Test of Fire (1982)

by Ben Bova

Slowly he walked down to the scene. Under the big tree the spotter Jay unmoving, blotches of red welling over his body, his legs crumpled beneath him, his face contorted. Alec turned and looked at the six men near the disassembled mortars. His stomach heaved.

  They were broken apart. Huge gaping wounds ripped through their grotesquely flung bodies.

  One of them had no face, only an oozing mass of red and gray. Flies buzzed over them.

  One of them was groaning. Alec turned his back and tottered away from the sight and smell. Everything was going blurry. Still, he could hear.

  "Please . . . please ..."

  "I'm sorry son, there's nothing I can do for you."

  A single shot.

  Alec leaned against the tree and threw up.

  After what seemed like hours, Russo came up beside him. "First time you've seen men killed." It was not a question.

  Alec mumbled, " First time . . . I've been responsible."

  "Okay . . . You take their weapons back to the truck. Take it slow and easy. You'll need to make a half-dozen trips. I'll bury them."

  "You'll . . . what?"

  With an almost bashful shrug, Russo said, "Someday somebody's going to kill me, and I wouldn't want to be left above ground to feed the maggotts."

  "But you killed them. I mean, we did."

  "Yep. And now they need burying." He paused a moment, then explained, "You kill your enemies when they're in a position to kill you. If they're running and weaponless, you let them run. If they're dead, you bury them. And you don't take prisoners unless you've got a good reason to."

  "Those are the rules of war here?"

  "The rules of survival."

  Alec nodded to show that he understood, even though he could not agree. He began to gather together the rifles and carbines that the dead men had left scattered on the ground. Russo took one of the corpses off along the tree line, carrying it in his arms almost tenderly.

  "Hey!" he suddenly called. "Come here!"

  Alec was running toward him instantly, slamming a fresh ammunition clip into his pistol as he moved.

  Russo had dropped the corpse at his feet. Hanging from the outstretched limb of a tree, dangling by his thumbs, was a ragged scarecrow of a kid, wide-eyed with pain and terror. His thumbs were swollen and blue. A filthy rag had been stuffed into his mouth. A long gash was oozing blood down one bare leg.

  Russo whipped a knife from his belt and cut the boy down, then pulled the gag from his mouth. He collapsed into the big redhead's arms.

  "Must've been a prisoner of the mortar crew's,"

  Russo said, "or one of the other gangs nearby."

  The kid's emaciated face was hollow-cheeked, his chin stubbly with the beginnings of a beard. He stared at the rifle slung over Russo's shoulder, then at Alec and his drawn pistol.

  "No, no ..." he whimpered.

  Russo loosened the ropes knotted over his thumbs as the kid winced with pain.

  "What do we do with him?" Alec asked. "What are your rules for this?"

  Holding the skinny youngster by his shoulders, Russo asked, "Can you stand?"

  The kid nodded and hobbled a few steps away from the big redhead. Russo shook his head and looked back at Alec. "He'll never make it by himself."

  "Please," the youngster whined. "Okay. Okay."

  "Can you talk?" Alec asked sharply. "What's your name? Why are you here?"

  "Ferret. Live here. In woods. They . . . caught me. Gonna kill me. Later. Slow."

  "No guns on him," Russo said. "Not even a knife."

  Studying the painfully thin youngster, Alec realized that they might both be the same age. This kid is just a runt, Alec thought. He must have gone through his whole life half-starved.

  Alec heard his own voice say, "We've got medical supplies in the trucks."

  Russo started to reply, but Ferret sank to his knees with a barely-suppressed groan.

  Frowning, Russo said to Alec, "You remember what I said about prisoners?"

  "I've got a good reason. He knows the territory around here. He could be useful to me."

  "Don't expect him to be grateful," Russo warned. "Don't trust him at all."

  But Alec stepped over to the emaciated young man and helped him to his feet. "Come on," he said. "We'll have that leg fixed in no time."

