Alan Foster - The Metrognome and Other Stories

His first thought satisfied, he turned his attention to the house, headed toward it.

A smartly clad ranger blocked his path with a slim M-18. "Sorry, sir, no one permitted past this point without authorization."

Chester fumbled for identification, trying to locate the proper cards and peer past the bulk of the soldier as well.

"I'm Major Josiah Chester," he explained, "Air Force Intelligence. I'm the one who placed the emergency call that brought you all out here."

The soldier listened impassively, noncommittally. It was the printed identification that pleased him. After that careful study; he stepped aside. "Go on in, Major."

The first thing he saw in the big living room was a very alive Beth hattuck and a long row of bodies. They were of indeterminate nationality and size, alike only their clothing. Some lay frozen in odd positions. They looked like a family of ravens worked on by a not-too-steady-handed taxidermist.

"Mornin', Major," Beth Shattuck greeted him brightly. "Seems we've been invaded twice tonight." She indicated the row of near corpses. "First by these. Then by your friends. They are your friends, aren't they?" He nodded ruefully. "Then they come swooping down with the most god-awful yelling and hollering you can imagine. Like to scared the chickens plumb to death.

"Cotton and Gin woke up woozy right when it happened. They're both in David's room hiding under his bed, and nothing can get them out. I got tired of shoutin' at those two bitches, so I came out here. What's goin' on? Who are these ugly catatonics-" She gestured again at the row of bodies. "-and why the invasion? You folks tryin' to make a comedy picture or somethin'?"

"There's no comedy to it, Mrs. Shattuck," Chester told her softly as he moved from one softly breathing, motionless form to the next. He stopped at the one he was hunting for, turned it over. Frightened, angry eyes glared back at him helplessly.

"Excuse me, sir?"

Chester looked up from the limp form into the face of an earnest captain of special forces. He repeated his identification, verbal and written, for the officer's benefit.

The captain stood back while Chester went through the sergeant's pockets, acutely aware of those eyes following him. Other than that, the big man didn't twitch a muscle, though Chester could feel as well as hear the man breathing.

There was nothing in the man's pockets that proved particularly instructive, unless it was the exceedingly large amount of cash. He fondled a bent, smudged card on which numbers were listed for girlfriends, bowling alleys, and restaurants. Odd, but all the numbers were out of state.

It might have been his imagination, but it seemed to Chester that when he handled that particular item the sergeant's eyes widened slightly. He handed the card to the captain, along with the cashwnd the rest of the items.

"While Intelligence is running checks on these people and their identities, have them research the numbers on that card, delicately. They might turn up some interesting people at the other end of each of them."

"Yes, sir," acknowledged the captain, saluting respectfully.

"Now, what happened here?" Chester asked him.

"Nothing, sir. We flew out as fast as we could, putting on our boots on board ship. Someone got somebody big awfully excited."

"That was me," Chester told him.

"We'd been standing by for weeks," the captain went on, "told to be ready for an unspecified emergency. When we got the call, we were ordered to prepare to land shooting. But when we came in, no one challenged us.

"We found these-" He indicated the bodies, a couple of which were beginning to twitch. "-scattered between that barn, all along the road up to a big semi-I don't know if you can see it in the darkness, sir."

"We passed it coming in," Chester said.

"There's a fancy sling and winch arrangement inside the rear trailer of it, sir, along with a pile of legitimate cargo-cover, we presume. We were informed on the way about the satellite."

Chester did not enlighten the captain further. "It seems pretty obvious they came here to steal it, sir. We've spent most of our time waiting for someone to give us new orders." He looked hopefully at Chester.

"Load up your men, go home, and forget about this morning," the major instructed him. "You've done your job." He gestured with a thumb at the now stirring, and moaning bodies nearby. "Make sure these are turned over to base intelligence for 'debriefing.' " His stress on the last word was peculiar.

"If they can be debriefed. What happened to them?"

"Just a minute, sir." The captain turned, shouted to a man bent over one of the forms. He rose, walked over, to join them. Chester noted the captain's bars and medical insignia on his field uniform.

"Never saw anything quite like it," was his response to Chester's questions. "Full paralysis of every voluntary muscle. Those necessary to maintain the life functions are operating normally."

"Any idea what caused it?"

"None." The doctor shook his head slowly. "I can't imagine what happened."

"I can," said a soft voice. All three officers turned, looked out the front door.

Shattuck, obviously bored and annoyed with the whole business, was standing and watching the milling soldiers. His son sat curled nearby on a swing bench. There was a kitten in his lap.

Chester had noticed the abundance of half-wild cats swarming about the ranch on his first arrival. Now, though, it occurred to him to wonder how the cats and farm fowl coexisted. He mentioned it to the rancher.

"That's what I'm talking about," Shattuck said, pleased. "It's just like the coyote."

"What coyote?" Chester asked.

"Normally the dogs keep them well clear of the henhouse," the rancher explained. "But when it gets as cold as it's been lately, we let them sleep on the porch. I wouldn't put a good dog out in the snow any more than I would a good man.

"Those damn coyotes are smart enough to know when the dogs are tied up here instead of out back. That's when they come in quick and quiet, and I end up losing a hen a week. I'd rather do that than lose Cotton or Gin. They're part of the family."

"I understand," a new voice said. Chester saw that Jean Calumet had left the barn to join the little group on the porch. "I've got three dogs myself, back home . . . Don't have the temperature problems you do, though. "

Shattuck examined the younger man with a fresh eye. "Where you from, son?"

"Little town near Baton Rouge," came the reply. Shattuck nodded as if that explained everything.

"About the coyote," Chester reminded the rancher curiously.

"Yeah. We came out one morning, a couple of days ago, and found two of them, a male and his bitch, lying side by side just outside the henhouse. They'd dug under the fence I'd put up around it. So I guess they'd already been inside and were coming out again, with one bird between them.

"When they come out, something had stopped them clean. They just lay there in the yard. I thought they were dead at first, but you could see their eyes move and that they were still breathing. So David and I took them way out behind the tank. When we checked them yesterday evening, we saw where they'd gotten up and run off. I don't expect them to come back again. Something shook them up pretty bad.

"Now, this doctor here has been saying that something knocked these fellows down and frazzled them good without killing them. They look just like those two coyotes."

"Make a note, Captain," Chester told the special forces officer, "of when we can expect them to come around again."

"Yes, sir."

Under the captain's direction, stretchers were used to ferry the motionless black-clad shapes to the waiting helicopters. When the whup-whup of many blades had faded to the south, Calumet spoke quietly to the rancher.