"One man absent," I reported to Johnson. "Flores, squad six."
"Missing or dead?"
"I don't know. Squad leader and assistant section leader dropping out for pickup."
"Johnnie, you let Ace take it."
But I didn't hear him, so I didn't answer. I heard him report to Jelly and I heard Jelly cuss. Now look, I wasn't bucking for a medal—it's the assistant section leader's business to make pickup; he's the chaser, the last man in, expendable. The squad leaders have other work to do. As you've no doubt gathered by now the assistant section leader isn't necessary as long as the section leader is alive.
Right that moment I was feeling unusually expendable, almost expended, because I was hearing the sweetest sound in the universe, the beacon the retrieval boat would land on, sounding our recall. The beacon is a robot rocket, fired ahead of the retrieval boat, just a spike that buries itself in the ground and starts broadcasting that welcome, welcome music. The retrieval boat homes in on it automatically three minutes later and you had better be on hand, because the bus can't wait and there won't be another one along.
But you don't walk away on another cap trooper, not while there's a chance he's still alive—not in Rasczak's Roughnecks. Not in any outfit of the Mobile Infantry. You try to make pickup.
I heard Jelly order: "Heads up, lads! Close to retrieval circle and interdict! On the bounce!"
And I heard the beacon's sweet voice: "—to the everlasting glory of the infantry, shines the name, shines the name of Rodger Young!" and I wanted to head for it so bad I could taste it.
Instead I was headed the other way, closing on Ace's beacon and expending what I had left of bombs and fire pills and anything else that would weigh me down. "Ace! You got his beacon?"
"Yes. Go back, Useless!"
"I've got you by eye now. Where is he?"
"Right ahead of me, maybe quarter mile. Scram! He's my man ."
I didn't answer; I simply cut left oblique to reach Ace about where he said Dizzy was.
And found Ace standing over him, a couple of skinnies flamed down and more running away. I lit beside him. "Let's get him out of his armor—the boat'll be down any second!"
"He's too bad hurt!"
I looked and saw that it was true -- there was actually a hole in his armor and blood coming out. And I was stumped. To make a wounded pickup you get him out of his armor... then you simply pick him up in your arms— no trouble in a powered suit—and bounce away from there. A bare man weighs less than the ammo and stuff you've expended. "What'll we do?"
"We carry him," Ace said grimly. "Grab ahold the left side of his belt." He grabbed the right side, we manhandled Flores to his feet. "Lock on! Now... by the numbers, stand by to jump—one—two!"
We jumped. Not far, not well. One man alone couldn't have gotten him off the ground; an armored suit is too heavy. But split it between two men and it can be done.
We jumped—and we jumped—and again, and again, with Ace calling it and both of us steadying and catching Dizzy on each grounding. His gyros seemed to be out.
We heard the beacon cut off as the retrieval boat landed on it—I saw it land... and it was too far away. We heard the acting platoon sergeant call out: "In succession, prepare to embark!"
And Jelly called out, "Belay that order!"
We broke at last into the open and saw the boat standing on its tail, heard the ululation of its take-off warning—saw the platoon still on the ground around it, in interdiction circle, crouching behind the shield they had formed.
Heard Jelly shout, "In succession, man the boat—move!"
And we were still too far away! I could see them peel off from the first squad, swarm into the boat as the interdiction circle tightened.
And a single figure broke out of the circle, came toward us at a speed possible only to a command suit.
Jelly caught us while we were in the air, grabbed Flores by his Y-rack and helped us lift.
Three jumps got us to the boat. Everybody else was inside but the door was still open. We got him in and closed it while the boat pilot screamed that we had made her miss rendezvous and now we had all bought it! Jelly paid no attention to her; we laid Flores down and lay down beside him. As the blast hit us Jelly was saying to himself, "All present, Lieutenant. Three men hurt—but all present!"
I'll say this for Captain Deladrier: they don't make any better pilots. A rendezvous, boat to ship in orbit, is precisely calculated. I don't know how, but it is, and you don't change it. You can't.
Only she did. She saw in her scope that the boat had failed to blast on time; she braked back, picked up speed again—and matched and took us in, just by eye and touch, no time to compute it. If the Almighty ever needs an assistant to keep the stars in their courses, I know where he can look.
Flores died on the way up.
CHAPTER 2
It scared me so, I hooked it off,
Nor stopped as I remember,
Nor turned about till I got home,
Locked up in mother's chamber.
Yankee Doodle, keep it up,
Yankee Doodle dandy,
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy.
I never really intended to join up.
And certainly not the infantry! Why, I would rather have taken ten lashes in the public square and have my father tell me that I was a disgrace to a proud name.
Oh, I had mentioned to my father, late in my senior year in high school, that I was thinking over the idea of volunteering for Federal Service. I suppose every kid does, when his eighteenth birthday heaves into sight -- and mine was due the week I graduated. Of course most of them just think about it, toy with the idea a little, then go do something else -- go to college, or get a job, or something. I suppose it would have been that way with me... if my best chum had not, with dead seriousness, planned to join up.
Carl and I had done everything together in high school -- eyed the girls together, double-dated together, been on the debate team together, pushed electrons together in his home lab. I wasn't much on electronic theory myself, but I'm a neat hand with a soldering gun; Carl supplied the skull sweat and I carried out his instructions. It was fun; anything we did together was fun. Carl's folks didn't have anything like the money that my father had, but it didn't matter between us. When my father bought me a Rolls copter for my fourteenth birthday, it was Carl's as much as it was mine; contrariwise, his basement lab was mine.
So when Carl told me that he was not going straight on with school, but serve a term first, it gave me to pause. He really meant it; he seemed to think that it was natural and right and obvious.
So I told him I was joining up, too.
He gave me an odd look. "Your old man won't let you."
"Huh? How can he stop me?" And of course he couldn't, not legally. It's
the first completely free choice anybody gets (and maybe his last); when a boy, or a girl, reaches his or her eighteenth birthday, he or she can volunteer and nobody else has any say in the matter.
"You'll find out." Carl changed the subject.
So I took it up with my father, tentatively, edging into it sideways.
He put down his newspaper and cigar and stared at me. "Son, are you out of your mind?"
I muttered that I didn't think so.
"Well, it certainly sounds like it." He sighed. "Still... I should have been expecting it; it's a predictable stage in a boy's growing up. I remember when you learned to walk and weren't a baby any longer—frankly you were a little hellion for quite a while. You broke one of your mother's Ming vases -- on purpose, I'm quite sure... but you were too young to know that it was valuable, so all you got was having your hand spatted. I recall the day you swiped one of my cigars, and how sick it made you. Your mother and I carefully avoided noticing that you couldn't eat dinner that night and I've never mentioned it to you until now -- boys have to try such things and discover for themselves that men's vices are not for them. We watched when you turned the corner on adolescence and started noticing that girls were different—and wonderful."