Two Hawks, observing that they were below the line of fire, changed his mind. He told the others what he wanted to do but said that they would keep to the original plan if they preferred. They said they would do what he ordered.
The four began to crawl northeastward, toward the nearest line of boulders. They arrived there a few minutes before the mortar crews. On the opposite side of the two boulders, they listened to the rasp of Arabic while the mortars were being set up. It was impossible to determine whether only the mortar crews were there or if others had come with them. Deciding that the longer he put off action, the less their chance of surprise, Two Hawks crawled around the huge rock. He and Ilmika were behind the one; Gilbert and Kwasind behind the other, ten yards away.
Everything went even better than Two Hawks had hoped. He shot from one side of the boulder while Ilmika fired from the other. Kwasind and Gilbert went into action as soon as they heard the first shot. Although it was dark, the white trousers and turbans of the marines made for easy shooting. The four aimed at the dark areas between the white.
There were eight men with each mortar. Four fell at each mortar before the survivors could bring their revolvers into play. Several tried to run, slipped, and rolled away out of the fight. The others died where they stood.
Ilmika and Two Hawks started around the boulder for the mortar but had to dive for cover. The marines farther down, guessing what had occurred, opened up. Two Hawks’ plan of using the mortars against them, of blasting them off the face of the mountain with their own weapons, was no longer feasible. Worse, the marines were advancing towards the boulders, intent on recapturing the mortars.
The four risked sticking their heads around the boulders and shooting now and then. But the hail of bullets, screaming just over their heads, throwing rock chips off the sides of the boulders, made it suicide to keep on trying a return fire.
Two Hawks cursed. He should have stuck to his original plan. They might be on their way to safety now, if he had not been carried away with his overbold, damned foolish, counterattack.
Suddenly, the racket from below redoubled, tripled in intensity. The bullets stopped flying around them, but the barking bedlam below continued. There were whistles and shouts in a non- Arabic speech. Two Hawks did not understand the words, but he recognized the language as Polynesian.
The Hivika had come.
The battle lasted for about five minutes. Then the surviving Ikhwani surrendered. The Hivika, having been told what was going on by their prisoners, called up for the four to surrender. The officer’s Blodlandish was heavily accented, but he could be understood. Gilbert answered in Hivika, and a moment later the four were also prisoners. They joined the others down below.
Raske was there, his hands clasped behind his neck. He laughed when he saw Two Hawks, and he said, “You slippery devil! By the skin of your teeth, heh? You have all the luck of Hitler himself!”
Two Hawks said, “Who’s Hitler?”
Postlude
The Norwegian dawn was paling the windows of the hotel room when Two Hawks stopped his narrative.
I said, “Surely you’re not going to quit now? Just before the end?”
“I forgot,” he said, “that Raske’s words would not mean anything to you. At the time he said them, they meant nothing to me. I was too concerned about what was going to become of us to think much about it. All of us, Ikhwani, Blodlandish, Kwasind, Ruske, and myself were being tried for illegal entry, a noncapital crime, and for trespassing on sacred ground, a capital crime. But Raske and I had something valuable to offer Hivika in return for our lives. And I got Kwasind and the Blodlandish off, too. However, the king of Hivika wanted to make an example of somebody, so he hung the Ikhwani marines and also the sailors who had survived the sinking of their ship. Those two smokeplumes I saw came from Hivika cruisers. They sank the Ikhwani ship, although not without heavy casualties themselves.
“We spent a year on Hivika, a very busy year, a repetition of what Raske and I had gone through in Perkunisha and Blodland. By the time we got our freedom, the war was over. The plague had finally died out, although not before killing four times as many people in three months as a year of war had done. Perkunisha fell apart; a part of its army and many civilians revolted, a commoner by the name of Wissambrs became head of a republic... well, you know all this.”
“But what’s this about... a Hitler?” I said.
Two Hawks smiled. “Raske answered that same question for me while we were in the Hivika jail. And he told me about the world from which he had come. As I said, we had always been working too hard while in Berlin to have much small talk or conversation about our lives on what we thought had been the same Earth. Besides, both of us avoided discussion of our ideologies or goals of our countries. We felt there was no use carrying on the disputes of a world lost forever to us.
“It was not until we were in Hivika that we learned that we had come through the same gate, simultaneously, but from different earths.”
“Amazing!”
“Yes. The ruler of the Germany of my world was the Kaiser, grandson of the Kaiser of Germany of World War I. Raske said that, in his world, the Kaiser had been exiled to Holland, after World War I. By the way, his World War I took place about ten years after that in my world, if your relative chronologies are correct. In Raske’s universe, an Austrian commoner named Hitler became dictator of Germany and led it into World War II.
“Of course, the World War I of the Kaiser of my world and of Raske’s were not the same people, you understand. They didn’t even have the same personal names. Yet, the course of history on his world and mine were amazingly similiar; the people were just different. The coincidences between the two are too many and too close to be coincidences. So, out the window goes my theory of this earth being populated by humans who had passed through gates from my earth.
“Did you know? -- no, you wouldn’t, of course—that American Air Force raids were made on the two Ploestis on the same day? Raske was in a Messerschmidt, a type unknown to me, about to attack an American Liberator, much like my own bomber, although mine was classed as a Vengeance.
“So—we now know that a ‘gate’ can open on to more than two worlds at once.”
There was a knock on the door. He opened it, and the beautiful Ilmika Thorrsstein entered. She said, “Pardon me, gentlemen, for interrupting, but it is time for us to go.”
A moment later, two men came into the room. Two Hawks introduced me to the herculean Kwasind and the blond and handsome Raske.
“Where are you going now?” I asked Two Hawks.
“We’ve heard of something very curious in the glacier country of upper Tyrsland,” he said. “The Wakasha nomads have stories of strange things in a valley there, of something that sounds to us like a gate. If the tale has any foundation, you may see us no more. But if it’s baseless, as I expect it will be, then we’re staying in this world. Raske would like to get back to his world, if possible. If he can’t he’s going to Saariset. He’s had a magnificent offer from them; he’ll be the next thing to a king if he accepts. Raske, I’m afraid, is the leopard who can’t change his spots. As for me, I’ll go back to Blodland with Ilmika.”
He smiled and said, “This may not be the best of all possible worlds. But it’s the one we’re in, so we’ll make the best of it.”
THE END