Astounding Stories of Super-Science 19

Astounding Stories of Super-Science 19

There were little clickings on the line, while the general's eyes

returned to the board that was the battlefield in miniature. He

indicated a spot with his finger.

 

"Concentrate our reserve-tanks here," he said meditatively. "Our

fighting aircraft here. At once."

 

The two spots were at nearly opposite ends of the battle field. The

chief of staff, checking the general's judgment with the alert suspicion

that was the latest addition to his duties, protested sharply.

 

"But sir, our tanks will have no protection against helicopters!"

 

"I am quite aware of it," said the general mildly.

 

He turned to the transmitter. A thin voice had just announced at the

other end of the wire, "The commander-in-chief of the army in the field

will make a statement."

 

* * * * *

 

The general spoke unhurriedly.

 

"We are in contact with the enemy, have been for some hours. We have

lost forty tanks and the enemy, we think, sixty or more. No general

engagement has yet taken place, but we think decisive action on the

enemy's part will be attempted within two hours. The tanks in the field

need now, as always, ammunition, spare tanks, and the special supplies

for modern warfare. In particular, we require ever-increasing quantities

of fog-gas. I appeal to your patriotism for reinforcements of material

and men."

 

He hung up the receiver and returned to his survey of the board.

 

"Those three listening-posts," he said abruptly, indicating a place near

where an enemy tank had been destroyed. "Have they been reoccupied?"

 

"Yes, sir. Just reported. The tank they reported rolled over them,

destroying the placement. They are digging in."

 

"Tell me," said the general, "when they cease to report again. They

will."

 

He watched the board again and without lifting his eyes from it, spoke

again.

 

"That listening-post in the dead sector, with the two strayed

infantrymen in it. Was it reported?"

 

"Not yet, sir."

 

"Tell me immediately it does."

 

The general leaned back in his chair and deliberately relaxed. He

lighted a cigar and puffed at it, his hands quite steady. Other

officers, scenting the smoke, glanced up enviously. But the general was

the only man who might smoke. The enemy's gases, like the American ones,

could go through any gas-mask if in sufficient concentration. The tanks

were sealed like so many submarines, and opened their interiors to the

outer air only after that air had been thoroughly tested and proven

safe. Only the general might use up more than a man's allowance for

breathing.

 

* * * * *

 

The general gazed about him, letting his mind rest from its intense

strain against the greater strain that would come on it in a few

minutes. He looked at a tall blond man who was surveying the board

intently, moving away, and returning again, his forehead creased in

thought.

 

The general smiled quizzically. That man was the officer appointed to I.

I. duty--interpretative intelligence--chosen from a thousand officers

because the most exhaustive psychological tests had proven that his

brain worked as nearly as possible like that of the enemy commander. His

task was to take the place of the enemy commander, to reconstruct from

the enemy movements reported and the enemy movements known as nearly as

possible the enemy plans.

 

"Well, Harlin," said the general, "Where will he strike?"

 

"He's tricky, sir," said Harlin. "That gap in our listening-posts looks,

of course, like preparation for a massing of his tanks inside our lines.

And it would be logical that he fought off our helicopters to keep them

from discovering his tanks massing in that area."

 

The general nodded.

 

"Quite true," he admitted. "Quite true."

 

"But," said Harlin eagerly. "He'd know we could figure that out. And he

may have wiped out listening posts to make us think he was planning just

so. He may have fought off our helicopters, not to keep them from

discovering his tanks in there, but to keep them from discovering that

there were no tanks in there!"

 

"My own idea exactly," said the general meditatively. "But again, it

looks so much like a feint that it may be a serious blow. I dare not

risk assuming it to be a feint only."

 

He turned back to the board.

 

"Have those two strayed infantrymen reported yet?" he asked sharply.

 

"Not yet, sir."

