by Isaac Asimov
Puzzled, Hunter kept careful watch on all the soldiers. A couple of them held their rifles on their prisoners, but the rest had turned their attention to the booming artillery ahead. Since the shells were not landing nearby, Hunter did not feel that his team members were in immediate danger, but he had to be ready to move if any of the soldiers became more belligerent — and if the shells landed closer.
Hunter had certainly not expected their welcome to be so hostile. At the very least, he had expected his story to be plausible enough to receive some consideration. When Hunter had first heard the tension in Leutnant Mohr’s voice, he had guessed that the artillery barrage and the coming battle were the reason. Then he had seen Leutnant Mohr’s sudden reaction to MC 4’s description. It obviously meant something to him, but Hunter did not know what. All he could do now was wait and look for an opportunity to find out.
Hunter’s sensitized hearing brought him more complex sounds of battle every minute. The steady rumble of thousands of tanks now mixed with the heavy pounding of artillery. Over the German radio band, men were shouting orders all along the lines.
Hunter did not take his eyes off the soldiers around him and his team, even when the armored car pulled up to a large barbed wire pen. The soldiers opened the back and jumped out, gesturing for the team to follow. Then the soldiers hustled them through the gate and left them inside the pen. A few men inside glanced at them, but most gazed to the east, where billows of gray smoke rose over the battlefield.
22
STEVE STUMBLED INTO the pen, repeatedly shoved from behind by one of the soldiers. As soon as they had locked the gate behind him, however, he saw that the team was together and unhurt. Right now that was good enough.
“Hey, Hunter,” said Steve. “Look at the crowd in here. Maybe MC 4 is in here someplace. What if they grabbed him when he showed up and just threw him in?”
“Just as they did with us,” said Judy. “That’s a good possibility. We should look.”
“I am looking,” said Hunter. “However, the crowd is dense. Everyone is standing together. I cannot see most people well enough to recognize them.” He turned to his team members. “We can move into the crowd in a moment. First I want to say this. I fear we may have to return again to our own time. If the artillery shelling comes near this area, I shall have no choice. So we must remain close together.”
“Maybe we really messed up,” said Judy. “A big battle in the industrial age is no time to look for MC 4. I thought we’d be talking to some officers, not just locked up and abandoned.”
“Me, too,” said Jane. “Hunter, do you want to go right back and pick another time? In all this confusion, I doubt anybody would notice if we just vanished again.”
“I agree with you about that,” said Hunter. “That gives us slightly greater flexibility. We can afford to wait a little longer before giving up.”
“You mean you want to stay longer?” Steve was startled. “Why?”
“The continuing danger is that Wayne Nystrom will beat us to MC 4, even in the midst of the battle. However, my greatest fear is that MC 4 will be hit by gunfire or something worse, damaging him to the point of being unrecognizable. That will make locating him very difficult — perhaps impossible. Coming back after the battle could be useless, and we would never be able to reassemble Mojave Center Governor.”
“I don’t see what we can do here,” said Judy. “And if MC 4 gets blown into junk, then he won’t change history.”
“You forgot about that nuclear explosion,” said Steve. “Even if he’s in two thousand pieces that just lie around under the soil undisturbed until our time, we know his remains explode when the time comes.”
“Oh — yeah.” Judy nodded tightly.
Hunter turned to her. “What happens here today?”
“Let me think. The Germans are on the defensive. They’re about to experience their first defeat on the Russian front. During the next six weeks, they’ll be driven back until they can stabilize the line in mid-January.” She shook her head.
“What’s wrong?” Hunter asked.
“Today in particular, I just don’t remember much detail. The Germans obviously get the worst of it.” She hesitated. “Half a million prisoners in their control, like these right here, will die in the first three months of winter from exposure.”
Steve could hear the sounds of artillery and tanks drawing closer. The weapons of this time required that the battle would be fought at a fairly close distance. The ground shook with the thundering of artillery.
