The Mouse That Roared

by Leonard Wibberley

  One or two of the men coughed in the silence and then, feeling that this cough had been heard for at least a mile, eyed each other uneasily. A cat came from around a corner, mewed loudly and fled. Those who saw it laughed nervously; those who didn’t, but heard only the mewing, started. A flock of pigeons wheeled suddenly down upon the band out of the sunlight, and only the iron discipline of their training prevented the men from breaking ranks. A sheet of newspaper, caught by a gust of wind, followed them up the street like some mischievous urchin, now coming abreast of the marching ranks, now dropping mockingly behind, only to dart ahead again. Eventually, it wrapped itself around Tully’s legs and would not be shaken off, making him feel ridiculous. He stooped and picked it up and thrust it into his sword belt angrily. But beyond these little noises and movements, normally lost in the city’s roar, there was no sound or stirring other than that which they themselves made.

  So they went, still without meeting a soul, until they had arrived at Times Square. The old New York Times building stood alone and quite deserted in the empty cross-roads of the world, and catching sight of it, Tully decided that it should be taken. It would provide in the first instance a temporary fortress. Its capture, he hoped, would get the war started on some more tangible basis. And it would be a good place to hold a council of war and seek for some reason why, while New York was where it had always been, none of the New Yorkers were.

  On the ground floor was a drug-store, whose windows, bright with a thousand attractive geegaws, fascinated the men of Grand Fenwick.

  “Will,” said Tully, to his lieutenant, “take half the men over to the other side of the building. You will find a door there. When I cry ‘Charge,’ break it down and kill any who offer resistance. We will breach the door on this side at the same moment.”

  Will saluted and trooped off with his men, who, despite their discipline, could not resist dawdling as they passed the drugstore windows, with their display of mechanical pencils and pens, wallets, handbags, cigarettes, pipes, and cigarette lighters. In the centre was a big sign which said, STOCK MUST BE MOVED. “Come on,” said Will, to his lagging warriors, “we will attend to that later.”

  On the other side they found a brass double door and gathered around to burst this open at the word of command from Tully. When it came, six muscular shoulders crashed into the doors, which, since they were not locked, spilled the company into the lobby of the building. At the same moment the remainder of the force under Tully’s command charged the door on their side. This also was unsecured, so they tumbled into the drug-store, and plunging through, piled into their comrades in the lobby.

  A few blows were exchanged and a sword or two brought ringing down upon helmets before it was discovered that the lobby of the building was deserted except for themselves. Again there was an anti-climax. Again, what had been anticipated would prove a dour assault at arms had turned out to be an unnecessarily forceful entry. Again, all had been prepared to meet the enemy face to face, only to be confronted by a complete absence of the enemy. The men stood in little clumps, bewildered, looking nervously around and muttering to each other.

  “Will,” said Tully, drawing his lieutenant aside, “to be plain about it, I don’t like this at all. I don’t understand why there is nobody in the city.”

  “You don’t think it is because they knew we were coming?” asked Will, who was beginning to doubt such a reason himself.

  “No. I don’t. It’s more like as if there had been a plague.”

  Will blanched. He was a brave man; none braver. But he had a mortal fear of germs, which it had been explained to him in his youth would certainly devour him if he did not wash behind his ears. “The air smells bad here,” he said.

  “It always does,” replied Tully.

  “You don’t suppose these blobs of black stuff on the ground are some kind of germ warfare, do you?”

  “No. Well, in a way they are. They’re old pieces of chewing gum, tons of it. Probably filthy with microbes, but they never bothered New Yorkers before. We’ve got to find someone to let them know that they’ve been invaded. We’ve got to strike a blow somewhere. An invasion doesn’t count if nobody ever finds out about it.”

  He put his hand on his sword belt in deep thought, and in doing so, rediscovered the sheet of newspaper which had caught on his legs as he marched up Forty-fourth Street. He was about to hurl it from him when he decided, on a hunch, to look it over and see whether there might be any clue in it to the reason for the desertion of the city.

  The sheet turned out to be the front page of the New York Times of the day before. A double banner, eight columns wide, spread underneath the masthead. One fine read: SUPER BOMB ANNOUNCED BY GRIFFIN. The other: EAST COAST ALERT EXPECTED HOURLY. There was a morass of other headings and then the text of the two stories. “The United States is in possession of an ultimate weapon of mass destruction, capable of devastating an area of two million square miles,” the first story read, and went on to describe how this had been announced by Senator Griffin, of the Atomic Energy Commission, and that the bomb had been developed by Dr. Kokintz, of Columbia University. The second story, which ran side by side with the first, said that it was learned from usually well-informed sources that the alert of the whole east coast of the United States, in preparation for atomic attack, was likely to be held within the next twenty-four hours.

  Tully read both stories through twice before the significance of the situation dawned on him. He reduced it to two basic points. The first was that New York was likely to be atom-bombed within a matter of hours, maybe minutes. The second, was that a far more valuable man to seize than the President of the United States was Dr. Kokintz, of Columbia University. And Dr. Kokintz had better be seized quickly before whatever other enemy the United States was at war with blew up New York and won the issue before Grand Fenwick had a chance.

