There was a door with a frosted glass top through which light showed. The driver turned the door-knob and marched in. The room had an alcoholic smell. A man with sunken cheeks slept heavily in a chair, his head forward on his chest.
The driver shook him.
“Wake up, guy!” he said sternly. “Orders are for all civilians to clear outa this town. You wanna soldier to come by an’ take you for a looter an’ bump you off?”
He shook again. The cadaverous man blinked his eyes open. The smell of alcohol was distinct. He was drunk. He gazed ferociously up at the driver of the truck.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded belligerently.
The driver spoke sternly, repeating what he’d said before. The drunk assumed an air of outraged dignity.
“If I wanna stay here, that’s my business! Who th’ hell are you anyways, disturbin’ a citizen tax-payer on his lawful occasions? Are you Martians? I wouldn’t put it pasht you!”
He sat down and went back to sleep.
The driver said fretfully, “He oughtn’t to be here! But we ain’t got room to carry him. I’m gonna use the truck radio an’ ask what to do. Maybe they’ll send a Army truck to get him outa here. He could set the whole town on fire!”
He went out. The small man who was his helper followed him. He hadn’t spoken a word. Lockley growled. Then Jill said breathlessly, “The switch-board has some long distance lines. I know how to connect them. Shall I try?”
Lockley agreed emphatically. Jill slipped into the operator’s chair and donned the headset. She inserted a plug and pressed a switch.
“I did an article once on how—Hello! Serena calling. I have a very important message for the military officer in command of the cordon. Will you route me through, please?”
Her manner was convincingly professional. She looked up and smiled shakily at Lockley. She spoke again into the mouthpiece before her. Then she said, “One moment, please.” She covered the mouthpiece with her hand.
“I can’t get the general,” she said. “His aide will take the message and if it’s important enough—”
“It is,” said Lockley. “Give me the phone.”
She vacated the chair and handed him the operator’s instrument with its light weight earphones and a mouthpiece that rested on his chest.
“My name’s Lockley,” said Lockley evenly. “I was in the Park on a Survey job the morning the thing came down from the sky. I relayed Vale’s message describing the landing and the creatures that came out of the—object. I was talking to him by microwave when he was seized by them. I reported that via Sattell of the Survey. You probably know of these reports.”
A tinny voice said with formal cordiality that he did, indeed.
“I’ve just managed to get out of the park,” said Lockley. “I’ve had a chance to experiment with a stationary terror beam. I’ve information of some importance about detecting those beams before they strike.”
The tinny voice said hastily that Lockley should speak to the general himself. There were clickings and a long wait. Lockley shook his head impatiently. When a new voice spoke, he said, “I’m at Serena. I was brought here by a Wild Life Control trailer -truck which picked us up just outside the Park. I mention that because the driver says he’s driving it for the Army, now. The information I have to pass on is.…”
Curtly and succinctly, he began to give exact information about the terror beam. Its detection so that one need not enter it. The total lack of effectiveness of a Faraday cage to check it. Its use to block highways and its one use against a low-flying plane. The failure to search him out with that terror beam was to be noted. There was other evidence that the monsters were not monsters at all—
The new voice interrupted sharply. It asked him to wait. His information would be recorded. Lockley waited, biting his lips. The voice returned after an unconscionably long wait. It told him to go ahead.
The driver of the truck was taking a long time to make contact with the military. He’d have done better by telephone instead of short wave.
The new voice repeated sharply for Lockley to go on with his story. And very, very carefully Lockley explained the contradictions in the behavior of the invaders. The blindfolds. The fact that it had been absurdly easy for four human prisoners in a compost pit shell to escape—almost as if it were intended for them to get away and report that their captors regarded men as on a par with game birds and rabbits and porcupines. True aliens would not have bothered to give such an impression. But men cooperating with aliens would contrive every possible trick to insist that only aliens operated at Boulder Lake.
“I’m saying,” said Lockley carefully, “that they do not act like aliens making a first landing on earth. Apparently their ship is designed to land in deep water. On a first landing, they should have chosen the sea. But they knew Boulder Lake was deep enough to cushion their descent. How did they know it? They didn’t kill us local animals for study, but they dropped in other local animals to convince us that they wouldn’t mind. Why try to fill us with horror—and then let us escape?”
The voice at the other end said sharply, “What do you infer from all this?”
“They’ve been briefed,” said Lockley. “They know too much about this planet and us humans. Somebody has told them about human psychology and suggested that they conquer us without destroying our cities or our factories or our usefulness as slaves. We’ll be much more valuable if captured that way! I’m saying that they’ve got humans advising and cooperating with them! I’m suggesting that those humans have made a deal to run earth for the aliens, paying them all the tribute they can demand. I’m saying that we’re not up against an invasion only by aliens, but by aliens with humans in active cooperation and acting not only as advisers but probably as spies. I’m—”
“Mr. Lockley!” said the voice at the other end of the wire. It was startled and shocked. It became pompous. “Mr. Lockley, what has been your training?” The voice did not wait for an answer. “Where have you become qualified to offer opinions contradicting all the information and all the decisions of scientists and military men alike? Where do you get the authority to make such statements? They are preposterous! You have wasted my time! You—”
Lockley reached over and flipped back the switch he’d seen Jill flip over. He carefully put down the headset. He stood up.