“Let’s walk up and join the group,” said Hunter. “If we’re lucky, MC 4 is right here.”
The other prisoners had little interest in them, as they continued to watch the smoke rising in the distance. The team slowly merged into the crowd. Hunter, because of his height, could see much more clearly than his team members. When Steve saw motion off to one side of the pen, outside the barbed wire, he turned to look.
A troop of German infantry was marching a long line of other prisoners past the pen, away from the front lines. As the filthy, ragged prisoners streamed past, a German officer stopped at the gate to their pen. The guards nodded and opened the gate.
“Hunter,” Steve said quickly, tapping him on the arm. “Look.”
Hunter turned. At the same time, one of the guards blew a whistle and began waving for everyone to come out. Another guard began barking orders.
“Judy, what are they doing?” Hunter asked. “Where are they taking all these people?”
“All the POWs are being marched to the rear right away, so they can’t be a threat of any kind in the day’s operations. These guys were probably held in other pens similar to this one.”
Steve watched everyone. The crowd of prisoners around them was already moving toward the gate. Since the marching prisoners were being taken west, away from the growing battle, none of the prisoners in the pen hesitated.
“We shall go with them,” said Hunter. “Long enough to find out if MC 4 is here somewhere, or in that other group. If we see no sign of him, we can return to our time and plan again. At least we are leaving the combat behind.”
Steve nodded. He waited patiently as the crowd shuffled forward, slowed by the bottleneck at the gate. Again, Hunter led the way and Steve brought up the rear.
At the gate, some prisoners had been pulled out of the line by men in different uniforms. These prisoners were standing at gunpoint just to one side of the gate. Hunter passed out of the gate, as did Jane. Then one of the guards grabbed Judy’s arm and jerked her aside, out of the line.
Before Steve could respond, another guard leveled his rifle at Steve and sharply moved the point toward Judy. Suddenly moving very cautiously, Steve stepped over to her.
Hunter turned and saw them from outside the barbed wire.
“Hey! What are you doing with them?” Hunter demanded.
One of the guards slammed the butt of his rifle into Hunter’s abdomen. The big robot, unhurt, bent forward slightly at the impact, pretending to react. “Why are you keeping them?”
“They’re going to execute us,” Judy shouted through the wires.
“Shut up, Jewish pig,” said one of the men, spitting on her. “All you subhumans will be eliminated before we go.”
Steve slammed into him, knocking him off balance. “Judy, run! Get outside the gate!” He pushed her forward. Hunter could not take the team back while local people stood among them, within the range of the sphere, or else he would take them, too.
Suddenly, in the line of prisoners marching behind Hunter to the west, Steve saw MC 4, his head down like the others. Steve pointed. “Hunter! There he is!” He started to yell MC 4’s name, then realized that it would alert the component robot to the pursuit. So far, in the noise and confusion all around, MC 4 had not realized anyone was concerned with him.
Something hard slammed into the back of Steve’s head and his legs crumpled, dropping him to the frozen ground with a thump. For a moment, he was dazed. He heard shouts an
d felt the pounding of feet on the ground around him, but could not think clearly.
Wayne and Ishihara had both seen Leutnant Mohr’s armored car pull up to the gate. Wayne had hoped the Leutnant was coming back for them. When Wayne had seen Hunter and his team, of course, he and Ishihara had hidden in the crowd of prisoners. They stayed behind Hunter as the prisoners moved toward the gate of the pen.
Now, however, they had both been herded close to the gate with everyone else. Ahead of him, Ishihara had almost reached the opening. Wayne remained caught behind the bottleneck, near Steve and Judy and the guards holding them. Then Wayne heard Steve shout and point to MC 4, who was about to march right in front of the gate among the troop of prisoners.
Wayne felt a rush of excitement. He, too, pointed to MC 4. “Ishihara, grab him!”
Ishihara was still trapped in the crowd, however. As they shuffled forward with everyone else, Wayne heard a uniformed man tell the woman whom Steve had called Judy that he was going to kill her, Steve, and the others who had been taken aside. Then the man spat on her.
