The vanishers
Date: 2022-11-14T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Marines -- Fiction

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Title: The vanishers

Author: Arthur J. Burks

Release date: November 14, 2022 [eBook #69350]
Most recently updated: October 19, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Popular Publications, Inc

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VANISHERS ***

THE VANISHERS

A Novelette by ARTHUR J. BURKS

Trapped, facing an incredible shadow
army, whose lightest touch meant instant
dissolution—the last fighters of invaded
Earth made their bitter choice—victory
beyond death's portals—or oblivion!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Super Science Stories May 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

CHAPTER ONE

The Invisible Wall

My men were in battle dress for the landing—steel helmets painted green, dirty green jackets, pants, cartridge belts, heavy field shoes. The Caribbean was so deep blue it hurt the eyes. You could look straight down into it until it made you dizzy. Sharks, some of them monsters, congregated from all directions.

Marines waiting to debark shouted derisively at the sharks; but it was noticeable that they didn't pull any funny business on the slings, and they didn't let go of the slings until their feet were firmly planted in the bottom of the landing craft. The landing craft scarcely rose and fell. The Caribbean was as smooth as an inland lake. I think, now that I look back, that all of us had a strange feeling that something unusual was going to happen, and that it had nothing to do with the sharks.

I was first aboard a landing craft. I moved to the outboard side of my craft and looked toward the half-moon beach where the Yataritas empties into the Caribbean. The river's mouth was hidden by the sandy beach. To my right the coast of Cuba, rugged, dirty coral cliffs ten to fifty feet high, led away eastward, bulging out gradually a mile south of the white-sandy beach. To my left there were broken cliffs of rotting coral, and slopes leading up gradually from the shore to cactus and spined-brush-covered hills so round they cast no shadows.

Captain Ross Haggerty crawled down into the second LCVP, First Lieutenant Peter Hoose into the third. There were twenty-four men with each of us, some veterans of two wars, some recruits who'd been too young for World War II.

We were going in with Haggerty to my right rear, Hoose to my left rear. We were equipped with the latest in ship-shore-landing-craft-airplane communications. Four jet planes did fancy stuff over us, over the beach, and behind the beach, while we got into our places. I could talk with anybody in any LCVP, aboard the Odyssey or in any one of the jets. Our headsets made us look like men from Mars.

Every man who was participating in this maneuver wore one of the sets, for experience had taught that any marine, at any time, might find himself running the show.

There were flecks of foam about the reefs which flanked the half-moon beach when all three LCVP's rose on their steps like amphibians ready to take off, and headed north for the beach, so white it dazzled the eyes. Behind the beach lay the spined brush wherein, theoretically, enemy troops were lying in wait to rip us apart.

I always thrilled to a landing, even a make-believe one. So did the men, boring though peacetime soldiering was. The APD was dropping dud shells ashore. The jets were diving on us, just to make a noise, and our three motors sounded like the crack of doom. The men kept down because that was the rule, but occasionally I pulled myself up and looked ahead over the ramp—which would come crashing down when we rammed our nose into the sand. Out over that ramp the marines would charge, to race for cover and swing into position to give our new weapons a workout.

We'd be in in five minutes. The boat-handlers were talking to the ship and the jets. I just listened in. I didn't see or hear a thing out of the ordinary.

"Stand by!" came the cry. "We're smacking in a coupla seconds!"

The jets were having fun right over the beach and for a moment I envied their pilots. When we got ashore it was going to be like sitting atop a burning galley stove, on that sand. It would be even worse under the brush on the land beyond that rose to the hills and the coral cliffs which crowned them.

The other two LCVP's had drawn abreast now. We hit the beach nearly together. I heard the rasping of the chains as the ramps went down, hitting the sand. There was knee-deep water over the outer ends of the ramps. The marines dashed ashore. The first odd thing happened then; one instant there was water over the ends of the ramps, then there was none.

As a matter of habit every marine did his job. Without command, they sprayed out to right and left, getting unbunched as quickly as possible, just in case a theoretical enemy projectile should land among them.

But their deployment slowed and came to a halt. I think they, like myself, must instantly have missed the racketing of the jets. I looked up. The sky, a pale blue, with slowly moving clouds in which I was aware of greenish tints, was utterly empty of the four jets which were supposed to support our maneuver.

I whirled and looked back. Where the Caribbean had been there was a huge sprawl of desert, blinding in the midday sun, stretching away southward to a semicircle of brooding hills. I judged their crests to be at least four thousand feet high. And where those crests were, five minutes before, the Caribbean had been—fully a mile deep under the stern of the Odyssey! Where the Odyssey might now be I hadn't the slightest idea.

Just before we hit the beach there had been thickets of broad-leaved squatty trees behind the ridges of sand, into which the marines had been headed for concealment. Now there was nothing of the kind. There was nothing but sand and silence—silence so deep that even breathing broke it into brittle bits.

The three LCVP's were still with us, high and dry on the sand in the middle of the desert. Each was manned by a coxswain and a radioman. These six men—they were sailors, of course—were now sitting in their positions aboard the three crafts, like statues; as if they had been fossilized by the suddenness of whatever had happened.

At first I thought something was wrong with me. Then the marines became uncertain, and when marines are uncertain the situation is definitely out of hand. If I was seeing things that weren't there, so were seventy-four other marines and six sailors.

Captain Haggerty was giving the "assemble" signal and pointing to me. Even before he gave it the marines were walking slowly toward me, their weapons at ready, their eyes taking in all there was to see. I moved back to the central landing craft.

"My radio is dead," I called. "How about yours?"

"Nothing, sir. They couldn't be deader on Judgment Day!"

I leaned against a corner of the LCVP and waited for the men to assemble. Nobody said anything. They just looked at me. I felt helpless.

"First," I said, "let's make a check. I want to be sure I haven't gone completely daft! If what I say is true, say 'Aye, aye!' Got it?"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"This is not the Yataritas Beach we all know—apparently!"

"Aye, aye, sir!" the voices were low, hesitant, yet sure.

"The Caribbean has disappeared!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"No jets! No APD! No anything we know—except sand!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"And we have no communication with anything, anywhere. I've no idea what we ran into, but it happened just as we hit the beach." I looked at my watch. "And one more thing. We landed about ten minutes ago, at nine hundred. The sun says it's nearly thirteen hundred. My watch says it's oh-nine-twelve exactly."

Officers and men looked at their wrist-watches.

"Aye, aye, sir!" They all agreed to that.

"The sailors are inside the—area—whatever it is, or they would be gone like everything else except the LCVP's. Somewhere behind the LCVP's, then, should be—"

But I couldn't say it. Everybody could see that behind the LCVP's was the unknown desert leading away south to the brooding ancient mountains.

