The Automated Goliath

by William F. Temple

  The four of us left Moble Island under cover of darkness and landed back on the mainland. “A Second Front—all to ourselves,” Bill cracked.

  Our vital weapon was the mental circuit breaker. Prospero had agreed he had no further use for that, either. We found plenty of use for it as we marched through Cornwall, breaking hypnotic bonds, picking our men.

  But we lost two in Devon. Pam and Arthur Coney were in love and wasted no time about it. They were married in the church in Widecombe, and Bill and I insisted they have a honeymoon. We didn’t want any tragedy at that moment. We were deploying our forces for an attack on Dartmoor Prison, once known as the Granite Hell.”

  In there, we’d learned from Coney, were imprisoned the greatest concentration in the West Country of the type of men we needed for officers; the type with proven immunity to hypnotism. Our present army, though bold and vigorous-all along our march we had smashed the links of Goliath, tearing up the monorail, raiding airports, overcoming all zombie opposition—had a certain weakness. Most of its members had been recruited with the help of the circuit breaker. And if the Makkees got anywhere near them, those people could be hypnotized again.

  We needed a nucleus of impervious and completely reliable officers.

  Dartmoor might be a tough nut to crack. On the miles of open moorland there was no real cover except darkness. After sunset we pitched camp a few miles from the Prison and in sight of it—at least, we should be in sight in the morning. So we planned a dawn attack.

  We had a fair armory, plenty of rifles, trucks, and even an old tank we’d dragged out of a War Museum and got in working order.

  We waited for dawn. The Makkees, however, didn’t. They made their own dawn and caught us with our pants down. A greenish glow appeared in the eastern sky and moved steadily our way until it was directly overhead.

  Bill and I stood outside our tent looking up at it.

  “Flying saucers,” said Bill. “Ten, I make it. The Makkees, of course.”

  “And you bet they know we’re here,” I said uneasily.

  “It might only be a routine patrol of the prison area.”

  “Or maybe they’re just out shopping. Come off it. If we can see them, I’m pretty sure they can see us. Wish we had some ground-to-air missiles. They’re too high for rifle fire. Not much we can do.”

  “Only dig in fast. Tell the men. Put it out over the loud hailer.”

  I turned and went two paces when the pale green light suddenly became brighter. Simultaneously, a paralysing pain hit my spine and crumpled me up. I heard Bill fall to the ground behind me. I rolled over in agony. It was far worse than the worst lumbago attack I’ve ever had.

  I glimpsed Bill, gripped by the same torture. There were cries coming from all over the camp. I realized that the saucers were raying us. Invisible pulses were racking our spinal cords. Our little army was out of action and lay at the mercy of the Makkees.

  Then I remembered Coney saying, “The Makkees have no mercy.”

  I was glad Pam and Coney were out of this.

  Prospero had been right. We were sprats against a whale.

  I lay on my back, glaring up. The screws were tightening and I was near to screaming. The saucers hovered over us like bees over flowers.

  Then, incredibly swiftly, a shower of sun-bright comets came streaking across the pale green sky.

  The saucers suddenly began to move too, and their glow moved with them. But they didn’t move fast enough to get away. The comets overtook them and hunted them down in the wastes of the sky.

  There was a series of very bright flashes. The comets, the saucers, and the green glow all vanished together, and it was black night again.

  I found I could move once more, although my back ached like hell. Bill called to me through the darkness. “That was Prospero.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It couldn’t be anybody else.”

  A long, black arm, no longer neutral, had reached all the way from Moble Island to intervene. How, we should probably never know. Why, we could only guess.

  Would he continue to be our ally? Or was this an isolated, farewell gesture? Tomorrow he might be dead.

  So might we.

  Tomorrow came. The sappers moved out of their forward positions, carrying the high explosive to the grim main gate of the prison. We could have shelled it, but we didn’t want to risk killing any of our future officers.

