CHAPTER IV

There was a good-enough moon. They made the outskirts of the city by eleven o'clock. A restaurant, all but demolished, gave them canned food; Trace had to bat Johnson in the chops to keep him from wolfing down a dirty chicken sandwich he found lying on the floor, and Johnson went into a fit of wailing hysterics, but when he came out of it he was just about cured, and didn't weep or shiver any longer. They walked a little farther and at midnight Trace plunked them down on a wooded hill, beyond the rayed area. He and Bill Blacknight gathered dry brush and built a blazing fire against the chill of January.

"Dangerous?" queried Slough, the tiny man.

"Calculated risk," said Trace. "I think we can presume the saucers won't be over this sector for a while, and if they do come, they may believe it's a natural fire. The main reason is to attract survivors to us." He didn't mention that he himself was so inured to climatic changes he would never have thought of building a fire for warmth, save for the others. He wore his heavy shirt and trousers and over them a light topcoat Bill had found for him. He could not have said off-hand whether he was cold or comfortable.

When they had all gone to sleep, some like corpses and others as light-slumbering as wildcats, Trace walked a beat around them, keeping an eye and an ear open for approaching steps. There were none.

Toward morning he heard the dark girl sobbing. He sat beside her and stroked her hair soothingly. When Bill took the watch, Trace fell asleep with one arm over the girl's shoulders. At dawn she was all right, and could talk again.

Her name was Jane Kelly and she'd been a teacher, and Trace considered her a very fine-looking dish indeed, even in the fat parka. She was not so flamboyantly female as Barbara Skye, the redhead, but she was distinctly not the sort you would take for a boy at forty paces. She had curves and a warm face and eyes like brown gold, if there was such a thing.

Trace said "Yo," like John Wayne was always doing in those Old West pictures about the cavalry. "Let's travel." They tramped off toward Washington.

They never reached it. They never even got as far as Philadelphia.

* * * * *

The first trouble came as they were crossing a field of frozen mud and corn-stalk stubble; Barbara turned her ankle and sat down with a squawk. She was wearing high heels, not spikes but a good two-and-a-half inches, and Trace was disgusted with himself for neglecting his job. He was so full of vengeance and hatred that he forgot to check on the little things that could sabotage him. He should have scrounged some shoes for her somewhere yesterday.

He glanced at Jane's feet. She wore sensible shoes. They didn't improve her ankles any, but they couldn't spoil them either. Trace had never been an admirer of sensible shoes, yet now he felt a rush of affectionate gratitude to Jane for wearing them.

"You can't go barefoot," he said to Barbara, who was chattering petulantly and rubbing her ankle, exposing an astonishing length of silken thigh in the process. "And you can't travel in those things. You'll have to be carried."

"Why don't you leave her?" said Kinkaid, the plump man. "She's no use to you. Neither am I. I'll stay with her."

Barbara said venomously, "I'd as soon be stranded with one of those bird-footed weirdies as with you, Tubby. Take your cotton-pickin' eyeballs off my leg before I scratch them out for you."

Hafnagel, the big man, said, "Take a vote, Roscoe. You can't force us to limp all over creation with you. Because you're crazy enough to want to find the saucers is no--"

"I'm no soldier," said Johnson. He was a blond man with a crooked nose and jughandle ears. "I'm going to take to the hills. The aliens are invincible; but a man might avoid them for years in the hills. There's farms and such to live off."

"Don't think I'll go with you," said Barbara, standing up. "I wouldn't trust one of you creeps if Roscoe was out o' sight. I'm going with him if I have to walk on my palms."

"We're not splitting up," said Trace. "Someone's got to carry you, honey." His breath misted out on the frosty air. "Hafnagel, you're big enough."

Hafnagel knelt down. Barbara straddled his shoulders, the man took her ankles carefully in his stiff fingers, as impersonally as if they had been firewood, rose and started forward. "Hey," Barbara said, "this is okay. You can see from up here."

"Any saucers?" asked Trace.

"No. Nothing moving at all." They all went on.

Trace's troubles multiplied through the day. Of all his crew, only three were interested in cracking back at the destroyers--the midget Slough, the magician Blacknight, and the teacher Jane Kelly. Barbara was against his plan, but would not leave Trace, whose uniform gave her a sense of security. The three others fought him constantly, with words and sometimes with action.

Hafnagel tried to knock him out during a halt. Trace presented him with a bloody nose, and saddled him with Barbara and drove them all onward.

Johnson broke for cover when they passed a willow-bordered river. Trace caught up with him and washed his face in the icy current, and Johnson restricted himself to verbal attacks thereafter.

Kinkaid refused to budge from their noon camp. Trace grabbed his left ankle and dragged him over the hard rocky earth for twenty yards, and Kinkaid shrieked that he'd walk. Later he pretended to go lame, fooled Trace into half-carrying him for a mile, and then had his fat face slapped so hard that he was filled with respect for Trace's authority, and made no more trouble.

* * * * *

Those were the intentional oppositions. Trace had likewise to contend with recurrent hysterics, with terrible fits of moaning agony of mind, and with a depression that now and again settled over the entire company. He bellowed at them, shoved them around, occasionally patted them like dogs; he realized what they were going through, and he was not a callous man, but he knew he had to keep them on the move for their own sakes as well as that of his plan. Civilization had all but died yesterday. He couldn't expect to pick up a gang of hard, angry, level-headed companions. He had to make do with what he had, and improve on this weak raw material by his tough, high-handed methods.

Again and again he examined the strange firearm he'd taken from that green beast with the flag. It baffled him. There was no place to load the thing, no jointure in all its smooth dark surface. The muzzle was pierced by a hole about a millimeter wide. That was where the missile would come out; but could the weapon be reloaded there? What kind of ammo would go into a millimeter opening?

The pistol--he decided to call it that--was much lighter than a Colt of comparable size. There was a narrow trigger and trigger guard in the same position as on an earth-made revolver. That was logical, as the hands of the aliens were, barring the color, perfectly human. Trace decided he'd have to take a chance and fire the thing. The unchancy weapon would come in handy if he could work it. He bit his lip. Maybe it had just one shot. Oh, blazes. He had to find out.

On their next halt, he aimed it at a tree (there was no sight and he aimed by feel, like a gunman) and pulled the trigger. It had a hard pull, so hard that only a strong man could have budged it at all. It made no sound. There was a thin streak of green light, and the trunk of the tree commenced to smoke and steam. Then it burst into yellow-green flame and exploded, fragments of bark and splintered wood showering out to a great distance. Trace ducked, let up on the trigger, and the beam died. He was reasonably sure now that it wasn't a one-shot.

"And that's what you want us to go against," said Johnson. "A million Martians armed with those. What right have you to make us?" he shrieked. "What authority?"

"This authority," said Trace, hefting the pistol. "Likewise the supreme authority of the United States Army, as I have declared martial law. And then there's the authority of me, Sergeant Trace Roscoe, who will mop up this whole damn valley with your fat puss if so be it you are disinclined to obey my orders, buster."

"Thinks he's so tough," grumbled Kinkaid.

But they all followed Trace when he marched on. Jane Kelly kept up easily with the men, and Trace was especially proud of her; but he had to admit that most all of them were whipping into shape better than he'd any right to hope for. "Few more days and I'll have me a real fine belly-achin' fighting-mad platoon here," he said to himself.

Unfortunately he didn't have a few more days. He made contact with the green-skinned destroyers no more than half an hour thereafter.