  “Form up the men and get them out into the street,” he shouted to Will, with sudden decision. “We haven’t much time to win this war and have to march about eight miles.”

  “Where are we going?” Will asked.

  “Columbia University,” Tully replied.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The invasion of the United States by the expeditionary force of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick was under way nearly two hours before anyone in an official position, or indeed, in any position at all, realized that such a thing was taking place. Even when the presence of strange, armed men in Manhattan was discovered, no one had any immediate conception of the significance of the matter.

  The elaborate plans made to guard the civilian population by keeping them off the street, irrespective of what excuses or devices they might invent, were fully successful. The first shock of the long-awaited air-raid warning had been sufficient to send all scurrying to places of safety. But the Secretary of Defence realized that this initial shock would be replaced in a little while by a growing curiosity as to what was going on. And this curiosity, he reasoned, would be most marked in New York and its environs.

  Thus air-raid wardens had been told to stay in shelters in subway terminals and in buildings, and prevent anyone leaving. In this task they were helped by the police, who also remained below ground. Other defence workers, decontamination men, unexploded bomb experts, medical and ambulance corps and volunteers with food were to appear in the streets as soon as practicable after the alert to make sure that all was as well as could be expected. Starting from a number of key points around the city, they were to inspect every building and shelter, take care of pregnant women, infants, the infirm and the aged and see that all were supplied with food, water, and clothing. But no others were to be allowed on the surface. Thus it was not until an hour and a half after their assault upon the deserted city that the men of Grand Fenwick met with the first of their enemies.

  They had, by that time, marching up Broadway under Tully’s leadership, gone as far as One Hundredth Street without seeing a soul or being seen.

  Then at the intersection of One Hundred
th and Broadway, they came, quite unexpectedly, upon a party of five men, dressed as no other men Tully had ever seen. They wore cumbersome grey-white suits, which covered them from head to foot, with thick glass windows in the cowls through which they could see. They were huddled together, and carried small instruments which they held to the sides of buildings, against fire hydrants and close to the ground, while peering at them anxiously. The two parties saw each other in the same moment, and were equally horrified at each other’s appearance. Both suspected that they were in the presence of an invasion force of monsters from another world. Both halted, and the decontamination squad, for such they were, began edging away, while the bowmen fitted arrows to the strings of their bows.

  One of the Americans, his voice humming and burbling through his cumbersome suit and further distorted by panic, cried, “They’re off a flying saucer.” The words were no sooner spoken than they took the force of divine revelation, confirming a suspicion forming, but up to then uncrystallized, in the minds of the others.

  “Flying saucer,” cried another, and in a twinkling the whole party had turned and scampered around the corner, heading for the river. Finding themselves severely handicapped in flight by their suits, the decontamination men tore them off and flung them away. In a second the quiet streets were reverberating to cries of “Flying Saucer! Men from Mars! Ray guns!” and the panic was increased by a volley of arrows which whistled over the heads of the fleeing five, and went clashing and chattering along the roads and buildings.

  A second volley was about to follow the first, but Tully, concerned over the prospect of an atom bomb falling at any minute upon New York, ordered his men to cease fire and continue their marching towards Columbia University. As an afterthought, he picked up the discarded suits, and gave them to some of the Fenwickians to carry.

  The leader of the decontamination squad, a man of middle years, who had not missed a newspaper comic section as far back as he could remember, was the first to recover his presence of mind. He had run himself almost out of breath when he became conscious that he had a duty other than flight to perform. And that duty, he knew, consisted of reporting to headquarters that a detachment of invaders from a flying saucer, perhaps from several flying saucers, had landed in New York, were marching through the city in metal clothing, were equipped with ray guns that threw a kind of dart that whistled as it went, and thousands more were probably to be expected at any minute.

  Fie realized, as his first terror left him, that he might have some difficulty in getting anyone to believe his story, though there was no doubt in his own mind that the horde of men who had stolen up on him and his party were not human and must, therefore, be from another planet. For one thing, they appeared taller than most human beings, a good foot or more. Then their heads had no hair on them, but seemed to be made of metal. Furthermore, they glittered in the sunlight. And lastly, they had launched some sort of supersonic hand missile which made a whistling noise as it sped over his head.

  All this he straightened out in his mind as he phoned the secret number to which reports were to be turned in, from a corner telephone booth.

  “Give me Special Reports,” he said, when his call was answered.

  There was a short silence and a voice said, “Special Reports. What is your name and section?”

  “Tom Mulligan. Section 4--300, sub-section 3. Decontamination,” he replied.

  There was the noise of a paper being put into a typewriter and then the clicking of the keys as this information was typed out. “Okay. Go ahead,” Special Reports said.

  “There’s a bunch of men from a flying saucer at Broadway and One Hundredth,” Tom said, breathlessly.

  “How many?” came back the laconic reply.

