THE LAST CRUSADE
BY GEORGE H. SMITH
It was part of a picture in part of a building that had
once been the Louvre. And somewhere back in his lost
memory, it was also a name for "Whitey"....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Julius Caesar named this place 'Lutetia Parisiorum', which means 'the mud town of the Parissii'. Later on people got around to calling it 'the city of light,'" Marty Coleman was saying.
"Well, Julius was sure as hell a lot closer to the truth than those others," I tell him. We was sitting in the mud in what's left of some big building and me and Joe White was listening to Marty, our Sergeant, talking like he always does. When I says the sergeant was talking I mean he was talking over the C.C., the Company Communication Circuit because what with having our mecho-armor on and the other side raising a little hell, we couldn't of heard him any other way.
"Yeah, I guess you're right, Ward. There isn't much light around here anymore," Coleman admitted.
"The only light you ever see around here these days is a flare or a rocket going over," White says in that funny flat voice of his.