They lapsed into silence, and Art Johnson considered the improbable amount of circumstances that had brought him to the base of this numbered but nameless hill half across the world from home. There was nothing of home here, and he felt the lack mightily. There was a very good chance that before another few hours had passed, he would be dead. And then he would never see home again. He shivered. The thought frightened him. He didn't want to die. Not that he supposed any of the other men wanted to die either. But they were remote, other beings, alien in Art Johnson's world. What they felt he could not guess; what he felt he knew. _And he did not want to die!_ "Hey, Art!" "Uh, what is it, Tooey?" "Chinks, I think. Up there in the trees. God, they're sneaking down!" "Where? Dammit, where?" He thumbed the safety of his grease gun, and brought it up to bear on the trees. His fingers tightened around the stock; the trigger started to depress-- Then-- Something clicked. "Jesus, Artie, they're coming!" Art Johnson's eyes took on a faraway look. His fingers loosened their death grip on the gun. He shook his head. "_Artie!_" "Shut up, Tooey!" Reaching out, he slapped the boy's face. "You're imagining things." "But they're up there, Artie!" whimpered the boy. "Sure they're up there. But not where you think they are. They're dug in, in the caves. And it's going to be up to us to dig them out. Now snap out of it!" * * * * * Suddenly a flare shot up from somewhere to their right. It whistled, then popped, the white light hurting their night-adjusted eyes. A moment later, Stebbins whistled and the men started moving up the hill. They paused at the timber-line, and Stebbins cursed, moving from man to man and urging him out of the false protection of the trees and onto the broad expanse of boulder-pocked snow. Above them, another two hundred yards, black dots against the snow showed where the caves were waiting for them. Johnson could visualize the little slant-eyed men within. He flopped to his belly and wriggled forward. Suddenly he stood up and dashed twenty yards, then flopped again as bullets whined through the space occupied by his body bare instants earlier. He lay there, face pressed into the snow, until the muscles of his legs started tensing of their own accord. Then he was up again, and running for dear life. Gun fire was bursting all around now, a seemingly solid screen of lead pouring down from the caves. But the men were getting through the barrier; one slammed into the rock wall beside a cave mouth and started unlimbering grenades, tossing them in as quickly as he could pull the pins. Seconds later a vast tongue of fire roared out, melting the snow and scorching the barren earth beneath. The fire probed down the hill as the side around the cave shook and roared. The fire reached and passed over Art Johnson, lying in the snow, fingers digging at the rock beneath.