Each man had his message pad on his knee, or on the sand beside him, opened up. The moon was so brilliant we had scarcely any need of the illuminated pages with which each book was equipped.

Within fifteen minutes our walkie-talkies were going wild. Every last one received first, the eerie whispering. Then the men began to report shouts, weeping, wordless screams, unearthly music, wind instruments, drums, tom-toms—just about every noise-making agency of which any of us had ever heard.

Was all this in answer to our attempts to communicate? How could we make contact that would also make sense?

So far, the sounds were no more informative than static. But it was something, when we had been hearing nothing at all, so we kept at it.

We kept it up for three days and nights.

The Shadow Men did not return during that time. The Japanese gradually mingled with us. They realized that we knew no more of our situation than they did, possibly less, and joined with us in trying to work it out.

It was midnight, the fourth night of our disappearance, when we got a break.

Ziegler brought me a message which said: "You are wasting your time. Contact like this is forbidden."

I looked at Ziegler.

"You got this in English?" I asked.

"No, sir. It's Mangbetu, an African dialect. I did some work among those people, some years ago. It's difficult. I could be mistaken, but I don't think so."

"Did you answer this?"

"No, sir."

"Go ahead," I said, "confirm! We'll see what happens."

He chattered something into his walkie-talkie. Instantly all sound died out of every last walkie-talkie.

We'd accomplished—what? Only something remotely confirming Matzuku, the Japanese who had located us in the Kalahari Desert of Africa.

We slept by fits and starts. The Shadow Men did not return. Silence held sway in our walkie-talkie receivers, though we kept on sending. Ziegler gave us Mangbetu words to use, but nothing came of it. That line of investigation was clearly ended.

We began working on the inner wall of the dome with our entrenching tools. That started something!

It was now clear that if we ever got out of wherever we were, we would have to do it on our own.

First, to establish the exact circumference of the dome, I formed all hands, sailors, marines and Japanese, in a single column and we did the circle. I wanted everybody whose lot was our lot, to know every detail that might later prove valuable. The area under our feet, available to us within the dome, we estimated at ten acres. That gave us considerable inner surface of wall and dome to be studied. We could not see the dome, we only knew it was there. We had small radar and sonar sets, but the dome registered on neither. Nothing we shouted was echoed back to us, nor did the chattering of the fast-firers cause reverberations. With those fast-firers, the ultimate in small arms, we searched out every quadrant of the dome, to see if there were any opening. In the same way we searched out every yard of the wall; there was no way out, at least of any size, for I'd have wagered, so carefully was this job done, that if one bullet fired into dome or wall had fallen outside, some one of us would have spotted it.

We used up a lot of steel-jacketed bullets, but we found not a single aperture in the wall or dome.

Next we worked on our super-grenades, of which we had a fairly good supply. This was dangerous work; we had to dig trenches from which to heave them. Even the rifle grenades were dangerous because of our limited escape area.

The grenades did nothing to the wall; nothing whatever.

The flame-throwers accomplished little more. There was danger with these, too, for the flame bathed the wall—we could see it strike and blossom up and down—and backfired so that it was a wonder all who stood behind the machines were not wiped out. And even the flames did not affect the wall.

We even, so help me, tried to talk a hole through the wall! Yes, Krane thought of it, Trumpeter Krane.

"Maybe we could find the key sound of the dome," he said, "and shatter it with sound. You know, like marching steps shaking down a bridge."

Well, we tried, but got nowhere.

"Shovels, then," I said. "Entrenching tools! Maybe we can go under."

All hands groaned. There is nothing a marine or sailor dislikes more than digging in—even when bullets are flying thick and fast.

I think we were all a little mad then. It was bad enough to dig down into sand that poured into a hole faster than one could dig, but to accomplish nothing by doing it was heartbreaking. By day we perspired like hippos, rubbed the skin off our palms, got raw and bleeding where our clothes chafed. Water and food were no problem, for our mysterious source of supply never for a moment ceased or abated.

We fought that wall for days and nights on end, as a mob, in shifts, and singly. We got nowhere. There were times when the sand inside the dome looked as if a huge animal had been rooting, or a crowd digging for treasure. But when we stopped for a few moments to rest we could hear the sand whispering with glee as it slid back into the pits we had dug—leveling off the area again.

We managed in some places to get down ten feet or so into the sand, and to witness a strange phenomenon. We never got under the wall, nor were we able to penetrate it anywhere, yet when sand poured back into the pits we dug—it poured back from beyond the wall, too, as if there were no obstruction! It poured in, apparently through the very wall we were trying to breach.

Naturally we wondered, if we had been digging on the outside, trying to get in, if the sand would have poured outward into the holes, too. We all remembered how we had got into the dome so easily, yet we could find no way, shape, form or manner to get out.

The Shadow Men, however, had escaped....

