Clifford Simak - Dusty Zebra - And Other Stories

Mason studied it carefully. “Ought to get her down. Might smack into a boulder or a hole or something. Never can tell.”

“There’s nothing else we can do,” said Foster. “Hang onto your hat and cross your fingers. Here we go.”

The motor gasped one last time and stopped, the prop circling idly, then hanging dead. The silence was terrifying. Wind whistled eerily along the ship’s metal skin and they were going fast.

Mason, fascinated, watched and tried to relax. Mentally he made bets with himself whether they would make it.

The sea was coming up at them. The beach was off to the right. They would never make it …

And then they were above the beach, Foster fighting to keep the ship level. The Avenger struck the sand with a force that jarred Mason’s teeth, leaped and struck again, threatening to nose over, then was rolling free, gliding to a stop.

Foster stood up, took off his helmet, wiped his brow with the back of his hand. He looked at Mason and grinned. “What are we going to do now?” asked the gunner.

“Take a look. Maybe we can patch her up.”

It was the feed-line, all right. Sliced in two and not too hard to patch, but that wasn’t all.

Foster, stepping back in the ship, switched on the ignition, stared at the gauges for a while and then snapped it off again.

“What’s wrong now?” demanded Mason.

“The gas,” said the pilot. “We lost practically all of it.”

He snapped the ignition on again. The needle on the fuel gauge barely quivered.

“About two cups full,” moaned Foster.

“We can call the base,” said Mason. “One of the boys will be down in half an hour with enough to get us home.”

“Not with this radio.” Foster snapped the switch. There was no hum.

Mason groaned.

“We might just as well start matching now,” he said, “to see which one of us hikes back to let them know the fix we’re in.”

Foster stared up and down the beach.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right at that, Hank. We’ll have to be careful, though. Sun’ll be down in a while and one of us can start. Have to stick to the shadows as much as we can. Some Jap patrols are apt to be gum-shoeing around.”

Feet crunched on the sand and Mason leaped from the wing, gun half out of his holster.

It wasn’t a Jap, however. It was a native.

The man, apparently, had slipped from the jungle without them noticing him.

He stared at Mason for a moment, then stabbed a thumb at his own naked chest.

“Me N’Goni,” he announced. “Me mission boy.”

Mason grinned. “Me Hank,” he said. “Him Steve. Americans.”

N’Goni gestured at the Avenger. “Machine that fly, him haywire?”

“No gas,” Mason explained. “You know him, gas?”

“Know him,” declared the native. “Water make machine go put-put.”

“Know where we can get any?” demanded Foster, impatient at the pidgin conversation.

N’Goni considered. “Jap maybe have him.”

“Jap!” yelled Foster.

“Jap here,” N’Goni told him. “In the hills. Not far.”

“Sure, I know all that,” said Foster. “Patrols sneaking around.”

N’Goni shook his head. “Many Japs. Machine that fly. Gas.”

The two Yanks looked at one another. N’Goni scraped his feet in the sand.

“The Old Man was right,” said Foster. “Those dirty rats do have a field right on this island. Maybe more than one. Sending in supplies and reinforcements at night, trying to build them up.”

He whirled on the native. “Can you show us where?” he demanded.

N’Goni grinned viciously. “Make go bang boom?” he asked.

“You’re darn right we’ll make them go bang boom,” promised Foster.

“Me show,” said the native, apparently satisfied.

He started off up the beach, but they called him back.

“Not yet,” explained Mason. “Go big American village first time. Tell big chief. Many machine that fly come. Bigger bang boom.”

N’Goni’s grin widened. “Me show big American village,” he offered.

“Gee,” said Foster, “that guy knows everything.”

“Mission boy,” N’Goni explained patiently.

“All right,” said Mason. “You show short way. We know long way.”

“Short way,” agreed N’Goni.

Mason turned to Foster, waiting for his decision. Foster wrinkled his brow.

“By rights,” he said, “we both should go. Blow up the ship before we leave.”

“Blow up the ship!” yelled Mason. “Steve, you ain’t in your right mind. That ship’s all right.”

“We can’t allow the Japs to get hold of one,” snapped Foster. “You know that as well as I do. It’s too new a job. Once those monkeys got their claws on one, they’d be making them.”

“One of us could stay and guard it while the other went,” argued Mason. “The Japs would never know it was here. You just can’t blow up a perfectly good ship. Cripes, those bombs might make a bunch of Japs say uncle.”

In the end Mason won. They flipped to see who’d go and the coin turned heads for Foster.

Mason, sitting in the sand, leaned back against a palm and watched the ocean.

For a change, it wasn’t raining and a brilliant tropical moon made the beach almost as light as day.

The Avenger was hidden in a coconut grove, where Foster had taxied it before he left and everything was peaceful. Too peaceful, Mason thought, leaving against the palm, trying to keep his eyes open. Waves charged upon the beach and foamed in silver spray. The wind sang in the palms and back in the jungle a monkey scolded.

Mason dozed, jerked himself awake guiltily. It was his job to watch the plane. He couldn’t sleep.

The monkey was chattering again, down the beach somewhere. A muted chatter that Mason suddenly realized was no monkey chatter at all.

He sat bolt upright and listened intently. A breeze swept the sound away for a moment and then it came back again.

The gunner got to his feet, slid back into the shadows, still listening intently. He was sure he couldn’t be mistaken. There were men down on that beach.

Moving swiftly, but keeping in the shadows, he hurried toward the sounds.

Rounding a rocky point that thrust out into the water, he saw the beach alive with men, small men who scurried about and carried rifles on their back. Off shore stood a ship and beyond it a couple of more ships, riding without lights, like gray ghosts in the moonlight. Boats were coming in through the surf and the men were busy unloading small steel drums.

Lying flat among the rocks, Mason watched eagerly. There was gasoline in those drums, he knew. Gasoline for the few planes the Japs were operating out of their hidden base up in the hills.

And, Lord, what beautiful targets they were, working away in the moonlight. Just about the right range, too.

Common sense tried to reason with him. “You haven’t got a chance,” he said. “You’re just one man against them all.”

“But,” Hank told Common Sense, “think of the fun it’d be. Boy, could I scatter those babies!”

A truck rumbled out of the jungle, backed up to the pile of drums.

Stealthily, Mason crept from the rocks, slipped into the shadows and ran. Back at the plane, he dismounted the gun in the turret, looped his shoulders with belts of ammo and staggered at a bent-kneed gallop down the beach again.

The Japs still were there. The last of the drums were being rolled up on the truck and the little brown men, chattering like apes, were clustered around the machine. The boats had left the shore, were going back to the ship.

Softly, gingerly, Mason swung the gun off his shoulder, rested it on top of a flat rock. Carefully he laid out the ammo belts.

Waiting for a second to catch his breath, he slid behind the gun, trained it carefully. Slowly his finger squeezed the trip and suddenly the gun was jabbering.