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“I assure you, Artillery Supervisor, resupply will reach you as expeditiously as is practicable,” answered the male in Supply, who wasn’t being shot at (not yet, Svallah thought bitterly). “I also assure you that yours is not the only unit urgently requesting munitions. We are making every effort to balance demands-”
The Tosevites’ shells were walking closer, fragments of brass and steel rattled off tree trunks and branches. Svallah said, “Look, if you don’t get me some shells pretty quick, my request won’t matter, because I’m about to be overrun here. Is that plain enough for you? By the Emperor, it’d probably make you happy, because then you’d have one thing fewer to worry about.”
“Your attitude is not constructive, Artillery Supervisor,” the male safe in the rear said in hurt tones.
“Ask me if I care,” Svallah retorted. “Just so you know, I’m going to order a retreat before I get chopped to pieces. Those are my only two choices, since you can’t get me ammunition. I-”
A Tosevite round landed within a male’s length of him. Between them, blast and fragments left him hardly more than a red rag splashed across the snow. By a freak of war, the field telephone was undamaged. It squawked, “Artillery Supervisor? Are you there, Artillery Supervisor? Respond, please. Artillery Supervisor…?”
For the first couple of days, it was easier than Larssen would have imagined possible. Patton really had managed to catch the Lizards napping, and to hit them where their defenses were thin. How the soldiers cheered when they crossed from Indiana into Illinois! Instead of running or desperately holding on like a stunned boxer in a clinch, they were advancing. It made new men of them-got their peckers up, was the way one sergeant had put it.
All of a sudden, it wasn’t easy any more. In the open fields in front of a grim little town called Cissna Park stood a Lizard tank. It was defiantly out in the open, with a view that reached for miles. In front of it, burning or by now burnt out, lay the hulks of at least half a dozen Lees and Shermans. Some had been killed at close to three miles. They didn’t have a prayer of touching the Lizard tank at that range, let alone killing it.
The tank crew had high-explosive shells as well as armor-piercers. Larssen had been on the receiving end of bombardments back in Chicago. He preferred giving them out. He couldn’t do anything about it, though, except throw himself flat when the big gun spoke again.
“That son of a whore’s gonna hold up the whole brigade all by his lonesome,” somebody said with sick dread in his voice. The soldiers’ peckers might be up now, but how long would they stay that way if the onslaught failed?
A fellow who looked much too young to be wearing a major’s gold oak leaves began ticking off men on his fingers. “You, you, you, you, and you, head off to the right flank and make that bastard notice you. I’m coming, too. We’ll see what we can do about him.”
Jens was the second of those yous. He opened his mouth to protest: he was supposed to be a valuable physicist, not a dog-face. But he didn’t have the nerve to finish squawking, not when the rest of the party was heading out, not when everybody was looking at them-and at him. Legs numb with fear, he lurched after the others.
The tank seemed almost naked out there. If it had any infantry support, the Lizards on the ground were holding their fire. Larssen watched the distant turret. It got less distant all the time, which meant it got more and more able to kill him. If it swings this way, I know I’m going to run, he thought. But he kept trotting forward.
One of the soldiers lay flat on the ground, opened up with a Browning automatic rifle. He had about as much chance of hurting the tank with it as a mosquito did blowing holes in an elephant. “Come on, keep moving!” the kid who was a major bawled. Jens kept moving. The farther he got from the brave maniac with the BAR, the better he liked it.
A couple of hundred yards farther on, another fellow, also armed with a BAR, took cover in some bushes that wouldn’t have been there if the field had been tended since last summer. He too started firing short bursts at the Lizard tank. Now Larssen was close enough to see a couple of sparks as bullets spanged off its turret. Again, he couldn’t see that they did any good.
“The rest of you, spread out, find what cover you can, and start shooting,” the major said. “We are a diversion. We have to make that gunner pay attention to us.”
Diversion indeed, Jens thought. The Lizard gunner ought to have extraordinarily good sport chewing up humans who couldn’t do him any damage in return.
But there was another tall patch of snow-covered dead weeds just ahead. He dropped down behind them. Even through several layers of clothes, the snow chilled his belly. He drew a bead on the tank, squeezed the Springfield’s trigger.
