Later in the day as he sat in the shade of the command post's
overhanging roof with his back against a stack of sand-bags, he cursed
himself for sixteen kinds of an idiot as he watched the evacuation
begin. Beta was dropping low over the pink Maldo hills as the long
line of earthmen filed up the gangway into the big airship.
"Hello," said a voice behind him. He turned to find Joan Allen
standing there clothed in radiation armor and holding a small canvas
bag in one hand. "I thought ... I mean ... I came to say good-bye."
"Hello, yourself. I thought you were on board with the rest of them."
He got up hastily.
"No. I got the kids on board but I wanted one more look at the
schoolhouse before we shoved off."
Somehow he was holding onto her arm, "I guess it meant a lot to you,
that schoolhouse," he said.
"Yes, it did. I ... I was afraid that I wouldn't get to see you when
you get to New Chicago."
"There's no danger of that, Joanie. If and when I get there, I'll be
looking for you ... that is ... if you want to see me."
"If you think you can stand an old maid school teacher, I'll be
looking for you." She was very close to him now. "Why did you do it,
Terrence? Why are you making the march with the Narakans? Fielding
says your chances aren't very good."
"I'll thank Fielding to keep his big mouth shut! I don't really know
why, probably kind of an Earthman's Burden, noblesse oblige ... you
know ... something like the sort of thing Kipling used to write
about."
"Hell," she said, surprising him with her vehemence, "you don't
believe that guy any more than I do. It was old when Kipling wrote it
and it's even older now. I think that somewhere under that tough Irish
skin of yours, there's a sentimental fool hiding."
She was still closer now with her hands pressed lightly against his
chest and suddenly his arms went around her, he lifted her protective
visor and forced his lips down hard on hers. All of her primness had
disappeared as she leaned against him, returning his kiss with a
burning eagerness which a more experienced woman might have
controlled.
There were tears running down his cheeks and he knew they weren't his.
He released her slightly and looked down into her tear streaked face,
wondering how it was possible for them to have been at the same post
for six months without really knowing each other.
"I guess I'm kind of crazy about you, teacher," he said.
He had lifted her off her feet and she clung there with her arms
around his neck. "Terrence, I can't leave you ... I...."
As Terrence bent over to kiss her again there was a loud cough and
Bill Fielding was standing there dressed in full battle armor. He
grinned and said, "Much as I hate to break this up, I don't think
Chapelle is going to hold the _Sun Maid_ much longer."
Terrence set Joan gently on her feet and she turned and fled toward
the waiting ship. He watched until she was on board and then turned to
stare at Bill. Still grinning broadly, Bill clapped him on the
shoulder as he said, "I could never have faced those bartenders on
Dobi Street if I had gone back without you. We better get going,
hadn't we? Sergeant Polasky's down with the men. He couldn't bear to
leave his Bannings."
"Well, I'll be damned!" was all O'Mara could find to say as he watched
the big airship lift itself in the fading light, circle and pass
through the smoke of Dust Bin for the last time.
* * * * *
Throwing their gear over their shoulders, the two officers crossed the
parade ground to where the two hundred khaki clad figures of the
Narakan Rifles stood waiting with Sergeant Polasky clucking slightly
as he fussed over his Bannings.
O'Shaughnessy was wearing his new lieutenant bars and a pith helmet
and was carrying a large piece of wood in imitation of Norton's
swagger stick. Terrence took one look at him and at the two orderlies
who stood behind him holding his field kit. He strode toward him
scowling, placed his fists on his hips and stood glaring up at the
Greenback as he roared, "So! It's delusions of grandeur you've got, is
it? Where are Hannigan and O'Toole and their patrols? Why aren't they
back?"
O'Shaughnessy stiffened to attention trying to pull in his great
stomach. "They are back, Mr. Lieutenant Sir.... I forgot. They had
nothing to report ... no contact."
Terrence looked him up and down, "If you foul up just once more ...
