" Rip could see no way to use the atomic bomb against the
Connies. It was too big for use against a landing party. Besides, it
would put the Planeteers themselves in danger.
"Ever have trouble with the Connies before?" he asked Koa.
"More'n once, sir. Sometimes it seems like I'll never get a job where
I don't have to fight Connies."
Rip was trained in science and Planeteer techniques, and he didn't
pretend to know the ins and outs of interplanetary politics. Just the
same, he couldn't help wondering about the strange relationship between
the Consolidation of People's Governments and the Federation of Free
Nations.
Connies and Feds, mostly Planeteers but sometimes spacemen, were
constantly skirmishing. They fought over property, over control of
ports on distant planets and moons, and over space salvage. Often there
was bloodshed. Sometimes there were pitched battles between groups of
platoon size.
But at that point the struggle ended. The law of the Federation said that
no spaceship could fire on a Connie spaceship or on Connie land bases,
except with special permission of the Space Council. The theory was that
brief struggles between men, or even between small fighting craft like
the snapper-boats, was not war.
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