Future Wars . . . and Other Punchlines

by Hank Davis

  Runckel shrugged and tossed it over. Bade smoothed it out and read:

  “In this prevalent fairy tale, the ‘cyclone’—corresponding to our ‘sea serpent,’ or ‘Ogre of the Deep’—makes recurrent visits to communities in certain regions, frightening the inhabitants terribly and committing all sorts of prankish violence. On some occasions, it carries its chosen victims aloft, to set them down again far away. The cyclone is a frightening giant, tall and dark, who approaches in a whirling dance.

  “An interesting aspect is the contrast of this legend with the equally prevalent legend of Santa Claus. Cyclone comes from the south, Santa from the north. Cyclone is prankish, frightening. Santa is benign, friendly, and even brings gifts. Cyclone favors ‘springtime,’ but may come nearly any time except ‘winter.’ Cyclone is secular. Santa reflects some of the holy aura of the religious festival, ‘Christmas.’

  “‘Christmas comes but once a year. When it comes, it brings good cheer.’ Though Cyclone visits but a few favored towns at a time, Santa visits at once all, everyone, even the lowliest dweller in his humble shack. The natives are immensely earnest about both of these legends. An amusing aspect is that our present main base is almost ideally located for visits by that local Ogre of the Sea, ‘Cyclone.’ We are, in fact, situated in a location known as ‘Cyclone Alley.’ Perhaps the Ogre will visit us.”

  At the bottom of the page was a footnote: “‘Cyclone’ is but one name for this popular Ogre. Another common name is ‘Tornado.’”

  Bade sat paralyzed for a moment staring at this paper. “Tornado Alley,” he muttered. He grabbed the Flyer Command microphone to demand how the tornado warning system was coming. Then, groggily, he set the paper aside and turned his attention to the problem of General Kottek’s special report. He looked up again as a nagging suspicion began to build up in him. He turned to Runckel. “How many of these ‘myths’ have we come across, anyway?”

  Runckel looked as though a heavy burden were settling on him. He groped through his bulging wastebasket and fished out another crumpled ball of paper, then another. He located the one he wanted, smoothed it out, sucked in a deep breath, and read: “Cyclone, winter, spring, summer, hurricane, Easter bunny, autumn, blizzard, cold wave, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, lightning, Santa Claus, typhoon, mental telepathy, earthquake, levitation, volcano—” He looked up. “You want the full report on each of these things? I’ve got most of them here somewhere.”

  Bade looked warily at Runckel’s overstuffed wastebasket. “No,” he said. “But what about that report you’re reading from? Isn’t that an overall summary? Why didn’t I get a copy of that?”

  Runckel looked it over and growled, “Try to train them to send their reports to the right place. Yes, it’s an overall summary. Here, want it?”

  “Yes,” said Bade. He took the report, then stopped to wonder, where was that report he had asked for on “reduced degree of heat?” He reached for a microphone, then remembered General Kottek’s special report. Bade first sent word to Kottek that he approved what Kottek was doing, and that the problem was getting close attention. Then he read the crumpled overall summary Runckel had given him, and ended up feeling he had been on a trip through fairyland. His memories of the details evaporated even as he tried to mentally review the paper. “Hallowe’en,” he growled, “icebergs, typhoons—this planet must be a mass of mythology from one end to the other.” He picked up a microphone to call his Intelligence Service.

  A messenger hurried across the room to hand him a slip of paper. The paper was from Atmosphere Flyer Command. It read:

  “Warning! Tornado sighted approaching main base!”

  This time, the tornado roared past slightly to the west of the base. It hit, instead Forceway Station 1, and scattered sections of it all over the countryside.

  For good measure, the enemy fired in an impressive concentration of rockets and missiles. The attack did only slight harm to the base, but it finished off Forceway Station 1.

  An incoherent report now came in from the occupied western end of Cuba, to the effect that a “hurricane” had just gone through.

