Charles Carr, page 12
“Of course I remember. I don’t want you to go away. You mustn’t leave me. It is only that I am a little frightened. Who could be interested enough, with things as they are, to make a complaint?”
He did not answer, but he himself felt a twinge of sick apprehension. To distract her, he told her of the arrival of Harper and his men, and how Pratt had talked of stuffing a salamander. She gave a doubtful little laugh.
But there was no doubt about the kiss she gave him when the time came for them to part and go back to their work.
“You are mine,” she murmured.
“And you are mine,” said Taylor. “Don’t be afraid any more.”
20
“What news?” Lyon asked, when Taylor returned to his headquarters. “How is the army?”
“Harper’s army? They’ll soon be ready, sir.”
“We’ll have to use them as soon as they are,” said Lyon. “Now,” he went on, “I’ve a few things to tell you, and I want you to take note of what I say.”
“Sir.”
“First of all, there’s this. You’ve accompanied me everywhere I’ve been since this business started. But, from now on, there’ll be times when I shan’t take you along with me.”
Taylor was both puzzled and hurt at this opening.
“I hope you don’t think, sir, that I can’t be trusted with any information, however secret it -“
Lyon interrupted him impatiently. “You seem very touchy just now. Of course I trust you completely. Haven’t I shown you that? If you’ll let me finish, you’ll see that’s precisely why I’m saying this. When I go up to the forward sectors I want you to stay here. There’s always a chance of being killed there, and the campaign must go on if I die. I’m going to give you my plans, so that if I fall foul of a heat-devil or a salamander there’ll still be someone left who knows what has to be done. You understand already the principles that I work on, don’t you?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Then we’ll start with the long-term plan, the attack - our attack - that’s going to decide the war. I’d hate to think that if I died it would be delayed or not properly developed. So your job will be to keep the pressure up and hand over all details to my successor. You understand?”
“Yes, sir. But I hope - I’m sure that the necessity won’t arise.”
“We’ll take the usual polite speeches for granted,” Lyon told him. “Now, the factors to be considered are these: weapons - new weapons, I hope - man-power, speed of movement, surprise, and above all, the offensive spirit. Have you got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lyon spent an hour instructing Taylor in all the details of the plan; and Taylor admired the foresight and thoroughness with which it had been conceived.
“This notion of waiting passively to be attacked is nonsense,” Lyon said warmly. He got up from his desk and paced the floor, as though to demonstrate his need for action. “It’s a certain way of being beaten. No dash - no initiative. I needn’t enlarge on that, except to say that our allies can’t easily be persuaded that the whole idea of everlasting passive defence is a fallacy.
Even Leblanc - I’ve convinced him mentally, but his spirit revolts…. Well, enough of that.”
He sat down again at his desk.
“Now for the short-term offensive,” he said. “This is where Harper’s force comes in. We have to get him and his men to a station that’s being attacked, and we have to get them there in time. That may not be easy; it’s becoming hard now to predict where the salamanders will strike next. But, provided Harper’s within reasonable distance, my notion is this. He mustn’t trouble about the defence of the station; that’s to be left to the men inside it. No, he moves out as the heat-devils move in. He locates the salamanders and he destroys them. You see what I mean?”
“Yes, sir.” Taylor felt an urgent wish to get away from the office for a time, to experience the reality of the war that he was helping to plan.
“Will you be going with Harper, sir?” he asked.
“No. It wouldn’t be fair to him. He’s quite capable of leading a counter-attack. I should only be in the way.”
“Then may I go, sir?”
“You?” exclaimed Lyon. He shook his head.
But Taylor urged his claim with more emphasis than he normally used in speaking to his chief.
“I’m junior to Harper, sir, and he could probably make good use of me. There’d be no risk of the plans you’ve explained to me being forgotten, since you yourself would be here to see to them.”
“That,” said Lyon with a smile, “was hardly what I meant, and I believe you know it. I spoke of leaving you behind when I go forward not of you leaving me. But since you want a change, you may as well join in the first salamander hunt.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Wait,” said Lyon, as Taylor rose to go. “You can earn your place in the operation by helping me to work out the salamander’s next move, or trying to.”
They settled down to an intricate study of the attacks that had already been made. The work took them a long time.
“There does seem to be a sort of rhythm about their moves,” Lyon said.
“A mathematical design,” suggested Taylor.
“Something like that. What’s your forecast?”
“Station Twenty-four or Station Thirteen, sir.”
“Yes,” Lyon agreed. He measured distances on the map. “They aren’t too far apart - those two stations - though they’re a long way from here. We’ll have Harper so placed that he can cover them both.”
“When shall we start, sir?” asked Taylor.
“In about thirty hours. But that doesn’t apply to you. I’m not letting you waste your time trundling about in those vehicles of Harper’s. You can put in your full share of work here, and then fly out and join him when he takes up his position.”
Taylor wondered what Nesina would say when she knew.
21
What she did say was, “I knew you would go, to fight in this war, some time or other.”
