by Allen Wold
"No good for anybody if that happens," Lucia said in complete understatement. "Do something, Steve, before it's too late."
Steve hung up, numb with the realization of what the verlogs could do if they escaped from the crivit ranch. Japanese beetles could destroy a rose bush in a week. Gypsy moths could strip trees in a month. Rabbits in Australia almost caused the collapse of their economy, and did severe damage to their ecology for years. And verlogs—he shook himself out of his nightmarish reverie and went looking for Anne Marino.
He found her in a meeting of division supervisors—after all, Data Tronix had its regular work to attend to—and barged in without apology.
"Anne," he said, ignoring the others present, "we've got big trouble, and I've got to talk to you right now!"
They left without any explanation; that would have to come later. Out in the hall, Steve told her about Dr. Van Oort's phone call and what it implied. Anne understood immediately.
"All right," she said, "if we hurry, we may be able to catch them before they attack the crivit ranch."
They went down to her car, and Anne broke as many traffic laws as she dared on her way south to Durk Attweiler's farm. Other cars were in the barn, but there was no sign of the attackers.
"You stay here," she told Steve, "just in case they haven't started yet and come back. But if you hear shooting—
"I know, then I'll take word to them the best way I can."
"Right. I'm going to try to head them off."
She got back in her car and drove around to the road on the far side of the crivit ranch. She pulled off onto the shoulder and started cross-country toward the old mine head. She was sure she could find it, even in the woods, since it was on the hill that lay between her and the Thurston place. It was only a mile away, but though she ran, it seemed to take forever.
She topped the ridge at last and saw that she was a bit too far to the north. From here, she could see the Thurston buildings, the barns, and the enclosure around the crivit feeding area. The mine head was to her left.
She ran toward it, heedless of the fact that she was plainly visible to Visitors in red down at the farm. She ignored their shouts but fell to her knees at the entrance to the mine and peered down into the darkness. Mark and Chris, at the foot of the ladder below, looked up at her, surprised.
"Thank God," Anne said, calling down to them even as they started up the ladder, with Grace, Fred, Durk, Jack, and Wendel close behind. "Forget the crivits," she said, "it's the verlogs we've got to destroy."
"You've blown our cover," Chris said as he poked his head up out of the ground. Several Visitors were now coming up the slope through the woods toward them.
"If those verlogs escape," Anne said, "they'll eat this country right down to the ground." She pointed to the trees within the not so distant feeding enclosure. All were bare, and even the twigs were gone.
"Damn," Chris said, getting out of the way so Mark could come up. Then the Visitors started firing.
Chris and Mark returned the fire, allowing the rest of the invasion party to come up out of the mine while Anne tried to explain the significance of the verlogs and the need for her to have spoiled the attack and put them all in danger.
"It makes sense in a funny kind of way," Grace Delaney said between shots. "The lizards know even less about protecting their environment than we do, and a stunt like that is just the kind of thing they might pull."
Jack and Wendel had both worked farms, and both understood what an unhindered pest invasion could do to crops. They did not need much imagination, after seeing the destroyed trees in the crivit feeding area, to picture what the whole countryside would look like if the verlogs were set loose. Even Mark and Chris could get the picture, though they were busy along with the others in keeping the Visitors down the hill at bay.
"They're going to have reinforcements pretty soon," Fred Linker said, dodging laser shots. "Maybe we should just run for it."
"My farm would be the first place those verlogs would eat," Durk Attweiler protested. "Running away won't do me any good at all."
"So what are you going to do?" Fred asked. "Walk down there and kill them all?"
"Something like that," Durk said. But his words seemed foolish, because the Visitors were working ever closer. Leon was not among them, but there were more than the regular staff. And all, in spite of their ostensible occupations, were experienced soldiers. Slowly, the invaders had to give way.
"What you need is a good fire," Chris said to Durk. "A bomb would blow the verlog barn apart, but some of them might escape."
"What are you talking about?" Fred said. "We can come back and clean them up another time."
