The Man Who Played to Lose Read online

it came, was overwhelmingly in favor of his plan.

  Even Huey was enthusiastic. He came up to me after the meeting andpounded me on the back; I suppose it was meant for friendship, thoughit felt more like sabotage. "Hey, I thought you were no good," hesaid. "I thought you were ... oh, you know, some kid of a spy."

  "I know," I said.

  "Well, Mister," he said, "believe me, I was wrong." He pounded somemore. I tried to look as if I liked it or, anyway, as if I could putup with it. "You're O.K., Mister," he said. "You're O.K."

  Some day, I told myself, I was going to get Huey all to myself, awayin a dark alley somewhere. There didn't seem to be much chance ofkeeping the promise, but I made it to myself anyway, and moved away.

  The meeting had set the attack for three days ahead, which was a moralvictory for Hollerith; the men were all for making it in the next fiveminutes. But he said he needed time--it's a good thing, I toldmyself, that he didn't say what he needed it for. Because in a fewhours, right after sunrise the next morning, training started andHollerith had his hands full of trouble.

  The new men didn't see the sense in it. "Hell," one of themcomplained, "all we got to do is go up and toss a bomb into the place.We don't like all this fooling around first."

  The "fooling around" involved jungle training--how to walk quietly,how to avoid getting slashed by a vine, and so forth. It also involvedforming two separate attack groups for Hollerith's plans. That meantdrilling the groups to move separately, and drilling each group tostay together.

  And there were other details: how to fire a heater from the third rankwithout incinerating a comrade in the front rank; signal-spotting, incase of emergency and sudden changes of plan; the use of dynamite, itscare and feeding; picking targets--and so forth and so forth.Hollerith's three days seemed pretty short when you thought about whatthey had to cover.

  But the new men didn't like it. They wanted action. "That's what wesigned on for," they said. "Not all this drill. Hell, we ain't anarmy--we're guerrillas."

  The older hands, and the more sensible members of the band, triedtheir best to talk the new men into line. Some of the officers triedordering them into line.

  But the talk was ignored. And as for the officers--well, the oldUnited States Civil War tried a democratic army for a while, on bothsides. Unfortunately, electing your officers is not an efficient wayto run things. The most popular man makes the best officer about asoften as the most popular man makes the best criminal-law judge. Orengineer, for that matter. War's not a democratic business.

  This one, however, seemed to be. Mass election of officers was one ofthe rules, along with the voting on staff decisions. The new menout-numbered the older hands. New officers were elected--and thatstopped the orders.

  Hollerith was about two-thirds of the way out of his mind when thethree days were up and the attack time came around. When night fell,the atmosphere around the cave was as tense as it could get withoutturning into actual lightning. It was a warm, still night; the singlemoon was quarter-full but it shed a lot more light than Earth's moon;we blacked ourselves and Hollerith went over the plans. We were stilldivided into two groups--ragged groups, but groups. The first wave wasto come around on the depot from the left, attacking in full forcewith all armaments and some of that dynamite. When things were gettingtoward a peak in that direction, the second force was to come in fromthe right and set off its own fireworks. Result (Hollerith hoped):demolition, confusion, catastrophe.

  It was a good plan. Hollerith obviously wasn't sure of his own menany more--and neither would I have been, in his spot. But he had theadvantage of surprise and superior arms; he was clearly hoping thatwould overbalance the lack of discipline, training and order in hisforce. Besides, there was nothing else he could do; he was outvoted,all the way down the line.

  * * * * *

  I set out, with hardly a qualm, along with the second attack group. Wewere under the command of a shy, tall man with spectacles who didn'tlook like much, he'd been a trapper before the war, though, and wasone of the original guerrillas, for a wonder, and that meant he wasprobably a hell of a lot tougher and more knowledgeable than heseemed. Setting traps for Wohlen's animals, for instance, wasemphatically not a job for the puny or the frightened. The first groupwas under Huey's command.

