This would at least have had the advantage of introducing confusion into the Friendly ranks, out of which a determined Cassidan field command might have made some capital.
They had shown no signs of doing so, however. Now, with a Dorsai as Field Commander, some such thing might still be attempted by the Cassidans-if there was still time and men available. But it seemed unlikely to me that the Friendlies, after sitting up all night, planning, were going to sit still today while the Cassidans made attempts to cut enemy communications.
The big question was, what did the Friendlies have in mind? I could see what I have just mentioned as a possible tactic for the Cassidans. But I could not imagine just how the Friendlies planned to take advantage of the present positions and tactical situation.
The south end of the line, on the outskirts of Dho-res, was pretty much open country, farmland planted in corn, or cattle pasture on rolling glaciated hills. To the north, there were also the hills, but covered with wooded patches, groves of towering yellow birch, which had found a fine, alien home in the moist, glacial uplands of the South Partition, here on New Earth, so that here they rose to nearly double their Earthly heights-nearly two hundred feet-and clustered their tops so densely that no undergrowth but a native, mosslike groundcover could exist beneath them. Consequently, it was a sort of dim, Robin Hood-like country that existed beneath their branches, with great, peeling, silver-gold and gray, four-to-six-foot trunks reaching straight up like pillars in the dimness to the darkness of sun-shot leaves overhead.
It was not until, looking at them, I remembered all this of how it was underneath them, that it struck me that any number of troops could be at movement under their cover and I-up here in my air-car-would not be aware of rifle or helmet of them. In short, the Friendlies could be developing a major push under the cover of the trees below me and I would have no suspicion of it.
No sooner thought than acted upon. I blamed my lack of sleep for a fuzziness of perception that had not made me suspect something like this before. I swung the air-car wide to the edge of one of the groves, where there was a fortified Cassidan emplacement with the ringed muzzle of a sonic cannon poking out of it, and parked. Out here in the open, there was too much sun for the mosslike ground-cover, but a knee-high native grass was everywhere, leaning to the little wind that was blowing it in ripples, like the surface of a lake.
I got out and waded through it to the entrance of the bushes masking the gun emplacement. The day was getting hot already.
“Any sign of Friendly movement around here, or in the woods over there?” I asked the Senior Group-man in charge of the emplacement.
“Nothing, far as we know,” he answered. He was a slim, high-keyed young fellow, gone half-bald considerably before his time. His uniform jacket was undipped at the throat. “Patrols are out.”
“Hmm,” I said, “I’ll try up forward a bit. Thanks.”
I got back in the air-car and took off again, just six inches above ground obstacles now, and into the woods. Here it was cooler. The patch of trees we entered led to another and that to another. In the third patch we were challenged, and found we had come up on a Cassidan patrol. Its members were flat on the ground, out of sight and covering us at the time we were challenged; and I did not spot a single man until a square-faced Force-Leader rose up almost beside the car, spring-rifle in his hand and visor of his helmet down.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he said, shoving the visor up.
“Newsman. I’ve got permissions to be in and across the battle lines. Want to see them?”
“You know what you can do with your permissions,” he said. “If it was up to me, you’d do it, too. Not that your being here makes this business any more of a damn Sunday picnic than it is now. But we’ve got trouble enough trying to keep the men acting halfway like soldiers in a battle zone without people like you wandering around.”
“Why?” I asked innocently. “Are you having some kind of trouble besides that? What trouble?”
“We haven’t seen a black helmet since dawn, that’s what trouble!” he said. “Their forward gun emplacements are empty-and they weren’t yesterday, that’s what trouble. Shoot an antenna down into bedrock and listen for five seconds and you can hear armor-heavy armor and lots of it-moving not more than fifteen, twenty kilometers from here. That’s what trouble! Now, why don’t you get back behind the lines, friend, so we don’t have to worry about you on top of everything else?”
“Which direction did you hear the armor?”
He pointed ahead, into Friendly territory.
“Then that’s where we’re headed ourselves,” I said, leaning back into the seat of the air-car and getting ready to close the overhead.
“Hold it!” His voice stopped me before I got the overhead shut. “If you’re determined to cross over toward the enemy, I can’t stop you. But it’s my duty to warn you that you head that way on your own responsibility. That’s between the lines, out there; and your chances of running into automatic weapons are better than not.”
“Sure, sure. Consider us cautioned!” I slid the overhead shut with a bang. It may have been my own lack of sleep making me irritable, but it seemed to me at the time that he was giving us an unnecessarily hard time. I saw his face staring grimly at us as I started up the car and pulled away.
But maybe I did him an injustice. We slid forward between the trees and in a few seconds he was lost to sight behind us. We moved on, through forests and across small glades, over gently rolling territory for about half an hour more, without encountering anything. I was just figuring that we could not be more than two or three kilometers shon of where the Force-Leader had estimated the sound of Friendly armor to be coming from when it happened.
There was a sudden swift sound and blow that seemed to tilt the instrument panel suddenly into my face, smashing me into unconsciousness.
I blinked and opened my eyes. His round face concerned, Dave was out of his own seat harness and bent over me, unfastening mine.
“What?” I muttered. But he paid no attention, merely getting me loose and getting me out of the air-car.
He wanted me to lie down on the moss; but by the time we were outside the vehicle, my head had cleared. I had been, I thought, almost more dazed than out. But, when I turned to look back at the air-car, I felt grateful that that had been the worst to happen to me.
We had run across a vibration mine. Of course the air-car, like any vehicle designed for use around battlefields, had sensor rods projecting out of it at odd angles; and one of these had set off the mine while we were still a dozen feet from it. But still the air-car now had a tangle of junk for a front end, and the instrument panel was pretty well wrecked by my head; so much so that it was surprising I had not even a cut on my forehead to show for it, though a rather considerable bruise was already rising there.
“I’m all right-I’m all right!” I said irritably to Dave. And then I swore at the air-car for a few minutes to relieve my feelings.
“What do we do now?” asked Dave when I was finished.
“Head for the Friendly lines on foot. They’re the closest!” I growled. The warning of the Force-Leader came back to my mind, and I swore again. Then, because I had to take it out on somebody, I snapped at Dave. “We’re still out here to get a newsstory, remember?”
I turned and stalked away in the direction the aircar had been headed. There were probably other vibration mines around, but walking on foot, I would not have the weight or disturbance to spring them. After a moment Dave caught up with me and we walked along in silence together over the mosslike groundcover, between the enormous tree trunks, until glancing back, I saw that the air-car was out of sight behind us.
It was only then, when it was too late, that it occurred to me that I had forgotten to check my wrist director with the direction indicator in the air-car. I glanced at the director on my wrist now. It seemed to indicate the Friendly lines as just ahead. If it had kept correlation with the direction indicator in the air-car, all was well. If not-among these huge pillars of tree trunks, on this soft, unending, mossy carpet, every direction looked alike. Turning back to search for the air-car to correct the correlation could make us lost in a real sense.