A moment later another guerrilla appeared in the clearing; and suddenly they were coming from every direction.
Cletus sat watching and counting for a couple of minutes. By the end of the time, forty-three men had entered the clearing to surrender. Cletus nodded, thoughtfully. Forty-three men out of a total of three groups of thirty guerrillas—or ninety—all told. It was as he had expected.
He glanced down along the riverbank to the place, less than ten meters from him, where Jarnki crouched with the two other men who had been left here to defend this crossing and were now covering the growing mass of prisoners. “Ed,” Cletus transmit-pulsed at the young corporal. “Ed, look to your right.”
Jarnki looked sharply to his right, and jerked a little in startlement at seeing Cletus so close. Cletus beckoned to him. Cautiously, still crouching low to keep under the ridge of the riverbank, Jarnki ran up to where Cletus hovered on the electric horse a few feet off the ground.
As Jarnki came up, Cletus set the vehicle down on the ground and, safely screened from the clearing by the jungle bushes before him, stepped stiffly off the horse and stretched himself gratefully. “Sir?” said Jarnki, inquiringly.
“I want you to hear this,” said Cletus. He turned to the horse again and set its communications unit for the channel number of Lieutenant Athyer, over on the Blue River. “Lieutenant,” he pulse-messaged, “this is Colonel Grahame.” There was a short pause, and then the reply came, crackling not only in the earphones plug in Cletus’ ear but over the small speaker built into the electric horse, which Cletus had just turned on. “Colonel?” said Athyer. “What is it?”
“It seems the Neulander guerrillas attempted to infiltrate across the Blue River crossings here, after all,” Cletus said. “We were lucky and managed to capture about half of them—”
“Guerrillas? Captured? Half … ” Athyer’s voice faltered in the earphones and over the speaker.
“But that isn’t why I messaged,” Cletus went on. “The other half got away from us. They’ll be headed back toward the pass, to escape back into Neuland. But you’re closer to the pass than they are. If you get there with even half your men, you ought to be able to round up the rest of them without any trouble.”
“Trouble? Look… I… how do I know the situation’s the way you say it is? I…"
“Lieutenant,” said Cletus, and for the first time he put a slight emphasis on the word, “I just told you. We’ve captured half their force, here at the upper crossing on the Blue.”
“Well… yes… Colonel. I understand that. But—”
Cletus cut him short. “Then get going, Lieutenant,” he said. “If you don’t move fast, you may miss them.”
“Yes, sir. Of course. I’ll message you again, shortly, Colonel… Maybe you’d better hold your prisoners there, until they can be picked up by support ship… Uh, some of them might get away if you try to move them through the jungle with only your six men.” Athyer’s voice was strengthening as he got control of himself. But there was a bitter note in it. Clearly, the implications of the capture of a large group of enemy infiltrators by a desk-bound theoretician, when Athyer himself was the sole field officer in command of the capturing force, was beginning to register on him. There was little hope that General Traynor would overlook this kind of a failure on his part.
His voice was grim as he went on.
“Do you need a medic?” he asked. “I can spare you one of the two I’ve got here and send him right over by one of the support ships, now that secrecy’s out and the Neulanders know we’re here.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant. Yes, we could use a medic,” said Cletus. “Good luck with the rest of them.”
“Thanks,” said Athyer, coldly. “Out, sir.”
“Out,” replied Cletus.
He cut transmission, stepped away from the electric horse and lowered himself stiffly to the ground into a sitting position, with his back to a nearby boulder.
“Sir?” said Jarnki. “What do we need a medic for? None of the men got hurt. You don’t mean you, sir…?”
“Me,” said Cletus.
He extended his left leg, reached down and took his combat knife from its boot sheath. With its blade he ripped open his left pants leg, from above the knee to the top of his boot. The knee he revealed was extremely swollen and not pretty to look at. He reached for the first-aid kit at his belt and took out a spray hypo. He put the blunt nose of the spray against his wrist and pulled the trigger. The cool shock of the spray being driven through his skin directly into his bloodstream was like the touch of a finger of peace.
