when he was recognized, had half risen, worked his mouth a couple of

times and finally blurted out: "Excuse me, sir, but they don't—they don't smell at all bad, do they?"

There had been a cyclone of laughter, the yelping laughter of men who've felt them-selves close to

the torn edge of hysteria all afternoon and who are damn glad that someone has at last said something

that they can make believe is funny.

And the white-haired briefing officer, who hadn't so much as smiled, waited for the hysteria to work

itself out, before saying gravely: "No, they don't smell bad at all. Unless, that is, they don't bathe. The

same as you gentlemen."

That shut us up. Even the kid, blushing his way back into his seat, set his jaw stiffly at the reminder.

And it wasn't until twenty minutes later, when we'd been dismissed, that I began to feel the ache in my

own face from the unrelaxed muscles there.

The same as you gentlemen...

I shook myself hard and walked over to the kid. "Hello, Commander," I said. "Been here long?"

He managed a grin. "Over an hour, Commander. I caught the eight-fifteen out of Arizona Base.

Most of the other fellows were still sleeping off last night's party, I'd gone to bed early; I wanted to give

myself as much time to get the feel of this thing as I could. Only it doesn't seem to do much good."

"I know. Some things you can't get used to. Some things you're not supposed to get used to."

He looked at my chest. "I guess this isn't your first sling-shot command?"

My first? More like my twenty-first, son! But then I remembered that everyone tells me I look

young for my medals, and what the hell, the kid looked so pale—"No, not exactly my first. But I've never

had a blob crew before. This is exactly as new to me as it is to you. Hey, listen, Commander: I'm having

a hard time, too. What say we bust through that gate together? Then the worst'll be over."

The kid nodded violently. We linked arms and marched up to the sentry. We showed him our

orders. He opened the gate and said: "Straight ahead. Any elevator on your left to the fifteenth floor."

So, still arm in arm, we walked into the main entrance of the large building, up a long flight of steps

and under the sign that said in red and black:

Human Protoplasm Reclamation Center

Third District Finishing Plant

There were some old-looking but very erect men walking along the main lobby and a lot of

uniformed, fairly pretty girls. I was pleased to note that most of the girls were pregnant. The first pleasing

sight I had seen in almost a week.

We turned into an elevator and told the girl, "Fifteen." She punched a button and waited for it to fill

up. She didn't seem to be pregnant. I wondered what was the mat-ter with her.

I'd managed to get a good grip on my heaving imagination, when I got a look at the shoulder patches

the other passengers were wearing. That almost did for me right there. It was a circular red patch with

the black letters TAF superimposed on a white G-4. TAF for Terrestrial Armed Forces, of course: the

letters were the basic insignia of all rear-echelon outfits. But why didn't they use G-1, which represented

Personnel? G-4 stood for the Supply Division. Supply!

You can always trust the TAF. Thousands of morale specialists in all kinds of ranks, working their

educated heads off to keep up the spirits of the men in the fighting perimeters—but every damn time,

when it comes down to scratch, the good old de-pendable TAF will pick the ugliest name, the one in the

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William Tenn - Down Among the Dead Men

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