Yes, we studied that LCVP that had seemed to be a funnel by which the Shadow Men coalesced into one shadow and vanished, but could find no key to the means or manner of their strange escape.

We were resting one afternoon, and Haggerty had just said this was the most unsatisfactory duty he had ever performed in twenty-some years of landing with the marines around the world, while Hoose suggested we ought to have a name for this nameless area, and Trumpeter Krane offered "Outpost Zero" as the most appropriate—when Preble erupted: "My God! Look!"

He was pointing up through the dome. Spinning down toward us from an empty sky was a ball of something that looked like metal—or perhaps crystal. It glistened and shone in the sun. It almost hurt the eyes.

Nobody said anything as that ball came closer and closer. I think we all knew what it was, though none of us had been at Hiroshima that fatal day.

We saw the A-bomb disintegrate, almost lazily, directly above our dome.

No one who has seen the Hiroshima pictures needs a further explanation of what we all saw. Only, this A-bomb was far more powerful than the first one. Only one nation, we all thought, could have it.

Why would our own people be so intent on wiping us out?

In a split second we were in the midst of the cloud, in the heart of the explosion, each one of us trying to convince himself, by pinching, that he was actually going through an A-bomb explosion—absolutely unscathed. Not even a sound came through.

We were sitting in the middle of the perfect defense against the A-bomb, but we didn't know what it was or who had made it—and we couldn't get out of it!

There was comfort in the knowledge that someone knew, else how did it happen that the A-bomb made what would have been a direct hit on the dome if it hadn't been detonated about a thousand feet above? There was design here, all right—but whose?

Nobody could imagine our own government addressing us in Mangbetu!

We thought we were all dead men. We had all seen pictures of survivors of Hiroshima, with their skin burned off their bones.

The Japs had not seen. They had been in the Guamian jungles and had not even heard of Hiroshima. I told them. They looked at one another in amazement. All this time we cowered in the heart of the explosion, and for the first time we could see the shape and extent of the dome which imprisoned us. It was outlined in smoke through which shot tongues of blue, green, and salmon pink. In the cloud which surrounded us we could see all the prisms play—and inter-flashing of lights of all colors that was unbelievably awesome. Yet we heard no sound. There was an eerie glow on the sand around us which must have come from the light, but if it had any ill effect on our bodies we have not yet become aware of it.

We had kept our watches wound and synchronized, so we timed the duration of the blast. The cloud about us lasted for two hours. Then it began slowly to disintegrate.

"Out to the walls, now," I said. "We'll move out from the center as skirmishers. Then, at my signal, when we're against the wall, we'll circle to the right until we have examined every inch we can reach or see."

Far above the dome we saw the great snowy mushroom of the blast's residue, with lights playing through it. We looked out through the wall at the sand beyond—and there was no sand. Only a landscape shaped as it had been when it had been sand; but now it was a smooth, rolling expanse of light green! The blast had been a vast primordial glazier, and the sand was not sand now, but green glass—right up to the outside of our still invisible dome! We marched out and looked through. We did the natural things, like putting our hands up beside faces that we pressed nose-flat against the invisible. The wall felt warm, but no warmer than it had felt before the blast. Our dome had withstood every possible destructive effect of the A-bomb blast!

I stood there, staring out. I looked around, and the marines, sailors and Japanese were standing in the same manner—looking out and through like children looking through a zoo fence.

We must all have realized it at the same time. I noticed, first, that there was suddenly a space between the outside of the wall and the sea of green glass. I noticed that it ran away to right and left, a border between the glass and our sand, which became a little wider even as I stared. Then I felt pressure against the toes of my field shoes. Then I was being pushed bodily back, and the sand border outside was a foot wide!

I whirled this time, back against the wall, to stare at the others. They were all facing inboard, too. It was clear that all had noticed the widening border, that each knew the fact: our dome was closing in on us, all around.

Probably most of us had read Poe's "Pit and the Pendulum" and enjoyed the spine-tingling horror of the walls closing in to crush the hapless victim.

Just now it was far from thrilling.

From all sides the wall closed in. We looked away to the south. The entire mountain there had become greenish, as if it, too, had turned to glass.

"No one blast," said Haggerty grimly, "did that. Not even the best we have in A-bombs could have done so much. That mountain is ten, fifteen miles away, at least. There must have been more A-bombs...."

"And maybe more domes," said Hoose. "How do we know that this whole desert isn't dotted with them?"

"Each one with its bugs under it for scientific study," said Haggerty wryly.

My mind went around and around. The Shadow Men ... Mangbetu ... the blast ... the desert ... the betrayal by the very sky itself ... the Japanese....

I had to turn it off or go crazy. Besides, the closing wall wasn't giving us much time. Faster and faster it advanced.

It was clear that we were being pushed deliberately inward on the LCVP's. Within a few minutes we were practically on the LCVP ramps.

