"Just flash blindness, Hurd. Only temporary." Hague kept his face
stiff, and hoped frantically that he was right, that it was just
temporary blindness, temporary optic shock.
Sergeant Brian's icy voice cut in. "Gun's all right, Lieutenant. Nobody
hurt. We fired twenty-eight rounds of H.E. No A.P.X. Get going with
him, Hurd."
He felt Hurd's tug at his elbow, and they made their way up the trail.
"What do they look like, Hurd?"
"These men-things? They're grey, about my size, skin looks like
leather, and their heads are flattish. Eyes on the side of their heads,
like a lizard. Not a stitch of clothes. Just a belt with a knife and
arrow holder. And they got webbed claws for feet. They're ugly-looking
things, sir. Here's the tank."
Clark's voice came, hard and clear. "That you, Hague?" Silence for a
moment. "What's wrong? You're not blinded?"
Sewell had dropped his irascibility, and his voice was steady and
kindly.
"Just flash blindness, isn't it, sir? This salve will fix you up.
You've got a cut on your shoulder. I'll take care of that too."
"How are your men, Hague?" Clark sounded as though he were standing
beside Hague.
"Not a scratch. We're ready to march."
"Five hurt here, three with the advance party, and two at the tank. We
got 'em good, though. They hit the trail between our units and got fire
from both sides. Must be twenty of them dead."
Hague grimaced at the sting of something Sewell had squeezed into his
eyes. "Who was hurt?"
"Arndt, the geologist; his buddy, Gault, the botanist; lab technician
Harker, Crewman Harker, and Szachek, the meteorologist man. How's your
pneumatic ammunition?"
"We fired twenty-eight rounds of H.E."
Cartographer Hirooka's voice burst in excitedly.
"That gun crew of yours! Your gun crew got twenty-one of these--these
lizard-men. A bunch came up our back trail, and the pneumatic cut them
to pieces."
"Good going, Hague. We'll leave you extended back there. I'm pulling in
the advance party, and there'll be just two groups. We'll be at point,
and you continue at afterguard." Clark was silent for a moment, then
his voice came bitterly, "We're down to seventeen men, you know."
He cursed, and Hague heard the wiry little navigator slosh away through
the mud and begin shouting orders. He and Hurd started back with
Whittaker and Sergeant Sample yelling wild instructions from the tank
as to what the rear guard might do with the next batch of lizard-men
who came sneaking up.
Hague's vision was clearing, and he saw Balistierri and the
photographer Whitcomb through a milky haze, measuring, photographing,
and even dissecting several of the lizard-men. The back trail, swept
by pneumatic gunfire was a wreck of wood splinters and smashed trees,
smashed bodies, and cratered earth.
They broke down the gun, harnessed the equipment, and swung off at the
sound of Clark's whistle. Bucci had to be supported between two of the
others, and they took turnabout at the job, sloshing through the water
and mud, with Bucci's one swollen leg dragging uselessly between them.
It was punishing work as the heat veils shimmered and thickened, but
no one seemed to consider leaving him behind, Hague noticed; and he
determined to say nothing about Clark's orders that the sick must be
abandoned.
Days and nights flashed by in a dreary monotony of mud, heat, insects
and thinning rations. Then one morning the giant trees began to thin,
and they passed from rainforest into jungle.
The change was too late for Bucci. They carved a neat marker beside
the trail, and set the dead youth's helmet atop it. Lieutenant Hague
carried ahead a smudged letter in his shirt, with instructions to
forward it to Wilma, the gunner's young wife.
Hague and his four gunners followed the rattling whippet tank's trail
higher, the jungle fell behind, and their protesting legs carried them
over the rim of a high, cloud-swept plateau, that swept on to the limit
of vision on both sides and ahead.
* * * * *
The city's black walls squatted secretively; foursquare, black, glassy
walls with a blocky tower set sturdily at each of the four corners,
enclosing what appeared to be a square mile of low buildings. Grey fog
whipped coldly across the flat bleakness and rustled through dark grass.
Balistierri, plodding beside Hague at the rear, stared at it warily,
muttering, "And Childe Roland to the dark tower came."
Sampler's tank ground along the base of the twelve-foot wall, turned at
a sharp right angle, and the party filed through a square cut opening
that once had been a gate. The black city looked tenantless. There was
dark-hued grass growing in the misted streets and squares, and across
the lintels of cube-shaped, neatly aligned dwellings, fashioned of
thick, black blocks. Hague could hear nothing but whipping wind, the
tank's clatter, and the quiet clink of equipment as men shuffled ahead
through the knee-high grass, peering watchfully into dark doorways.
Clark's whistle shrilled, the tank motor died, and they waited.
"Hague, come ahead."
The gunnery officer nodded at Sergeant Brian, and walked swiftly to
Clark, who was leaning against the tank's mud-caked side.
"Sampler says we've got to make repairs on the tank. We'll shelter
here. Set your gun on a roof top commanding the street--or, better yet,
set it on the wall. I'll want two of your gunners to go hunting food
animals."
"What do you think this place is, Bob?"
"Beats me," and the navigator's wind-burned face twisted in a perplexed
expression. "Lenkranz knows more about metals, but he thinks this stone
is volcanic, like obsidian. Those lizard-men couldn't have built it."
"We passed some kind of bas-relief or murals inside the gate."
"Whitcomb is going to photograph them. Blake, Lenkranz, Johnston, and
Hirooka are going to explore the place. Your two gunners, and Crewman
Swenson and Balistierri will form the two hunting parties."
