The Invisible Enemy — A Closer Reading

Tom was silent for a while. Then he asked: "I'm not going to have any trouble with that, am I?"

"No, but take it easy for the next couple of days. I'll put a bandage on it, but it takes time for that stuff to gel."

He went to work on the bandage, while his companion started packing up the apparatus. Five minutes later they had gone.

Tom lay thinking. None of his questions had yet been answered. He still could not think coherently about even the recent past. And nobody had been able to state clearly just whom they were fighting, though everyone agreed on the motives for the war: they were defending freedom against tyranny--it was as simple and as basic as that. However, it somehow left Tom unsatisfied.

"Well, what did I tell you?" the soldier next to him remarked. "Discipline. No trucks. No picnic. Just discipline. Say, how about a cigarette. I must have dropped mine in the scramble."

"Sure." Tom threw him a mashed, half-empty pack.

"Hey, thanks." He lit one, carefully buttoning the rest in a pocket of his fatigue jacket. "Thanks a lot."

"Okay, you guys," came the hoarse command. "Strip them butts! We're movin'."

"Discipline," the soldier muttered bitterly, crushing the cigarette into the gravel. "Discipline."

The night was quiet, too quiet. There were remote and occasional atomic artillery bursts. But no other noise.

The two other members of the patrol were immediately ahead of Tom. But they progressed slowly and made little sound. Tom crept forward a single notch, looking up only when he had sunk again into the grass. On either side there was nothing but blackness. Once more he squirmed forward with his boots and forearms. Still there was only the quiet and darkness of night. He lay there for a while, waiting and wondering.

He had ceased pondering those questions which had most concerned him during the earlier days. Now he asked himself only when would it be over. Nothing else any longer seemed to matter. But more and more frequently there had come to his mind a single irrelevant memory. It was an image of a clear day, of a cool breeze off the ocean, of a crest of green and gold eucalyptus on a faraway hill. It had something to do with home. But that was all he knew of it, and it was all he could recall of home.

A burst of flashless automatic fire from somewhere up the ridge brought a scream from the soldier in front of him and sent him writhing down the slope. Tom lowered himself till he was on a level with the sight of his carbine, then started scanning the rise. A moment later he spotted the greenish glow of the sniper's infrared beam, and flipping the safety onto automatic, he squeezed the trigger. Rapidly he replaced the clip and waited. After several moments, he uncautiously flooded the terrain with his own light. A mere hundred feet away was a sprawling greenish form. One of the enemy. A good and dead one.

It was ten minutes before he heard the remaining member of the patrol working his way back.

"Good boy!" came a whisper. "You got him."

"What do _you_ think?"

"Sure. There ain't no troops up there. That's what we came to find out. Maybe a few snipers is all."

They started crawling the way they had come. But this time it was more tedious because of the abrasions and bruises that had been incurred. Dawn was a pastey gray in the sky behind them when they at last neared the lines.

"Something funny," the sergeant muttered suspiciously, rising to his knees.

"What's wrong," Tom asked wearily.

"I don't know. Wait here." Tom waited till the sky threatened to become light, then began following. He continued along the route which he felt must lead to the lines, but after some minutes began to feel a sense of panic. The landmarks were all wrong and the cloud-strewn sky gave no indication of direction. Then, from the other side of a low, rocky hillock came the unmistakable sound of approaching troops. Running forward to the edge, he stopped abruptly as he found himself face to face with the enemy.

Suddenly all the hate and guilt he had ever known exploded into his awareness. The face before him was a meaningless blur, but he did not need to know the enemy to loathe him. His carbine was in his hands, the safety off, the barrel lowered, the trigger squeezed--but the rifle failed to fire.