Ben Bova - Test of Fire

“No guns on him,” Russo said. “Not even a knife.”

Studying the painfully thin youngster, Alec realized that they might both be the same age. This kid is just a runt, Alec thought. He must have gone through his whole life half-starved.

Alec heard his own voice say, “We’ve got medical supplies in the trucks.”

Russo started to reply, but Ferret sank to his knees with a barely-suppressed groan.

Frowning, Russo said to Alec, “You remember what I said about prisoners?”

“I’ve got a good reason. He knows the territory around here. He could be useful to me.”

“Don’t expect him to be grateful,” Russo warned. “Don’t trust him at all.”

But Alec stepped over to the emaciated young man and helped him to his feet. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll have that leg fixed in no time.”

When they got back to the airfield, the battle had long been over. Russo left Alec at the edge of the woods, saying he had to check his own men, and he would be back before sundown. Alec rode the truck back to the runway, with Ferret lying silent but wide-eyed at his side.

Jameson eyed the wounded prisoner with obvious disdain, but gave orders to have his leg attended to. Then he gave Alec an account of the battle. “They kept melting back into the trees. We couldn’t follow them in there with the trucks, so we just kept patrolling around the edge of the woods, squirting at them to keep them from getting any closer. They lobbed a lot of mortar rounds at us, but didn’t do much damage with them.”

Two of the trucks had been clawed by shrapnel, but were still running. Several of the men were hurt, none seriously.

Jameson peered into the woods, his face the image of a hunting hawk. “This man Russo is with your father, is he? Are they on our side, or what?”

Shrugging tiredly, Alec replied, “Today they were on our side. I’m not sure of what happens next. Keep everyone on the alert. Post guards.”

“And your prisoner?”

“Keep a guard on him at all times.”

“When does the shuttle come back for us?”

“When I call it.”

Alec could see that Jameson was skeptical about that. But after a moment’s hesitation, the big man simply said, “I’ll set out the guards.” He strode away, leaving Alec standing alone.

He leaned back against the cab of the truck and surveyed the landscape. Out in the middle of the airfield lay the blackened smoking skeleton of the destroyed shuttle. The forest was silent now.

Shadows were creeping across the open ground as the sun settled toward the west.

Alec realized that they were completely alone on an alien, dangerous world.

The sun had already sunk behind the trees when Will Russo appeared again. He walked alone out of the forest and toward the semicircle of trucks parked at the edge of the runway.

Despite himself, Alec was glad to see the man.

When Jameson told him that Russo was coming, Alec almost ran out to the guard perimeter to meet him.

“You’re not bedded down for the night yet, are you?” Will asked, right off.

“No, not yet.”

“Good, good.” He looked genuinely pleased.

“We’ve made camp up on top of the first ridge,” he waved vaguely in the general direction, “and I think it’d be a good idea for you to camp there with us.”

Alec said nothing.

“What’s left of those raiders are still skulking around here somewhere,” Will explained, “and with our two forces camping together we’ll be strong enough to discourage them from trying anything during the night. We’ll both be able to sleep easier.”

My trucks and lasers and your experienced woods fighters, Alec thought. Nodding, he asked, “Can the trucks get up there?”

“Oh, sure, I’ll show you the trail.”

“All right.” Alec turned and called for Jameson.

Will grinned boyishly. “Fine. Wonderful. In union there is strength.”

The trail up to the top of the ridge was narrow and tricky. One of the trucks slipped in a rain-sliced gully alongside the barely-visible trail and it took nearly an hour to pull it out again. The men had to use primitive muscle power to lift the truck’s rear wheels out of the foliage-choked gully. The other trucks’ electric motors began to overheat when they tried to winch the stuck truck free.

For Ferret, the ride was wonderful. He lay on the back of a trucks behind the laser mount. His leg no longer hurt. These strangers had given him hot food and wrapped his wound with clean strips of something that looked like cloth, yet felt oddly slick and slippery. They were treating him like a king, and watched him carefully every minute.

It was full night when Alec’s force finally reached the top of the ridge. Riding perched on the cab of the lead truck, Alec saw a meager handful of men and women sitting quietly around an open fire. One of them was Angela.

“Is this your whole group?” he wondered aloud to Will, who sat on the fender alongside the cab.

“Oh no! We’ve got twice this many set out as guards. Didn’t you see them as we came up the trail?”

Alec shook his head, a gesture that was lost in the darkness.

The trees thinned out at the top of the ridge; there was ample room to park the trucks in a circle around the perimeter of the camp. Alec told Jameson to have the men sleep on the trucks, and to have one man awake per truck at all times.

“Are you sure one man per truck is enough?”

Jameson asked quietly.

They were standing far enough from the campfire so that none of Russo’s men was in earshot.

“What do you mean?” Alec asked.

“I don’t want to be an impolite guest,” Jameson replied softly, hitching his thumbs in the ammo belt he had buckled across his hips, “but—well, why should these people be so helpful to us? Especially if they’re the same guys who stole the fissionables. Why did they stick their necks out to help us drive the barbarians away, and why are they offering to share their camp and their food with us? It doesn’t add up.”

Alec was forced to agree. “At least it’s better than sitting down there in the open, alone. We don’t have enough rations for more than another day or two.”

Jameson’s hawk-eyed faced scanned the men sitting around the campfire. “Suppose what they’re really interested in is getting these nice, shiny new trucks for themselves? It wouldn’t be too difficult for them to slit our throats while we sleep.”

Somehow the picture of Will Russo murdering men in their sleep did not match in Alec’s mind with what he had already seen of the man. Still…

“All right. Tell the men to sleep in the cabs of the trucks. Button them up and open them for no one except a recognized member of our group.”

Jameson was silent for a moment. In the flickering light cast by the distant campfire it was impossible to read the expression on his face. At last he said, “Okay… but I still don’t like this.”

“Things could be a lot better,” Alec admitted.

“But they could be a lot worse, too.”

“I suppose.”

“Keep somebody on the radio. The satellite ought to be in range sometime tonight.”

“Right.”

Alec walked slowly toward the campfire. Angela was sitting there. He saw her long hair gleaming like hammered gold in the firelight.

The fire itself was strangely fascinating. Twisting, dancing, flickering hypnotically, the flames formed shapes and memories before his eyes. He stared at it, then realized that he was staring into the fire, deep inside the dancing flames, watching the logs glowing bright red and the flames licking up from them, orange and yellow and bluish and…

“Hello. Had any dinner yet?”

Alec pulled himself away from the hypnotic flames.