Climbing into the tank was like climbing into a dark well. When the
lid closed behind them, there was _no_ light. The darkness annoyed
Murphy, but he realized it was necessary. There were no slits for the
crew to see through: slits allowed bullets, radiation, and poison gas
to enter a tank. The crew observed through periscopes that fitted tight
against their faces; they were trained to work in the dark.
It was a long, rough ride through the night. Murphy listened to the
crew members, the roar of the motor. Now and then there was the sharp
bark of the tank's cannon, and even through four inches of steel and
lead he heard the roar of shock waves from distant atomic explosions.
Hank whispered, "That wasn't right, was it? I mean, leaving like that
and--"
"Ever hear of 'strategic withdrawal'?" Murphy asked. "We'll live to
fight another day."
Murphy slept at times. One time, after being awakened by a nearby
explosion, one of the tank crew asked him his name and what unit he was
with. He said he would radio their unit and ask if their CO had orders
for them. Murphy gave his name and unit, then fell asleep again.
Sometime during the night, he felt a hand shaking him. "You lucky
stiffs," a voice in the darkness said. "Your CO says you're to return
to Earth on the next ship."
* * * * *
Colonel Donovan climbed out of the jeep and walked a distance. He was
a tall, husky man with powerful shoulders and prematurely gray hair.
His face was hard and weather-beaten, and his eyes held the only hint
of his intelligence. He did not have the delicate features and slender
fingers of an intellectual, but his gray eyes were cold and alert. He
had climbed to the rank of colonel partly by his physical strength and
partly by that deceptive intelligence. He had an aggressive way of
tackling a problem, a way of prodding it and beating it with his mind
as if it were a physical thing and he were beating it with his fists.
During his career, he had solved numerous problems with his different
approach. The intellectuals, the men who solved problems, had minds
as alike as if they had been cut from the same pattern. A definite
type of physique produced a definite mentality-type, and a definite
mentality-type produced a definite way of thinking. The intellectuals
were similar in body and mind, and their answers were often too
similar. When the UN wanted a _different_ answer, it called upon men
such as Donovan.
And Donovan had a new problem.
He lit a cigarette without looking away from the ruins. The ruins of
Fort Meade; he could see at a glance that it had been a direct hit.
Every building had been leveled, the ground scorched and fused into
weird glass-like substances. There had been no burial details: of all
the thousands of soldiers at the Fort, there had been no remains to
bury.
He had no special purpose in viewing the ruins except to goad his
mind. Reports on his desk in the New Pentagon had informed him of the
facts: seven military bases such as Fort Meade had been bombed by the
Antarians. All direct hits.
It meant one of two things. One: the Antarians could take a photograph
of Earth from a thousand miles and spot military installations on that
photograph. Two: they had tortured prisoners and learned the locations.
Number one was improbable; number two was very probable.
He wondered, _How do you prevent a man from giving information?_ It
was an important problem. There seemed to be no way to prevent the
Antarians from taking prisoners, no way to prevent them from torturing
prisoners. If they captured enough prisoners, they could learn the
location of every military base and war plant on Earth. Every soldier
knew the location of something vital; almost every soldier could point
to it on an aerial map. It was a simple matter of spotting rivers and
mountain ranges and judging distances.
The possibilities of preventing their men from talking were few, he
realized. There was the standard answer: give a pill to every soldier
and tell him to swallow the pill if he's captured. But that was
the wrong answer. It had been used before, but only in the case of
espionage agents. Used on an army of men, it would have a demoralizing
effect. It would imply that you expected them to be captured. And
what percentage of men would commit suicide? Besides that, the news
would sooner or later leak out to the civilian population and have a
demoralizing effect upon _them_. How would millions of mothers and
wives feel if they knew their sons and husbands had been ordered to
kill themselves if captured?
No, suicide pills were not the answer. It had to be something
different, something original, and as foolproof as anything could be.
Preferably a way to kill a captured soldier--a way that the soldier was
not aware of. Death seemed the only solution. Any man, tortured hard
enough and long enough, would talk. How could you keep that man from
talking except by killing him? And still, it wasn't _right_ to kill
your own men!
_How_, he thought, _can you kill a man without killing him?_
* * * * *
Hank was pacing the floor. "We're on our way, Murph. Back to Earth. No
more combat. We'll train other guys how to fight. Instructors. What a
deal! Weekend passes, girls, beer, fried chicken, real milk--"
"Lay off," Murphy said. "We aren't there yet."
Sitting there on the edge of the cot, he struggled for a sense of
reality. Nothing seemed real. Nothing had seemed real since they left
the foxhole. There everything had seemed real: the coldness and wetness
of the mud beneath them, the stars in the sky above them, a thousand
other things. But, in the tank, there had been nothing but darkness and
voices in the darkness. The tank had broken through the Antarian lines
and taken them directly to a spaceport. There, in a thick fog--so thick
that you could see only a few feet in any direction--they had boarded
the ship. In the darkened ship, they had been led to this compartment.
They had seen only two men aboard the ship. One crew member--seen at a
distance--and Gregg, the ship's captain. Now they were in outer space,
in a small compartment aboard a huge ship. It didn't seem real, and he
felt as if they were walking through a shadowy dream.
The door opened and Captain Chester Gregg stepped into the room.
Gregg, Murphy reflected, looked as if he had been taken apart and put
together again. There were lines in his face: not lines that came from
facial muscles, but the clean-cut lines of a surgeon's scalpel--lines
that divided his face into small sections. And the flesh from his
forehead to his chin did not change shade gradually. Each section was
a slightly different shade than the section next to it. Not a hideous
effect, but noticeable when you looked at him closely. Gregg was
evidently conscious of his appearance, for he stayed in the shadows as
much as possible.
Gregg glanced around the room and grinned. "How do you like your
quarters? Fancy, huh?"
"Great," Murphy said. "Almost as good as the Ritz. Are we the only
passengers?"
Gregg nodded his head affirmatively. "We had to leave in a hurry. We
were scheduled to take more men back, but the Antarians were about to
take over that port. We were lucky to get out when we did."
Gregg hesitated, then went on, "You guys are going to have a tough job
when you get back. Not as easy as you might think. I know. I was in the
infantry for a while--in a training outfit. Hard work."