The Vanisher

"Nobody here but us chickens," he said, sputtering in the rain, and the guard dropped the muzzle of the machine pistol and saluted.

The colonel stomped in onto the concrete floor, grumbling. He was followed by an enormous lieutenant, an immense, looming, cliff-shouldered man well over six feet tall. The lieutenant had to duck coming through the door, cast a downward salute to the startled guard. The colonel moved out from under the lieutenant's dripping overhang, pointed a lean wet finger down the hall.

"He here?"

"Yessir," said the guard, eyeing the monstrous lieutenant with respect.

The colonel wiped his face with a dry handkerchief, took off his hat and smoothed down his sparse white hair. Then he strode off down the concrete hall, motioning for the lieutenant to follow. Together they came to a bolted steel door. The colonel opened it without knocking, ushered the lieutenant inside.

The room they entered was wide and rich, oak-panelled, in great contrast to the white-washed concrete of the halls outside. In the center of the room was a mahogany desk, at which a small, sad, cigar-smoking man sat absorbedly drawing doughnuts on a white lined pad.

The colonel saluted. The man at the desk, whose name was Dundon, looked up at the big lieutenant and chomped on his cigar.

"Is this our man?"

"Yes sir. Lieutenant Hilton. He knows--"

"Sure is a big bugger," Dundon said, rising. The lieutenant regarded him calmly.

"He knows every phase of the operation, sir," the colonel said.

"Of course. Sit down, boy," Dundon said briefly, waving his cigar. The lieutenant sat. "What's a few extra pounds? May need 'em, by God." He put the cigar in his mouth and clamped his hands behind him, walked around to the front of the desk and sat down on the edge of it.

"When's take-off, sir?" the colonel asked.

Dundon looked at his watch. "Less than an hour. Does he know?"

The colonel whistled. "That soon? No, he doesn't know anything."

The lieutenant had taken off his hat, showing himself to be much younger and blonder than he had first appeared to Dundon. He sat watching both men without any particular expression.

"Well, we'd better get on with it," Dundon said, and reached out a hand toward the colonel, without looking at him. "Do you have the lieutenant's records?"

The colonel reached quickly into his inside coat pocket, drew out a long folded envelope which he laid in Dundon's hand. The small man hefted it, looked briefly inside.

"Hell," he said curtly. "Got to save time. If we have to brief him and get ready I can't go through all this. What's the story?"

Before the colonel could say anything Dundon looked at the lieutenant with a wide, amiable, thoroughly unexpected smile. "Don't mind us son, no time for manners. Have a cigar."

The lieutenant politely refused. The colonel took off his coat and began to dry himself out, talking as he moved.

"Well, as far as I can recall, here's the poop. His name is Augustus Webster Hilton, Second Lieutenant, RA, out of Fort Benning. He's six foot six and a half, weighs two hundred and forty some odd pounds. Age: 25. Nickname: Web. AGCT score of 145."

Dundon's eyes lifted.

"He's got a head on him," the colonel agreed. "Army record superior to excellent. Present assignment instructing in orbits and trajectory at Base Training. Qualities of Organization, Leadership very high. Excellent officer material."

A slight fleeting frown crossed Dundon's face.

"Defects," the colonel said coolly. "Several minor, no major. Minor include a tendency to irk his superiors by failure to consult, by failure to keep his opinions to himself. Nothing unusual for the age, of course. Other defects are his size"--the lieutenant sat without moving through all of this--"and his blood type. He's got some rare kind of thing for which plasma is almost never available. That keeps him from front line duty."

The colonel stopped, began slowly to light a cigarette.

Dundon looked at him oddly.

"Nothing else?"

The colonel shook his head.

Dundon was suddenly flushed. "Wait a minute, son," he said to the lieutenant, and then he took the colonel by the arm and led him briskly into a corner.

"What the hell is this?" he hissed angrily, lowly, into the colonel's ear. "This boy looks like one hell of a good officer, what--"

The colonel held his finger to his lips, gestured cautiously.

"I couldn't tell you in front of him, chief."