"You didn't come here to tell me we were licked," Reynolds cut in. "How about Brand's batteries?"
"Hell, son, Lenny stood up to point-blank Hellbore fire on Toledo, and—"
"Are you telling me there's nothing we can do?"
"What's that? No, son, that's not what I'm saying . . ."
"Then what!"
"Just tell these johnnies to get out of the way, mister. I think I can handle him."
11
At the field comm hut, Pete Reynolds watched as the man who had been Lieutenant Sanders of the Volunteer Scouts pulled shiny black boots over his thin ankles and stood. The blouse and trousers of royal blue polyon hung on his spare frame like wash on a line. He grinned, a skull's grin.
"It doesn't fit like it used to; but Lenny will recognize it. It'll help. Now, if you've got that power pack ready . . ."
Mayfield handed over the old-fashioned field instrument Sanders had brought in with him.
"It's operating, sir—but I've already tried everything I've got on that infernal machine; I didn't get a peep out of it."
Sanders winked at him. "Maybe I know a couple of tricks you boys haven't heard about." He slung the strap over his bony shoulder and turned to Reynolds.
"Guess we better get going, mister. He's getting close."
In the rock car, Sanders leaned close to Reynolds' ear. "Told you those Federal guns wouldn't scratch Lenny. They're wasting their time."
Reynolds pulled the car to a stop at the crest of the road, from which point he had a view of the sweep of ground leading across to the city's edge. Lights sparkled all across the towers of New Devon. Close to the walls, the converging fire of the ranked batteries of infinite repeaters drove into the glowing bulk of the machine, which plowed on, undeterred. As he watched, the firing ceased.
"Now, let's get in there, before they get some other damn-fool scheme going," Sanders said.
The rock car crossed the rough ground, swung wide to come up on the Bolo from the left side. Behind the hastily rigged radiation cover, Reynolds watched the immense silhouette grow before him.
"I knew they were big," he said. "But to see one up close like this—" He pulled to a stop a hundred feet from the Bolo.
"Look at the side ports," Sanders said, his voice crisper now. "He's firing antipersonnel charges—only his plates are flat. If they weren't, we wouldn't have gotten within half a mile." He unclipped the microphone and spoke into it:
"Unit LNE, break off action and retire to ten-mile line!"
Reynolds' head jerked around to stare at the old man. His voice had rung with vigor and authority as he spoke the command.
The Bolo ground slowly ahead. Sanders shook his head, tried again.
"No answer, like that fella said. He must be running on nothing but memories now . . ." He reattached the microphone, and before Reynolds could put out a hand, had lifted the anti-R cover and stepped off on the ground.
"Sanders—get back in here!" Reynolds yelled.
"Never mind, son. I've got to get in close. Contact induction." He started toward the giant machine. Frantically, Reynolds started the car, slammed it into gear, pulled forward.
"Better stay back." Sanders' voice came from his field radio. "This close, that screening won't do you much good."
"Get in the car!" Reynolds roared. "That's hard radiation!"
"Sure; feels funny, like a sunburn, about an hour after you come in from the beach and start to think maybe you got a little too much." He laughed. "But I'll get to him . . ."
Reynolds braked to a stop, watched the shrunken figure in the baggy uniform as it slogged forward, leaning as against a sleet storm.
12
"I'm up beside him." Sander's voice came through faintly on the field radio. "I'm going to try to swing up on his side. Don't feel like trying to chase him any farther."
Through the glasses, Reynolds watched the small figure, dwarfed by the immense bulk of the fighting machine, as he tried, stumbled, tried again, swung up on the flange running across the rear quarter inside the churning bogie wheel.
"He's up," he reported. "Damned wonder the track didn't get him . . ."
Clinging to the side of the machine, Sanders lay for a moment, bent forward across the flange. Then he pulled himself up, wormed his way forward to the base of the rear quarter turret, wedged himself against it. He unslung the communicator, removed a small black unit, clipped it to the armor; it clung, held by a magnet. He brought the microphone up to his face.
