“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The general watched with lack-luster eyes, his mind withdrawn in thought.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.”
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 abou
t 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?”
The Third Murray Leinster Page 20
