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Title: The vanishers

Author: Arthur J. Burks

Release Date: November 14, 2022 [eBook #69350]

Language: English

Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
             Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VANISHERS ***





                             THE VANISHERS

                    A Novelette by ARTHUR J. BURKS

                 _Trapped, facing an incredible shadow
               army, whose lightest touch meant instant
               dissolution--the last fighters of invaded
                Earth made their bitter choice--victory
                 beyond death's portals--or oblivion!_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                    Super Science Stories May 1950.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




                              CHAPTER ONE

                          The Invisible Wall


My men were in battle dress for the landing--steel helmets painted
green, dirty green jackets, pants, cartridge belts, heavy field shoes.
The Caribbean was so deep blue it hurt the eyes. You could look
straight down into it until it made you dizzy. Sharks, some of them
monsters, congregated from all directions.

Marines waiting to debark shouted derisively at the sharks; but it was
noticeable that they didn't pull any funny business on the slings,
and they didn't let go of the slings until their feet were firmly
planted in the bottom of the landing craft. The landing craft scarcely
rose and fell. The Caribbean was as smooth as an inland lake. I think,
now that I look back, that all of us had a strange feeling that
something unusual was going to happen, and that it had nothing to do
with the sharks.

I was first aboard a landing craft. I moved to the outboard side of
my craft and looked toward the half-moon beach where the Yataritas
empties into the Caribbean. The river's mouth was hidden by the sandy
beach. To my right the coast of Cuba, rugged, dirty coral cliffs ten
to fifty feet high, led away eastward, bulging out gradually a mile
south of the white-sandy beach. To my left there were broken cliffs of
rotting coral, and slopes leading up gradually from the shore to cactus
and spined-brush-covered hills so round they cast no shadows.

Captain Ross Haggerty crawled down into the second LCVP, First
Lieutenant Peter Hoose into the third. There were twenty-four men with
each of us, some veterans of two wars, some recruits who'd been too
young for World War II.

We were going in with Haggerty to my right rear, Hoose to my left rear.
We were equipped with the latest in ship-shore-landing-craft-airplane
communications. Four jet planes did fancy stuff over us, over the
beach, and behind the beach, while we got into our places. I could talk
with anybody in any LCVP, aboard the _Odyssey_ or in any one of the
jets. Our headsets made us look like men from Mars.

Every man who was participating in this maneuver wore one of the sets,
for experience had taught that any marine, at any time, might find
himself running the show.

There were flecks of foam about the reefs which flanked the half-moon
beach when all three LCVP's rose on their steps like amphibians ready
to take off, and headed north for the beach, so white it dazzled the
eyes. Behind the beach lay the spined brush wherein, theoretically,
enemy troops were lying in wait to rip us apart.

I always thrilled to a landing, even a make-believe one. So did the
men, boring though peacetime soldiering was. The APD was dropping dud
shells ashore. The jets were diving on us, just to make a noise, and
our three motors sounded like the crack of doom. The men kept down
because that was the rule, but occasionally I pulled myself up and
looked ahead over the ramp--which would come crashing down when we
rammed our nose into the sand. Out over that ramp the marines would
charge, to race for cover and swing into position to give our new
weapons a workout.

We'd be in in five minutes. The boat-handlers were talking to the ship
and the jets. I just listened in. I didn't see or hear a thing out of
the ordinary.

"Stand by!" came the cry. "We're smacking in a coupla seconds!"

The jets were having fun right over the beach and for a moment I envied
their pilots. When we got ashore it was going to be like sitting atop
a burning galley stove, on that sand. It would be even worse under the
brush on the land beyond that rose to the hills and the coral cliffs
which crowned them.

The other two LCVP's had drawn abreast now. We hit the beach nearly
together. I heard the rasping of the chains as the ramps went down,
hitting the sand. There was knee-deep water over the outer ends of the
ramps. The marines dashed ashore. The first odd thing happened then;
one instant there was water over the ends of the ramps, then there was
none.

As a matter of habit every marine did his job. Without command,
they sprayed out to right and left, getting unbunched as quickly as
possible, just in case a theoretical enemy projectile should land among
them.

But their deployment slowed and came to a halt. I think they, like
myself, must instantly have missed the racketing of the jets. I looked
up. The sky, a pale blue, with slowly moving clouds in which I was
aware of greenish tints, was utterly empty of the four jets which were
supposed to support our maneuver.

I whirled and looked back. Where the Caribbean had been there was a
huge sprawl of desert, blinding in the midday sun, stretching away
southward to a semicircle of brooding hills. I judged their crests to
be at least four thousand feet high. And where those crests were, five
minutes before, the Caribbean had been--fully a mile deep under the
stern of the _Odyssey_! Where the _Odyssey_ might now be I hadn't the
slightest idea.

Just before we hit the beach there had been thickets of broad-leaved
squatty trees behind the ridges of sand, into which the marines had
been headed for concealment. Now there was nothing of the kind. There
was nothing but sand and silence--silence so deep that even breathing
broke it into brittle bits.

The three LCVP's were still with us, high and dry on the sand in the
middle of the desert. Each was manned by a coxswain and a radioman.
These six men--they were sailors, of course--were now sitting in their
positions aboard the three crafts, like statues; as if they had been
fossilized by the suddenness of whatever had happened.

At first I thought something was wrong with me. Then the marines became
uncertain, and when marines are uncertain the situation is definitely
out of hand. If I was seeing things that weren't there, so were
seventy-four other marines and six sailors.

Captain Haggerty was giving the "assemble" signal and pointing to me.
Even before he gave it the marines were walking slowly toward me, their
weapons at ready, their eyes taking in all there was to see. I moved
back to the central landing craft.

"My radio is dead," I called. "How about yours?"

"Nothing, sir. They couldn't be deader on Judgment Day!"

I leaned against a corner of the LCVP and waited for the men to
assemble. Nobody said anything. They just looked at me. I felt
helpless.

"First," I said, "let's make a check. I want to be sure I haven't gone
completely daft! If what I say is true, say 'Aye, aye!' Got it?"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"This is not the Yataritas Beach we all know--apparently!"

"Aye, aye, sir!" the voices were low, hesitant, yet sure.

"The Caribbean has disappeared!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"No jets! No APD! No _anything_ we know--except sand!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"And we have no communication with anything, anywhere. I've no idea
what we ran into, but it happened just as we hit the beach." I looked
at my watch. "And one more thing. We landed about ten minutes ago, at
nine hundred. The sun says it's nearly thirteen hundred. My watch says
it's oh-nine-twelve exactly."

Officers and men looked at their wrist-watches.

"Aye, aye, sir!" They all agreed to that.

"The sailors are inside the--area--whatever it is, or they would be
gone like everything else except the LCVP's. Somewhere behind the
LCVP's, then, should be--"

But I couldn't say it. Everybody could see that behind the LCVP's was
the unknown desert leading away south to the brooding ancient mountains.