The driver and the small man came back. They picked up the sleeping drunk and moved toward the door. Something fell out of the drunk’s pocket. It was a wallet. They did not notice. They went out, carrying the drunk. Jill stooped and recovered it. She looked at Lockley’s face.
“What—”
“I’m trying,” said Lockley in a grating voice, “to figure out what to do next. That didn’t work.”
“I’ll be right back,” said Jill.
She went out to deliver the wallet to the driver, who had apparently been ordered to put the drunk in the trailer body and deliver him somewhere.
Lockley swore explosively when she was gone. He clenched and unclenched his hands. He paced the length of the room.
Jill came back, her face white.
“They opened the door of the trailer to pass him in,” she said in a thin, strained voice. “And there were other men back there. Several of them! And machinery! Not cages for animals but engines—generators—electrical things! I’m frightened!”
“And I,” said Lockley, “am a fool. I should have known it! Look here—”
The frosted-glass door opened. The driver came back. He had a revolver in his hand.
“Too bad!” he said calmly. “We should’ve been more careful. But the lady saw too much. Now—”
The revolver bore on Lockley. Jill flung herself upon it. Lockley swung, with every ounce of his strength. He connected with the driver’s jaw. The driver went limp. Lockley had the revolver almost before he reached the floor.
“Quick!” he snapped. “Where was the machinery? Front or back part of the trailer?”
“All of it,�
�� panted Jill. “Mostly front. What—”
“The hall again,” Lockley snapped. “Hunt for a back door!”
He thrust her out. She fumbled toward the back of the building while he went to the street entrance. The trailer-truck loomed huge. The driver’s helper came out of it. Another man followed him. Still another.…
Lockley fired from the doorway. One bullet through the front part of the truck. One near the middle. Then a third halfway between the first two. The three men dived to the ground, thinking themselves his targets. But Jill called inarticulately from the back of the dark hall. Lockley raced back to her. He saw starlight. She waited, shivering. They went out and he closed the door softly behind him.
He took her hand and they ran through the night. Overhead there was a luminous mistiness because of the street light, but here were abysmal darknesses between vague areas on which the starlight fell. Lockley said evenly, “We’ve got to be quiet. Maybe I hit some of the machinery. Maybe. If I didn’t, it’s all over!”
The back of a building. An alleyway. They ran down it. There was a street with trees, where the street lights cast utterly black shadows in between intolerable glare. They ran across the street. On the other side were residences—the business district was not large. Lockley found a gate, and opened it quietly and as quietly closed it behind them. They ran into a lane between two dead, dark, dreary structures in which people had lived but from which all life was now gone.
A back yard. A fence. Lockley helped Jill get over it. Another lane. Another street. But this street was not crossed—not here, anyhow—by another which led back to the street of the telephone office. A man could not look from there and see them running under the lights.
The blessed irregularity of the streets continued. They ran and ran until Jill’s breath came in pantings. Lockley was drenched in sweat because he expected at any instant to smell the most loathesome of all possible combinations of odors, and then to see flashing lights originating in his own eyes, and sounds which would exist only in the nerves of his ears, and then to feel all his muscles knot in total and horrible paralysis.
They heard the truck motor rumble into life when they were many blocks away. They heard the clumsy vehicle move. It continued to growl, and they knew that it was moving about the streets with its occupants trying to sight fleeing figures under the darknesses which were trees.
“I hit—I hit the generator,” panted Lockley. “I must have! Else they’d swing a beam on us!”
He stopped. Here they were in a district where many large homes pooled their lawns in block-long stretches of soft green. The street lights cast arbitrary patches of brightness against the houses, but their windows were blank and dark. This street, like most in this small town, was lined with trees on either side. There were the fragrances of flowers and grass.
“We aren’t safe now,” said Lockley, “but I just found out there may not be any safety anywhere.”
Jill’s teeth chattered.
“What will we do? What was that machinery? I felt—frightened because it wasn’t what he said was back there. So I told you. But what was it?”.
“At a guess,” said Lockley, “a terror beam generator. The invaders must have human friends. To us they’re spies. They’re cooperating with the monsters. Apparently they’re even trusted with terror beam projectors.”
He stood still, thinking, while in the distance the trailer-truck ground and rumbled about the streets. It was not a very promising method for finding two fugitives. They could hide if it turned onto a street they used. It could not continue the search indefinitely. The most likely final course would be to leave some of the unknown number of men in its trailer to search the town on foot. Even that might not be successful. But it wouldn’t be a good idea for Lockley and Jill to remain here, either.
“We look for two-car garages,” said Lockley. “It’s not a good chance, but it’s all we’ve got. If somebody had two cars, they might have left one behind when they evacuated. I can jump an ignition switch if necessary. Meanwhile we’ll be moving out of town, which is a good idea even if we do it on foot!”
