The colonel let his plump bulk sag forward in his chair, and he covered his hands with his eyes. “I can imagine all kinds of catastrophes,” he said, with a kind of hysterical glumness, “but this has them all beat.”
Dr. Pilar stroked his, short, gray, carefully cultivated beard. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. We could all have been killed.”
The colonel peeked one out from between the first and second fingers of his right hand. “You think starving to death is cleaner than fire?”
Pilar shook his head slowly. “Of course not. I’m just not certain that we’ll all die—that’s all.”
Colonel Fennister dropped his hands to the surface of his metal desk. “I see,” he said dryly. “Where there’s life, there’s hope. Right? All right, I agree with you.” He waved his hand around, in an all-encompassing gesture. “Somewhere out there, we may find food. But don’t you see that this puts us in the Siege Position?”
Dr. Francis Pilar frowned. His thick salt-and-pepper brows rumpled in a look of puzzlement. “Siege Position? I’m afraid—”
Fennister gestured with one hand and leaned back in his chair, looking at the scientist across from him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve let my humiliation get the better of me.” He clipped his upper lip between his teeth until his lower incisors were brushed by his crisp, military mustache, and held it there for a moment before he spoke.
“The Siege Position is one that no military commander of any cerebral magnitude whatever allows himself to get into. It is as old as Mankind, and a great deal stupider. It is the position of a beleaguered group which lacks one simple essential to keep them alive until help comes.
“A fighting outfit, suppose, has enough ammunition to stand off two more attacks; but they know that there will be reinforcements within four days. Unfortunately, the enemy can attack more than twice before help comes. Help will come too late.
“Or, it could be that they have enough water to last a week, but help won’t come for a month.