  Hollerith stayed with a small group of his own as a "reserve";actually, he wanted to oversee the battle, and the men were perfectlywilling to let him, having gotten one idea into their democraticheads: Hollerith was too valuable a man for the guerrillas to lose.

  But I wasn't, of course. I'd done my bit; I'd gotten the volunteers.Now I could go and die for glory like the rest of them.

  * * * * *

  The trouble was, I couldn't see any way out. I marched in the dimnesswith the rest, and we managed to make surprisingly little noise.Wohlen's animals were active and stirring, anyhow, and that helped.

  At last the depot showed up in the moonlight with the city somedistance behind it. There was a wire fence, and a sentry, immediatelyin view behind him were square blocky buildings in a clearing. Beyondthat there was another fence, then some more jungle, and then thecity. Fifty yards from the fence, in the last screen of trees, westopped and waited.

  The first group was off to the other side of the fence, and I couldn'tsee or hear them. The wait seemed to go on for hours; perhaps a minuteand a half passed. Then the first heater went off.

  The sentry whirled and fired without really thinking. There wasn't anyway for him to tell what he was shooting at. More heaters went offfrom the jungle, and then they started to come in. There was a lot ofnoise.

  The boys were yelling, swarming over the wire fence and through it,firing heaters wildly. There were lights in the buildings, now, and apicked group of men came out of one of them, swinging in single file;the heaters chopped them to pieces before they had much of a chance. Atower light went on and then the really big guns got going.

  The guerrillas started to get it, then. The big boys from thearmaments tower charred holes in their line, and the noise got worse;men were screaming and cursing and dying and the heaters were stillgoing off. I tore my eyes away and looked at the leader of our group.He was poised on the balls of his feet, leaning forward; he stayedthat way, his head nodding very slowly up and down, for a full second.Then he shouted and lifted an arm and we followed him, a screaming mobheading down into hell.

  The big guns were swiveled the other way and for a couple of secondswe had no trouble. Our boys weren't playing with heaters too much;instead, the dynamite started to fly. Light the fuse, pick it up,heave--and then stand back and watch. Fireworks. Excitement. Well, itwas what they wanted, wasn't it?

  There was an explosion as a small bundle landed inside the fence, in acourtyard. Then another one, the flashes lighting up faces and bodiesin motion. I found myself screaming with the rest of them.

  Then the big one went off.

  One of the dynamite bundles had hit the right spot. Ammunition wentoff with a dull boom that shook the ground, and the light was toobright to look into. I went flat and so did the others; I wonderedabout solid shells exploding and going wild, but there weren't any.The light faded, and then it began to grow again.

  I put my head up and saw flames. Then I got up and saw the othersrising, too. I turned tail for the jungle. Some of them followed me,along with some of the first group; order was lost entirely and wewere no more than pieces of a shrieking, delirious, victorious mob. Iheaded back for the base.

  Behind me the ammunition depot burned brightly. The raid was over.

  It had been an unqualified success, of course. The guerrillas had donethe best job of their careers.

  So far.

  * * * * *

  Hollerith was back to the cave before me. Put it down to a short-cut,or just more practice in the jungle. When I came in he lookedterrible, about a hundred and twelve years old and shrunken. But myappearance seemed to rouse him a little. He
gestured and the others inthe cave--three or four of them--went out. One stood at the entrance.

  There was a silence. Hollerith grimaced at me. "You're working for theGovernment," he said. It wasn't a question.

  I shook my head. "I--"

  "Keep it," he said. "James Carson from Ancarta is a cover identity,that's all. I tell you, I _know_."

  He didn't look ready to pull a heater. I waited a second. The silencegot louder. Then I said: "All right. How do you know?"

  The grimace again, twisted and half-humorous. "Why, because you got merecruits," he said. "Because you got me armaments. Because you helpedme."

  "Doesn't make sense," I said.

  "Doesn't it?" He turned away from me for a second. When he turned backhe looked more