Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories

by Stephen Brennan

  “Cast around,” said Coffee gloomily. “Maybe we’ll find a shell, or tracks of a tank or somethin’ that chucked the gas here.”

  It was rather ludicrous to go searching for anything in that mass of vapor. At three yards distance they could make each other out as dim outlines, no more. But it did not even occur to them to deplore the mist. The war which had already been christened, by the politicians at home, the last war, was always fought in a mist. Infantry could not stand against tanks, tanks could not live under aircraft-directed artillery fire—not when forty guns fired salvos for the aircraft to spot—and neither artillery nor aircraft could take any advantage of a victory which either, under special conditions, might win. The general staffs of both the United States and the prominent nation—let us say the Yellow Empire—at war with it had come to a single conclusion. Tanks or infantry were needed for the use of victories. Infantry could be destroyed by tanks. But tanks could be hidden from aerial spotters by smoke-screens.

  The result was fog-gas, which was being used by both sides in the most modern fashion when, their own unit wiped out and themselves wandering aimlessly in the general direction of the American rear, Sergeant Coffee and Corporal Wallis stumbled upon an American pill-box with its small garrison lying dead. For forty miles in one direction and perhaps thirty in the other, the vapor lay upon the earth. It was being blown by the wind, of course, but it was sufficiently heavier than air to cling to the ground level, and the industries of two nations were straining every nerve to supply the demands of their respective armies for its material.

  The fog-bank was nowhere less than a hundred feet thick—a cloud of impalpable particles impenetrable to any eye or any camera, however shrewdly filtered. And under that mattress of pale opacity the tanks crawled heavily. They lurched and rumbled upon their deadly errands, uncouth and barbarous, listening for each other by a myriad of devices, locked in desperate, short-range conflict when they came upon each other, and emitting clouds of deadly vapor, against which gas-masks were no protection, when they came upon opposing infantry.

  The infantrymen, though, were few. Their principal purpose was the reporting of the approach or passage of tanks, and trenches were of no service to them. They occupied unarmed little listening-posts with field telephones, small wireless or ground buzzer sets for reporting the enemy before he overwhelmed them. They held small pill-boxes, fitted with anti-tank guns which sometimes—if rarely—managed to get home a shell, aimed largely by sound, before the tank rolled over gun and gunners alike.

  And now Sergeant Coffee and Corporal Wallis groped about in that blinding mist. There had been two systems of listening-posts hidden in it, each of admittedly little fighting value, but each one deep and composed of an infinity of little pin-point posts where two or three men were stationed. The American posts, by their reports, had assured the command that all enemy tanks were on the other side of a certain definite line. Their own tanks, receiving recognition signals, passed and repassed among them, prowling in quest of invaders. The enemy tanks crawled upon the same grisly patrol on their own side.

  But two miles of the American front had suddenly gone silent. A hundred telephones had ceased to make reports along the line nearest the enemy. As Coffee and Wallis stumbled about the little pill-box, looking for some inkling of the way in which the original occupants of the small strong-point had been wiped out, the second line of observation-posts began to go dead.

  Now one, now another abruptly ceased to communicate. Half a dozen were in actual conversation with their sector headquarters, and broke off between words. The wires remained intact. But in fifteen nerve-racking minutes a second hundred posts ceased to make reports and ceased to answer the inquiry-signal. G.H.Q. was demanding explanations in crisp accents that told the matter was being taken very seriously indeed. And then, as the officer in command of the second-line sector headquarters was explaining frenziedly that he was doing all any man could do, he stopped short between two words and thereafter he, also, ceased to communicate.

  Front-line sector headquarters seemed inexplicably to have escaped whatever fate had overtaken all its posts, but it could only report that they had apparently gone out of existence without warning. American tanks, prowling in the area that had gone dead, announced that no enemy tanks had been seen. G-81, stumbling on a pill-box no more than ten minutes after it had gone silent, offered to investigate. A member of her crew, in a gas-mask, stepped out of the port doorway. Immediately thereafter G-81’s wireless reports stopped coming in.

  The situation was clearly shown in the huge tank that had been built to serve as G.H.Q. That tank was seventy feet long, and lay hidden in the mist with a brood of other, smaller tanks clustered near it, from each of which a cable ran to the telephones and instruments of the greater monster. Farther off in the fog, of course, were other tanks, hundreds of them, fighting machines all, silent and motionless now, but infinitely ready to protect the brain of the army.

  The G.H.Q. maneuver-board showed the battle as no single observer could ever have seen it. A map lay spread out on a monster board, under a pitiless white light. It was a map of the whole battlefield. Tiny sparks crawled here and there under the map, and there were hundreds of little pins with different-colored heads to mark the position of this thing and that. The crawling sparks were the reported positions of American tanks, made visible as positions of moving trains had been made visible for years on the electric charts of railroads in dispatcher’s offices. Where the tiny bulbs glowed under the map, there a tank crawled under the fog. As the tank moved, the first bulb went out and another flashed into light.

