The second blast hit as I was saying it. It wasn’t as violent. “Cunha! Call off your section. And everybody stay on the bounce and mop up.”
The call-off was ragged and slow — too many missing files as I could see from my physicals display. But the mop-up was precise and fast. I ranged around the edge and got half a dozen Bugs myself — the last of them suddenly became active just before I flamed it. Why did concussion daze them more than it did us? Because they were unarmored? Or was it their brain Bug, somewhere down below, that was dazed?I
The call-off showed nineteen effectives, plus two dead, two hurt, and three out of action through suit failure — and two of these latter Navarre was repairing by vandalizing power units from suits of dead and wounded. The third suit failure was in radio & radar and could not be repaired, so Navarre assigned the man to guard the wounded, the nearest thing to pickup we could manage until we were relieved.
In the meantime I was inspecting, with Sergeant Cunha, the three places where the Bugs had broken through from their nest below. Comparison with the sub map showed, as one could have guessed, that they had cut exits at the places where their tunnels were closest to the surface.
One hole had closed; it was a heap of loose rock. The second one did not show Bug activity; I told Cunha to post a lance and a private there with orders to kill single Bugs, close the hole with a bomb if they started to pour out — it’s all very well for the Sky Marshal to sit up there and decide that holes must not be closed, but I had a situation, not a theory.
Then I looked at the third hole, the one that had swallowed up my platoon sergeant and half my platoon.
Here a Bug corridor came within twenty feet of the surface and they had simply removed the roof for about fifty feet. Where the rock went, what caused that “frying bacon” noise while they did it, I could not say. The rocky roof was gone and the sides of the hole were sloped and grooved. The map showed what must have happened; the other two holes came up from small side tunnels, this tunnel was part of their main labyrinth — so the other two had been diversions and their main attack had come from here.
Can those Bugs see through solid rock?
Nothing was in sight down that hole, neither Bug nor human. Cunha pointed out the direction the second section had gone. It had been seven minutes and forty seconds since the platoon sergeant had gone down, slightly over seven since Brumby had gone after him. I peered into the darkness, gulped and swallowed my stomach. “Sergeant, take charge of your section,” I said, trying to make it sound cheerful. “If you need help, call Lieutenant Khoroshen.”
“Orders, sir?”
“None. Unless some come down from above. I’m going down and find the second section — so I may be out of touch for a while.” Then I jumped down in the hole at once, because my nerve was slipping.
Behind me I heard: “Section!”
“First squad! ”—“Second squad! ”—“Third squad!”
“By squads! Follow me!”—and Cunha jumped down, too.
It’s not nearly so lonely that way.
I had Cunha leave two men at the hole to cover our rear, one on the floor of the tunnel, one at surface level. Then I led them down the tunnel the second section had followed, moving as fast as possible — which wasn’t fast as the roof of the tunnel was right over our heads. A man can move in sort of a skating motion in a powered suit without lifting his feet, but it is neither easy nor natural; we could have trotted without armor faster.
Snoopers were needed at once — whereupon we confirmed something that had been theorized: Bugs see by infrared. That dark tunnel was well lighted when seen by snoopers. So far it had no special features, simply glazed rock walls arching over a smooth, level floor.
We came to a tunnel crossing the one we were in and I stopped short of it. There are doctrines for how you should dispose a strike force underground — but what good are they? The only certainty was that the man who had written the doctrines had never himself tried them … because, before Operation Royalty, nobody had come back up to tell what had worked and what had not.
One doctrine called for guarding every intersection such as this one. But I had already used two men to guard our escape hole; if I left 10 per cent of my force at each intersection, mighty soon I would be ten-percented to death.
I decided to keep us together … decided, too, that none of us would be captured. Not by Bugs. Far better a nice, clean real estate deal … and with that decision a load was lifted from my mind and I was no longer worried.
I peered cautiously into the intersection, looked both ways. No Bugs. So I called out over the non-coms’ circuit: “Brumby!”
The result was startling. You hardly hear your own voice when using suit radio, as you are shielded from your output. But here, underground in a network of smooth corridors, my output came back to me as if the whole complex were one enormous wave guide:
“BRRRRUMMBY!”
My ears rang with it.
And then rang again: “MR. RRRICCCO!”
“Not so loud,” I said, trying to talk very softly myself. “Where are you?”
Brumby answered, not quite so deafeningly, “Sir, I don’t know. We’re lost.”
“Well, take it easy. We’re coming to get you. You can’t be far away. Is the platoon sergeant with you?”
“No, sir. We never—”
“Hold it.” I clicked in my private circuit. “Sarge—”
“I read you, sir.” His voice sounded calm and he was holding the volume down. “Brumby and I are in radio contact but we have not been able to make rendezvous.”
“Where are you?”
He hesitated slightly. “Sir, my advice is to make rendezvous with Brumby’s section — then return to the surface.”
“Answer my question.”
“Mr. Rico, you could spend a week down here and not find me … and I am not able to move. You must—”
“Cut it, Sarge! Are you wounded?”
“No, sir, but—”
“Then why can’t you move? Bug trouble?”
“Lots of it. They can’t reach me now … but I can’t come out. So I think you had better—”
“Sarge, you’re wasting time! I am certain you know exactly what turns you took. Now tell me, while I look at the map. And give me a vernier reading on your D.R. tracer. That’s a direct order. Report.”
He did so, precisely and concisely. I switched on my head lamp, flipped up the snoopers, and followed it on the map. “All right,” I said presently. “You’re almost directly under us and two levels down — and I know what turns to take. We’ll be there as soon as we pick up the second section. Hang on.” I clicked over. “Brumby—”
“Here, sir.”
“When you came to the first tunnel intersection, did you go right, left, or straight ahead?”
“Straight ahead, sir.”
“Okay. Cunha, bring ’em along. Brumby, have you got Bug trouble?”
“Not now, sir. But that’s how we got lost. We tangled with a bunch of them … and when it was over, we were turned around.”
I started to ask about casualties, then decided that bad news could wait; I wanted to get my platoon together and get out of there. A Bug town with no bugs in sight was somehow more upsetting than the Bugs we had expected to encounter. Brumby coached us through the next two choices and I tossed tanglefoot bombs down each corridor we did not use. “Tanglefoot” is a derivative of the nerve gas we had been using on Bugs in the past — instead of killing, it gives any Bug that trots through it a sort of shaking palsy. We had been equipped with it for this one operation, and I would have swapped a ton of it for a few pounds of the real stuff. Still, it might protect our flanks.