Triplanetary - E. E. Smith (phonics reader TXT) 📗

that it was. The gun had practically a full belt and there was plenty more. He placed a box⁠—he would have no Number Two to help him here⁠—took hold of the grips, shoved off the safety, and squeezed the trip. The gun roared⁠—what a gorgeous, what a heavenly racket that Maxim made! He traversed until he could see where the bullets were striking: then swung the stream of metal to and fro. One belt and the Germans were completely disorganized; two belts and he could see no signs of life.

He pulled the Maxim’s block and threw it away; shot the water-jacket full of holes. That gun was done. Nor had he increased his own hazard. Unless more Germans came very soon, nobody would ever know who had done what, or to whom.

He slithered away; resumed earnestly his westward course: going as fast as⁠—sometimes a trifle faster than⁠—caution would permit. But there were no more alarms. He crossed the dangerously open ground; sulked rapidly through the frightfully shattered wood. He reached the road, strode along it around the first bend, and stopped, appalled. He had heard of such things, but he had never seen one; and mere description has always been and always will be completely inadequate. Now he was walking right into it⁠—the thing he was to see in nightmare for all the rest of his ninety-six years of life.

Actually, there was very little to see. The road ended abruptly. What had been a road, what had been wheatfields and farms, what had been woods, were practically indistinguishable, one from the other; were fantastically and impossibly the same. The entire area had been churned. Worse⁠—it was as though the ground and its every surface object had been run through a gargantuan mill and spewed abroad. Splinters of wood, riven chunks of metal, a few scraps of bloody flesh. Kinnison screamed, then, and ran; ran back and around that blasted acreage. And as he ran, his mind built up pictures; pictures which became only the more vivid because of his frantic efforts to wipe them out.

That road, the night before, had been one of the world’s most heavily traveled highways. Motorcycles, trucks, bicycles. Ambulances. Kitchens. Staff-cars and other automobiles. Guns; from seventy-fives up to the big boys, whose tremendous weight drove their wide caterpillar treads inches deep into solid ground. Horses. Mules. And people⁠—especially people⁠—like himself. Solid columns of men, marching as fast as they could step⁠—there weren’t trucks enough to haul them all. That road had been crowded⁠—jammed. Like State and Madison at noon, only more so. Over-jammed with all the personnel, all the instrumentation and incidentalia, all the weaponry, of war.

And upon that teeming, seething highway there had descended a rain of steel-encased high explosive. Possibly some gas, but probably not. The German High Command had given orders to pulverize that particular area at that particular time; and hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of German guns, in a micrometrically-synchronized symphony of firepower, had pulverized it. Just that. Literally. Precisely. No road remained; no farm, no field, no building, no tree or shrub. The bits of flesh might have come from horse or man or mule; few indeed were the scraps of metal which retained enough of their original shape to show what they had once been.

Kinnison ran⁠—or staggered⁠—around that obscene blot and struggled back to the road. It was shell-pocked, but passable. He hoped that the shell-holes would decrease in number as he went along, but they did not. The enemy had put this whole road out of service. And that farm, the P.C., ought to be around the next bend.

It was, but it was no longer a Post of Command. Either by directed fire⁠—star-shell illumination⁠—or by uncannily accurate chart-work, they had put some heavy shell exactly where they would do the most damage. The buildings were gone; the cellar in which the P.C. had been was now a gaping crater. Parts of motorcycles and of staff cars littered the ground. Stark tree trunks⁠—all bare of leaves, some riven of all except the largest branches, a few stripped even of bark⁠—stood gauntly. In a crotch of one, Kinnison saw with rising horror, hung the limp and shattered naked torso of a man; blown completely out of his clothes.

Shells were⁠—had been, right along⁠—coming over occasionally. Big ones, but high; headed for targets well to the west. Nothing close enough to worry about. Two ambulances, a couple of hundred meters apart, were coming; working their way along the road, between the holes. The first one slowed⁠ ⁠… stopped.

“Seen anybody⁠—Look out! Duck!”

Kinnison had already heard that unmistakable, unforgettable screech, was already diving headlong into the nearest hole. There was a crash as though the world were falling apart. Something smote him; seemed to drive him bodily into the ground. His light went out. When he recovered consciousness he was lying upon a stretcher; two men were bending over him.

“What hit me?” he gasped. “Am I⁠ ⁠… ?” He stopped. He was afraid to ask: afraid even to try to move, lest he should find that he didn’t have any arms or legs.

“A wheel, and maybe some of the axle, of the other ambulance, is all,” one of the men assured him. “Nothing much; you’re practically as good as ever. Shoulder and arm bunged up a little and something⁠—maybe shrapnel, though⁠—poked you in the guts. But we’ve got you all fixed up, so take it easy and.⁠ ⁠…”

“What we want to know is,” his partner interrupted, “Is there anybody else alive up here?”

“Uh-huh,” Kinnison shook his head.

“OK. Just wanted to be sure. Lots of business back there, and it won’t do any harm to have a doctor look at you.”

“Get me to a phone, as fast as you can,” Kinnison directed, in a voice which he thought was strong and full of authority, but which in fact was neither. “I’ve got an important message for General Weatherby, at Spearmint.”

“Better tell us what it is, hadn’t you?” The ambulance was now jolting along what had been the