I'm going to ... I'll split your gizzard, stuff it with To-To leaves
and send you to the Rumi for their breakfast with my compliments!"
O'Shaughnessy shivered at the dire threat as O'Mara turned to Rev.
Goodman who stood with his people clustered about him. "All right,
Reverend, you can move out with your flock. I'll throw patrols out in
front of you and bring up the rear with the rest of the Rifles. We'll
see you as far as the edge of the swamps."
In a long straggly line, the refugees started out with the native
police keeping order and Goodman marching at their head. The two drums
and the three bugles of the Narakan Rifles struck up a badly mangled
version of _Back to Donegal_, and the column followed on the heels of
the civilians. Once or twice Terrence glanced back at the smoke and
flame that had been Dust Bin before he turned his face forward across
the miles of grasslands to where the Suzi swamps lay.
Darkness had fallen but progress wasn't difficult until one of those
sudden, lashing storms for which Naraka was famous hurled itself upon
them, flattening the tall grass, raising swirls of dust and finally
turning the dust into thick, clinging mud.
As suddenly as it had come, the storm was gone. But by that time they
were in the swamp itself. Night in the Suzi swamps. Swamps composed of
a sticky, gray mud and heavy tangled undergrowth. The night was as
black as the day had been bright. The column which had left the
civilians at the edge of the swamp was pushing slowly forward. The
Narakans glided along on their bare, webbed feet and the Terrans
pushed along on snowshoe-like glides attached to their boots.
Bill Fielding, bareheaded with his helmet thrown back over his
shoulder, floundered along beside Terrence. "Did you ever see a place
like this? Did you ever see mud like this? Even the Irish bogs
couldn't be this bad."
Terrence checked his map, shielding his flashlight carefully. "We'll
be out of the worst of this by tomorrow morning," he said.
"If we live until tomorrow morning," Fielding replied, "those Rumi
have eyes like the blasted jungle cats they're descended from."
"I don't think we have much to worry about until we get out of the
swamps. I doubt if their patrols would penetrate very deeply into this
mess."
"How about the radio? Has Polasky been able to get through to Fort
Craven?" asked Fielding.
O'Mara shook his head, "no. You know what Beta's radiations do to
radio reception this time of year. Even at night it takes a powerful
transmitter to reach farther than twenty or thirty miles."
Later in the night, with a good ten miles of swamp country between him
and the enemy, Terrence called a halt on a slightly raised spot of
almost dry ground. The unwearied Greenbacks and the exhausted Terrans
dropped down in huddled groups. The patrols that had penetrated to the
edge of the swamp came in to report that they had contacted no Rumi
ahead. Terrence munched a can of cold beans and fell over in an
exhausted sleep to the sound of O'Shaughnessy placing sentries about
the camp.
* * * * *
The next day's march was a nightmare to the lieutenant. If anything,
the heat and humidity were worse in the swamps than they had been in
Dust Bin and the going got tougher every mile. The mud was softer and
the undergrowth had to be cut away by bayonet-wielding Narakans before
the main body could move through. Terrence had thrown off his battle
armor and lost his radiation helmet somewhere in the morass as had
other of the Earthmen. Hannigan had prepared a thick mess of mud and
grass which the Terrans applied to exposed parts of their bodies.
Late in the afternoon of the second day the Narakan Rifles came to a
tepid little stream that marked the end of the swamps, and for the
first time Terrence ordered a rest of longer than two hours. Bill
Fielding was lying flat on his back in the grass beside the stream
with his feet dangling in the water, shoes and all, when O'Mara
dragged himself wearily back from inspecting the pickets and flopped
down beside him.
"If I never to my dying day see another speck of mud," Fielding
muttered as he ate a bar of tropical chocolate that was as mud covered
as he was, "I'll still have seen more than all the Fieldings for two
hundred years back have seen on Earth and Mars."
