"Four days?" echoed Swahili. "That's better than fifty miles a day on foot through unfamiliar territory."
"Exactly!" said Cletus. "That's why no one - Newtonians or Brozans - will suspect we'd try to do anything like that. But you and I know, don't we, Major, that our best men can make it?"
His eyes met the eyes in Swahili's dark, unchanging face.
"Yes," said Swahili.
"Good," said Cletus, stepping back from the table. "We'll eat now, and work out the details this evening. I want you, Major, to travel along with Arv, here. I'll take Force Leader Athyer along with me and travel with him."
"Athyer?" queried Swahili.
"That's right," replied Cletus, dryly. "Wasn't it you who told me he was coming along?"
"Yes," answered Swahili. It was true, oddly enough. Swahili seemed to have taken an interest in the newly recruited, untrained Athyer. It was an interest apparently more of curiosity than sentiment - for if ever two men were at opposite poles, it was the major and the force leader. Swahili was far and away the superior of all the new-trained Dorsais, men and officers alike, having surpassed everyone in the training, with the exception of Cletus in the matter of autocontrol. Clearly, however, Swahili was not one to let interest affect judgment. He looked with a touch of grim amusement at Cletus.
"And, of course, since he'll be with you, sir... " he said.
"All the way," said Cletus, levelly. "I take it you've no objection to having Arv with you?"
"No, sir." Swahili's eyes glanced at the tall young commandant with something very close - as close as he ever came - to approval.
"Good," said Cletus. "You can take off, then. I'll meet you both here in an hour after we've eaten."
"Yes."
Swahili went out. Cletus turned toward the door, and found Arvid still there, standing almost in his way. Cletus stopped.
"Something the matter, Arv?" Cletus asked.
"Sir... " began Arvid, and he did not seem to be able to continue.
Cletus made no attempt to assist the conversation. He merely stood, waiting.
"Sir," said Arvid again, "I'm still your aide, aren't I?"
"You are," said Cletus.
"Then" - Arvid's face was stiff and a little pale - "can I ask why Athyer should be with you in an action like this, instead of me?"
Cletus looked at him coldly. Arvid held himself stiffly, and his right shoulder was still a little hunched under his uniform coat, drawn forward by the tightening of the scar tissue of the burn he had taken back at the BOQ in Bakhalla, protecting Cletus from the Neuland gunmen.
"No, Commandant," said Cletus, slowly. "You can't ask me why I decide what I do - now or ever."
They stood facing each other.
"Is that clear?" Cletus said, after a moment.
Arvid stood even more stiffly. His eyes seemed to have lost Cletus, and his gaze traveled past him now to some spot on the farther wall.
"Yes, sir," he said.
"Then you'd probably better be getting to the evening meal, hadn't you?" said Cletus.
"Yes, sir."
Arvid turned and went out. After a second, Cletus sighed and also left for his own quarters and a solitary meal served there by his orderly.
At nine the following morning, he was standing with Force Leader Athyer five miles inside the forest fringe, when Swahili came up to him and handed him the matchbox-sized metal case of a peep-map. Cletus tucked it into a jacket pocket of his gray-green field uniform.
"It's oriented?" he asked Swahili. The major nodded.
"With the camp as base point," Swahili answered. "The rest of the men tagged for the expedition have already left - in two- and three-man teams, just as you said. The captain and I are ready to go."
"Good," said Cletus. "We'll get started, too, Bill and I. See you at the rendezvous point, five miles below Watershed, in approximately ninety-one hours."
"We'll be there, sir." With a single, slightly humorous glance at Athyer, Swahili turned and left.
Cletus turned the peep-map over in the palm of his hand, exposing the needle of the orientation compass under its transparent cover. He pressed the button in the side of the case and the needle swung clockwise some forty degrees until it pointed almost due north into the forest. Cletus lined himself up with a tree trunk as far off as he could see through the dimness of the forest in that direction. Then he put the peephole at one end of the instrument to his eye and gazed through it. Within he saw the image of what appeared to be a ten- by twelve-foot relief map of the territory between his present position and Watershed. A red line marked the route that had been programmed into the map. Reaching for another button on the case, he cranked the view in close to study the detail of the first half-dozen miles. It was all straight forest, with no bog land to be crossed or avoided.
"Come on," he said over his shoulder to Athyer. Putting the peep-map into his pocket, he started off at a jog trot.
Athyer followed him. For the first couple of hours they trotted along side by side without speaking, enclosed in the dimness and silence of the northern Newtonian forest. There were no flying creatures, neither birds nor insects, in this forest, only the amphibious and fish-like life of its lakes, swamps and bogs. Under the thick cover of the needle-like leaves that grew only on the topmost branches of the trees, the ground was bare except for the leafless tree trunks and lower branches but covered with a thick coat of blackened, dead needles fallen from the trees in past seasons. Only here and there, startling and expectedly, there would be a thick clump of large, flesh-colored leaves as much as four feet in length, sprouting directly from the needle bed to signal the presence of a spring or some other damp area of the jungle floor beneath.
After the first two hours, they fell into an alternate rhythm of five minutes at a jog trot, followed by five minutes at a rapid walk. Once each hour they stopped for five minutes to rest, dropping at full length upon the soft, thick, needle carpet without bothering even to remove the light survival packs they wore strapped to their shoulders.
For the first half hour or so, the going had been effortful. But after that they warmed to the physical movement, their heartbeats slowed, their breathing calmed - and it seemed almost as if they could go on forever like this. Cletus ran or walked, with the larger share of his mind abstract, far away in concentration on other problems. Even the matter of periodically checking their progress with the directional compass on the peep-map was an almost automatic action for him, performed by reflex.
He was roused from this at last by the fading of the already dim light of the forest about them. Newton's sun, hidden between its double screen of the treetops' foliage and the high, almost constant cloud layer that gave the sky its usual gray, metallic look, was beginning to set.
"Time for a meal break," said Cletus. He headed for a flat spot at the base of a large tree trunk and dropped into a sitting position, cross-legged with his back to the trunk, stripping off his shoulder pack as he did so. Athyer joined him on the ground. "How're you doing?"
"Fine, sir," grunted Athyer.
In fact, the other man was looking as good as he claimed to feel, and this Cletus was glad to see. There was only a faint sheen of perspiration on Athyer's face, and his breathing was deep and unhurried.
They broke out a thermo meal pack apiece and punctured the seal to start warming the food inside. By the time it was hot enough to eat, the darkness around them had closed in absolutely. It was as black as the inside of some sealed underground room.
"Half an hour until the moons start to rise," Cletus said into the darkness in the direction in which he had last looked to see the seated Athyer. "Try and get some sleep, if you can."