Clifford D. Simak

Reunion on Ganymede

I

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. T 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.