r that human beings or ... aliens? Which name fit best?

The Berlin war ...

A dozen different outbreaks, starting with Korea so long ago ...

And then you were supposed to admit that they were blood brothers after
all, and that in the face of a mutual threat you should forget your
differences and pool your resources against the common enemy.

"There goes another one!"

So in fifteen minutes the _Josef_ would go down. And from him it would
bring only cheers, not tears.

But you didn't make decisions on a personal basis, he thought slowly.
You had to look at it from the viewpoint of a thousand years. You had to
develop a certain detachment, even though one man's lifetime was far too
short a period to develop it in.

"Message for you, Captain."

It was a voice message that had been picked up in CIC. It was brief and
to the point.

_Attention Captain United States Vessel_ Oahu:

_Help urgently requested. If aid not granted immediately, all is
lost._

_Constantin Simenovich,
Captain, People's Warship_ Josef Dzugashvili.

He had a brief mental picture of a young man lying in the shambles of
Berlin calling out the same words. And what had he received?

He buried the thought.

The detached viewpoint. Political systems evolved, he thought, they
never remained the same. The French Revolution had spawned a thousand
human monsters and the blood had run in the streets. But out of it all
had come a democratic nation. And a thousand years from now, what would
the Combine be? A turn of the wheel and perhaps it would be a
peace-loving democracy while the United States would be the abattoir of
human hopes. Who could tell? A thousand years from now the present
bloodbaths and tortures and mass deaths would be history.

But if the aliens won you ran the chance of there being no history at
all.

The wheelhouse was silent. The Captain could feel a dozen pairs of eyes
watching him, waiting for his decision. Outside the ports, on the far
horizon, there came a steady, golden pulsing.

He looked up at McCandless and Davis. McCandless was young, too
inexperienced to realize that situations where today's enemies are
tomorrow's friends are the order of the day and not the exception. You
adjusted to it or you became bitter. Davis, the gutless bastard, had
adjusted to it. He was probably already to make the switch, to go back
to drinking toasts in vodka.

The detached viewpoint.

"Send up the jets," the Cap