Prescription for Chaos

by Christopher Anvil

  One of the men at the table snorted. "Some of those spark plugs are buried under valve covers bolted down on waterproof gaskets. You could run those engines under Niagara Falls if you had the air intakes clear."

  "Well," said Smitty, "it's an explanation, anyway, and to see this authority sneer at the whole business certainly has a calming effect."

  Donovan said, "I heard you ask about Diesel trucks, Chief. Any information on that?"

  "They got stopped, too."

  "Then there goes the spark-plug argument. A Diesel fires by compression, not by spark plugs."

  Cardan glanced at the towhead, who shook his head, and said, "All I could get was the same stuff. The police say they aren't responsible for sunspots and to keep off the highways except in case of emergency. Apparently the trains are still running, and Route 34 is still clear. About the car that went through the traffic jam, they say they're sorry, but for security reasons, they can't give any information on it. The government is investigating the tie-up, and that was a new experimental kind of car. I'm not supposed to repeat that, and if anybody asks me about seeing the car, I'm supposed to say 'no comment,' or deny any knowledge of it."

  Cardan laughed.

  Somebody said, "What's this about a secret governmental car?"

  Cardan said, "I had to give some explanation for that steam car. I didn't say it was a secret government car. But if they want to think so, that's their business."

  Maclane said, "Excuse me, Chief. I'd better see how those circuits are coming along. You want to watch this?"

  Cardan said, "Sure," and Maclane handed him the headset. Maclane went out, and Cardan sent everyone but Donovan out of the room to keep watch on the radio and TV news coverage, to go down to the local supermarkets and bring back some meat and fresh grocery orders, and to drop in at nearby sporting goods and Army-Navy stores to pick up weapons and ammunition.

  Cardan put on the headset for a moment to study the tripod, then took the headset off, and, frowning, fired up his cigar.

  Donovan said, "I wish we could change the focus on this thing. I'm sitting here watching nothing while there's no telling what may be going on just twenty feet away."

  "When Mac gets the other sets ready," said Cardan, "we ought to be a lot better off."

  "I keep hoping that when we can see more of this, we'll find out it's just a big flap over nothing. Maybe, say, the filming of a motion picture. But this trough on a tripod just isn't dramatic enough for that. And they acted too casual when they used it."

  "It's no flap over nothing," said Cardan. He described his phone conversation with Whitely.

  Donovan shook his head. "You'd think a race that could do this would have gotten past the point where it would do it."

  "Why?"

  "It seems to me to be a basic truth that when you set out to injure someone else, you may succeed. But, in due time, the thing will curve around in such a way that you get your own teeth rammed down your throat. I'd think an interstellar race would have had enough experience to have learned that."

  Cardan blew out a cloud of smoke. "You're talking about how it ought to be. But what if this interstellar race isn't perfect? What if they have competition from another interstellar race? For that matter, by the time we can travel from star to star, will the whole human race have turned into saints?"

  Donovan hesitated. "Maybe not the whole human race."

  "There's another catch."

  "Why?" Donovan asked abruptly.

  "The bulk of our own people are law-abiding. But how does that help you if you run into a gang of murderers? How do we know your wise interstellar race won't have a band of fanatics, or frustrated adventurers, who will get a ship, go off to some planet out in the hinterlands, take the planet over and run things their way?"

  Donovan frowned. "Kind of a rough situation. They'd have the advanced technology, but not the restraints that went with it."

  "Which would be our tough luck."

  "Yeah."

  A cold, hard expression passed over Donovan's face, then he said, "I don't know if you're watching this or not, Chief. If you aren't, you'd better take a look"

  Cardan put on the headset. Directly before him sat the tripod, still deserted, and with its half-cylinder pointed at the horizon. For a moment there was nothing else nearby but tracks in the snow. Then a thing like a huge, pale gray oil drum rolled from the left into Cardan's field of view, wheeled, and swung back in the opposite direction, the long snout of a gun showing momentarily in outline against the sky.

  Cardan looked at the snow, where there were two broad tracks, each of which appeared to be about four feet wide, with roughly a two-and-a-half foot space between them.

  A moment later, another of the gray drums rolled into view, and Cardan glanced rapidly from point-to-point on this drum, noting the non-rotating central part, the wide treads turning on either end, the slit between these two treads, and the long gun that thrust out, canted slightly skyward, below the right end of the slit.

  Then the vehicle wheeled, and Cardan had a brief glimpse of a tube like a short length of fifty caliber machine gun, thrust out the rear of the cylinder and aimed straight at him. Then the thing was out of his range of vision.

  Cardan slipped off the headset, and snapped on the intercom. "Miss Bowen, see if you can get General Whitely for me."

  "Yes, Mr. Cardan."

  Donovan said, "Those guns could be for self-defense."

  "Sure. Which is why they try to paralyze traffic along a circle eighty miles across."