  As it happened, things had been moving in the prison and most of our future officers had made a partial break-out. Under the leadership of a very efficient, vigorous little man named Maggelen, whose initiative was equaled only by his bumptiousness…

  PART THREE

  Chapter 7

  The bumptious little man has now to resume the narrative, because Captain Madden didn’t live to carry it much farther than that.

  I don’t know whether I left in that last paragraph because of honesty or vanity. I think Madden lived just long enough to know me better. He was a really nice guy. But I wish he had spelled my name right. Peter Butler became thick with both him and Brewster, because they all wore the same old school tie of Harrow.

  Personally, I got along with Major Brewster only so-so. He pulled his rank a bit too often. He was friendly in his cups but hostile most other times. He poured tepid water on almost everything I suggested in the shape of strategy, reminded me that he and Madden had spent six years in a shooting war, implying that I was a raw amateur.

  I pointed out that this was a different kind of war.

  For one thing, we had to avoid battle in open country. Our chosen ground had to have plenty of brick walls on it for protection against the green rays. There would be much house-to-house fighting. Between our picked spots, we had to make a series of forced marches.

  We had no air defense to speak of. The Makkee saucers came skimming low, spitting white-hot spears which exploded and threw off waves of intense, killing heat.

  When the saucer attacks were heaviest, Prospero’s own flaming arrows would hurtle from over the western horizon and smash them. But this help became infrequent, and after the battle of Salisbury we had no more of it. Either we’d moved beyond Prospero’s effective range—or he was dead.

  Hating it, we’d cut our way bloodily through masses of zombies. Only a few of them had ray guns—plainly, the Makkees had counted on little or no resistance. Like ourselves, the zombies were armed with whatever weapons came to hand.

  Madden got his on the road to Stockbridge—from a machine gun nest in a farmhouse. Brewster went mad with rage and grief and charged the house singlehandedly with a canvas bag full of grenades. He killed the lot of them. Then, coming away, he trod on a mine in a field he had just crossed unharmed. He died within minutes.

  I was genuinely sorry, and yet relieved. It left me in sole command and forestalled clashes that would have been inevitable between us.

  Gerry Cross, Peter Butler, and the taciturn Watts became my commanders. Watts later had a grenade to himself at Bagshot. He was an able officer. He moved and thought slowly, but on the right lines. Unfortunately, he moved a little too slowly at Bagshot.

  Basingstoke was my classic battle; a double feint, then an overwhelming attack from an unexpected quarter. My troops, actually, were numerically inferior, but by switching them I always outnumbered the enemy at the point of my attack.

  All along the way, we smashed the web of automation Madden and Brewster called Goliath. We demolished every TV station—we couldn’t risk further mass hypnosis at the rear of our advancing army. It was a kind of scorched earth policy. The ultimate aim was to present the Makkees with a wilderness in place of the comfortable home they sought.

  As for mankind, for its soul’s sake it needed a period in the wilderness.

  We set free the minds of the zombies we captured, and recruited them. By the time we drew near London we were producing a number of effective copies of the circuit breaker. Sometimes when I fingered mine, I considered employing it to break up the neurotic patterns which had warped
Sarah’s mind.

  For I never doubted that I should see Sarah Masters again. She was constantly in my thoughts these days. I talked of capturing London. But I meant to capture Sarah, too.

  We crossed the Thames at Windsor and wheeled to approach London from the northwest, aiming at Hampstead.

  We came to Harrow in the mist of evening and camped for the night, planning to launch an all-out attack on Hampstead at dawn.

  Only dawn never came.

  It had been a cloudy, moonless night. The mist was thickening into fog. I went to bed not too happy about the unseasonable weather.

  I awoke in the small hours, breaking free from a nightmare in which once more I stood paralysed by the window in Sarah’s room. The black shadow of the descending flying saucer was growing over the garden. But this time the thing landed on the roof, and began crunching down through the floors to get at me, and crush me. And I could only wait, unable to move…

  Yet somehow, too, I was Richard III in his fear-haunted tent on the eve of the fatal battle of Bosworth Field.

  The lights burn blue—It is now dead midnight.

  Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh …

  I could feel the cold drops, all right. The room was pitch-black. I reached out and snapped on the electric lights.

  They burned blue.

  Dark blue, almost purple. The room was full of black fog. I could hardly see the foot of the bed, and the far wall not at all. Shakily, I groped for my clothes and dressed.

  A dim figure came into the room, and my heart jumped. But it was too big for a Makkee. Could be a zombie sent to kill me in my bed.

  “Charles?” It was the anxious voice of Gerry Cross.

  “Here,” I said, and waved a near-useless torch.

  He came over, cursing as he hit his knee against a bedpost.

  “Something’s afoot. This is no natural fog. Must be some kind of smoke screen the Makkees have laid down on us. It’s damned effective—the whole army’s immobilized. You can’t see to drive a truck through this.”

  “It cuts both ways,” I said calmer. “They can’t attack us either.”

  “But they can see in the dark.”

  “So can a cat, but it can’t see in a fog,” I said.

  “Hm. But suppose the Makkees have got infrared search-lights and special observing instruments. They’re wizards with radar, and all that kind of thing.”

  “Radar won’t tell them friend from foe in the streets,” I said. “And I doubt if infrared light could get far through this.”

  I couldn’t see Cross’ expression but he still sounded doubtful. “I’ve alerted the guards, anyhow.”

  I looked at my wrist watch. I had to stick its luminous face almost into my eye. “It’s just after three. I guess we’ll just have to sit it out till daylight.”

  We sat it out, with the aid of a bottle of whisky, until at last we realized daylight wasn’t going to come—not in these parts, anyhow. Then I called a conference of officers.

  “Does anyone have a clue about the nature of this fog?” I asked.

  A bespectacled lieutenant, Tyson, said, “Natural fogs are composed of globules of moisture formed around dust particles. There’s very little moisture in this stuff. It’s more like smoke. But it doesn’t behave like smoke, nor fog, come to that. There’s an intermittent breeze blowing. Normally a gust of wind would drive fog into a dense bank, with a correspondingly clear patch. But this stuff is hardly affected by the wind. It’s as if each particle of it is trying to remain in its own particular place.”

  “Okay, then, it’s a Makkee brew,” I said. “Any chance of clearing patches by burning gasoline?”

  “None, I’d say,” said Tyson. “I’ve a theory these particles are electrically charged and held in place by the earth’s magnetic field. We dislodge them as we move around, but they drift back to their respective lines of force almost immediately.”

  “How far does the earth’s magnetic field extend?”

  “We still don’t know, precisely,” said Tyson. “Well into space and well below ground—I can’t be more exact than that.”

  “Thanks, anyhow.” I pondered, then said to Peter Butler, “You were at school here. D’you know the Harrow area well?”

  “Yes. I could find my way around blindfolded.”

  “Good, because that’s what you’re going to do—lead me to the top of Harrow Hill.”

  Tyson cut in, “I doubt if that’ll take you above the fog-it’s probably miles thick vertically.”

  “Maybe, and maybe not. We’ll find out. Come on, Pete.” We took powerful hand lamps. They helped fractionally. But I should have got lost without Peter, although I knew the general direction of the hill. I’d seen it yesterday. The crooked spire of the old church on the summit was visible for many miles around.

  We stumbled up the hill through the gloom. The higher we went, the lower my spirits sank. For right until we reached the churchyard wall, the fog remained as impenetrable as ever. We went through the lych gate and climbed the slight rise on which the church stood. Those last few feet of elevation worked the miracle.

  The fog thinned and vanished abruptly. It was like rising to the surface of a lake of ink. Suddenly, our heads were in bright sunlight and we could see for miles across the level upper surface of the fog layer, although we could scarcely see our own feet.

