by John Dalmas
That trip too he repeated, till he'd transferred some 300 half-kilo blocks, and had started back for more. By that time it was fully night, and moonless. When he'd almost reached the graveled road, he heard footsteps walking in the direction of the schloss. Motionless, he listened while the person passed, invisible to him in the moonless, tree-shadowed dark. Even after he could no longer hear the sounds, he waited a couple of minutes before following. Sound could betray him.
But he did take something for granted. In the entryway he opened the door—to find two SS men coming toward him down the corridor, talking! One glanced toward him, stopped and stared, then swore. "That damned Josef! The fool left the door wide open! If Mueller or Lipanov find it like that, it will ruin everything!"
"It could have been the woman."
"That's beside the point! It's Josef's responsibility!" He strode toward Macurdy, who backed away, holding his breath. Grabbing the door, the soldier closed it in his face. Chagrined, Macurdy climbed the dozen steps to the yard and retreated to the forest's edge. The person who'd passed on the road had been "the woman," it seemed to him: some farmer's wife or daughter whose husband or boy friend was fighting in the Ukraine, or sitting in a bunker on the Channel coast. A woman feeling desperate with life, and perhaps short of money.
How long would she be in there? He'd planned to take twice as much TNT to the hill, then perhaps start packing it up the ridge, if it wasn't too damned dark.
But hell, even with his tiny pen light, it was too dark. The best tiling to do was resign himself to patience. He still had a few days.
Or did he? What if they decided to transfer the Voitar early?
With a muttered curse, Macurdy moved back to the entryway and down the stairs, to try the door. It was not barred, and he opened it a few slow inches. No one was in the corridor, so he slipped inside, moved quickly to the nearest magazine, picked the lock and entered. Again he blocked the space beneath the door and turned on the light. Working faster than before, he filled the bag with blocks, shouldered it, turned the light out again, removed the towel, and listened hard with an ear against the door. The party room was just a few yards away across the corridor.
Listened with worry and self-anger. What he'd just done was foolhardy, had endangered his whole mission for no adequate reason. The best thing to do now, he told himself, was catch a few hours sleep behind the stack of TNT.
But hearing nothing, and driven by a sense of urgency, he held his breath, opened the door, and peered out. No one. Quickly he stepped into the corridor, closed the door silently behind him, and without locking it, went to the entryway and left. Then, crossing the lawn, he hiked to his stash by the ridge road, where he unloaded the bag and considered. He decided to go back for one more load, but not go inside till after the woman came out. When she left, the guardsmen would surely go up to bed.
But waiting for her by the entryway, the question again became how many she'd serve, and how long it would take. He'd assumed there was only Josef and the two he'd seen, but there might be more. And would some demand seconds?
After a bit he grew sleepy. Rather than fight it, he drank as much water as he comfortably could, then went a few yards into the forest and lay down, ordering his mental alarm clock to waken him in two hours. If it failed, his bladder would remind him.
* * *
He awoke as intended, rolled quickly to his feet, slung the pack frame on one shoulder, relieved his bladder, then padded to the schloss. The corridor was clear, and listening at the party room door, he heard nothing. Working steadily, he packed two more loads of TNT to his stash in the woods, before stopping to rest.
Was it enough? Was it possible to destroy the gate with any amount? "Wrong damn question, Macurdy," he muttered. The operating assumption had to be that it was possible. And as for how much it would take, the only rational response was to use all he could while still doing it that day, that morning at 0857, when the weather office had said the moon would cross the local meridian. The explosive had to be there at the gate, waiting—he had to be there waiting—before it opened.
And it was doubtful he could even lug what he had up the mile of truck trail to the gate between dawn and 0857. Yet to start lugging it now, in utter darkness, would be stupid; even coming a slow, groping 200 feet up the ridge road had involved stumbling, straying off the rocky road, even bumping into trees. And he would not risk it all by using the pen light. He'd wait for dawn.
Still driven by the urgency of his mission, he went back to the schloss and hauled more TNT to his new stack beneath the Voitar's wing, till he had 1,800 blocks stacked there—nearly a metric ton. For good measure, he loaded another sackful to take with him, then returned to his stash in the forest. There, with the deadly burden still on his shoulders, he sat back against his pack to doze, with the strict admonition to be on his feet at the first dawnlight that reached him through the trees.
* * *
He half-wakened various times over the next hours, till he became aware that the darkness was thick gray, not black, and he could make out, vaguely, the tree trunks around him. With a lurch he got to his knees, then his feet, found the rough road, and started uphill for the gate. Twice he stumbled, not quite falling, but charged hard nonetheless, jogging on the easy stretches, sweating profusely in the chill morning. By the time he reached the crest, it was light enough to see that the SS had no guards there. He recognized the gate itself by memory, and by a psychic buzz so faint, he'd have missed it had he not been concentrating.
