"I won't surrender," Hank said as he checked his rifle. "I know that. There wouldn't be anything to gain." "You couldn't surrender if you wanted to." "Huh?" "The Army doesn't allow it. You see, the Army tells you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and where to do it. There's regulations in the manuals to cover _everything_. If there aren't regulations about something, that's because the Army doesn't allow it. There are no regulations about how to surrender. That means you _can't_ surrender." "Suppose you haven't got anything to fight with?" "No dice. If you've only got one bullet, you fire that bullet. Then you use your bayonet. If your bayonet breaks, then you pick up rocks and throw them, and if there aren't any rocks around, then you attack with your bare hands. In other words, you keep fighting until you kill them or they kill you. If you surrender, you're a traitor." Hank was silent for a while. "If that's so," he said, "why do they have regulations about what to do _after_ you're captured? You know, that 'Give only your name, rank, and serial number' stuff." "That," explained Murphy with mock impatience, "is for those cases when a guy might be captured while unconscious. The Army's sensible. It knows you can't fight if you've been knocked unconscious by something." "Did you hear the rumor," Hank went on, "that every guy going into combat has something done to him so he'll kill himself if he's captured? Hypnotism or something?" "Uh-huh." Murphy wished Hank hadn't mentioned that. He remembered, there at Fort Hendricks, something strange had happened. Take a battalion of men, line them up outside a hospital. One by one, as the men enter a room, give them an injection that knocks them cold. Keep them unconscious for days while you feed them through the veins, and then revive them, put them in a formation and march them back to their barracks without an explanation. Do something like that and you'll cause all sorts of rumors. Those men will wonder what happened to them while they were unconscious. The more they wonder, the more fantastic the rumors will get.... "I doubt it," Murphy said. They had been whispering. No enemy followed a barrage so close that they were killed by their own shells, and Antarians could only move at a certain speed. That always left--immediately after a barrage--a few minutes during which they could talk or whisper in safety. But that time was limited and they fell silent now. Murphy thought, _Somewhere out there, lizard-like things are crawling toward us. Any minute now, they'll be close enough to hear us if we make a sound, and they'll be waiting, hoping to hear a sound. They'll be holding their weapons with their tentacles as they move closer. They should be in a zoo where you could see them on Sunday afternoons and laugh. They're funny-looking, but it's hard to laugh at them while they're trying to kill you--_ A rumble of sound.