Future Wars . . . and Other Punchlines

by Hank Davis

  “Phew,” said Bade. He picked up the Communications microphone. “What did General Rast say?”

  “Sir, he said, ‘I can’t reach the coast any faster than a day-and-a-half!’”

  “The coast!”

  “That’s what he said, sir.”

  “Did you get that message to him?”

  “Not yet, sir. We’re trying.”

  Bade switched off and tried to think. His army was stretched out like a rubber balloon. His headquarters machinery was falling apart fast. An epidemic was loose among his men and plainly spreading fast. The base was still secure. But without sane men to man it, the enemy could be expected to walk in any time.

  Bade’s eyes were watering. He blinked, and glanced around for some sane face in the sea of hysterically cheerful people. He spotted an alert-looking officer with his back against the wall and a chair leg in his hand. Bade called to him. The officer looked around.

  Bade said, “Do you know when Landing Force 3 is coming down?”

  “Sir, they’re coming down right now.”

  Bade stayed conscious long enough to watch the beginning of the enemy’s counteroffensive, and also to see the start of the exploding sickness spread through the landing site. He grimly summarized the situation to the man he chose to take over command.

  This man was the leader of Landing Force 3, a general by the name of Kottek. General Kottek was a fanatic, a man with a rough hypnotic voice and a direct unblinking stare. General Kottek’s favorite drink was pure water. Food was a matter of indifference to him. His only known amusements were regular physical exercise and the dissection of military problems. To hesitate to obey a command of General Kottek’s was unheard of. To bungle in the performance of it was as pleasant as to sit down in the open mouth of a shark. General Kottek’s officers were usually recognizable by their lean athletic appearance, and a tendency to jump at unexpected noises. General Kottek’s men were nearly always to be seen in a state of good order and high spirits.

  As soon as Bade, aching and miserable, summarized the situation and ordered Kottek to take over, Kottek gave a sharp precise salute, turned, and immediately began snapping out orders.

  Heavily armed troops swung out to guard the site. Military police forced wandering gangs of sick men back to their ships. The crews of Landing Force 3 divided up to bring the depleted crews of the other ships up to minimum standards. The ships’ damper units were turned to full power, and the outside power network and auxiliary damper units were disassembled and carried into the ships. Word came that a large enemy force had made an air-borne landing not far away. Kottek’s troops marched in good order back to their ships. The ships of all three landing forces took off. They set down together in the center of the largest mass of Rast’s encircled troops. The next day passed embarking these men under the protection of Kottek’s fresh troops and the ships’ dampers. Then the ships took off and repeated the process.

  In this way, some sixty-five percent of the surrounded men were saved in the course of the week. Two more landing forces came down. General Rast and a small body of guards were found unconscious partway up an unbelievably high hill in the west. The situation at this point became hopelessly complicated by the exploding sickness.

  This sickness, which none of the doctors were able to cure or even relieve, manifested itself in various forms. The usual form began by exhilarating the victim. In this state, the patient generally considered himself capable of doing anything, however foolhardy, and regardless of difficulties. This lasted until the second phase set in with violent contractions of the chest and a sudden out-rush of air from the lungs, accompanied by a blast like a gun going off. This second stage might or might not have complications such as digestive upset, headache, or shooting pains in the hands and feet. It ended when the third and last phase set in. In this phase the victim suffered from mental depression, considered himself a hopeless failure, and was as likely as not to try to end his life by suicide.

  As a result of this suicidal impulse there were nightmarish scenes of soldiers disarming other soldiers, which brought the whole invasion force into a state of quaking uncertainty. At this critical point, and despite all precautions, General Kottek himself began to come down with the sickness. With him, the usual exhilaration took the form of a stream of violent and imperative orders.