Nothing happened. Scowling, he checked the rifle. He’d left the safety on. “You idiot!” he snarled to himself as he clicked it off. He aimed again, fired. The kick hammered his shoulder, a lot harder than he remembered from when he’d fooled around with a.22.
The physicist part of him took over: You’re sending a heavier slug out at a higher velocity-of course it’ll kick harder. Newton’s Second Law, remember-good old F = ma? He adjusted the sight for long range; his first shot, with it set for four hundred yards, couldn’t have come close. He pulled the trigger again. This time he was better braced against the recoil. He still couldn’t tell whether he hit it or not.
As he’d been ordered, he banged away. The rest of the detachment was making a lot of noise, too. If somebody got real lucky with a round, he might mess up a sight or a periscope. Past that, the major’s diversion wasn’t doing anything more than standing out in the open with a SHOOT ME sign would have accomplished.
After a while, though, the Lizard commanding the tank must have got tired of just sitting there in a target suit. The turret skewed toward one of the BAR men. Having seen American tank turrets in action, Larssen was appalled at how fast this one traversed.
Fire spurted from the turret, not the main armament-why swat flies with a sledgehammer? — but the coaxial machine gun by it. Snow and dirt spurted up all around the soldier with the automatic rifle. It wasn’t a long burst-the gunner was flung for effect. After a few seconds’ silence, the BAR man shifted his weapon on its bipod, sent back.a few defiant rounds. Here I am! he seemed to be saying. Nyaah, nyaah!
The tank gunner squeezed off an answering burst, longer this time. Another silence fell after he stopped. The fellow with the Browning automatic rifle did not reply now. Wounded or dead, Larssen thought grimly. The tank turret turned on to the other BAR man.
He had a better spot from which to shoot back, and lasted quite a bit longer than the first gunner had. The firefight between him and the tank gunner went on through several exchanges. But the fellow, with the BAR was under orders to keep the tank busy, and brave enough to carry out those orders with exactitude. That meant he had to keep exposing himself to fire and in any case, the dirt and bushes behind which he lay were no match for the inches of armor that sheltered the Lizard in the tank turret.
When the second BAR fell silent, the tank turret traversed through another few degrees. Larssen watched it with fearful fascination-for now it bore on him. He was lying in what had been a plowed furrow. When the machine gun began to chatter again, he flattened himself out like a snake, hoping-praying-the hard earth would offer some protection. The second BAR man had lived a little while, after all.
Bullets lashed the ground all around him. Freezing dirt spattered onto his coat and the back of his neck. He could
not force himself to get up and shoot back; not in the face of a machine gun behind armor. Did that make him a coward? He didn’t know or care.
The burst from the tank broke off. He lifted his head out of the dirt. If by some miracle the turret had moved on to take up the hunt for someone else, he thought, he might start firing again, and then scoot for new cover. But no. The cannon-and, therefore, the machine gun, too-still bore on him.
He saw motion on the far side of the Lizard tank: more human soldiers, men who’d snuck close to the monster while he and his comrades occupied its attention. He wondered if they’d leap aboard and throw explosives into the turret through the cupola. Lizard tanks had died that way, but an awful lot more soldiers had died trying to kill them.
One of the Americans raised something to his shoulder. It wasn’t a gun: it was longer and thicker. Flame spurted from its rear end. Trailing fire all the way, some kind of rocket round shot across the couple of hundred yards that separated the soldiers from the Lizard tank. It slammed into the engine compartment at the rear, right where the armor was thinnest.
More fire, some blue, some orange, spurted from the stricken vehicle. Hatches popped open in the turret; three Lizards bailed out. Now, yelling like a savage, Jens fired with ferocious glee. Suddenly the tables were turned, the tormentors all but helpless against those they had bedeviled. One Lizard fell, then another.
Then the tank brewed up as the fire reached the main fuel storage. Flame washed over the whole chassis; a smoke ring spurted up from the turret. Pops and booms marked ammunition starting to cook off. The last Lizard who’d made it out of the hatch went down under a fusillade of bullets.
The kid major was up on his feet, waving like a madman. Off to the east, the distant roar of engines marked new motion from the tanks and self-propelled guns the Lizard tank had stalled. Then the major ran back to see how the two BAR men were. Jens ran with him.