"And now," said Terrence as he eased over on his back with a heavy
sigh, "that we have run out of mud, we can start looking for Rumi."
"At least it'll be a change! Here Kitty! Here kitty! Nice Rumi! Come
and get a bayonet in...."
Clack, clack, clack. The sound of spring guns broke the stillness of
the afternoon and was followed by the sound of rifles and a cry of
pain.
"Oh, Lord!" moaned O'Mara, "now it starts!" He was on his feet,
gripping his carbine and running bent over. Fielding was at his heels,
dragging a machine gun off the ground.
"O'Shaughnessy! Hannigan! Take the first platoon. Move up to support
the pickets. O'Toole! On the double! Take your squad and try to get
around the firing. Bill, you and Polasky stand by here with the rest
of the men and the Bannings."
Terrence had plunged into the stream and splashed across and was
clambering up the opposite bank when one of his pickets came crawling
and stumbling back clutching a wounded arm. "Mr. Lieutenant! Mr.
Lieutenant! Rumi! Rumi! Many Rumi up ahead! Sullivan and O'Leary dead!
Rumi get!"
"Medic! Medic!" O'Shaughnessy was yelling in his ear with the
full-throated croak of an adult Narakan, drowning out what the wounded
picket was trying to say.
"How many? How many Rumi, man?" Terrence demanded.
"Twenty ... thirty ... maybe thousand!" the Narakan gasped as the
Medic led him off.
"'Twenty, thirty, maybe thousand.' That gives us a damn fine idea of
what we're up against!"
While his men dragged their big bodies up the bank of the stream,
O'Mara stood scowling at the eight foot high grass. Usually about a
foot high, the hardy and ubiquitous purple grass of Naraka grew far
more lushly around the edges of the swamps. He felt that it would be a
risky business at best to plunge into it after an unknown number of
enemy. At the same time he had an illogical determination not to leave
the bodies of his men in the hands of the Rumi. He looked at the
broad, big-mouthed exaggerations of Irish faces around him, heaved a
sigh that came from deep in his chest and ordered, "All right, men.
Spread out. Keep low and keep your eyes open. And try not to shoot
each other."
"We fix bayonets now, Lieutenant, sir?" Hannigan asked.
"You keep your eyes open, Sergeant," Terrence snapped, "I'll tell you
when to fix bayonets."
The noisy rustling of his men's heavy bodies as they pushed through
the grass made him nervous and irritable. Then suddenly, just as they
were edging their way around a gully, a dozen Rumi were swarming down
on them. Terrence cut down two with his carbine but his men were
firing and missing as the incredibly fast catmen hurtled at them. He
had a brief glimpse of O'Shaughnessy spraying submachine gun slugs
wildly about and then there was a hail of spring bolts and two of his
men were down. The whole platoon was thrashing through the grass in
their direction and the Rumi were gone as quickly as they had come.
"Come on!" Terrence shouted, breaking into a run with twenty or thirty
Riflemen after him. A bolt grazed his cheek and another cut down a man
to his right. He emptied his carbine in the general direction of the
Clack, Clack, Clack. Hannigan was roaring a primitive bull-throated
chant and firing at everything that moved. O'Shaughnessy managed to
jam his gun and was beating frantically at it with one webbed fist.
They burst into a clearing filled with Rumi and both sides blazed away
at point blank range. It was hard for even a Narakan to miss at that
close range and the Rumi broke and ran just as Sergeant O'Toole and
his squad came out of the grass on the other side of the clearing.
The Rumi, trapped, turned and dashed at Terrence and his men. The
lieutenant drove his fist into one cat faced creature and smashed his
empty gun across the head of another. Hannigan grappled with one of
the lithe gray-bodied things and slowly crushed it beneath his 350 odd
pounds. O'Shaughnessy beat another insensible with his jammed Tommy
gun. Several Narakans were down but most of them had taken Rumi with
them.
