Gunnar knew they could hope only to take as many Nips as possible with them. Even as he opened fire he could hear Martha's pistol start up beside him. The first Japs went down.
"Just one more," Gunnar prayed as he threw the useless weapon into the nearest yellow face and drew his knife for a final charge.
He expected to be met by a burst of fire as he stepped out, but the bullets did not come. Instead a Jap tripped and kicked at something near his feet, then tumbled violently backward with his hands coming up as though to protect his face. The Jap started to scream but stopped abruptly as blood spurted from a throat suddenly raw and mangled. A snarling growl echoed through the cave.
[Illustration: _A snarling growl echoed through the cave._]
Another Nip went down, struggling with something invisible.
Panic gripped the Jap patrol. Two surviving soldiers broke and ran, but the lieutenant in charge snatched up a gun. Bullets whined off the rocks as he fired wildly, without a target.
All at once Frankie lay in the middle of the floor, his spine shattered by a chance bullet but his fangs still bared in a snarl of defiance. The Jap kicked at the dog, then jumped aside and stared unbelievingly as his outlines blurred momentarily. He kicked again with deliberate brutality, and the dog gave one convulsive shudder and lay still.
Without conscious volition Gunnar raised his arm. Twenty feet away bones crunched under the brass handle-studs of the trench knife. Gunnar felt the impact up his arm, and then the snick as the double-edged blade plunged between two ribs.
Then he and Martha were alone with several dead Japanese and the body of a dog.
Gunnar felt a pulling sensation in his shoulder. The bloody knife surged toward him through the air. He looked down.
"Yes, Gunnar," her voice answered from nearby.
He glanced wildly around. Her pistol was floating in the air beside him, and then by the light of a flash the Japs had dropped he could just discern the tenuous, transparent outlines of her figure. He stared.
She must have seen him too, for instantly she was completely invisible again.
"I--I don't know." Her voice was shaky now. Her coveralls lifted themselves from the floor and fastened themselves.