  Troops who should have retreated were ordered to fight to the death where they stood. Savage counter-attacks for worthless objectives were driven home “to the last drop of blood.” Because General Kottek ordered it, people obeyed without thought. The hysterical light in his eye was masked by the fanatical glitter that had been there to begin with. The general himself only realized what was wrong when his chest tightened up, his body tensed, and a racking concatenation of explosions burst from his chest. He immediately brought his body to the position of attention, and crushed out by sheer will a series of incipient tickling sensations way down in his throat. General Kottek handed the command over to General Runckel and reported himself to sick bay.

  Runckel, by this time, had recovered enough from the third phase to be untied and allowed to walk around with only two guards. As he had not fully recovered his confidence, however, he immediately went to see Bade.

  Bade’s illness took the form of nausea, cold hands and feet, and a sensation of severe pressure in the small of the back. Bade was lying on a cot when Runckel came in, followed by his two watchful guards.

  Bade looked up and saw the two guards lean warily against the wall, their eyes narrowed as they watched Runckel. Runckel paused at the foot of Bade’s bed. “How do you feel?” Runckel asked.

  “Except for yesterday and day before,” said Bade, “I never felt worse in my life. How do you feel?”

  “All right most of the time.” He cleared his throat. “Kottek’s down with it now.”

  “Did he know in time?”

  “No, I’m afraid he’s left things in a mess.”

  Bade shook his head. “Do we have a general officer who isn’t sick?”

  “Not in the top brackets.”

  “Who did Kottek hand over to?”

  “Me.” Runckel looked a little embarrassed. “I’m not sure I can handle it yet.”

  “Who’s in actual charge right now?”

  “I’ve got the pieces of our own staff and the staff of Landing Force 2 working on it. Kottek’s staff is hopeless. Half of them are talking about sweeping the enemy off the planet in two days.”

  Bade grunted. “What’s your idea?”

  “Well,” said Runckel, “I still get . . . a little excited now and then. If you could possibly provide a sort of general supervision—”

  Bade looked away weakly. “How’s Rast?”

  “Tied to his bunk with half-a-dozen men sitting on him.”

  “What about Vokk?”

  “Tearing his lungs out every two or three minutes.”

  “Sokkis, then?”

  Runckel shook his head grimly. “I’m afraid they didn’t hear the gun go off in time. The doctors are still working on him, though.”

  “Well . . . is Frotch all right?”

  “Yes, thank heaven. But then he’s Flyer Command. And, worse yet, there’s nobody to put in his place.”

  “All right, how about Sozzle?”

  “Well,” said Runckel, “Sozzle may be a good propaganda man, but personally I wouldn’t trust him to command a platoon.”

  “Yes,” said Bade, rolling over to try to ease the pain in his back, “I see your point.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll try to supervise the thing.” He swung gingerly to a sitting position.

  Runckel watched him, then his face twisted. “This whole thing is all my fault,” he said. He choked. “I’m just no goo—”

  The two guards sprang across the room, grabbed Runckel by the arms and rushed him out the door. Harsh grunts and solid thumping sounds came from the corridor outside. There was a heavy crash. Somebody said, “All right, get the general by the feet, and I’ll take him by the sho
ulders. Phew! Let’s go.”

  Bade sat dizzily on the edge of the bed. For a moment, he had a mental image of Runckel before the invasion, leaning forward and saying impressively, “Certain glory and a mighty victory await us.”

  Bade took several slow deep breaths. Then he got up carefully, found a towel, and cautiously went to wash.

  It took Bade almost a week to disentangle the troops from the web of indefensible positions and hopeless last stands Kottek had committed them to in a day-and-a-half of peremptory orders. The enemy, meanwhile, took advantage of opportunity, using ground and air attacks, rockets, missiles and artillery in such profusion as to stun the mind. It was not until Bade’s men and officers had recovered from circulating attacks of the sickness, and another landing force had come down, that it was possible to temporarily resume the offensive. Another two weeks, and another sick landing force recovered, saw the invasion army in control of a substantial part of the central plain of the continent. Bade now had some spare moments to squint at certain reports that were piled up on his desk. Exasperatedly, he called a meeting of high officers.

