Murray Leinster - War with the Gizmos

Things touched Lane, and the air about him ceased to be. He felt even his clothing stir all over his body as invisible things pressed against it, throbbing and suddenly emitting spiteful, snarling whines. His face and neck felt ticklings like thousands of spider webs thrown to cover and enmesh him. He saw nothing. He heard only the whines. And he could not breathe.

The hand that held the cigarette lighter was untouched. He moved it, to a torch of dry straw. The straw caught and flames leaped up, and the winnings about him seemed to become shrieks, unspeakably eerie and horrible. The air—the Gizmos—touching his body acquired the feel of a ghastly, throbbing wall. The violence of its movement almost toppled him. He waved the torch savagely, and sparks flew in every direction, and there were more ghostly, keening, wailing sounds. Then he could breathe, but the air about him was foul with mephitic odors. He turned triumphantly to the others, to see how the fire was aiding them.

Carol sat tensely with a flaming torch before her. The professor had fallen. Her first match had gone out. Her hands still tried desperately to strike a second, but the brittle bit of cardboard had bent in her grasp.

Lane strode to her and waved his grassy flare about her like someone making mystic conjurations. But it dripped sparks. Things fled, uttering tiny, unearthly shrieks. “I think,” he said savagely, as Professor Warren gasped for the breath that again became possible, “I think we fooled them this time!”

His torch was already down to the hard-twisted handle. He plucked another from his belt and lighted it. It crackled and blazed brightly, and he waved it above his head. The look of things was lunacy: three human beings on the spur of a mountain, menacingly waving torches at the moonlight all about.

“The trailer,” snapped Lane. “We’ve got to get set before we try to get far away.” Carol helped the professor to her feet. “And I thought,” panted the professor, “that they were interesting things to study!”

They made their way toward the trailer. Its electric lights still burned. There was a thin chorus of awful fury all about them. Lane’s torch had burned out, and Carol waved hers until he could light another from it. Then the professor marched ahead, scattering sparks lavishly. They reached the trailer and entered it. They waved torches all about its interior, hearing more small shrieks. Once there was a small impact as something in frantic flight bounced against Lane’s cheek. The professor lighted all four burners of the bottled-gas stove.

“I feel a fondness for flames, now,” she said sardonically.

There was a whimpering, and the Monster crawled from under the couch. Its daytime cover reached down to the floor, and even so slight a barrier had kept Gizmos from entering the space beneath. The Monster, though, was in a pitiable state. He trembled and moaned.

“Temporarily,” said Lane coldly, “we are on top. But I’m wondering how long we can stay there.”

“We have to warn the public,” said the professor. “We have to tell about the existence of these Gizmos and how dangerous they are. That is our first duty. If we can capture one to demonstrate—”

“We did,” said Carol. “We did that once, Aunt Ann!

And it made noises and others came running. We don’t want to keep a horde of them about us, trying to kill us for our prisoner’s sake! That would be too much proof!”

“True. Then we go and make our reports—I to the University, and Dick to his sportsmen’s magazine. They’ll alert the authorities, and there will be a prompt handling of the whole situation!”

Carol looked at Lane. He shrugged.

“We’ll see. I’ll make some firepots. We can’t depend on two gallons of gasoline to last forever, but we can pick up sticks and stuff to keep pots going. Where’s a can opener?”

Carol found one and helped him. He opened three cans of food at random. A firepot is a tin can with its top off, a draught hole in one side near the bottom, and a handle made of wire to sling it from. Small boys make them every fall by some mysterious instinct, and gloriously carry them about for no reason whatever until their parents make them stop for fear of arson. Lane quickly made three of them.

“You can whirl it about your head,” he observed, “with the draught hole forward to blow up the fire. I don’t think Gizmos can face such things as this.”

He demonstrated the whirling of a firepot at the end of its two-foot wire handle. He found a wooden packing box in the trailer and kicked it into pieces no bigger than his hand. Using those fragments, he started a fire in one of the tin firepots. He gave it to Carol. He started a second small blaze in a similar contrivance for the professor. He needed a third for himself. He slung the gasoline can over his shoulder and stuffed his pockets with bits of broken wood. They went out of the trailer, leaving it brightly lighted.

They looked unusual as they struck out across the mountain—a young man in tweedy city clothing, a slim young girl in slacks, and an ample older female in riding breeches and puttees. From time to time they whirled their firepots angrily about their heads, and more than once they stopped and gathered about the Monster, who had rolled over on his back and screamed and snapped at nothingness. At such times they grimly passed small containers of glowing coals close to his body until he whimpered and got to his feet again. Also they gathered earnestly about deadfalls and broke off bark and bits of branches to be carried with them for later use in the firepots.

The mountains reared upward as they trudged. The professor was now filled with vengeful thoughts concerning the doom she would presently bring upon Gizmos. Carol absorbedly kept her firepot alight, though she was instantly attentive to any word from Lane. He led the way, and tried to compose a reasonable account of what he’d learned which would convince people who had not been attacked by Gizmos.

They talked very little as they made their way along the trail. There were places where trees closed overhead and hid the heavens. Here the darkness was intense, and the tiny draught holes of the firepots let out dullish red glows which had to guide them past fallen tree trunks and boulders resting in the way. There was the feel of ghastly things lurking among the trees, and the Monster yelped and howled as he trudged with them, panting, and though there was no sound of movement, they knew that things—Gizmos—accompanied them malevolently through the blackness, hoping for the fires in the little tin cans to go out.

After a long time they came to open spaces, where innumerable stars shone overhead, and they could look for miles across mountains lighted by the misshapen moon. Sometimes they felt the small puffs of an errant night breeze, and in every case its touches seemed like signs of an attack by monstrous, unsubstantial fiends, and they flung their firepots about and scattered sparks in all directions.

They saw no other lights, though it was not likely that they looked out over only uninhabited ground. But also they heard no night birds until a grayish glow appeared very, very far away at the horizon. Carol noticed it first.

“Day’s coming,” she said quietly.

Then they heard, with infinite faintness, the lonely cry of a bird very far away. It had not been murdered, like all things of flesh and blood in the area they had passed through.

“I’m surprised that we’ve lived this long,” said Lane grimly. “I don’t think our troubles are over yet, though.”

The professor said firmly, “I shall get a research team down here immediately. These things are dangerous! They must be taken in hand immediately!”

She made the statement with that unconscious confidence in superiority which human beings have inherited through some thousands of generations. But Lane did not fully share it. He knew that there must be Gizmos nearly everywhere. How many? And would those fragile horrors gain strength in numbers?