In the comm shack, Mayfield leaned toward the screen, his eyes squinted in tension. Across the field, Reynolds held the glasses fixed on the man lying across the flank of the Bolo. They waited . . .
13
The walls are before me, and I ready myself for a final effort, but suddenly I am aware of trickle currents flowing over my outer surface. Is this some new trick of the Enemy? I tune to the wave energies, trace the source. They originate at a point in contact with my aft port armor. I sense modulation, match receptivity to a computed pattern. And I hear a voice:
"Unit LNE, break it off, Lenny. We're pulling back now, boy. This is Command to LNE; pull back to ten miles. If you read me, Lenny, swing to port and halt."
I am not fooled by the deception. The order appears correct, but the voice is not that of my Commander. Briefly I regret that I cannot spare energy to direct a neutralizing power flow at the device the Enemy has attached to me. I continue my charge.
"Unit LNE! Listen to me, boy; maybe you don't recognize my voice, but it's me. You see, boy—some time has passed. I've gotten old. My voice has changed some, maybe. But it's me! Make a port turn, Lenny. Make it now!"
I am tempted to respond to the trick, for something in the false command seems to awaken secondary circuits which I sense have been long stilled. But I must not be swayed by the cleverness of the Enemy. My sensing circuitry has faded further as my energy cells drain; but I know where the Enemy lies. I move forward, but I am filled with agony, and only the memory of my comrades drives me on.
"Lenny, answer me. Transmit on the old private band—the one we agreed on. Nobody but me knows it, remember?
Thus the Enemy seeks to beguile me into diverting precious power. But I will not listen.
"Lenny—not much time left. Another minute and you'll be into the walls. People are going to die. Got to stop you, Lenny. Hot here. My God, I'm hot. Not breathing too well, now. I can feel it; cutting through me like knives. You took a load of Enemy power, Lenny; and now I'm getting my share. Answer me, Lenny. Over to you . . ."
It will require only a tiny allocation of power to activate a communication circuit. I realize that it is only an Enemy trick, but I compute that by pretending to be deceived, I may achieve some trivial advantage. I adjust circuitry accordingly and transmit:
"Unit LNE to Command. Contact with Enemy defensive line imminent. Request support fire!"
"Lenny . . . you can hear me! Good boy, Lenny! Now make a turn, to port. Walls . . . close . . ."
"Unit LNE to Command. Request positive identification; transmit code 685749."
"Lenny—I can't . . . don't have code blanks. But it's me . . ."
"In absence of recognition code, your transmission disregarded," I send. And now the walls loom high above me. There are many lights, but I see them only vaguely. I am nearly blind now.
"Lenny—less'n two hundred feet to go. Listen, Lenny. I'm climbing down. I'm going to jump down, Lenny, and get around under your fore scanner pickup. You'll see me, Lenny. You'll know me then."
The false transmission ceases. I sense a body moving across my side. The gap closes. I detect movement before me, and in automatic reflex fire anti-P charges before I recall that I am unarmed.
A small object has moved out before me, and taken up a position between me and the wall behind which the Enemy conceal themselves. It is dim, but appears to have the shape of a man . . .
I am uncertain. My alert center attempts to engage inhibitory circuitry which will force me to halt, b
ut it lacks power. I can override it. But still I am unsure. Now I must take a last risk; I must shunt power to my forward scanner to examine this obstacle more closely. I do so, and it leaps into greater clarity. It is indeed a man—and it is enclothed in regulation blues of the Volunteers. Now, closer, I see the face and through the pain of my great effort, I study it . . .
14
"He's backed against the wall," Reynolds said hoarsely. "It's still coming. A hundred feet to go—"
"You were a fool, Reynolds!" the mayor barked. "A fool to stake everything on that old dotard's crazy ideas!"
"Hold it!" As Reynolds watched, the mighty machine slowed, halted, ten feet from the sheer wall before it. For a moment, it sat, as though puzzled. Then it backed, halted again, pivoted ponderously to the left, and came about.