  Bade was standing with Runckel at a big map of the continent when their generals came in. Bade and Runckel each looked grim and intense. The generals looked uniformly dulled and worn down.

  Bade took a last hard look at the map, then he and Runckel turned. Bade glanced at Veth, Landing Site Commander. “What’s your impression of the way things are going?”

  Veth scowled. “Well, we’re still getting eight to ten sizable missile hits a day. Of course, there’s no predicting when they’ll come in. With the men working outside the ships, any single hit could vaporize large numbers of essential technical personnel. Until we get the underground shelters built, the only way around this is to have whole site damped out all the time.” He shook his head. “This takes a lot of energy.”

  Bade nodded, and turned to Rast, Ground Forces Commander.

  “So far,” said Rast frowning, “our situation on paper looks not too bad. Morale is satisfactory. Our weapons are superior. We have strong forces in a reasonably large central area, and in theory we can shift rapidly from one front to the other, and be superior anywhere. But in practice, the enemy has so many missiles, of all types and sizes, that we can’t take advantage of the position.

  “Suppose, for instance, that I order XX and XXII Tank Armies from the eastern to the western front. They can’t go under their own power, because of fuel expenditure, the wear on their tracks, and the resulting delay for repairs. They can’t go by forceway network because there isn’t any built yet. The only way to send them is by the natives’ iron track roads. That would be fine, except that the iron track roads make beautiful targets for missile attacks. Thanks to the enemy, every bridge and junction either is, has been, or will be blown up and not once, either. The result is, we have to use slow filtration of troops from one front to the other, or we have to accept very heavy losses on route. In addition, we now know that the enemy has formidable natural defenses in the east and west, especially in the west. There’s a range of hills there that surpasses anything I’ve ever seen or heard of. Not only is the difficulty of the terrain an obstacle, but as our men go higher, movement finally becomes practically impossible. I know this from personal experience. The result of it is, the enemy need only guard the passes and he has a natural barrier behind which he can mass for attack at any chosen point.”

  Bade frowned. “Don’t the hills have the same harmful effect on the enemy?”

  “No sir, they don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. But that and their missiles put us in a nasty spot.”

  Bade absorbed this, then turned to General Frotch, head of Atmospheric Flyer Command.

  Frotch said briskly, “Sir, so far as the enemy air forces are concerned, we have the situation under control. And various foreign long-range reconnaissance aircraft that have been filtering in from distant native countries, have also been successfully batted out of the sky. However, as far as . . . ah . . . missiles . . . are concerned, the situation is a little strained.”

  Bade snapped, “Go on.”

  “Well, sir,” said Frotch, “the enemy has missiles that can be fired at the fastest atmospheric flyers, that can be made to blow up near them, that can be guided to them, and even that can be made to chase and catch them.”

  “What about our weapons?”

  “They’re fine, on a percentage basis. But the enemy has a lot more missiles than we have pilots.”

  “I see,” said Bade. “Well—” He turned to speak to the Director of Intelligence, but Frotch went on:

  “Moreover, sir, we are having atmospheric troubles.”

  “‘Atmospheric troubles’? What’s that?”

  “For one thing, gigantic traveling electrical displays that disrupt plane-to-ground communications, and have to be avoided, or else the pilots either don’t come out, or else come out fit for nothing but a rest cure. Then there are mass movements of air traveling from one part of the planet to another. Like land breezes and sea breezes at home. But here the breezes can be pretty forceful. The effect is to put an unpredictable braking force on all our operations.”

  Bade nodded slowly. “Well, we’ll have to make the best of it.” He turned to General Sozzle, who was Disseminator of Propaganda.

  Sozzle cleared his throat. “I can make my report short and to the point. Our propaganda is getting us nowhere. For one thing, the enemy is apparently used to being ambushed daily by something called ‘advertising,’ which seems to consist of a series of subtle propaganda traps. By comparison our approach is so crude it throws them into hysterics.”