Sergeant Eckstrom strode quickly to the rear of the LCVP's. That took guts, for he might have disappeared; but he didn't. He walked out onto the hot desert for twenty yards, turned and came back. That ended that. We were seeing what actually was there.

"We'll send out scouts," I said, "to the four cardinal points of the compass. We'll split each quadrant with another scout. That's eight scouts. Make it sixteen, scout in pairs. Don't get out of sight of the landing craft. No telling what you may run into."

We officers split the horizon into thirds, set out to reconnoiter.

The sailors flatly refused to leave the LCVP's further than the almost non-existent shade they cast. It was their way of grasping at something they could understand. I didn't blame them or argue with them. The skipper of the APD was their immediate superior. Where was he, anyway?

What had snatched us into this unbelievable Limbo?

How had it been done? What was going to happen to us?

I traveled about four points north of the northeast group. I am a fast walker; even through sand I can travel faster than most men. I was slightly ahead of all the other groups when suddenly I could go no further. I could feel nothing, yet when I put out my foot to set it down in a new place, it struck an invisible something, dropped back, and my impetus carried me forward to involve my face in something much finer than cobwebs.

I jumped back, swearing, for I could see nothing except the hot waste of glistening sand. There were dunes, hummocks with strange grasses and brush sticking up through them like beards; but I had struck the limit of my trek and could not reach any of those visible spots beyond.

I pushed against it with my hands. It gave, but only as a taut wire net might give, then press back against the hands; it was a strain to make the thing bulge. The counterpressure was strong. I could not advance. I turned to the right and saw that the nearest patrol had stopped. The two men were fumbling in the air like blind men. They were raising and lowering their feet as if they felt for steps above an abyss. They, too, had come to the end of possible advance. They had come into contact with invisibility also—invisibility that was inflexibly tough beyond a certain brief limit.

The two men turned now and looked at me. I gave the halt signal and started toward them. I ran into something and caromed off, falling to my knees. The horrible thought struck me that each group might have stumbled inside some hideous globe and become separated from all other groups. But it wasn't so. I got to my feet, put my left hand out against the invisible wall—which felt warm to the touch, as if it were a living thing—and started toward the northeast group.

The surface of that strange substance was undulant; it zig-zagged, like the weaving walk of a drunken man.

I reached the first patrol, Corporal Hoge Ziegler and Private First Class Barry Preble. Their faces were white. I wouldn't say they were scared but they were definitely concerned.

"Well, at least we've discovered what it was we ran through at the moment we hit the beach," I offered. "All we need to do is find a way through it, and go on with our maneuver."

Ziegler shook his head. "No, sir, I don't see it like that. We can see through this stuff, or seem to, but we can't see back the way we came, astern of the landing craft."

"Right, corporal; what do you think it is, then?"

"I'm no scientist, sir. I'd say it is a net of some kind, in which we have been caught, landing craft and all, like so many fish. But by whom? By what? For what reason? It has me stopped."

"I wonder—" began Preble, then stopped, staring at the place where he and Ziegler had come to a dead stop. Preble stepped back. In his arms he cradled one of the latest automatic weapons.

Preble stepped back, lifted the muzzle of the weapon, held down the trigger for a few squirts. The weapon acted naturally enough. There was no question that the bullets left the muzzle of the fast-firer. But we didn't hear them hit the invisible screen; nor, looking beyond it, did we see where the bullets kicked up sand. The bullets simply plunked into nothingness as bullets of an obsolete day vanished into soap or sand during firing tests.

A few seconds passed. Then there were soft sounds in the sand at the very spot where the two marines had hit the wall. All three of us looked down. The flattened, steel-jacketed bullets lay in a small group in the sand, within a couple of inches of the invisible wall—on our side of it.

"Caught the bullets, like a baseball catcher!" said Preble, his voice high-pitched with threatened hysteria. "Then just dropped 'em! Took them in, killed their speed, then slowly discarded them! And I saw the wall do it!"

Ziegler and I had not seen this phenomenon, but we were not directly behind the weapon, as Preble was.

I lifted my binoculars for the first time and looked around at the other patrols, all of which I could see easily. All except those which followed a southerly direction had come to the wall and were just as puzzled by it as we. None of us had anything to offer; we were even afraid to think lest we question our own sanity.

We held our ground until all patrols had come up against the invisible wall. Then we had some idea of the extent of our prison. That brooding mountain to the south, it appeared, was forbidden to us.

How high did the wall reach? Was it domed?

"Preble, fire as nearly straight up as you can," I told the private. "Then we'll duck away fifty or sixty yards, just in case, and listen."

Ziegler and I stepped well back. Preble took careful aim. He squirted a few score slugs, then ran to join us. We were so silent we could not even hear each other's breathing. Shortly we heard the bullets drop into the sand, and stepped forward.

Theoretically a bullet fired straight up strikes the ground with the same speed at which it was fired—so the slugs would have been flattened anyway. But we had noticed a thin film of some substance unknown to us around the slugs which had been first fired into the wall.

That same substance was clinging to the several slugs we managed to sift up from the sand. Our wall of invisible tension was a dome!

"I feel like a bug!" said Preble. "I feel like a bug must feel when a scientist wants to study it. The scientist keeps covering it with a glass tumbler when it tries to walk or fly away!"

"Do you suppose our own authorities," said Ziegler, "would be trying out a new interdiction weapon on us? Major, they wouldn't do it without at least telling you, sir, would they?"

"They might," I said. "There are secret weapons only the highest high brass knows about. But if your hunch is right, corporal, we've sure got ourselves something, haven't we? Wouldn't it be something if we could throw an invisible net over every dive bomber of an enemy, every warship, every man, and nullify the attack before it got started?"

"It would make them all feel pretty silly," said Preble. "But suppose an enemy had such a 'net'? Suppose it could reach out from anywhere in the world—"

Slowly we all walked back to the LCVP's.

"Something else funny," said Ziegler. "It's noon now, by our time. The sun says it's about four in the afternoon or thereabouts. But we're still ordinary marines, aren't we? Maybe I'm different from the rest of you, but doesn't it strike you as off—"

"I'm not hungry," said Preble. "Nor thirsty! By this time of the day, when we had breakfast at oh-six-hundred at Guantanamo, I'd be starving." Preble was the company chow-hound. "But I'm not hungry, or thirsty. You, corporal?"

Ziegler shook his head. He was by way of being a hearty eater himself, while I confess I came as close to being a glutton as an officer and a gentleman dares allow himself to be.

