Hanging on

failed. No matter what you said, if you framed it with a couple of ehs you could topple any language barrier.

Angelli turned to the workers, clapped his hands. “One more hole to fill, eh? Eh? Quick job, eh? But big job gets done poco a poco, eh?”

The Frenchmen laughed and went to work. They all had shovels, and they energetically attacked the ring of blast-thrown soil, scooping it back into the crater from which it had come.

“Faster!” Kelly said. They seemed to be working in slow motion. “Angelli, tell them to shovel faster. We've got only six days!”

“But they are shoveling fast,” Angelli said.

“Faster, faster, faster!” Kelly demanded. When Angelli gave the order and the Frenchmen complied, the major said, “You've got excellent rapport here. If all the men could work with the French as well as you do, we might come close to building the town before the Germans get here.”

Angelli grinned. “Then you think we'll do it, sir?”

“Never,” Kelly said. “I said we'd come closer to doing it if we had your rapport with these people.”

“Do not be so negative, bon ami.” Maurice appeared out of nowhere at Kelly's elbow. “The work goes well. You will have a new bridge tonight, with my people helping. Your chief surveyor has begun to mark off the streets and lots. My wonderful people have cleared away random brush and have filled in the bomb craters. We've come so far in so few hours!”

Kelly looked at the bundle of papers Maurice was carrying. Ignoring The Frog's optimism, he said, “Those the forms?”

“Ready for signatures,” Maurice said, handing them over.

Reluctantly, Kelly took them. “The men won't like this.”

“Oh, but they will!” Maurice said. “They are sure to see what a real bargain I am giving them. Americans love bargains.”

Private Angelli looked warily at the forms. “Why won't we like those? What are they?”

“Credit contracts,” Maurice said. “Nothing sinister.”

Angelli was perplexed. “Credit contracts?” he asked, squinting at the bundle.

“One for each man in the unit,” Maurice said. He thumped the middle of his checkered shirt. “Made out by hand, written by me or members of my immediate family, very official.”

“Credit contracts?” Angelli repeated.

“Let me explain,” Kelly said, wearily.

3

Sergeant Coombs was operating the small cargo shuttler when Major Kelly found him. He had been trundling the more compact construction materials from the storage dump by the runway to the men at the bridge, and though it was now well past noon, he had not taken a single rest break. He was sweaty and dirty. His back ached, his arms ached, and his knuckles were skinned and sore. He had stoved his left thumb but had kept on working while it swelled to half again its normal size. He was in no mood for Major Kelly. Only his great respect for the rules and regulations regarding the responsibilities of rank kept him from being completely uncooperative.

“I have something for you to sign,” Major Kelly said.

Major Kelly had spent all morning running around the camp getting the men to sign various papers which he carried in a folder under his arm. He was not dirty or sweaty. Coombs knew that Kelly didn't have an aching back or aching arms or a stoved thumb. He regarded the proffered document scornfully and said, “What is it?”

“Nothing much,” Kelly said, evasively. “Just sign it, and I'll stop bothering you.”

Sergeant Coombs looked at the pile of materiel he had yet to transfer to the bridge, scratched the back of his sunburned neck, and was tempted to sign the damn thing, whatever it was, just to be rid of Kelly. He was still on the shuttler seat, with crates stacked on the forked platform before him. He could sign and be on his way again. But something in Kelly's manner, a sort of phony good humor, warned Coombs. “What is it?” he repeated.

“Just sign it. Quick, now. I've got to get every man's signature if I'm going to keep Maurice's help. And I need Maurice's help. Every minute counts in this, Sergeant. So sign.”

“I won't sign anything that I don't know what it is,” Coombs said.

Kelly's smile faded. “Well, look, you know how much help Maurice has been, bringing in all these workers.”

“Frogs,” Coombs said.

“Yes, perhaps they are. But the fact remains that we need them. And in the days ahead, Maurice will be doing even more for us. And you can't expect him to do it all out of the goodness of his heart. Maurice wants to make a profit from it. That should be something every red-blooded American can understand. We Americans believe in the profit system, free enterprise. That's one of the things we're fighting for.”

“What about this paper?” Coombs asked. For such a stumpy man, he was damned difficult to fool.

Major Kelly was distinctly uncomfortable now. He could not stop thinking about the Panzers. While he was standing here with Coombs, how much closer had the Germans come? Too much closer… Kelly looked nervously at the stack of crates beside the shuttler, at the sky, at the ground, everywhere but at Coombs. “Maurice wants to be paid for his help. Naturally, we're the only ones who can pay him. So what Maurice wants from us — he wants two hundred bucks from every man in camp.”

“I don't have it,” Coombs said.

Kelly shook his head in agreement and frustration. “Who does? But Maurice understands how things are with us. We're paid in scrip when the DC-3 comes in from

Blade's HQ, but most of us lose it to Hoskins or Malzberg in a day or two, at best. Maurice understands, and he does not want to be at all unreasonable. He's willing to extend us credit, provided we sign these forms he's given me. You pay fifty dollars now, the other one-fifty over the next six months.”

Coombs was suspicious. “Six months?”

“That's right.”

“We'll be gone in six months.”

Kelly shrugged. “Maybe he's banking on the war not being over that fast.”

Coombs would not swallow that. “There's something you're not telling me.”

Kelly sighed, thinking about the Panzers, about the minutes melting away. “You're right. You see, this paper you're to sign… well, it's an admission of collaboration with the Nazis.”

Coombs looked at Kelly as if the major were a stone that had come suddenly to life before his eyes. He could not believe what he was hearing. “Admit I collaborated with the krauts, even if I didn't?”

Kelly smiled nervously. “Maurice has written a different confession for each of us.” He looked down at the paper in his hand and quickly scanned the neat paragraphs of precise, handwritten English. “Yours states that you sabotaged the equipment which you were assigned to maintain, that you interfered with the building of the bridge.”

Coombs did not know what to say.

“You can see where Maurice might feel he has to use such an extreme credit contract,” Kelly said. He liked to call the paper a credit contract rather than a forged confession or something equally distasteful. “This kind of document would guarantee his money even if we were transferred out of here before we paid him in full. None of us would want his contract turned over to Allied military officials.”

“What did you confess?” Coombs asked.

“Transmitting information to the Nazis via our wireless set.” He forced the rumpled paper into Coombs's hand, gave him a stubby yellow pencil. “Just sign the damn thing, Sergeant. Time is our greatest enemy.”

“I won't sign.” Coombs's jaw was set, and his pulse pounded visibly at neck and temples.

“Sergeant, you must. I've got more than forty men to sign up yet. If one refuses, others will too. And the deal with Maurice will fall through… You'll die with the rest of us!” He was trying to scare