They helped her a few steps away, with their heads averted from the stink. She gagged and swore at them, and when they tried to help her stand she collapsed and vomited into the sand again. The doctor came running, but a doctor wasn’t what Marge needed. What she needed was to get the cesspool stench of the Krinpit off her and out of her nostrils. She let Cheech strip off her coveralls and assist her to the edge of the water, and then she splashed around until the smell was gone and she could walk again. Limpingly, yes. But under her own power. Wearing a bra and bikini panties, with her gun belt over her shoulder, she walked up the shore past the dead Krinpit, seared into a sort of omelette of meat and shell, until someone came up with a terrycloth robe. She was giving orders as she walked.
Why had they stopped?
The camp had been at their mercy. With great precision they had knocked out the heavy weapons on the first pass. There was not a rocket launcher or a machine gun untouched — nothing but hand weapons. Of the hundred eight persons in the Food camp, twenty-two were dead, nearly fifty were wounded or burned. The planes had been unscathed. The burrowers had been wiped out entirely, but if the planes had finished their work first, the burrowers would have had an easy time with the survivors. Why? The timing had been exact. As soon as the planes had stopped shooting, the burrowers came out. That could not have been a coincidence, and the goggles the burrowers wore were proof that the Greasies had prepared them for the job. But then they hadn’t followed through.
Why not?
But thank God for poppa and his parting gift! A metric ton of ammunition had been blown up, but there were metric tons left untouched by virtue of the spare supplies in the final ship. Tents burned and food was destroyed. But there was more. If Cappy’s airplane had been stitched across by machine-gun fire, there were spare parts to fix it. And that greatest of gifts, the six kilograms of239Pu in its carefully crafted sheaths — that was still intact. The dead were irreplaceable, of course. Worse still were the casualties, because some of them were not merely a loss but a debit. Nguyen Dao Tree, who had lost a leg and a lot of blood to go with it; six persons badly burned, two others with serious abdominal wounds — a whole cluster of damages for Cheech Arkashvili to try to repair. For each one of the worst off, there was the cost of an able-bodied person to tend him. There was no tent still standing big enough to hold them all, and so Cheech had put them onto cots dragged out of the damaged tents, out in the open. Some of the bedding was scorched, and if it began to rain again they would be in trouble. But for now they were as well off as they were likely to be, Margie thought as she moved among them.
One of them got up as Margie approached: Lieutenant Kristianides, one whole side of her body in gauze and antiburn dressing. But functioning. “Colonel,” she said. “I had to leave the radio—”
Marge glanced at the doctor, who shook her head. “Get back in bed, Kris. Tell me about it later.”
“No, I’m all right. When they shot the tent up I ran out. But I left the tape going. I was getting their chatter, only it was in all different languages.”
“Thanks. Now get back in bed,” Marge ordered, and looked around. “Dalehouse, front and center!” she called. “Check the radio shack. If the tape’s still working, give me a yell.”
He didn’t look too good himself, she thought as he put down the tray of dressings and headed up the hill without a word — but then, none of them did. Especially herself. Margie’s own tent had been totaled, and she was wearing fatigues belonging to a woman who would never again need them — not unfair, but she had been a taller and fatter woman than Marge Menninger.
When Dalehouse called her, she had forgotten about the tapes. But she went up to the shack, which was unburned and not really harmed except for bullet holes, commandeering Ana Dimitrova on the way. The tape was voice-actuated, and Dalehouse had already found the right place to begin. Ana put on the earphones and began to translate.
“First one of the pilots says, ‘On target,’ and the base acknowledges. Then there are some carrier noises, as though they were going to transmit and changed their minds, and then the base says, ‘Suspend operations at once. Do not attack.’ And one of the pilots, I think it is the Egyptian, says in a different Arab dialect, ‘Strike already in progress. We have taken out their weapons dump. Body count around twenty-five.’ Then there is some mumbling that I cannot make out, as though they are talking at the base with the transmitter on but not close enough to pick it up. And then the base says, ‘Urgent. Suspend operations immediately.’ And then the other pilot, the Irishman, says they are observing from over the water, waiting for instructions, and then the base orders them to return without further attack. That is all there is on the tape until they get landing instructions later on.”
“That’s it?” Margie asked.
“As I have said, colonel, yes. There is nothing else.”
“Now, why would they change their minds in the middle?” Margie asked. Neither Dalehouse nor Dimitrova offered an answer. She hadn’t expected one. It didn’t matter. The Greasies had declared war, and if they backed out in the middle of it that was their problem, not hers. She would not back out. To Marge Menninger, the attack on her base — her base! — answered all questions right there. Why didn’t really matter. The only question was how — how to carry the fight to them, and win it.
“Can you dig with that shoulder?” she asked Dalehouse.
“I guess so. It’s not bleeding.”
“Then go help Kappelyushnikov dig graves. Dimitrova, you’re a radio operator now. No transmissions. Just listen. If the Greasies say anything, I want to hear about it right away.”
She left them and headed for the surviving latrine. She didn’t particularly need to go to the bathroom; she just wanted to be alone for a moment to clarify her thoughts. She ranked her way to the head of the line, closed the door, and sat there smoking a cigarette and staring into space.
There was no question in her mind that she could win this war, because she had some powerful cards to play. The plutonium store was one of them. The other was Major Vandemeer’s little dispatch case. There were still four birds in orbit; one could hit the Greasy main camp, and another their Farside base, anytime she gave the order — and that would be that.
The trouble was, she didn’t want to destroy the Greasy facilities. She wanted to acquire them. The birds and the bomb were overkill, like trying to take care of a mosquito with a mortar.
No. It would have to be a straight overland operation. Maybe the plutonium, if it could be placed exactly right. Not the missiles. It was a pity the Greasies had launched their preemptive strike before she was quite ready to launch hers. But not a disaster. The worst thing about the raid was that her cadre of effectives had been seriously reduced. How was she going to mount her retaliatory strike without grunts?
Marge Menninger had just taken the only decision that gave the human race a future on Jem, even though she didn’t know it.
“The only good thing about all this,” Dalehouse said to Kappelyushnikov, “is that most of the casualties were military. At least now we can get on with the real business of the expedition.”
Kappelyushnikov grunted and threw a few more spadefuls of dirt before he answered. “Of course, is so,” he said, pausing and wiping sweat off his face. “Only one question. What is real business of expedition?”