“You said you trusted me to win it,” he told her. “Not single-handed, I hope.”
“Do not laugh at me, when I am trying to be brave, as you are. And now that the time has come, it is not quite so bad as I feared. But it is bad enough. You must come back. Say that you will come back!”
‘Oh, my dear!” he said hurriedly. “I’ll try.”
“When you come back - when the danger is over - then I shall be able to laugh, I think. But now I cannot laugh.”
And he thought later that it would be worth while enduring any trial if, by doing so, he could win the right to return to her victorious and hear her lovely laughter.
He was resting beneath a tall clump of ferns when these thoughts passed through his mind.
The ‘plane that had flown him out from Una to join Harper had just taken off for the landing-ground at the nearest settlement, where it would wait for his orders on the radio. Harper and his men had camped in the cover of the jungle. Soon Harper, coming back from a reconnaissance, beckoned to Taylor to join him in the command vehicle. They sat there, listening for radio calls, but none came. The men who stood or sat nearby, close to their vehicles, had been waiting for a long time. They were tense already. As the time of waiting dragged on they grew more tense still.
They were about equidistant here from the two stations that were likely to be the objectives of the salamanders’ next attack, according to calculation.
But were those calculations correct? Taylor wondered. And soon Harper showed that he, too, had his doubts.
“It must surely be one station or the other,” he argued restlessly. “All the same, they might attack elsewhere. And if they did -“
“We’d be no worse off,” Taylor replied, “except that we’d have lost some time. We’d have to wait for another chance, that’s all.”
“Yes, but all I want now is to come to grips with these things as soon as I can. Lyon has turned me into something like a soldier. The men are keyed up too. Lyon did a good job when he explained the plan to them. They feel now that they all have a stake in the game.”
The radio call-sign sounded. It was the pilot of a patrolling ‘plane making his report.
“Negative,” said Harper as he switched off. “They’re a good lot,” he went on, referring again to his own men, “but they can’t keep at fighting pitch indefinitely. It’ll be a pity if their fire dies down.”
Pratt and his comrades were cleaning their weapons as they waited, and making adjustments to their vehicles. These were excavators from which much of the machinery had been taken and to which heat-resistant armour had been added.
“I’m going to tell them to make a meal now,” Harper said.
Preparing the food came as a welcome distraction. Pratt caught a small shug. He was a good cook, and he prepared and roasted the delicacy, which made a welcome addition to the rations that had been brought from Una.
Again. the call-sign on the radio. It was another report from a ‘plane to the ground.
“Heat activity seen. Bearing from Station Twenty-four….”
“Distance?” Harper snapped back.
He was given that too. But he was leaving nothing to chance.
“Give me another bearing,” he said.
Now the point was fixed on his map with only a small margin of error.
Harper started his engine. There was no need to give orders to the men. They followed him at full speed for fifteen kilometres.
“Can you check our position?” he asked Taylor, driving more slowly now and calculating distances on the map.
“There’s Station Twenty-four,” TayIer said. He gave the bearing.
“Is anything happening there?”
“It’s too far to see if there are any heat-devils round it, but there’s no sign of the place being on fire.”
“Good. We’re near enough now to the place the ‘plane reported,” Harper said, and halted.
“Now for old Kraft’s detector.”
“You certainly need it.” The plain in front of them was without definite features, save slight undulations. It was covered with a uniformly short growth of vegetation. Only by turning round again was Taylor able to see anything except a grey sameness in the scene. Back there the high walls of the oxygen plant known as Station Twenty-four was plainly visible, but they looked unsubstantial, as though they lacked thickness. The sight no longer gave him any reassurance, and he turned to Harper again.
Harper was swinging the detector slowly, turning the adjustment knobs as he did so. But so far nothing showed on the screen. The radio receiver beside Taylor started to hum as for an incoming message. Harper cursed.
“I can’t work this thing with the radio active,” he said. “It makes all sorts of oscillations.
Who’s calling?”
“It’s local. Must be one of ours.”
“Find out who it is and tell ‘em to keep off the air,” said Harper bitterly. “I said they were to shut down, didn’t I?”
Taylor climbed to the top of the vehicle and signalled. The radio call ceased, and Pratt’s head appeared flaming and unmistakable from the doorway of a vehicle a little way back in the column.
“Was that you calling, Pratt?” Taylor shouted.
“Yes, sir. Only wanted to say we sighted something back there.”
Looking in the direction where Pratt was pointing, Taylor could see an unsubstantial disturbance of the air. He stared at it hard. It was caused by a procession of four heat-devils.
They were gliding towards the oxygen plant.
“Keep watching,” Taylor ordered. He dived back into the vehicle and reported to Harper what he had seen.
“Never mind them,” said Harper. “I got something on this screen just then.”
He swung the detector in an are. The screen showed a clear reaction. He read the bearing and range.
“There’s something else over on the edge of the screen,” Taylor said.
“Never mind that either. It may be a single salamander moving up behind the heat-devils.
