Robert Heinlein - Starship Troopers

“Haven’t you already?”

“No, sir. I’ve been asleep the past hour.”

“ Huh? ”

He sounded embarrassed. “The Captain required me to do so. He placed Brumby temporarily in charge and put me to sleep immediately after he relieved you.”

I started to answer, then laughed helplessly. “Sarge? Let’s you and I go off somewhere and go back to sleep. We’re wasting our time; Cap’n Blackie is running this platoon.”

“I have found, sir,” he answered stiffly, “that Captain Blackstone invariably has a reason for anything he does.”

I nodded thoughtfully, forgetting that I was ten miles from my listener. “Yes. You’re right, he always has a reason. Mmm … since he had us both sleep, he must want us both awake and alert now.”

“I think that must be true.”

“Mmm … any idea why?”

He was rather long in answering. “Mr. Rico,” he said slowly, “if the Captain knew he would tell us; I’ve never known him to hold back information. But sometimes he does things a certain way without being able to explain why. The Captain’s hunches — well, I’ve learned to respect them.”

“So? Squad leaders are all even numbers; they’re asleep.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alert the lance of each squad. We won’t wake anybody … but when we do, seconds may be important.”

“Right away.”

I checked the remaining forward post, then covered the four posts bracketing the Bug village, jacking my phones in parallel with each listener. I had to force myself to listen, because you could hear them, down there below, chittering to each other. I wanted to run and it was all I could do not to let it show.

I wondered if that “special talent” was simply a man with incredibly acute hearing.

Well, no matter how he did it, the Bugs were where he said they were. Back at O.C.S. we had received demonstrations of recorded Bug noises; these four posts were picking up typical nest noises of a large Bug town — that chittering which may be their speech (though why should they need to talk if they are all remotely controlled by the brain caste?), a rustling like sticks and dry leaves, a high background whine which is always heard at a settlement and which had to be machinery — their air conditioning perhaps.

I did not hear the hissing, cracking noise they make in cutting through rock.

The sounds along the Bug boulevard were unlike the settlement sounds — a low background rumble which increased to a roar every few moments, as if heavy traffic were passing. I listened at post number five, then got an idea — checked it by having the stand-by man at each of the four posts along the tunnel call out “ Mark! ” to me each time the roaring got loudest.

Presently I reported. “Captain—”

“Yeah, Johnnie?”

“The traffic along this Bug race is all moving one way, from me toward you. Speed is approximately a hundred and ten miles per hour, a load goes past about once a minute.”

“Close enough,” he agreed. “I make it one-oh-eight with a headway of fifty-eight seconds.”

“Oh.” I felt dashed, and changed the subject. “I haven’t seen that sapper company.”

“You won’t. They picked a spot in the middle rear of ‘Head Hunter’ area: Sorry, I should have told you. Anything more?”

“No, sir.” We clicked off and I felt better. Even Blackie could forget … and there hadn’t been anything wrong with my idea. I left the tunnel zone to inspect the listening post to right and rear of the Bug area, post twelve.

As with the others, there were two men asleep, one listening, one stand-by, I said to the stand-by, “Getting anything?”

“No, sir.”

The man listening, one of my five recruits, looked up and said, “Mr. Rico, I think this pickup has just gone sour.”

“I’ll check it,” I said. He moved to let me jack in with him.

“Frying bacon” so loud you could smell it!

I hit the all-hands circuit. “First platoon up ! Wake up, call off, and report!”

—And clicked over to officers’ circuit. “Captain! Captain Blackstone! Urgent! ”

“Slow down, Johnnie. Report.”

“‘Frying bacon’ sounds, sir,” I answered, trying desperately to keep my voice steady. “Post twelve at co-ordinates Easter Nine, Square Black One.”

“Easter Nine,” he agreed. “Decibels?”

I looked hastily at the meter on the pickup. “I don’t know, Captain. Off the scale at the max end. It sounds like they’re right under my feet!”

“Good!” He applauded — and I wondered how he could feel that way. “Best news we’ve had today! Now listen, son. Get your lads awake—”

“They are, sir!”

“Very well. Pull back two listeners, have them spot-check around post twelve. Try to figure where the Bugs are going to break out. And stay away from that spot! Understand me?”

“I hear you, sir,” I said carefully. “But I do not understand.”

He sighed. “Johnnie, you’ll turn my hair gray yet. Look, son, we want them to come out, the more the better. You don’t have the firepower to handle them other than by blowing up their tunnel as they reach the surface — and that is the one thing you must not do ! If they come out in force, a regiment can’t handle them. But that’s just what the General wants, and he’s got a brigade of heavy weapons in orbit, waiting for it. So you spot that breakthrough, fall back and keep it under observation. If you are lucky enough to have a major breakthrough in your area, your reconnaissance will be patched through all the way to the top. So stay lucky and stay alive! Got it?”

“Yes, sir. Spot the breakthrough. Fall back and avoid contact. Observe and report.”

“Get on it!”

I pulled back listeners nine and ten from the middle stretch of “Bug Boulevard” and had them close in on co-ordinates Easter Nine from right and left, stopping every half mile to listen for “frying bacon.” At the same time I lifted post twelve and moved it toward our rear, while checking for a dying away of the sound.

In the meantime my platoon sergeant was regrouping the platoon in the forward area between the Bug settlement and the crater — all but twelve men who were ground-listening. Since we were under orders not to attack, we both worried over the prospect of having the platoon spread too widely for mutual support. So he rearranged them in a compact line five miles long, with Brumby’s section on the left, nearer the Bug settlement. This placed the men less than three hundred yards apart (almost shoulder to shoulder for cap troopers), and put nine of the men still on listening stations within support distance of one flank or the other. Only the three listeners working with me were out of reach of ready help.

I told Bayonne of the Wolverines and Do Campo of the Head Hunters that I was no longer patrolling and why, and I reported our regrouping to Captain Blackstone.

He grunted. “Suit yourself. Got a prediction on that breakthrough?”

“It seems to center about Easter Ten, Captain, but it is hard to pin down. The sounds are very loud in an area about three miles across — and it seems to get wider. I’m trying to circle it at an intensity level just barely on scale.” I added, “Could they be driving a new horizontal tunnel just under the surface?”

He seemed surprised. “That’s possible. I hope not — we want them to come up.” He added, “Let me know if the center of the noise moves. Check on it.”

“Yes, sir. Captain—”

“Huh? Speak up.”

“You told us not to attack when they break out. If they break out. What are we to do? Are we just spectators?”

There was a longish delay, fifteen or twenty seconds, and he may have consulted “upstairs.” At last he said, “Mr. Rico, you are not to attack at or near Easter Ten. Anywhere else — the idea is to hunt Bugs.”