This was defeat. We knew it as we stood by the tangled pile of steelite that had been the Hound and watched the Arrow die. But nothing in this life that I have lived ever told me so grandly that the Wall Decade was ended—and our life of buccaneering with it—as the thing that happened next.
The Arrow's valve opened and a tiny figure stepped out—into space. I did not need to be told that Jaq Merril was coming to meet the men he had welded together against him.
Lazily, unreally, the tiny shape twisted over and over as it fell, until at last it vanished amid the raw welter of craters and ridges beyond the razor wall of Clavius....
I have told a true tale, though one that will not be believed. I have taken the Peacemaker of the histories and painted him as he was.
But men are ashamed, and the chronicles of history must be rewritten to hide their weaknesses, Jaq Merril has become a legend, and the man that I knew is forgotten.
Merril—pirate, fighter, grandiose dreamer. That was my captain. Not the colorless do-good creature of the legend. Merril fought for lust and greed, and these are the things that will one day take men to the stars. He knew this truth, of course, and that was the substance of his great dream. Because of it, there are no longer walls in space, and the men who united to fight the Peacemaker will one day rule the universe.
Meanwhile, chroniclers will write lies about him, and Jaq Merril's laughter will echo in some ghostly Valhalla beyond the farthest star.
THE END