 

* * * * *

 

The general drummed on the table. There were four red flashes glowing at

different points of the board--four points where American tanks or

groups of tanks were locked in conflict with the enemy. Somewhere off

in the enveloping fog that made all the world a gray chaos, lumbering,

crawling monsters rammed and battered at each other at infinitely short

range. They fought blindly, their guns swinging menacingly and belching

lurid flames into the semi-darkness, while from all about them dropped

the liquids that meant death to any man who breathed their vapor. Those

gases penetrated any gas-mask, and would even strike through the

sag-pastes that had made the vesicatory gases of 1918 futile.

 

With tanks by thousands hidden in the fog, four small combats were kept

up, four only. Battles fought with tanks as the main arm are necessarily

battles of movement, more nearly akin to cavalry battles than any other

unless it be fleet actions. When the main bodies come into contact, the

issue is decided quickly. There can be no long drawn-out stalemates such

as infantry trenches produced in years past. The fighting that had

taken place so far, both under the fog and aloft in the air, was

outpost skirmishing only. When the main body of the enemy came into

action it would be like a whirlwind, and the battle would be won or lost

in a matter of minutes only.

 

The general paid no attention to those four conflicts, or their possible

meaning.

 

"I want to hear from those two strayed infantrymen," he said quietly, "I

must base my orders on what they report. The whole battle, I believe,

hinges on what they have to say."

 

He fell silent, watching the board without the tense preoccupation he

had shown before. He knew the moves he had to make in any of three

eventualities. He watched the board to make sure he would not have to

make those moves before he was ready. His whole air was that of waiting:

the commander-in-chief of the army of the United States, waiting to hear

what he would be told by two strayed infantrymen, lost in the fog that

covered a battlefield.

 

* * * * *

 

The fog was neither more dense nor any lighter where Corporal Wallis

paused to roll his pre-war cigarette. The tobacco came from the gassed

machine-gunner in the pill-box a few yards off. Sergeant Coffee, three

yards distant, was a blurred figure. Corporal Wallis put his cigarette

into his mouth, struck his match, and puffed delicately.

 

"Ah!" said Corporal Wallis, and cheered considerably. He thought he saw

Sergeant Coffee moving toward him and ungenerously hid his cigarette's

glow.

 

Overhead, a machine-gun suddenly burst into a rattling roar, the sound

sweeping above them with incredible speed. Another gun answered it.

Abruptly, the whole sky above them was an inferno of such tearing noises

and immediately after they began a multitudinous bellowing set up.

Airplanes on patrol ordinarily kept their engines muffled, in hopes of

locating a tank below them by its noise. But in actual fighting there

was too much power to be gained by cutting out the muffler for any minor

motive to take effect. A hundred aircraft above the heads of the two

strayed infantrymen were fighting madly about five helicopters. Two

hundred yards away, one fell to the earth with a crash, and immediately

afterward there was a hollow boom. For an instant even the mist was

tinged with yellow from the exploded gasoline tank. But the roaring

above continued--not mounting, as in a battle between opposing patrols

of fighting planes, when each side finds height a decisive advantage,

but keeping nearly to the same level, little above the bank of cloud.

 

Something came down, roaring, and struck the earth no more than fifty

yards away. The impact was terrific, but after it there was dead silence

while the thunder above kept on.

 

Sergeant Coffee came leaping to Corporal Wallis' side.

 

"Helicopters!" he barked. "Huntin' tanks an' pill-boxes! Lay down!"

 

He flung himself down to the earth.

 

Wind beat on them suddenly, then an outrageous blast of icy air from

above. For an instant the sky lightened. They saw a hole in the mist,

saw the little pill-box clearly, saw a huge framework of supporting

screws sweeping swiftly overhead with figures in it watching the ground

through wind-angle glasses, and machine-gunners firing madly at dancing

things in the air. Then it was gone.

 

"One o' ours," shouted Coffee in Wallis' ear. "They' tryin' to find th'

Yellows' tanks!"