  Bade fished through Runckel’s wastebasket to find out exactly what a “hurricane” might be. He looked up at the end of this, pale and shaken, and sent out a strong force to put his Cuban garrison back on its feet.

  Then he ordered Intelligence, and some of his technical and scientific departments to get together right away and break down the so-called “myths” into two groups: Harmful, and nonharmful. The harmful group was to be arranged in logical order, and each item accompanied by a brief, straightforward description.

  As Bade sent out this order, General Kottek reported that, as a supplement to his fortified system, he was making sharp raids whenever conditions were favorable, in order to keep the enemy in his section off-balance. In one of these raids, his troops had captured an enemy document which had since been translated. The document was titled: “Characteristics of Unheatful-Blooded Animals.” Kottek enclosed a copy:

  “Unheatful-blooded animals have no built-in system for maintaining their bodily rate of molecular activity. If the surrounding temperature falls, so does theirs. This lowers their physical activity. They cannot move or react as fast as normally. Heatful-blooded animals, properly clothed, are not subject to this handicap.

  “In practical reality, this means that as unheatful conditions set in, the Invader should always be attacked during the most unheatful period possible. Night attacks have much to recommend them. So do attacks at dusk or dawn. In general, avoid taking the offensive during heatful periods such as early afternoon.

  “Forecasts indicate that winter will be late this year, but severe when it comes. Remember, there is no year on record when temperatures have not dropped severely in the depths of winter. In such conditions, it is expected that the Invader will be killed in large numbers by—untranslatable—of the blood.

  “Our job is to make sure they are kept worn down until winter comes. Our job then will be to make sure none of them live through the winter.”

  Bade looked up feeling as if his digestive system were paralyzed. A messenger hurried across the room to hand him a thick report hastily put together by the Intelligence Service. It was titled:

  “Harmful Myths and Definitions.”

  Bade spent the first part of the night reading this spine-tingling document. The second part of the night he spent in nightmares.

  Toward morning, Bade had one vivid and comparatively pleasant dream. A native wearing a simple cloth about his waist looked at Bade intently and asked, “Does the shark live in the air? Does a man breathe underwater? Who will eat grass when he can have meat?”

  Bade woke up feeling vaguely relieved. This sensation was swept away when he reached the operating room and saw the expression on Runckel’s face. Runckel handed Bade a slip of paper:

  “Hurricane Hannah approaching Long Island Base.”

  Intercepted enemy radio and television broadcasts spoke of Hurricane Hannah as “the worst in thirty years.” As Bade and Runckel stood by helplessly, Hurricane Hannah methodically pounded Long Island Base to bits and pieces, then swept away the pieces. The hurricane moved on up the shoreline, treating every village and city along the way like a personal enemy. When Hurricane Hannah ended her career, and retired to sink ships further north, the Atlantic coast was a shambles from one end to the other.

  Out of this shambles moved a powerful enemy force, which seized the bulk of what was left of Long Island Base. The remnant of survivors were trapped in the underground installations, and reported that the enemy was lowering a huge bomb down through the entrance.

  In Cuba, the reinforced garrison was barely holding on.

  A flood of recommendations now poured in on Bade:

  1) Long Island Base needed a whole landing force to escape capture.

  2) Cuba Base had to have at least another half landing force for reinforcements.

  3) The Construction Corps required the ships of two full l
anding forces in order to power the forceway network. Otherwise, work on the key-tools factories would be delayed.

  4) Landing Site Command would need the ships and dampers of three landing forces to barely protect the base if the power supply of two landing forces were diverted to the Construction Corps.

  5) The present main base was now completed and should be put to efficient use at once.

  6) The present main base was worthless, because Forceway Station 1 could not be repaired in time to link the base to the forceway network.

  7) Every field commander except General Kottek urgently needed heavy reinforcements without delay.

  8) Studies by the Staff showed the urgent need of building up the central reserve without delay, at the expense of the field commanders, if necessary.