  When they got back to the airfield, the battle had long been over. Russo left Alec at the edge of the woods, saying he had to check his own men, and he would be back before sundown. Alec rode the truck back to the runway, with Ferret lying silent but wide-eyed at his side.

  Jameson eyed the wounded prisoner with obvious disdain, but gave orders to have his leg attended to. Then he gave Alec an account of the battle. "They kept melting back into the trees. We couldn't follow them in there with the trucks, so we just kept patrolling around the edge of the woods, squirting at them to keep them from getting any closer. They lobbed a lot of mortar rounds at us, but didn't do much damage with them."

  Two of the trucks had been clawed by shrapnel, but were still running. Several of the men were hurt, none seriously.

  Jameson peered into the woods, his face the image of a hunting hawk. "This man Russo is with your father, is he? Are they on our side, or what?"

  Shrugging tiredly, Alec replied, "Today they were on our side. I'm not sure of what happens next. Keep everyone on the alert. Post guards."

  "And your prisoner?"

  "Keep a guard on him at all times."

  "When does the shuttle come back for us?"

  "When I call it."

  Alec could see that Jameson was skeptical about that. But after a moment's hesitation, the big man simply said, "I'll set out the guards." He strode away, leaving Alec standing alone.

  He leaned back against the cab of the truck and surveyed the landscape. Out in the middle of the airfield lay the blackened smoking skeleton of the destroyed shuttle. The forest was silent now.

  Shadows were creeping across the open ground as the sun settled toward the west.

  Alec realized that they were completely alone on an alien, dangerous world.

  Chapter 16

  The sun had already sunk behind the trees when Will Russo appeared again. He walked alone out of the forest and toward the semicircle of trucks parked at the edge of the runway.

  Despite himself, Alec was glad to see the man.

  When Jameson told him that Russo was coming, Alec almost ran out to the guard perimeter to meet him.

  "You're not bedded down for the night yet, are you?" Will asked, right off.

  "No, not yet."

  "Good, good." He looked genuinely pleased.

  "We've made camp up on top of the first ridge," he waved vaguely in the general direction, "and I think it'd be a good idea for you to camp there with us."

  Alec said nothing.

  "What's left of those raiders are still skulking around here somewhere," Will explained, "and with our two forces camping together we'll be strong enough to discourage them from trying anything during the night. We'll both be able to sleep easier."

  My trucks and lasers and your experienced woods fighters, Alec thought. Nodding, he asked, "Can the trucks get up there?"

  "Oh, sure, I'll show you the trail."

  "All right." Alec turned and called for Jameson.

  Will grinned boyishly. "Fine. Wonderful. In union there is strength."

  The trail up to the top of the ridge was narrow and tricky. One of the trucks slipped in a rain-sliced gully alongside the barely-visible trail and it took nearly an hour to pull it out again. The men had to use primitive muscle power to lift the truck's rear wheels out of the foliage-choked gully. The other trucks' electric motors began to overheat when they tried to winch the stuck truck free.

  For Ferret, the ride was wonderful. He lay on the back of a trucks behind the laser mount. His leg no longer hurt. These strangers had given him hot food and wrapped his wound with clean strips of something that looked like cloth, yet felt oddly slick and slippery. They were treating him lik
e a king, and watched him carefully every minute.

  It was full night when Alec's force finally reached the top of the ridge. Riding perched on the cab of the lead truck, Alec saw a meager handful of men and women sitting quietly around an open fire. One of them was Angela.

  "Is this your whole group?" he wondered aloud to Will, who sat on the fender alongside the cab.

  "Oh no! We've got twice this many set out as guards. Didn't you see them as we came up the trail?"

  Alec shook his head, a gesture that was lost in the darkness.

  The trees thinned out at the top of the ridge; there was ample room to park the trucks in a circle around the perimeter of the camp. Alec told Jameson to have the men sleep on the trucks, and to have one man awake per truck at all times.

  "Are you sure one man per truck is enough?"

  Jameson asked quietly.

  They were standing far enough from the campfire so that none of Russo's men was in earshot.

