As one of the seventy-six male lieutenants of the Regiment, Hartford
pulled O.G. about once every eleven weeks. His Terrible Third drew duty
with him as Guard Platoon. All of them could expect to sleep through
the night undisturbed, unless Nasty Nef held a dry-run, falling them
out for a Simulated Problem. Nef was tired tonight, though; the Guard
could sleep. Only the two men on picket and the handful of Service
Company personnel on duty at the Status Board need stay awake tonight.
Awake or sleeping, the security of First Regiment would rest this
night in the hands of Lee Hartford. It was he who bore the final
responsibility for allowing no living thing to enter the Barracks
except in a well-scrubbed safety-suit; for assuring that the air his
sleeping comrades breathed was sterile and dustless; that the Syphon's
poisonous bug-juice was of the proper pH and germicidity; and for
checking that the whereabouts of every Axenite on Kansas was reflected
on the Status Board. That these duties were complex was attested by the
assignment of a Service Company officer to the Board, a woman who would
watch the Board's bands of lights and meters every moment. Hartford
could sleep; he was the Responsible Male. Mrs. Paula Piacentelli,
1/Lt. S.C. (Gnotobiotics Spec.), had to remain awake: she was the
Knowledgeable Woman.
Hartford found Paula already at her work in the Board Room. Only a bit
over five feet tall, Piacentelli's wife was concentrated woman of the
most splendid sort. When Hartford had told her that Pia was taking the
picket, she frowned. "I hope he doesn't plan anything foolish."
"Me? Foolish?" Piacentelli demanded from the elevator. He walked up,
clammed shut in his blue safety-suit, ready to hit bug-dirt. Under one
arm he carried a package sheathed in opaque plastic. Behind him, in the
gray safety-suit of an enlisted trooper, was a man Hartford recognized
as Corporal Bond, machine-gunner from Pia's platoon. "Lieutenant
Gabriel Piacentelli reporting with one man, Sir and Ma'am," he said,
saluting his wife and Hartford.
"At ease, Weenie-head," Hartford said. "With you and Bond on picket
amidst the sunflowers, I won't sleep a wink all night." He turned to
the corporal. "Did you sure-enough volunteer for this duty?" he asked.
"Yes, sir!" Bond said. "I voluntarily assumed the duty of absorbing a
fifth of Lt. Piacentelli's Class-VI Scotch. The Lieutenant was kind
enough to reciprocate by offering me this tour."
"He gave you Scotch?" Hartford turned to Piacentelli. "Gabe, for a jug
of Scotch I'd have gone on picket with you myself. What's that you're
taking outside with you? Lunch?"
"A microscope," Piacentelli said. "I'm doing a little research for
Paula." His wife nodded. A gnotobiotics technician, responsible for
maintaining the bacteriological security of the Barracks, she had
business with microscopes.
"Want to give me the word on this romp of yours?" Hartford asked.
"Standard picket, Lee," Piacentelli said. "I'll learn a little Kansan,
take care of Paula's project and tell you all about it when we get
back."
* * * * *
"Let's see your weapons." Hartford inspected Bond's Dardick-rifle and
Piacentelli's Dardick-pistol. Both weapons were loaded, clean and
wrapped up for their trip through the Wet Gut in plastic sleeves.
The trucks and heavy weapons stayed outside on bug-dirt. The lighter
weapons and all ammunition came back inside the Barracks with the
troopers who carried them. The weapons were detail-stripped on each
re-entry, irradiated with u-v and fit with fresh sleeves. As had been
discovered with the first axenic animals, in the 1930's, keeping a
mammal germ-free is a formidable task. When that mammal is a human
being and a soldier the job is double-tough.
"Check out a jeep," Hartford said. "Report each half-hour. Don't shoot
any Stinkers ... sorry, I mean Indigenous Hominids. Try not to hit a
camelopard with the jeep; we're low on replacement parts. In fact, be
careful. Okay, Pia?"
"Done and done, Exalted One."
Hartford dropped his voice. "I'd feel easier in my mind if I knew
what's so important as to require your desertion of our mutual womb
tonight, Pia."
"Language study, you might say," Piacentelli replied.
"_Ha! So desa ka?_" Hartford replied. "That's so much bug-dirt, and you
know it."
"_Ha!_" Piacentelli said. "See you at dawn. Take care of my wife,
buddy."
"Aren't you going to kiss her good night?" Hartford asked.
Pia grinned through his clammed-shut helmet and clomped to the elevator
with Bond. They were en route to the Hot Gut and the Wet Gut, the
twisting hallway from the sterile First Regiment Barracks to the living
night of Kansas.
