At the Narrow Passage Read Free Page A

relaxed, said, "Good morning, sir."

"Morning, Mathers, Tracy," the colonel replied in the clipped fashion

that I suppose was natural to him.

Woods held the flap open until the other two men accompanying him came into

the dugout. As I expected, one of them wore captain's bars and the other

was a lieutenant. Our replacements.

Colonel Woods quickly made the introductions. The captain was a tall,

slender Floridian named David Walters. The lieutenant was a shorter,

stockier man named Carl Boland. He was a Virginian, the same as I was

supposed to be.

"Spot of tea, Colonel?" Tracy asked once the three newcomers had seated

themselves at the table -- in the three chairs. I guessed that left the

box for me and Tracy would just have to stand.

"No. Just had a cup," Woods answered. "No time, anyway. Must get back

to headquarters."

Walters and Boland accepted Tracy's offer, and he began to rummage around

for two fairly clean cups.

"Sorry to come in on you so abruptly, Mathers," Colonel Woods went on

to say. "Orders y'know."

"Yes, sir. Of course."

"You and Tracy will have till noon to get your gear together and introduce

Walters and Boland to your men. A signaler will come then to accompany you

to brigade headquarters."

"Brigade, sir?" I asked.

Woods nodded, shrugged, then pulled a mimeographed sheet of paper from

his pocket and handed it to me. "Orders just came round this morning."

The orders were quite explicit. We were relieved of our commands as of

0900 and were to report to brigade at 1300.

"Brigade is sending a man round for you," Woods said. "Understand that

HQ's been moved or some such. You'll have to wait for him."

"Yes, sir." Odd, I thought. Were we going to brigade at all? Probably not,

but Woods wouldn't know that. He would never really know what became of us.

I knew for a fact that Woods wasn't a Timeliner; he was exactly what he

was supposed to be. He knew nothing, suspected nothing of the existence

of the Kriths or of the fact that men from other universes were here

helping him and his British Empire wage war against the Holy Romans.

Nor did either Walters or Boland seem to be other than what they claimed.

They gave no indications, and we Timeliners have a thousand secret ways

of letting other Timeliners know of our presence.

No, it appeared that the Kriths had given up on this one rather minor

aspect of their master plan for this Line. They had something else in

mind for Tracy and me. We'd learn what that was soon enough, I suspected.

"Well, must be shoving off," Woods said abruptly, rising. He offered his

hand to me. "Been nice knowing you, Mathers, Tracy. You'll both get good

reports from me."

"Thank you, sir," I said, shaking his hand.

After briefly clasping Tracy's hand, Woods turned, ducked out under the

flap that covered the dugout's door and vanished.

I turned back to my replacement.

"Well, Walters," I asked, "ready for me to show you around a bit?"

3

Kearns

Long before noon I had completed all the introductions, said all my

good-byes, and packed what gear I had.

After a trip to the latrine, Tracy and I sat down on the bunks that had,

a few hours before, been ours, and waited for the man to come who was to

lead us to "brigade headquarters," whatever that might be this time.

Walters and Boland, after saying their good-byes to us, had gone to

mess, so Tracy and I were alone when the sergeant came into the dugout,

snapped to attention and saluted.

"Captain Mathers, sir?" he asked.

I nodded. "This is Lieutenant Tracy."

"I'm Sergeant Kearns, sir." Then he paused, his face relaxing. "Are we

alone?"

"Yes, we are."

As I answered, Kearns deliberately placed the tip of his right thumb

against the tip of his right ring finger. It was one of our signals.

I replied by performing the same gesture with my left hand, though since

most of my left ring finger was missing, I used the middle one. Tracy

signaled with a similar gesture.

" Ca kasser a Shangalis? " Kearns