We had hiked for several hours under a blazing sun. Moreover, all of us had sweated away a lot of moisture. Each of us carried a canteen of water, so water was not yet a problem; but the point is, none of us had taken a drink!

When we got back to the LCVP's it was to find that nobody else was either hungry or thirsty....

"We're prisoners," said Captain Haggerty, "that's clear. And according to the laws of war, prisoners are fed. If we've been fed, and given water without eating or drinking, how?"

"Through our pores!" said Preble impetuously.

There was a long moment of silence which somebody had to break pretty soon.

Lieutenant Hoose broke it.

"Personally, I don't want to be sprinkled by something invisible, even if I'm dying of thirst. And if food is being somehow rubbed into us, I'd just as soon nobody rubbed it in! I'm not too lazy to chew for myself!"

It brought the first laugh. Hoose had a drawling manner of speech which sometimes caused the men in ranks some discomfort to keep their faces straight. We were more relaxed than we had been, for we appeared to be in no danger. Besides, we were extremely well armed. If anybody attacked us—but I refused to think too much about that. I had a sneaking hunch that our top-secret weapons were, in this place, just so much metal, value zero.

Now and again, during a comfortable afternoon, I sent out patrols to check on the invisible wall. They always found it. Either it was there continuously, or it was dropped when nobody was near and hurriedly restored when a patrol went out to check.

The feeling that everything we did or said was noted and heard began to make us wary of movement and speech. We tried to pick out vantage points from which we could be seen. Any one of the dunes outside our prison might have hidden something. But discussing it, none of us felt that this was up to the standard of behavior of whatever it was that held us.

That's about as far as we got before the sun went down with startling suddenness and darkness settled over our Limbo. The darkness was impenetrable. It lasted perhaps an hour. Then a sort of haze seemed to withdraw in all directions, inwardly and outwardly—and the wondrous tropical sky, studded with stars that hung down almost within reach of human hands, bathed our upturned faces.

In silence we all watched. There was an unusual coolness in the air, too, for several minutes, Cuba, at that time of the year, was almost never cool, even late at night; but some of the men were shivering. Sweat had not dried on all of us, and sweat is bad when you are motionless, at night. I was about to order the men to exercise a little, when I realized something that Hoose put into words first:

"Now," he said, "they're feeding us warmth, just as they feed and water us! And we've been here for hours and don't have any idea, even, who or what they are!"

Nobody else said anything. All the rest of us were studying the sky.

"I don't see the Big Dipper!" said Sergeant Eckstrom.

"Nor the North Star!" somebody added.

"Nor Venus, nor Lyra!" said someone else. "I've been studying our books on constellations, and I don't recognize a one! Where are we? We're not even in Cuba! Not even in the Northern Hemisphere! Not even—"

"Not even on the Earth—?" said Hoose.

It was just here that the whispering began in our walkie-talkies; whispering like nothing we had ever heard. We could make out nothing that sounded at all like human words. The sounds were mechanical, yet not-mechanical. I've called them whispers only because that comes closest to describing the eerie sounds which every last one of us was now hearing in his walkie-talkie.

"It's vibration on our wavelength," said one of the gobs. "But that's the best I can say of it."

"Morse? International?" I asked.

But nobody could offer an answer.

Right after that we saw the Shadow Men, inside the dome. Something of that which held us at last became visible.

CHAPTER TWO

The Destroying Shadows

It looked like something new in shadow-play, or motion pictures. The shadows looked like men falling in in close formation, save that there was an uncanny shapelessness about them. We could tell that they walked like other men, for we could see the swinging of their legs. But for the rest of their bodies, well, somebody had worked out a great system of camouflage. Heads were just black blobs rising out of shoulders that were stooped and round. We could not tell whether the group had formed facing us or with their backs to us.

A chill crept over and through the dome as the formations fell in. The sounds in our walkie-talkies grew in volume. I think we all sensed menace in the words that were not human words, in tones that were not human tones. We could sense growing menace, and intonations of command.

We could make out nothing resembling any weapons we knew, but never once did we doubt that the shadows were forming against us. We forgot, while the shadows closed ranks, that we had been fed, watered, kept warm. This was no friendly demonstration.

The Shadow Men started closing in. I gave the command for which my men had been waiting, and for the first time the sailors came out of the landing craft to take part.

A vast circle of shadows closed in on us as we formed for defense. Old-timers remembered the ancient "Form for Bolo Attack" as we arranged ourselves in concentric circles, the automatic weapons outside, riflemen behind them with bayonets fixed. There was a rifle and bayonet for each man, including the automatic weaponers, for use if the automatics went out of action.

"No firing until I give the word," I said. "Music!"

"Music," in the Navy, of which the Marine Corps is a proud part, designates a trumpeter or drummer or bugler—whoever beats to quarters or blows the bugle-calls.

"Here, sir," said Trumpeter Krane.

"Blow something," I said, "It doesn't matter what. I'm just curious about what effect it will have."

"How about 'Boots and Saddles', sir?" he asked. There was a snicker, the suggestion of laughter from the marines.

Trumpeter Krane did a good job with "Boots and Saddles". It was a brave sound, but it had no effect whatever on the advancing Shadow Men. As the big circle contracted, every other Shadow Man dropped back, forming an outer circle. One thing that seemed to make clear to us: the Shadow Men had mass. They occupied space. Bullets, then, should have some effect on them.

"Preble!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"Scatter some bullets ahead of those things, far enough ahead so that they'll ricochet over them."

Preble stood up and let go with his ultramodern fast-firer. For a few seconds, as he played the weapon's muzzle like a hose, the Shadow Men were obscured by the cloud of kicked-up sand. The sand fell at once, of course—and the Shadow Men were coming directly on! Moreover, there was a grimmer note in our walkie-talkies.

"One fast-firer at each cardinal point of the compass," I said.

Marines in action are something to see. In a split second the Shadow Men from all sides were being warned by bullets. But they came right on.

"No other choice," I said quietly. "Shoot into them. Fire at will!"

Thousands of steel-jacketed slugs poured into the Shadow Men. But not one fell, and not for so much as an instant did they hesitate in their advance. Now other men had fallen back so that four concentric circles of Shadow Men closed in on us. They were quite close when they halted. I was just preparing to order our new explosives to be hurled among them, when, directly in front of me, a shadow detached itself from other shadows. It strode forward a few paces and halted. The clumsy arms seemed to gesticulate. The sounds of whispering came louder in our walkie-talkies. I think we all felt that in some way we were being challenged.

"Someone is to go forward," I said. "I don't know what it wants, but—Hold your fire, now—not that it seems to be worth much!"

