Don threw himself down, exhausted. The old buck stopped, plainly puzzled, while the herd gained the land and crowded around them. The leader snorted and looked disgusted, then turned away and continued his duty of leading his people to good pasture. Don pulled himself together and followed them.
They were just coming out of the trees that hedged the shore when Don saw a fence off to the right. He felt like singing. “So long, folksl” he called out. “Here’s where I get off.” He headed for the fence, while the main herd moved on. When he reached the fence he reluctantly slapped and swatted his attendants until he managed to shoo them off, then headed along the wire. Eventually, he told himself, I will find a gate and that will lead me to people. It did not matter much who the people were; they would feed him and let him rest and help him to hide from the invaders.
The fog was very thick; it was good to have the fence to guide him. He stumbled along by it, feeling feverish and somewhat confused, but cheerful.
“Halt.”
Don froze automatically, shook his head and tried to remember where he was.
“I’ve got you spotted,” the voice went on. “Move forward slowly with your hands up.”
Don strained his eyes to see through the fog, wondered if he dared to run for it. But, with a feeling of utter and final defeat, he realized that he had run as far as he could.
XIII – Fog-Eaters
“SNAP out of it!” the voice said, “or I shoot.”
“Okay,” he answered dully and moved forward with his hands over his head. A few paces advance let him see a man’s shape; a few more and he made out a soldier with a hand gun trained on him. His eyes were covered by snooper goggles, making him look like some bug-eyed improbability from another planet.
The soldier halted Don again a few steps from him, made him turn around slowly. When Don turned back he had shoved the snoopers up on his forehead, revealing pleasant blue eyes. He lowered his gun. “Jack, you’re sure a mess”, he commented. “What in the name of the Egg have you been doing?”
It was only then that Don realized that the soldier was wearing not the mottled green of the Federation but the tans of the Ground Forces of Venus Republic.
The soldier’s commanding officer, a Lieutenant Busby, tried to question him in the kitchen of the farm house inside the fence, but he saw very quickly that the prisoner was in no shape to be questioned. He turned Don over to the farmer’s wife for food, a hot bath, and emergency medical attention. It was late that afternoon that Don, much refreshed and with the patches left by the mud lice a covered with poultices, finally gave an account of himself.
Busby listened him out and nodded. “I’ll take your word for it, mainly because it is almost inconceivable that a Federation spy could have been where you were, dressed the way you were, and in the shape you were in.” He went on to question him closely about what he had seen in New London, how many soldiers there seemed to be, how they were armed, and so forth. Unfortunately Don could not tell him much. He did recite “Emergency Law Number One” as closely as he could remember it.
Busby nodded, “We got it over Mr. Wong’s radio.” He hooked a thumb at the corner of the room. He thought for a moment. “They played it smart; they took a leaf from Commodore Higgins’ book and played it real smart. They didn’t bomb our cities; they just bombed our ships—then they moved in and burned us out.”
“Have we got any ships left?” Don asked.
“I don’t know. I doubt it—but it doesn’t matter.”
“Huh?”
“Because they played it too smart. There’s nothing left they can do to us; from here on they’re fighting the fog. And we fog-eaters know this planet better than they do.”
Don was allowed to rest up the balance of that day and the following night. By listening to the gossip of the soldiers he came to the conclusion that Busby was not simply an optimist; the situation was not completely hopeless. It was admittedly very bad; so far as anyone knew all the ships of the High Guard had been destroyed. The Valkyrie, the Nautilus and the Adonis were reported bombed and with them Commodore Higgins and most of his men. There was no word of the Spring Tide—which meant nothing; what little information they had was compounded of equal parts rumor and Federation official propaganda.