Narakan Rifles, About Face! Part 4

"If you think you can stand an old maid school teacher, I'll be looking for you." She was very close to him now. "Why did you do it, Terrence? Why are you making the march with the Narakans? Fielding says your chances aren't very good."

"I'll thank Fielding to keep his big mouth shut! I don't really know why, probably kind of an Earthman's Burden, n.o.blesse oblige ... you know ... something like the sort of thing Kipling used to write about."

"h.e.l.l," she said, surprising him with her vehemence, "you don't believe that guy any more than I do. It was old when Kipling wrote it and it's even older now. I think that somewhere under that tough Irish skin of yours, there's a sentimental fool hiding."

She was still closer now with her hands pressed lightly against his chest and suddenly his arms went around her, he lifted her protective visor and forced his lips down hard on hers. All of her primness had disappeared as she leaned against him, returning his kiss with a burning eagerness which a more experienced woman might have controlled.

There were tears running down his cheeks and he knew they weren't his.

He released her slightly and looked down into her tear streaked face, wondering how it was possible for them to have been at the same post for six months without really knowing each other.

"I guess I'm kind of crazy about you, teacher," he said.

He had lifted her off her feet and she clung there with her arms around his neck. "Terrence, I can't leave you ... I...."

As Terrence bent over to kiss her again there was a loud cough and Bill Fielding was standing there dressed in full battle armor. He grinned and said, "Much as I hate to break this up, I don't think Chapelle is going to hold the _Sun Maid_ much longer."

Terrence set Joan gently on her feet and she turned and fled toward the waiting ship. He watched until she was on board and then turned to stare at Bill. Still grinning broadly, Bill clapped him on the shoulder as he said, "I could never have faced those bartenders on Dobi Street if I had gone back without you. We better get going, hadn't we? Sergeant Polasky's down with the men. He couldn't bear to leave his Bannings."

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned!" was all O'Mara could find to say as he watched the big airship lift itself in the fading light, circle and pa.s.s through the smoke of Dust Bin for the last time.

Throwing their gear over their shoulders, the two officers crossed the parade ground to where the two hundred khaki clad figures of the Narakan Rifles stood waiting with Sergeant Polasky clucking slightly as he fussed over his Bannings.

O'Shaughnessy was wearing his new lieutenant bars and a pith helmet and was carrying a large piece of wood in imitation of Norton's swagger stick. Terrence took one look at him and at the two orderlies who stood behind him holding his field kit. He strode toward him scowling, placed his fists on his hips and stood glaring up at the Greenback as he roared, "So! It's delusions of grandeur you've got, is it? Where are Hannigan and O'Toole and their patrols? Why aren't they back?"

O'Shaughnessy stiffened to attention trying to pull in his great stomach. "They are back, Mr. Lieutenant Sir.... I forgot. They had nothing to report ... no contact."

Terrence looked him up and down, "If you foul up just once more ...

I'm going to ... I'll split your gizzard, stuff it with To-To leaves and send you to the Rumi for their breakfast with my compliments!"

O'Shaughnessy shivered at the dire threat as O'Mara turned to Rev.

Goodman who stood with his people cl.u.s.tered about him. "All right, Reverend, you can move out with your flock. I'll throw patrols out in front of you and bring up the rear with the rest of the Rifles. We'll see you as far as the edge of the swamps."

In a long straggly line, the refugees started out with the native police keeping order and Goodman marching at their head. The two drums and the three bugles of the Narakan Rifles struck up a badly mangled version of _Back to Donegal_, and the column followed on the heels of the civilians. Once or twice Terrence glanced back at the smoke and flame that had been Dust Bin before he turned his face forward across the miles of gra.s.slands to where the Suzi swamps lay.

Darkness had fallen but progress wasn't difficult until one of those sudden, lashing storms for which Naraka was famous hurled itself upon them, flattening the tall gra.s.s, raising swirls of dust and finally turning the dust into thick, clinging mud.

As suddenly as it had come, the storm was gone. But by that time they were in the swamp itself. Night in the Suzi swamps. Swamps composed of a sticky, gray mud and heavy tangled undergrowth. The night was as black as the day had been bright. The column which had left the civilians at the edge of the swamp was pushing slowly forward. The Narakans glided along on their bare, webbed feet and the Terrans pushed along on snowshoe-like glides attached to their boots.

Bill Fielding, bareheaded with his helmet thrown back over his shoulder, floundered along beside Terrence. "Did you ever see a place like this? Did you ever see mud like this? Even the Irish bogs couldn't be this bad."

Terrence checked his map, shielding his flashlight carefully. "We'll be out of the worst of this by tomorrow morning," he said.

"If we live until tomorrow morning," Fielding replied, "those Rumi have eyes like the blasted jungle cats they're descended from."

"I don't think we have much to worry about until we get out of the swamps. I doubt if their patrols would penetrate very deeply into this mess."

"How about the radio? Has Polasky been able to get through to Fort Craven?" asked Fielding.

O'Mara shook his head, "no. You know what Beta's radiations do to radio reception this time of year. Even at night it takes a powerful transmitter to reach farther than twenty or thirty miles."

Later in the night, with a good ten miles of swamp country between him and the enemy, Terrence called a halt on a slightly raised spot of almost dry ground. The unwearied Greenbacks and the exhausted Terrans dropped down in huddled groups. The patrols that had penetrated to the edge of the swamp came in to report that they had contacted no Rumi ahead. Terrence munched a can of cold beans and fell over in an exhausted sleep to the sound of O'Shaughnessy placing sentries about the camp.