“Christ, sir,” said Jarnki, white-faced, staring at the knee.
Cletus leaned back gratefully against the boulder, and let the soft waves of the narcotic begin to fold him into unconsciousness.
“I agree with you,” he said. Then darkness claimed him.
9.
Lying on his back in the hospital bed, Cletus gazed thoughtfully at the stiff, sunlit form of his left leg, upheld in traction above the surface of the bed.
“So,” the duty medical officer, a brisk, round-faced, fortyish major had said with a fiendish chuckle when Cletus had been brought in, “you’re the type who hates to take time out to give your body a chance to heal, are you, Colonel?” The next thing Cletus had known he was in the bed with his leg balanced immovably in a float cast anchored to the ceiling.
“But it’s been three days now,” Cletus remarked to Arvid, who had just arrived, bringing, as per orders, a local almanac, “and he promised that the third day he’d turn me loose. Take another look out in the corridor and see if he’s been in any of the other rooms along here.” Arvid obeyed. He returned in a minute or two, shaking his head.
“No luck,” he said. “But General Traynor’s on his way over, sir. The nurse on the desk said his office just phoned to see if you were still here.”
“Oh?” said Cletus. “That is right. He’d be coming, of course.” He reached out and pressed the button that tilted the bed to lift him up into a sitting position. “Tell you what, Arv. Take a look up and down the other rooms for me and see if you can scrounge me some spacepost covers.”
“Spacepost covers?” replied Arvid, calmly unquestioningly. “Right, I’ll be back in a minute.”
He went out. It took him more like three minutes than one; but when he returned he had five of the flimsy yellow envelopes in which mail sent by spaceship was ordinarily carried. The Earth Terminal postmark was square and black on the back of each. Cletus stacked them loosely together and laid them in a face-down pile on the table surface of his bedside console. Arvid watched him.
“Did you find what you wanted in the almanac, sir?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Cletus. Seeing Arvid still gazing at him curiously, he added, “There’s a new moon tonight.”
“Oh,” said Arvid.
“Yes. Now, when the general comes, Arv,” Cletus said, “stay out in the corridor and keep your eyes open. I don’t want that doctor slipping past me just because a general’s talking to me, and leaving me hung up here for another day. What time was that appointment of mine with the officer from the Security Echelon?”
“Eleven hundred hours,” said Arvid.
“And it’s nine-thirty, already,” said Cletus, looking at his watch. “Arv, if you’ll step into the bathroom there, its window should give you a view of the drive in front of the hospital. If the general’s coming by ground car, you ought to be able to see him pulling up about now. Take a look for me, will you?”
Arvid obediently disappeared into the small bath cubicle attached to Cletus’ hospital room.
“No sign, sir,” his voice came back.
“Keep watching,” Cletus said.
Cletus relaxed against the upright slope of the bed behind him, half-closing his eyes. He had been expecting the general—in fact, Bat would be merely the last in a long line of visitors that had included Mondar, Eachan Khan, Melissa, Wefer Linet—and even Ed Jarnki. The gangling young noncommissione
d officer had come in to show Cletus the new sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve and give Cletus the credit for the fact they were there.
“Lieutenant Athyer’s report tried to take all the credit for himself,” Jarnki said. “We heard about it from the company clerk. But the rest of the squad and me—we spread the real story around. Maybe over at the Officers’ Club they don’t know how it was, but they do back in the barracks.”
“Thank you,” said Cletus.
“Hell…" said Jarnki, and paused, apparently at somewhat of a loss to further express his feelings. He changed the subject. “You wouldn’t be able to use me yourself, would you, Colonel? I haven’t been to clerks’ school, but I mean—you couldn’t use a driver or anything?”
Cletus smiled. “I’d like to have you, Ed,” he said, “but I don’t think they’d give you up. After all, you’re a line soldier.”
“I guess not, then,” said Jarnki, disappointed. He went off, but not before he extracted from Cletus a promise to take him on if he should ever become available.
