Science fiction; Time travel -- Fiction; War stories; World War, 1939-1945 -- Fiction
Kane nodded, then tensed as another automobile rolled up and stopped.
"This one's O.K.," he said aloud. "Quick, now--get inside it!"
They went forward in a pellmell rush. Kane eased open a back door of
the car--a sedan with a lone man at the wheel--and all six of them
squeezed themselves into the back seat, pulling the door quietly to
after them. They held their breath, but there was no cry of surprise or
alarm. The soldiers went routinely but thoroughly through the ritual
of halberds. Any invisible man clinging to the outside of the vehicle
would have had to drop off or be dragged into the wicked blades.
* * * * *
The car rolled through the gate and picked up speed with the violent
surge of an electric motor. The man hunched in the front seat drove
with businesslike concentration, oblivious of his six unwanted
passengers. The raiders grinned at each other, shifted their cramped
positions a little and waited.
Presently the town's lights began to swim past. Kane, in a position
to see out the left-hand window, muttered: "We're passing the rocket
field--they've thrown a brand-new wall around it. If this guy would
just slow down--well, we've got to stop the car." He wriggled up until
he could lean over the front seat--and stiffened. All of them heard the
moan of a siren closing up behind.
"_Donnerwetter!_" growled their chauffeur, and clamped on the brakes. A
few feet behind loomed up a pair of headlights and a searchlight helped
bathe the car ahead in a merciless illumination.
"Out!" said Kane sharply, flinging open the left-hand door.
They sprawled out and ran, stooping instinctively, through the patch of
brilliance. Uniformed Germans were climbing out of the other vehicle
and starting to form a cordon.
Dugan, the last man out, halted a moment to close the car door, then
sprinted after the rest. They huddled against the forbidding wall that
had been built around the rocket port. Larrabie, eyes on the brightlit
scene, nervously hefted a bomb. Kane shook his head.
"Time enough to make big noises when we get inside," he advised. And to
the whole party, "I spotted an entrance a couple of hundred yards back.
Come on!"
They ran in single file under the frowning face of concrete. It might
have been possible to form a human chain and get over the wall; but
there was unquestionably alarms atop it, and ready guns.
Beyond the wall, a whistle began hooting. The field was being alerted.
Kane panted, "Don't know what tipped them off--but probably we were
photographed at that gate."
The entrance to the field was solidly blocked by a massive iron
grille. Beyond it, they could see men running and springing into
position behind a concrete redoubt, through which a machine gun thrust
menacingly, covering the opening in the wall.
"Damn!" said Kane. "No more time to be subtle. We'll have to knock that
out."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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