I rose and started forward, conscious that there wasn't a movement among the marines, nor among the Shadow Men. I wondered as I approached the foremost shadow, how we would make ourselves understood to each other. The other entity must have some idea or there would be no suggestion of a parley.

I must have been halfway there when I was aware of running footfalls behind me. I didn't turn—and by failing to turn I saved my own life at the expense of PFC Yount's. The footfalls were right behind me, but I wasn't expecting what happened. Arms went around my legs in as neat a tackle as ever a leatherneck footballer pulled. I was thrown on my face so hard I couldn't breathe. I don't remember when I've been downed so hard.

By the time I got to my knees Yount was almost in contact with the detached shadow. He had a trench knife in his hand; drew it right after tackling me. I could see everything that happened.

PFC Yount flung himself straight at the shadow. I saw him disappear into the shadow, emerge on the other side. But there was a difference: he went in a marine in full battle dress; he came out a completely articulated skeleton. He had been stripped of clothes, shoes, weapons, skin, flesh and life—so quickly that his forward impetus carried his skeleton on through the shadow.

He went in a Marine in full battle dress; he came out a skeleton....

Now four marines were beside me. A growl rose from the others. I had to yell at them, over my shoulder: "Stand fast! Do you want the same thing to happen to you?"

The four men beside me—I didn't look to see who they were—simply waited.

"Okay, just be careful not to touch any of the shadows," I said. "Apparently that's where the danger is."

Not a shadow moved, not even the one through which Yount had gone to his death. The five of us then, rose and moved straight forward. As we came close I could smell something in the shadows, a vague, pestilential odor, like nothing I had ever experienced.

"I smelled its like, sir," said one, Haggerty, I think, "where men lay too long unburied. This is just a far hint, but it's like it, some way."

We went around the detached shadow. There was no sound, even in our walkie-talkies, now. It was almost as if, honoring an ancient military custom, the Shadow Men were allowing us to collect our dead. I could not see into or through the shadow. It was still so shapeless, even when I was close enough to touch it, that I could not tell anything of its true nature, or whether it, or any of the Shadow Men behind it, were armed. I could see the result of too much impetuosity, however, in the skeleton—snow-white, as if it were that of a man long dead in the burning desert sands—of PFC Yount. I tried to remember, as the others carefully gathered up the skeleton—Haggerty later said it was still warm!—whether Yount had uttered any sound, but could not remember.

Some men said later they were sure they heard a muffled scream, the scream of a man in mortal agony, but I doubt it.

I think it was an afterthought, strictly imagination.

No attempt was made to keep us from retiring with the skeleton of Yount. As soon as we were back, and had placed it against a side of one of the LCVP's for burial later, the Shadow Men again began their inexorable march.

"Sailors!" I called. "Break out the flame-throwers."

We surrounded ourselves with a sheet of flame, hot beyond anything used in World War II. We sprayed the stuff into the faces of the advancing Shadow Men; we blotted them out.

They were erased as if they had never been.

At my command the flames stopped—and the Shadow Men were still coming on.

Not very hopefully, I gave the command to use the flames again. We still had tricks in the bag, but if they proved no more effective than what we had so far used—I shouted my next command:

"Stand by to charge! Hang onto weapons! Go between them! Don't touch one of the shadows! CHARGE!"

I didn't tell the marines to face in any given direction. I merely wanted as many of them as possible to get through the closing cordon.

With a wild, defiant yell the leathernecks charged. As I ran I looked for some opening through the concentric circles. If flesh or skin, clothing or equipment, touched one of the shadows—

It was the queerest ducking and darting game I had ever played. We must not run into one another, we marines, or we might push one another into the shadows—and we knew what had happened to Yount, would never forget it.

It was like trying to dash out through a crowded theater, save that in a theater you didn't lose your life if you happened to touch anything.

I got through, out behind the last circle of Shadow Men. As soon as I was clear, in the cool, starlit waste beyond, I turned and looked back. The circles were still closing, with the LCVP's in their approximate center. To my right and left other marines were emerging from among the Shadow Men.

I looked, and looked away. Some of my own marines were a sight to turn the stomach. It's hell to see an apparently healthy marine standing, stupidly staring at the skeleton of his arm, to the shoulder.... I saw no skeletons in the sand after the marines came through and the Shadows went on. I breathed a sigh of relief. A marine could get along with one arm, and even the skeleton of the other might have possibilities; but a dead marine was dead and done.

I turned and looked back at the closing circles of Shadow Men. As the strange platoon closed in, more and more shadows stepped out of the circles, to form still more concentric circles.

The middle LCVP happened to be the center of the closing circles. The first Shadow Man reached it and stopped, right in the LCVP. Others closed in there—and merged with the first. The Shadow Men were piling themselves into a black heap within the landing craft.

Still the Shadow Men marched inward, converging on that central spot. The heap of blackness in the center did not grow larger. It was as if there were some sort of hole there, into which the shadows were pouring, like water into a funnel.

The last ring of Shadow Men stepped into the LCVP—and vanished.

Well outside the place of disappearance, looking as if they were participants in a nightmare, were the marines. Every last officer and man, with most of our weapons, had got through the cordon of Shadow Men.

It could have been a dream, but for the skeleton of Yount, there by the LCVP, and the fact that several men had touched the shadows and been severely injured. Four hands were missing—save for the bones. One man had lost an ear, but he laughed. "It could have been my whole head!" he said. "What's an ear?"

"We got through with extraordinarily good luck, sir," said Haggerty. "What do we do now, sir?"

"What can we do, except wait and see what happens next, Captain?" He had no answer for that.

Automatically, we buried the skeleton of Yount. First his closest friends went back to the spot where his body had disappeared, and hunted for remnants. They didn't find so much as a button of his uniform or a screw from his weapons, or any part even of the steel blade of his trench knife. The detached shadow had absorbed everything of Yount save his bones.

The shadows were, in some fashion, chemical, that seemed clear enough. But beyond that we were all stuck. They were not human. They were maneuverable, plainly; but not self-maneuverable. Who, then, or what, controlled and manipulated the Shadow Men?

The Shadow Men, it gave us a shiver to note, left no footprints. Nor had they in any way affected the landing craft.

After the starlit funeral, we re-formed as we had been before the sudden appearance of the Shadow Men.

"Mother of God!" cried Krane, the trumpeter. "It's starting again. But this time it's different!"

We all whirled to look. Coming out of the northwest was a group of scarecrow figures. They didn't look like our Shadow Men. I didn't recognize them at first, though I could hear their hoarse panting, their rasped words. They staggered like men far gone in hunger and thirst. One of them fell on his face, struggled to his knees, came on.