  Bade gave up Long Island Base, ordered Cuba Base to hold on with what it had, told the Landing Site Commander to select a suitable new main base near some southern forceway station free of tornadoes, and threw the rest of the recommendations into the wastebasket.

  Runckel now came over with a rope smoldering stub jutting out of the corner of his mouth. “Listen,” he said to Bade, “we’re going to have a disciplinary problem on our hands. That Cuban garrison has been living on some kind of native paint-remover called ‘rum.’ The whole lot of them have a bad case of the staggering lurch from it; not even the hurricane sobered them up. Poff knew what was going on. But he and his staff covered it over. His troops are worthless. Molch and the reinforcements are doing all the fighting.”

  Bade said, “Poff is still in command?”

  “I put Molch in charge.”

  “Good. We’ll have to court-martial Poff and his staff. Can Molch hold the base?”

  “He said he could. If we’d get Poff off his neck.”

  “Fine,” said Bade. “Once he gets things in order, ship the regular garrison to a temporary camp somewhere. We don’t want Molch’s troops infected.”

  Runckel nodded. A clerk apologized and stepped past Runckel to hand Bade a message. It was from General Frotch, who reported that all his atmospheric flyers based on Long Island had been lost in Hurricane Hannah. Bade showed the message to Runckel, who shook his head wearily.

  As Runckel strode away, another clerk put a scientific report on Bade’s desk. Bade read it through, got Frotch on the line, and arranged for a special mission by Flyer Command. Then he located his report on “Harmful Myths and Definitions.” Carefully, he read the definition of winter:

  “To the best of our knowledge, ‘winter’ is a severe periodic disease of plants, the actual onset of which is preceded by the vegetation turning various colors. The tall vegetables known as ‘trees’ lose their foliage entirely, except for some few which are immune and are known as ‘evergreens.’ As the disease progresses, the juices of the plants are squeezed out and crystallize in white feathery forms known as ‘frost.’ Sufficient quantities of this squeezed-out dried juice is ‘snow.’ The mythology refers to ‘snow falling from the sky.’ A possible explanation of this is that the large trees also ‘snow,’ producing a fall of dried juice crystals. These crystals are clearly poisonous. ‘Frostbite,’ ‘chilblains,’ and even ‘freezing to death’ are mentioned in the enemy’s communication media. Even the atmosphere filled with the resulting vapor, is said to be ‘cold.’ Totally unexplainable is the common reference to children rolling up balls of this poisonous dried plant juice and hurling them at each other. This can only be presumed to be some sort of toughening exercise. More research on this problem is needed.”

  Bade set this report down, reread the latest scientific report, then got up and slowly walked over to a big map of the globe. He gazed thoughtfully at various islands in the South Seas.

  Late that day, the ships lifted and moved, to land again near Forceway Station 2. Power cables were run to the station across a sort of long narrow valley at the bottom of which ran a thin trickle of water. By early the morning of the next day, the forceway network was in operation. Men and materials flashed thousands of miles in a moment, and work on the key-tools factories accelerated sharply.

  Bade immersed himself in intelligence summaries of the enemy communications media. An item that especially interested him was “Winter Late This Year.”

  By now there were three viewpoints on “winter.” A diehard faction doggedly insisted that it was a myth, a mere quirk of the alien mentality. A large and very authoritative body of opinion held the plant juice theory, and bolstered its stand with reams of data sheets and statistics. A small, vociferous group asserted the heretical water crystal hypotheses, and ate alone at small tables for doing so.

  General Frotch called Bade to say that the special Flyer Command mission was coming in to report.

  General Kottek sent word that enemy attacks were becoming more daring, that his troops’ periods of inefficiency were more frequent, and that the vegetation in his district was turning color. He mentioned, for what it was worth, that troops within the fortifications seemed less affected than those outside. Troops far underground, however, seemed to be slowed down automatically, regardless of conditions on the surface, unless they were engaged in heavy physical labor.

  Bade scowled and set off inquiries to his scientific section. Then he heard excited voices and looked up.

