ownholster, to find it empty. The pistol was his own 9.5 Colt automatic. Helooked at the dead man, with the white beard and the vivid blueneck-scarf, and he was sure that he had never seen him before. He'd hadthat pistol when he'd come down the ravine....
There was another pistol under the dead man's coat, in ashoulder-holster; a queer thing with a thick round barrel, like an oldpercussion pepper-box, and a diaphragm instead of a muzzle. Probablyprojected ultrasonic waves. He holstered his own Colt and pocketed theunknown weapon. There was a black plastileather-bound notebook. It wasfull of notes. Chemical formulae, yes, and some stuff on sonics; thattied in with the queer pistol. He pocketed that. He'd look both over,when he had time and privacy, two scarce commodities in the Army....
* * * * *
At that moment, there was a sudden rushing overhead, and an instantlater, the barrage began falling beyond the crest of the ridge. Helooked at his watch, blinked, and looked again. That barrage was due at0550; according to his watch, it was 0726. That was another mystery, togo with the question of who the dead man was, where he had come from,and how he'd gotten hold of Benson's pistol. Yes, and how that tank hadgotten blown up. Benson was sure he had used his last grenade back atthe supply-dump.
The hell with it; he'd worry about all that later. The attack was dueany minute, now, and there would be fleeing Commies coming up the valleyahead, of the UN advance. He'd better get himself placed before theystarted coming in on him.
He stopped thinking about the multiple mystery, a solution to whichseemed to dance maddeningly just out of his mental reach, and foundhimself a place among the rocks to wait, and while he waited, he lookedover the plastileather-bound notebook. In civil life, he had been ahigh school chemistry teacher, but the stuff in this book was utterlynew to him. Some of it he could understand readily enough; the rest ofit he could dig out for himself. Stuff about some kind of a carbonatedsoft-drink, and about a couple of unbelievable-looking long-chainmolecules....
After a while, fugitive Communists began coming up the valley to maketheir stand.
Benson put away the notebook, picked up his carbine, and cuddled thestock to his cheek....
THE END
+--------------------------------------------------------------+| || Transcriber's Note || || Bold text was surrounded by '+' symbols. || || One "onionskin" was converted to "onion-skin" to conform || with the majority usage in the text. || || "rebuilds" and "re-builds" were left alone as there was no || predominant usage || || The following typos were corrected: || || benificence beneficence || lethel lethal || "See See || tyranical tyrannical || || Subscripts || || Water was shown as H_{2}O, and || Sulfuric acid as H_{2}SO_{4} || |+--------------------------------------------------------------+
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