fast...." He retched. "Limited-effectbomb; everything within two-meter circle burned to nothing; outsidethat, great but not unendurable heat. Shut your eyes when you throw it.Flash almost blinding." He dropped his cigar and turned almost green inthe face. Walter had a drink poured and handed it to him. "Uggh! Thanks,Walter." He downed it.
"Peculiar sort of thing for a non-violent people to manufacture," Bensonsaid, looking at the bomb and then putting it in his jacket pocket.
"It isn't a weapon. Industrial; we use it in mining. I used plenty ofthem, in Walter's iron mines."
He nodded again. "Where do I stand, now?" he asked.
"Right over here." Gregory placed him in front of a small panel withthree buttons. "Press the middle one, and step back into the small redcircle and stand perfectly still while the field builds up andcollapses. Face that way."
* * * * *
Benson drew his pistol and checked it; magazine full, a round in thechamber, safety on.
"Put that horrid thing out of sight!" Anthony gasped. "The ... the otherthing ... is what you want to use."
"The bomb won't be any good if some of his guards come in before thefield re-builds," Benson said.
"He has no guards. He lives absolutely alone. We told you...."
"I know you did. You probably believed it, too. I don't. And by the way,you're sending me forward. What do you do about the fact that atime-jump seems to make me pass out?"
"Here. Before you press the button, swallow it." Gregory gave him asmall blue pill.
"Well, I guess that's all there is," Gregory continued. "I hope...." Hisface twitched, and he dropped to the floor with a thud. Carl and Waltercame forward, dragged him away from the machine.
"Conditioning got him. Getting me, too," Walter said. "Hurry up, man!"
Benson swallowed the pill, pressed the button and stepped back into thered circle, drawing his pistol and snapping off the safety. The bluemist closed in on him.
* * * * *
This time, however, it did not thicken into blackness. It becameluminous, brightening to a dazzle and dimming again to a colored mist,and then it cleared, while Benson stood at raise pistol, as though on atarget range. He was facing a big desk at twenty feet, across athick-piled blue rug. There was a man seated at the desk, a white-hairedman with a mustache and a small beard, who wore a loose coat of someglossy plum-brown fabric, and a vividly blue neck-scarf.
The pistol centered on the v-shaped blue under his chin. Deliberately,Benson squeezed, recovered from the recoil, aimed, fired, recovered,aimed, fired. Five seconds gone. The old man slumped across the desk,his arms extended. Better make a good job of it, six, seven, eightseconds; he stepped forward to the edge of the desk, call that fifteenseconds, and put the muzzle to the top of the man's head, firing againand snapping on the safety. There had been something familiar about TheGuide's face, but it was too late to check on that, now. There wasn'tany face left; not even much head.
A box, on the desk, caught Benson's eye, a cardboard box with anenvelope, stamped _Top Secret! For the Guide Only!_ taped to it. Heholstered his pistol and caught that up, stuffing it into his pocket, inobedience to an instinct to grab anything that looked like intelligencematter while in the enemy's country. Then he stepped back to the spotwhere the field had deposited him. He had ten seconds to spare; somebodywas banging on a door when the blue mist began to gather around him.
* * * * *
He was crouching, the spherical plastic object in his right hand, histhumb over the button, when the field collapsed. Sure enough, right infront of him, so close that he could smell the very heat of it, was thebig tank with the red star on its turret. He cursed the sextet ofsanctimonious double-crossers eight thousand miles and fifty years awayin space-time. The machine guns had stopped--probably because theycouldn't be depressed far enough to aim at him, now; that was anotorious fault of some of the newer Pan-Soviet tanks--and he rockedback on his heels, pressed the button, and heaved, closing his eyes. Asthe thing left his fingers, he knew that he had thrown too hard. Hismuscles, accustomed to the heavier cast-iron grenades of his experience,had betrayed him. For a moment, he was closer to despair than at anyother time in the whole phantasmagoric adventure. Then he was hit, withphysical violence, by a wave of almost solid heat. It didn't smell likethe heat of the tank's engines; it smelled like molten metal, withundertones of burned flesh. Immediately, there was a multiple explosionthat threw him flat, as the tank's ammunition went up. There were noscreams. It was too fast for that. He opened his eyes.
