THE LAST BRAVE INVADER
BY CHARLES L. FONTENAY
In youth Lauria was beautiful,
proud, unattainable. But when
autumn came, she changed her
code and lowered her defense.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Lauria Swept down the spiral staircase in regal dignity, and wishedthere were someone there to witness her entrance. She walked across theparlor to the gun-rack and strapped a holstered pistol to her hip, justabove the rustling flare of the full skirt of her evening dress.
The green sun's slanting rays in the parlor window told her it was lateafternoon, nearly time to get started. She went to the full-lengthmirror. Beside the mirror hung the framed copy of the Constitution ofPamplin, hand-lettered on parchment. In bold red letters it proclaimed:
We, the people of Pamplin, hold that:
1. No government is the best government.
2. A man's home is his castle.
3. A woman's rights are equal to a man's rights.
4. Only the brave deserve the fair.
Lauria looked in the mirror, almost fearfully.
She saw with approval the breadth of her hips, the erectness of hershoulders. With more reluctance, her eyes rose to her face. There wasstill beauty there, she told herself, to the discerning eye. That touchof slackness to the jaw, that faint hollowness of cheek: those were nodoubt exaggerated by the dimness of the room.
In a table drawer, Lauria found jars and tubes. From them she carefullyfilled in a fuller form for her mouth, dabbed heavily at her cheeks,touched up her eyes, smeared over her jawline. She fluffed out thethinning blond hair and donned a light scarf then she removed the heavybars from the front door. She went out, and locked its triple locksbehind her. She gazed around cautiously and stepped lightly down thegravelled path. Around the house, the grounds were a solid mass ofblooming flowers. Lauria had plenty of time to spend in the garden. Thebaskets and other handicraft articles that were her means of incomeleft her a good deal of leisure, and cooking and household chores wereroutine and brief.
Farther from the house, the grounds looked better kept than they were.It was fortunate that the blue grass of the planet Pamplin grew shortand neat, for Lauria never would have been able to keep the ten acresof her property trimmed. But the big trees that shaded the grounds haddropped twigs and leaves that she wouldn't clear away until the bigeffort of the fall clean-up.
The path curved down past a small cleared area in which a dozen uprightwooden markers were spaced in rows. This was the cemetery.
She paused to look out across the neat rows of markers. There weremen buried there. Twelve young men. They had died by her hand, inaccordance with the Constitution and the law.
At one end of the cemetery stood a large wooden plaque on which she hadcarved the Constitution of Pamplin. Many times had her mother explainedthe meaning of the Constitution to Lauria, when Lauria was a littlegirl and still intruding on her mother's privacy.
"The people who colonized Pamplin left Earth many years ago becausethere they always had to sacrifice some of their individual rightsto some government," her mother had said. "There are many kinds ofgovernments, but all of them try to regulate people. And to regulatepe