If this was a quiet day, Bill didn’t want to see a busy one. Since the entire planet of Veneria was a swamp no advances could be made until a road was built. Individual soldiers might penetrate a bit ahead of the road, but for equipment or supplies or even heavily armed men a road was necessary. Therefore the labor corps was building a road of felled trees. At the front.
Bursts from atomrifles steamed in the water around them, and the poison darts were as thick as falling leaves. The firing and sniping on both sides was constant while the prisoners cut down trees and trimmed and lashed them together to push the road forward another few inches. Bill trimmed and chopped and tried to ignore the screams and falling bodies until it began to grow dark. The squad, now a good deal smaller, made their return march in the dusk.
“We pushed it ahead at least thirty yards this afternoon,” Bill said to the old prisoner marching at his side.
“Don’t mean nothing, Venians swim up in the night and take the logs away.”
Bill instantly made his mind up to get out of there.
“Got any more of that joyjuice?” Sergeant Ferkel asked when Bill dropped onto his bunk and began to scrape some of the mud from his boots with the blade of his knife. Bill took a quick slash at a plant coming up through the floorboards before he answered.
“Do you think you could spare me a moment to give me some advice, Sergeant?”
“I am a flowing fountain of advice once my throat is lubricated.”
Bill dug a bottle out of his pocket. “How do you get out of this outfit?” he asked.
“You get killed,” the sergeant told him as he raised the bottle to his lips. Bill snatched it out of his hand.
“That I know without your help,” he snarled.
“Well that’s all you gonna know without my help,” the sergeant snarled back.
Their noses were touching and they growled at each other deep in their throats. Having proven just where they stood and just how tough they both were they relaxed, and Sergeant Ferkel leaned back while Bill sighed and passed him the bottle.
“How’s about a job in the orderly room?” Bill asked.
“We don’t have an orderly room. We don’t have any records. Everyone sent here gets killed sooner or later, so who tares exactly when.”
“What about getting wounded?”
“Get sent to the hospital, get well, get sent back here.”
“The only thing left to do is mutiny!” Bill shouted.
“Didn’t work last four times we tried it. They just pulled the supply ships out and didn’t give us any food until we agreed to start fighting again. Wrong chemistry here, all the food on this planet is pure poison for our metabolisms. We had a couple of guys prove it the hard way. Any mutiny that is going to succeed has to grab enough ships first so we can get offplanet. If you got any good ideas about that I’ll put you in touch with the Permanent Mutiny Committee.”
“Isn’t there any way to get out?”
“I anshered that firsht,” Ferkel told him, and fell over stone drunk.
“I’ll see for myself,” Bill said as he slid. the sergeant’s pistol from his holster, then slipped out the back door.
Armored floodlights lit up the forward positions facing the enemy, and Bill went in the opposite direction, toward the distant white flares of landing rockets. Barracks and warehouses were dotted about on the boggy ground, but Bill stayed clear of them since they were all guarded, and the guards had itchy trigger fingers. They fired at anything they saw, anything they heard, and if they didn’t see or hear anything they fired once in a while anyway just to keep their morale up. Lights were burning brightly ahead, and Bill crawled forward on his stomach to peer from behind a rank growth at a tall, floodlighted fence of barbed wire that stretched out of sight in both directions.
A burst from an atomic rifle burned a hole in the ‘Mud about a yard behind him, and a searchlight swung over, catching him full in its glare.