Sergeant Eckstrom strode quickly to the rear of the LCVP's. That took
guts, for he might have disappeared; but he didn't. He walked out onto
the hot desert for twenty yards, turned and came back. That ended that.
We were seeing what actually was there.

"We'll send out scouts," I said, "to the four cardinal points of the
compass. We'll split each quadrant with another scout. That's eight
scouts. Make it sixteen, scout in pairs. Don't get out of sight of the
landing craft. No telling what you may run into."

We officers split the horizon into thirds, set out to reconnoiter.

The sailors flatly refused to leave the LCVP's further than the almost
non-existent shade they cast. It was their way of grasping at something
they could understand. I didn't blame them or argue with them. The
skipper of the APD was their immediate superior. Where _was_ he, anyway?

What had snatched us into this unbelievable Limbo?

How had it been done? What was going to happen to us?

       *       *       *       *       *

I traveled about four points north of the northeast group. I am a fast
walker; even through sand I can travel faster than most men. I was
slightly ahead of all the other groups when suddenly I could go no
further. I could feel nothing, yet when I put out my foot to set it
down in a new place, it struck an invisible something, dropped back,
and my impetus carried me forward to involve my face in something much
finer than cobwebs.

I jumped back, swearing, for I could see nothing except the hot waste
of glistening sand. There were dunes, hummocks with strange grasses and
brush sticking up through them like beards; but I had struck the limit
of my trek and could not reach any of those visible spots beyond.

I pushed against it with my hands. It gave, but only as a taut wire net
might give, then press back against the hands; it was a strain to make
the thing bulge. The counterpressure was strong. I could not advance.
I turned to the right and saw that the nearest patrol had stopped. The
two men were fumbling in the air like blind men. They were raising
and lowering their feet as if they felt for steps above an abyss.
They, too, had come to the end of possible advance. They had come into
contact with invisibility also--invisibility that was inflexibly tough
beyond a certain brief limit.

The two men turned now and looked at me. I gave the halt signal and
started toward them. I ran into something and caromed off, falling
to my knees. The horrible thought struck me that each group might
have stumbled inside some hideous globe and become separated from all
other groups. But it wasn't so. I got to my feet, put my left hand out
against the invisible wall--which felt warm to the touch, as if it were
a living thing--and started toward the northeast group.

The surface of that strange substance was undulant; it zig-zagged, like
the weaving walk of a drunken man.

I reached the first patrol, Corporal Hoge Ziegler and Private First
Class Barry Preble. Their faces were white. I wouldn't say they were
scared but they were definitely concerned.

"Well, at least we've discovered what it was we ran through at the
moment we hit the beach," I offered. "All we need to do is find a way
through it, and go on with our maneuver."

Ziegler shook his head. "No, sir, I don't see it like that. We can see
through this stuff, or seem to, but we can't see back the way we came,
astern of the landing craft."

"Right, corporal; what do you think it is, then?"

"I'm no scientist, sir. I'd say it is a net of some kind, in which we
have been caught, landing craft and all, like so many fish. But by
whom? By what? For what reason? It has me stopped."

"I wonder--" began Preble, then stopped, staring at the place where he
and Ziegler had come to a dead stop. Preble stepped back. In his arms
he cradled one of the latest automatic weapons.

Preble stepped back, lifted the muzzle of the weapon, held down the
trigger for a few squirts. The weapon acted naturally enough. There was
no question that the bullets left the muzzle of the fast-firer. But we
didn't hear them hit the invisible screen; nor, looking beyond it, did
we see where the bullets kicked up sand. The bullets simply plunked
into nothingness as bullets of an obsolete day vanished into soap or
sand during firing tests.

A few seconds passed. Then there were soft sounds in the sand at the
very spot where the two marines had hit the wall. All three of us
looked down. The flattened, steel-jacketed bullets lay in a small group
in the sand, within a couple of inches of the invisible wall--on our
side of it.

"Caught the bullets, like a baseball catcher!" said Preble, his voice
high-pitched with threatened hysteria. "Then just dropped 'em! Took
them in, killed their speed, then slowly discarded them! And I saw the
wall do it!"

Ziegler and I had not seen this phenomenon, but we were not directly
behind the weapon, as Preble was.

I lifted my binoculars for the first time and looked around at the
other patrols, all of which I could see easily. All except those which
followed a southerly direction had come to the wall and were just as
puzzled by it as we. None of us had anything to offer; we were even
afraid to think lest we question our own sanity.

We held our ground until all patrols had come up against the invisible
wall. Then we had some idea of the extent of our prison. That brooding
mountain to the south, it appeared, was forbidden to us.

How high did the wall reach? Was it domed?

"Preble, fire as nearly straight up as you can," I told the private.
"Then we'll duck away fifty or sixty yards, just in case, and listen."

Ziegler and I stepped well back. Preble took careful aim. He squirted a
few score slugs, then ran to join us. We were so silent we could not
even hear each other's breathing. Shortly we heard the bullets drop
into the sand, and stepped forward.

Theoretically a bullet fired straight up strikes the ground with
the same speed at which it was fired--so the slugs would have been
flattened anyway. But we had noticed a thin film of some substance
unknown to us around the slugs which had been first fired into the wall.

That same substance was clinging to the several slugs we managed to
sift up from the sand. Our wall of invisible tension was a dome!

"I feel like a bug!" said Preble. "I feel like a bug must feel when a
scientist wants to study it. The scientist keeps covering it with a
glass tumbler when it tries to walk or fly away!"

"Do you suppose our own authorities," said Ziegler, "would be trying
out a new interdiction weapon on us? Major, they wouldn't do it without
at least telling you, sir, would they?"

"They might," I said. "There are secret weapons only the highest high
brass knows about. But if your hunch is right, corporal, we've sure
got ourselves something, haven't we? Wouldn't it be something if we
could throw an invisible net over every dive bomber of an enemy, every
warship, every man, and nullify the attack before it got started?"

"It would make them all feel pretty silly," said Preble. "But suppose
an enemy had such a 'net'? Suppose it could reach out from anywhere in
the world--"

Slowly we all walked back to the LCVP's.

"Something else funny," said Ziegler. "It's noon now, by our time. The
sun says it's about four in the afternoon or thereabouts. But we're
still ordinary marines, aren't we? Maybe I'm different from the rest of
you, but doesn't it strike you as off--"

"I'm not hungry," said Preble. "Nor thirsty! By this time of the
day, when we had breakfast at oh-six-hundred at Guantanamo, I'd be
starving." Preble was the company chow-hound. "But I'm not hungry, or
thirsty. You, corporal?"

Ziegler shook his head. He was by way of being a hearty eater himself,
while I confess I came as close to being a glutton as an officer and a
gentleman dares allow himself to be.

We had hiked for several hours under a blazing sun. Moreover, all of
us had sweated away a lot of moisture. Each of us carried a canteen of
water, so water was not yet a problem; but the point is, none of us had
taken a drink!