 

* * * * *

 

The center of the roaring seemed to shift, perhaps to the north. Then a

roaring drowned out all the other roarings. This one was lower down and

approaching in a rush. Something swooped from the south, a dark blotch

in the lighter mist above. It was an airplane flying in the mist, a

plane that had dived into the fog as into oblivion. It appeared, was

gone--and there was a terrific crash. A shattering roar drowned out even

the droning tumult of a hundred aircraft engines. A sheet of flame

flashed up, and a thunderous detonation.

 

"Hit a tree," panted Coffee, scrambling to his feet again. "Suicide

club, aimin' for our helicopter."

 

Corporal Wallis was pointing, his lips drawn back in a snarl.

 

"Shut up!" he whispered. "I saw a shadow against that flash! Yeller

infantryman! Le's get 'im!"

 

"Y'crazy," said Sergeant Coffee, but he strained his eyes and more

especially his ears.

 

It was Coffee who clutched Corporal Wallis' wrist and pointed. Wallis

could see nothing, but he followed as Coffee moved silently through the

gray mist. Presently he too, straining his eyes, saw an indistinct

movement.

 

The roaring of motors died away suddenly. The fighting had stopped, a

long way off, apparently because the helicopters had been withdrawn.

Except for the booming of artillery a very long distance away, firing

unseen at an unseen target, there was no noise at all.

 

"Aimin' for our pill-box," whispered Coffee.

 

They saw the dim shape, moving noiselessly, halt. The dim figure seemed

to be casting about for something. It went down on hands and knees and

crawled forward. The two infantrymen crept after it. It stopped, and

turned around. The two dodged to one side in haste. The enemy

infantryman crawled off in another direction, the two Americans

following him as closely as they dared.

 

He halted once more, a dim and grotesque figure in the fog. They saw him

fumbling in his belt. He threw something, suddenly. There was a little

tap as of a fountain pen dropped upon concrete. Then a hissing sound.

That was all, but the enemy infantryman waited, as if listening....

 

* * * * *

 

The two Americans fell upon him as one individual. They bore him to the

earth and Coffee dragged at his gas-mask, good tactics in a battle where

every man carries gas-grenades. He gasped and fought desperately, in a

seeming frenzy of terror.

 

They squatted over him, finally, having taken away his automatics, and

Coffee worked painstakingly to get off his gas-mask while Wallis went

poking about in quest of tobacco.

 

"Dawggone!" said Coffee. "This mask is intricate."

 

"He ain't got any pockets," mourned Wallis.

 

Then they examined him more closely.

 

"It's a whole suit," explained Coffee. "H-m.... He don't have to bother

with sag-paste. He's got him on a land diving-suit."

 

"S-s-say," gasped the prisoner, his language utterly colloquial in spite

of the beady eyes and coarse black hair that marked him racially as of

the enemy, "say, don't take off my mask! Don't take off my mask!"

 

"He talks an' everything," observed Coffee in mild amazement. He

inspected the mask again and painstakingly smashed the goggles. "Now,

big boy, you take your chance with th' rest of us. What' you doin'

around here?"

 

The prisoner set his teeth, though deathly pale, and did not reply.

 

"H'm-m...." said Coffee meditatively. "Let's take him in the pill-box

an' let Loot'n't Madison tell us what to do with him."

 

They picked him up.

 

"No! No! For Gawd's sake, no!" cried the prisoner shrilly. "I just

gassed it!"

 

* * * * *

 

The two halted. Coffee scratched his nose.

 

"Reckon he's lyin', Pete?" he asked.

 

Corporal Wallis shrugged gloomily.

 

"He ain't got any tobacco," he said morosely. "Let's chuck him in first

an' see."

 

The prisoner wriggled until Coffee put his own automatic in the small of

his back.

 

"How long does that gas last?" he asked, frowning. "Loot'n't Madison

wants us to report. There's some fellers in there, all gassed up, but we

were in there a while back an' it didn't hurt us. How long does it

last?"

 

"Fur-fifteen minutes, maybe twenty," chattered the prisoner. "Don't put

me in there!"

