In an age of starships and planet-searing weapons, an old Anglo-Saxon warrior’s boast will still resound as bravely under fire: “Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens.”
THE QUESTION
The alien official entered the office of his superior with a film case under his arm.
“Well?” asked the superior.
“I’m sorry,” said the official, setting his film case down on what passed for a desk among those of that race. “Professionally, I have to report failure.”
“Failure?” echoed the superior, coming upright suddenly behind the desk. He was a pale, smooth-skinned creature, very humanoid as far as shape went, but, of course, completely hairless and possessing one extra joint in each leg. “What kind of failure?”
“May I demonstrate?” asked the official, gesturing toward the film case.
“Of course.”
The official opened his case, extracted the film and fed it into a projector built into the superior’s desk.
“These films,” he said, as he worked, “were made by concealed perceptors inside a human redoubt that had been especially prepared with them. The men you will see pictured on them were deliberately driven toward this refuge and the films have been edited down to relevant moments and whenever possible built up by interpretive material by our psychology department. They represent absolutely the best we can do in this direction and they demonstrate our problem.”
He touched a switch. One wall of the office seemed to dissolve. The two aliens found themselves apparently looking into the interior of a concrete-walled cave. It was furnished with human-style bunks, a table and some plain metal chairs. A wrecked cupboard sagged against a far wall, and a sink next to it had its water tap dangling and apparently useless. The image shifted point of view slightly and they looked out through one of the square ports in the front wall of the redoubt onto a bouldered slope falling away down into a little gully and rising beyond into a sharp, unscalable cliff at a distance of some three hundred meters. In the bed of the gully the boulders were enormous.
“This redoubt,” said the official, “was on the far west wing of the original human line of defense, on Otraca IV, where we and they had both established colonies and where we both came into contact and conflict originally. The redoubt was abandoned early, in the first human retreat. By the way, I might mention that for all practical purposes, Otraca IV is ours, the only humans left there now being such as you are about to see. The perceptors were installed and the men driven toward it for the purpose of making this particular film and answering a specific question—now you see them approaching . . .”
The point of view in the projector was suddenly stepped up by magnification. Framed on the screen there appeared four men as they emerged from among the enormous boulders of the gully and approached the small stream running down the gully at a distance of some sixty meters from the redoubt.
The men were obviously in the last stages of exhaustion. The best part of them seemed to be their clothing—jackets and trousers and boots of some nearly indestructible plastic. All of them were almost ridiculously overarmed with weapons of various kinds, all were bearded and gaunt-faced, and one—who leaned heavily on the shoulder of another—seemed wounded in the leg.
The leading man fell belly-down at the edge of the stream and began to drink from the running water in long gulps like a tired horse. He was a big man with light red, curly hair and the freckled face of a boy. The dark, bright barrel of his gun glinted in the afternoon sunlight. The other three came up and fell down at the stream alongside him. The second man to reach the water was lean and dark as a strip of meat hung and dried in the sun. He seemed too frail for the weight of the weapons he was strapped about with, but he moved with a quick nervous energy. The third and fourth were, respectively, a tall, slim blond young man and the oldest of the four, a large-boned lanky individual of middle age with thinning hair and a face prematurely cut into deep lines of character. It was this oldest and last that dragged his left leg as if it was of little use to him.
The large redhead, having been the first to reach the water and drink, was the first to raise his head. He got to his feet with the sun at his shoulder, throwing his long distorted shadow off to his right over the bouldered ground and, shading his eyes with one hand, gazed up to the redoubt. He was still looking as, one by one, the other three rose to join him. Their voices came distantly to the ears of the perceptors in the redoubt.
“What about it?” This was the lean, youthful blond who had been helping the injured man.
“One of ours,” replied the redhead. “No doubt of that. And looks empty. Could be booby-trapped, though.”
They stood for a second.
“Want to try it?” asked the redhead.
“Why not?” said the lean, dark one standing beside him—and without waiting to discuss it further, he waded out into the stream toward the redoubt. The others followed him.
They approached the cave in a staggered line. The dark one led, the redhead behind him, and the remaining pair coming together, the one assisting the other as they had to the creek. The dark one came up within a dozen feet of the entrance and stopped. He waited for the redhead to come up and join him. They stood framed by the half-open door.
“What about it?” the dark one asked. The redhead shrugged, and, reaching to the holster that dragged down his belt on the right side, drew out a heavy-handled, four-hundred-shot magazine automatic. He fired and the door slammed back to the impact of the explosive slug, revealing the redoubt’s abandoned interior. Dust, disturbed by the explosion and the door’s action, fumed out through the entrance like light smoke.
“Good enough, Tyler?” asked the redhead, grinning down a little lopsidedly at the dark man, and reholstering his sidearm.
“It’ll do,” said Tyler, dryly. He went forward cautiously, however, slinging his rifle around to a ready position before him as he stepped through the entrance. The redhead turned to wait for the other two.