Terrence was knocked off his feet by a gray ball of fury that leaped
at him wielding a stiletto-thin knife. He caught at the Rumi's arm
with both hands but the creature was not only fast but strong. It
twisted out of his grasp and slashed at him and only a quick sideward
roll saved him. Desperately he brought his fist down on his
assailant's head.
The Rumi's grip relaxed slightly and Terrence drove his fist full into
its face and locked his legs about its waist. The catman couldn't have
weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds but all of it was wiry
strength. It clawed at him now, ripping his protective clothing and
gashing his legs, meanwhile trying to get its knife into play. He was
vaguely conscious that his men had disposed of the rest of the Rumi
and were dancing around him frantically trying to get a chance to aid
him. He was struck by the incongruity of a civilized being descended
from simian ancestors and a civilized being descended from feline
ancestors fighting fang and claw while a bunch of misplaced amphibians
danced about them.
Making his weight count he suddenly twisted and hurled the Rumi under
him but something hit him a terrific blow on the back of the head and
blackness closed in.
V
O'Mara awoke with a head that felt like all the hangovers of a
misspent life.
"Have a nice rest?" Bill Fielding asked.
Terrence reached a weak hand to the back of his head and felt
bandages. "Did I catch a spring bolt?" he asked.
Bill grinned, "Well, no. Not exactly. It was more on the order of
Private O'Hara's rifle butt. He was trying to hit the Rumi you were
necking with."
"I might have known," Terrence groaned.
"We lost six men but recovered all the bodies except for one. We've
got four wounded ... litter cases. Thought you were going to make it
five for a while."
"Well, they won't slow us down too much. We still have about a hundred
and fifty miles to go. We'll camp here for the night and move out at
dawn."
Marching in the early morning and resting in the heat of the day
before another afternoon march, the Narakan Rifles covered another
fifty miles of the distance to Fort Craven without incident but not
without signs of Rumi. Twice they came on recently occupied camps and
once they caught sight of a Rumi patrol moving parallel to their own
line of march.
The next morning, which was blistering and cloudless, they were only
seventy miles from the Fort.
"Maybe we ought to give the radio another try." Terrence decided.
"We're close enough to have a chance of getting through now."
Polasky set up the field radio.
"Hello, Balliwick. Hello, Balliwick. This is Apple Three Three. Can
you read me? Come in, please."
O'Mara and Fielding sat and listened while he repeated the call a
dozen or more times. His only answer was the heavy static that Beta
produced in most electronic instruments. The same static that made
radar and space scanners all but useless, that limited aircraft to the
big dirigibles and weapons to old fashioned rifles and machine guns.
"I guess we'll know what's going on when we get there!" Terrence said.
He wiped his forehead with his arm, noticing that the heavily caked
mud was beginning to crack off. He would be in for a bad case of sun
poisoning probably.
A rare breeze had sprung up and drifting down it from the west came
the sound of gunfire. As one man, everyone in the camp stiffened.
"Did you hear that?" demanded Fielding.
"I think I hear a Banning," Polasky said, "sounds like it's coming
from in back of us ... off to the west."
"From what our scouts have been able to pick up, that's the general
direction that the Rumi have been moving," Terrence said.
"But there's nothing over that way. What in hell could they be
attacking?" Fielding was on his feet, looking off in the direction
from which the sounds were coming.
Terrence was aware of an increasingly uneasy feeling. He got to his
feet and picked up his gear. "The sounds could be deceiving. We might
as well get moving. It isn't going to get much cooler before
nightfall."
* * * * *
An hour later they were hotly engaged with a large force of Rumi. Rumi
armed for the first time with heavier weapons, mortar-like guns that
hurled pods of smothering dust that caused almost instant
strangulation. Rumi who attacked suddenly, giving them time only to
drop to the ground and set up the Bannings and machine guns before
three hundred howling fiends came charging through the grass at a dead
run, firing as they came.
