Astounding Stories of Super-Science 18

Astounding Stories of Super-Science 18

"Gimme a drag o' that, Pete," he suggested. "I'll slip y' some butts in

a minute."

 

* * * * *

 

Corporal Wallis nodded, and proceeded to light the cigarette with

infinite artistry. He puffed delicately upon it, inhaled it with the

care a man learns when he has just so much tobacco and never expects to

get any more, and reluctantly handed it to Sergeant Coffee.

 

Sergeant Coffee emptied his lungs in a sigh of anticipation. He put the

cigarette to his lips. It burned brightly as he drew upon it. Its tip

became brighter and brighter until it was white-hot, and the paper

crackled as the line of fire crept up the tube.

 

"Hey!" said Corporal Wallis in alarm.

 

Sergeant Coffee waved him aside, and his chest expanded to the fullest

limit of his blouse. When his lungs could hold no more he ceased to

draw, grandly returned about one-fourth of the cigarette to Corporal

Wallis, and blew out a cloud of smoke in small driblets until he had to

gasp for breath.

 

"When y' ain't got much time," said Sergeant Coffee amiably, "that's a

quick smoke."

 

Corporal Wallis regarded the ruins of his cigarette with a woeful air.

 

"Hell!" said Corporal Wallis gloomily. But he smoked what was left.

 

"Yeah," said Sergeant Coffee suddenly, into the field telephone, "I'm

still here, an' they're still dead.... Listen, Mr. Officer, I got me a

black eye an' numerous contusions. Also my gas-mask is busted. I called

y'up to do y' a favor. I aim to head for distant parts.... Hell's bells!

Ain't there anybody else in the army--" He stopped, and resentment died

out in wide-eyed amazement. "Yeh.... Yeh.... Yeh.... I gotcha, Loot.

A'right, I'll see what I c'n do. Yeh.... Wish y'd see my insurance gets

paid. Yeh."

 

He hung up, gloomily, and turned to Corporal Wallis.

 

"We' got to be heroes," he announced bitterly. "Sit out here in th'

stinkin' fog an' wait for a tank t' come along an' wipe us out. We' the

only listenin' post in two miles of front. That new gas o' theirs wiped

out all the rest without report."

 

He surveyed the crumpled figures, which had been the original occupants

of the pill-box. They wore the same uniform as himself and when he took

the gas-mask off of one of them the man's face was strangely peaceful.

 

"Hell of a war," said Sergeant Coffee bitterly. "Here our gang gets

wiped out by a helicopter. I ain't seen sunlight in a week, an' I got

just four butts left. Lucky I started savin' 'em." He rummaged shrewdly.

"This guy's got half a sack o' makin's. Say, that was Loot'n't Madison

on the line, then. Transferred from our gang a coupla months back. They

cut him in the line to listen in on me an' make sure I was who I said I

was. He recognized my voice."

 

* * * * *

 

Corporal Wallis, after smoking to the last and ultimate puff, pinched

out his cigarette and put the fragments of a butt back in his pocket.

 

"What we got to do?" he asked, watching as Sergeant Coffee divided the

treasure-trove into two scrupulously exact portions.

 

"Nothin'," said Coffee bitterly, "except find out how this gang got

wiped out, an' a few little things like that. Half th' front line is in

th' air, the planes can't see anything, o'course, an' nobody dares cut

th' fog-gas to look. He didn't say much, but he said for Gawd's sake

find out somethin'."

 

Corporal Wallis gloated over one-fourth of a sack of tobacco and stowed

it away.

 

"Th' infantry always gets th' dirty end of the stick," he said gloomily.

"I'm goin' to roll me a whole one, pre-war, an' smoke it, presently."

 

"Hell yes," said Coffee. He examined his gas-mask from force of habit

before stepping out into the fog once more, then contemptuously threw it

aside. "Gas-masks, hell! Ain't worth havin'. Come on."

 

Corporal Wallis followed as he emerged from the little round cone of

the pill-box.

 

The gray mist that was fog-gas hung over everything. There was a

definite breeze blowing, but the mist was so dense that it did not seem

to move. It was far enough from the fog-flares for the last least trace

of striation to have vanished. Fifteen miles to the north the fog-flares

were placed, ranged by hundreds and by thousands, burning one after

another as the fog service set them off, and sending out their

incredible masses of thick gray vapor in long threads that spread out

before the wind, coalesced, and made a smoke-screen to which the puny

efforts of the last war--the war that was to make the world safe for

democracy--were as nothing.