  "What do you mean?" Alec asked.

  "I don't want to be an impolite guest," Jameson replied softly, hitching his thumbs in the ammo belt he had buckled across his hips, "but—well, why should these people be so helpful to us? Especially if they're the same guys who stole the fissionables. Why did they stick their necks out to help us drive the barbarians away, and why are they offering to share their camp and their food with us? It doesn't add up."

  Alec was forced to agree. "At least it's better than sitting down there in the open, alone. We don't have enough rations for more than another day or two."

  Jameson's hawk-eyed faced scanned the men sitting around the campfire. "Suppose what they're really interested in is getting these nice, shiny new trucks for themselves? It wouldn't be too difficult for them to slit our throats while we sleep."

  Somehow the picture of Will Russo murdering men in their sleep did not match in Alec's mind with what he had already seen of the man. Still . . .

  "All right. Tell the men to sleep in the cabs of the trucks. Button them up and open them for no one except a recognized member of our group."

  Jameson was silent for a moment. In the flickering light cast by the distant campfire it was impossible to read the expression on his face. At last he said, "Okay . . . but I still don't like this."

  "Things could be a lot better," Alec admitted.

  "But they could be a lot worse, too."

  "I suppose."

  "Keep somebody on the radio. The satellite ought to be in range sometime tonight."

  "Right."

  Alec walked slowly toward the campfire. Angela was sitting there. He saw her long hair gleaming like hammered gold in the firelight.

  The fire itself was strangely fascinating. Twisting, dancing, flickering hypnotically, the flames formed shapes and memories before his eyes. He stared at it, then realized that he was staring into the fire, deep inside the dancing flames, watching the logs glowing bright red and the flames licking up from them, orange and yellow and bluish and . . .

  "Hello. Had any dinner yet?"

  Alec pulled himself away from the hypnotic flames.

  "What?" He saw that Angela was looking up at him. "Dinner? No, not yet."

  "What's the matter? Are you okay?"

  "I'm all right." He hunkered down on the ground beside her. "It's just . . . I've never seen an open fire before. It's fascinating."

  "Oh. Yeah, I guess so."

  Alec saw that there was a blackened metal container rigged on a set of poles, hanging over the flames. Angela called it a pot, but it looked to Alec as if it had started life as a gasoline tank. Now it was cut down, its corner battered and dented.

  "Grab some stew and make yourself to home," she invited.

  Alec got up and bent over the pot. Hot fragrant steam bathed his face; the smell was enticing. A simmering liquid bubbled in there, lumpy dark shapes poking out of the seething surface.

  Thinking of all the injections and pills he had taken before leaving the satellite station, Alec stirred the concoction with his knife, then jabbed at one of the shapes. He held it at arm's length, dripping and smoking, as he squatted awkwardly on the ground beside Angela once more.

  "It won't hurt you," she laughed at him. "It was only a rabbit even when it was alive."

  "A rabbit?" It was the first time he had seen her laughing.

  With a nod, Angela asked, "Don't you have anything you can use for a plate? The stew's got plenty of good things in it: carrots and leeks and all sorts of herbs."

  "Um . . . this is fine. I've got a messkit back at the truck, but just let me taste . . ." He bit into the rabbit. Pain! Alec had never felt anything so hot inside his mouth. Coughing, gagging, burning, he finally swallowed the chunk whole.

  Angela was pounding him on the back, looking worried and shouting at him, "You want water? Are you okay?"

  "I'm fine," he croaked, eyes tearing. "My mouth is a mass of second-degree burns and there's a lump of dead rabbit stuck sideways in my guts, but otherwise I'm fine."

  The dozen people—mostly men—around the campfire were staring at him. But they quickly looked away and went back to their own conversations.

  Alec managed to down a few bites of the meat without further trouble, once Angela showed him how to blow on the chunks to cool them. He found that it was good. Good enough to make him want more.

  "I'll go find my mess kit." He started to get to his feet.

  "Don't bother," Angela said. "Here, use my plate. I'll wash it off, okay? Then you won't have to go all the way back to the trucks."