Jarnki had been wrong, however, in believing that Athyer’s report would be accepted at face value among the commissioned ranks. Clearly, the lieutenant was known to his fellow officers for the kind of field commander he was—just as it had been fairly obvious that Bat had not by chance chosen an officer like him to test Cletus’s prophecy of guerrilla infiltration. As Arvid had reported to him, after that night at Mondar’s party, the word was that Bat Traynor was out to get Cletus. In itself this information had originally meant merely that Cletus would be a good person for his fellow officers to avoid. But now, since he had pulled his chestnut out of the fire up on the Blue River without burning his fingers, there was plainly a good deal of covert sympathy for him among all but Bat’s closest supporters. Eachan Khan had dryly hinted as much. Wefer Linet, from his safe perch inside the Navy chain of command, had blandly alluded to it. Bat could hardly be unaware of this reaction among the officers and men he commanded. Moreover, he was a conscientious commanding officer in the formal sense. If anything, it was surprising that he had not come to pay a visit to Cletus at the hospital before this.
Cletus relaxed, pushing back the tension in his body that threatened to possess it in impatience at being anchored here on the bed when so many things were yet to be done. What would be, would be…
The sound of the door opening brought his eyes open as well. He raised his head and looked to his right and saw Bat Traynor entering the hospital room. There had been no warning from Arvid, still in the bathroom. Fleetingly, Cletus permitted himself the hope that the young lieutenant would have the sense to stay out of sight now that his chance discreetly to leave the hospital room was barred.
Bat strode up to the edge of the bed and stared down at Cletus, his expressive eyebrows drawing together in a faint scowl.
“Well, Colonel,” he said, as he pulled a nearby chair close to the bed and sat down so that he stared into Cletus’s face. He smiled, in hard, genial fashion. “Still got you tied up, I see.”
“I’m supposed to be turned loose today,” Cletus answered. “Thank you for dropping by, sir.”
“I usually drop by to see one of my officers who’s in the hospital,” said Bat. “Nothing special in your case—though you did do a good job with those six men up on the Blue River, Colonel.”
“The guerrillas weren’t very eager to make a fight of it, sir,” said Cletus. “And then I was lucky enough to have them do just what I’d guessed they’d do. The General knows how unusual it is when everything works out in the field just the way it’s planned.”
“I do. Believe me, I do,” answered Bat. Under the heavy brows, his eyes were hard but wary upon Cletus. “But that doesn’t alter the fact you were right in your guess about where they’d come through and what they’d do once they were through.”
“Yes, I’m happy about that,” said Cletus. He smiled. “As I told the General, I pretty much bet my reputation on it to my friends back on Earth just before I left.”
He glanced, as if unthinkingly, at the loose pile of face-down spaceship covers. Bat’s eyes, following the direction of Cletus’s gaze, narrowed slightly at sight of the yellow envelopes.
“You’ve been getting congratulations, have you?” Bat asked.
“There’ve been a few pats on the back,” Cletus said. He did not add that these had been only from such local people as Eachan, Mondar and newly made Sergeant Ed Jarnki. “Of course, the operation wasn’t a total success. I heard the rest of the guerrillas managed to get back through the pass before Lieutenant Athyer could contain them.”
Bat’s eyebrows jerked together into a solid angry line of black. “Don’t push me, Colonel,” he rumbled. “Athyer’s report said he got word from you too late to take his men up into position to bar the pass.”
“Was that it, sir?” said Cletus. “I’d guess it was my fault, then. After all, Athyer’s an experienced field officer and I’m just a desk-jockey theoretician. I’m sure everybody realizes it was just luck that the contact my squad had with the enemy was successful and the contact the lieutenant and the rest of his company had wasn’t.”
For a moment their eyes locked.
“Of course,” said Bat, grimly. “And if they don’t understand it, I do. And that’s what’s important—isn’t it, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir,” said Cletus.