  Four Flyer Command officers were coming slowly into the room, bright metal poles across their shoulders. Slung from the poles was a big plastic-wrapped bundle. The bundle was dripping steadily, and leaving a trail of droplets that led back out the door into the hall. The plastic was filmed over with a layer of tiny beads of moisture.

  Runckel came slowly to his feet.

  The officers, breathing heavily, set the big bundle on the floor near Bade’s desk.

  “Here it is, sir.”

  Bade’s glance was fastened on the object.

  “Unwrap it.”

  The officers bent over the bundle, and with clumsy fingers pulled back the plastic layer. The plastic stood up stiffly, and bent only with a hard pull. Underneath was something covered with several of the enemy’s thick dark sleeping covers. The officers rolled the bundle back and forth and unwound the covers. An edge of some milky substance came into view. The officers pulled back the covers and a milky, semitransparent block sat there, white vapor rolling out from it along the floor.

  There was a concerted movement away from the block and the officers.

  Bade said, “Was the whole place like that?”

  “No, sir, but there was an awful lot of this stuff. And there was a compacted powdery kind of substance, too. We didn’t bring enough of it back and it all turned to water.”

  “Did you wear the protective clothes we captured?”

  “Yes, sir, but they had to be slit and zippered up the legs, because the enemy’s feet are so small. The arms were a poor fit and there had to be more material across the chest.”

  “How did they work?”

  “They were a great help, sir, as long as we kept moving. As soon as we slowed down, we started to stiffen up. The hand and foot gear was improvised and hard to work in, though.”

  Bade looked thoughtfully at the smoldering block, then got up, stepped forward, and spread his hand close to the block. A numbness gradually dulled his hand and moved up his arm. Then Bade straightened up. He found he could move his hand only slowly and painfully. He motioned to Runckel. “I think this is what ‘cold’ is. Want to try it?” Runckel got up, held his hand to the block, then straightened, scowling.

  Bade felt a tingling sensation and worked his hand cautiously as Runckel, his face intent, slowly spread and closed his fingers.

  Bade thoughtfully congratulated the officers, then had the block carried off to the Testing Lab.

  The report on defense against “reduced degree of heat” now came in. Bade read this carefully several times over. The most striking point, he noticed, was the heavy energy expenditure involved.

  That afternoon, several ships took off, separated, and headed south.

 
; The next few days saw the completion of the first key-tool factory, the receipt of reports from insect-bitten scouts in various regions far to the south, and a number of terse messages from General Kottek. Bade ordered plans drawn up for the immediate withdrawal of General Kottek’s army, and for the possible withdrawal by stages of other forces in the north. He ordered preparations made for the first completed factories to produce anti-reduced-degree-of-heat devices. He read a number of reports on the swiftly changing state of the planet’s atmosphere. Large quantities of rain were predicted.

  Bade saw no reason to fear rain, and turned to a new problem: The enemy’s missiles had produced a superabundance of atomic debris in the atmosphere. Testing Lab was concerned over this, and suggested various ways to get rid of it. Bade approved the projects and turned to the immediate problem of withdrawing the bulk of General Kottek’s troops from their strong position without losing completely the advantages of it.

  Bade was considering the idea of putting a forceway station somewhere in Kottek’s underground defenses, so that he could be reinforced or withdrawn at will. This would involve complicated production difficulties; but then Kottek had said the slowing-down was minimized under cover, and it might be worthwhile to hold an option on his position. While weighing the various intangibles and unpredictables, Bade received a report from General Rast. Rast was now noticing the same effect Kottek had reported.

  Word came in that two more key-tools factories were now completed.

  Intelligence reports of enemy atmospheric data showed an enormous “cold air mass moving down through Canada.”

  General Frotch, personally supervising high-altitude tests, now somehow got involved in a rushing high-level air stream. Having the power of concentrating his attention completely upon whatever he was doing, Frotch got bound up in the work and never realized the speed of the air stream until he came down again—just behind the enemy lines.