  She leaned forward to reach a small canteen of water that was resting on the ground near the fire.

  As she washed off the metal plate and spoon, Alec wondered, Why does she want to keep me away from the trucks?

  He ate in wary silence, thinking vaguely about how long the immunizations shots they had given him on the satellite would protect him from local microbes. The stew was hot and strong, spicier than anything he had ever tasted in his life. Angela offered him water in a metal cup.

  When he finished the meal he washed off the utensils himself and handed them back to her.

  "Is your mouth okay?" she asked, grinning.

  "I'll survive." In fact, with the hot meal inside him, Alec felt fine and strong. Except for the sunburn glowering on the back of his neck. And then, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he remembered everything else: the stolen fissionables, the attack, the loss of the shuttle, the fact that he and his remaining men were stranded a quarter-million miles from home.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. "I'd better be getting back to my men," he said to Angela, while a voice inside his head taunted, Failure! Failure!

  She got up with him and walked alongside. Alec realized that the only weapon he was carrying was his knife. Angela was completely unarmed.

  "Look." She pointed. The Moon was rising above the tree-fringed horizon. It was nearly full, bright and serene and glorious.

  Alec stared at it. The lights of the settlement's surface domes could not be seen against its whiteness.

  "What's it like?" Angela asked.

  "What?"

  "Living there ... on the Moon."

  "We don't live on it," he said. "We live in it, underground. You can't walk around in the open like this, you need a pressure suit and a helmet."

  "Why?"

  "There's no air."

  Her eyes widened for a split-second, then went crafty. "Now wait ... if there's no air, how can you live there?"

  So they sat on a convenient rock, watching the Moon climb higher into the night sky, playing tag with occasional drifting silvered clouds, and Alec explained about lunar life to her. She really doesn't know, he realized as he told her what a dazzling sight the Earth is. Before long he found himself watching her, instead of the Moon. In the soft light from his home her face seemed to float pale and beautiful against the darkness. Lord, she's beautiful!

  "This is the first time anyone's told me about these things," she sa
id, her voice excited. "Dad — I mean, your father, never wants to talk about living there."

  Alec felt his heart turn to ice.

  "Strange," she said, still smiling but with puzzlement in her voice now. "It's kind of hard for me to call him Dad now . . . knowing he's your father."

  "He never told you about the settlement?" Alec asked, his voice sounding cold and distant, even to himself.

  Angela shook her head. "He'd always change the subject when I'd ask about that. After a while, I guess I just stopped asking."

  Alec got to his feet. "I've got to check my men now. Good-night, Angela."

  "Oh." She sat there in surprised silence for a moment, then stood up beside him. "Well, goodnight, Alec." She turned and walked swiftly back toward the campfire.

  He didn't trust himself to say anything more, to call after her. So he tramped in the opposite direction, to the trucks. Disregarding his own orders, he slept out in the open on a stretch of mossy ground near the trucks. He wrapped himself in a plastic tarpaulin and laid his machine pistol by his side. It seemed to take hours for his eyes to close, and when he finally did sleep, he dreamed of his mother.

  Ferret slid off the back of the truck and tested his injured leg. It was all right. He could stand on it and walk. The food they had given him had made him strong again, and the leg would heal soon enough.

  He limped around the truck and saw Alec stretched out on the ground, the shiny pistol at his side. Ferret crouched so that the guard inside the next truck could not see him, and stared at the pistol. He could snatch it and be off into the woods. They would never find him, and he'd have a wonderful gun for himself.

  Dimly he remembered Billy-Joe and the others of the band who had been killed. And his mother, feeding him, crooning him to sleep when he was a baby. They coulda killed me, Ferret said to himself. He coulda killed me. But he didn't.

  The gun was an enormous temptation. But so was the food and medical care and wary but kind treatment these people had given him. I'll stay with them for a while, Ferret decided. This looks like a good gang to stay with. For now.

  Stealthily he climbed back onto the truck and went back to sleep.