"Japs!" cried Haggerty. "Japs! Attacking, too, and this is nineteen forty-nine!"

It couldn't be true, yet it was. There were rusty rifles in the hands of the Japanese, rifles that plainly would not work. As if to emphasize this, they began to throw them away.

One of them called out to us, in English:

"Water! Food! We surrender! We surrender!"

Japs? Surrendering? In Cuba—or thereabouts!—in 1949? I was tempted to laugh, until I remembered something that was absolutely no comfort whatever: in other parts of the world, a long way from Cuba, Japs still were holding out against patrols that hunted them down, Japs who somehow hadn't got the word that the war was over, or else refused to believe it.

I was proud of the marines when the Japs asked for food and water. Not one of them spoke up and said, "You don't need either one here." I knew then that every marine regarded it as at least possible that what was happening to us was a top-brass secret, or series of secrets, of our own government. I doubted it because of what happened to Yount. The government doesn't risk human lives on a whim. But the possibility was there. I hadn't expected Yount to tackle me, either, or to hurl himself into the shadow which slew him.

We all had canteens, none of which had been emptied. And no landing would have been properly simulated without food. We let the Japs come among us, then Hoose, who spoke some Japanese, and Matzuku, a Jap corporal who spoke some English, got together.

The Japanese were seated with their backs against an LCVP and canteens were passed to them, together with our special rations. They drank as if they had forgotten the glory of water, ate as if they had forgotten how. I gave them a little time. We did not pull in our defensive rings, even though it could be seen that they were not especially useful. When the Japs seemed more or less sated, I got Matzuku and Hoose together and began asking questions.

KING: "Where have you been for the past four years?"

MATZUKU: "Hiding out in the hills. What place is this? I know the whole island, but I don't remember this desert area."

KING: "What island?"

MATZUKU: "Guam, of course, as you Americans call it."

I pondered the matter a few minutes. It wasn't possible that these Japanese had finally decided to surrender, had started hunting marines to whom to turn in their rusty weapons—then walked through the invisible dome, out of the hinterland of Guam into the midst of what we fondly believed to be Cuba. Yet here they were, flesh-and-blood men, and here were we, also flesh-and-blood men—or so we thought.

Of course, Matzuku and his men were as much prisoners as we were. They were not only prisoners of whatever manipulated the dome, but they were our prisoners as well. There was nothing they could do, nowhere they could go with any secrets filched from us; but I decided not to tell them anything.

Matzuku, I noticed, was studying the sky. I watched his brown face as he struggled with some idea that plainly had him buffaloed. He looked at me quickly, then looked away. He knew something, but was afraid to say what it was. I could at least make it clear to him that he was not crazy, need not be afraid to say what was in his mind.

"You are amazed, corporal," I said, "to discover that you can't possibly be on Guam. I see that you know something of astronomy. It won't be taken amiss if you hazard a guess as to where you are, and how you got here."

"I should like to do that, sir," said the Jap corporal, "but it does not seem possible that we should merely have seen a marine patrol, scouting the jungles of Guam, approached them to surrender, and found ourselves in the Kalahari Desert! It isn't possible, therefore I must not know the stars as well as I had thought. And yet, sir, I do know the stars. Unless this is delirium induced by fever, lack of water and food over the years, we are somewhere in the Kalahari Desert!"

"Let's go have a look, Matzuku," I said. "You, too, Hoose. Haggerty, you'd better stay with the command."

Matzuku, Hoose and I started back the way the Japs had come. Matzuku seemed to have forgotten his fatigue, the fact that he had been practically a walking dead man when he approached the "patrol" to surrender. Ten sets of footprints led in a wavering line back to the invisible dome which hemmed us in. Hoose and I hung back to let Matzuku go on ahead of us. He came to the invisible wall and halted, looking foolish as a fore-thrust foot slid down what appeared to be nothingness.

The footprints all ended against the invisible wall. Moonlight shed its brilliance over everything, and we could see far out beyond the invisible wall, into the eerie area of sand dunes, stunted brush, to a horizon which offered no hope whatever.

"We couldn't have come from out there!" said Matzuku wonderingly. "We came out of the Guamian jungles, but our footprints don't start until we reach this invisible barricade." Matzuku turned on me. "I have no right to ask, but what kind of a concentration camp is this? We Japanese have much experience in camps, but we use barbed wire, high rock walls with broken glass embedded in their tops, or dungeons and caves."

I grinned at the little corporal.

"You don't use energy domes, then," I said, "or compress invisibility into a solid?"

"No," said Matzuku, "do you?"

He had guessed we were prisoners also. I didn't explain. After all, how could I? We three went back to the LCVP. I ordered the Japanese into the LCVP on our right flank, placed a guard over them, not because we had any fear of them, but so they would not hear our discussion. They showed no interest whatever. They sprawled out on the deck of the LCVP and were asleep, and raucously snoring, before we met in plenary session—save for the single guard over the Japanese—near the grave of Yount's skeleton.

"Could we really be in the Kalahari Desert?" asked Haggerty.

"We could," I said. "The Japs could also be decoys, deliberately sent to us to make us believe whatever we're supposed to believe. I'm only sure of one thing: we're not on Yataritas Beach, Cuba!"

"Are we really sure of that, even?" asked Captain Haggerty. I had to admit that we were sure of nothing.

"We seem to be unmolested for the time being," I said. "But we can't just sit here and brood. Those of you who want to sleep, turn in wherever you like. Those who want to help figure out what has happened to us, assemble here with me and we'll see if we can get anywhere."

"You don't suppose, sir," said Krane diffidently, "that we're all—dead, or something? With all those fancy explosives we brought along—"

Nobody laughed. Nobody snickered. And nobody drew away to hit the sack.

"I don't believe we're dead, Music," I said, "but I could be wrong about that, too. I think your 'or something' comes about as close to an answer as anything we have. Now, I'm open to suggestions as to how we find out what ails us, where we are, how we get out; what, in general, it all seems to be about."

"The Shadow Men," said Ziegler, "what were they?"

Nobody knew.

There was something in the shadows. A smell, and something else. Why didn't the stuff, whatever it was, destroy bones as well? Had we really heard Yount scream inside the shadow?

We recapitulated everything we could remember. As if we could forget anything! And it all added up to a nightmare.

"The walkie-talkies," said Haggerty. "We've got eighty-odd of them. They can all be adjusted to different wavelengths. I suggest we estimate how many, and then each of us take his share of them, and start sending, not only in Morse and International codes, but in every language we know, down to Greek and Latin!"

