22

Steve stumbled into the pen, repeatedly shoved from behind by one of the soldiers. As soon as they had locked the gate behind him, however, he saw that the team was together and unhurt. Right now that was good enough.

“Hey, Hunter,” said Steve. “Look at the crowd in here. Maybe MC 4 is in here someplace. What if they grabbed him when he showed up and just threw him in?”

“Just as they did with us,” said Judy. “That’s a good possibility. We should look.”

“I am looking,” said Hunter. “However, the crowd is dense. Everyone is standing together. I cannot see most people well enough to recognize them.” He turned to his team members. “We can move into the crowd in a moment. First I want to say this. I fear we may have to return again to our own time. If the artillery shelling comes near this area, I shall have no choice. So we must remain close together.”

“Maybe we really messed up,” said Judy. “A big battle in the industrial age is no time to look for MC 4. I thought we’d be talking to some officers, not just locked up and abandoned.”

“Me, too,” said Jane. “Hunter, do you want to go right back and pick another time? In all this confusion, I doubt anybody would notice if we just vanished again.”

“I agree with you about that,” said Hunter. “That gives us slightly greater flexibility. We can afford to wait a little longer before giving up.”

“You mean you want to stay longer?” Steve was startled. “Why?”

“The continuing danger is that Wayne Nystrom will beat us to MC 4, even in the midst of the battle. However, my greatest fear is that MC 4 will be hit by gunfire or something worse, damaging him to the point of being unrecognizable. That will make locating him very difficult-perhaps impossible. Coming back after the battle could be useless, and we would never be able to reassemble Mojave Center Governor.”

“I don’t see what we can do here,” said Judy. “And if MC 4 gets blown into junk, then he won’t change history.”

“You forgot about that nuclear explosion,” said Steve. “Even if he’s in two thousand pieces that just lie around under the soil undisturbed until our time, we know his remains explode when the time comes.”

“Oh-yeah.” Judy nodded tightly.

Hunter turned to her. “What happens here today?”

“Let me think. The Germans are on the defensive. They’re about to experience their first defeat on the Russian front. During the next six weeks, they’ll be driven back until they can stabilize the line in mid-January.” She shook her head.

“What’s wrong?” Hunter asked.

“Today in particular, I just don’t remember much detail. The Germans obviously get the worst of it.” She hesitated. “Half a million prisoners in their control, like these right here, will die in the first three months of winter from exposure.”

Steve could hear the sounds of artillery and tanks drawing closer. The weapons of this time required that the battle would be fought at a fairly close distance. The ground shook with the thundering of artillery.

“Let’s walk up and join the group,” said Hunter. “If we’re lucky, MC 4 is right here.”

The other prisoners had little interest in them, as they continued to watch the smoke rising in the distance. The team slowly merged into the crowd. Hunter, because of his height, could see much more clearly than his team members. When Steve saw motion off to one side of the pen, outside the barbed wire, he turned to look.

A troop of German infantry was marching a long line of other prisoners past the pen, away from the front lines. As the filthy, ragged prisoners streamed past, a German officer stopped at the gate to their pen. The guards nodded and opened the gate.

“Hunter,” Steve said quickly, tapping him on the arm. “Look.”

Hunter turned. At the same time, one of the guards blew a whistle and began waving for everyone to come out. Another guard began barking orders.

“Judy, what are they doing?” Hunter asked. “Where are they taking all these people?”

“All the POWs are being marched to the rear right away, so they can’t be a threat of any kind in the day’s operations. These guys were probably held in other pens similar to this one.”

Steve watched everyone. The crowd of prisoners around them was already moving toward the gate. Since the marching prisoners were being taken west, away from the growing battle, none of the prisoners in the pen hesitated.

“We shall go with them,” said Hunter. “Long enough to find out if MC 4 is here somewhere, or in that other group. If we see no sign of him, we can return to our time and plan again. At least we are leaving the combat behind.”

Steve nodded. He waited patiently as the crowd shuffled forward, slowed by the bottleneck at the gate. Again, Hunter led the way and Steve brought up the rear.

At the gate, some prisoners had been pulled out of the line by men in different uniforms. These prisoners were standing at gunpoint just to one side of the gate. Hunter passed out of the gate, as did Jane. Then one of the guards grabbed Judy’s arm and jerked her aside, out of the line.

Before Steve could respond, another guard leveled his rifle at Steve and sharply moved the point toward Judy. Suddenly moving very cautiously, Steve stepped over to her.

Hunter turned and saw them from outside the barbed wire.

“Hey! What are you doing with them?” Hunter demanded.

