“Gosh, this is no place for a rest cure,” said Freiburg. “I’m beginning to get the jitters. What the hell is it now?”
George said, looking hard: “It’s the armored H.Q. It’s coming this way—like a bullet.”
And indeed the great torpedo was hurtling head on towards them with its jet roaring. They could see only its blind, sharp nose. It sped through the ring of stationary tanks and the ground began to shake under its spinning metal wheels.
“Down,” said Freiburg, dazedly, wearily. He was getting tired of existence in a sort of recurring earthquake, bobbing up and down like some kind of jack-in-the-box; of continually being assailed by ear-shattering noises and uninvited missies. The collapse of the ship, his once proud charge, had brought the last of his failing spirits down with it. That was the last straw. He fell into a state of cynical despair.
The roaring ended, was supplanted by a nerve-tearing squealing, like powerful brakes being applied. Came a silence. And then the grinding of twenty-five tanks moving in unison grated through the heavy air. George caught Freiburg’s glazing eye. He grinned at him wryly. Freiburg tried to respond in kind, but failed. His expression asked dismally:
Events answered with another change of tempo. Silence fell so abruptly that it seemed to have a noise of its own.
But now the skipper had become too apathetic to investigate. He merely lay waiting dully for whatever manifested itself. Sparks had given up, too, and lay resignedly at his side with a red-soaked handkerchief pressed to the lower half of his face.
Temperamentally different, George was alert and interested. He gazed boldly at the next surprise item on the program—and was duly surprised. For each and every one of the tanks had performed an about-face. Now they were facing outwards, their long gun barrels radiating like the spokes of a wheel. To the ship and men from Earth they presented only their apparently unprotected backs. And the great horizontal ship on wheels had also swung around to offer them a view of its rear. It stood there not two hundred metres distant, ignoring them, facing an unseen enemy, patiently waiting. The only thing moving appeared to be the slight heat haze rising from its tail. For the rest, it was a still-life picture, painted in low tones, with the motionless grey clouds hanging over all. George spurred his reluctant skipper into taking a look at it. The Captain gazed from under lowered, cynical eyelids. He grunted: “Oh, I see, it’s all only a game, after all. They want us to chase them now. To hell with them! I’m going to see how the other guys are.”
He shook off George’s restraining hand and climbed out of the pit. He walked at his own pace to the craters where the rest of his crew had gone to ground. But one crater was no longer there. It had become a filled-in double grave.
The mate and one other crew member were lying full-length at the bottom of their crater, face down. Shrapnel was strewn around like so much street rubbish, but none of it appeared to have touched them.
“Come on, you men,” said the skipper. “Time for chow.”
He stood on the crater rim careless of the array of mechanized might not so far beyond it. There had been just too much of everything, and he was beyond caring any more. Egotistically, he looked on it as a personal attack. Fate had always used him as a football, and now he could only accept that and shrug it off.
Slowly, the mate raised his grimy face. The shells had fallen closer to his refuge and the tide of thick, sooty gas had washed over it many times. There were tear furrows down his cheeks. He might have been crying. It might have been only the gas making his eyes stream.
“Milman’s dead, sir.”
The skipper frowned. “Are you sure? He doesn’t look it.”
“No, it was just one small splinter. In his right eye.”
Captain Jonah Freiburg sighed. “Barker and Heinz are dead, too. And buried. Which leaves only four of us. Four is just right for bridge. Got a deck of cards on you?”
The mate sat up. “No, sir.” He was puzzled by this off-hand remark. George got there in time to hear it, and wasn’t puzzled. He realized Freiburg had thrown in his hand. And he knew he would have to take over. He examined Milman, who was stone dead and cooling fast. He clambered out of the crater and took a careful survey of the whole area through his telescope. It was still as lively as a graveyard on a wet afternoon threatening rain.
Freiburg had perched himself on the rim of the pit, and was swinging his legs idly as he filled his pipe.
George said: “You just rest there for a while, Skip. I’m going over to that H.Q. set-up to see if I can make contact and learn who’s on who’s side against what”
Freiburg nodded absently, busy with his pipe.
The mate asked: “Can I come, Mr. Starkey?”