He unloaded his burden, not taking time to stack or cloak it, then shouldered the pack frame again and started back down at a lope, not concerned with falling or the noise of his descent. Subsequent trips were even faster, Macurdy drawing energy from the Web of the World to keep up his furious pace. The last load was less than full, and he made it in a shambling run, driven by the fear that the gate would activate before he arrived, yet unwilling to leave any of the explosive behind. When he arrived at the loose heap of TNT at the gate, he dumped his load, then ran back to the place he'd chosen earlier in passing. Facing the heap, he looked at his watch: 0854.
Within a minute he felt activation begin, and concentrated on the TNT 120 feet away—close enough that he could see it clearly, sharply, but far enough that the gate wouldn't suck him in. If he didn't time it right—if it blew too soon—it seemed unlikely he'd survive. That was an awfully big stack of explosive.
He raised both arms in front of him, palms forward, level with his shoulders, saw the margins of the heap begin to waver, blur, made himself hold back for brief seconds. Then the heap shimmered, and he pumped plasma spheres at it, almost too swift to see in the morning light.
Abruptly the field collapsed and was gone, as if it hadn't been, leaving not even a psychic echo. There was no shock wave, and to his eyes, nothing had changed—except that the heap had disappeared. There wasn't even a hole where it had been.
He collapsed on the ground, and for several minutes lay exhausted, unseeing, numb with relief. He'd timed it right.
But there was nothing resembling jubilation. For one thing, he couldn't be sure—not really sure—that he'd actually destroyed the gate. He might simply have interrupted it, or altered the timing again.
At any rate, the more dangerous task remained.
35
Points of View
Greszak had long since lost any real interest in the training project. Life had grown monotonous, boring, to the point that all he looked forward to—all any of them looked forward to—was returning to Hithmearc. Next to the boredom, the worst thing about this place was being cut off from the hive mind—except for the fragment consisting of their own small group. One got used to it, but only to a degree.
For him, the high point had come to be the spring birds caroling in the new day—he'd been getting up at daybreak to hear them—and the low point, this week, had been the antics of the human guardsmen bouncing and shouting on the lawn in some grotesque rite of spring. Watching through a wind
ow, he wished them ill as they filed back into the building.
At first, training Germans in magic had seemed a challenge, but had become essentially a defeat. In Hithmearc, training humans in magic had never even been contemplated, of course; first it was undesirable, and secondly, few showed talent. Even in the two races that had—the Saanit and the Ylver—the talent had been quite limited. As a precaution, both peoples had been dispersed—destroyed so far as possible. The remnants of the Saanit had fled into the vast harsh taiga east of the grasslands. While the Ylver who'd survived—the island Ylver—had fled west across the ocean sea, an escape his people would never forgive.
The Germans had no more talent than usual for humans: A few showed one or another ability, but always minor. Still, it had been interesting for a while to see what could be made of them. Some had gained modestly, but soon reached a limit, perhaps because they lacked the hive mind. The most successful had been the one named Montag—amusing to be named for a calendar day—but even Montag had reached his limit well below adept.
Nonetheless it had heartened Landgraf and Kupfer to send him off against their enemies, and in fact, Montag should prove useful to them. But overall, as a magician he was no more powerful than the Ylvin magicians of ancient record.
Meanwhile Greszak's staff went through the motions of teaching, while looking forward to going home. The Crown Prince would arrive through the gate shortly, bringing a circle of seven adepts and a power master, and after two days of acclimation and briefing, would send them with the Germans to some meaningless place on the northwest coast, to repel invaders.
And when they'd been sent, the Germans would complete their part of the bargain. They'd already delivered detailed diagrams for building large sailing vessels—their most vital contribution—and had tried to deliver powerful explosives. Now they would deliver tools, models, and less utilitarian artifacts, along with a medicine they claimed to have against seasickness.
It would be interesting to go north themselves, he and his staff, and in an early stage of planning, it had been considered. But the Crown Prince had decided otherwise. There were risks, and they all were masters, well beyond the level needed by the Germans; adepts would serve nicely.
A sensation touched Greszak: The gate had begun its daily activation. He felt its energy rising, shaping. In perhaps half an hour, the Crown Prince and the team he was bringing would arrive at the schloss on foot, their disorientation and queasiness repaired by the run.
A bird landed on the window sill and looked in at Greszak. The baron didn't know the names of Bavarian birds, but this one looked rather like the speckled thrush at home. He grinned at it, and it cocked its head as if to say, "Who are you?"
"I am Baron Greszak," the Voitu replied, "and who are you?" Its answer was to flirt its tail and fly. Probably, Greszak thought, it had a nest close by, perhaps under the eaves.
He returned his attention to the gate energy. Activation involved frequency acceleration, and he sensed it culminate. Then, after the brief and customary waver, it stabilized—and at that same moment cut sharply off.
Greszak's face froze. Aborted! What had happened to the gate?