But the main concentration must be there.”
He adjusted the detector carefully till the screen showed a bright, clear dot. Then the dot blurred and shifted.
“Some kind of upward movement,” said Harper. “But the salamanders can’t have grown wings and started flying. What is it?”
“There is something rising,” Taylor exclaimed.
Harper looked up from the instrument.
“It’s a fireball.”
Taylor’s comment was unnecessary. The dull red of the rising globe was plain enough to be seen. Then it ceased to rise land floated sedately towards Station Twenty-four.
“And another. And another,” said Harper.
There was a fascination in seeing the fireballs appear one by one. Harper began to count them, and then jerked his gaze back to the detector and the controls of the vehicle.
“Time we moved,” he said.
The tactics that his little force were to use had already been worked out in detail and rehearsed. The vehicles split into two columns and then converged, timing their movements so that they should arrive simultaneously at the spot where the detector had first shown movement.
Harper, who was concentrating on his driving, asked Taylor what he could see of the salamanders.
“They’re grouped round the point where the fireballs rise.”
“That’s what you’d expect,” said Harper. “Are you ready?”
“Ready,” Taylor replied as he braced himself for action. He was responsible for operating two weapons, the long tube and the short blast-gun.
“Here we go!” Harper said, and increased speed.
Taylor stared hard through the observation panel. There seemed to be something moving midway between them and their objective. He lost sight of it and then, for an instant, sighted it against the glow of another fireball which had not yet risen above ground-level. Taylor had an impression that the thing was a loose collection of hoops - a moving skeleton. Then, as the fireball rose higher, the outline of the salamander was lost, and it became ghostly and unsubstantial again.
But he kept it in sight and aligned the long tube on it as well as the vibration and plunging of the moving vehicle allowed. He pressed the operating stud and saw the jet shoot out. But it missed the salamander.
Immediately the thing swerved and sped in an arc round on Taylor’s left. He turned and saw through another panel that the salamander was launching itself at the next vehicle in the line behind Harper’s, about fifty metres away. It attached itself to the cabin. Instinctively Taylor’s hand moved to the controls of the long tube. But he remembered in time that the effect of its use would be on the vehicle and its occupants, and he sighted with the blast-gun instead.
He missed once, and then again; but the third blast licked the side of the cabin, and the salamander fell from its position, disintegrating as it did so. The vehicle that it had attacked turned suddenly in its own length, one set of tracks jammed and the other racing. Then it stopped.
But the remaining vehicles wheeled round the broken-down one and followed in good order.
Harper was still driving fast. Taylor turned back to the observation panel that faced forward. A red glow shone through it, for a fireball, just skimming the ground, was whirling straight at Harper’s column.
22
The approaching peril forced Taylor to think quickly and coolly. The fireball must be hit, and when it burst Harper’s vehicle must be as far from it as possible. And yet the longest effective range of the blast-tube was only about a hundred and twenty metres. Taylor’s mind sorted the facts and figures so swiftly that he still had a second to spare. He employed it in training the tube on the fireball, and while the thing was still two hundred metres away he felt that he would not miss.
The thin jet leapt from the tube straight into the glowing heart of the floating sphere. But for an awful moment Taylor feared that he had missed it after all. He had expected a loud explosion to follow his shot, but, amid the clatter of tracks and the thunder of racing engines, the only sound he heard was a faint, derisive pop, like the bursting of a plastic bag.
But the visible effect was spectacular and convincing. The small red seed of the fireball swelled into a monstrous, incandescent blossom that filled the sky; and shooting flames bathed the whole scene in evil glory.
To thrust on into the inferno seemed an act of madness. But Harper did so, trusting to his speed in conjunction with the armour and insulation of his vehicle. Taylor, his eyes shutting instinctively against the glare, felt a sudden increase of heat that was terrifying and threatened to become unbearable. But the experience was mercifully short. It lasted only for seconds.
Then Harper had burst through the area of flame and won to the untormented plain beyond.
The other half of the force was now in sight again, converging from the opposite direction on the objective. This was clearly marked by another fireball. Taylor thought that he saw a number of salamanders grouped grotesquely against its glow. Then the fireball seemed to detach itself from the ground. It rose high in the air and flared away overhead. The salamanders remained. They were hard to see and already they were dispersing.
At the time it seemed to Taylor that the things moved without plan in all directions.
Afterwards it occurred to him that their movements could have shown an intention; for, in effect, some of them fought a rearguard action which covered the retreat of the others. But while the skirmish lasted he was too fully occupied in dealing with each fleeting situation as it arose to puzzle over the salamanders’ motives or intentions.
The general movement was now towards the hot side. Taylor used the long blast-tube several times; but whenever there was a danger of hitting another vehicle he operated the short gun instead. He concentrated savagely on his task, exulting to see salamanders blasted to nothingness. Once something warned him to turn to the rear observation panel. Through it he saw a salamander overtaking them, but before its destructive embrace seized upon the vehicle his blast-gun seared it.