  Bade glanced at the Director of Intelligence, who said dully, “Sir, it’s too early to say for certain how our work will eventually turn out. We’ve had some successes; but, so far, we’ve been handicapped by translation difficulties.”

  Bade frowned. “For instance?”

  “Take the single word, ‘snow,’” said the Intelligence Director. “You can’t imagine the snarl my translators get into over that word. It apparently means ‘white solid which falls in crystals from the sky.’ Figure that out.”

  Bade squinted, then looked relieved. “Oh. It means, ‘dust.’”

  “That’s the way the interpreters translated it. Now consider this sentence from a schoolbook. ‘When April comes, the dust all turns to water and flows into the ground to fill the streams.’”

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “No. But that’s what happens if you accept ‘dust’ as the translation for ‘snow.’ There are other words such as ‘winter,’ ‘blizzard,’ ‘tornado.’ Ask a native for an explanation, and with a straight face he’ll give you a string of incomprehensible nonsense that will stand you on your ear. Not that it’s important in itself. But it seems to show something about the native psychology that I can’t quite figure out. You can fight your enemy best when you can understand him. Well, from this angle they’re completely incomprehensible.”

  “Keep working on it,” said Bade, after a short silence. He turned to Runckel.

  Runckel said, “The overall situation looks about the same from my point of view. Namely, the natives are driven back, but by no means defeated. What we have to remember is that we never expected to have them defeated at this stage. True, our time schedule has been set back somewhat, but this was due not to enemy action, but to purely accidental circumstances. That is, first the atmosphere was so deficient in moisture that our ground vehicles were temporarily out of order, and, second, we were disabled by an unexpected disease. But these troubles are over with. My point is that we can now begin the decisive phase of operations.”

  “Good,” said Bade. “But to do that we have to firmly hold the ground we have. I want to know if we can do this. On the surface, perhaps, it looks like it. But there are signs here I don’t like. As the old saying goes, ‘A shark shows you his fin, not his teeth. Take warning from the fin; when you see the tee
th it’s too late.’”

  “Yes,” said Frotch, turning excitedly to Rast, “that’s the thought exactly. Now, will you mention it, or shall I?”

  “Holy fangjaw,” growled Rast, “maybe it doesn’t really mean anything.”

  “The Supreme Commander,” said Runckel angrily, “was trying to talk.”

  Bade said, “What is it, Rast? Speak up.”

  “Well—” Rast hesitated, glanced uneasily at Runckel, then thrust out his jaw, “Sir, it looks like the whole master plan of the invasion may have come unhinged.”

  Runckel angrily started to speak.

  Bade glanced at Runckel, took out a long slender cigar, and sat down on the edge of the table to watch Runckel. He lit the cigar and put down the lighter. As far as Bade was concerned, his face was expressionless. Things seemed to have an unnatural clarity, however, as he looked at Runckel and waited for him to speak.

  Runckel looked at Bade, swallowed hard and said nothing.

  Bade glanced at Rast.

  Rast burst out, “Sir, for the last ten days or so, we’ve been wondering how long the enemy could keep up his missile attacks. Flyer Command has blasted factories vital to missile manufacture, and destroyed all their known stockpiles. Well, grant we didn’t get all their stockpiles. That’s logical enough. Grant that they had tremendous stocks stored away. Even grant that before we got here they made missiles all the time for the sheer love of making them. Maybe every man, woman, and child in the country had a missile, like a pet. Still, there’s got to be an end somewhere.”

  Bade nodded soberly.

  “Well, sir,” said Rast, “we get these missiles fired at us all the time, day after day after day, one missile after the other, like an army of men tramping past in an endless circle forever. It’s inconceivable that they’d use their missiles like this unless their supply is inexhaustible. Frotch gets hit with them, I get hit with them, Veth gets hit with them. For every job there’s a missile. We put our overall weapons superiority in one pan of the balance. They pour an endless heap of missiles in the other pan. Where do all these missiles come from?”