When we got back to the LCVP's it was to find that nobody else was
either hungry or thirsty....

"We're prisoners," said Captain Haggerty, "that's clear. And according
to the laws of war, prisoners are fed. If we've been fed, and given
water without eating or drinking, _how_?"

"Through our pores!" said Preble impetuously.

There was a long moment of silence which somebody had to break pretty
soon.

Lieutenant Hoose broke it.

"Personally, I don't want to be sprinkled by something invisible, even
if I'm dying of thirst. And if food is being somehow rubbed into us,
I'd just as soon nobody rubbed it in! I'm not too lazy to chew for
myself!"

It brought the first laugh. Hoose had a drawling manner of speech which
sometimes caused the men in ranks some discomfort to keep their faces
straight. We were more relaxed than we had been, for we appeared to
be in no danger. Besides, we were extremely well armed. If anybody
attacked us--but I refused to think too much about that. I had a
sneaking hunch that our top-secret weapons were, in this place, just so
much metal, value zero.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now and again, during a comfortable afternoon, I sent out patrols to
check on the invisible wall. They always found it. Either it was there
continuously, or it was dropped when nobody was near and hurriedly
restored when a patrol went out to check.

The feeling that everything we did or said was noted and heard began
to make us wary of movement and speech. We tried to pick out vantage
points from which we could be seen. Any one of the dunes outside our
prison might have hidden something. But discussing it, none of us felt
that this was up to the standard of behavior of whatever it was that
held us.

That's about as far as we got before the sun went down with startling
suddenness and darkness settled over our Limbo. The darkness was
impenetrable. It lasted perhaps an hour. Then a sort of haze seemed to
withdraw in all directions, inwardly and outwardly--and the wondrous
tropical sky, studded with stars that hung down almost within reach of
human hands, bathed our upturned faces.

In silence we all watched. There was an unusual coolness in the air,
too, for several minutes, Cuba, at that time of the year, was almost
never cool, even late at night; but some of the men were shivering.
Sweat had not dried on all of us, and sweat is bad when you are
motionless, at night. I was about to order the men to exercise a
little, when I realized something that Hoose put into words first:

"Now," he said, "they're feeding us warmth, just as they feed and water
us! And we've been here for hours and don't have any idea, even, who or
what they are!"

Nobody else said anything. All the rest of us were studying the sky.

"I don't see the Big Dipper!" said Sergeant Eckstrom.

"Nor the North Star!" somebody added.

"Nor Venus, nor Lyra!" said someone else. "I've been studying our books
on constellations, and I don't recognize a one! _Where are we?_ We're
not even in Cuba! Not even in the Northern Hemisphere! Not even--"

"Not even on the Earth--?" said Hoose.

It was just here that the whispering began in our walkie-talkies;
whispering like nothing we had ever heard. We could make out nothing
that sounded at all like human words. The sounds were mechanical, yet
not-mechanical. I've called them whispers only because that comes
closest to describing the eerie sounds which every last one of us was
now hearing in his walkie-talkie.

"It's vibration on our wavelength," said one of the gobs. "But that's
the best I can say of it."

"Morse? International?" I asked.

But nobody could offer an answer.

Right after that we saw the Shadow Men, inside the dome. Something of
that which held us at last became visible.




                              CHAPTER TWO

                        The Destroying Shadows


It looked like something new in shadow-play, or motion pictures. The
shadows looked like men falling in in close formation, save that there
was an uncanny shapelessness about them. We could tell that they walked
like other men, for we could see the swinging of their legs. But for
the rest of their bodies, well, somebody had worked out a great system
of camouflage. Heads were just black blobs rising out of shoulders that
were stooped and round. We could not tell whether the group had formed
facing us or with their backs to us.

A chill crept over and through the dome as the formations fell in. The
sounds in our walkie-talkies grew in volume. I think we all sensed
menace in the words that were not human words, in tones that were not
human tones. We could sense growing menace, and intonations of command.

We could make out nothing resembling any weapons we knew, but never
once did we doubt that the shadows were forming against us. We forgot,
while the shadows closed ranks, that we had been fed, watered, kept
warm. This was no friendly demonstration.

The Shadow Men started closing in. I gave the command for which my men
had been waiting, and for the first time the sailors came out of the
landing craft to take part.

A vast circle of shadows closed in on us as we formed for defense.
Old-timers remembered the ancient "Form for Bolo Attack" as we arranged
ourselves in concentric circles, the automatic weapons outside,
riflemen behind them with bayonets fixed. There was a rifle and bayonet
for each man, including the automatic weaponers, for use if the
automatics went out of action.

"No firing until I give the word," I said. "Music!"

"Music," in the Navy, of which the Marine Corps is a proud part,
designates a trumpeter or drummer or bugler--whoever beats to quarters
or blows the bugle-calls.

"Here, sir," said Trumpeter Krane.

"Blow something," I said, "It doesn't matter what. I'm just curious
about what effect it will have."

"How about 'Boots and Saddles', sir?" he asked. There was a snicker,
the suggestion of laughter from the marines.

Trumpeter Krane did a good job with "Boots and Saddles". It was a brave
sound, but it had no effect whatever on the advancing Shadow Men. As
the big circle contracted, every other Shadow Man dropped back, forming
an outer circle. One thing that seemed to make clear to us: the Shadow
Men had mass. They occupied space. Bullets, then, should have some
effect on them.

"Preble!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"Scatter some bullets ahead of those things, far enough ahead so that
they'll ricochet over them."

Preble stood up and let go with his ultramodern fast-firer. For a few
seconds, as he played the weapon's muzzle like a hose, the Shadow Men
were obscured by the cloud of kicked-up sand. The sand fell at once, of
course--and the Shadow Men were coming directly on! Moreover, there was
a grimmer note in our walkie-talkies.

"One fast-firer at each cardinal point of the compass," I said.

Marines in action are something to see. In a split second the Shadow
Men from all sides were being warned by bullets. But they came right on.

"No other choice," I said quietly. "Shoot into them. Fire at will!"

Thousands of steel-jacketed slugs poured into the Shadow Men. But not
one fell, and not for so much as an instant did they hesitate in their
advance. Now other men had fallen back so that four concentric circles
of Shadow Men closed in on us. They were quite close when they halted.
I was just preparing to order our new explosives to be hurled among
them, when, directly in front of me, a shadow detached itself from
other shadows. It strode forward a few paces and halted. The clumsy
arms seemed to gesticulate. The sounds of whispering came louder in
our walkie-talkies. I think we all felt that in some way we were being
challenged.

"Someone is to go forward," I said. "I don't know what it wants,
but--Hold your fire, now--not that it seems to be worth much!"

I rose and started forward, conscious that there wasn't a movement
among the marines, nor among the Shadow Men. I wondered as I
approached the foremost shadow, how we would make ourselves understood
to each other. The other entity must have some idea or there would be
no suggestion of a parley.