Wayne was shocked. Somehow, until this moment, the people around them had been sort of abstract, unreal. He knew that the combat and stress of war was horrible, but he had not expected to see prisoners simply executed out of hand like this. For the first time, he realized how ignorant he was of this time and these people.
Hunter had moved just outside the gate and beyond the barbed wire, but he responded instantly. Flinging aside one startled German guard, he plunged directly into the barbed wire, stretching it forward with his weight, ignoring how it tore into his clothes. He reached through the wires for Judy and Steve, but two more guards threw themselves on him, forcing him to turn and fight them off.
In the same instant, Ishihara pushed people away from him just inside the barbed wire. He slammed into the guard who had spit on Judy, knocking his rifle to the ground. The immediacy of the danger to people from his own time had forced Ishihara to act under the First Law.
The other prisoners quickly drew away from the gate, hoping to avoid getting hurt if the Germans began firing their weapons. Suddenly the open gateway was in front of Wayne. MC 4 was only a few yards away.
Wayne looked back at Hunter and Ishihara, who were struggling with a knot of German guards and other soldiers. More soldiers had gathered around them with their rifles aimed. They hesitated to shoot for fear of hitting their own comrades.
Steve pushed himself up, stumbling into a standing position. Judy took his arm to help him up. She frantically pulled him toward the open gate.
The angry, impatient guard who had spit on Judy had drawn his sidearm. With deliberate care, he raised it toward the back of Judy’s head.
Forgetting MC 4, Wayne threw himself against the man’s legs. The gun went off, firing into the ground. Both men fell, tripping some of the troops who had been shuffling in a crazed huddle with Hunter and Ishihara.
Steve blinked, staggering dizzily, and looked around. Judy was dragging him by the arm. Ishihara flung German soldiers away from himself. They fell against the semicircle of armed soldiers surrounding them. Some fired as they went down, but their bullets went wild into the air.
As Judy pushed Steve out the open gate, Ishihara threw himself on the ground over Wayne, protecting him. Then he reached into his tunic, apparently the same one he had worn in ancient Germany. Wayne and Ishihara vanished.
Jane had grabbed MC 4’s arm and was trying to pull him after her. He was not coming, but she had slowed him down. Hunter hurled the soldiers around him to the ground just as Steve and Judy reached him. Then Hunter stretched out one long arm and yanked MC 4 closer. Jane came with him, still holding the small robot’s arm. Steve saw Hunter reach inside his heavy overcoat.
An instant later, Steve found himself back in the familiar, crowded darkness of the sphere. No one spoke while Hunter opened it, jumped out, and pulled MC 4 into Room F-12 after him. Judy got out next; this time she and Jane had to help Steve climb out slowly. He was still dizzy.
“Hunter, Steve needs to be checked by a medical robot,” said Jane. “He’s hurt. I can’t tell if it’s serious or not.”
“I am radioing for one now,” said Hunter. He turned to MC 4. “Can you hear us speak?”
“Yes.”
“Jane, please give him direct instructions.”
“Do not make any attempt to get away or shut off your receptivity to our instructions under the Second Law,” Jane said, looking over her shoulder. “Stay right where you are until we give you further orders. Acknowledge.”
“I agree,” said MC 4.
Jane turned to Daladier, who still stood by the door. “Do not allow MC 4 to leave our custody. If he makes some interpretation of the First Law to justify it, he might still make an attempt to escape.”
“Acknowledged,” said Daladier.
Steve sank onto the couch. His head throbbed painfully, but he could think more clearly now, and followed the conversation around him. “Did we leave right in the middle of everybody?”
“Yes,” said Hunter. “However, I believe that in the crowd and confusion, with the battle coming near, stories of our disappearance will not be taken seriously.”
“The sad truth is, most of those prisoners died soon afterward in captivity,” said Judy. “Their stories about our disappearance, if they told them, had nowhere to go but to each other.”