 

Here, fifteen miles down wind from the flares, it was possible to see

clearly in a circle approximately five feet in diameter. At the edge of

that circle outlines began to blur. At ten feet all shapes were the

faintest of bulks, the dimmest of outlines. At fifteen feet all was

invisible, hidden behind a screen of mist.

 

"Cast around," said Coffee gloomily. "Maybe we'll find a shell, or

tracks of a tank or somethin' that chucked the gas here."

 

* * * * *

 

It was rather ludicrous to go searching for anything in that mass of

vapor. At three yards distance they could make each other out as dim

outlines, no more. But it did not even occur to them to deplore the

mist. The war which had already been christened, by the politicians at

home, the last war, was always fought in a mist. Infantry could not

stand against tanks, tanks could not live under aircraft-directed

artillery fire--not when forty guns fired salvos for the aircraft to

spot--and neither artillery nor aircraft could take any advantage of a

victory which either, under special conditions, might win. The general

staffs of both the United States and the prominent nation--let us say

the Yellow Empire--at war with it had come to a single conclusion.

Tanks or infantry were needed for the use of victories. Infantry could

be destroyed by tanks. But tanks could be hidden from aerial spotters by

smoke-screens.

 

The result was fog-gas, which was being used by both sides in the most

modern fashion when, their own unit wiped out and themselves wandering

aimlessly in the general direction of the American rear, Sergeant Coffee

and Corporal Wallis stumbled upon an American pill-box with its small

garrison lying dead. For forty miles in one direction and perhaps thirty

in the other, the vapor lay upon the earth. It was being blown by the

wind, of course, but it was sufficiently heavier than air to cling to

the ground level, and the industries of two nations were straining every

nerve to supply the demands of their respective armies for its material.

 

The fog-bank was nowhere less than a hundred feet thick--a cloud of

impalpable particles impenetrable to any eye or any camera, however

shrewdly filtered. And under that mattress of pale opacity the tanks

crawled heavily. They lurched and rumbled upon their deadly errands,

uncouth and barbarous, listening for each other by a myriad of devices,

locked in desperate, short-range conflict when they came upon each

other, and emitting clouds of deadly vapor, against which gas-masks were

no protection, when they came upon opposing infantry.

 

* * * * *

 

The infantrymen, though, were few. Their principal purpose was the

reporting of the approach or passage of tanks, and trenches were of no

service to them. They occupied unarmed little listening-posts with field

telephones, small wireless or ground buzzer sets for reporting the enemy

before he overwhelmed them. They held small pill-boxes, fitted with

anti-tank guns which sometimes--if rarely--managed to get home a shell,

aimed largely by sound, before the tank rolled over gun and gunners

alike.

 

And now Sergeant Coffee and Corporal Wallis groped about in that

blinding mist. There had been two systems of listening-posts hidden in

it, each of admittedly little fighting value, but each one deep and

composed of an infinity of little pin-point posts where two or three men

were stationed. The American posts, by their reports, had assured the

command that all enemy tanks were on the other side of a certain

definite line. Their own tanks, receiving recognition signals, passed

and repassed among them, prowling in quest of invaders. The enemy tanks

crawled upon the same grisly patrol on their own side.

 

But two miles of the American front had suddenly gone silent. A hundred

telephones had ceased to make reports along the line nearest the enemy.

As Coffee and Wallis stumbled about the little pill-box, looking for

some inkling of the way in which the original occupants of the small

strong-point had been wiped out, the second line of observation-posts

began to go dead.

 

Now one, now another abruptly ceased to communicate. Half a dozen were

in actual conversation with their sector headquarters, and broke off

between words. The wires remained intact. But in fifteen nerve-racking

minutes a second hundred posts ceased to make reports and ceased to

answer the inquiry-signal. G.H.Q. was demanding explanations in crisp

accents that told the matter was being taken very seriously indeed. And

then, as the officer in command of the second-line sector headquarters

was explaining frenziedly that he was doing all any man could do, he

stopped short between two words and thereafter he, also, ceased to

communicate.

