Ardmore wet his lips. “Apparently I did not clearly convey the order.
The order was to take charge, and prosecute the war!”
“With what?”
He measured Calhoun before answering. “It is not actually your responsibility. Under the changed situation, in accordance with the articles of war, as senior line officer present I am assuming command of this detachment of the United States army!”
It hung in the balance for twenty heartbeats. At last Calhoun stood up and attempted to square his stooped shoulders. “You are perfectly correct, sir. What are your orders?”
“What are your orders?” he asked himself. Think fast, Ardmore, you big Junk, you’ve shot off your face — now where are you? Calhoun was right when he asked “With what?” — yet he could not stand still and see the remnant of military organization fall to pieces.
You’ve got to tell ’em something, and it’s got to be good; at least good enough to hold ’em until you think of something better. Stall, brother, stall! “I think we had best examine the new situation here, first.
Colonel, will you oblige me by having the remaining personnel gather around — say around that big table? That will be convenient.”
“Certainly, sir.” The others, having heard the order, moved toward the table. “Graham! And you, what’s your name? Thomas, isn’t it? You two remove Captain MacAllister’s body to some other place. Put him in the corridor for now.”
The commotion of getting one of the ubiquitous corpses out of the way and getting the living settled around a table broke the air of unreality and brought things into focus. Ardmore felt more self-confidence when he turned again to Calhoun. “You had better introduce me to those here present. I want to know what they do and something about them, as well as their names.”
It was a corporal’s guard, a forlorn remnant. He had expected to find, hidden here safely and secretly away under an unmarked spot in the Rocky Mountains, the most magnificent aggregation of research brains ever gathered together for one purpose. Even in the face of complete military disaster to the regular forces of the United States, there remained a reasonable outside chance that two hundred-odd keen scientific brains, secreted in a hide-away whose very existence was unsuspected by the enemy and equipped with every modern facility for research, might conceivably perfect and operate some weapon that would eventually drive out the PanAsians.
For that purpose he had been sent to tell the commanding general that he was on his own, no longer responsible to higher authority. But what could half a dozen men do in any case?
For it was a scant half a dozen. There was Dr. Lowell Calhoun, mathematician, jerked out of university life by the exigencies of war and called a colonel. There was Dr. Randall Brooks, biologist and bio-chemist, with a special commission of major. Ardmore liked his looks; he was quiet and mild, but gave the impression of an untroubled strength of character superior to that of a more extroverted man-he would do, and his advice would be useful.
Ardmore mentally dubbed Robert Wilkie a “punk kid.” He was young and looked younger, having an overgrown collie-dog clumsiness, and hair that would not stay in place. His field, it developed, was radiation, and the attendant branches of physics too esoteric for a layman to understand.
Ardmore had not the slightest way of judging whether or not he was any good in his specialty. He might be a genius, but his appearance did not encourage the idea.
No other scientist remained. There were three enlisted men: Herman Scheer, technical sergeant. He had been a mechanic, a die maker, a tool maker. When the army picked him up he had been making precision instruments for the laboratories of the Edison Trust. His brown, square hands and lean fingers backed up his account of himself. His lined, set face and heavy jaw muscles made Ardmore judge him to be a good man to have at his back in a tight place. He would do.
There remained Edward Graham, private first-class, specialist rating officers’ cook. Total war had turned him from his profession as an artist and interior decorator to his one other talent, cooking. Ardmore was unable to see how he could fit into the job, except, of course, that somebody had to cook.