I must have been halfway there when I was aware of running footfalls
behind me. I didn't turn--and by failing to turn I saved my own life at
the expense of PFC Yount's. The footfalls were right behind me, but I
wasn't expecting what happened. Arms went around my legs in as neat a
tackle as ever a leatherneck footballer pulled. I was thrown on my face
so hard I couldn't breathe. I don't remember when I've been downed so
hard.

By the time I got to my knees Yount was almost in contact with the
detached shadow. He had a trench knife in his hand; drew it right after
tackling me. I could see everything that happened.

PFC Yount flung himself straight at the shadow. I saw him disappear
_into_ the shadow, emerge on the other side. But there was a
difference: _he went in a marine in full battle dress; he came out a
completely articulated skeleton_. He had been stripped of clothes,
shoes, weapons, skin, flesh and life--so quickly that his forward
impetus carried his skeleton on through the shadow.

[Illustration: He went in a Marine in full battle dress; he came out a
skeleton....]

Now four marines were beside me. A growl rose from the others. I had to
yell at them, over my shoulder: "Stand fast! Do you want the same thing
to happen to you?"

The four men beside me--I didn't look to see who they were--simply
waited.

"Okay, just be careful not to touch any of the shadows," I said.
"Apparently that's where the danger is."

Not a shadow moved, not even the one through which Yount had gone
to his death. The five of us then, rose and moved straight forward.
As we came close I could smell something in the shadows, a vague,
pestilential odor, like nothing I had ever experienced.

"I smelled its like, sir," said one, Haggerty, I think, "where men lay
too long unburied. This is just a far hint, but it's like it, some way."

We went around the detached shadow. There was no sound, even in our
walkie-talkies, now. It was almost as if, honoring an ancient military
custom, the Shadow Men were allowing us to collect our dead. I could
not see into or through the shadow. It was still so shapeless, even
when I was close enough to touch it, that I could not tell anything of
its true nature, or whether it, or any of the Shadow Men behind it,
were armed. I could see the result of too much impetuosity, however, in
the skeleton--snow-white, as if it were that of a man long dead in the
burning desert sands--of PFC Yount. I tried to remember, as the others
carefully gathered up the skeleton--Haggerty later said it was still
warm!--whether Yount had uttered any sound, but could not remember.

Some men said later they were sure they heard a muffled scream, the
scream of a man in mortal agony, but I doubt it.

I think it was an afterthought, strictly imagination.

No attempt was made to keep us from retiring with the skeleton of
Yount. As soon as we were back, and had placed it against a side of
one of the LCVP's for burial later, the Shadow Men again began their
inexorable march.

"Sailors!" I called. "Break out the flame-throwers."

We surrounded ourselves with a sheet of flame, hot beyond anything used
in World War II. We sprayed the stuff into the faces of the advancing
Shadow Men; we blotted them out.

They were erased as if they had never been.

At my command the flames stopped--and the Shadow Men were still coming
on.

       *       *       *       *       *

Not very hopefully, I gave the command to use the flames again. We
still had tricks in the bag, but if they proved no more effective than
what we had so far used--I shouted my next command:

"Stand by to charge! Hang onto weapons! Go between them! Don't touch
one of the shadows! _CHARGE!_"

I didn't tell the marines to face in any given direction. I merely
wanted as many of them as possible to get through the closing cordon.

With a wild, defiant yell the leathernecks charged. As I ran I looked
for some opening through the concentric circles. If flesh or skin,
clothing or equipment, touched one of the shadows--

It was the queerest ducking and darting game I had ever played. We must
not run into one another, we marines, or we might push one another into
the shadows--and we knew what had happened to Yount, would never forget
it.

It was like trying to dash out through a crowded theater, save that in
a theater you didn't lose your life if you happened to touch anything.

I got through, out behind the last circle of Shadow Men. As soon as I
was clear, in the cool, starlit waste beyond, I turned and looked back.
The circles were still closing, with the LCVP's in their approximate
center. To my right and left other marines were emerging from among the
Shadow Men.

I looked, and looked away. Some of my own marines were a sight to turn
the stomach. It's hell to see an apparently healthy marine standing,
stupidly staring at the skeleton of his arm, to the shoulder.... I saw
no skeletons in the sand after the marines came through and the Shadows
went on. I breathed a sigh of relief. A marine could get along with one
arm, and even the skeleton of the other might have possibilities; but a
dead marine was dead and done.

I turned and looked back at the closing circles of Shadow Men. As the
strange platoon closed in, more and more shadows stepped out of the
circles, to form still more concentric circles.

The middle LCVP happened to be the center of the closing circles. The
first Shadow Man reached it and stopped, right in the LCVP. Others
closed in there--and merged with the first. The Shadow Men were piling
themselves into a black heap within the landing craft.

Still the Shadow Men marched inward, converging on that central spot.
The heap of blackness in the center did not grow larger. It was as
if there were some sort of hole there, into which the shadows were
pouring, like water into a funnel.

The last ring of Shadow Men stepped into the LCVP--and vanished.

Well outside the place of disappearance, looking as if they were
participants in a nightmare, were the marines. Every last officer and
man, with most of our weapons, had got through the cordon of Shadow Men.

It could have been a dream, but for the skeleton of Yount, there by the
LCVP, and the fact that several men had touched the shadows and been
severely injured. Four hands were missing--save for the bones. One man
had lost an ear, but he laughed. "It could have been my whole head!" he
said. "What's an ear?"

"We got through with extraordinarily good luck, sir," said Haggerty.
"What do we do now, sir?"

"What can we do, except wait and see what happens next, Captain?" He
had no answer for that.

Automatically, we buried the skeleton of Yount. First his closest
friends went back to the spot where his body had disappeared, and
hunted for remnants. They didn't find so much as a button of his
uniform or a screw from his weapons, or any part even of the steel
blade of his trench knife. The detached shadow had absorbed everything
of Yount save his bones.

The shadows were, in some fashion, chemical, that seemed clear enough.
But beyond that we were all stuck. They were not human. They were
maneuverable, plainly; but not _self_-maneuverable. Who, then, or what,
controlled and manipulated the Shadow Men?

The Shadow Men, it gave us a shiver to note, left no footprints. Nor
had they in any way affected the landing craft.

After the starlit funeral, we re-formed as we had been before the
sudden appearance of the Shadow Men.

"Mother of God!" cried Krane, the trumpeter. "It's starting again. But
this time it's different!"

We all whirled to look. Coming out of the northwest was a group of
scarecrow figures. They didn't look like our Shadow Men. I didn't
recognize them at first, though I could hear their hoarse panting,
their rasped words. They staggered like men far gone in hunger and
thirst. One of them fell on his face, struggled to his knees, came on.

"Japs!" cried Haggerty. "Japs! Attacking, too, and this is nineteen
forty-nine!"