The next day's march was a nightmare to the lieutenant. If anything, the heat and humidity were worse in the swamps than they had been in Dust Bin and the going got tougher every mile. The mud was softer and the undergrowth had to be cut away by bayonet-wielding Narakans before the main body could move through. Terrence had thrown off his battle armor and lost his radiation helmet somewhere in the mora.s.s as had other of the Earthmen. Hannigan had prepared a thick mess of mud and gra.s.s which the Terrans applied to exposed parts of their bodies.

Late in the afternoon of the second day the Narakan Rifles came to a tepid little stream that marked the end of the swamps, and for the first time Terrence ordered a rest of longer than two hours. Bill Fielding was lying flat on his back in the gra.s.s beside the stream with his feet dangling in the water, shoes and all, when O'Mara dragged himself wearily back from inspecting the pickets and flopped down beside him.

"If I never to my dying day see another speck of mud," Fielding muttered as he ate a bar of tropical chocolate that was as mud covered as he was, "I'll still have seen more than all the Fieldings for two hundred years back have seen on Earth and Mars."

"And now," said Terrence as he eased over on his back with a heavy sigh, "that we have run out of mud, we can start looking for Rumi."

"At least it'll be a change! Here Kitty! Here kitty! Nice Rumi! Come and get a bayonet in...."

Clack, clack, clack. The sound of spring guns broke the stillness of the afternoon and was followed by the sound of rifles and a cry of pain.

"Oh, Lord!" moaned O'Mara, "now it starts!" He was on his feet, gripping his carbine and running bent over. Fielding was at his heels, dragging a machine gun off the ground.

"O'Shaughnessy! Hannigan! Take the first platoon. Move up to support the pickets. O'Toole! On the double! Take your squad and try to get around the firing. Bill, you and Polasky stand by here with the rest of the men and the Bannings."

Terrence had plunged into the stream and splashed across and was clambering up the opposite bank when one of his pickets came crawling and stumbling back clutching a wounded arm. "Mr. Lieutenant! Mr.

Lieutenant! Rumi! Rumi! Many Rumi up ahead! Sullivan and O'Leary dead!

Rumi get!"

"Medic! Medic!" O'Shaughnessy was yelling in his ear with the full-throated croak of an adult Narakan, drowning out what the wounded picket was trying to say.

"How many? How many Rumi, man?" Terrence demanded.

"Twenty ... thirty ... maybe thousand!" the Narakan gasped as the Medic led him off.

"'Twenty, thirty, maybe thousand.' That gives us a d.a.m.n fine idea of what we're up against!"

While his men dragged their big bodies up the bank of the stream, O'Mara stood scowling at the eight foot high gra.s.s. Usually about a foot high, the hardy and ubiquitous purple gra.s.s of Naraka grew far more lushly around the edges of the swamps. He felt that it would be a risky business at best to plunge into it after an unknown number of enemy. At the same time he had an illogical determination not to leave the bodies of his men in the hands of the Rumi. He looked at the broad, big-mouthed exaggerations of Irish faces around him, heaved a sigh that came from deep in his chest and ordered, "All right, men.

Spread out. Keep low and keep your eyes open. And try not to shoot each other."

"We fix bayonets now, Lieutenant, sir?" Hannigan asked.

"You keep your eyes open, Sergeant," Terrence snapped, "I'll tell you when to fix bayonets."

The noisy rustling of his men's heavy bodies as they pushed through the gra.s.s made him nervous and irritable. Then suddenly, just as they were edging their way around a gully, a dozen Rumi were swarming down on them. Terrence cut down two with his carbine but his men were firing and missing as the incredibly fast catmen hurtled at them. He had a brief glimpse of O'Shaughnessy spraying submachine gun slugs wildly about and then there was a hail of spring bolts and two of his men were down. The whole platoon was thrashing through the gra.s.s in their direction and the Rumi were gone as quickly as they had come.

"Come on!" Terrence shouted, breaking into a run with twenty or thirty Riflemen after him. A bolt grazed his cheek and another cut down a man to his right. He emptied his carbine in the general direction of the Clack, Clack, Clack. Hannigan was roaring a primitive bull-throated chant and firing at everything that moved. O'Shaughnessy managed to jam his gun and was beating frantically at it with one webbed fist.

They burst into a clearing filled with Rumi and both sides blazed away at point blank range. It was hard for even a Narakan to miss at that close range and the Rumi broke and ran just as Sergeant O'Toole and his squad came out of the gra.s.s on the other side of the clearing.

The Rumi, trapped, turned and dashed at Terrence and his men. The lieutenant drove his fist into one cat faced creature and smashed his empty gun across the head of another. Hannigan grappled with one of the lithe gray-bodied things and slowly crushed it beneath his 350 odd pounds. O'Shaughnessy beat another insensible with his jammed Tommy gun. Several Narakans were down but most of them had taken Rumi with them.

Terrence was knocked off his feet by a gray ball of fury that leaped at him wielding a stiletto-thin knife. He caught at the Rumi's arm with both hands but the creature was not only fast but strong. It twisted out of his grasp and slashed at him and only a quick sideward roll saved him. Desperately he brought his fist down on his a.s.sailant's head.