Except, the thought crept back, there was no reason for him to believe that the aliens would differentiate between the _Josef_ and the _Oahu_, between the Combine and the United States. "The planes!" McCandless said, incredulous. "Look at the planes!" The Captain glanced down at the screen again. An orangish glow was suffusing the alien ship. A jet slipped in for a rocket shot. The glow pulsed, expanded, touched the jet, and the plane vanished into a rain of wreckage that sped towards the ocean below. "God!" Davis breathed. "Did you see that?" The Captain only half heard him. So they were aliens. What did that mean? Beings of different background, different beliefs, different physical structure? He had been one of the first into Berlin after the massacre was over and the Combine had laid the blame on their Berlin Commandant, though it was painfully obvious that he had only followed out instructions. And the shambles he had seen there couldn't have been done by human beings. Four thousand soldiers and close to a hundred thousand civilians killed. Would you call the people who had been responsible for that human beings or ... aliens? Which name fit best? The Berlin war ... A dozen different outbreaks, starting with Korea so long ago ... And then you were supposed to admit that they were blood brothers after all, and that in the face of a mutual threat you should forget your differences and pool your resources against the common enemy. "There goes another one!" So in fifteen minutes the _Josef_ would go down. And from him it would bring only cheers, not tears. But you didn't make decisions on a personal basis, he thought slowly. You had to look at it from the viewpoint of a thousand years. You had to develop a certain detachment, even though one man's lifetime was far too short a period to develop it in. "Message for you, Captain." It was a voice message that had been picked up in CIC. It was brief and to the point. _Attention Captain United States Vessel_ Oahu: _Help urgently requested. If aid not granted immediately, all is lost._ _Constantin Simenovich, Captain, People's Warship_ Josef Dzugashvili. He had a brief mental picture of a young man lying in the shambles of Berlin calling out the same words. And what had he received? He buried the thought. The detached viewpoint. Political systems evolved, he thought, they never remained the same. The French Revolution had spawned a thousand human monsters and the blood had run in the streets. But out of it all had come a democratic nation. And a thousand years from now, what would the Combine be? A turn of the wheel and perhaps it would be a peace-loving democracy while the United States would be the abattoir of human hopes. Who could tell? A thousand years from now the present bloodbaths and tortures and mass deaths would be history. But if the aliens won you ran the chance of there being no history at all.