  The general watched broodingly as the crawling sparks moved from this place to that place, as varicolored lights flashed up and vanished, as a steady hand reached down to shift tiny pins and place new ones. The general moved rarely, and spoke hardly at all. His whole air was that of a man absorbed in a game of chess—a game on which the fate of a nation depended.

  He was thus absorbed. The great board, illuminated from above by the glaring bulb, and speckled with little white sparks from below by the tiny bulbs beneath, showed the situation clearly at every instant. The crawling white sparks were his own tanks, each in its present position. Flashing blue sparks noted the last report of enemy tanks. Two staff officers stood behind the general, and each spoke from time to time into a strapped-on telephone transmitter. They were giving routine orders, heading the nearest American patrol-tanks toward the location of the latest reported enemies.

  The general reached out his hand suddenly and marked off an area with his fingers. They were long fingers, and slender ones: an artist’s fingers.

  “Our outposts are dead in this space,” he observed meditatively. The use of the word “outposts” dated him many years back as a soldier, back to the old days of open warfare, which had only now come about again. “Penetration of two miles—”

  “Tank, sir,” said the man of the steady fingers, putting a black pin in position within that area, “let a man out in a gas-mask to examine a pill-box. The tank does not report or reply, sir.”

  “Gas,” said the general, noting the spot. “Their new gas, of course. It must go through masks or sag-paste, or both.”

  He looked up to one of a row of officers seated opposite him, each man with headphones strapped to his ears and a transmitter before his lips, and each man with a map-pad on his knees, on which from time to time he made notations and shifted pins absorbedly.

  “Captain Harvey,” said the general, “you are sure that dead spot has not been bombarded with gas-shells?”

  “Yes, General. There has been no artillery fire heavy enough to put more than a fraction of those posts out of action, and all that fire, sir, has been accounted for elsewhere.”

  The officer looked up, saw the general’s eyes shift, and bent to his map again, on which he was marking areas from which spotting aircraft reported flashes as of heavy guns beneath the mist.

  “Their aircraft have not been dropping bombs, po
sitively?”

  A second officer glanced up from his own map.

  “Our planes cover all that space, sir, and have for some time.”

  “They either have a noiseless tank,” observed the general meditatively, “or… .”

  The steady fingers placed a red pin at a certain spot.

  “One observation-post, sir, has reopened communication. Two infantrymen, separated from their command, came upon it and found the machine-gun crew dead, with gas-masks adjusted. No tanks or tracks. They are identified, sir, and are now looking for tank tracks or shells.”

  The general nodded emotionlessly.

  “Let me know immediately.”

  He fell back to the ceaseless study of the board with its crawling sparks and sudden flashes of light. Over at the left, there were four white sparks crawling toward a spot where a blue flash had showed a little while since. A red light glowed suddenly where one of the white sparks crawled. One of the two officers behind the general spoke crisply. Instantly, it seemed, the other three white sparks changed their direction of movement. They swung toward the red flash—the point where a wireless from the tank represented by the first white flash had reported, contact with the enemy.

  “Enemy tank destroyed here, sir,” said the voice above the steady fingers.

  “Wiped out three of our observation posts,” murmured the general, “His side knows it. That’s an opportunity. Have those posts reoccupied.”

  “Orders given, sir,” said a staff officer from behind. “No reports as yet.”

  The general’s eyes went back to the space two miles wide and two miles deep in which there was only a single observation-post functioning, and that in charge of two strayed infantrymen. The battle in the fog was in a formative stage, now, and the general himself had to watch the whole, because it was by small and trivial indications that the enemy’s plans would be disclosed. The dead area was no triviality, however. Half a dozen tanks were crawling through it, reporting monotonously that no sign of the enemy could be found. One of the little sparks representing those tanks abruptly went out.

  “Tank here, sir, no longer reports.”

  The general watched with lack-luster eyes, his mind withdrawn in thought.

  “Send four helicopters,” he said slowly, “to sweep that space. We’ll see what the enemy does.”

  One of the seated officers opposite him spoke swiftly. Far away a roaring set up and was stilled. The helicopters were taking off.

  They would rush across the blanket of fog, their vertical propellers sending blasts of air straight downward. For most of their sweep they would keep a good height, but above the questionable ground they would swoop down to barely above the fog-blanket. There their monstrous screws would blow holes in the fog until the ground below was visible. If any tanks crawled there, in the spaces the helicopters swept clear, they would be visible at once and would be shelled by batteries miles away, batteries invisible under the artificial cloud-bank.

  No other noises came through the walls of the monster tank. There was a faint, monotonous murmur of the electric generator. There were the quiet, crisp orders of the officers behind the general, giving the routine commands that kept the fighting a stalemate.

  The aircraft officer lifted his head, pressing his headphones tightly against his ears, as if to hear mores clearly.

  “The enemy, sir, has sent sixty fighting machines to attack our helicopters. We sent forty single-seaters as escort.”

  “Let them fight enough,” said the general absently, “to cause the enemy to think us desperate for information. Then draw them off.”