It was long past midnight by the time we had worked out charts of wavelengths for the walkie-talkies, and divided them among us. Then we scattered, first stripping off our jackets and laying our fast-fire weapons on them to keep the weapons from being fouled by sand. We needed our hands free.

"The first whisper anybody gets, he'll sing out," I instructed officers and men.

Marines acquire a lot of miscellaneous information—and plenty of misinformation. Among seventy-five or eighty one would find a dozen European languages, Gaelic probably, three or four Chinese dialects, a smattering of Congo jabbering, a spot of Latin, a touch of Greek. If someone asked me, anywhere, anytime, in the presence of as few as a dozen marines, if any of them knew Sanskrit I would hesitate to say no.

We turned all that mess loose on our walkie-talkies. If anybody ever really "shot the moon," it was us.

CHAPTER THREE

Alien Voices

Each man had his message pad on his knee, or on the sand beside him, opened up. The moon was so brilliant we had scarcely any need of the illuminated pages with which each book was equipped.

Within fifteen minutes our walkie-talkies were going wild. Every last one received first, the eerie whispering. Then the men began to report shouts, weeping, wordless screams, unearthly music, wind instruments, drums, tom-toms—just about every noise-making agency of which any of us had ever heard.

Was all this in answer to our attempts to communicate? How could we make contact that would also make sense?

So far, the sounds were no more informative than static. But it was something, when we had been hearing nothing at all, so we kept at it.

We kept it up for three days and nights.

The Shadow Men did not return during that time. The Japanese gradually mingled with us. They realized that we knew no more of our situation than they did, possibly less, and joined with us in trying to work it out.

It was midnight, the fourth night of our disappearance, when we got a break.

Ziegler brought me a message which said: "You are wasting your time. Contact like this is forbidden."

I looked at Ziegler.

"You got this in English?" I asked.

"No, sir. It's Mangbetu, an African dialect. I did some work among those people, some years ago. It's difficult. I could be mistaken, but I don't think so."

"Did you answer this?"

"No, sir."

"Go ahead," I said, "confirm! We'll see what happens."

He chattered something into his walkie-talkie. Instantly all sound died out of every last walkie-talkie.

We'd accomplished—what? Only something remotely confirming Matzuku, the Japanese who had located us in the Kalahari Desert of Africa.

We slept by fits and starts. The Shadow Men did not return. Silence held sway in our walkie-talkie receivers, though we kept on sending. Ziegler gave us Mangbetu words to use, but nothing came of it. That line of investigation was clearly ended.

We began working on the inner wall of the dome with our entrenching tools. That started something!

It was now clear that if we ever got out of wherever we were, we would have to do it on our own.

First, to establish the exact circumference of the dome, I formed all hands, sailors, marines and Japanese, in a single column and we did the circle. I wanted everybody whose lot was our lot, to know every detail that might later prove valuable. The area under our feet, available to us within the dome, we estimated at ten acres. That gave us considerable inner surface of wall and dome to be studied. We could not see the dome, we only knew it was there. We had small radar and sonar sets, but the dome registered on neither. Nothing we shouted was echoed back to us, nor did the chattering of the fast-firers cause reverberations. With those fast-firers, the ultimate in small arms, we searched out every quadrant of the dome, to see if there were any opening. In the same way we searched out every yard of the wall; there was no way out, at least of any size, for I'd have wagered, so carefully was this job done, that if one bullet fired into dome or wall had fallen outside, some one of us would have spotted it.

We used up a lot of steel-jacketed bullets, but we found not a single aperture in the wall or dome.

Next we worked on our super-grenades, of which we had a fairly good supply. This was dangerous work; we had to dig trenches from which to heave them. Even the rifle grenades were dangerous because of our limited escape area.

The grenades did nothing to the wall; nothing whatever.

The flame-throwers accomplished little more. There was danger with these, too, for the flame bathed the wall—we could see it strike and blossom up and down—and backfired so that it was a wonder all who stood behind the machines were not wiped out. And even the flames did not affect the wall.

We even, so help me, tried to talk a hole through the wall! Yes, Krane thought of it, Trumpeter Krane.

"Maybe we could find the key sound of the dome," he said, "and shatter it with sound. You know, like marching steps shaking down a bridge."

Well, we tried, but got nowhere.

"Shovels, then," I said. "Entrenching tools! Maybe we can go under."

All hands groaned. There is nothing a marine or sailor dislikes more than digging in—even when bullets are flying thick and fast.

I think we were all a little mad then. It was bad enough to dig down into sand that poured into a hole faster than one could dig, but to accomplish nothing by doing it was heartbreaking. By day we perspired like hippos, rubbed the skin off our palms, got raw and bleeding where our clothes chafed. Water and food were no problem, for our mysterious source of supply never for a moment ceased or abated.

We fought that wall for days and nights on end, as a mob, in shifts, and singly. We got nowhere. There were times when the sand inside the dome looked as if a huge animal had been rooting, or a crowd digging for treasure. But when we stopped for a few moments to rest we could hear the sand whispering with glee as it slid back into the pits we had dug—leveling off the area again.

We managed in some places to get down ten feet or so into the sand, and to witness a strange phenomenon. We never got under the wall, nor were we able to penetrate it anywhere, yet when sand poured back into the pits we dug—it poured back from beyond the wall, too, as if there were no obstruction! It poured in, apparently through the very wall we were trying to breach.

Naturally we wondered, if we had been digging on the outside, trying to get in, if the sand would have poured outward into the holes, too. We all remembered how we had got into the dome so easily, yet we could find no way, shape, form or manner to get out.

The Shadow Men, however, had escaped....

Yes, we studied that LCVP that had seemed to be a funnel by which the Shadow Men coalesced into one shadow and vanished, but could find no key to the means or manner of their strange escape.

We were resting one afternoon, and Haggerty had just said this was the most unsatisfactory duty he had ever performed in twenty-some years of landing with the marines around the world, while Hoose suggested we ought to have a name for this nameless area, and Trumpeter Krane offered "Outpost Zero" as the most appropriate—when Preble erupted: "My God! Look!"

He was pointing up through the dome. Spinning down toward us from an empty sky was a ball of something that looked like metal—or perhaps crystal. It glistened and shone in the sun. It almost hurt the eyes.

Nobody said anything as that ball came closer and closer. I think we all knew what it was, though none of us had been at Hiroshima that fatal day.

We saw the A-bomb disintegrate, almost lazily, directly above our dome.

No one who has seen the Hiroshima pictures needs a further explanation of what we all saw. Only, this A-bomb was far more powerful than the first one. Only one nation, we all thought, could have it.

Why would our own people be so intent on wiping us out?