Hartford turned.
Paula Piacentelli wore the short skirt, knee-hose and short-sleeved
blouse of Pioneer green that was the Class B uniform for females inside
the Barracks. She looked, Hartford thought, remarkably delectable;
and he again congratulated his friend on his luck in getting her. He
returned his attention to the Status Board, which Paula was conning.
Two red lights flickered on above the ground-floor diagram of the
Barracks, indicating that the two men of the picket had entered the Hot
Gut. A moment later these lights blinked off, and two lighted over the
diagram of the Wet Gut. Piacentelli and Bond were swimming now, towing
their weapons in ballooning plastic sleeves. Sterile, on their way out
into a filthy world, these two men were the outpost that would protect
through the night their hundreds of brothers and sisters sleeping safe
_in utero_. Freud, thou shouldst have lived this hour! Hartford mused.
* * * * *
Piacentelli turned the ignition key of the jeep he'd chosen. With the
starting cough of the engine, one of the rank of TV screens over the
Status Board lighted. The camera eye was looking out the rear-view
mirror of the jeep, and picked up Pia's helmeted head and the shoulder
of his companion. "We're off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of
Oz!" Piacentelli sang.
His wife spoke into the microphone before her. "Don't do anything
foolish, Lieutenant," she said. "And remember, all transmissions are
recorded and are audited, at random, by the Base Commander."
"Transmission received, receiver contrite," Piacentelli reported back.
"Okay, Paula-Darling. From now on till Bond and I swim home, we'll be
as military as GI soap." He flicked the TV monitor around to look out
the windshield and started the jeep down the road toward Stinkerville.
The duty of the picket was to chug around outside at random, hitting
all the cross-roads, settlements and high spots of the countryside near
the Barracks; to interview late-riding Indigenous Hominids and inquire
their business being out; to conduct such searches of Stinker homes and
hideaways as might seem useful to the occupying Axenites; and to remain
at all times in contact with the officers on duty at the Status Board.
As the picket got underway, Hartford went down to the Terrible Third's
area to check quickly through the two-man apartments. Knock on the
door; "As you were, Troopers." A brisk inspection of two safety-suits,
gaping beside their owners' bunks like firemen's boot-sheathed pants.
The men were quiet. Guard-duty meant that any socializing with Service
Company troopers was impossible for a night, and militated against any
intake of alcoholic beverage. It was a bore, especially after three dry
and womanless weeks in the field. Hartford visited his Platoon Sergeant
last: "Sergeant Felix, could you have our bunch standing on bug-dirt
ten minutes after I blew the whistle? Very well, then. Good night,
Felix."
Having demonstrated to his troopers that he was suffering the same
strictures as they, Hartford went back to the O.G. cubicle in the
Board Room. He checked his own safety-suit, his plastic-packaged
Dardick-pistol, said good night to Paula Piacentelli and lay down to
begin his first night's sleep outside a safety-suit in three weeks.
But sleep didn't come easily.
There was the murmur from the Board Room; Piacentelli's half-hourly
reports. "Nothing to report, Paula. I'm at Road Junction (41-17). No
I.H. activity. No excitement at all."
"Continue random patrol, Lieutenant."
"Yes, Dear. I'm going to run down to Kansannamura (42-19) for my next
call-in."
"Carry on, Lieutenant."
Pia was in the best possible hands with Paula on duty, Hartford mused.
The Status Board was really a woman's job. The girls of the Service
Companies were the house-keepers of the Barracks, the guardians of the
Regimental lares and penates. Paula, for example, had as her primary
duty gnotobiotic control: the maintenance of the whole germ-free system
of the Barracks, from the Hot-&-Wet Guts to safety-suit inspection
and the upkeep of the Decontamination Vehicles. Behind the women on
Board-duty, however, was always at least one male, combat-trained
Officer of the Guard, ready (once awakened and briefed by the female
help) to take armed men into the field.
But meanwhile, Hartford wanted to sleep.
* * * * *
Half an hour passed, and at its end Pia made his report: "Picket
reporting, Paula. I'm going into the village. Corporal Bond will remain
with the jeep, and will keep the transmitter open till I get back.
Okay?"
"Be careful, Lieutenant," Paula Piacentelli said, combining affection
with military formality.
Hartford, deciding that sleep was impossible, got up and cold-showered.