"Grab all weapons!" I yelled. "Don't risk finding them on the pay roll!"

Marines who lose weapons have to pay for them. That's what I meant, silly as it seems in the circumstances.

Just as we were falling in at the sand-covered ramps of the three LCVP's, Krane cried out: "Where are the Japs?"

It gave me a chill. There was no escaping a peculiar fact: that even while the invisible was herding us, assembling us before our LCVP's, something of it, or about it, had snatched away the Japanese. They had simply vanished.

The walls were not circular now, but oval, roughly encompassing the LCVP's. Haggerty assembled his men before his LCVP. Hoose did the same. Mine assembled about me on the central ramp.

Then, when we were inside, in position as he had been when we landed, with only one man missing—Yount—the wall ceased closing in. For ten minutes we wondered about this. Then I had a hunch.

"Can we raise the ramps without the motors?"

We couldn't, not all the way, but we could, with two men at each outer corner, raise them about four feet, catch and hold them with their rattling chains.

When we figured this out we did it by the numbers—

And we almost left twelve men on the beach!

No sooner had we raised the ramps than the Caribbean was tugging at our LCVP's, the waves trying to take them back to sea. Our ramp men jumped up on their ramps, rolled crazily into the LCVP's, and the ramps raised all the way, clicking into place to become the prows of the unwieldy landing craft.

Cries of glee rose from our boat-handlers. Motors caught on the first try, exactly as if they had not been idle for two weeks, and the LCVP's were backing away from Yataritas Beach, turning, heading out to sea. I whirled and looked out into the deep blue. I think all of us expected to find the Odyssey still standing off, waiting for us. But it wasn't there.

"Can we make it back to Guantanamo Bay?" I asked the motorman. "Never mind answering; we're going to!" A cheer rose from the marines and sailors as we rounded the point we had never expected to see again, and started west, in deep blue water, along the coast.

LCVP's aren't good travelers. They roll like eggs on a hill, but this time nobody got seasick.

"Outpost Zero," said someone, looking back at Yataritas Beach. "If I never even hear of it again it will be too soon!"

We kept in close formation as we approached Escondido Bay, outside the Reservation. There a cruising plane picked us up, dipped wings over us, looped and headed full speed back to Guantanamo.

We all crawled up our starboard sides, tilting the LCVP's far over, and not caring a bit, to pick out landmarks ashore that we knew—Kittery Beach, Windmill, Cuzco, Blind, Blue and Cable Beaches. Every one looked like home—and the marine hadn't lived, up to that moment, who regarded Guantanamo as home!

There were many planes out, including some of our jets, by the time we reached the mouth of Guantanamo Bay. Luckily the long run was made in fairly smooth water.

We crossed the shelf where the deep blue water of the Caribbean becomes the green-dirty water of the Bay, and were as good as home.

I planned on making it to the Marine Boat House, but the Admiral's launch came out, with a staff officer aboard, with instructions to land at the Admiral's own dock.

I guess it didn't matter much where we docked, for the point of land on which the Admiral had his quarters was covered with uniforms. Marines and sailors were kept back by MP's.

The Chief Staff Officer placed me formally under arrest, "for absence over-leave," he said—though there was a suggestion of excitement in his voice that made me suspect subterfuge. One thing was certain, an officer under arrest kept his mouth shut. I couldn't tell anybody anything. The same thing, or something like it, happened to every one of us. We were all completely muzzled by being placed under arrest. Whatever else we might be, we were "hot."

Then it was that we worked together as even marines did not always work together—and the six gobs pitched in, too.

I made out this report, with the understanding that it would be seen by every leatherneck and sailor, and not submitted until all were satisfied with its accuracy.

I told what seemed to have happened to us. As commanding officer I was requested also to express an opinion. I had none to offer, except that two news bulletins, received over the radio the next day after our return, gave me something to think about.

One of the bulletins explained in somewhat guarded language, that new A-bomb experiments were being made—not in mid-Pacific, in Bikini, but in the heart of the Kalahari Desert! So careful were the brass hats in this important series of tests, that no words in any civilized tongue were allowed to be spoken even on intercom sets! The report didn't mention Mangbetu, but it did say "little known African dialects." This wasn't an unusual procedure, by the way—Comanche Indians had been so employed in World War II.

And what were those people testing, besides the newest thing in A-bombs?

"Part of the test," said the voice of the announcer, "involves an amazing above-ground bomb-shelter! This shelter, of secret manufacture, is believed to be proof against anything except the explosion of the planet itself. Not only is each such shelter capable of great extension, thus to handle large groups of people, but built into it is something new in provisioning. People who are forced into these shelters by sudden attack, are automatically provided with food, water and equable temperature, by a process which provides these necessities as separate exudations from the inner walls of the bombproofs!

