Murray Leinster - War with the Gizmos

Some time later, sunlight glowed upon the mountains, and they cast vast shadows upon each other, and little white clouds in the sky were brilliant in sunshine that still had a trace of pink in it. Grass and foliage glittered with dew, and the air smelled fresh and glorious. Now, birds called to each other from the mountainsides. Somewhere a dog barked. Even insects buzzed in the dawn light.

Professor Warren surveyed the scene. The three had come out of a thicket of mountain laurel, and before them there was a gravel road which seemed to come from nowhere and to lead on to the same destination. There was no house in sight, but there was a steep, grass-grown hillside with patches of red clay showing, which could have been a pasture. A catbird perched on a branch less than thirty feet away and uttered its raucous cry.

The professor looked about her with great satisfaction.

“Birds singing,” she said appreciatively. “I hear bugs. This territory, anyhow, is not occupied by Gizmos. And now we’ve got to get to a long-distance wire and get things in motion.” She said in sudden indignation: “The nerve of those Gizmos!” She dumped the smoking embers of her firepot. “I’ve felt silly all the time I’ve been carrying that! But now we’re safe! Which way should we go?”

Carol started a little at her aunt’s action. She looked mutely at Lane. He shrugged.

“Murfree’s courthouse should be somewhere over yonder,” he said, nodding toward his left. “We’re probably still five or six miles away, though.”

“And my feet hurt!” complained the professor. “I—”

There was a noise in the distance. She stopped, looking avidly toward the source of the sound. It increased and was plainly the motor of an automobile traveling on this highway. It came into view. It was a battered, dark-green car five or six years old.

“We hitch a ride,” said the professor with authority. “I’ve got to get somebody down here with equipment to make a proper study of those monstrosities!”

She waved her arms. The car braked and stopped. The man who drove it regarded them with lively interest.

“Can you give us a lift?” asked Lane.

It would not be wise to start a conversation with a sane person by trying to explain the emergency behind the request.

“Where d’you want to go?” asked the man. “Hop in.”

“We want,” said the professor firmly, “to get to a telephone. A pay telephone, because we have to make some long-distance calls.”

She climbed into the car. There were many parcels in the car, and she rearranged them to make room for herself in the back seat. Carol looked mutely at Lane, indicating the firepot in her hand in which coals still smoldered. He glanced at the Monster; the dog was exhausted from past terror, but he did not seem frightened now.

“I guess it’s all right,” he said slowly. “I’ve still got the gasoline and my lighter. And this car will travel fairly fast.”

She dumped the coals, and he emptied his own. It did not occur to either—not even to the professor—to abandon the queer objects which had been such effective defenses against the Gizmos during the night. The Monster had to be lifted into the car, and then Lane and Carol climbed in. The driver watched them wisely. He shifted the gear lever and the motor roared. The car jolted into motion and its clamor grew less.

The driver said brightly, “You’ll be that professor that’s studying turkey-buzzards back that way. Right?”

“Right,” said the professor.

“And she’s your niece,” said the driver, “and he’s that fellow that writes pieces about hunting.” “Right,” said the professor.

“My name’s Burke,” said the driver. “Glad to meet you. You found out what killed those cows and partridges and foxes and coons and such?”

Lane didn’t answer, and the professor only grunted. She was beginning to realize that in bright sunshine, with birds and insects filling the air with sound, the idea of living creatures which were not flesh and blood, and which suffocated more normal things so that they might gorge on the odors of decay—in bright sunshine an average person might tend to be skeptical. But…

“I found out,” said Burke. “I’m not sure I believe it, but I found out. So I’m leavin’ these parts. Got my luggage right here with me. I’m goin’ some place else.”

“What did you find out?” asked Lane.

“Never mind!” said Burke. “Never mind that! You wouldn’t believe me if I told you!”

He pressed the accelerator. The car picked up speed. It ran onward through the new morning with the hillsides echoing back its roaring. The highway swung right to encircle an out-jutting part of a mountainside, and ran over a narrow bridge spanning a brook all of five feet wide. It turned left again, and then Burke swung off the gravel road and went bumping and bouncing down a still narrower road with a bed of powdery dust. The dust rose in a reddish cloud behind the car. “Nearest telephone’s along this way,” said Burke.

“That’s a new road we were on. This fellow built a fillin’ station where he thought the new road would come, an’ then the highway folks didn’t build it there. He got fooled.”

Lane said in a low tone to Carol: “We should be safe now. It’s unthinkable that Gizmos could travel really fast. Even if they trailed us from the forest, they’d have been left behind now.”

Carol nodded. But her features looked oddly pinched, as if she had a premonition she could not bring herself to mention.

The car swerved around the curving boundary of a cornfield, its trail of swirling dust conspicuous behind it. It swung in to a modern filling station which seemed to belong on a well-traveled road instead of a dusty dirt one. Burke braked on its concrete apron.

“Telephone here,” he reported. “Hi, Sam! I brought you some phone customers.”

The filling station proprietor came out, leisurely. A cat accompanied him. The professor got out of the car and nodded briskly. She could see the phone. She went inside, fumbling in the pockets of her breeches for coins. The Monster lay on the floor of the car, panting. The filling station operator said humorously:

“Seen any more ha’nts?”

Burke said primly: “Hell! I didn’t say I saw anything! Y’ can’t see ’em! They’ll move danglin’ strings, an’ they make noises, an’ they’ll make tracks in flour sprinkled over a buried dead chicken. But y’ can’t see ’em!”

Lane and Carol exchanged startled glances. Then Lane’s face went expressionless. He could see Professor Warren inside the plate-glass window of the filling station. She put coins into the instrument.

“When I see ’em,” said Sam, “I’ll think about believin’ in ’em.”

Professor Warren greeted someone on the telephone. She began to speak, crisply and with authority, into the instrument. She evidently spoke with great precision and with scientific terminology.

“They’ve been killin’ things,” said Burke sagely. “They’re what’s killed off the game people’ve been talkin’ about. They killed those cows in the courthouse a while back.”

Sam said humorously: “They ain’t killed me yet.”

“They’ll get to you,” said Burke firmly. “They’ve been leavin’ us humans alone—so far. I’m not stayin’ around till they start killin’ people. I’m gettin’ out.”

“Scared?” asked Sam incredulously. “Scared of something you can’t see?”

“Yep,” said Burke. “I’m scared of anything I can’t fight. And how’re you goin’ to fight somethin’ you can’t see?”

Inside the station, Professor Warren’s expression turned to one of shock, her face bewildered and crimsoning. Then she bellowed infuriatedly into the transmitter. A sound came through the plate glass. It was the professor’s voice, expressing a violently disparaging opinion of the person at the other end of the line. Then she stopped and jiggled the hook furiously. She slammed down the receiver and came out, raging.