"You think Leon's going to wait for us?" Mark snapped, then had to duck as a Visitor energy bolt struck the tree near his head, sending fragments of bark and wood flying. "Diana's never approved of his experiment, and once she gets word of this attack, she'll close him down. The only way he can finish his experiment is to release the verlogs right now."
And then there was no time for further argument, because the reinforcements Fred had predicted arrived. The sky-fighters settled down in the clear space next to the house, and ten heavily armed Visitor soldiers emerged.
"Looks like we don't have any choice," Anne said. "Durk, we'll have to come back—" But Durk was gone.
"Spread out through the trees," Chris said. "We can't get back to Attweiler's; we'll have to hitch rides on the highway."
"Those of us who make it alive," Fred said.
The group split and retreated through the trees toward the east.
Durk crawled on his belly through a briar patch, ignoring the thorns that tore at his arms and back. The Visitors passed within yards of his position, but the dense foliage of the blackberry canes concealed him from their distracted view. When he could move again, he continued crawling, still clutching the machine pistol Chris had given him before going down into the mine entrance at the riverbank.
Fire was what was needed, and he thought he knew where he could get it—the kerosene tank against the north end of the verlog barn. If there was any kerosene left in it. Still, it was worth a try. He moved along the crest of the ridge, away from the now retreating battle, until he could see the tank through the trees on the slope. It was two hundred yards away.
And then his eyes caught a movement beyond the house. Someone, a man, a human, was coming from the direction of his place. It was Steve Wong.
Durk got to his feet and half ran down the slope, making only a token effort at concealment. Steve saw him, glanced at the house, and ran to meet him by the kerosene tank.
"Anne got to you then," Steve said.
"She did," Durk answered. "They're fighting a retreat toward the highway. But we've got to do something about these verlogs."
"You're telling me." He grabbed a stanchion supporting the tank and shook it. There was a barely audible sloshing sound from inside.
"Let's hope it's enough," Durk said.
"How do we get it into the barn?" Steve asked. The only windows were at the back of the barn, beyond reach of the short filler hose. Durk took his pistol and, aiming low, shot off the clip, ripping a hole in the wall. Then he took the filler hose and stuck it into the hole. He squeezed the release valve, and wedged a splinter of wood into the trigger to hold it open. Kerosene gurgled out of the tank into the barn.
And a door slammed at the house just out of sight.
"Leon," Durk said. He stuffed a new clip into the gun while Steve, unarmed, dropped to his knees to peer around the corner of the barn.
"It is indeed," Steve said, quickly getting to his feet and pressing close to the barn wall. "And he's armed and coming this way."
"Get ready to light the kerosene," Durk said. "I'll hold him off." He took Steve's place at the corner of the barn, peered around, and ducked back as Leon fired. The shot splintered the corner of the barn just inches from his face. He stuck his pistol around the corner and aiming by guess let off a short burst. His only satisfaction was he
aring Leon scramble.
"I can't get it lit," Steve cried, half panicked. Up on the ridge above the barn, three or four Visitors were coming back, having heard Durk's fusillade.
"You can't light it like that," Durk said, turning to see Steve touch a lit match to a rivulet of kerosene. The fluid just put the match out. He strode past to the far side, ripped off a few shots at the approaching soldiers, then came back to Steve and handed him the pistol and two extra clips.
"You keep them busy," he said. Then, while Steve moved from one corner to the other, firing alternately from each position, Durk took out his wallet. Inside were five singles, a ten, and a twenty. He crumpled them up into a big wad and put it into the kerosene. Slowly, the fuel soaked into the money. Only then did he light a match and touch it to the wad of currency which now acted like a wick. He pushed this now burning mass into the hole in the side of the barn.
"It will take a few minutes to get going," he said, "but the whole floor is covered with kerosene, and when it goes nothing inside will survive."
"Then let's get out of here," Steve started to say when a laser bolt took him high in the chest and he went down.