It couldn't be true, yet it was. There were rusty rifles in the hands
of the Japanese, rifles that plainly would not work. As if to emphasize
this, they began to throw them away.

One of them called out to us, in English:

"Water! Food! We surrender! We surrender!"

Japs? Surrendering? In Cuba--or thereabouts!--in 1949? I was tempted
to laugh, until I remembered something that was absolutely no comfort
whatever: in other parts of the world, a long way from Cuba, Japs
still were holding out against patrols that hunted them down, Japs who
somehow hadn't got the word that the war was over, or else refused to
believe it.

       *       *       *       *       *

I was proud of the marines when the Japs asked for food and water. Not
one of them spoke up and said, "You don't need either one here." I knew
then that every marine regarded it as at least _possible_ that what was
happening to us was a top-brass secret, or series of secrets, of our
own government. I doubted it because of what happened to Yount. The
government doesn't risk human lives on a whim. But the possibility was
there. I hadn't expected Yount to tackle me, either, or to hurl himself
into the shadow which slew him.

We all had canteens, none of which had been emptied. And no landing
would have been properly simulated without food. We let the Japs come
among us, then Hoose, who spoke some Japanese, and Matzuku, a Jap
corporal who spoke some English, got together.

The Japanese were seated with their backs against an LCVP and canteens
were passed to them, together with our special rations. They drank as
if they had forgotten the glory of water, ate as if they had forgotten
how. I gave them a little time. We did not pull in our defensive rings,
even though it could be seen that they were not especially useful. When
the Japs seemed more or less sated, I got Matzuku and Hoose together
and began asking questions.

KING: "Where have you been for the past four years?"

MATZUKU: "Hiding out in the hills. What place is this? I know the whole
island, but I don't remember this desert area."

KING: "_What_ island?"

MATZUKU: "Guam, of course, as you Americans call it."

I pondered the matter a few minutes. It wasn't possible that these
Japanese had finally decided to surrender, had started hunting marines
to whom to turn in their rusty weapons--then walked through the
invisible dome, out of the hinterland of Guam into the midst of what
we fondly believed to be Cuba. Yet here they were, flesh-and-blood men,
and here were we, also flesh-and-blood men--or so we thought.

Of course, Matzuku and his men were as much prisoners as we were. They
were not only prisoners of whatever manipulated the dome, but they were
our prisoners as well. There was nothing they could do, nowhere they
could go with any secrets filched from us; but I decided not to tell
them anything.

Matzuku, I noticed, was studying the sky. I watched his brown face as
he struggled with some idea that plainly had him buffaloed. He looked
at me quickly, then looked away. He knew something, but was afraid to
say what it was. I could at least make it clear to him that he was not
crazy, need not be afraid to say what was in his mind.

"You are amazed, corporal," I said, "to discover that you can't
possibly be on Guam. I see that you know something of astronomy. It
won't be taken amiss if you hazard a guess as to where you are, and how
you got here."

"I should like to do that, sir," said the Jap corporal, "but it does
not seem possible that we should merely have seen a marine patrol,
scouting the jungles of Guam, approached them to surrender, and found
ourselves in the Kalahari Desert! It isn't possible, therefore I must
not know the stars as well as I had thought. And yet, sir, I _do_ know
the stars. Unless this is delirium induced by fever, lack of water and
food over the years, we _are_ somewhere in the Kalahari Desert!"

"Let's go have a look, Matzuku," I said. "You, too, Hoose. Haggerty,
you'd better stay with the command."

Matzuku, Hoose and I started back the way the Japs had come. Matzuku
seemed to have forgotten his fatigue, the fact that he had been
practically a walking dead man when he approached the "patrol" to
surrender. Ten sets of footprints led in a wavering line back to the
invisible dome which hemmed us in. Hoose and I hung back to let Matzuku
go on ahead of us. He came to the invisible wall and halted, looking
foolish as a fore-thrust foot slid down what appeared to be nothingness.

The footprints all ended against the invisible wall. Moonlight shed
its brilliance over everything, and we could see far out beyond the
invisible wall, into the eerie area of sand dunes, stunted brush, to a
horizon which offered no hope whatever.

"We couldn't have come from out there!" said Matzuku wonderingly. "We
came out of the Guamian jungles, but our footprints don't start until
we reach this invisible barricade." Matzuku turned on me. "I have no
right to ask, but what kind of a concentration camp _is_ this? We
Japanese have much experience in camps, but we use barbed wire, high
rock walls with broken glass embedded in their tops, or dungeons and
caves."

I grinned at the little corporal.

"You don't use energy domes, then," I said, "or compress invisibility
into a solid?"

"No," said Matzuku, "_do you?_"

He had guessed we were prisoners also. I didn't explain. After all,
how could I? We three went back to the LCVP. I ordered the Japanese
into the LCVP on our right flank, placed a guard over them, not because
we had any fear of them, but so they would not hear our discussion.
They showed no interest whatever. They sprawled out on the deck of the
LCVP and were asleep, and raucously snoring, before we met in plenary
session--save for the single guard over the Japanese--near the grave of
Yount's skeleton.

"Could we really be in the Kalahari Desert?" asked Haggerty.

"We could," I said. "The Japs could also be decoys, deliberately sent
to us to make us believe whatever we're supposed to believe. I'm only
sure of one thing: we're not on Yataritas Beach, Cuba!"

"Are we really sure of _that_, even?" asked Captain Haggerty. I had to
admit that we were sure of nothing.

"We seem to be unmolested for the time being," I said. "But we can't
just sit here and brood. Those of you who want to sleep, turn in
wherever you like. Those who want to help figure out what has happened
to us, assemble here with me and we'll see if we can get anywhere."

"You don't suppose, sir," said Krane diffidently, "that we're
all--dead, or something? With all those fancy explosives we brought
along--"

Nobody laughed. Nobody snickered. And nobody drew away to hit the sack.

"I don't believe we're dead, Music," I said, "but I could be wrong
about that, too. I think your 'or something' comes about as close to an
answer as anything we have. Now, I'm open to suggestions as to how we
find out what ails us, where we are, how we get out; what, in general,
it all seems to be about."

"The Shadow Men," said Ziegler, "what were they?"

Nobody knew.

There was something in the shadows. A smell, and something else. Why
didn't the stuff, whatever it was, destroy bones as well? Had we really
heard Yount scream inside the shadow?

We recapitulated everything we could remember. As if we could forget
anything! And it all added up to a nightmare.

"The walkie-talkies," said Haggerty. "We've got eighty-odd of them.
They can all be adjusted to different wavelengths. I suggest we
estimate how many, and then each of us take his share of them, and
start sending, not only in Morse and International codes, but in every
language we know, down to Greek and Latin!"

It was long past midnight by the time we had worked out charts of
wavelengths for the walkie-talkies, and divided them among us. Then we
scattered, first stripping off our jackets and laying our fast-fire
weapons on them to keep the weapons from being fouled by sand. We
needed our hands free.

