Dynamon walked thoughtfully out of Government city by the North Gate. The sentry noticed that his helmet was now adorned with the badge of centurion, and came to a smart salute. Dynamon went past him without seeing him, and the sentry glared after the new centurion disapprovingly. Lost in thought, Dynamon kept on walking until he came to with a start, and found himself in the middle of the shopping district.
The sun was getting uncomfortably warm and Dynamon switched off the electric current that heated his long cloak and looked around him. A sign in a shop window said, "Only fourteen more shopping days before the Twenty-fifth of December." Dynamon sighed. He wouldn't be around on this Twenty-fifth and it was going to be a very gay one. It was to be the nine hundredth anniversary of the Great Armistice—from which had come the unification of all the peoples of the Earth. Dynamon sighed again.
The long peace was threatened.
The Earth, in this year of grace 3057, was a wonderful place to live in, and Copia was the political and cultural center of the Earth. For nine hundred years now, the peoples of the Earth had lived at peace with one another as members of a single integrated community. The World-State had grown into something which that war-torn handful of people back in 1957 could scarcely have imagined. No longer did region war against region, or group against group, or class against class. Humanity had finally united to fight the common enemies—death, disease, old age, starvation.
And on this nine hundredth anniversary of the Great Armistice, the people of the World would have a great deal to celebrate. Disease was now unknown, as was starvation. Arduous physical labor was abolished, for now, the heaviest and the slightest tasks were performed by machines. Pain had been reduced, both physical and mental. Helpless senility was a thing of the past. Death alone remained. But even death had been postponed. Human beings now lived to be almost three hundred years old.
All in all, Dynamon mused, as he strolled along the broad avenue, the human race had evolved a pretty satisfactory civilization. More was the pity, then, that human restlessness and vaulting ambition should have led to the construction of the great Cosmos Carriers. If Man had been content to stay on his own little planet, then communication would never have been established with the jealous little men of Mars, and this beautiful civilization would not now be threatened by a visitation of the terrible Martians and their frightful Photo-Atomic Ray. Dynamon's deep chest swelled a little with pride at the thought that he had been selected by the Commander-in-Chief to take an important part in the coming conflict.
He turned the corner and found himself standing before an imposing building. Across the top of the facade in block letters was the legend, "State Theater of Comedy." A few minutes later he stood in front of a doorway at the side of the great theater building. The door opened and a tall, lovely girl appeared.
"Dynamon!" she exclaimed, "I didn't expect to see you for another ten days." She stepped out of the doorway, and reached her arms up impulsively, kissing Dynamon.
The tall young soldier gripped her shoulders hard for a minute, and then stepped back and looked down into her soft brown eyes.