Avenue of Escape

(1942)*

Astounding Science Fiction, November 1942

By Hal Clement

The sergeant swaggered into the dugout, carefully indifferent to the stares of Corporal Snodgrass, Buck Private Kendall, and the captain’s orderly. He dropped into a seat at the packing-case table, and the orderly automatically began to deal.

“F’r gosh sakes, sarge, how did you make it?” asked the corporal, picking up his hand. “We thought we’d have to get a new fourth. Ken said you were in a shell hole up front, with a Jap machine gun pecking at you every time you poked your head out. We figgered you’d last till dark, and then they’d crawl out and drop a grenade on you.”

The sergeant glared at his cards and then at the orderly. “I have told you children time and again that a clever man—a man, say, intelligent enough to reach the rank of mess sergeant, where all his work is done for him—can find a way out of anything,” he remarked, discarding four cards. “If Ken, instead of merely reporting the presence of that machine gun, had gone to the trouble to drop a grenade on it with that trench mortar I developed, I would have been spared the effort of thinking my own way out of trouble; but he was always a thoughtless youngster.”

Several hands were played in silence, the men knowing better than to ask questions. As they expected, the sergeant finally unbent.

“It is also like you young squirts to refuse to profit by the ingenuity of yer betters. I suppose it’s my duty to explain my methods, in the event of your ever occupying a similar position. As you said, I was in that shell hole, which was the only cover in the neighborhood. My support, consisting of you, had departed rearward under the wing of a handy smoke pot, not leaving room for your superior officer in the cloud. As you know, I have always been opposed to the use of machine guns, and the specimen covering my shelter did nothing to change my opinion. Maybe I can persuade the army to my way of thinking, after this.

“There was only one of the guns in the nest, which was two hundred yards away. Knowing that you were retreating along their line of fire, I thoughtfully refrained from attracting their attention until I was sure you were safe—that was why I didn’t follow you just then. When the smoke cleared away so that I could walk without trippin’ on things, I came back.”

“Huh? Did you have a tank with you?” asked the corporal.

“I did not, son. I have told you many a time machine guns are useless weapons. Consider, please. That gun fired about fifteen h’indred shots a minute, with a muzzle velocity of about four thousand feet per second. A little arithmetic, of which even you should be capable, shows that there is a space of one hundred and sixty feet between bullets—enough for any normal man. I walked back.”

The End

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