"The first whisper anybody gets, he'll sing out," I instructed officers
and men.

Marines acquire a lot of miscellaneous information--and plenty of
misinformation. Among seventy-five or eighty one would find a dozen
European languages, Gaelic probably, three or four Chinese dialects, a
smattering of Congo jabbering, a spot of Latin, a touch of Greek. If
someone asked me, anywhere, anytime, in the presence of as few as a
dozen marines, if any of them knew Sanskrit I would hesitate to say no.

We turned all that mess loose on our walkie-talkies. If anybody ever
really "shot the moon," it was us.




                             CHAPTER THREE

                             Alien Voices


Each man had his message pad on his knee, or on the sand beside him,
opened up. The moon was so brilliant we had scarcely any need of the
illuminated pages with which each book was equipped.

Within fifteen minutes our walkie-talkies were going wild. Every last
one received first, the eerie whispering. Then the men began to report
shouts, weeping, wordless screams, unearthly music, wind instruments,
drums, tom-toms--just about every noise-making agency of which any of
us had ever heard.

Was all this in answer to our attempts to communicate? How could we
make contact that would also make sense?

So far, the sounds were no more informative than static. But it was
something, when we had been hearing nothing at all, so we kept at it.

We kept it up for three days and nights.

The Shadow Men did not return during that time. The Japanese gradually
mingled with us. They realized that we knew no more of our situation
than they did, possibly less, and joined with us in trying to work it
out.

It was midnight, the fourth night of our disappearance, when we got a
break.

Ziegler brought me a message which said: "You are wasting your time.
Contact like this is forbidden."

I looked at Ziegler.

"You got this in English?" I asked.

"No, sir. It's Mangbetu, an African dialect. I did some work among
those people, some years ago. It's difficult. I could be mistaken, but
I don't think so."

"Did you answer this?"

"No, sir."

"Go ahead," I said, "confirm! We'll see what happens."

He chattered something into his walkie-talkie. Instantly all sound died
out of every last walkie-talkie.

We'd accomplished--what? Only something remotely confirming Matzuku,
the Japanese who had located us in the Kalahari Desert of Africa.

We slept by fits and starts. The Shadow Men did not return. Silence
held sway in our walkie-talkie receivers, though we kept on sending.
Ziegler gave us Mangbetu words to use, but nothing came of it. That
line of investigation was clearly ended.

We began working on the inner wall of the dome with our entrenching
tools. That started something!

       *       *       *       *       *

It was now clear that if we ever got out of wherever we were, we would
have to do it on our own.

First, to establish the exact circumference of the dome, I formed all
hands, sailors, marines and Japanese, in a single column and we did
the circle. I wanted everybody whose lot was our lot, to know every
detail that might later prove valuable. The area under our feet,
available to us within the dome, we estimated at ten acres. That gave
us considerable inner surface of wall and dome to be studied. We could
not see the dome, we only knew it was there. We had small radar and
sonar sets, but the dome registered on neither. Nothing we shouted was
echoed back to us, nor did the chattering of the fast-firers cause
reverberations. With those fast-firers, the ultimate in small arms,
we searched out every quadrant of the dome, to see if there were any
opening. In the same way we searched out every yard of the wall;
there was no way out, at least of any size, for I'd have wagered, so
carefully was this job done, that if one bullet fired into dome or wall
had fallen outside, some one of us would have spotted it.

We used up a lot of steel-jacketed bullets, but we found not a single
aperture in the wall or dome.

Next we worked on our super-grenades, of which we had a fairly good
supply. This was dangerous work; we had to dig trenches from which
to heave them. Even the rifle grenades were dangerous because of our
limited escape area.

The grenades did nothing to the wall; nothing whatever.

The flame-throwers accomplished little more. There was danger with
these, too, for the flame bathed the wall--we could see it strike and
blossom up and down--and backfired so that it was a wonder all who
stood behind the machines were not wiped out. And even the flames did
not affect the wall.

We even, so help me, tried to _talk_ a hole through the wall! Yes,
Krane thought of it, Trumpeter Krane.

"Maybe we could find the key sound of the dome," he said, "and shatter
it with sound. You know, like marching steps shaking down a bridge."

Well, we tried, but got nowhere.

"Shovels, then," I said. "Entrenching tools! Maybe we can go under."

All hands groaned. There is nothing a marine or sailor dislikes more
than digging in--even when bullets are flying thick and fast.

I think we were all a little mad then. It was bad enough to dig down
into sand that poured into a hole faster than one could dig, but to
accomplish nothing by doing it was heartbreaking. By day we perspired
like hippos, rubbed the skin off our palms, got raw and bleeding where
our clothes chafed. Water and food were no problem, for our mysterious
source of supply never for a moment ceased or abated.

We fought that wall for days and nights on end, as a mob, in shifts,
and singly. We got nowhere. There were times when the sand inside the
dome looked as if a huge animal had been rooting, or a crowd digging
for treasure. But when we stopped for a few moments to rest we could
hear the sand whispering with glee as it slid back into the pits we had
dug--leveling off the area again.

We managed in some places to get down ten feet or so into the sand, and
to witness a strange phenomenon. We never got under the wall, nor were
we able to penetrate it anywhere, yet when sand poured back into the
pits we dug--_it poured back from beyond the wall, too_, as if there
were no obstruction! It poured in, apparently through the very wall we
were trying to breach.

Naturally we wondered, if we had been digging on the outside, trying
to get in, if the sand would have poured outward into the holes, too.
We all remembered how we had got into the dome so easily, yet we could
find no way, shape, form or manner to get out.

The Shadow Men, however, had escaped....

Yes, we studied that LCVP that had seemed to be a funnel by which the
Shadow Men coalesced into one shadow and vanished, but could find no
key to the means or manner of their strange escape.

We were resting one afternoon, and Haggerty had just said this was the
most unsatisfactory duty he had ever performed in twenty-some years
of landing with the marines around the world, while Hoose suggested
we ought to have a name for this nameless area, and Trumpeter Krane
offered "Outpost Zero" as the most appropriate--when Preble erupted:
"My God! Look!"

He was pointing up through the dome. Spinning down toward us from an
empty sky was a ball of something that looked like metal--or perhaps
crystal. It glistened and shone in the sun. It almost hurt the eyes.

Nobody said anything as that ball came closer and closer. I think we
all knew what it was, though none of us had been at Hiroshima that
fatal day.

We saw the A-bomb disintegrate, almost lazily, directly above our dome.

No one who has seen the Hiroshima pictures needs a further explanation
of what we all saw. Only, this A-bomb was far more powerful than the
first one. Only one nation, we all thought, could have it.

Why would our own people be so intent on wiping us out?

In a split second we were in the midst of the cloud, in the heart of
the explosion, each one of us trying to convince himself, by pinching,
that he was actually going through an A-bomb explosion--absolutely
unscathed. Not even a sound came through.

