Hanging on

in the turret, hatless, his shirt open at the throat revealing fine yellow hairs that gleamed in the reflection of the head lamps. He scanned the men in the jeep, peered menacingly at Major Kelly-but more at the much-feared SS death's-head on his cap than at Kelly's face-then looked imperiously away.
        What were these men? Kelly wondered. Where did these legions of hard, fair-faced Aryan supermen come from? Surely, not all the German people were like these; they could not all be so icily handsome, so withdrawn and cold and lifeless. Was Hitler creating these in his basement, through some arcane magic?
        The tank commander was watching Danny Dew. His hands were braced on opposite sides of the turret hatch, to keep him steady, and he was staring straight ahead at the sentry.
        The steel tread clattered up the incline.
        "He's seen Dew," Kelly said.
        The long barrel of the tank's biggest gun nearly scraped the horizontal part of the entrance frame before the giant machine tipped onto the bridge floor and nosed down a bit. A moment later, it was roaring away, toward the far bank of the river. The tank commander had not seen anything out of the ordinary, after all.
        "I don't believe it!"
        Slade said, "He didn't even notice Danny Dew is a nigger."
        The second tank ground toward the bridge. The commander nodded to Dew abstractedly as he guided his machine through the end posts and away toward the other shore. It reached the other side and soon disappeared around the bend.
        "Still ten to go," Beame said.
        Slade said, "Take my word for it. Before this is over, we're going to have to fight them."
        One by one, the next ten Panzer tanks, fully prepared for battle, driven by some of the most dedicated and steely-nerved army technicians in the world, captained by officers who were among the best of the German military class, passed over the bridge without hesitation. A few of the tank commanders nodded at Dew. Most ignored him.
        "Here come the trucks," Slade said as the trucks came into sight behind the last of the rumbling Panzers.
        According to Maurice, there were thirty trucks, each carrying more than thirty men in addition to the driver and the officer up front. They were not nearly so large as the tanks. They would be able to streak through the bridge posts without any anxious moments, and each driver would have time to give Danny Dew a quick but thorough looking over.
        The first truck hit the graded bridge approach at forty miles an hour, closing the gap between itself and the last tank which was already at the far side of the gorge. It bounced badly in the ruts; the soldiers in the back looked grim as they sat on metal benches and gripped the side slats to keep from falling to the floor. The truck jolted onto the bridge and growled away, followed closely by another and another and still another of the transports.
        "This is too much," Kelly said. "Our luck will change."
        It didn't. None of those drivers, turning glassy blue eyes on Danny Dew as they went by, saw anything amiss. Not just then, anyway. Perhaps later they would think of it. Five years from now, one of these dumb krauts would sit up in bed in the middle of the night and say to a startled wife: "That sentry was a Neger, for God's sake!" Now, though, all the trucks went past without incident.
        Behind the last of the trucks, separated from the transports by fifty yards, was the first of the two motorcycles that wrapped up the procession. It passed with a noisy clatter. Immediately after it was by, Danny Dew stepped back and away from the edge of the bridge, rolled over the top of the riverbank and out of sight of the final cyclist. It was in this last sidecar that he would ride away- if he were really a German sentry.
        Now came the worst part.
        "This is the worst part," Slade said.
        Usually, according to Maurice, the last cycle picked up the sentry. Now and again, however, if the sentry felt like a bit of relief from the windy ride of the sidecar, he would flag down one of the last transports and climb into the back of the truck. Kelly was hoping the man on the last cycle would go on if he saw no sentry waiting, sure that his man had joined the troops in the back of one of the transports. Also, since this was apparently a German camp, the cyclist wouldn't see how anything could have gone wrong. And he wouldn't