（外文电子版资料）Fritz Leiber - The Oldest Soldier.pdfVIP

Scanned by gojukai From Fritz Leiber’s The Mind Spider and Other Stories THE OLDEST SOLDIER Fritz Leiber The one we called the Lieutenant took a long swallow of his dark Lowensbrau. Hed just been describing a battle of infantry rockets on the Eastern Front, the German and Russian positions erupting bundles of flame. Max swished his paler beer in its green bottle and his eyes got a faraway look and he said, When the rockets lolled their thousands in Copenhagen, they laced the sky with fire and lit up the steeples in the city and the masts and bare spars of the British ships like a field of crosses. I didnt know there were any landings in Denmark, someone remarked with an expectant casualness. “This was in the Napoleonic wars, Max explained. The British bombarded the city and captured the Danish fleet. Back in 1807. Vas you dere, Maxie? Woody asked, and the gang around the counter chuckled and beamed. Drinking at a liquor store is a pretty dull occupation and one is grateful for small vaudeville acts. Why bare spars? someone asked. So thered be less chance of the rockets setting the launching ships afire,* Max came back at him. Sails burn fast and wooden ships are tinder anyway—thats why ships firing red-hot shot never worked out. Rockets and bare spars were bid enough. Yes, and it was Con- greve rockets made the *red glare* at Fort McHenry, he continued unruffled, while the bombs bursting in air were about the earliest precision artillery shells, fired from mortars on bomb-ketches. Theres a condensed history, of arms in the American anthem. He looked around smiling. Yes, I was there. Woody—Just as I was with me South Martians when they stormed Copernicus in the Second Colonial War. And just as Ill be in a foxhole outside Copeybawa a billion years from now while the blast waves from the battling Venusian spaceships shake the soil and roil the mud and give me some more digging to do. This time the gang really snorted its happy