Tactics of Mistake Read Online Free PDF Page A

pleasant tropical day, Cletus thought. He looked about for Mondar—and was abruptly jolted by a something like a soundless, emotional thunderclap.
    Even as it jarred him, he recognized it from its reputation. It was “reorientation shock”—the abrupt impact of a whole spectrum of differences from the familiar experienced all at once. His absent-mindedness as he had stepped out into this almost Earth-like scene had heightened its effect upon him.
    Now, as the shock passed, he recognized all at once that the sky was not blue so much as bluish-green. The sun was larger and a deeper golden yellow than the sun of Earth. The red and yellow threads in the foliage were not produced by flowers or vines, but by actual veins of color running through the leaves. And the air was heavily humid, filled with odors that intermingled to produce a scent something like that of a mixture of grated nutmeg and crushed grass stems. Also, it was vibrant with a low-level but steady chorus of insect or animal cries ranging from the sounds like the high tones of a toy tin flute to the mellow booming of an empty wooden barrel being thumped—but all with a creakiness foreign to the voices of Earth.
    Altogether the total impact of light, color, odor and sound, even now that the first shock was passed, caught Cletus up in a momentary immobility, out of which he recovered to find Mondar’s hand on his elbow.
    â€œHere comes the command car,” Mondar was saying, leading him forward. The vehicle he mentioned was just emerging from behind the terminal building with the wide shape of a passenger float-bus behind it. “Unless you’d rather ride the bus with the luggage, the wives and the ordinary civilians?”
    â€œThanks, no. I’ll join you,” said Cletus.
    â€œThis way, then,” said Mondar.
    Cletus went with him as the two vehicles came up and halted. The command car was a military, plasma-powered, air-cushion transport, with half-treads it could lower for unusually rough cross-country going. Over all, it was like an armored version of the sports cars used for big game hunting. Eachan Khan and Melissa were already inside, occupying one of the facing pair of passenger seats. Up front on the open seat sat a round-faced young Army Spec 9 at the controls, with a dally gun beside him.
    Cletus glanced at the clumsy hand weapon with interest as he climbed aboard the car over the right-side treads. It was the first dally gun he had seen in use in the field—although he had handled and even fired one back at the Academy. It was crossbreed—no, it was an out-and-out mongrel of a weapon—designed originally as a riot-control gun and all but useless in the field, where a speck of dirt could paralyze some necessary part of its complex mechanism inside the first half hour of combat.
    Its name was a derivative from its original, unofficial designation of “dial-a-gun,” which name proved that even ordnance men were capable of humor. With proper adjustment it could deliver anything from a single .29 caliber pellet slug to an eight-ounce, seeker-type canister shell. It was just the sort of impractical weapon that set Cletus’s tactical imagination perking over possible unorthodox employments of it in unexpected situations.
    But he and Mondar were in the car now. With a hiss from its compressor, the command car’s heavy body rose ten inches from the concrete and glided off on its supporting cushion of air. An opening in the jungle wall loomed before them; and a moment later they were sliding down a narrow winding road of bonded earth, with two deep, weed-choked ditches on each side unsuccessfully striving to hold back the wall of jungle that towered up on either side to arch thinly together, at last, over their heads.
    â€œI’m surprised you don’t burn back or spray-kill a cleared area on each side of the road,” said Cletus to Mondar.
    â€œOn the important military routes, we