Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

“How much farther?” Rashid said. The masks muffled their voices.

“There it is now. Shall I take us right in?”

“I think you’d better.”

The station was a glass diamond in a small clearing. The driver slowed down, then crashed through the glass walls and hovered by the transmitter booth.

Rashid opened the door and threw out two grenades. Read jumped out and the two of them struggled toward the booth with Umluana. The driver, pistol in hand, ran for the control panel.

There were three technicians in the station and no passengers. All three panicked when the psycho gas enveloped them. They ran howling for the jungle.

Through the window of his mask, Read saw their pursuers land in the clearing. Machine-gun bullets raked the building. They got Umluana in the booth and hit the floor. Read took aim and opened fire on the largest car.

“Now, I can shoot back,” he said. “Now we’ll see what they do.”

“Are you ready, Rashid?” yelled the driver.

“Man, get us out of here!”

The booth door shut. When it opened, they were at the Game Preserve.

The station jutted from the side of a hill. A glass-walled waiting room surrounded the bank of transmitter booths. Read looked out the door and saw his first battlefield.

Directly in front of him, his head shattered by a bullet, a dead inspector lay behind an overturned couch.

Read had seen dozens of training films taken during actual battles or after atomic attacks. He had laughed when other recruits complained. “That’s the way this world is. You people with the weak stomachs better get used to it.”

Now he slid against the rear wall of the transmitter booth.

A wounded inspector crawled across the floor to the booth. Read couldn’t see his wound, only the pain scratched on his face and the blood he deposited on the floor.

“Did you get Umluana?” he asked Sergeant Rashid.

“He’s in the booth. What’s going on?” Rashid’s Middle East Oxford seemed more clipped than ever.

“They hit us with two companies of troops a few minutes ago. I think half our men are wounded.”

“Can we get out of here?”

“They machine-gunned the controls.”

Rashid swore. “You heard him, Read! Get out there and help those men.”

He heard the screams of the wounded, the crack of rifles and machine guns, all the terrifying noise of war. But since his eighteenth year he had done everything his superiors told him to do.

He started crawling toward an easy-chair that looked like good cover. A bullet cracked above his head, so close he felt the shock wave. He got up, ran panicky, crouched, and dove behind the chair.

An inspector cracked the valve on a smoke grenade. A white fog spread through the building. They could see anyone who tried to rush them but the besiegers couldn’t pick out targets.

Above the noise, he heard Rashid.

“I’m calling South Africa Station for a copter. It’s the only way out of here. Until it comes, we’ve got to hold them back.”

Read thought of the green beret he had stuffed in his pocket that morning. He stuck it on his head and cocked it. He didn’t need plain clothes anymore and he wanted to wear at least a part of his uniform.

Bullets had completely shattered the wall in front of him. He stared through the murk, across the broken glass. He was Corporal Harry Read, UN Inspector Corps—a very special man. If he didn’t do a good job here, he wasn’t the man he claimed to be. This might be the only real test he would ever face.

He heard a shout in rapid French. He turned to his right. Men in red loincloths ran zigzagging toward the station. They carried light automatic rifles. Half of them wore gas masks.

“Shoot the masks,” he yelled. “Aim for the masks.”

The machine gun kicked and chattered on his shoulder. He picked a target and squeezed off a burst. Tensely, he hunted for another mask. Three grenades arced through the air and yellow gas spread across the battlefield. The attackers ran through it. A few yards beyond the gas, some of them turned and ran for their own lines. In a moment only half a dozen masked men still advanced. The inspectors fired a long, noisy volley. When they stopped only four attackers remained on their feet. And they were running for cover.

The attackers had come straight up a road that led from the Game Preserve to the station. They had not expected any resistance. The UN men had already taken over the station, chased out the passengers and technicians and taken up defense positions; they had met the Belderkans with a dozen grenades and sent them scurrying for cover. The fight so far had been vicious but disorganized. But the Belderkans had a few hundred men and knew they had wrecked the transmitter controls.

The first direct attack had been repulsed. They could attack many more times and continue to spray the building with bullets. They could also try to go around the hill and attack the station from above; if they did, the inspectors had a good view of the hill and should see them going up.

The inspectors had taken up good defensive positions. In spite of their losses, they still had enough firepower to cover the area surrounding the station.

Read surveyed his sector of fire. About two hundred yards to his left, he saw the top of a small ditch. Using the ditch for cover, the Belderkans could sneak to the top of the hill.

Gas grenades are only three inches long. They hold cubic yards of gas under high pressure. Read unclipped a telescoping rod from his vest pocket. He opened it and a pair of sights flipped up. A thin track ran down one side.

He had about a dozen grenades left, three self-propelling. He slid an SP grenade into the rod’s track and estimated windage and range. Sighting carefully, not breathing, muscles relaxed, the rod rock steady, he fired and lobbed the little grenade into the ditch. He dropped another grenade beside it.

The heavy gas would lie there for hours.

Sergeant Rashid ran crouched from man to man. He did what he could to shield the wounded.

“Well, corporal, how are you?”

“Not too bad, sergeant. See that ditch out there? I put a little gas in it.”

“Good work. How’s your ammunition?”

“A dozen grenades. Half a barrel of shells.”

“The copter will be here in half an hour. We’ll put Umluana on, then try to save ourselves. Once he’s gone, I think we ought to surrender.”

“How do you think they’ll treat us?”

“That we’ll have to see.”

An occasional bullet cracked and whined through the misty room. Near him a man gasped frantically for air. On the sunny field a wounded man screamed for help.

“There’s a garage downstairs,” Rashid said. “In case the copter doesn’t get here on time, I’ve got a man filling wine bottles with gasoline.”

“We’ll stop them, Sarge. Don’t worry.”

Rashid ran off. Read stared across the green land and listened to the pound of his heart. What were the Belderkans planning? A mass frontal attack? To sneak in over the top of the hill?

He didn’t think, anymore than a rabbit thinks when it lies hiding from the fox or a panther thinks when it crouches on a branch above the trail. His skin tightened and relaxed on his body.

“Listen,” said a German.

Far down the hill he heard the deep-throated rumble of a big motor.

“Armor,” the German said.

The earth shook. The tank rounded the bend. Read watched the squat, angular monster until its stubby gun pointed at the station. It stopped less than two hundred yards away.

A loud-speaker blared.

ATTENTION UN SOLDIERS. ATTENTION UN SOLDIERS. YOU MAY THINK US SAVAGES BUT WE HAVE MODERN WEAPONS. WE HAVE ATOMIC WARHEADS, ALL GASES, ROCKETS AND FLAME THROWERS. IF YOU DO NOT SURRENDER OUR PREMIER, WE WILL DESTROY YOU.