Armored floodlights lit up the forward positions facing the enemy, and Bill went in the opposite direction, toward the distant white flares of landing rockets. Barracks and warehouses were dotted about on the boggy ground, but Bill stayed clear of them since they were all guarded, and the guards had itchy trigger fingers. They fired at anything they saw, anything they heard, and if they didn't see or hear anything they fired once in a while anyway just to keep their morale up. Lights were burning brightly ahead, and Bill crawled forward on his stomach to peer from behind a rank growth at a tall, floodlighted fence of barbed wire that stretched out of sight in both directions.
A burst from an atomic rifle burned a hole in the 'Mud about a yard behind him, and a searchlight swung over, catching him full in its glare.
“Greetings from your commanding officer,” an amplified voice thundered from loudspeakers on the fence. “This is a recorded announcement. You are now attempting to leave the combat zone and enter the restricted headquarters zone.
This is forbidden. Your presence has been detected by automatic machinery, and these same devices now have a number of guns trained upon you. They will fire in sixty seconds if you do not leave. Be patriotic, marl Do your duty. Death to the Chingers! Fifty-five seconds. Would you like your mother to know that her boy is a coward? Fifty seconds. Your Emperor has invested a lot of money in your trainingis this the way that you repay him? Forty- five seconds…” Bill cursed and shot up the nearest loudspeaker, but the voice continued from others down the length of the fence. He turned and went back the way he had come.
As he neared his barracks, skirting the front line to avoid the fire from the nervous guards in the buildings, all the lights went out. At the same time gunfire and bomb explosions broke out on every side.
Chapter 4
Something slithered close by in the mud and Bill's trigger finger spontaneously contracted and he shot it. In the brief atomic flare he saw the smoking remains of a dead Venian, as well as an unusually large number of live Venians squelching to the attack. Bill dived aside instantly, so that their return fire missed him, and fled in the opposite direction. His only thought was to save his skin, and this he did by getting as far from the firing and the attacking enemy as he could. That this direction happened to be into the trackless swamp he did not consider at the time. Survive, his shivering little ego screamed, and he ran on.
Running became difficult when the ground turned to mud, and even more difficult when the mud gave way to open water. After paddling desperately for an interminable length of time Bill came to more mud. The first hysteria had now passed, the firing was only a dull rumble in the distance, and he was exhausted.
He dropped onto the mudbank and instantly sharp teeth sank deep into his buttocks. Screaming hoarsely, he ran on until he ran into a tree. He wasn't going fast enough to hurt himself, and the feel of rough bark under his fingers brought out all of his eoanthropic survival instincts: he climbed. High up there were two branches that forked out from the trunk, and be wedged himself into the crotch, back to the solid wood and gun pointed straight ahead and ready. Nothing bothered him now. The night sounds grew dim and distant, the' blackness was complete, and within a few minutes his head started to nod. He dragged it back up a few times, blinked about at nothing, then finally slept.
It was the first gray light of dawn, when he opened his gummy eyes and blinked around. There was a little lizard perched on a nearby branch watching him with jewellike eyes.
“Gee-you were really sacked out,” the Chinger said.
Bill's shot tore a smoking scar in the top of the branch, then the Chinger swung back up from underneath and meticulously wiped bits of ash from his paws.
“Easy on the trigger, Bill,” it said. “Gee-I could have killed you anytime during the night if I had wanted to.” “I know you,” Bill said hoarsely. “You're Eager Beager, aren't you?” “Gee-this is just like old home week, isn't it?” A centipede was scuttling by, and Eager Beager the Chinger grabbed it up with three of his arms and began pulling off legs with his fourth and eating them. “I recognized you Bill, and wanted to talk to you. I have been feeling bad ever since I called you a stoolie, that wasn't right of me. You were only doing your duty when you turned me in. You wouldn't like to tell me how you recognized me, would you…?” he asked, and winked slyly.
“Why don't you bowb off, Jack?” Bill growled, and groped in his pocket for a bottle of cough syrup. Eager Chinger sighed.
“Well, I suppose I can't expect you to betray anything of military importance, but I hope you will answer a few questions for me.” He discarded the delimbed corpse and groped about in his marsupial pouch and produced a tablet and tiny writing instrument. “You must realize that spying is not my chosen occupation, but rather I was dragooned into it through my speciality, which is exopologyperhaps you have heard of this discipline…?” “We had an orientation lecture once, an exopologist, all he could talk about was alien creeps and things.” “Yes-well, that roughly sums it up. The science of the study -of alien life forms, and of course to us you homo sapiens are an alien form…” He scuttled halfway around the branch when Bill raised his gun.
“Watch that kind of talk, bowb!” “Sorry, just my manner of speaking. To put it briefly, since I specialized in the study of your species I was sent out as a spy, reluctantly, but that is the sort of sacrifice one makes during wartime. However, seeing you here reminded me that there are a number of questions and problems still unanswered that I would appreciate your help on, purely in the matter of science of course.” “Like what?” Bill asked suspiciously, draining the bottle and flinging it away into the jungle.
“Well-gee-to begin simply, bow do you feel about us Chingers?” “Death to all Chingers!” The little pen flew over the tablet.
“But you have been taught to say that. How did you feel before you entered the service?” “Didn't give a damn about Chingers.” Out of the corner of his eye Bill was watching a suspicious movement of the leaves in the tree above.
“Fine! Then could you explain to me just who it is that hates us Chingers and wants to fight a war of extermination?” “Nobody really hates Chingers, I guess. It's just that there is no one else around to fight a war with, so we fight with you.” The moving leaves had parted and a great, smooth head with slitted eyes peered down.
“I knew it! And that brings me to my really important question. Why do you homo sapiens like to fight wars?” Bill's hand tightened on his gun as the monstrous head dropped silently down from the leaves behind Eager Chinger Beager, it was attached to a foot thick and apparently endless serpent body.
“Fight wars? I don't know,” Bill said, distracted by the soundless approach of the giant snake. “I guess because we like to, there doesn't seem to be any other reason.” “You like to!” the Chinger squeaked, hopping up and down with excitement. “No civilized race could like wars, death, killing, maiming, rape, torture, pain, to name just a few of the concomitant factors. Your race can't be civilized!” The snake struck like lightning, and Eager Beager Chinger vanished down its spine-covered throat with only the slightest of muffled squeals.
“Yeah… I guess we're just not civilized,” Bill said, gun ready, but the snake kept going on down. At least fifty yards of it slithered by before the tail flipped past and it was out of sight. “Serves the damn spy right,” Bill grunted happily, and pulled himself to his feet.
Once on the ground Bill began to realize just how bad a spot he was in. The damp swamp had swallowed up any marks of his passage from the night before and he hadn't the slightest idea in which direction the battle area lay. The sun was just a general illumination behind the layers of fog and cloud, and he felt a sudden chill as he realized how small were his chances of finding his way back.
The invasion area, just ten miles to a side, made a microscopic pinprick in the hide of this planet. Yet if he didn't find it he was as good as dead. And if he just stayed here he would die, so, picking what looked like the most likely direction, he started off.
“I'm pooped,” he said, and was. A few hours of dragging through the swamps had done nothing except weaken his muscles, fill his skin with insect bites, drain a quart or two of blood into the ubiquitous leeches, and deplete the charge in his gun as he killed a dozen or so of the local life forms that wanted him for breakfast. He was also hungry and thirsty. And still lost.
The rest of the day just recapitulated the morning, so that when the sky began to darken he was close to exhaustion, and his supply of cough medicine was gone.