“Can we . . . go in?” gasped the wounded man, as he came up.
“Enoch’s about done up, Win,” said the other.
“It’s all right,” said Win, running a big hand wearily through his red mop of hair. “I could tell it when we came up. You get a feeling after a while.” He stood aside and let the wounded Enoch be supported through the entrance by the blond man. They went straight for the nearest bunk and Enoch collapsed upon its dust blankets.
Bringing up the rear, Win stopped for a second before closing the door to examine the spot where the slug from his automatic had exploded against it. Only a small bright spot marked the metal at that point. Win grunted with satisfaction, closing the heavy door behind him. He turned about.
“Where’s Tyler?” he asked. “Where’d he go, Paul?”
The blond answered, jerking his head in the direction of a dark entrance at the rear of the redoubt. He was bent over, straightening out Enoch’s wounded leg upon the bunk.
“He went back up the rathole.” He looked back down at the man on the bunk. “How’s that now, Enoch?”
“Let me rest for a while,” sighed Enoch. “Just let me lie still for a bit.”
Win turned back to check the inner bar-locks of the door. Then he went up and down the front wall of concrete, checking the ports and the metal shutters that could be slid across them. All worked well. Finished with this, he made a tour of the redoubt’s interior, sniffing as if to smell something past the damp-dustiness of its atmosphere. He stopped at the sink and played with the broken faucet. No stream of water came forth.
He turned to the cupboard, and rummaging around in it came down with a couple of empty plastic bottles and a large five-gallon tin that had evidently by its label once contained food concentrates.
“Canteens,” he said, carrying these items over to the two men at the bunk. Without a word, Paul unhooked his own canteen and gently detached the one on Enoch’s belt. He handed both over to Win.
There was a scraping noise from the dark aperture and Tyler emerged back into the dim light of the redoubt.
“Canteen,” said Win. Tyler took his off and came across the room to hand it over.
“Rathole’s blocked,” he said. “Rockfall—maybe an explosion, maybe natural. But blocked.”
“I figured as much,” said Win. He took his load of containers and went out the door. Tyler drifted across to one of the ports and watched the big man as he made his way down to the creek, filled with water all the motley assortments of objects he was burdened with, and brought them back. Before he returned, Win drank again.
“That’s good water,” he said, coming back into the redoubt and setting down his full containers on the table. He wiped his mouth as Tyler closed the door and locked it behind him. After he snicked the last bolt home, the dark man drifted across to the nearest port and took up a post there, his rifle at rest upon the thick ledge of the concrete sill.
“We can’t go on,” said Paul from the bunkside, “Enoch can’t make it any farther the way he is.”
“Sure,” said Win. He sat down on one of the chairs and it squeaked to his weight.
“You can leave me,” Enoch spoke from the shadow of the corner where his bunk stood. “I can go on on my own after a bit.”
“I’ll stay with you,” said Paul.
“Be a damn fool,” said Tyler, without turning his gaze from the gully beyond the open port. “Outside, we can still run. Here, we’re trapped.”
“I won’t leave Enoch,” said Paul. He turned toward Win. “How close behind us do you think they are?”
“Two hours, according to your watch,” replied the redhead with his eyes half-closed. “Give or take an hour.”
“I think we ought to bug out,” said Tyler, without turning.
“Go if you want,” said Paul, calmly.
“No,” said Enoch. “I don’t think—”
“Listen,” said Win, speaking up suddenly. “What’s the difference? We all got to rest. Maybe,” he grinned, “tomorrow’s our lucky day. Maybe they won’t catch up with us tonight. Also maybe they’re a small enough group so we can stand them off from here. They can’t get at us in this place as long as we stay buttoned up.”
“Artillery,” said Tyler from the port.
“On that rockpile?” asked Win. “Don’t make me laugh. You can hardly stand a body up straight, let alone a launcher. Also—you notice the armor on the front of this? Collapsed steel over three feet of concrete. It’d take atomics to get us out of here.”
“I still don’t like it,” said Tyler. “If only that rathole was still open for a way out.”
“So we’ve got one place less to watch.” The redhead’s voice was amused. “That’s the trouble with you civilians. You’re always trying to figure the situation. When you been fighting as long as I have you’ll know—you can’t ever figure it. You take a guess and hope for a happier deal tomorrow. That’s life, buddies.”
There was a momentary silence in the redoubt after he finished talking. Then Tyler spoke again, without moving, without changing the inflection of his voice.
“I’ll take first watch.”
“Second,” said Paul.
“And Enoch’s out of it,” said Win. “I’ll take third.” He walked across to an empty bunk, unbuckling his weapon’s belt as he went. Drawing the handgun from its holster, he lay down with it in his hand. He was almost instantly asleep.
* * *
END OF SAMPLE
Buy this Ebook to finish reading the above story.