Durk threw himself on the ground and crawled to Steve, but the man was dead. Coldly, Durk retrieved the pistol from Steve's clenched fist, plugged in the last of the ammunition clips, and prepared himself to take out as many of his attackers as he could before he himself was gunned down.
The soldiers coming down the slope were overly confident. Durk, with years of experience in picking off squirrels and rabbits as they ran, dropped all three with three short bursts. But there was still Leon to deal with, and other soldiers were coming back now, having given up on the fleeing humans.
Thick, black, oily smoke began to leak out of the hole in the barn wall and from other places around the other sides of the building. The kerosene, burning poorly from lack of adequate air, was producing huge quantities of noxious smoke and gas which, alone, would kill all the verlogs inside.
Durk went toward the front of the barn and cautiously looked around the corner to see Leon who, concerned more for his animals than for Durk, was frantically trying to open the newly locked front doors. Durk just smiled and backed away. When Leon at last succeeded and threw the doors open, smoke in a dense, black cloud billowed from the entrance, and the sudden influx of air caused the kerosene to ignite completely. The effect was like a soft explosion, with gouts of red flame bursting from the double door and from the eaves of the roof and blowing out the windows at the back of the barn. Leon was knocked over backward, and the soldiers in the woods all started shouting.
A moment's confusion was all Durk needed. He ran from the barn toward the back of the Thurston house and his own property beyond. He heard Leon yelling just as he rounded the corner of the house, and Visitor weapons fired at him uselessly.
But he didn't go straight toward his house. He'd run from revenuers before, and his instincts took charge now. Instead, he went north around the feeding enclosure and up the side of the fence that kept the crivits confined to the channel to their sand pits. Behind him he could hear the sounds of running feet and more shots.
He ran through the trees now, diagonally across the side of Thurston's farm, until he burst from the woods at the fence opposite where his tractor still stood in his bean field. The ground was all furrowed with crivit burrows, and even as he climbed the fence, Durk could see other burrows being freshly made. He ran across his own field toward the tractor, leaping the burrows, dodging the Visitors' fire. He could hear Leon behind him, shouting. That was just fine.
Two crivits, plowing through the soil their previous burrows had made loose, tunneled after him just below the surface. Durk made it to his tractor, climbed on and over, and crouched behind the engine, just above the ground. The crivits, confused when he left the ground, circled around, and one raised a tentacle tentatively into the air, just a few yards from him.
The body of the tractor protected him from the Visitors' shots. With one leg hooked over his gearshift and his head up against the front of the tractor, Durk looked back the way he had come and watched as Leon and three other soldiers came out of the woods and across his field toward him. They knew where he was all right, and there was nowhere Durk could run.
But the crivits, frustrated at missing him, felt the vibrations in the soil made by the running Visitors. Before Leon and his soldiers had crossed half the distance to the tractor, four moving mounds of broken earth converged on them. Durk laughed as eight tentacles reached up into the air to grab the red-uniformed Visitors and dragged them down, screaming, into the loose soil. The ground roiled for a moment, and then was still.
And Durk, with the crivits now satisfied, stepped down to the ground and walked away.
Watch for
THE NEW ENGLAND RESISTANCE
next in the V series
from Pinnacle Books
coming in June!
A new alien plot has been hatched—as vicious and inhuman as the Visitors themselves. In the Piedmont Mountain region of North Carolina their top biologists, led by the coldly brutal Visitor Leon, are breeding crivits—a new life form of great power, appetite, and ferocity, which burrows in the sand and waits to pounce, destroy, and devour. The Visitor plan is to turn them loose in great numbers up and down the eastern beach coasts—where they can disrupt communications and kill thousands of people.
Scientist Mark Casey, with the aid of some resistance-inspired students, has uncovered the scheme but cannot locate the secret breeding grounds. For that he needs the help of the locals—who distrust him and his fellow outsiders almost as much as the deadly Visitors!
THE CRIVIT EXPERIMENT
Created by Kenneth Johnson
From Warner Bros Television
A Warner Communications Company