 

Front-line sector headquarters seemed inexplicably to have escaped

whatever fate had overtaken all its posts, but it could only report that

they had apparently gone out of existence without warning. American

tanks, prowling in the area that had gone dead, announced that no enemy

tanks had been seen. G-81, stumbling on a pill-box no more than ten

minutes after it had gone silent, offered to investigate. A member of

her crew, in a gas-mask, stepped out of the port doorway. Immediately

thereafter G-81's wireless reports stopped coming in.

 

* * * * *

 

The situation was clearly shown in the huge tank that had been built to

serve as G.H.Q. That tank was seventy feet long, and lay hidden in the

mist with a brood of other, smaller tanks clustered near it, from each

of which a cable ran to the telephones and instruments of the greater

monster. Farther off in the fog, of course, were other tanks, hundreds

of them, fighting machines all, silent and motionless now, but

infinitely ready to protect the brain of the army.

 

The G.H.Q. maneuver-board showed the battle as no single observer could

ever have seen it. A map lay spread out on a monster board, under a

pitiless white light. It was a map of the whole battlefield. Tiny sparks

crawled here and there under the map, and there were hundreds of little

pins with different-colored heads to mark the position of this thing and

that. The crawling sparks were the reported positions of American tanks,

made visible as positions of moving trains had been made visible for

years on the electric charts of railroads in dispatcher's offices. Where

the tiny bulbs glowed under the map, there a tank crawled under the fog.

As the tank moved, the first bulb went out and another flashed into

light.

 

The general watched broodingly as the crawling sparks moved from this

place to that place, as varicolored lights flashed up and vanished, as a

steady hand reached down to shift tiny pins and place new ones. The

general moved rarely, and spoke hardly at all. His whole air was that of

a man absorbed in a game of chess--a game on which the fate of a nation

depended.

 

He was thus absorbed. The great board, illuminated from above by the

glaring bulb, and speckled with little white sparks from below by the

tiny bulbs beneath, showed the situation clearly at every instant. The

crawling white sparks were his own tanks, each in its present position.

Flashing blue sparks noted the last report of enemy tanks. Two staff

officers stood behind the general, and each spoke from time to time into

a strapped-on telephone transmitter. They were giving routine orders,

heading the nearest American patrol-tanks toward the location of the

latest reported enemies.

 

* * * * *

 

The general reached out his hand suddenly and marked off an area with

his fingers. They were long fingers, and slender ones: an artist's

fingers.

 

"Our outposts are dead in this space," he observed meditatively. The use

of the word "outposts" dated him many years back as a soldier, back to

the old days of open warfare, which had only now come about again.

"Penetration of two miles--"

 

"Tank, sir," said the man of the steady fingers, putting a black pin in

position within that area, "let a man out in a gas-mask to examine a

pill-box. The tank does not report or reply, sir."

 

"Gas," said the general, noting the spot. "Their new gas, of course. It

must go through masks or sag-paste, or both."

 

He looked up to one of a row of officers seated opposite him, each man

with headphones strapped to his ears and a transmitter before his lips,

and each man with a map-pad on his knees, on which from time to time he

made notations and shifted pins absorbedly.

 

"Captain Harvey," said the general, "you are sure that dead spot has not

been bombarded with gas-shells?"

 

"Yes, General. There has been no artillery fire heavy enough to put more

than a fraction of those posts out of action, and all that fire, sir,

has been accounted for elsewhere."

 

The officer looked up, saw the general's eyes shift, and bent to his map

again, on which he was marking areas from which spotting aircraft

reported flashes as of heavy guns beneath the mist.

 

"Their aircraft have not been dropping bombs, positively?"

 

A second officer glanced up from his own map.

 

"Our planes cover all that space, sir, and have for some time."

 

"They either have a noiseless tank," observed the general meditatively,

"or...."

 

The steady fingers placed a red pin at a certain spot.

 

"One observation-post, sir, has reopened communication. Two infantrymen,

separated from their command, came upon it and found the machine-gun

crew dead, with gas-masks adjusted. No tanks or tracks. They are

identified, sir, and are now looking for tank tracks or shells."

 

The general nodded emotionlessly.

 

"Let me know immediately."

