Part 2

"I...." He shook his head. "I can't."

"Of course you can't. And for the very simple reason that nothing did change. I'm still the same man I always was. And you'd better start coming up with some concrete benefits from this gadget of yours. You know I put myself into hock to raise the money you needed--I told my wife I was adding another franchise to my line. If she finds out her jewels were hocked for me to play around with a time machine, instead of a new line of cars, she'll flip. So how about it, Cavendish? Some concrete results next time."

Cavendish went to the bar and returned with a generous slug of whisky.

"What's this?" said Johnson.

"Why, your drink."

"Drink?" He snorted. "You know I don't drink, man. Have you gone completely daft? I haven't touched alcohol since I was a youngster."

Cavendish seemed near tears. He drank the whisky himself, then turned back to the machine.

"What are you up to now?"

"I'm looking for a suitable crisis point." The screen wavered, then filled with a group of men in uniform--heavy winter garb. They were clustered around a small fire in a cave; one seemed to be heating coffee in a tin can. Johnson sucked in his breath.

"You know what is going to happen?"

"Yes, dammit! You're a devil!"

"Perhaps." He sighed. "I sometimes wonder.... But no matter." He adjusted the picture, and events flowed forward a few hours. The soldiers were now at the base of a snow-covered hill. Above them, gaunt and bare, the timber-line beckoned with obscenely stretching limbs.

Suddenly a flare shot up from someplace to the right of the little band. Its eerie glare picked out unexpected shadows among the trees above. One of the soldiers, facing the prospect of near and immediate personal death for the first time in his life, panicked and began spraying the tree-line with his grease gun. Branches and splinters of wood kicked out, until the Sergeant reached out and slapped the gun from the boy's arms.

* * * * *

The men waited until an unheard signal sounded; then the Sergeant waved them on up the hill. Slowly, cautiously at first, they made progress through the protecting trees. But then they reached the timber-line and froze. Cursing, the Sergeant moved from man to man, shoving them out of the false protection. At last he came to the boy who had fired earlier. Just as the older man placed his hand on the boy's shoulder, the boy twisted and broke away, running madly down the hill....

"That's enough, damn you!"

Cavendish turned off the picture and came back to Johnson's side. "They court-martialed you, didn't they?"

"You know they did," he said, dully.

"You were unlucky, that's all. Many a soldier spooks his first time under fire. A lot of them run away."

"How many of them run right into the arms of their Commanding General?"

"Unlucky," said Cavendish.

"They kicked me out," said Johnson, bitterly. "A dishonorable discharge--'cowardice in the face of enemy action'. Said I was lucky I didn't face the firing squad."

"Officers are human, too," said Cavendish. "In times of stress, they tend to panic."

"They were 'making an example of me'," said Johnson. He laughed, a humorless sound that grated on the ears. "Some example. It took me twenty years to live it down."

"But people do forget, eventually."

"Not all of them."

"Shall we get on with it?"

"Of course, man. This is what I have been waiting for!" His words were sharp and impatient.

* * * * *

"Hey, Art! Got a butt?"

"Yeah, sure." Art Johnson scrabbled around inside his jacket and came out with a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He passed them over.

"Thanks, buddy. God, but it's cold here!" He stripped off one glove and warmed the palm of his hand over the glowing coal of the cigarette. "Now I know what they mean when they call a place Godforsaken."

"Ease off there, you two!" Sergeant Stebbins glowered their way. "You want every chink in Korea to hear you?"

"Sorry, Sarge," muttered the cigarette-bummer. He dropped his voice to a whisper. "Hey, Artie! I hear some of the guys in Fox company are making book on how many of us live through the day."

"Yeah?" Johnson shook his head. "Some characters'll bet on their own mother's funeral."

"Or their own." The boy giggled. "Wouldn't it be funny if the winners couldn't collect because they were all dead?"

"A real scream," said Johnson, sourly. "Look, let's change the subject, huh?"

The boy shrugged. "Sure, Art. Anything you say."

They lapsed into silence, and Art Johnson considered the improbable amount of circumstances that had brought him to the base of this numbered but nameless hill half across the world from home. There was nothing of home here, and he felt the lack mightily. There was a very good chance that before another few hours had passed, he would be dead. And then he would never see home again.

He shivered. The thought frightened him. He didn't want to die. Not that he supposed any of the other men wanted to die either. But they were remote, other beings, alien in Art Johnson's world. What they felt he could not guess; what he felt he knew.

_And he did not want to die!_

"Hey, Art!"

"Uh, what is it, Tooey?"

"Chinks, I think. Up there in the trees. God, they're sneaking down!"

"Where? Dammit, where?" He thumbed the safety of his grease gun, and brought it up to bear on the trees. His fingers tightened around the stock; the trigger started to depress--

Then--

Something clicked.

"Jesus, Artie, they're coming!"

Art Johnson's eyes took on a faraway look. His fingers loosened their death grip on the gun. He shook his head.

"_Artie!_"

"Shut up, Tooey!" Reaching out, he slapped the boy's face. "You're imagining things."

"But they're up there, Artie!" whimpered the boy.

"Sure they're up there. But not where you think they are. They're dug in, in the caves. And it's going to be up to us to dig them out. Now snap out of it!"

* * * * *

Suddenly a flare shot up from somewhere to their right. It whistled, then popped, the white light hurting their night-adjusted eyes. A moment later, Stebbins whistled and the men started moving up the hill.

They paused at the timber-line, and Stebbins cursed, moving from man to man and urging him out of the false protection of the trees and onto the broad expanse of boulder-pocked snow. Above them, another two hundred yards, black dots against the snow showed where the caves were waiting for them. Johnson could visualize the little slant-eyed men within. He flopped to his belly and wriggled forward. Suddenly he stood up and dashed twenty yards, then flopped again as bullets whined through the space occupied by his body bare instants earlier.

He lay there, face pressed into the snow, until the muscles of his legs started tensing of their own accord. Then he was up again, and running for dear life.

Gun fire was bursting all around now, a seemingly solid screen of lead pouring down from the caves. But the men were getting through the barrier; one slammed into the rock wall beside a cave mouth and started unlimbering grenades, tossing them in as quickly as he could pull the pins. Seconds later a vast tongue of fire roared out, melting the snow and scorching the barren earth beneath.

The fire probed down the hill as the side around the cave shook and roared. The fire reached and passed over Art Johnson, lying in the snow, fingers digging at the rock beneath.

By its orange light, the spreading circle of red around the soldier blended into the artificial coloring of the snow.

* * * * *

"Just think of it!" Cavendish pounded his hand on the desk. "The chance to go back and correct our mistakes, live our lives over again. The opportunities missed, the chances passed up, the decisions made wrong--all can be changed."

The man in the chair swirled the dregs of the whisky in the bottom of the glass. "Go on, Cavendish," he said. "You're keeping my interest."

Cavendish flushed. "Thank you, Mr. Blackwell. I knew a man of your position would not pass up an opportunity like this. Why, this is another chance to make the world! A second chance!"

THE END