"I like the idea of a picnic," the other replied obstinately. "Only it's supposed to be a surprise, and that's why they don't tell us nothin."
"Okay, you guys. Strip those butts!"
Tom hoisted the straps of his pack onto his aching shoulders and fell into file behind the other two. The heel of his left boot was wearing badly and he could sense the strain on his ankle. He tried placing his weight on the ball of his foot, but that made him limp. Then he had no time for concern with small discomforts, for the column was scattering at the distant whoosh of jets.
Tom, however, got no farther than the ditch.
The soldier who liked picnics had stumbled onto a discarded recoilless rifle shell ten feet from the road. It exploded at the contact. Tom did not hear the jets roar past, for the pain that had burst in his leg was deafening. Momentarily he experienced a curious detached awareness of both the agony of the wound and the contortions into which he was throwing his body. Then he collapsed on the weed-matted gravel, unconscious.
He woke to find two medical aid men seated beside him. The pain had lessened and the wound was all but covered. He watched furtively as a corporal completed the job of daubing the gummy white substance from a freshly opened can of plastoderm into a raw gash below his right knee. He hoped none of the ligaments had been torn, since they would take a lot longer to evolve from the undifferentiated surrogate than would the rest of the tissues. Tentatively he flexed his foot muscles; they seemed all right.
"Just lean back, buddy. You're okay, now," he was informed.
"How about the jets? We hit any of them?" he asked.
"Couldn't tell, but I don't think so. They got what they were after, though."
"Yeah? What was that?"