"Some fear was expressed, in the midst of the tests," said the announcer, "that there were traitors even among the carefully screened technicians—for despite orders, for a period of three days not only English but many other languages, including the secret dialect used by the technicians, were heard in their intercoms!"

I shivered at that, remembering how, for three days, we had tried every tongue of which we could think. Gradually a picture was beginning to emerge.

"It was feared for some time that some potential aggressor nation had managed somehow to get past the Kalahari guards and ferret out secret information—or else that there was already a fifth column among the technicians!"

No mention anywhere, of the Shadow Men!

I was scared stiff when I realized this. For those Shadow Men, it now seemed, had accomplished something the A-bomb had not been able to do; they had got inside the bombproof, killed Yount—and could easily have killed us all—and got out again.

"The experiments," said the announcer, "were of course carried out by the United Nations Security Council. The results have not been announced in every detail, but the world has been informed that complete security against the A-Bomb has been produced and will be available if ever there is another world war!"

But what about the Shadow Men? What good was the best bombproof if it could be entered so easily, and everybody inside it destroyed?

On the next day after our return I picked up a brief broadcast which I could easily have missed.

"It appears that there are still Japanese soldiers, hiding out on Guam, who do not know that the war is over. Ten Japanese, led by a Corporal Matzuku, surrendered yesterday to Guamian authorities! How they survived for almost four years is a mystery. They appear well fed."

I got this far and realized that I knew a great deal of what had happened, but not how. How we and the Guamian Japanese had been netted under the same bombproof, for instance—they on Guam, ourselves on Yataritas Beach, Cuba.

I had no explanation for the Shadow Men—except that nobody but the "vanishers", ourselves and the Japanese, so much as mentioned them. They were, I felt sure, outside the knowledge of the Security Council.

The Shadow Men were some manifestation—chemicals, or instantaneously acting disease germs?—of a potential enemy fifth column which had horned in on the Kalahari experiments.

I can do no more. This report is respectfully submitted for transmission via official channels.

FIRST ENDORSEMENT

From: Commanding Officer, Guantanamo Marines.

To: Senior Officer Present, Naval Base.

Subject: Yataritas Beach Case.

1. But for the fact that eighty men concur in the attached report I would request that Major Rafe King be ordered to Saint Elizabeth's for observation.

SECOND ENDORSEMENT

From: Senior Officer Present, Naval Base.

To: Chief of Naval Operations.

Subject: Cuba-Yataritas Beach Case.

1. I am not inclined to treat this report lightly, or to suggest that it be so treated elsewhere. Knowing how our marines, sailors, equipment and LCVP's were plucked up and transported to Kalahari, together with the Japanese, I am still in complete ignorance of the meaning of the "Shadow Men." If Operations has any additional information it is felt that this base should be made aware of it.

THIRD ENDORSEMENT

From: Chief of Naval Operations.

To: Commanding General of the Marines.

Subject: Cuba-Yataritas Beach Case.

1. This activity is aware of all details except the so-called "Shadow Men." If the Commanding General of Marines has any information, include it herewith and forward to Chairman, Security Council, United Nations.

FOURTH ENDORSEMENT

From: Chairman, Security Council, United Nations.

To: Major Rafe King, via all above channels.

Subject: The Kalahari Tests.

1. Returned for amplification. It is deemed advisable, in view of publicity attendant on the Cuba-Yataritas angle of the Kalahari Desert tests, to make public the following facts. First, best protection against the A-Bomb is worldwide observation by special television; the Council has it. Second necessity is ability to make the bombproofs, provided by the Security Council, available to anybody, anywhere in the world, who is threatened by attack. Bombproofs are capable of instant transmission to any spot on the face of the globe—and removal of bombproof and occupants to anywhere else in the world—as Cuba-to-Kalahari-to-Guam.

2. Amplification on the "Shadow Men" is required. Every nation in the world, on the honor of its chief executive, has denied all knowledge of the "Shadow Men." Any Fifth Column from "Outside" is considered fantastic beyond all possibility.

Well, there it is. The high brass all along the way has spoken. Now it's up to me. I checked to find that every nation in the world had denied knowledge of the Shadow Men—except our own United States. But without asking for volunteers, our most ruthless high brass would not have sent us to face those shadows, wherein someone was almost certain to die horribly.

So, some nation has lied! We, the United Nations, have the perfect A-bomb-proof, capable of instant transmission to anywhere it is needed. We can also see where it is needed, through our World Visual Section.

But, as usual, for every attack weapon, there is a defense. For every defensive weapon there is, eventually, a weapon which will crack it. We have the best defensive gadget ever constructed, but somebody has the grim, black answer to it!

WHAT NATION?

When the next bombs begin to fall, the name of that nation will be written into the murderous heart of every bomb. Then will tongues be freely loosed which now dare not give offense to any "friendly" nation!

THE END