 

* * * * *

 

He fell back to the ceaseless study of the board with its crawling

sparks and sudden flashes of light. Over at the left, there were four

white sparks crawling toward a spot where a blue flash had showed a

little while since. A red light glowed suddenly where one of the white

sparks crawled. One of the two officers behind the general spoke

crisply. Instantly, it seemed, the other three white sparks changed

their direction of movement. They swung toward the red flash--the point

where a wireless from the tank represented by the first white flash had

reported, contact with the enemy.

 

"Enemy tank destroyed here, sir," said the voice above the steady

fingers.

 

"Wiped out three of our observation posts," murmured the general, "His

side knows it. That's an opportunity. Have those posts reoccupied."

 

"Orders given, sir," said a staff officer from behind. "No reports as

yet."

 

The general's eyes went back to the space two miles wide and two miles

deep in which there was only a single observation-post functioning, and

that in charge of two strayed infantrymen. The battle in the fog was in

a formative stage, now, and the general himself had to watch the whole,

because it was by small and trivial indications that the enemy's plans

would be disclosed. The dead area was no triviality, however. Half a

dozen tanks were crawling through it, reporting monotonously that no

sign of the enemy could be found. One of the little sparks representing

those tanks abruptly went out.

 

"Tank here, sir, no longer reports."

 

The general watched with lack-luster eyes, his mind withdrawn in

thought.

 

"Send four helicopters," he said slowly, "to sweep that space. We'll see

what the enemy does."

 

One of the seated officers opposite him spoke swiftly. Far away a

roaring set up and was stilled. The helicopters were taking off.

 

* * * * *

 

They would rush across the blanket of fog, their vertical propellers

sending blasts of air straight downward. For most of their sweep they

would keep a good height, but above the questionable ground they would

swoop down to barely above the fog-blanket. There their monstrous screws

would blow holes in the fog until the ground below was visible. If any

tanks crawled there, in the spaces the helicopters swept clear, they

would be visible at once and would be shelled by batteries miles away,

batteries invisible under the artificial cloud-bank.

 

No other noises came through the walls of the monster tank. There was a

faint, monotonous murmur of the electric generator. There were the

quiet, crisp orders of the officers behind the general, giving the

routine commands that kept the fighting a stalemate.

 

The aircraft officer lifted his head, pressing his headphones tightly

against his ears, as if to hear mores clearly.

 

"The enemy, sir, has sent sixty fighting machines to attack our

helicopters. We sent forty single-seaters as escort."

 

"Let them fight enough," said the general absently, "to cause the enemy

to think us desperate for information. Then draw them off."

 

There was silence again. The steady fingers put pins here and there. An

enemy tank destroyed here. An American tank encountered an enemy and

ceased to report further. The enemy sent four helicopters in a wide

sweep behind the American lines, escorted by fifty fighting planes. They

uncovered a squadron of four tanks, which scattered like insects

disturbed by the overturning of a stone. Instantly after their

disclosure a hundred and fifty guns, four miles away, were pouring

shells about the place where they had been seen. Two of the tanks ceased

to report.

 

The general's attention was called to a telephone instrument with its

call-light glowing.

 

"Ah," said the general absently. "They want publicity matter."

 

The telephone was connected to the rear, and from there to the Capital.

A much-worried cabinet waited for news, and arrangements were made and

had been used, to broadcast suitably arranged reports from the front,

the voice of the commander-in-chief in the field going to every

workshop, every gathering-place, and even being bellowed by

loud-speakers in the city streets.

 

* * * * *

 

The general took the phone. The President of the United States was at

the other end of the wire, this time.

 

"General?"

 

"Still in a preliminary stage, sir," said the general, without haste.

"The enemy is preparing a break-through effort, possibly aimed at our

machine-shops and supplies. Of course, if he gets them we will have to

retreat. An hour ago he paralyzed our radios, not being aware, I

suppose, of our tuned earth-induction wireless sets. I daresay he is

puzzled that our communications have not fallen to pieces."

 

"But what are our chances?" The voice of the President was steady, but

it was strained.

 

"His tanks outnumber ours two to one, of course, sir," said the general

calmly. "Unless we can divide his fleet and destroy a part of it, of

course we will be crushed in a general combat. But we are naturally

trying to make sure that any such action will take place within

point-blank range of our artillery, which may help a little. We will cut

the fog to secure that help, risking everything, if a general engagement

occurs."

 

There was silence.

 

The President's voice, when it came, was more strained still.

 

"Will you speak to the public, General?"

 

"Three sentences. I have no time for more."