On its side, a small figure crept up, fell across the lower gun deck. The Bolo surged into motion, retracing its route across the artillery-scarred gardens.
"He's turned it." Reynolds let his breath out with a shuddering sigh. "It's headed out for open desert. It might get twenty miles before it finally runs out of steam."
The strange voice that was the Bolo's came from the big panel before Mayfield:
"Command . . . Unit LNE reports main power cells drained, secondary cells drained; now operating at .037 per cent efficiency, using Final Emergency Power. Request advice as to range to be covered before relief maintenance available."
"It's a long way, Lenny . . ." Sanders' voice was a bare whisper. "But I'm coming with you . . ."
Then there was only the crackle of static. Ponderously, like a great mortally stricken animal, the Bolo moved through the ruins of the fallen roadway, heading for the open desert.
"That damned machine," the mayor said in a hoarse voice. "You'd almost think it was alive."
"You would at that," Pete Reynolds said.
Afterword by Eric Flint:
In his preface, David refers to three of the Bolo stories "that really have an impact." The other two, for the record—at least so far as Dave and I are concerned—are "A Relic of War" and "Combat Unit" (aka "Dinochrome"). Among the three, it's hard to pick and choose. As it happens, I chose "Dinochrome" to include in the first volume of Laumer's writings which I edited for Baen Books' current reissue of many of Laumer's writings, but I could just as easily have chosen this one.
My reasons are similar to David's, but not exactly the same. I'm not a combat veteran, so on that level the story doesn't have the same personal impact. The thing I've always liked so much about the three great Bolo stories is that they give you the best of Laumer's ethos of duty without the veneer that I often find repellent in so many other stories Laumer wrote.
Laumer, like Van Vogt, was an author who naturally gravitated toward superman stories. Stories like that, no matter how well crafted and enjoyable—and on that level Laumer was a superb writer, one of the best ever in science fiction—just naturally tend to rub me the wrong way. It doesn't matter how admirable and courageous the hero might be, or how worthy his cause, I soon get impatient with story after story where the fate of the world rests almost entirely on one person doing the right thing, and where the role of everyone else is pretty much reduced to one of three roles:
a) Loyal sidekick;
b) Enemy;
c) Most people, who are irrelevant at best and sluggards as a rule.
Oh, bah. The great divide in science fiction is not political, it's the divide between those writers—Heinlein, Clarke and Andre Norton, to name three great figures—who generally tell stories about fairly ordinary people doing their best in difficult circumstances, and those writers—Van Vogt, "Doc" Smith and Laumer prominent among them, with George Lucas' Star Wars series the latest embodiment—for whom most stories are heroic epics centered around supermen.
There's an attraction to such stories, of course, even for someone with my inclination. That's because, in the hands of good writers, the theme of Duty rings so strongly. It's a theme which is difficult not to like, because without a sense of duty no virtues of any kind are possible.
And that's why the best of the Bolo stories always have such an impact on me—today just as much as they did when I first read them many decades ago. The theme comes without the dross, so to speak. The Bolos are not supermen, they are simply servants trying to follow their duty as best as they can manage. In the end, for me at least, that makes these machines ultimately more human than many other of Laumer's characters. Well . . . maybe not more human, but certainly a lot more sympathetic.
Who Goes There?
by John W. Campbell
Preface by Eric Flint
This story has been anthologized so many times, that I suppose I should explain why we decided to do it again. Well . . . that's sort of the reason, right there. It was something of a ubiquitous phenomenon, coming into science fiction in the late '50s and early '60s. Even in Hollywood: the 1951 movie The Thing was made from it, and then remade in 1982. An anthology like this one just wouldn't have felt quite right without it. To me, anyway.
Campbell is today much more often remembered as the editor of ASF than he is as a writer in his own right. But when I was a kid, a lot of his stories were still readily available. There was a time when I devoured his space operas and swore that Doc Smith's Lensmen couldn't hold a candle to the intrepid crews of Campbell's galactic-scale adventure novels.
