"You? If I had my way, I'd have you shipped back to the rear. The trouble is that I don't have my way. It's been decided that you can't be spared, and you have to lead a twenty even if you kill them all in the process. The way things are, I can't get that reversed."
Elmo grunted. "Don't do me no favors."
"I'm not doing you a favor. As far as I'm concerned, you didn't ought to be leading a combat twenty."
"I'm telling you I can handle it."
"And I'm telling you to back off. Take it as an order — don't take out your problems on your squad."
Elmo's face was stiff and blank. "Is that all?"
Rance sighed. "Yeah, that's all."
Elmo turned on his heel and marched away. Rance watched him go. He seemed to be moving like a robot.
The group of men in each foxhole had combined their individual environ bubbles and spread the resulting transparent sheet over the hole. It was anchored around the edge with rocks and dirt. Once in place, the bubbles slowly inflated until they formed a low protective dome. They also took on the coloring of the surrounding ground. The EBs were living entities, biotailored first cousins of the suits. On a planet that was a vacuum or one that had a poisonous atmosphere, the EBs sealed in an environment of canned air. In an emergency, they could also generate oxygen for the men sheltering inside them. On a planet like this one, however, where the air would have been breathable but for the contaminates and the wildlife, they actually filtered the toxins and impurities through their thick membranes.
Structures were going up all over the assembly area. In addition to the individual foxholes, there were larger command posts and supply marquees. Some were inflatable; others were solid domes that were assembled from portable sections. It was all part of the Therem passion for overorganization. Each time the task force paused in its advance prior to the next push, it felt the need to quickly put up what amounted to a small fortified town. When the force moved on, the town would just as quickly be torn down, leaving a tangle of holes, trenches, and debris to mark its passage.
When the foxholes were set up to everyone's satisfaction and the first guard shift was in position, the remainder of the twenty were free to attend to their most pressing personal needs. The most pressing of all was hot food. After days of living on F-rations and concentrates, any kind of cooked meal had to constitute a luxury. The cookhouse was now open, and there was almost a sense of anticipation as the men made their way to the temporary mess hall. As they eased through the bubble lock and pulled off their helmets and masks, they found that there was already a long line stretching to the serving area. Among those first on the line were some of the raw replacements who had come up on the crawlers. Dacker immediately took exception to this.
"Will you look at this new meat? We've been out in the forsaken bush getting our asses shot off and they get to eat first when they ain't done nothing but ride up here in comfort."
"Ain't that always the way of it?"
"I say make 'em wait."
Some came down on the side of being reasonable.
"Aah, leave the poor bastards be. They're probably scared out of their minds."
"So what the hell? I've been scared for as long as can remember, and with good reason. I'm going to t* front and get myself some food."
Dacker defiantly started toward the head of the line. After only a moment's hesitation, the others followed, even those who hadn't agreed with him. As the troopers elbowed their way to the front there were a couple of protests from the new recruits, but these were quickly silenced by glares from the longtimers. One of the mess orderlies was less easily intimidated. He set down his ladle and returned Dacker's angry stare.
"You men get back in line or you don't get served."
"Say what?"
"You heard me."
Dacker leaned forward so his face was very close to the orderly's. "Now you listen to me, dickhead. Not more than sixty minutes ago I was in combat, almost overrun by chibas. In another sixty minutes, I intend to be fast asleep with a full belly. Are you telling me that I've got to waste my precious downtime waiting on line while a bunch of pussy-assed new meat get their chow in front of me? What were you doing an hour ago, watching the soup on a burner?"
The orderly stood his ground. "The rule here is first come, first served, no exceptions. So you heroes can just get to the back of the line."
"Can you imagine the disaster area we could make out of this place?"
"Can you imagine what will happen to you if you start anything in here?"
"So what can they do? Shoot us? We'll be back in combat tomorrow."
There was complaining back down the line that quickly built in volume to curses and catcalls. No food had been served since Dacker and the others had walked to the front of the line, and the line was getting impatient. A supply overman emerged from the rear kitchen area.
"What the hell's going on here? What's the holdup?" A steel plate that covered more than half of his forehead indicated that he was a wounded combat veteran who had been placed on light duties. The head injury made his speech a little strange, but there didn't seem to be anything wrong with his thinking. "You men just in from the bush?"
"Damn right we are."
He glanced at the orderly. "Go ahead, feed 'em and get the whole bunch out of the way."
The orderly started to protest, but the overman stopped him with a look. "Just get them out of here."
Dacker grinned. "Just get us out of here."
The orderly scowled but started slopping out the food.
As Hawk walked back down the line with his full tray, he couldn't help looking into the faces of the new intake. Poor little bleeders. They were like blank pages waiting to be written on. Sure, they were afraid, but that was it-no marks, no scars. Their skins were smooth and unblemished, and there was nothing in their eyes but ap prehension. He thought back to when he had been like that. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
The sun dropped behind the hills, and the river valley sank into deep shadow. The lights came on around the perimeter. The minutes after sunset were the darkest of the whole half night. Then the huge parent planet would start to rise beyond the opposite horizon. At first the giant world was nothing more than a thin luminous band, a second horizon with a slight curve on the leading edge. Rapidly, though, it grew and grew, filling up the sky with its enormous bulk and casting a bright twilight over the jungle that turned the fungus ghostly pale. The planet was an expanse of parchment-yellow banded with strips of red, orange, and purple that slowly twisted and rippled and spiraled into great ponderous vortices as they were driven by the unimaginably violent storms that tore through its deep, dense atmosphere.
The night sounds began, dominated by the booming moan of the big green lizards. The big lizards seemed to make a nocturnal practice of raising their long necks to the sky and baying at the planet. It wasn't an unusual sight to see four or five of them, with necks intertwined and heads raised in unison, moaning together as a group. Above and around their bellows, the smaller creatures shrieked and howled. One particular species-nobody was quite sure which because nobody'd actually seen it-had become a particular favorite of the ground forces. It made a croaking noise that could be approximated by the word "walleye." Isolated troopers had taken to duplicating the cry. With surreal bravado, they'd yell back into the night.
"Walleye!"
"Walleye!"
Already the call of this jungle campaign was echoing around the perimeter. "Walleye."
"Walleye."
With Dyrkin giving out the details, none of the old-timers had pulled guard duty. When he'd finished eating, Hark found that although exhausted, he wasn't ready to sleep. He wanted to be on his own for a while. That was also something of a luxury. He slipped on his mask, not bothering with his helmet, and wriggled out of the bubble. He felt a little dizzy-Renchett and Kemlo were inside the foxhole sharing a small vial of totally illegal sweet gas. He turned his back on the big planet. It tended to hang over everything like a great psychological weight, and the last thing Hark needed was any kind of additional burden. He walked slowly as far as a parked crawler and sat down on one of its rear treads. To the east, there was a red glow beyond the hills. It might have been an erupting volcano. This young planet was made even more unstable by the clutching gravity of the big mother. On the other hand, it could have been flying wings, firestorming a section of jungle. Somewhere on the perimeter there was a brief chatter of fire. Hark looked around but didn't react in any other way. There had been a time when he. would have jumped and grabbed for his weapon. Now he waited until he was called. The hell with it. It was probably just some piece of new meat shooting at shadows.