  "Yeah," said Donovan slowly.

  "A circle eighty miles across takes in about five thousand square miles," said Cardan. "That's about the size of the state of Connecticut. What's going to happen to all the people inside the circle when neither trucks nor trains can get through with food?"

  "They'll have to get out."

  "How? On foot?"

  "They'll drive to the place where their cars stall. Then they'll walk."

  "What happens to the cars they leave behind when they get out to walk?"

  "They—" Donovan stopped.

  "Say the cars average sixteen feet in length," said Cardan. "If half a dozen drivers, with or without their families, just stop their cars one behind the other, there's a hundred feet of road blocked up. Five hundred and twenty of these cars will block a mile of a single-lane road. If you stand on a highway, with the cars going past fifty feet apart and at sixty miles an hour, it will only take about four minutes for that number of cars to go by."

  "But can't the police—"

  Cardan snorted. "The police can operate for two reasons. First, their own organization and discipline. Second, the fact that the great bulk of the people are on their side, actively or passively. Now, what's going to happen when everybody, including the police, realizes that the only way to get food for themselves and their families is to get on the other side of this eighty-mile circle?"

  Donovan was silently thinking that over when the door opened up and Maclane stepped in. He grinned at Cardan, and said, "Anything new?"

  Cardan described the cylindrical vehicles, with their guns fore and aft.

  Maclane whistled and put on the headset. "Nothing in sight now but the tripod and a lot of packed snow. What do you mean, this vehicle is like a big thick axle with a wheel on each end?"

  "More like an overgrown oil drum, with broad treads turning on each end."

  "Does the drum itself rotate?"

  "Not while I was looking at it. How about you, Don?"

  "The drum rotates a little, but not much, just the way a car dips a little in the front when you stop suddenly."

  Maclane said, "How much clearance between the underside of this drum and the ground?"

  "Oh, I'd guess about a foot."

  The door opened, and Cardan's secretary said, "I have General Whitely on the phone, sir. And Mr. Farrell—he's working on the circuits—said to tell Mr. Maclane they're having an 'h' of a time focusing the circuits."

  Cardan g
rinned. "You'd better get back down there, Mac. When you get them focused, send one up here, and take another down to the subbasement and see if it works down there."

  Maclane nodded and went out.

  Cardan picked up the phone, and held it cautiously a little way from his ear. The general's voice jumped out at him. "What are we up against here, Bugs? Have you got any inside dope on this?"

  Cardan said cautiously, "I've got a kind of long-range viewer with a very narrow fixed field of view, overlooking what I think is the spot where the trouble is. How about you?"

  "I've got aerial TV and blown-up aerial photographs."

  "What do you see?"

  The general snorted. "There's a big cylinder piled into the snow, with one end open, and things like pale blue fuel drums dropping out and rolling away."

  "Rolling away toward what?"

  "The highway. Where that traffic jam is, on the curve south of Milford."

  "What are you doing about it?"

  "I managed to get a couple of helicopters around this arc of interference to take a close look. Their engines quit before they could get close. I've got some special jets high overhead."

  "How about their engines?"

  "They give out, too. Whether because of what hits the others, or because of a kind of drifting fluff or fuzz we've run into, I don't know."

  "What does the fuzz do?"

  "It gets sucked into the air intakes, and apparently knocks out the engines. I've told you something. How about something in return?"

  "Well," said Cardan, "this thing I'm looking through has a narrow fixed field of view, but I'm trying to get that fixed. Meantime, those drums you saw are a pale blue, is that right?"

  "Right. What about them?"

  "I got a close view of them but without color, and it didn't last very long. The drums seem to be about twelve feet long, the center section fitted with a view slit and a gun in front, a gun behind, and broad treads mounted on either side of the center with about a foot ground clearance. The treads look about four feet wide. They may actually be several treads mounted side-by-side. The whole drum doesn't roll over, but just the treads. Directly in my field of view, there's a heavy tripod mounting a half-cylinder that looks about a foot through and six feet long. This half-cylinder is something like a big bazooka split lengthwise, and mounted on a tripod with two adjusting wheels, graduated circles—apparently for elevation and azimuth, and several locking levers. About an hour ago, a big brawny individual in coveralls was dropping cylinders a foot or so long in his end of this split bazooka, and the cylinders streaked up the trough and shot out for the horizon. I don't know what the means of propulsion is."

  The general said tensely, "See the face of the individual, Bugs?"

  Cardan hesitated.

  Whitely's voice sprang out at him. "Did this individual look human, Bugs?"

  Cardan said, "Depends on what you mean by human. All the features were there, and the body looked human, but the overall effect was that of a lynx or a bobcat. Why?"

  "You know why. Either this is Orson Welles' shocker come to life, or it all started out on Earth. If so, I think we know the foreign power responsible."

