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Frigid Fracas

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<h2>XI</h2> Stretched out on the convalescent bed in the Category Military rest home, Joe grinned up at his visitor and said ruefully, "I'd salute, sir, but my arms seem to be out of commission. And, come to think of it, I'm out of uniform." Cogswell looked down at him, unamused. "You've heard the news?" Joe caught the other's tone and his face straightened. "You mean the Disarmament Commission?" Cogswell said brittlely, "They found against the use of aircraft, other than free balloons, in any military action. They threw the book, Mauser. The court ruled that you, Robert Flaubert and James Hideka be stripped of rank and forbidden the Category Military. You have also been fined all stock shares in your possession other than those unalienably yours as a West-world citizen." Joe's face went empty. It was only then that he realized that the other was attired in the uniform of a brigadier general. The direction of his eyes was obvious. Cogswell shrugged bitterly. "My Upper caste status helped me. I could pull just enough strings that the Category Military Department, in conjunction with the rulings of the International Disarmament Commission merely reduced me in rank and belted me with a stiff fine. Your friend—your former friend, I should say, Freddy Soligen, testified in my behalf. Testified that I had no knowledge of your mounting a gun." The former marshal cleared his throat. "His testimony was correct. I had no such knowledge and would have issued orders against it, had I known. The fact that you enabled me to rescue the situation into which I'd been sucked, helps somewhat my feelings toward you, Mauser. But only somewhat." Joe could imagine the other's bitterness. He had fought his way up the hard way to that marshal's baton. At his age, he wasn't going to regain it. Brigadier general Stonewall Cogswell hesitated for a moment, then said, "One other thing. United Miners has repudiated your actions even to the point of refusing the cost of your hospitalization. I told the Category Medicine authorities to put your bill on my account." Joe said quite stiffly, "That won't be necessary, sir." "I'm afraid you'll find it is, Mauser." The former marshal allowed himself a grimace. "Besides, I owe you something for that spectacular scene when you came skimming over the treetops, the two enemy gliders right behind you, then stalling your craft and crashing into that tree not thirty feet from my open air headquarters. Admittedly, in forty years of fracases, I've never seen anything so confoundedly dramatic." "Thank you, sir." The old soldier grunted, turned and marched from the room. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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