Well . . . that was then and this is now, and the verdict of history is pretty much in. Campbell was in fact a central figure in SF, even a towering one, but it's his influence as an editor that has lasted. His own fiction has pretty much vanished.
Except this story.
I
The place stank. A queer, mingled stench that only the ice-buried cabins of an Antarctic camp know, compounded of reeking human sweat, and the heavy, fish-oil stench of melted seal blubber. An overtone of liniment combated the musty smell of sweat-and-snow-drenched furs. The acrid odor of burnt cooking fat, and the animal, not-unpleasant smell of dogs, diluted by time, hung in the air.
Lingering odors of machine oil contrasted sharply with the taint of harness dressing and leather. Yet, somehow, through all that reek of human beings and their associates—dogs, machines, and cooking—came another taint. It was a queer, neck-ruffling thing, a faintest suggestion of an odor alien among the smells of industry and life. And it was a life-smell. But it came from the thing that lay bound with cord and tarpaulin on the table, dripping slowly, methodically onto the heavy planks, dank and gaunt under the unshielded glare of the electric light.
Blair, the little bald-pated biologist of the expedition, twitched nervously at the wrappings, exposing clear, dark ice beneath and then pulling the tarpaulin back into place restlessly. His little birdlike motions of suppressed eagerness danced his shadow across the fringe of dingy gray underwear hanging from the low ceiling, the equatorial fringe of stiff, graying hair around his naked skull a comical halo about the shadow's head.
Commander Garry brushed aside the lax legs of a suit of underwear, and stepped toward the table. Slowly his eyes traced around the rings of men sardined into the Administration Building. His tall, stiff body straightened finally, and he nodded. "Thirty-seven. All here." His voice was low, yet carried the clear authority of the commander by nature, as well as by title.
"You know the outline of the story back of that find of the Secondary Pole Expedition. I have been conferring with Second-in-Command McReady, and Norris, as well as Blair and Dr. Copper. There is a difference of opinion, and because it involves the entire group, it is only just that the entire Expedition personnel act on it.
"I am going to ask McReady to give you the details of the story, because each of you has been too busy with his own work to follow closely the endeavors of the others. McReady?"
Moving from the smoke-blued background, McReady was a figure from some forgotten myth, a looming, bronze statue that held life, and walked. Six feet four inches he stood as he halted beside the table, and with a characteris
tic glance upward to assure himself of room under the low ceiling beams, straightened. His rough, clashingly orange windproof jacket he still had on, yet on his huge frame it did not seem misplaced. Even here, four feet beneath the drift-wind that droned across the Antarctic waste above the ceiling, the cold of the frozen continent leaked in, and gave meaning to the harshness of the man. And he was bronze—his great red-bronze beard, the heavy hair that matched it. The gnarled, corded hands gripping, relaxing, gripping and relaxing on the table planks were bronze. Even the deep-sunken eyes beneath heavy brows were bronzed.
Age-resisting endurance of the metal spoke in the cragged heavy outlines of his face, and the mellow tones of the heavy voice. "Norris and Blair agree on one thing; that animal we found was not—terrestrial in origin. Norris fears there may be danger in that; Blair says there is none.
"But I'll go back to how, and why we found it. To all that was known before we came here, it appeared that this point was exactly over the South Magnetic Pole of Earth. The compass does point straight down here, as you all know. The more delicate instruments of the physicists, instruments especially designed for this expedition and its study of the magnetic pole, detected a secondary effect, a secondary, less powerful magnetic influence about eighty miles southwest of here.
"The Secondary Magnetic Expedition went out to investigate it. There is no need for details. We found it, but it was not the huge meteorite or magnetic mountain Norris had expected to find. Iron ore is magnetic, of course; iron more so—and certain special steels even more magnetic. From the surface indications, the secondary pole we found was small, so small that the magnetic effect it had was preposterous. No magnetic material conceivable could have that effect. Soundings through the ice indicated it was within one hundred feet of the glacier surface.