Murray Leinster - War with the Gizmos

Carol looked anxiously at his face.

“Dick—is there something else you’re worried about?”

He shook his head, struggling to bring his hatred under control. Presently he heard Professor Warren explaining just what had been found out. Burke asked surprisingly shrewd questions which had a peculiar slant to them. Burke was a leathery-faced individual with incongruously bright blue eyes. He nodded, as Professor Warren explained.

“First they tried to kill Mr. Lane,” he said with something close to zest, “and when he fooled ’em with dead leaves they followed him. They hadn’t had anybody beat ’em before. And they knew he knew. You see what I’m drivin’ at?”

“No,” said the professor.

“Suppose they’re Martians,” said Burke, with enthusiasm. “Or that they come from Jupiter, or Venus, or somewhere. Suppose they landed in a forest. What’d we do if we landed on Mars or Jupiter and found there was forests with animals in ’em.”

“Let’s not suppose anything of the sort,” snapped the professor. “The facts are preposterous enough!”

Burke grinned. “You don’t get me,” he said. “If we landed on Mars or Jupiter, we’d be cagey. We’d kinda hide ourselves and do some scoutin’. We wouldn’t go around saying, Take us to your leaders.’ We’d make ourselves a hide-out and study what we were up against. We’d try out our guns on the animals. We’d find out if they were good to eat. If we found there were Martians or Jupiterians that were civilized, we’d send back for more men. We’d build up an army. Bein’ a long way from home, we’d live off the animals in the forest where we landed, to save transportation so we could bring in more men. When we got pretty strong, we’d put out some outposts to keep an eye on the natives. We’d make a plan of campaign. We’d keep out of sight till we were ready to take over. Ain’t it so?”

“No,” said the professor indignantly. “If we landed on another planet and found civilized inhabitants there, we’d try to make friends!”

Burke said ironically: “Yeah? That’s what folks did with the Indians, near four hundred years ago? What they did in Africa? Australia? They had natives in those places. Us civilized folk made friends with them?” “It’s not a parallel,” Professor Warren said shortly. “But it might be, to those critters you call Gizmos,” argued Burke. “Just suppose they came from somewhere off Earth, and they’ve been layin’ low, buildin’ up their strength and living off wild game as much as they could to save supplies bein’ brought in. Suppose they’ve been putting advanced bases in the bigger forests. Outposts on the edges. Observation posts in woodlots. If they got a big army here already, they’d have to send out foragin’ parties. Now and then there’d be sentries and little patrols of Gizmos out, hunting food with orders not to bother humans if they could help it, but not to let any get away that suspected there was such things as them.”

“That,” said Professor Warren with asperity, “assumes that the Gizmos are not only intelligent like lower animals on Earth, but intellectual, like men, and that they can reason.”

“Right!” said Burke. He went on with the same peculiar relish: “They’d have to be smart to get here from another world. And you check what’s happened against that idea! Mr. Lane beat off an attack by a foragin’ party with dry leaves. He went off and the patrol followed him. But some of ’em sent off for orders what to do about a man who found out they couldn’t strangle him if he kept dried leaves before his face. They got orders to wait a good chance and kill him when he wasn’t expecting it. They sneaked a spy into the trailer. But you caught and killed that one. Then they tried to break in an’ kill you regardless, but they’d got reinforcements by that time. After a while they did manage to break in. They got all three of you alive. They made up their minds to study you, findin’ out how fast you learned and so on, and keepin’ you alive till they found out all they could. And you turned that trick on them, with fire.”

Carol shuddered; the Monster, lying at her feet, whimpered to himself. “You got away,” pursued Burke, with an odd air of enjoyment. “You waved fire around your heads and they couldn’t face it. Then I came along. And what were the Gizmos doin’? They were sendin’ back to headquarters sayin’ you were even smarter than they’d expected. And they hadn’t a big enough force to handle you, anyway. Maybe Mr. Lane hit on a squad of Gizmos, first. Maybe a battalion was sent to the trailer. But they must’ve sent a division to make a dust storm that’d put out the kind of fires you’d made, and to kill us all because we knew too much.”

He paused. The car went thumping along a long straight stretch of mountain highway. This was a valley among the mountains, and there were pastures and occasional cornfields in view. The sky overhead was very bright and shining.

“The question,” said Burke zestfully, “is how many divisions have they got? How good is their communication system? Have they got a beachhead just here in Murfree County, or are they ready for a general offensive?” He rolled out the technical military terms with satisfaction.

“I’ve read a lot about wars and fightin’. I’m guessing we’ve got a war coming with the Gizmos. It’s goin’ to be a tough fight. There’s going to be a lot of people killed before it’s over. We could even lose! But there’s going to be a lot of advantage to them that know from the start what the Gizmos are and what they can do and what they can’t. I want to be one of those that know. Somebody’s got to lead guerrilla fightin’ against them, wherever they’ve occupied the country. I’m aimin’ to be qualified to do just that!”

He preened himself at the wheel of the clanking car. Lane understood. Burke was one of that considerable part of humanity which enthusiastically believes in anything that’s sufficiently dramatic. In Burke, however, his imagination did not exaggerate the drama he believed in. His assumption of an extraterrestrial origin for the Gizmos was based on pure guess, and an unlikely one at that. His description of a military organization among the Gizmos was pure, exciting fantasy. But, however wrong his assumptions, his estimate of the danger was correct.

“Where’s the proof?” Professor Warren demanded. “Reason requires a nervous system. What kind of nervous system could a Gizmo have? They’ve got something —they find prey, they use cunning. But is it a nervous system?”

Carol stirred. She looked steadily ahead, far down the sunlit valley. Suddenly she gasped. She pointed with an unsteady hand.

Lane ground his teeth. There was a dust cloud moving out from behind a mountainside ahead. It grew thicker as it went rolling across cultivated fields. It moved as an entity, as a dynamic system with every appearance of volition and purpose.

Burke braked, his eyes wide and frightened. He brought the car to a stop. A second dust cloud began to form itself to the left. It began to roll down the mountainside.

It was even larger than the one that had overwhelmed the filling station.

Burke frantically put the car in reverse, to back around and flee in the opposite direction.

“That’s no good,” said Lane. “Ahead’s the best bet. Look back there!”

Two more of the impossibly dense dust clouds were already visible behind the car. One came rolling terribly along the way the car had come; another was gathering substance from a dirt road as it swept across the valley bottom.

The four dust clouds moved to converge upon the stopped car.

The Monster uttered a howling sound which was at once so despairing and so frantic that Lane felt an urge to kick him. But instead he said to Burke: “Give me the wheel. I know how to handle this!”