O'Mara was behind a machine gun and Fielding and Polasky each had a
Banning in action. They met the Rumi charge with a withering hail of
lead and fire. The Narakans lying as flat as their huge chests would
allow them were firing as fast as the automatic rifles would fire. The
Bannings swept the line of charging figures. As the beams paused for a
moment, the charge would take effect and a ball of fire would
mushroom skyward, leaving a dozen seared cat bodies on the ground.
Terrence swept his machine gun along in a swath behind the Bannings,
picking off what they left. Some dozen catmen made it to within ten
yards of their front but sprawled still or lay kicking briefly until a
Greenback put another bullet into him.
The Rumi were gone, withdrawing to the west and Terrence was yelling
and cursing at his men to keep them from breaking ranks and following
them. Three Riflemen and O'Toole were dead and Sergeant Polasky was
coughing out his life beside his Banning with a spring gun bolt in his
stomach.
"Those damn cats!" he was muttering when O'Mara reached him, "those
damn cats. We showed 'em, didn't we, Lieutenant? That Banning's a good
gun if you...."
They buried the Greenbacks in eight foot graves and the Earthman in a
seven foot one. "Those dirty, lousy, stinking...." Bill Fielding was
beating his fist into the palm of his hand. "We got one of them alive
this time, Terrence. Hannigan knows a little of their lingo. His old
man escaped from one of their breeding pens on the other side of the
Muddy. He's working him over."
In the twenty odd years that Terrans and Rumi had occupied different
halves of the same planet, the number of men who had learned the Rumi
language wouldn't have filled a small room. So Terrence was surprised
at Bill's information and hurried toward the place where the
interrogation was taking place. Before he got there, he heard a
piercing cat cry which ended in a gurgle and when he reached the group
of Greenbacks, Hannigan was wiping his bayonet on the grass. He stood
looking down at a Rumi officer whose throat was neatly slit from furry
ear to furry ear. Then fists clenched on his hips, he confronted his
men.
"I don't suppose it ever occurred to you bunch of dimwits that we
might have gotten some information out of this guy. He might have
talked, you know."
"He talk," grinned Hannigan, "he talk plenty. He feared we might hurt
him. We tell him no hurt if he talk.... Ha!"
"He say big flyship down, Mr. Lieutenant," said O'Shaughnessy.
"What? What do you mean?" demanded O'Mara.
"Flyship ... _Sun Maid_ crash in storm.... Rumi find."
"Good God! The _Sun Maid_!" Terrence gasped, "That storm the first
night!"
"They surround and attack Terrans. These ones on way to join attack
when meet us," O'Shaughnessy went on.
"He tell where ship down," Hannigan said, "it near bend in Big Muddy ...
place I know. Ten, twenty mile back."
The Greenbacks were watching the Terrans, fingering their bayonets
eagerly and hugging their rifles. Terrence had the impression that
they were beginning to like their jobs. He turned to Bill Fielding,
"Well, Bill, it looks like we came about twenty miles too far."
Bill grinned, "Yep, I guess so. Come on, soldiers, fall in. We got
work to do back here a piece."
A two hour's forced march with the sun beating down and the sound of
firing growing closer. Only a column of Greenbacks could have done it
and only a crazy Irishman would have asked them to. They came up over
a rise and looked down a gentle slope toward the brown twisting snake
that was the Big Muddy. On its banks lay the broken shape of the
airship and swarming across a burned circle around it were Rumi,
thousands of them. The firing had slackened in the last few minutes
and now they could see why. The Rumi were assaulting and were at close
grips with the ring of defending Terrans.
"Now?" questioned O'Shaughnessy, "we fix bayonets now?"
"Yes," replied Terrence, "now we fix bayonets."
At his word three hundred big clumsy hands reached for three hundred
bayonets and fixed them to three hundred rifles.
"O'Shea, take O'Toole's squad and stand by up here with the Bannings.
O'Shaughnessy, take the left flank. Bill, you take the right. Let's
go!"