  “Maybe fifty or sixty of them,” replied Tom, relieved that he was, apparently, being believed.

  “Just a minute, while I type this out. Fifty or sixty men from a flying saucer--say, what the hell is this? What do you mean, flying saucer?”

  “Just what I said,” replied Tom. “I saw them. My squad saw them. Fifty or sixty. With metal heads, and all covered in some kind of shiny stuff. They appeared suddenly right in front of us, and fired on us with some kind of a ray gun.”

  “Listen, bub,” said Special Reports, “you have been told to keep out of saloons, haven’t you? The job you’re doing is a serious business. You’re not supposed to get your nose wet. Where are you now?”

  “Ninety-eighth and Broadway,” said Tom. “And I haven’t been in any saloons. Ask my men. They were with me. They saw these guys. Right out of a flying saucer. I tell you the city is being invaded.”

  “Stay where you are,” said Special Reports. “I’ll send someone over.” But before the Civil Defence official arrived to pick Tom up for questioning, another patrol appeared. They had already picked up his men, dressed in ordinary clothing and jabbering about flying saucers. None had any identification. To humour them, since all told substantially the same story, the patrol drove them all to the place where they said they had left their decontamination suits. Not finding them there, they hustled them off to the nearest subway shelter, where they were thrust into the depths without ceremony. Here Tom and his men tried hard to convince the wardens on duty that they were part of the Civil Defence Organization and had been interrupted in the course of their duties by a war party--which had now grown to half a division--from Mars.

  “Blitz plotz,” the wardens said, understandingly.

  The word of an invasion from Mars, however, with frightful details of giant beings in metal suits, men equipped with strange and awesome weapons, spread from mouth to mouth among the teeming, scared, credulous multitude in the subway station. Their nerves had been keyed up for a full week. They had been warned of weapons which defeated all attempts of the imagination to describe. They had read innumerable stories of flying saucers; they had devoured a host of books on adventures in space; they had seen movies depicting every kind of invader from every kind of world. They had been huddled underground and kept there, and they swallowed the story of an invasion from Mars, readily, avidly, and almost with relief. At last they knew who the enemy was whose onslaught they had been preparing to meet for seven days.

  “Men from Mars,” the cry went and it spread from the Ninety-sixth Street subway station to the Seventy-second, and on down the line until, in a comparatively short while, all who had been caught in the subways of New York at the sounding of the air-raid alarm, were telling each other that the city had been taken over by an expeditionary force from a neighbouring planet.

  The reactions were curious. Some wanted to get out and have a look and had to be forcibly restrained. Others crept out of the subway stations down the tunnels, anxious to escape even farther into the ground. Somebody started singing “Abide with Me” in a high-pitched quaver, and the hymn was taken up tentatively at first and then with more vigour, so that soon the chant was echoing through the underground passages, the echoes seeming louder than the voices which roused them.

  From below the streets the voices emerged booming, but still recognizable from manholes and gratings, into the empty city. The wardens and police started to worry. Several called up Special Reports to say that they didn’t know how long they could control the people in the subways. “Abide with Me” gave way to “Mairzy Doats,” then to “The Little Doggie in the Window,” and, in the brief intervals, the tales grew wilder until it was common knowledge that flying saucers had landed on top of all the principal buildings in Manhattan, unleashing hordes of steel men who flung electric rays from their hands.

  Special Reports at first told the wardens to do what they could to control the crowds and that reinforcements would be sent. But as the reinforcements went out, only to send back messages that the situation was getting completely out of hand, it was decided to call up the Secretary of Defence. The decision was not an easy one to make, for the strictest instructions had been given to New York Civil Defence Headquarters that the Secretary was to be contacted o
nly in case of a pressing emergency.

  Did half a million people in the New York subway system, singing “The Little Doggie in the Window,” constitute a pressing emergency? General Snippett, Civil Defence Chief for the New York area, asked himself. He was not sure that it did. He was a practical man who had achieved the rank of General in the course of his army career largely by refusing to be panicked by anything. People singing didn’t constitute in itself an emergency, in his definition of the term, though he abominated music. So in the first instance he had temporized by sending out even more reinforcements, and sound trucks, calling upon those in subways and shelters to keep calm and assuring them that nothing untoward had happened.

  The sound trucks, unfortunately, produced the exact opposite effect to that desired on those in the underground tunnels. They sounded like giants shouting in the streets, and their message, “There are no men from Mars around,” did not get over in its entirety. Some heard it correctly, but most caught only the phrase, “Men from Mars around.” Two of the trucks, rounding a corner from opposite directions, the drivers distracted by the singing coming from underground, collided, and the gasoline tank on one exploded with a soft “whoomp.” This gave rise to a new rumour to the effect that an atomic bomb had been dropped. Some in the subways insisted that they had radiation sickness. Others shouted that the heat was increasing and perhaps half the city was already burning. The clamour of the engines racing to the blazing trucks lent credence to this last rumour; and it was at this point, with distracted wardens jamming the Special Reports’ section with appeals for aid, that General Snippett decided to call the Secretary of Defence.