In a split second we were in the midst of the cloud, in the heart of the explosion, each one of us trying to convince himself, by pinching, that he was actually going through an A-bomb explosion—absolutely unscathed. Not even a sound came through.

We were sitting in the middle of the perfect defense against the A-bomb, but we didn't know what it was or who had made it—and we couldn't get out of it!

There was comfort in the knowledge that someone knew, else how did it happen that the A-bomb made what would have been a direct hit on the dome if it hadn't been detonated about a thousand feet above? There was design here, all right—but whose?

Nobody could imagine our own government addressing us in Mangbetu!

We thought we were all dead men. We had all seen pictures of survivors of Hiroshima, with their skin burned off their bones.

The Japs had not seen. They had been in the Guamian jungles and had not even heard of Hiroshima. I told them. They looked at one another in amazement. All this time we cowered in the heart of the explosion, and for the first time we could see the shape and extent of the dome which imprisoned us. It was outlined in smoke through which shot tongues of blue, green, and salmon pink. In the cloud which surrounded us we could see all the prisms play—and inter-flashing of lights of all colors that was unbelievably awesome. Yet we heard no sound. There was an eerie glow on the sand around us which must have come from the light, but if it had any ill effect on our bodies we have not yet become aware of it.

We had kept our watches wound and synchronized, so we timed the duration of the blast. The cloud about us lasted for two hours. Then it began slowly to disintegrate.

"Out to the walls, now," I said. "We'll move out from the center as skirmishers. Then, at my signal, when we're against the wall, we'll circle to the right until we have examined every inch we can reach or see."

Far above the dome we saw the great snowy mushroom of the blast's residue, with lights playing through it. We looked out through the wall at the sand beyond—and there was no sand. Only a landscape shaped as it had been when it had been sand; but now it was a smooth, rolling expanse of light green! The blast had been a vast primordial glazier, and the sand was not sand now, but green glass—right up to the outside of our still invisible dome! We marched out and looked through. We did the natural things, like putting our hands up beside faces that we pressed nose-flat against the invisible. The wall felt warm, but no warmer than it had felt before the blast. Our dome had withstood every possible destructive effect of the A-bomb blast!

I stood there, staring out. I looked around, and the marines, sailors and Japanese were standing in the same manner—looking out and through like children looking through a zoo fence.

We must all have realized it at the same time. I noticed, first, that there was suddenly a space between the outside of the wall and the sea of green glass. I noticed that it ran away to right and left, a border between the glass and our sand, which became a little wider even as I stared. Then I felt pressure against the toes of my field shoes. Then I was being pushed bodily back, and the sand border outside was a foot wide!

I whirled this time, back against the wall, to stare at the others. They were all facing inboard, too. It was clear that all had noticed the widening border, that each knew the fact: our dome was closing in on us, all around.

Probably most of us had read Poe's "Pit and the Pendulum" and enjoyed the spine-tingling horror of the walls closing in to crush the hapless victim.

Just now it was far from thrilling.

From all sides the wall closed in. We looked away to the south. The entire mountain there had become greenish, as if it, too, had turned to glass.

"No one blast," said Haggerty grimly, "did that. Not even the best we have in A-bombs could have done so much. That mountain is ten, fifteen miles away, at least. There must have been more A-bombs...."

"And maybe more domes," said Hoose. "How do we know that this whole desert isn't dotted with them?"

"Each one with its bugs under it for scientific study," said Haggerty wryly.

My mind went around and around. The Shadow Men ... Mangbetu ... the blast ... the desert ... the betrayal by the very sky itself ... the Japanese....

I had to turn it off or go crazy. Besides, the closing wall wasn't giving us much time. Faster and faster it advanced.

It was clear that we were being pushed deliberately inward on the LCVP's. Within a few minutes we were practically on the LCVP ramps.

"Grab all weapons!" I yelled. "Don't risk finding them on the pay roll!"

Marines who lose weapons have to pay for them. That's what I meant, silly as it seems in the circumstances.

Just as we were falling in at the sand-covered ramps of the three LCVP's, Krane cried out: "Where are the Japs?"

It gave me a chill. There was no escaping a peculiar fact: that even while the invisible was herding us, assembling us before our LCVP's, something of it, or about it, had snatched away the Japanese. They had simply vanished.

The walls were not circular now, but oval, roughly encompassing the LCVP's. Haggerty assembled his men before his LCVP. Hoose did the same. Mine assembled about me on the central ramp.

Then, when we were inside, in position as he had been when we landed, with only one man missing—Yount—the wall ceased closing in. For ten minutes we wondered about this. Then I had a hunch.

"Can we raise the ramps without the motors?"

We couldn't, not all the way, but we could, with two men at each outer corner, raise them about four feet, catch and hold them with their rattling chains.

When we figured this out we did it by the numbers—

And we almost left twelve men on the beach!

No sooner had we raised the ramps than the Caribbean was tugging at our LCVP's, the waves trying to take them back to sea. Our ramp men jumped up on their ramps, rolled crazily into the LCVP's, and the ramps raised all the way, clicking into place to become the prows of the unwieldy landing craft.

Cries of glee rose from our boat-handlers. Motors caught on the first try, exactly as if they had not been idle for two weeks, and the LCVP's were backing away from Yataritas Beach, turning, heading out to sea. I whirled and looked out into the deep blue. I think all of us expected to find the Odyssey still standing off, waiting for us. But it wasn't there.

"Can we make it back to Guantanamo Bay?" I asked the motorman. "Never mind answering; we're going to!" A cheer rose from the marines and sailors as we rounded the point we had never expected to see again, and started west, in deep blue water, along the coast.

LCVP's aren't good travelers. They roll like eggs on a hill, but this time nobody got seasick.

"Outpost Zero," said someone, looking back at Yataritas Beach. "If I never even hear of it again it will be too soon!"

We kept in close formation as we approached Escondido Bay, outside the Reservation. There a cruising plane picked us up, dipped wings over us, looped and headed full speed back to Guantanamo.

We all crawled up our starboard sides, tilting the LCVP's far over, and not caring a bit, to pick out landmarks ashore that we knew—Kittery Beach, Windmill, Cuzco, Blind, Blue and Cable Beaches. Every one looked like home—and the marine hadn't lived, up to that moment, who regarded Guantanamo as home!

There were many planes out, including some of our jets, by the time we reached the mouth of Guantanamo Bay. Luckily the long run was made in fairly smooth water.

We crossed the shelf where the deep blue water of the Caribbean becomes the green-dirty water of the Bay, and were as good as home.

I planned on making it to the Marine Boat House, but the Admiral's launch came out, with a staff officer aboard, with instructions to land at the Admiral's own dock.