They ceased to use the streets with their dramatic contrast of vivid lights with total shadows. They moved behind a row of what would be considered mansions in Serena, Colorado. Sometimes they stumbled over flower beds, and once there was a hose over which Jill tripped, and once Lockley barked his shin on a garden wheelbarrow. Most of the garages were empty or contained only tools and garden equipment.
Then something made Lockley look up. A slender, truss-braced, mastlike tower rose skyward. It began on the lawn of a house with wide porches. There was a two-car garage with one wide door open.
“A radio ham,” said Lockley. “I wonder—”
But he looked first in the garage. There was a car. It looked all right. He climbed in and opened the door. The dome light came on. The key was still in the ignition. He turned it and the gauge showed that the gas tank was three-quarters full. This was unbelievable good fortune.
“They probably intended to use this and then changed their minds,” said Lockley. “I’ll get the door open and attempt a little burglary. Just one burglary with a prayer that he used a storage battery for his power!”
Breaking in was simple. He tried the windows opening on the main wide porch. One window slid up. He went inside, Jill following.
The ham radio outfit was in the cellar. Like most radio hams, this one had battery-powered equipment as a matter of public responsibility. In case of storm or disaster when power lines are down, the ham operators of the United States can function as emergency communication systems, working without outside power. This operator was equipped as membership in the organization required.
Lockley warmed up the tubes. He tuned to a general call frequency. He began to say, “May Day! May Day! May Day!” in a level voice. This emergency call has precedence over all other calls but S.O.S., which has an identical meaning. But “May Day” is more distinct and unmistakable when heard faintly.
There were answers within minutes. Lockley snapped for them to stay tuned while he called for others. He had half a dozen hams waiting curiously when he began to broadcast what he wanted the world to know.
He told it as briefly and as convincingly as he could. Then he said, “Over” and threw the reception switch for questions.
There were no questions. His broadcast had been jammed. Some other station or stations were transmitting pure static with deafening volume, evidently from somewhere nearby. Lockley could not tell when it had begun. It could have been from the instant he began to speak. It was very likely that not one really useful word had been heard anywhere.
But a direction finder could have betrayed his position.
CHAPTER 8
It was a ticklish job getting the car out of the garage and into the street. Lockley was afraid that starting the motor would make a noise which in the silence of the town’s absolute abandonment could be heard for a long way. The grinding of the starter, though, lasted only for seconds. It might make men listen, but they could hardly locate it before the motor caught and ran quietly. Also, the trailer-truck was still in motion and making its own noise. Of course it was probably posting watchers and listeners here and there to try to find Lockley and Jill.
So Lockley backed the car into the street as silently as was possible. He did not turn on the lights. He stopped, headed away from the area in which the truck rumbled. He sent the car forward at a crawl. Then an idea occurred to him and cold chills ran down his spine. It is possible to use a short wave receiver to pick up the ignition sparks of a car. Normally such sparkings are grounded so the car’s own radio will work. But sometimes a radio is out of order. It was characteristic of Lockley’s acquired distrust of luck and chance that he thought of so unlikely a disaster.
He eased the car into motion, straining his ears for any sign that the truck reacted. Then he moved the car slowly away from the business district. It required enormous self-control to go slowly. While among
the lighted streets the urge to flee at top speed was strong. But he clenched his teeth. A car makes much less noise when barely in motion. He made it drift as silently as a wraith under the trees and the street lamps.
They got out of town. The last of the street lamps was behind them. There was only starlight ahead, and an unknown road with many turns and curves. Sometimes there were roadsigns, dimly visible as uninformative shapes beside the highway. They warned of curves and other driving hazards, but they could not be read because Lockley drove without lights. He left the car dark because any glare would have been visible to the men of the trailer-truck for a very long way.
Starlight is not good for fast driving, and when a road passes through a wooded space it is nerve-racking. Lockley drove with foreboding, every sense alert and every muscle tense. But just after a painful progress through a series of curves with high trees on either side which he managed by looking up at the sky and staying under the middle of the ribbon of stars he could see, Lockley touched the brake and stopped the car.
“What’s the matter?” asked Jill, as he rummaged under the instrument panel.
“I think,” said Lockley, “that I must have damaged something in that truck. Otherwise they’d have turned their beam on us just to get even.
“But maybe they’ll be able to make a repair. In any case there are other beams. Those are probably stationary and the truck knows where they are and calls by truck radio to have them shut off when it wants to go by. That would work. Using the Wild Life truck was really very clever.”
He wrenched at something. It gave. He pulled out a length of wire and started working on one end of it.
“If they guess we got a car,” he observed, “they’ll expect us to run into a road block beam that would wreck the car and paralyze us. I’m taking a small precaution against that. Here.” He put the wire’s end into her hand. “It’s the lead-in from this car’s radio antenna. It ought to warn us of beams across the road as my watch spring did in the hills. Hold it.”
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 207