Dressing in fresh Class B's, he walked out to join Paula at the Status
Board. The TV screen showed Bond, the sheathed Dardick-rifle slung over
his shoulder, pacing back and forth in front of the jeep, glancing
from time to time toward the walls of Kansannamura, white in the light
of the skyful of stars. He was nervous, evidently aware of the fact
that Kansas was largely unexplored, her potential for midnight mayhem
untested. Bond spoke across his shoulder. "The lieutenant has been gone
for a quarter hour, Ma'am," he said. "Do you want me to go in and ask
him to come out?"
"Wait another quarter-hour, Corporal," Paula said. She explained to
Hartford, "What he's got to do may take a little time." They watched
the screen. Bond climbed back into the jeep, where he sat with his
rifle between his knees, sweeping his attention around him, at the
village, at the road behind, at the sunflower-fields, where the
blossoms were bleached white and the leaves enameled black by starlight.
With Paula's agreement, Hartford pressed the microphone-switch to talk
with Bond. "Have you tried to tap Piacentelli on his suit-receiver,
Corporal?"
"Yes, sir," Bond said. "First thing. No answer."
"Turn your bitcher full up, then," Hartford said. "Tell Lieutenant
Piacentelli that the O.G. wants him out on the road within five
minutes."
"Done and done, sir." Bond tongued the bitcher's controls to Full
Volume and repeated the message. Echoes bounced back from the walls of
Stinkerville and lost themselves in the tangle of sunflowers.
No one answered.
The village seemed as much asleep as it had been before Bond's bellow.
The Kansans were never hasty to volunteer response to Axenites; they
knew that troopers meant trouble.
"Piacentelli is busy at something," Hartford said, as much to reassure
himself as Pia's wife. "I think I'll go out and have a look." He spoke
to Bond: "Get out of the jeep, but stay close to it. Report any haps
immediately. Watch for lights, listen for small-arms fire."
"Done and done, sir."
Hartford phoned Felix, his platoon sergeant. "Report to the Board Room
to sub for me," he said. "Wake the Platoon Guide and tell him to stand
ready to fall the Guard out, but not to wake anyone else yet. This is
probably a nothing, Felix; Lt. Piacentelli just went for a walk in
Stinkerville."
* * * * *
The Command Light, top in the tier of all the hierarchy of
red-yellow-green-white Status-Board indicators, flashed alive.
"A nothing?" Nasty Nef's voice demanded. "What sort of talk is that,
Lieutenant? If I've been properly interpreting the past five minutes'
transmissions, we've got an Axenite officer stranded in the middle of
a Stinker village. This, Mister, is not a nothing. Call out the Guard.
Prepare to join me in a Stinkerville shakedown. Those Gooks got to
learn they can't play fast-and-easy with Axenite troopers."
"Done and done, sir!" Hartford snapped. He toggled the phone to get
Felix back. "Felix, fall the boys out beside the Syphon. We've got the
Old Man hitting bug-dirt with us, so look sharp."
"The colonel's going out with us?" Felix asked.
"Yes. There must be more to this situation than meets the company-grade
eye," Hartford said. "Diaper-up our darlings and stand by in the Hot
Gut, Felix."
"Done and done!"
Twenty seconds later a figure in Santa Claus red came clashing into
the room. Hartford, half into his blue safety-suit, came to a clumsy
attention. The newcomer, his helmet clammed shut all ready for
contamination, bellowed, "Get with it, Mister!"
"Yes, sir." Hartford fit himself into the suit, a sort of cockpit, a
congeries of valves, gauges, counters and vetters. In a moment he'd
sealed himself in the sterile suit, checked his air-filters and air
reserve. "The Guard is assembled in the Hot Gut, sir, ready to take the
field."
"Dam' well better be," Nef said. "Lead off, Mister." He turned to Paula
Piacentelli. "Send a Decontamination Vehicle after us, Lieutenant. No
telling what those Stinker devils have cooked up with Piacentelli."
Back to Hartford: "You're in command of the Guard, I'll observe and
offer suggestions."
"Tain-HUT!" Platoon Sergeant Felix saluted the scarlet-clad colonel
and the blue-clad lieutenant as they stepped from the elevator into
the electric atmosphere of the Hot Gut. The Guard snapped to, their
plastic-packaged Dardick-rifles at order arms.
"Take 'em out, Felix," Hartford said. "Two personnel carriers,
a .50-caliber m.g.-mounted jeep fore and aft. You and the colonel take
the rear jeep; I'll lead. Have the men unbag their weapons the instant
we're outside. Any questions?"
"No, sir."
"Move out," Hartford said.