For five days, Hague and Crosse walked over the sullen plateau beneath
scudding, leaden clouds, hunting little lizards that resembled
dinosaurs and ran in coveys like grey chickens. The meat was good,
and Sewell dropped his role of medical technician to achieve glowing
accolades as an expert cook. Balistierri was in a zoologist's paradise,
and he hunted over the windy plain with Swenson, the big white-haired
Swede, for ten and twelve hours at a stretch. Balistierri would sit in
the cook's unit glow at night, his thin face ecstatic as he described
the weird life forms he and Swenson had tracked down during the day;
or alternately he'd bemoan the necessity of eating what were to him
priceless zoological specimens.
Whittaker and Sampler hammered in the recalcitrant tank's bowels and
shouted ribald remarks to any one nearby, until they emerged the third
day, grease-stained and perspiring, to announce that "She's ready to
roll her g---- d---- cleats off."
Whittaker had been nursing the tank's radio transreceiver beside the
forward hatch this grey afternoon, when his wild yell brought Hague
erect. The officer carefully handed Bormann's skin bird back to the
gunner, swung down from the city wall's edge, and ran to Whittaker's
side. Clark was already there when Hague reached the tank.
"Listen! I've got 'em!" Whittaker yelped and extended the crackling
earphones to Clark.
A tinny voice penetrated the interference.
"Base.... Peter One.... Do you hear ... to George Easy Peter One ...
hear me ... out."
Whittaker snapped on his throat microphone.
"George Easy Peter One To Base. George Easy Peter One To Base. We hear
you. We hear you. Rocket crashed. Rocket crashed. Returning overland.
Returning overland. Present strength sixteen men. Can you drop us
supplies? Can you drop us supplies?"
The earphones sputtered, but no more voices came through. Clark's
excited face fell into tired lines.
"We've lost them. Keep trying, Whittaker. Hague, we'll march-order
tomorrow at dawn. You'll take the rear again."
* * * * *
Grey, windy dawnlight brought them out to the sound of Clark's call.
Strapping on equipment and plates, they assembled around the tank. They
were rested, and full fed.
"Walk, you poor devils," Whittaker was yelling from his tank turret.
"And, if you get tired, run awhile," he snorted, grinning heartlessly,
as he leaned back in pretended luxury against the gunner's seat, a
thinly padded metal strip.
Balistierri and the blond Swenson shouldered their rifles and shuffled
out. They would move well in advance as scouts.
"I wouldn't ride in that armored alarm-clock if it had a built-in
harem," Hurd was screaming at Whittaker, and hurled a well-placed
mudball at the tankman's head as the tank motor caught, and the metal
vehicle lumbered ahead toward the gate, with Whittaker sneering, but
with most of his head safely below the turret rim. Beside it marched
Clark, his ragged uniform carefully scraped clean of mud, and with
him Lenkranz, the metals man. Both carried rifles and wore half empty
bandoliers of blast cartridges.
The supply cart jerked behind the tank, and behind it filed Whitcomb
with his cameras; Sewell, the big, laconic medical technician;
Johnston; cartographer Hirooka perusing absorbedly the clip board that
held his strip map; Blake, the lean and spectacled bacteriologist,
brought up the rear. Hague waited until they had disappeared through
the gate cut sharply in the city's black wall, then he turned to his
gun crew.
Sergeant Brian, saturnine as always, swung past carrying the pneumatic
barrel assembly, Crosse with the charger a pace behind. Next, Bormann,
whispering to Helen who rode his shoulder piping throaty calls.
Last came Hurd, swaggering past with jaws grinding steadily at that
mysterious cud. Hague cast a glance over his shoulder at the deserted
street of black cubes, wondered at the dank loneness of the place, and
followed Hurd.
The hours wore on as they swung across dark grass, through damp
tendrils of cloud, and faced into whipping, cold wind, eyes narrowed
against its sting. Helen, squawking unhappily, crawled inside Bormann's
shirt and rode with just her brown bird-head protruding.
"Look at the big hole, Lieutenant," Hurd called above the wind.
Hurd had dropped behind, and Hague called a halt to investigate Hurd's
find, but as he hiked rapidly back, the wiry little man yelled and
pitched out of sight. Brian came running, and he and Hague peered over
the edge of a funnel shaped pit, from which Hurd was trying to crawl.
Each time he'd get a third of the way up the eighteen-foot slope,
gravelly soil would slide and he'd again be carried to the bottom.
"Throw me a line."
Brian pulled a hank of nylon line from his belt, shook out the snarls,
and tossed an end into Hurd's clawing hands. Hague and the Sergeant
anchored themselves to the upper end and were preparing to haul, when
Hague saw something move in the gravel beneath Hurd's feet, at the
funnel bottom, and saw a giant pincers emerging from loose, black
gravel.
"Hurd look out!" he screamed.
The little man, white-faced, threw himself aside as a giant beetle head
erupted through the funnel bottom. The great pincers jaws fastened
around Hurd's waist as he struggled frantically up the pit's side. He
began screaming when the beetle monster dragged him relentlessly down,
his distorted face flung up at them appealingly. Hague snatched at his
rifle and brought it up. When the gun cracked, the pincers tightened on
Hurd's middle, and the little man was snipped in half. The blue-white
flash and report of the explosive bullet blended with Hurd's choked
yells, the beetle rolled over on its back and the two bodies lay
entangled at the pit bottom. Brian and Hague looked at each other in
silent, blanched horror, then turned from the pit's edge and loped back
to the others.
Bormann and Crosse peered fearfully across the wind-whipped grass, and
inquired in shouts what Hurd was doing.
"He's dead, gone," Hague yelled savagely over the wind's whine. "Keep
moving. We can't do anything. Keep going."