"I don't get ithe's got plenty of guts, you know that," I said.
"Yes, but he can't take discipline, he never did take it very well, and now that the squeeze is on he's blowing up. Well, see you later, Frank."
I saw him later, but not the way I expected. For that was the day we heard the faint echo of shots, and then the alarm siren screaming, and men running, and half-tracks starting up in a hurry. And when I managed to get out of my bunk and out of the hut, they were all going toward the big rockets, and a corporal yelled to me from a jeep, "That's blown it! The damn fools swiped guns and tried to take over the rockets and make the crews fly 'em homel" I could still remember the sickening slidings and bounc- ings of the jeep as it took us out there, the milling little crowd under the looming rockets, milling around and hiding something on the ground, and Major Weiler yelling himself hoarse giving orders.
When I got to see what was on the ground, it was seven or eight men and most of them dead. Walter had been shot right through the heart. They told me later it was because he'd been the leader, out in front, that he got it first of the mutineers.
One M.P. was dead, and one was sitting with red all over the middle of his uniform, and that one was Breck, and they were bringing a stretcher for him now.
The corporal said, "Hey, that's Jergen, your squad leader!"
And I said, "Yes, that's him." Funny how you can't talk when something hits youhow you just say words, like
"Yes, that's him." Breck died that night without ever regaining conscious- ness, and there I was, still half sick myself, and with Lassen dying in his bunk, and five of us were all that was left of Squad Fourteen, and that was that.
How could H.Q. let a thing like that get known? A fine advertisement it would be for recruiting more Mars expedi- tions, if they told how guys on Two cracked up and did a crazy thing like that. I didn't blame them for telling us to keep it top secret. Anyway, it wasn't something we'd want to talk about.
But it sure left me in afine spot now, a sweet spot. I was going down to talk to Brock's parents and Walter's parents, and they'd want to know how their sons died, and I could tell them, "Your sons probably killed each other, out there." Sure, I could tell them that, couldn't I? But what was I going to tell them? I knew H.Q. had reported those casual- ties as "accidental deaths," but what kind of accident? Well, it got late, and I had to go down, and when I did, Breck's parents were there. Mr. Jergen was a carpenter, a tall, bony man with level blue eyes like Breck's. He didn't say much, but his wife was a little woman who talked enough for both of them.