The turret and top armor of the tank had vanished. The two massivetreads had been toppled over, one to either side. The body had collapsedbetween them, and it was running sticky trickles of molten metal. Heblinked, rubbed his eyes on the back of his hand, and looked again. Ofall the many blasted and burned-out tanks, Soviet and UN, that he hadseen, this was the most completely wrecked thing in his experience. Andhe'd done that with one grenade....
* * * * *
At that moment, there was a sudden rushing overhead, and an instantlater the barrage began falling beyond the crest of the ridge. He lookedat his watch, blinked, and looked again. That barrage was due at 0550;according to the watch, it was 0726. He was sure that, ten minutes ago,when he had looked at it, up there at the head of the ravine, it hadbeen twenty minutes to six. He puzzled about that for a moment, anddecided that he must have caught the stem on something and pulled itout, and then twisted it a little, setting the watch ahead. Then,somehow, the stem had gotten pushed back in, starting it at the newsetting. That was a pretty far-fetched explanation, but it was the onlyone he could think of.
But about this tank, now. He was positive that he could rememberthrowing a grenade.... Yet he'd used his last grenade back there at thesupply dump. He saw his carbine, and picked it up. That silly blackouthe'd had, for a second, there; he must have dropped it. Action was open,empty magazine on the ground where he'd dropped it. He wondered,stupidly, if one of his bullets couldn't have gone down the muzzle ofthe tank's gun and exploded the shell in the chamber.... Oh, the hellwith it! The tank might have been hit by a premature shot from thebarrage which was raging against the far slope of the ridge. He resethis watch by guess and looked down the valley. The big attack would bestarting any minute, now, and there would be fleeing Commies coming upthe valley ahead of the UN advance. He'd better get himself placedbefore they started coming in on him.
He stopped thinking about the mystery of the blown-up tank, a solutionto which seemed to dance maddeningly just out of his mental reach, andfound himself a place among the rocks to wait. Down the valley he couldhear everything from pistols to mortars going off, and shouting in threeor four racial intonations. After a while, fugitive Communists begancoming, many of them without their equipment, stumbling in their hasteand looking back over their shoulders. Most of them avoided the mouthof the ravine and hurried by to the left or right, but one little clump,eight or ten, came up the dry stream-bed, and stopped a hundred andfifty yards from his hiding-place to make a stand. They were Hindus,with outsize helmets over their turbans. Two of them came ahead,carrying a machine gun, followed by a third with a flame-thrower; theothers retreated more slowly, firing their rifles to delay pursuit.
* * * * *
Cuddling the stock of his carbine to his cheek, he divided a ten-shotburst between the two machine-gunners, then, as a matter of principle,he shot the man with the flame-thrower. He had a dislike forflame-throwers; he killed every enemy he found with one. The othersdropped their rifles and raised their hands, screaming: "Hey, Joe! Hey,Joe! You no shoot, me no shoot!"
A dozen men in UN battledress came up and took them prisoner. Bensonshouted to them, and then rose and came down to join them. They wereBritish--Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders, advertising the fact byinconspicuous bits of tartan on their uniforms. The subaltern in commandlooked at him and nodded.
&n
bsp; "Captain Benson? We were warned to be on watch for your patrol," hesaid. "Any of the rest of you lads get out?"
Benson shrugged. "We split up after the attack. You may run into acouple of them. Some are locals and don't speak very good English. I'vegot to get back to Division, myself; what's the best way?"
"Down that way. You'll overtake a couple of our walking wounded. If youdon't mind going slowly, they'll show you the way to advance dressingstation, and you can hitch a ride on an ambulance from there."
Benson nodded. Off on the left, there was a flurry of small-arms fire,ending in yells of "Hey, Joe! Hey, Joe!"--the World War IV version of"Kamarad"!
* * * * *
His company was a
Hunter Patrol Page 4