  There was silence again. The steady fingers put pins here and there. An enemy tank destroyed here. An American tank encountered an enemy and ceased to report further. The enemy sent four helicopters in a wide sweep behind the American lines, escorted by fifty fighting planes. They uncovered a squadron of four tanks, which scattered like insects disturbed by the overturning of a stone. Instantly after their disclosure a hundred and fifty guns, four miles away, were pouring shells about the place where they had been seen. Two of the tanks ceased to report.

  The general’s attention was called to a telephone instrument with its call-light glowing.

  “Ah,” said the general absently. “They want publicity matter.”

  The telephone was connected to the rear, and from there to the Capital. A much-worried cabinet waited for news, and arrangements were made and had been used, to broadcast suitably arranged reports from the front, the voice of the commander-in-chief in the field going to every workshop, every gathering-place, and even being bellowed by loud-speakers in the city streets.

  The general took the phone. The President of the United States was at the other end of the wire, this time.

  “General?”

  “Still in a preliminary stage, sir,” said the general, without haste. “The enemy is preparing a break-through effort, possibly aimed at our machine-shops and supplies. Of course, if he gets them we will have to retreat. An hour ago he paralyzed our radios, not being aware, I suppose, of our tuned earth-induction wireless sets. I daresay he is puzzled that our communications have not fallen to pieces.”

  “But what are our chances?” The voice of the President was steady, but it was strained.

  “His tanks outnumber ours two to one, of course, sir,” said the general calmly. “Unless we can divide his fleet and destroy a part of it, of course we will be crushed in a general combat. But we are naturally trying to make sure that any such action will take place within point-blank range of our artillery, which may help a little. We will cut the fog to secure that help, risking everything, if a general engagement occurs.”

  There was silence.

  The President’s voice, when it came, was more strained still.

  “Will you speak to the public, General?”

  “Three sentences. I have no time for more.”

  There were little clickings on the line, while the general’s eyes returned to the board that was the battlefield in miniature. He indicated a spot with his finger.

  “Concentrate our reserve-tanks here,” he said meditatively. “Our fighting aircraft here. At once.”

  The two spots were at nearly opposite ends of the battle field. The chief of staff, checking the general’s judgment with the alert suspicion that was the latest addition to his duties, protested sharply.

  “But sir, our tanks will have no protection against helicopters!”

  “I am quite aware of it,” said the general mildly.

  He turned to the transmitter. A thin voice had just announced at the other end of the wire, “The commander-in-chief of the army in the field will make a statement.”

  The general spoke unhurriedly.

  “We are in contact with the enemy, have been for some hours. We have lost forty tanks and the enemy, we think, sixty or more. No general engagement has yet taken place, but we think decisive action on the enemy’s part will be attempted within two hours. The tanks in the field need now, as always, ammunition, spare tanks, and the special supplies for modern warfare. In particular, we require ever-increasing quantities of fog-gas. I appeal to your patriotism for reinforcements of material and men.”

  He hung up the receiver and returned to his survey of the board.

  “Those three listening-posts,” he said abruptly, indicating a place near where an enemy tank had been destroyed. “Have they been reoccupied?”

  “Yes, sir. Just reported. The tank they reported rolled over them, destroying the placement. They are digging in.”

  “Tell me,” said the general, “when they cease to report again. They will.”

  He watched the board again and without lifting his eyes from it, spoke again.

  “That listening-post in the dead sector, with the two strayed infantrymen in it. Was it reported?”

  “Not yet, sir.”

  “Tell me immediately it does.”

  The general leaned back in his chair and deliberately relaxed. He lighted a ci
gar and puffed at it, his hands quite steady. Other officers, scenting the smoke, glanced up enviously. But the general was the only man who might smoke. The enemy’s gases, like the American ones, could go through any gas-mask if in sufficient concentration. The tanks were sealed like so many submarines, and opened their interiors to the outer air only after that air had been thoroughly tested and proven safe. Only the general might use up more than a man’s allowance for breathing.

  The general gazed about him, letting his mind rest from its intense strain against the greater strain that would come on it in a few minutes. He looked at a tall blond man who was surveying the board intently, moving away, and returning again, his forehead creased in thought.

  The general smiled quizzically. That man was the officer appointed to I. I. duty—interpretative intelligence—chosen from a thousand officers because the most exhaustive psychological tests had proven that his brain worked as nearly as possible like that of the enemy commander. His task was to take the place of the enemy commander, to reconstruct from the enemy movements reported and the enemy movements known as nearly as possible the enemy plans.

  “Well, Harlin,” said the general, “Where will he strike?”

  “He’s tricky, sir,” said Harlin. “That gap in our listening-posts looks, of course, like preparation for a massing of his tanks inside our lines. And it would be logical that he fought off our helicopters to keep them from discovering his tanks massing in that area.”

  The general nodded.

  “Quite true,” he admitted. “Quite true.”

  “But,” said Harlin eagerly. “He’d know we could figure that out. And he may have wiped out listening posts to make us think he was planning just so. He may have fought off our helicopters, not to keep them from discovering his tanks in there, but to keep them from discovering that there were no tanks in there!”

  “My own idea exactly,” said the general meditatively. “But again, it looks so much like a feint that it may be a serious blow. I dare not risk assuming it to be a feint only.”