We were sitting in the middle of the perfect defense against the
A-bomb, but we didn't know what it was or who had made it--and we
couldn't get out of it!

There was comfort in the knowledge that _someone_ knew, else how did it
happen that the A-bomb made what would have been a direct hit on the
dome if it hadn't been detonated about a thousand feet above? There was
design here, all right--but _whose_?

Nobody could imagine our own government addressing us in Mangbetu!

       *       *       *       *       *

We thought we were all dead men. We had all seen pictures of survivors
of Hiroshima, with their skin burned off their bones.

The Japs had not seen. They had been in the Guamian jungles and had not
even heard of Hiroshima. I told them. They looked at one another in
amazement. All this time we cowered in the heart of the explosion, and
for the first time we could see the shape and extent of the dome which
imprisoned us. It was outlined in smoke through which shot tongues of
blue, green, and salmon pink. In the cloud which surrounded us we could
see all the prisms play--and inter-flashing of lights of all colors
that was unbelievably awesome. Yet we heard no sound. There was an
eerie glow on the sand around us which must have come from the light,
but if it had any ill effect on our bodies we have not yet become aware
of it.

We had kept our watches wound and synchronized, so we timed the
duration of the blast. The cloud about us lasted for two hours. Then it
began slowly to disintegrate.

"Out to the walls, now," I said. "We'll move out from the center as
skirmishers. Then, at my signal, when we're against the wall, we'll
circle to the right until we have examined every inch we can reach or
see."

Far above the dome we saw the great snowy mushroom of the blast's
residue, with lights playing through it. We looked out through the wall
at the sand beyond--and there _was_ no sand. Only a landscape shaped
as it had been when it had been sand; but now it was a smooth, rolling
expanse of light green! The blast had been a vast primordial glazier,
and the sand was not sand now, but green glass--right up to the outside
of our still invisible dome! We marched out and looked through. We
did the natural things, like putting our hands up beside faces that we
pressed nose-flat against the invisible. The wall felt warm, but no
warmer than it had felt before the blast. Our dome had withstood every
possible destructive effect of the A-bomb blast!

I stood there, staring out. I looked around, and the marines, sailors
and Japanese were standing in the same manner--looking out and through
like children looking through a zoo fence.

We must all have realized it at the same time. I noticed, first, that
there was suddenly a space between the outside of the wall and the sea
of green glass. I noticed that it ran away to right and left, a border
between the glass and our sand, which became a little wider even as I
stared. Then I felt pressure against the toes of my field shoes. Then
I was being pushed bodily back, and the sand border outside was a foot
wide!

I whirled this time, back against the wall, to stare at the others.
They were all facing inboard, too. It was clear that all had noticed
the widening border, that each knew the fact: our dome was closing in
on us, all around.

Probably most of us had read Poe's "Pit and the Pendulum" and enjoyed
the spine-tingling horror of the walls closing in to crush the hapless
victim.

Just now it was far from thrilling.

From all sides the wall closed in. We looked away to the south. The
entire mountain there had become greenish, as if it, too, had turned to
glass.

"No one blast," said Haggerty grimly, "did that. Not even the best we
have in A-bombs could have done so much. That mountain is ten, fifteen
miles away, at least. There must have been more A-bombs...."

"And maybe more domes," said Hoose. "How do we know that this whole
desert isn't dotted with them?"

"Each one with its bugs under it for scientific study," said Haggerty
wryly.

My mind went around and around. The Shadow Men ... Mangbetu ... the
blast ... the desert ... the betrayal by the very sky itself ... the
Japanese....

I had to turn it off or go crazy. Besides, the closing wall wasn't
giving us much time. Faster and faster it advanced.

It was clear that we were being pushed deliberately inward on the
LCVP's. Within a few minutes we were practically on the LCVP ramps.

"Grab all weapons!" I yelled. "Don't risk finding them on the pay roll!"

Marines who lose weapons have to pay for them. That's what I meant,
silly as it seems in the circumstances.

Just as we were falling in at the sand-covered ramps of the three
LCVP's, Krane cried out: "Where are the Japs?"

It gave me a chill. There was no escaping a peculiar fact: that even
while the invisible was herding us, assembling us before our LCVP's,
something of it, or about it, had snatched away the Japanese. They had
simply vanished.

The walls were not circular now, but oval, roughly encompassing the
LCVP's. Haggerty assembled his men before his LCVP. Hoose did the same.
Mine assembled about me on the central ramp.

Then, when we were inside, in position as he had been when we landed,
with only one man missing--Yount--the wall ceased closing in. For ten
minutes we wondered about this. Then I had a hunch.

"Can we raise the ramps without the motors?"

We couldn't, not all the way, but we could, with two men at each outer
corner, raise them about four feet, catch and hold them with their
rattling chains.

When we figured this out we did it by the numbers--

And we almost left twelve men on the beach!

No sooner had we raised the ramps than the Caribbean was tugging at
our LCVP's, the waves trying to take them back to sea. Our ramp men
jumped up on their ramps, rolled crazily into the LCVP's, and the ramps
raised all the way, clicking into place to become the prows of the
unwieldy landing craft.

Cries of glee rose from our boat-handlers. Motors caught on the first
try, exactly as if they had not been idle for two weeks, and the LCVP's
were backing away from Yataritas Beach, turning, heading out to sea. I
whirled and looked out into the deep blue. I think all of us expected
to find the _Odyssey_ still standing off, waiting for us. But it wasn't
there.

"Can we make it back to Guantanamo Bay?" I asked the motorman. "Never
mind answering; we're going to!" A cheer rose from the marines and
sailors as we rounded the point we had never expected to see again, and
started west, in deep blue water, along the coast.

LCVP's aren't good travelers. They roll like eggs on a hill, but this
time nobody got seasick.

"Outpost Zero," said someone, looking back at Yataritas Beach. "If I
never even _hear_ of it again it will be too soon!"

       *       *       *       *       *

We kept in close formation as we approached Escondido Bay, outside the
Reservation. There a cruising plane picked us up, dipped wings over us,
looped and headed full speed back to Guantanamo.

We all crawled up our starboard sides, tilting the LCVP's far over, and
not caring a bit, to pick out landmarks ashore that we knew--Kittery
Beach, Windmill, Cuzco, Blind, Blue and Cable Beaches. Every one looked
like home--and the marine hadn't lived, up to that moment, who regarded
Guantanamo as home!

There were many planes out, including some of our jets, by the time we
reached the mouth of Guantanamo Bay. Luckily the long run was made in
fairly smooth water.

We crossed the shelf where the deep blue water of the Caribbean becomes
the green-dirty water of the Bay, and were as good as home.

I planned on making it to the Marine Boat House, but the Admiral's
launch came out, with a staff officer aboard, with instructions to land
at the Admiral's own dock.

I guess it didn't matter much where we docked, for the point of land on
which the Admiral had his quarters was covered with uniforms. Marines
and sailors were kept back by MP's.