I guess it didn't matter much where we docked, for the point of land on which the Admiral had his quarters was covered with uniforms. Marines and sailors were kept back by MP's.

The Chief Staff Officer placed me formally under arrest, "for absence over-leave," he said—though there was a suggestion of excitement in his voice that made me suspect subterfuge. One thing was certain, an officer under arrest kept his mouth shut. I couldn't tell anybody anything. The same thing, or something like it, happened to every one of us. We were all completely muzzled by being placed under arrest. Whatever else we might be, we were "hot."

Then it was that we worked together as even marines did not always work together—and the six gobs pitched in, too.

I made out this report, with the understanding that it would be seen by every leatherneck and sailor, and not submitted until all were satisfied with its accuracy.

I told what seemed to have happened to us. As commanding officer I was requested also to express an opinion. I had none to offer, except that two news bulletins, received over the radio the next day after our return, gave me something to think about.

One of the bulletins explained in somewhat guarded language, that new A-bomb experiments were being made—not in mid-Pacific, in Bikini, but in the heart of the Kalahari Desert! So careful were the brass hats in this important series of tests, that no words in any civilized tongue were allowed to be spoken even on intercom sets! The report didn't mention Mangbetu, but it did say "little known African dialects." This wasn't an unusual procedure, by the way—Comanche Indians had been so employed in World War II.

And what were those people testing, besides the newest thing in A-bombs?

"Part of the test," said the voice of the announcer, "involves an amazing above-ground bomb-shelter! This shelter, of secret manufacture, is believed to be proof against anything except the explosion of the planet itself. Not only is each such shelter capable of great extension, thus to handle large groups of people, but built into it is something new in provisioning. People who are forced into these shelters by sudden attack, are automatically provided with food, water and equable temperature, by a process which provides these necessities as separate exudations from the inner walls of the bombproofs!

"Some fear was expressed, in the midst of the tests," said the announcer, "that there were traitors even among the carefully screened technicians—for despite orders, for a period of three days not only English but many other languages, including the secret dialect used by the technicians, were heard in their intercoms!"

I shivered at that, remembering how, for three days, we had tried every tongue of which we could think. Gradually a picture was beginning to emerge.

"It was feared for some time that some potential aggressor nation had managed somehow to get past the Kalahari guards and ferret out secret information—or else that there was already a fifth column among the technicians!"

No mention anywhere, of the Shadow Men!

I was scared stiff when I realized this. For those Shadow Men, it now seemed, had accomplished something the A-bomb had not been able to do; they had got inside the bombproof, killed Yount—and could easily have killed us all—and got out again.

"The experiments," said the announcer, "were of course carried out by the United Nations Security Council. The results have not been announced in every detail, but the world has been informed that complete security against the A-Bomb has been produced and will be available if ever there is another world war!"

But what about the Shadow Men? What good was the best bombproof if it could be entered so easily, and everybody inside it destroyed?

On the next day after our return I picked up a brief broadcast which I could easily have missed.

"It appears that there are still Japanese soldiers, hiding out on Guam, who do not know that the war is over. Ten Japanese, led by a Corporal Matzuku, surrendered yesterday to Guamian authorities! How they survived for almost four years is a mystery. They appear well fed."

I got this far and realized that I knew a great deal of what had happened, but not how. How we and the Guamian Japanese had been netted under the same bombproof, for instance—they on Guam, ourselves on Yataritas Beach, Cuba.

I had no explanation for the Shadow Men—except that nobody but the "vanishers", ourselves and the Japanese, so much as mentioned them. They were, I felt sure, outside the knowledge of the Security Council.

The Shadow Men were some manifestation—chemicals, or instantaneously acting disease germs?—of a potential enemy fifth column which had horned in on the Kalahari experiments.

I can do no more. This report is respectfully submitted for transmission via official channels.

FIRST ENDORSEMENT

From: Commanding Officer, Guantanamo Marines.

To: Senior Officer Present, Naval Base.

Subject: Yataritas Beach Case.

1. But for the fact that eighty men concur in the attached report I would request that Major Rafe King be ordered to Saint Elizabeth's for observation.

SECOND ENDORSEMENT

From: Senior Officer Present, Naval Base.

To: Chief of Naval Operations.

Subject: Cuba-Yataritas Beach Case.

1. I am not inclined to treat this report lightly, or to suggest that it be so treated elsewhere. Knowing how our marines, sailors, equipment and LCVP's were plucked up and transported to Kalahari, together with the Japanese, I am still in complete ignorance of the meaning of the "Shadow Men." If Operations has any additional information it is felt that this base should be made aware of it.

THIRD ENDORSEMENT

From: Chief of Naval Operations.

To: Commanding General of the Marines.

Subject: Cuba-Yataritas Beach Case.

1. This activity is aware of all details except the so-called "Shadow Men." If the Commanding General of Marines has any information, include it herewith and forward to Chairman, Security Council, United Nations.

FOURTH ENDORSEMENT

From: Chairman, Security Council, United Nations.

To: Major Rafe King, via all above channels.

Subject: The Kalahari Tests.

1. Returned for amplification. It is deemed advisable, in view of publicity attendant on the Cuba-Yataritas angle of the Kalahari Desert tests, to make public the following facts. First, best protection against the A-Bomb is worldwide observation by special television; the Council has it. Second necessity is ability to make the bombproofs, provided by the Security Council, available to anybody, anywhere in the world, who is threatened by attack. Bombproofs are capable of instant transmission to any spot on the face of the globe—and removal of bombproof and occupants to anywhere else in the world—as Cuba-to-Kalahari-to-Guam.

2. Amplification on the "Shadow Men" is required. Every nation in the world, on the honor of its chief executive, has denied all knowledge of the "Shadow Men." Any Fifth Column from "Outside" is considered fantastic beyond all possibility.

Well, there it is. The high brass all along the way has spoken. Now it's up to me. I checked to find that every nation in the world had denied knowledge of the Shadow Men—except our own United States. But without asking for volunteers, our most ruthless high brass would not have sent us to face those shadows, wherein someone was almost certain to die horribly.

So, some nation has lied! We, the United Nations, have the perfect A-bomb-proof, capable of instant transmission to anywhere it is needed. We can also see where it is needed, through our World Visual Section.

But, as usual, for every attack weapon, there is a defense. For every defensive weapon there is, eventually, a weapon which will crack it. We have the best defensive gadget ever constructed, but somebody has the grim, black answer to it!

WHAT NATION?

When the next bombs begin to fall, the name of that nation will be written into the murderous heart of every bomb. Then will tongues be freely loosed which now dare not give offense to any "friendly" nation!

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