  “What an amazing thing!” Pete exclaimed. “I expected it,” I lied. “Let’s go higher.” We entered the church, climbed the tower, peered out through a small window. It was certainly amazing. The sky was light blue overhead, yet to the southeast all London lay drowned, spires, domes and all, beneath a flat calm blackness. “They made a thorough job of it,” said Pete. “Yes, but they carefully left themselves out of it. See there.” I pointed to a distant archipelago of small wooded islands in the black sea. “Those are the heights of Hampstead. The Makkees are basking in the sunshine there while all London gropes in the darkness below them, except on a few other high points, like Shooters’ Hill and Sydenham Hill way to the south.”

  Pete looked at the miles of fog between us and Hampstead.

  “They’ve killed our attack before it could begin. We can’t get at them. I know the northwestern quarter of London pretty well, but I wouldn’t give a bean for my chances of reaching Hampstead through that maze of streets in that kind of fog. But I might make Northolt Airfield—that’s near here. We could grab some helicopters—”

  I was shaking my head. “The same thing would happen to us in those ‘copters as happened to you in your car. The ‘copters would take control of us and dump us anywhere the Makkees chose—maybe in mid-Channel. Too risky altogether. No, I suggest we take the monorail—it’s a direct run to Hampstead from Harrow-on-the-Hill Station.”

  “But surely the Makkees will have cut the power?”

  “You bet they have,” I said and added cryptically, “But that won’t stop us from taking the monorail.”

  I left Pete in the dark as we descended into the more tangible dark of the fog. I wanted to think over my idea. I’d have taken a bet that all London’s transport system had been shut down. It was part of Goliath and the Makkees knew we weren’t dumb enough to attempt to use it. The fog itself was the trap they’d laid. Any army advancing into that blinding blackness would slowly lose cohesion. Separation would lead to disintegration.

  It was Napoleonic strategy to divide the enemy troops before annihilating them. The Makkees were counting on the fog to divide us. Then, I guessed, they would lift the fog suddenly and launch a zombie counterattack against my disorganized army.

  I wasn’t going to buy that one.

  On the way back, Pete and I stopped off at Harrow-on-the-Hill Station. Our surmise was correct. The current was off, no monotrains were running.

  We encountered nobody. The population of the district, presumably by order, was completely house-bound. Of course, they could see no better than ourselves in the fog.

  Back at HQ I called another conference
and presented my plan of action. Brewster would have grinned ironically. I meant to do exactly what I’d condemned him for; swan on alone into enemy territory, chancing my army being rendered leaderless.

  In the event, Pete Butler came with me. It didn’t matter that the trains weren’t running. The monorail itself was the important thing. It was an unbroken steel guide rope directly linking our camp to the enemy’s HQ. We had only to follow it, never losing touch with it, and the fog weapon was defeated.

  Quite literally we kept in touch with it. The rail ran waist-high on supports the whole way. You could run your fingers along its smooth cold surface without strain as you walked. And you had to. The dense cloud of motionless particles surrounding us kept visibility down to a yard or so, and made funeral lights of our big hand lamps.

  In holsters I packed a circuit breaker and a needle-pistol. I carried a magnesium flash-pistol, which could extend the radius of our vision by another yard—briefly. It could be useful in an emergency, say a sudden attack.

  Pete carried a field telephone. Radio was out, by my order; the Makkees could pick up our messages. Throughout our campaign we’d stuck to the old-fashioned field telephone, for security. Pete’s one was a special. It could transmit without cable. Wire fences, iron railings, could be its medium. We used the monorail. Periodically, Pete would clamp the phone to it and we could speak to Cross, leading two hundred picked men two miles behind us. Cross would take over if anything happened to us.

  Our mass assault had been stopped. There was no alternative now but a surprise commando-style attack on the Makkee HQ. It could settle the issue at a blow.

  We continued to feel our way. The monorail, we knew, burrowed into the side of a hill at West Hampstead, where a new underground section had recently been constructed to link up with the old Hampstead subway station, which was our goal.

  Mile after mile through the silent dark, awkwardly bypassing stationary empty trains. Once or twice we became confused over points, but regained the right track.

  We saw no sign of living creatures. I found that unnerving. I imagined silent forces around us, letting us through, then closing in behind us. But Cross’ men, from way back, reported a similar desertedness near the line.