turret, separate engine compartment, wireless set, reduced crew… In 1922, no other barrel in the world touched this design.
But it wasn't 1922 any more. The design was a dozen years older now. So was Irving Morrell. He didn't show his years very much. He was still lean and strong in his early forties, and his close-cropped, light brown hair held only a few threads of gray. If his face was lined and tanned and weathered… well, it had been lined and tanned and weathered in the early 1920s, too. Hard service and a love for the outdoors had taken their toll there.
A Model T Ford in military green-gray bounced across the prairie toward the experimental model. One of the soldiers inside the motorcar waved to Morrell. When he waved back, showing he'd seen, the man held up a hand to get him to stop.
He waved again, then ducked down into the turret. 'Stop!' he bawled into the speaking tube that led to the driver's seat at the front of the barrel.
'Stopping, yes, sir.' The answer was tinny but understandable. The barrel clanked to a halt.
'What's up, sir?' Sergeant Michael Pound, the barrel's gunner, was insatiably curious-more than was good for him, Morrell often thought. His wide face might have been that of a three-year-old seeing his first aeroplane.
'I don't know,' Morrell answered. 'They've just sent out an auto to stop the maneuvers.'
Sergeant Pound's wide shoulders moved up and down in a shrug. 'Maybe the powers that be have gone off the deep end. Wouldn't surprise me a bit.' Spending his whole adult life in the Army had left him endlessly cynical- not that he didn't seem to have had a good running start beforehand. But then his green-blue eyes widened. 'Or do you suppose-?'
That same thought had been in Morrell's mind, too. 'It would be sooner than I expected if it is, Sergeant. When was the last time those people up in Pontiac ever turned something out sooner than anyone expected?'
'I'm afraid that's much too good a question, sir.' Pound pointed to the hatchway in the top of the commander's cupola. 'Pop your head out and see, though, why don't you?' He made out sound almost like oat, as a Canadian would have; he came from somewhere up near the border. What used to be the border, Morrell reminded himself.
No matter what he sounded like, he'd given good advice. Morrell did stand up again in the turret. Any barrel commander worth his salt liked to stick his head out of the machine whenever he could. You could see so much more of the field that way. Of course, everybody on the field could also see you-and shoot at you. During the Great War, Morrell had often been forced back into the hell that was the interior of an old-style barrel by machine-gun fire that would have killed him in moments if he'd kept on looking around.
By the time he did emerge from the experimental model, the old Ford had come up alongside his barrel. The soldier who'd waved to him-a young lieutenant named Walt Cressy-called, 'Sir, you might want to take your machine back to the farm.'
'Oh? How come?' Morrell asked.
Lieutenant Cressy grinned. 'Just because, sir.'
That made Morrell grin, too. Maybe they really had been working overtime up in Pontiac. Maybe the combination of war with Japan-not that it was an all-out, no-holds-barred war on either side-and a Democratic administration had got engineers and workers to go at it harder than they were used to doing. 'All right, Lieutenant,' Morrell said. 'I'll do that.'
Sergeant Pound whooped with glee when Morrell gave the order to break off from maneuvers and go back to the farm. 'It has to be!' he said. 'By God, it has to be.'
'Nothing has to be anything, Sergeant,' Morrell said. 'If we haven't seen that over the past ten years and more of this business…'
That made even Pound nod thoughtfully. Barrels had probably been the war-winning weapon during the Great War. After the war, they'd been the weapon most cut by budget trimmers in two successive Socialist administrations. No one had wanted to spend the money to improve them, to give them a chance to be the war- winning weapon of the next war. No one wanted to think there might be another big war. Morrell didn't like contemplating that possibility, either, but not thinking about it wouldn't make it go away.
The experimental model easily outdistanced the leftovers from the Great War, though they carried two truck engines apiece and it had only one. It was made from thin, mild steel, enough to give an idea of how it performed but not enough to stand up to bullets. It had plainly outdone everything else in the arsenal, and by a wide margin, too. For more than ten years, nobody'd given a damn. Now…
Now Morrell's heart beat faster. It he was right, if the powers that be were waking up at last… Sergeant Michael Pound said, 'Maybe seeing Jake Featherston snorting and stomping the ground down in Richmond put the fear of God into some people, too.'
'It could be,' Morrell said. 'I'll tell you something, Sergeant: he sure as hell puts the fear of God into me.'
'He's a madman.' As usual, everything looked simple to Pound.
'Maybe. If he is, he's a clever one,' Morrell said. 'And if you put a clever madman in charge of a country that has good reason to hate the United States… Well, I don't like the combination.'
'If we have to, we'll squash him.' Pound was confident, too. Morrell wished he shared that confidence.
Then the experimental model got to the field where the barrels stayed now that they were back in service. Sure enough, a new machine squatted on the track-torn turf. The closer Morrell got, the better it looked. If he'd admired a woman as openly as he ogled that barrel, his wife, Agnes, would have had something sharp to say to him.
He climbed out through the hatch in the cupola and descended from the experimental model before it stopped moving. Sergeant Pound let out a piteous howl from inside the barrel. 'Don't eat your heart out, Sergeant,' Morrell said. 'You can come have a look, too.'
He didn't wait for Pound to emerge, though. He hurried over to the new barrel. His leg twinged under him. He'd been shot in the early days of the Great War. He still had a slight limp almost twenty years later. The leg did what he needed, though. If it pained him now and again… then it did, that was all.
'Bully,' he said softly as he came up to the new barrel. That marked him as an old-fashioned man; people who'd grown up after the Great War commonly said swell at such times. He knew exactly what he meant, though. He looked from the new machine to the experimental model and back again. A broad grin found room on his narrow face. It was like seeing a child and the man he had become there side by side.
The experimental model was soft-skinned, thin-skinned. One truck engine powered it, because it wasn't very heavy. The cannon in its turret was a one-pounder, a popgun that couldn't damage anything tougher than a truck.
Here, though, here was the machine of which its predecessor had been the model. Morrell set a hand on its green-gray flank. Armor plate felt no different from mild steel under his palm. He knew the difference was there, though. Up at the bow and on the front of the turret, two inches of hardened steel warded the barrel's vitals. The armor on the sides and back was thinner, but it was there.
A long-barreled two-inch gun jutted from the turret, a machine gun beside it. He knew of no barrel anywhere in the world with a better main armament. The suspension was beefed up. So was the engine at the rear. It was supposed to push this barrel along even faster than the experimental model could do.
Sergeant Pound came up behind him. So did the other crewmen from the experimental model: the loader, the bow machine-gunner, the wireless operator, and the driver. Pound said, 'It's quite something, sir. It's a good thing we've got it. It would have been even better if we'd had it ten years ago.'
'Yes.' Morrell wished the sergeant hadn't pointed that out, no matter how obvious a truth it was. 'If we'd built this ten years ago, what would we have now? That's what eats at me.'
'I don't blame you a bit, sir,' Pound said. 'What happened to the barrel program was a shame, a disgrace, and an embarrassment. And if the Japs hadn't gone and embarrassed us, too, it never would have started up again.'
'I know.' Morrell couldn't wait any more. He climbed up onto the new barrel, opened the hatch at the top of the commander's cupola, and slid down into the turret.
It didn't smell right. He noticed that first. All it smelled of was paint and leather and gasoline: fresh smells, new smells. It might have been a Chevrolet in a showroom. The old machines and the experimental model stank of cordite fumes and sweat, odors Morrell had taken for granted till he found himself in a barrel without them. He sat down in the commander's seat. Before long, this beast would smell the way it was supposed to.
Clankings from up above said somebody else wanted to investigate the new barrel, too. Michael Pound's
