It all came from living too long, Jenkins thought—from living too long and not being able to forget. That would be the hardest part of it; he never would forget.
He turned about and went back through the door and across the patio.
Andrew was waiting for him, at the bottom of the ladder that led into the ship.
Jenkins tried to say goodbye, but he could not say goodbye. If he could only weep, he thought, but a robot could not weep.
A Bomb for No. 10 Downing
Clifford Simak’s production of World War II–era stories involving air combat seems to have been limited to just five tales; all five sold, and there is no indication that he wrote any that did not sell. All of those five stories were much shorter than most of his work in other genres, but there is nothing in his surviving journals to suggest why they were so short—nor, for that matter, why he entered the genre or why he left it. It is clear that he began writing the war stories well before the United States entered WWII, and he seems to have left the market before the end of 1942. I suspect that he found the editors’ requirements too restrictive (the editor of this particular issue was a U.S. Army officer, a fact that might suggest that demands outside those of the usual pulp magazine markets were placed on authors), but it’s also true that Simak was moving into western stories at that time, and those paid much better money (he received just $25 for this story).
Sent to American Eagle in October 1941 and purchased less than a month later, «A Bomb for No. 10 Downing» would actually appear in a magazine called Sky Fighters in September 1942. (No. 10 Downing was, and is, the address of the British Prime Minister’s residence/office.)
—dww
Normandy lay peaceful in the dawn, its forests colorful, its fields somber in after-harvest dress. War seemed a remote thing in this land of white chateaux and little villages and ribbony roads winding through the woods.
Kermit Hubbard glanced at the map strapped to his knee and pushed the nose of the Defiant down. The crossroad with its clustered village rushed up at him as the plane dived. Just beyond the village sat a chateau among the beeches. Just beyond the chateau should be a field rimmed by poplars, with wheat shocks at its northern end set in the form of a Maltese cross.
There it was, rimmed with poplars and with the shocks in the form of a cross. Just exactly as the message had said they would be. Speed cut, Hubbard circled the field, eyes sharp on the ground below. Nothing stirred.
Barely clearing the treetops, he mushed the machine down into the field, gunned the Merlin to taxi toward the wheat shocks.
Prop barely turning over, motor no more than a whisper, Hubbard shoved back the hatch cover. The smell of ripened grain and dried straw came to his nostrils and a breeze made the leaves of the poplars dance with tiny whisperings.
There was no sign of Grigsby.
Silence enveloped Hubbard. A silence that seemed to squeeze at the pit of his stomach, while little danger signals jigged up and down his spine.
Slowly he climbed from the ship, mentally cursing Grigsby. The man’s message had said that he would be here, waiting at dawn, for the next seven days—and this was only the second.
«Grigsby!» he shouted.
When there was no reply, he shouted again, a note of desperation in his voice.
«Grigsby!»
The grain shocks in front of him suddenly erupted into men with short, ugly submachine-guns.
Hubbard stepped back quickly, hand falling to the revolver at his belt. But one of the men spoke harshly and he stopped, stock still, hands hanging at his side.
He eyed the men sharply, saw their coal-scuttle helmets, gray battle dress, wide leather belts and creased service boots. All but one. This one wore a visored cap, a medal dangled on his left breast pocket and he carried a revolver instead of a tommy gun. He, Hubbard knew, was a German officer.
«Your friend Grigsby, I am afraid, has disappointed you,» the officer said in precise English.
Hubbard did not answer.
«I can imagine,» the officer went on, «that you may be planning something—something in the way of sudden action. I ask you, please don’t do it. You haven’t got a chance.»
«No,» Hubbard admitted. «No, I guess I haven’t.»
«And now,» said the officer, «if you will—»
A rifle snicked from the edge of the field. The officer gasped and pitched forward on his face. The rifle snicked again, then chattered.
Three of the German soldiers were down, the others were diving for the scattered wheat shocks. Bullets kicked up little puffs of dust just in front of Hubbard’s toes. With a cry, the R.A.F. man jerked his Webley free.
The German guns were snarling now and the wheat bundles were bouncing to the impact of bullets from the field’s edge. Hubbard leaped backward to gain shelter behind his plane, his Webley coming up to line its sights on one of the Nazis snuggled in the bundles.
But even as his finger tightened on the trigger, something bored into his back.
«Nein! Nein!» a voice said.
Hubbard whirled savagely, shoving the submachine-gun aside. But the German backed away and slammed its muzzle viciously into his stomach, knocking the wind from him.
«Nein! Nein!» the man with the coat-scuttle helmet insisted. Hubbard saw that his lips were drawn back in a snarl.
The fire at the edge of the field had ceased. Somewhere a motorcycle roared into life and howled away. The Nazi with the gun jabbed it deeper into Hubbard’s stomach and jerked his head toward the Webley in the R.A.F. man’s hand.
«I get you, pal,» Hubbard said and dropped the weapon.
He stood there, with the gun still in his belly, listening to the ticking of the Merlin. The firing had stopped completely now and feet were tramping behind him. The Nazi laughed quietly at him.
«Dumkopf,» he said.
And that was right, Hubbard told himself. The Nazi apparently had dived for the shelter of the plane when the firing started, had been there all the time, ready to cover any action he might take. All in all, it was as neat a trap as one could imagine.
Rough hands grabbed him and hauled him around. There were four Nazis left. They shouted at him in German while they searched him for other weapons.
A sound of motors roared out of the sky and over the trees came a Stuka, mushing down into the field. Hubbard watched the machine taxi up beside his. Two men got out. One of them climbed into the Defiant while the other walked over to Hubbard.
«I trust you didn’t find Herr Grigsby,» the Nazi pilot said to him.
«You guys seem to know more about this Grigsby than I do,» Hubbard told him.
«We’ll find out how much you know,» the pilot barked. «You’re going back to base with me. The Kommandant wants to see you!»
The Kommandant spoke English—English with something that might have started out to be an Oxford accent.
«Why did you land your plane in France, Herr Lieutenant?»
Hubbard grinned. «You know as well as I do. Why be so formal?»
The Kommandant nodded.
«Grigsby is a British agent, isn’t he?»
«I suppose so,» said Hubbard. «I never asked.»
«You mean you won’t tell me.»
«No. I mean I don’t know. I presume he is. I was to come and pick him up. No harm in telling you that. You probably read the message he sent. Mind telling me how you did it?»
The Nazi officer chuckled.
«The pigeon flew down into a street in Le Havre to pick up some grain. A soldier found him. We keep close watch for things like that.»