The Chief Staff Officer placed me formally under arrest, "for absence
over-leave," he said--though there was a suggestion of excitement in
his voice that made me suspect subterfuge. One thing was certain, an
officer under arrest kept his mouth shut. I couldn't tell anybody
anything. The same thing, or something like it, happened to every one
of us. We were all completely muzzled by being placed under arrest.
Whatever else we might be, we were "hot."

Then it was that we worked together as even marines did not always work
together--and the six gobs pitched in, too.

I made out this report, with the understanding that it would be seen
by every leatherneck and sailor, and not submitted until all were
satisfied with its accuracy.

I told what seemed to have happened to us. As commanding officer I was
requested also to express an opinion. I had none to offer, except that
two news bulletins, received over the radio the next day after our
return, gave me something to think about.

One of the bulletins explained in somewhat guarded language, that new
A-bomb experiments were being made--not in mid-Pacific, in Bikini, but
in the heart of the Kalahari Desert! So careful were the brass hats in
this important series of tests, that no words in any civilized tongue
were allowed to be spoken even on intercom sets! The report didn't
mention Mangbetu, but it did say "little known African dialects." This
wasn't an unusual procedure, by the way--Comanche Indians had been so
employed in World War II.

And what were those people testing, besides the newest thing in A-bombs?

"Part of the test," said the voice of the announcer, "involves an
amazing above-ground bomb-shelter! This shelter, of secret manufacture,
is believed to be proof against anything except the explosion of
the planet itself. Not only is each such shelter capable of great
extension, thus to handle large groups of people, but built into it
is something new in provisioning. People who are forced into these
shelters by sudden attack, are automatically provided with food, water
and equable temperature, by a process which provides these necessities
as separate exudations from the inner walls of the bombproofs!

"Some fear was expressed, in the midst of the tests," said the
announcer, "that there were traitors even among the carefully screened
technicians--for despite orders, for a period of three days not only
English but many other languages, including the secret dialect used by
the technicians, were heard in their intercoms!"

I shivered at that, remembering how, for three days, we had tried every
tongue of which we could think. Gradually a picture was beginning to
emerge.

"It was feared for some time that some potential aggressor nation had
managed somehow to get past the Kalahari guards and ferret out secret
information--or else that there was already a fifth column among the
technicians!"

No mention anywhere, of the Shadow Men!

I was scared stiff when I realized this. For those Shadow Men, it now
seemed, had accomplished something the A-bomb had not been able to do;
they had got inside the bombproof, killed Yount--and could easily have
killed us all--and got out again.

"The experiments," said the announcer, "were of course carried out
by the United Nations Security Council. The results have not been
announced in every detail, but the world _has_ been informed that
complete security against the A-Bomb has been produced and will be
available if ever there is another world war!"

_But what about the Shadow Men?_ What good was the best bombproof if it
could be entered so easily, and everybody inside it destroyed?

On the next day after our return I picked up a brief broadcast which I
could easily have missed.

"It appears that there are still Japanese soldiers, hiding out on Guam,
who do not know that the war is over. Ten Japanese, led by a Corporal
Matzuku, surrendered yesterday to Guamian authorities! How they
survived for almost four years is a mystery. They appear well fed."

I got this far and realized that I knew a great deal of _what_ had
happened, but not _how_. How we and the Guamian Japanese had been
netted under the same bombproof, for instance--they on Guam, ourselves
on Yataritas Beach, Cuba.

I had no explanation for the Shadow Men--except that nobody but the
"vanishers", ourselves and the Japanese, so much as mentioned them.
They were, I felt sure, outside the knowledge of the Security Council.

The Shadow Men were some manifestation--chemicals, or instantaneously
acting disease germs?--of a potential enemy fifth column which had
horned in on the Kalahari experiments.

I can do no more. This report is respectfully submitted for
transmission via official channels.

       *       *       *       *       *

                           FIRST ENDORSEMENT

From: Commanding Officer, Guantanamo Marines.

To: Senior Officer Present, Naval Base.

Subject: Yataritas Beach Case.

1. But for the fact that eighty men concur in the attached report I
would request that Major Rafe King be ordered to Saint Elizabeth's for
observation.

       *       *       *       *       *

                          SECOND ENDORSEMENT

From: Senior Officer Present, Naval Base.

To: Chief of Naval Operations.

Subject: Cuba-Yataritas Beach Case.

1. I am not inclined to treat this report lightly, or to suggest that
it be so treated elsewhere. Knowing how our marines, sailors, equipment
and LCVP's were plucked up and transported to Kalahari, together with
the Japanese, I am still in complete ignorance of the meaning of the
"Shadow Men." If Operations has any additional information it is felt
that this base should be made aware of it.

       *       *       *       *       *

                           THIRD ENDORSEMENT

From: Chief of Naval Operations.

To: Commanding General of the Marines.

Subject: Cuba-Yataritas Beach Case.

1. This activity is aware of all details except the so-called "Shadow
Men." If the Commanding General of Marines has any information, include
it herewith and forward to Chairman, Security Council, United Nations.

       *       *       *       *       *

                          FOURTH ENDORSEMENT

From: Chairman, Security Council, United Nations.

To: Major Rafe King, via all above channels.

Subject: The Kalahari Tests.

1. Returned for amplification. It is deemed advisable, in view of
publicity attendant on the Cuba-Yataritas angle of the Kalahari Desert
tests, to make public the following facts. First, best protection
against the A-Bomb is worldwide observation by special television; the
Council has it. Second necessity is ability to make the bombproofs,
provided by the Security Council, available to anybody, anywhere
in the world, who is threatened by attack. Bombproofs are capable
of instant transmission to any spot on the face of the globe--and
removal of bombproof _and occupants_ to anywhere else in the world--as
Cuba-to-Kalahari-to-Guam.

2. Amplification on the "Shadow Men" is required. Every nation in the
world, on the honor of its chief executive, has denied all knowledge
of the "Shadow Men." Any Fifth Column from "Outside" is considered
fantastic beyond all possibility.

       *       *       *       *       *

Well, there it is. The high brass all along the way has spoken. Now
it's up to me. I checked to find that every nation in the world _had_
denied knowledge of the Shadow Men--except our own United States. But
without asking for volunteers, our most ruthless high brass would not
have sent us to face those shadows, wherein someone was almost certain
to die horribly.

So, some nation has lied! We, the United Nations, have the perfect
A-bomb-proof, capable of instant transmission to anywhere it is needed.
We can also see where it is needed, through our World Visual Section.

But, as usual, for every attack weapon, there is a defense. For every
defensive weapon there is, eventually, a weapon which will crack it. We
have the best defensive gadget ever constructed, but somebody has the
grim, black answer to it!

WHAT NATION?

When the next bombs begin to fall, the name of that nation will be
written into the murderous heart of every bomb. _Then_ will tongues be
freely loosed which now dare not give offense to any "friendly" nation!

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