Bat sat back in his chair, and his brows relaxed. “Anyway,” he said, “I didn’t come here just to congratulate you. A suggestion by you came through to my office that you set up a staff to make regular weekly forecasts of enemy activity. There was also your request for personnel and office space to facilitate your making such forecasts… Understand, Colonel, as far as I’m concerned, I still need you like I need a fifty-man string ensemble. But your success with the guerrillas has got us some good publicity back at Alliance HQ, and I don’t see how you can do any harm to the rest of the war effort here on Kultis by setting up this forecast staff. So, I’m going to approve it.” He paused, then shot the words at Cletus. “That make you happy?”
“Yes, sir,” said Cletus. “Thank you, General.”
“Don’t bother,” said Bat, grimly. “As for Athyer—he had his chance, and he fell on his face. He’ll be coming up for a Board of Inquiry into his fitness as an Alliance officer. Now—anything else you want?”
“No,” said Cletus.
Bat stood up abruptly. “Good,” he said. “I don’t like having my arm twisted. I prefer handing out favors before they’re asked. Also, I still need those tanks, and you’re still going back to Earth at the first opportunity, Colonel. Tuck that fact into your prognostications and don’t forget it!”
He turned on his heel and went toward the door. “General,” said Cletus. “There is a favor you could do me…"
Bat checked and swung about. His face darkened. “After all?” His voice was hard. “What is it, Colonel?”
“The Exotics have quite a library here in Bakhalla,” said Cletus. “With a good deal of military text and information in it.”
“What about it?”
“If the General will pardon me,” said Cletus, slowly, “Lieutenant Athyer’s main problems are too much imagination coupled with not enough confidence in himself. If he could get away and season himself for a while—say, as Information Officer for the Expeditionary Forces, to that Exotic library—he might turn out highly useful, after all.”
Bat stared at Cletus. “Now why,” said Bat softly, “would you want something like that for Athyer instead of a Board of Inquiry?”
“I don’t like to see a valuable man wasted,” said Cletus.
Bat grunted. He turned on his heel and went out without a further word. Looking a little sheepish, Arvid emerged from the bathroom.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said to Cletus. “The General must’ve come by air and landed on the roof.”
“Think nothing of it, Arv,” said Cletus, happily. “Just get out in that corridor and find me that doctor. I’ve got to get out
of here.”
Twenty minutes later, Arvid having finally located and produced the medical officer, Cletus was finally out of his cast and on his way to the office space Arvid had located for him. It was one of a set of three office suites, each consisting of three rooms and a bath, that had originally been erected by the Exotics for housing VIP guests. The other two suites were empty, so that, in essence, they had the building to themselves—a point Cletus had stipulated earlier when he had sent Arvid out to search. When they reached the office, Cletus found it furnished only with some camp chairs and a temporary field desk. A lean major in his early forties, with a white scar across his chin, was examining these in disparaging fashion.
“Major Wilson?” asked Cletus, as the officer turned to face them. “I’m Colonel Grahame.”
They shook hands.
“Security sent me over,” Wilson said. “You said you were expecting some special problem here, Colonel?”
“I’m hoping for one,” replied Cletus. “We’re going to be handling a good deal of material here, from the classified category on up. I’m going to be making weekly forecasts of enemy activity for General Traynor. Sooner or later the Neulanders are bound to hear of this and take an interest in this office. I’d like to set it up as a trap for anyone they send to investigate.”
“Trap, sir?” echoed Wilson, puzzled.
“That’s right,” said Cletus, cheerfully. “I want to make it possible for them to get in, but, once in, impossible for them to get back out.”
He turned to indicate the walls around them.
“For example,” he said, pointing, “heavy steel mesh on the inside of the windows, but anchored so that it can’t be pried loose or cut through with ordinary tools. An obvious lock on the outer door that can be easily picked—but a hidden lock that fastens the door securely once the open lock has been picked and the door opened and shut once. Metal framing and center panel for the door frame and door itself, so that they can’t break out once the hidden lock has closed the door… Possibly a wiring system to electrify the doors, windows and ventilator system just to discourage any attempt to break loose.”