  Cardan thought of the vivid streak across the sky, the intense bluish glare of the explosion, the tripod with its half-cylindrical launcher, and the drum-shaped vehicles churning toward the highway jammed with stalled cars. Cardan tossed his dead cigar into the ashtray. "Nuts," he said irritatedly. "If the Russians had this stuff, they could put it into production and crowd us right off the map into the Pacific Ocean. They wouldn't tip their hand like this. You're going off the deep end, Tarface."

  "Hell, it could be a test. To see if we've got the stuff ourselves. Then they spring the main attack."

  "And what if we happen to be jumpy and the minute this 'test' of theirs starts, we hit them with everything we've got?"

  Whitely was silent a moment, then he laughed. "I just wanted to see how it sounded to you."

  "It sounds lousy. Suppose in the course of this test we should turn out to have the devices ourselves. Then we overpower the 'aliens,' tear off their Halloween masks, and they turn out to talk Russian. Next we put on a big propaganda exhibition featuring the 'alien spaceship,' plus vehicles, guns, and alien invaders complete with masks. The Russians would look foolish for the next five years."

  "It doesn't sound too good, does it?"

  "They just aren't stupid, that's all. They'd have their neck stuck out a mile, and no way to pull it in."

  "You got any more information?"

  "Not yet. Maybe later."

  "O.K., Bugs. If you can get any more close views, it will be a big help. Keep me in touch. And keep away from the highway."

  Cardan frowned at the dead phone. That was the second time Whitely had told him to stay away from the road. He put the phone on its cradle, and looked up to see Maclane holding another circuit, and looking serious. "Was that the general?"

  Cardan nodded.

  Maclane said, "You don't look too disturbed, Chief."

  Cardan frowned. "Why? Have you got a better view on that set?"

  "We've got a ringside seat."

  "Let's see."

  Cardan put the headset on, and got a view across the northern end of the traffic jam out over the lowland to the east, and to the southeast along the bend of the highway. Several of the big cylindrical vehicles were on the highway above the traffic jam, and others were spread out, approaching across the low snow-covered ground. About five hundred feet from the highway a helicopter was burning. Another plane was burning about a thousand yards away. Still further back, he could see a line of towers that carried power lines across the low-lying farmland. In the foreground, a parachute was caught in some brush, billowing in the wind near the foot of the embankment below the highway.

  Cardan glanced at the stalled and deserted cars, then back at the big cylindrical drums, rolling northward on the road. They seemed to be moving only about fifteen or twenty miles an hour, but they were moving steadily. More of them were working along a slanting cable up the bank and onto the road. As Cardan watched, one of the cylinders wheeled toward the jammed cars. There was a blur at the forward gun of the vehicle, and a puff of rolling black smoke burst amongst the nearest cars which lifted up and smashed heavily back and sidewise. There was another blast. A figure in airman's uniform jumped up to dart back amongst the cars. There was a third puff of smoke and the figure disintegrated.

  The cylinder rolled down the grass strip toward the south, followed by another cylinder, and then another. Far out across the lowland, a blast of smoke billowed at the base of a tower supporting the power lines. The tower tilted and leaned out. There was a dazzling display of arcing sparks, then the power line came down.

  Nearby, several of the cylinders crossed the highway, spread out, and started up the hill on the other side, passing out of Cardan's field of vision.

  Several powerfully-built figures, carrying crates, walked onto the shoulder of the northbound side of this highway, and began setting up a half-cylinder on a tripod.

  Maclane's voice reached Cardan. "I'm watching this thing, Chief, with my hands on the contacts. I want you to notice something."

  Donovan's voice cut in, "I don't know if you can see this. There's a big Marine Corps helicopter coming in fast, to the right of this view. There—boy, it hit like a rock! Wait a minute. Here come parachutists! They're drifting down all over the place. Can you see that, Chief?"

  Cardan could now see in the sky well beyond the fallen power lines the parachutes blossoming out in what appeared to be different shades of gray and drifting to the south. Big planes were gliding down fast overhead.

  Maclane said urgently, "This is important, Chief. You see that mess of burning trash blown out of the cars over there?"

  Cardan tore his gaze from the parachutes, and looked at the overturned cars. "You mean the front seat cushion, and some upholstery ripped half-off a door? What of it, Mac?"

  "Watch it."


  Cardan briefly glanced up at a plane that was banking steeply, toward the road. The plane blew up in a blast of black smoke, and Cardan looked back at the burning car, and growled. "What's the point of this, Mac?"

  "Just watch."

  A small piece of blazing upholstery flapped sharply, then tore away, and blew along the road in the wind, twisting and tumbling. It stopped, and momentarily seemed to lean against the wind, then rolled away, and stopped again, on an empty stretch of road.

  Cardan frowned as the strip of cloth flapped in the air, rising slowly above the roadway, but remained stationary and did not blow back with the wind.