There wasn't a sound out of the Rifles as they started down the hill,
none of their usual croakings and bellowings, just silence and the
heavy thud of their feet. The Rumi had seen them. Many of those in
the rear of the attack were swinging about to face them. Spring gun
bolts began to whiz in their direction. One or two Narakans fell. They
were closer to the struggle now, closer to the tightly packed Rumi and
the hand to hand struggle about the _Sun Maid_.
Terrence was firing, throwing lead into the gray-bodied mass ahead of
him but his men were just thundering along with their little black
eyes fixed on their old oppressors, bayonets leveled in front of them
in approved training school method. They resembled nothing so much as
a regiment of tanks hurtling at an enemy. The momentum of their charge
carried them half way through the Rumi ranks, the terrific force of
the plunging amphibians bowling over the lighter catmen.
Bayonets, clubbed rifle and heavy webbed fist fought against claw,
teeth and knife. There was almost no firing, almost no sound save for
the cries of the Rumi and an occasional cheer from the Terrans.
Terrence emptied his Tommy gun, hurled it in the face of a Rumi and
reached for his knife and automatic. A Rumi knocked him off his feet
with the butt end of a spring gun but before he could do more,
Hannigan stepped over his lieutenant and plunged his bayonet into the
catman. The Irishman scrambled to his feet amidst the gray furry
bodies, thrust his .45 into a snarling face and pulled the trigger.
The face disappeared but another took its place and he fired again. A
Rumi with a knife grabbed at him from behind and he raised his pistol
again but the cat was already down with a bayonet between his
shoulders.
The Greenbacks were yelling now, lifting those great voices of theirs
in full throated bullfrog croaks. The Rumi, trapped and desperate,
were scattering and trying to flee down river. O'Mara stumbled over a
barricade of rocks and boxes and almost got a Terran slug in him
before he realized that they had cut their way through to the broken
ship. He was up in a minute and urging his men on after the scattering
enemy. Twenty or thirty of them tried to make a stand around a tall
Rumi officer but O'Shaughnessy at the head of a wedge of Narakans
swept into them at a full run.
Their bayonets flashed for a few seconds and then flashed no more, the
steel was covered with blood. A few hundred Rumi made it to the river
under a hail of fire from O'Shea and his squad on the hill. Hardly
pausing to consider their cat-like aversion to water, most of them
plunged in and struck out for the other shore. The rest were cut down
on the bank by onrushing Greenbacks. Terrence grabbed hold of one of
his buglers and then had to practically beat the man over the head to
get him to sound Recall.
Bill Fielding picked his way among the bodies and came toward Terrence
holding his left arm. O'Shaughnessy was leaping up and down and waving
his fist across the river.
"Things different now! All different now! One Greenback better than
four, five, eight Rumi!"
"At least that many," Terrence said under his breath before he roared
at O'Shaughnessy, "Fall the men in on the double now! We're going to
march back to the _Sun Maid_ in proper military style."
There was a blowing of sergeant's whistles, the shouting of corporals,
and the Narakan Rifles slowly formed ranks. Some were missing and
others were limping and holding wounds but they stepped out smartly as
the column headed back up the river. Every rifle was at the correct
slope, every man was in step as they marched through the makeshift
barricade and past where Chapelle was standing. The drum and bugle
corps struck up _The Wearing of the Green_ just as O'Mara shouted,
"_Eyes Right!_" and every eye swung right in perfect unison. A
tattered and weary Chapelle brought a surprised hand up to salute and
the Narakan Rifles came to a snappy halt.
A small, black haired figure threw itself at Terrence and his arms
were again holding Joan Allen. "I knew you'd come," she said, "only a
big, crazy Irishman like you could do it."
He kissed her and then pressed his mud-caked face against hers as he
said into her ear. "Only three hundred big, crazy Irishmen, baby.
There's not a drop of anything else in me boys."
* * * * *