 

Coffee scratched his nose again and looked at his wrist-watch.

 

"A'right," he conceded, "we give you twenty minutes. Then we chuck you

down inside. That is, if you act real agreeable until then. Got anything

to smoke?"

 

The prisoner agonizedly opened a zipper slip in his costume and brought

out tobacco, even tailor-made cigarettes. Coffee pounced on them one

second before Wallis. Then he divided them with absorbed and scrupulous

fairness.

 

"Right," said Sergeant Coffee comfortably. He lighted up. "Say, you, if

y' want to smoke, here's one o' your pills. Let's see the gas stuff.

How' y' use it?"

 

Wallis had stripped off a heavy belt about the prisoner's waist and it

was trailing over his arm. He inspected it now. There were twenty or

thirty little sticks in it, each one barely larger than a lead pencil,

of dirty gray color, and each one securely nested in a tube of

flannel-lined papier-mache.

 

"These things?" asked Wallis contentedly. He was inhaling deeply with

that luxurious enjoyment a tailor-made cigarette can give a man who had

been remaking butts into smokes for days past.

 

"Don't touch 'em," warned the prisoner nervously. "You broke my goggles.

You throw 'em, and they light and catch fire, and that scatters the

gas."

 

* * * * *

 

Coffee touched the prisoner, indicating the ground, and sat down,

comfortably smoking one of the prisoner's cigarettes. By his air, he

began to approve of his captive.

 

"Say, you," he said curiously, "you talk English pretty good. How'd you

learn it?"

 

"I was a waiter," the prisoner explained. "New York. Corner Forty-eighth

and Sixth."

 

"My Gawd!" said Coffee. "Me, I used to be a movie operator along there.

Forty-ninth. Projection room stuff, you know. Say, you know Heine's

place?"

 

"Sure," said the prisoner. "I used to buy Scotch from that blond feller

in the back room. With a benzine label for a prescription?"

 

Coffee lay back and slapped his knee.

 

"Ain't it a small world?" he demanded. "Pete, here, he ain't never been

in any town bigger than Chicago. Ever in Chicago?"

 

"Hell," said Wallis, morose yet comfortable with a tailor-made

cigarette. "If you guys want to start a extra war, go to knockin'

Chicago. That's all."

 

Coffee looked at his wrist-watch again.

 

"Got ten minutes yet," he observed. "Say, you must know Pete Hanfry--"

 

"Sure I know him," said the enemy prisoner, scornfully. "I waited on

him. One day, just before us reserves were called back home...."

 

In the monster tank that was headquarters the general tapped his fingers

on his knees. The pale white light flickered a little as it shone on the

board where the bright sparks crawled. White sparks were American tanks.

Blue flashes were for enemy tanks sighted and reported, usually in the

three-second interval between their identification and the annihilation

of the observation-post that had reported them. Red glows showed

encounters between American and enemy tanks. There were a dozen red

glows visible, with from one to a dozen white sparks hovering about

them. It seemed as if the whole front line were about to burst into a

glare of red, were about to become one long lane of conflicts in

impenetrable obscurity, where metal monsters roared and rumbled and

clanked one against the other, bellowing and belching flame and ramming

each other savagely, while from them dripped the liquids that made their

breath mean death. There were nightmarish conflicts in progress under

the blanket of fog, unparalleled save perhaps in the undersea battles

between submarines in the previous European war.

 

* * * * *

 

The chief of staff looked up; his face drawn.

 

"General," he said harshly, "it looks like a frontal attack all along

our line."

 

The general's cigar had gone out. He was pale, but calm with an iron

composure.

 

"Yes," he conceded. "But you forget that blank spot in our line. We do

not know what is happening there."

 

"I am not forgetting it. But the enemy outnumbers us two to one--"

 

"I am waiting," said the general, "to hear from those two infantrymen

who reported some time ago from a listen-post in the dead area."

 

The chief of staff pointed to the outline formed by the red glows where tanks were battling.