Short Fiction by Mack Reynolds (ready to read books .TXT) 📕

think I was stupid? Hadn’t I been reading up on all that stuff for months? I sat down casually in an empty acceleration chair.

“Of course,” I said. “An Egyptian God; also known as Jupiter by their neighbors, the Aztecs, and by the name of Zeus, by the Chinese.”

And that’s the way it was all the way to Mars. I tried to hang on and stick it out with them, but I came in a bad third. I was fighting out of my class. In fact, just before we arrived on Mars, Suzi made it plain that she thought I might as well give up my attempts to become cultured. She said I just didn’t assimilate the stuff, that it didn’t come off on me. I could read whole libraries of the ancient classics and recall none of the significance of what I’d read. In short, I wasn’t doing so good with Suzi.

Well, three days after getting the telegram, I met the other two gladiators from Terra in our dressing room at the arena. They weren’t much happier about the meet than I was.

It’s one of the occupational hazards of our trade. If you get too good, you’ll probably be chosen as Terra representative to the Interplanetary Meet and your chances of surviving are almost nil. Of course, the pay is high and your survivors get a big chunk of credits but it’s a chilly prospect at best.

The other two were pretty well armored and had chosen spears as weapons, but I left off all armor and took a short sword. I planned on moving fast and the less weight I carried the better.

When the various preliminaries were over and the crowd shouting for the main event, we trotted out to the field, joined the gladiators from the other planets and paraded toward the stand at which the judges and diplomats were seated. There was a mob of these, each with his assistants and secretaries. You could bet that little that happened would miss them. After all, on this meet hung the destinies of planets.

Thousands of spectators from every planet and every principal satellite in the system stared down from their arena seats. I knew that the majority of them had expended a fortune in transport from their homes and for tickets to the meet. But why not! It was the equivalent of having a box seat at a full scale war of the type held in legendary times. Certainly, the ultimate effect was as great or greater. Each spectator knew that upon the manner in which their planet’s representatives fought this day, their fates depended.

The planets have long since abolished war, but they put great store by these Interplanetary Meets. The theory is: Why fight a war and kill off billions of population when you can figure out before the fighting ever takes place who’d win? It’s the natural ultimate development of diplomacy. Everything is settled by the diplomats without resorting to armed conflict.

Suppose, for instance, that Mars decided to assume domination of Terra. She notes, as do the Terran diplomats, that, at the Interplanetary Meet, the Martian gladiators wiped up on those from Terra. Obviously, if the same fighting would take place on a gigantic scale the same thing would result. So why fight the war? Terra simply accepts the domination. Of course, it’s all done in very diplomatic language so that nobody loses face, but the results are the same.

As a matter of fact, I’m surprised that one of the other planets hasn’t already taken over Terra. The most recent addition to the League of Solar System Planets, we’re by far the weakest. Probably our strongest defense has been the fact that several different League members have had their eyes upon us and each has counteracted the other. It’s certain that Venus, Saturn, and even Pluto would like to assimilate Terra. Actually, any one of them could do it.

As is customary, a beauty from the planet upon which the meet is being held, a Martian Princess in this case, opened the main event by throwing out the prize. It was a tremendous Venusian emerald, the largest ever discovered and the size of a man’s hand. It doesn’t really make much difference who catches the prize, except that it’s considered to be a lucky sign; the gladiator who survives the contest is the one who finally takes it.

I could see Suzi in the press box, sitting next to Alger. She seemed pale. I thought I might as well show her that some of the stuff she’d given me to read had been remembered. So just before the Princess tossed out the emerald and while the others stood about nervously and impatient, I drew my sword, flourished it, and called out, “We who are about to die, salute you!”

The Martian Princess smiled down at me. “Good fortune to you, gladiator from Terra,” she said, and deliberately threw the stone.

I’d just as well she hadn’t. The man with the prize is always the center of conflict and to have a hundred or so of the most efficient killers in the system out after you is no way to live to a ripe old age.

But I caught the emerald and the battle was on. I’d hardly got it into my belt before I heard a swish and a Mercurian Bouncer, the steel knives on his heels flashing, missed me by a fraction of an inch. Before it could jump again, a four armed Martian pierced it with a javelin. The Martian went down in his turn under a crushing blow from a Slaber.

I ran backward quickly, knowing that where there’s one Bouncer there’s another. They fight in a group of twenty or thirty.

Sometimes I wonder about that rule. Each planet is represented in the final free-for-all, the climax of the Interplanetary Meet, by weight. The Mercurians, who are about the size of Terran chickens, have thirty gladiators in the battle. The group from Calypso numbers eight, and looks like a gang of