“The German soldiers and guards may have lived to tell the story,” said Jane. “A few of them, anyway.”
“Some may have survived to talk about it,” said Judy. “Under the Nazi regime, I feel that anyone who said he lost custody of prisoners who vanished magically would not be taken seriously — he might even be punished for offering such a flimsy excuse. In a system that thrives on fear, the soldiers might have chosen not to repeat what they saw.”
“Our concern is a real one,” said Hunter. “If possible, we must not disappear in front of witnesses during future missions.”
“How did we happen to come across MC 4?” Steve muttered, looking up at him.
Jane turned to MC 4. “Tell us how you came to be a prisoner of the Germans.”
“I attempted to sneak up on the German lines and move past them,” said MC 4. “However, dawn was breaking by the time I had crossed the open territory and German sentries saw me. They trained their weapons on me and the Third Law required that I not take risks with them. They put me in a prison pen without interrogation. Then some soldiers came and began emptying each pen. They escorted us with weapons and told us which way to go. We marched from one pen to another down the rear of the lines until we reached the one where you were.”
“Lucky for us,” said Steve.
“Actually, chance factors were quite low,” said Hunter. “Under the pressure of impending combat, the Germans were imprisoning all strangers and marching them together out of the area. We were all caught in the same net. If we had not spotted him when we did, we would have had to return to our own time. However, in a later trip to complete the mission, we would have still have found him in the group marching to the rear.”
“What do you think?” Jane grinned at MC 4.
“I agree.”
“Steve,” said Hunter. “How are you feeling?”
“I think I’ll be okay.”
“With your permission, I shall contact the medical robot again and have him meet us at MC Governor’s office. Are you well enough to ride there?”
“Yeah.”
“Daladier, please remain here and continue to watch for Dr. Wayne Nystrom and R. Ishihara,” said Hunter.
“Of course.”
“Jane, please instruct MC 4,” said Hunter.
“You will remain with us as we move through Mojave Center to the office of MC Governor,” said Jane. “You will still cooperate with us fully and make no attempt to escape us or to interfere with our return to the office.”
“Acknowledged,” said MC 4.
Hunter led his team out. Steve gratefully allowed Jane to
take his arm and support him. Hunter had a Security detail waiting to drive them back.
Outside the office of MC Governor, a medical robot was already waiting for them, holding his small black case of equipment.
“I am R. Cushing,” said the medical robot. “My ‘patient is named Steve, I have been told.”
“That’s me.”
Cushing stared at Steve for a long moment. “My specialized vision reveals no fracture. You will be fine.” He took a pressure gun from his black case and held it against the side of Steve’s neck. It popped against his skin. “This is a mild painkiller. My infrared vision tells me that the inflammation is localized and stable. For the swelling, I recommend that you apply ice.”
“Okay,” said Steve. “Thanks.”
“I shall leave you,” said Cushing. “I am permanently on call, so contact me if the situation changes. I do not expect it will.”
“Thank you,” said Hunter.
Cushing departed.
Jane came lip and gave Steve a quick hug. “I always knew you had a hard head.”
Judy walked up on the other side and gave him a hug, too. “That guy clobbered you after you knocked down the one who spit on me. He was about to shoot both of us. I’ll never forget that.”
Steve smiled wryly. “I won’t either.”
“I feel so bad about Ivana, too,” said Judy. “She was totally helpless, and completely innocent. I wonder what happened to her.”
Jane gave Judy a quick hug. “Whatever it was, it happened to her long before we ever went back and met her.”
Judy nodded.
“Those two regimes have disturbed me deeply,” said Hunter. “The earlier societies we have visited were primitive in their values because of their early place in social evolution. However, the Nazi regime and the Soviet Union were barbaric throwbacks. Their values were more primitive than those of many societies which had preceded them.”
“And they had the power of the industrial age to use in their atrocities.” Judy straightened, her voice firm.
