One thing he was seeing now, graphically so that he would never forget: Wars weren't all the same. Sometimes fighting-men hated war. He had known only the swift clean war, the septic war, a gigantic street-cleaning machine with a ray gun in front and a rotary brush in the back, with individuals turned abruptly into the earth from which they had come, and no one knowing the difference. But in different times and places, wars could be different. * * * * * The amtrac stopped. "Let's get 'em out of here!" Danton was thrown up, over, out and down, and other forms fell around him. He heard a moan from something not quite dead. Metal clanged. Machinery whirred. He thought of the mart, disposal mart. He thought of dropping through a hole maybe into a pit of fire, or into a vat of something. All through him as from an intravenous injection--horror. He looked. A mound of metal, as though a bald giant had been buried up to his eyebrows. Metal corroded with green slime. And there, an opening appearing as heavy metal doors slid open. A railcar with a spherical truck bed emerging from the opening and waiting with an eery suggestion of eager sentience in its cold metal. The men throwing the bodies into the railcar. "What happens to them?" "Who knows? No one ever hears of them again. Morlan mentioned it the other day. He said the Powers demand sacrifice, like gods maybe. I'm not superstitious or anything, but--" "Why not? Something's taking care of us, making us move around, dance on the invisible wires. Maybe the Powers are gods. Why not? They're supposed to live forever. Never grow old." "Push the button! Push it! Get them out of here. Wait, here's another one." Danton felt himself plunging, striking, rolling among the other dead logs. He didn't move. Some of the horror was dissolving, because this whole disposal system was too elaborate. There was something basic and symptomatic about it, and Danton felt that it was a key. Van Ness and Keith were gone. He couldn't think about them now. Their disappearance had seemed so very final. He was alone. He still had his duty, and he was curious. He wanted to find out what he could, although the idea of somehow getting a ship and returning to Earth with what information he could garner was no longer part of his thoughts. You could take advantage of the impossible if it happened perhaps. You couldn't anticipate it as a basis for action. But he was still curious, and that was part of his duty. The Oligarchs, the Powers, seemed interested in gathering in the blossoms of death from the fields. Very interested. One of these soldiers had said the Powers would be happy. Surely then the bodies wouldn't simply go into a vat or a flame. "Here she goes!" Darkness. Silent movement whirring, rapidly accelerating speed, hot wind sighing dry past his face. The body of the dead girl, her body tight up against him in the darkness, moved a little. She sighed brokenly.