One of the guards slammed the butt of his rifle into Hunter’s abdomen. The big robot, unhurt, bent forward slightly at the impact, pretending to react. “Why are you keeping them?”

“They’re going to execute us,” Judy shouted through the wires.

“Shut up, Jewish pig,” said one of the men, spitting on her. “All you subhumans will be eliminated before we go.”

Steve slammed into him, knocking him off balance. “Judy, run! Get outside the gate!” He pushed her forward. Hunter could not take the team back while local people stood among them, within the range of the sphere, or else he would take them, too.

Suddenly, in the line of prisoners marching behind Hunter to the west, Steve saw MC 4, his head down like the others. Steve pointed. “Hunter! There he is!” He started to yell MC 4’s name, then realized that it would alert the component robot to the pursuit. So far, in the noise and confusion all around, MC 4 had not realized anyone was concerned with him.

Something hard slammed into the back of Steve’s head and his legs crumpled, dropping him to the frozen ground with a thump. For a moment, he was dazed. He heard shouts and felt the pounding of feet on the ground around him, but could not think clearly.

Wayne and Ishihara had both seen Leutnant Mohr’s armored car pull up to the gate. Wayne had hoped the Leutnant was coming back for them. When Wayne had seen Hunter and his team, of course, he and Ishihara had hidden in the crowd of prisoners. They stayed behind Hunter as the prisoners moved toward the gate of the pen.

Now, however, they had both been herded close to the gate with everyone else. Ahead of him, Ishihara had almost reached the opening. Wayne remained caught behind the bottleneck, near Steve and Judy and the guards holding them. Then Wayne heard Steve shout and point to MC 4, who was about to march right in front of the gate among the troop of prisoners.

Wayne felt a rush of excitement. He, too, pointed to MC 4. “Ishihara, grab him!”

Ishihara was still trapped in the crowd, however. As they shuffled forward with everyone else, Wayne heard a uniformed man tell the woman whom Steve had called Judy that he was going to kill her, Steve, and the others who had been taken aside. Then the man spat on her.

Wayne was shocked. Somehow, until this moment, the people around them had been sort of abstract, unreal. He knew that the combat and stress of war was horrible, but he had not expected to see prisoners simply executed out of hand like this. For the first time, he realized how ignorant he was of this time and these people.

Hunter had moved just outside the gate and beyond the barbed wire, but he responded instantly. Flinging aside one startled German guard, he plunged directly into the barbed wire, stretching it forward with his weight, ignoring how it tore into his clothes. He reached through the wires for Judy and Steve, but two more guards threw themselves on him, forcing him to turn and fight them off.

In the same instant, Ishihara pushed people away from him just inside the barbed wire. He slammed into the guard who had spit on Judy, knocking his rifle to the ground. The immediacy of the danger to people from his own time had forced Ishihara to act under the First Law.

The other prisoners quickly drew away from the gate, hoping to avoid getting hurt if the Germans began firing their weapons. Suddenly the open gateway was in front of Wayne. MC 4 was only a few yards away.

Wayne looked back at Hunter and Ishihara, who were struggling with a knot of German guards and other soldiers. More soldiers had gathered around them with their rifles aimed. They hesitated to shoot for fear of hitting their own comrades.

Steve pushed himself up, stumbling into a standing position. Judy took his arm to help him up. She frantically pulled him toward the open gate.

The angry, impatient guard who had spit on Judy had drawn his sidearm. With deliberate care, he raised it toward the back of Judy’s head.

Forgetting MC 4, Wayne threw himself against the man’s legs. The gun went off, firing into the ground. Both men fell, tripping some of the troops who had been shuffling in a crazed huddle with Hunter and Ishihara.

Steve blinked, staggering dizzily, and looked around. Judy was dragging him by the arm. Ishihara flung German soldiers away from himself. They fell against the semicircle of armed soldiers surrounding them. Some fired as they went down, but their bullets went wild into the air.

As Judy pushed Steve out the open gate, Ishihara threw himself on the ground over Wayne, protecting him. Then he reached into his tunic, apparently the same one he had worn in ancient Germany. Wayne and Ishihara vanished.

Jane had grabbed MC 4’s arm and was trying to pull him after her. He was not coming, but she had slowed him down. Hunter hurled the soldiers around him to the ground just as Steve and Judy reached him. Then Hunter stretched out one long arm and yanked MC 4 closer. Jane came with him, still holding the small robot’s arm. Steve saw Hunter reach inside his heavy overcoat.

An instant later, Steve found himself back in the familiar, crowded darkness of the sphere. No one spoke while Hunter opened it, jumped out, and pulled MC 4 into Room F-12 after him. Judy got out next; this time she and Jane had to help Steve climb out slowly. He was still dizzy.