His consternation lasted only a moment. Nothing was wrong with the gate itself. Their spell had simply collapsed. It had been inevitable, but Kurqôsz's calculations had predicted eleven lunar cycles before it happened. After a period of dangerous irregularity, it should settle on its natural timing—midnights nearest the full moon. Meanwhile he would salvage the situation on this side; in the absence of the new team, he'd fulfill the agreement using his staff, himself acting as power master. To panic a human army would be no challenge at all. More like entertainment.
* * *
Colonel Landgraf had been disturbed at Greszak's news. The Crown Prince's magnetism and power had more than made up for his arrogance, and the colonel had felt assured by his presence. But Greszak had promised that the project would be carried out despite the mishap, and Landgraf did not doubt him.
The buzzer on his desk rasped.
"What is it, Kupfer?"
"There is a local farmer to see you, sir, about a matter that seems quite important. I believe he should tell you himself."
Landgraf frowned. What would a local farmer have to say that Kupfer couldn't take care of? "Send him in, Kupfer."
A moment later the farmer entered, a middle-aged man of middle-height and sturdy build, in work clothes, his battered felt hat clutched in a thick-fingered hand. In the other was a large paper bag. His bald skull was ivory above sun-reddened cheeks, his eyebrows yellow-brown, the eyes beneath them blue. In all, he resembled many of the farmers in Landgraf's home district, though Landgraf knew that when the man spoke, his dialect would spoil the resemblance.
"Guten Tag, Herr Oberst," the farmer said apologetically, and bobbed an almost bow. "I have found something the colonel may wish to know about."
"Let us see it, sir."
The farmer opened the paper bag and took out a small orange parachute perhaps seventy centimeters across, with a long, orange sack attached, both of some silk-like material.
"It was caught on the wire fence at the north end of my pasture woods," he said. "I do not know how it came there, but it seems to have been deposited forcibly. See how it was torn!" He spread the material to show a ragged tear.
"And in its sack I found this." He drew from it what the colonel recognized as either fuse or detonation cord, depending on its origin. The farmer laid it on the colonel's desk, and reached in the bag again. "And these," he added Taking out a drawstring pouch, he emptied it carefully into his hand, and gently laid a handful of brass capsules beside the fuse. "I was a sapper in the Kaiser's army," he said. "These are detonators, as for dynamite."
Landgraf's face went wooden. What did this mean? "In your pasture woods?" he said. "Let me see the parachute."
The farmer handed it to him. Numbers were stenciled along its edge, and in small block letters, "U.S. ARMY."
Lieber Gott! Landgraf breathed, and looked up at the farmer. "You are to be commended for bringing this to me. What is your name?"
"Gruber, Herr Oberst. Wilhelm Gruber."
Landgraf turned his gaze to the door and stood up. "Hauptsturmführer Kupfer!" he called, "see that Herr Gruber receives a proper commendation for this!"
Kupfer had been waiting by the door, and looked in. "Yes sir, Colonel."
Landgraf extended a hand. After brief hesitation, the farmer took it, and they shook. "You are dismissed, Herr Gruber."
"Yessir, colonel sir," Gruber replied, did a rusty about face, and left. Kupfer closed the door behind him, then Landgraf keyed the intercom to the watch room and snapped an order. In scarcely a minute, Lieutenant Lipanov arrived with three men. The colonel showed him what the farmer had brought.
"I do not know what this means," Landgraf said, "hut you and I are going to visit the magazines."
They marched from his office then, not through Kupfer's, but directly into the hallway, downstairs into the cellar corridor, and down the corridor to the magazines. A corporal unlocked the first magazine door and opened it. To Landgraf's eyes, everything seemed all right.
"Search it!" he ordered, and the three enlisted men entered, all of them for the first time. A minute later the corporal looked apologetically at the commanding officer.
"Sir, I find nothing out of order!"
"Good. Let us look at the other."
They moved to the next room. It too passed.
Landgraf stood frowning. "Are there ways into the cellar from outside?"
"Yes sir, colonel," Lipanov said. "At the end is a back entryway, with a door that is kept barred And the coal bunker off the furnace room has a small door for a coal chute, that a man could crawl through."
"Have them both checked immediately. And Lieutenant, I want two men on guard here at the magazines. At all times. Also one in the furnace room, and double the guards at the front entrance. This finding may have nothing at all to do with us, but we must
take no chances."
Then he turned and left the cellar, muttering about phoning Munich. He'd tell them once again that they really needed to remove this high explosive. Since the aliens could not use it, it served no purpose here.
* * *
Lipanov watched him leave. Was that all? he wondered. Three guards in the cellar and two more at the entrance? Who had dropped that parachute? Americans, obviously. And to whom? A demolitions team, of course. As for why: This was the only military installation for many kilometers, so obviously the schloss was the target, the schloss or perhaps the aliens. Yet the colonel was treating the affair as if they were dealing with ordinary criminals. What he should do was request a battalion be sent to hunt them down.
Well. Perhaps he intended to; he'd mumbled something about Munich. And after all, he did wear the Iron Cross, the old one that really meant something. At some time in his life he'd been a warrior and a hero.
