“That’s ridiculous,” Barton said, laughing.

“Get it!” Stone yelled.

“Yes, get it,” Merriweather said. “Like we planned, if we ever got back. A historic record, for the schoolbooks.”

Vecchi rummaged around among the debris. “It’s sort of banged up,” he said. He held up the dented camera.

“Maybe it’ll work anyhow,” Parkhurst said, panting with exertion as he followed Leon outside. “How’re we going to take all six of us? Somebody has to snap the shutter.”

“I’ll set it for time,” Stone said, taking the camera and adjusting the knobs. “Everybody line up.” He pushed a button, and joined the others.

The six bearded, tattered men stood by their smashed ship, as the camera ticked. They gazed across the green countryside, awed and suddenly silent. They glanced at each other, eyes bright.

“We’re back!” Stone shouted. “We’re back!”

War Game

In his office at the Terran Import Bureau of Standards, the tall man gathered up the morning’s memos from their wire basket, and, seating himself at his desk, arranged them for reading. He put on his iris lenses, lit a cigarette.

“Good morning,” the first memo said in its tinny, chattery voice, as Wiseman ran his thumb along the line of pasted tape. Staring off through the open window at the parking lot, he listened to it idly. “Say, look, what’s wrong with you people down there? We sent that lot of”—a pause as the speaker, the sales manager of a chain of New York department stores, found his records—“those Ganymedean toys. You realize we have to get them approved in time for the autumn buying plan, so we can get them stocked for Christmas.” Grumbling, the sales manager concluded, “War games are going to be an important item again this year. We intend to buy big.”

Wiseman ran his thumb down to the speaker’s name and title.

“Joe Hauck,” the memo-voice chattered. “Appeley’s Children’s.”

To himself, Wiseman said, “Ah.” He put down the memo, got a blank and prepared to replay. And then he said, half-aloud, “Yes, what about that lot of Ganymedean toys?”

It seemed like a long time that the testing labs had been on them. At least two weeks.

Of course, any Ganymedean products got special attention these days; the Moons had, during the last year, gotten beyond their usual state of economic greed and had begun—according to intelligence circles—mulling overt military action against competitive interest, of which the Inner Three planets could be called the foremost element. But so far nothing had shown up. Exports remained of adequate quality, with no special jokers, no toxic paint to be licked off, no capsules of bacteria.

And yet....

Any group of people as inventive as the Ganymedeans could be expected to show creativity in whatever field they entered. Subversion would be tackled like any other venture—with imagination and a flair for wit.

Wiseman got to his feet and left his office, in the direction of the separate building in which the testing labs operated.

Surrounded by half-disassembled consumers’ products, Pinario looked up to see his boss, Leon Wiseman, shutting the final door of the lab.

“I’m glad you came down,” Pinario said, although actually he was stalling; he knew that he was at least five days behind in his work, and this session was going to mean trouble. “Better put on a prophylaxis suit—don’t want to take risks.” He spoke pleasantly, but Wiseman’s expression remained dour.

“I’m here about those inner-citadel-storming shock troops at six dollars a set,” Wiseman said, strolling among the stacks of many-sized unopened products waiting to be tested and released.

“Oh, that set of Ganymedean toy soldiers,” Pinario said with relief. His conscience was clear on that item; every tester in the labs knew the special instructions handed down by the Cheyenne Government on the Dangers of Contamination from Culture Particles Hostile to Innocent Urban Populations, a typically muddy ukase from officialdom. He could always—legitimately—fall back and cite the number of that directive. “I’ve got them off by themselves,” he said, walking over to accompany Wiseman, “due to the special danger involved.”

“Let’s have a look,” Wiseman said. “Do you believe there’s anything in this caution, or is it more paranoia about ‘alien milieux’?”

Pinario said, “It’s justified, especially where children’s artifacts are concerned.”

A few hand-signals, and a slab of wall exposed a side room.

Propped up in the center was a sight that caused Wiseman to halt. A plastic life-size dummy of a child, perhaps five years in appearance, wearing ordinary clothes, sat surrounded by toys. At this moment, the dummy was saying, “I’m tired of that. Do something else.” It paused a short time, and then repeated, “I’m tired of that. Do something else.”

The toys on the floor, triggered to respond to oral instructions, gave up their various occupations, and started afresh.

“It saves on labor costs,” Pinario explained. “This is a crop of junk that’s got an entire repertoire to go through, before the buyer has his money’s worth. If we stuck around to keep them active, we’d be in here all the time.”

Directly before the dummy was the group of Ganymedean soldiers, plus the citadel which they had been built to storm. They had been sneaking up on it in an elaborate pattern, but, at the dummy’s utterance, they had halted. Now they were regrouping.

“You’re getting this all on tape?” Wiseman asked.

“Oh, yes,” Pinario said.

The model soldiers stood approximately six inches high, made from the almost indestructible thermoplastic compounds that the Ganymedean manufacturers were famous for. Their uniforms were synthetic, a hodgepodge of various military costumes from the Moons and nearby planets. The citadel itself, a block of ominous dark metal-like stuff, resembled a legendary fort; peepholes dotted its upper surfaces, a drawbridge had been drawn up out of sight, and from the top turret a gaudy flag waved.

With a whistling pop, the citadel fired a projectile at its attackers. The projectile exploded in a cloud of harmless smoke and noise, among a cluster of soldiers.

“It fights back,” Wiseman observed.

“But ultimately it loses,” Pinario said. “It has to. Psychologically speaking, it symbolizes the external reality. The dozen soldiers, of course, represent to the child his own efforts to cope. By participating in the storming of the citadel, the child undergoes a sense of adequacy in dealing with the harsh world. Eventually he prevails, but only after a painstaking period of effort and patience.” He added, “Anyhow, that’s what the instruction booklet says.” He handed Wiseman the booklet.

Glancing over the booklet, Wiseman asked, “And their pattern of assault varies each time?”

“We’ve had it running for eight days now. The same pattern hasn’t cropped up twice. Well, you’ve got quite a few units involved.”

The soldiers were sneaking around, gradually nearing the citadel. On the walls, a number of monitoring devices appeared and began tracking the soldiers. Utilizing other toys being tested, the soldiers concealed themselves.

“They can incorporate accidental configurations of terrain,” Pinario explained. “They’re object-tropic; when they see, for example, a dollhouse here for testing, they climb into it like mice. They’ll be all through it.” To prove his point, he picked up a large toy spaceship manufactured by a Uranian company; shaking it, he spilled two soldiers from it.

“How many times do they take the citadel,” Wiseman asked, “on a percentage basis?”

“So far, they’ve been successful one out of nine tries. There’s an adjustment in the back of the citadel. You can set it for a higher yield of successful tries.”

He threaded a path through the advancing soldiers; Wiseman accompanied him, and they bent down to inspect the citadel.