Hunter Patrol | Page 9

every one proof of his own particular theories. It was with
relief that he watched them fill out the red tag which gave him a
priority on jet transports for home.
Ankara to Alexandria, Alexandria to Dakar, Dakar to Belm, Belm to
the shattered skyline of New York, the "hurry-and-wait" procedures at
Fort Carlisle, and, after the usual separation promotion, Major Fred
Benson, late of Benson's Butchers, was back at teaching high school
juniors the difference between H^{2}O and H^{2}SO^{4}.
* * * * *
There were two high schools in the city: McKinley High, on the east
side, and Dwight Eisenhower High, on the west. A few blocks from
McKinley was the Tulip Tavern, where the Eisenhower teachers came
in the late afternoons; the McKinley faculty crossed town to do their
after-school drinking on the west side. When Benson entered the Tulip
Tavern, on a warm September afternoon, he found Bill Myers, the
school psychologist, at one of the tables, smoking his pipe, checking
over a stack of aptitude test forms, and drinking beer. He got a highball
at the bar and carried it over to Bill's table.
"Oh, hi, Fred." The psychologist separated the finished from the
unfinished work with a sheet of yellow paper and crammed the whole
business into his brief case. "I was hoping somebody'd show up...."
Benson lit a cigarette, sipped his highball. They talked at
random--school-talk; the progress of the war, now in its twelfth year;
personal reminiscences, of the Turkish Theater where Benson had
served, and the Madras Beachhead, where Myers had been.
"Bring home any souvenirs?" Myers asked.
"Not much. Couple of pistols, couple of knives, some pictures. I don't
remember what all; haven't gotten around to unpacking them, yet.... I
have a sixth of rye and some beer, at my rooms. Let's go around and
see what I did bring home."

They finished their drinks and went out.
"What the devil's that?" Myers said, pointing to the cardboard box with
the envelope taped to it, when Benson lifted it out of the gray-green
locker.
"Bill, I don't know," Benson said. "I found it in the pocket of my coat,
on my way back from my last hunter patrol.... I've never told anybody
about this, before."
"That's the damnedest story I've ever heard, and in my racket you hear
some honeys," Myers said, when he had finished. "You couldn't have
picked that thing up in some other way, deliberately forgotten the
circumstances, and fabricated this story about the tank and the grenade
and the discrepancy in your watch subconsciously as an explanation?"
"My subconscious is a better liar than that," Benson replied. "It would
have cobbled up some kind of a story that would stand up. This
business...."
"Top Secret! For the Guide Only!" Myers frowned. "That isn't one of
our marks, and if it were Soviet, it'd be tri-lingual, Russian, Hindi and
Chinese."
"Well, let's see what's in it. I want this thing cleared up. I've been
having some of the nastiest dreams, lately...."
"Well, be careful; it may be booby-trapped," Myers said urgently.
"Don't worry; I will."
He used a knife to slice the envelope open without untaping it from the
box, and exposed five sheets of typewritten onion-skin paper. There
was no letterhead, no salutation or address-line. Just a mass of chemical
formulae, and a concise report on tests. It seemed to be a report on an
improved syrup for a carbonated soft-drink. There were a few cryptic
cautionary references to heightened physico-psychological effects.

The box was opened with the same caution, but it proved as innocent of
dangers as the envelope. It contained only a half-liter bottle, wax-sealed,
containing a dark reddish-brown syrup.
"There's a lot of this stuff I don't dig," Benson said, tapping the sheets
of onion-skin. "I don't even scratch the surface of this rigamarole about
The Guide. I'm going to get to work on this sample in the lab, at school,
though. Maybe we have something, here."
* * * * *
At eight-thirty the next evening, after four and a half hours work, he
stopped to check what he had found out.
The school's X-ray, an excellent one, had given him a complete picture
of the molecular structure of the syrup. There were a couple of
long-chain molecules that he could only believe after two
re-examinations and a careful check of the machine, but with the help
of the notes he could deduce how they had been put together. They
would be the Ingredient Alpha and Ingredient Beta referred to in the
notes.
The components of the syrup were all simple and easily procurable
with these two exceptions, as were the basic components from which
these were made.
The mechanical guinea-pig demonstrated that the syrup contained
nothing harmful to human tissue.
Of course, there