Murray Leinster - War with the Gizmos

Lane kept the accelerator down to the floor. The car went up and up, nearing the end of a two-mile climb. Carol said, “Are you wondering about their communication system, Dick?”

“I am,” he said with some grimness. “They’re everywhere—I’ve had proof of that. And they’ve proved that they can call enormous numbers of others overnight, anyhow. If they can send messages for help—and we’ve had three examples of it—can they send messages of warning that we must be killed?”

“It is not likely,” said the professor with authority. “It is most improbable.”

Burke pulled in his head from where he had been staring anxiously to the rear.

“They’re out of sight now,” he said with relief. “Maybe we lost ’em. Mr. Lane, d’you think they can send word on ahead for other ones to watch out for us?”

“Most unlikely!” repeated the professor firmly. “Even lower animals can summon aid. Ants can call other ants when they find booty too large for them to handle alone. Other creatures even post sentinels and combine for their mutual defense. But no creature lower than man can transmit the idea of an individual identity.”

Burke was suddenly garrulous with relief because there were no longer any dust clouds in view. “But are Gizmos lower than humans?” he demanded zestfully. “If they came here from Mars or somewhere, they’ve got to be smart. They could be smarter than people.”

“Mr. Burke,” said the professor, “there is a limit to what even I will believe without evidence!”

The road leveled. It ran through a cut between hillsides which rose still higher, though the valley bottom behind it was deep. A few hundred yards on, it disappeared in a downward curve. When they reached the spot where the landscape spread out to their view ahead, the effect would have been breathtaking under other circumstances. They had crossed the last of one range of mountains, and they could see for scores of miles. Everything was green and beautiful. They could sec farmhouses and highways and woodland and villages. To the north a small town—it would be Murfree—sprawled out over a square mile or more. The spires of churches rose above its tree-lined streets. There were rolling pastures, speckled with moving dots of grazing cattle. On the highways there were crawling motes of cars.

Lane started the car down the steep incline. “Either the Gizmos are intelligent, and after us individually for a very good reason, or they’re a weird kind of beast. As beasts of the forests, they may have multiplied until they can’t stay in the wilderness, and have to move out to get food. If the first is true, we’ve got to get mixed up in traffic so they can’t identify us. If they’re really intelligent they might or might not try to wipe out all traffic to get us.”

“I think,” said Carol, looking at him, “that you’ve got to risk it, Dick. If we made sure we were alone when we were killed, our death would do no good to anybody. But if we force the Gizmos to kill us—if they can—in a way that proves they do exist, at least that will be a warning to people who don’t suspect a thing. Even if we have to risk other people’s lives with our own, we’ve got to make sure that the danger from the Gizmos is realized!”

Lane knew he would have to pass through Murfree if he meant to go on to the north. But he had no choice.

Even at the risk of provoking a mass attack by Gizmos on the little town, he had to reach some source of authority—governmental or scientific—which could make use of what he’d discovered. Meanwhile he could make no specific plans without news of the state of things in general,—without news of atrocities that might have been committed, or discoveries about Gizmos that might have been made. He turned on the car radio. It gave forth hillbilly music exclusively. He snapped it off and drove downhill toward the valley.

It was time to go beyond the mere facts that he and the professor and Carol had been forced to learn in order to survive. So far the Gizmos had surprised them in every encounter. Not once had Lane anticipated the next action of the ghostly killers. In each assault the Gizmos had used what should have been an adequate force and a suitable stratagem to accomplish their destruction. In all instances they had increased the force applied and used a new tactic for which the humans should have been unprepared. It was time to try to guess what they might do next.

But that would depend on how intelligent they were, and Lane had no certain knowledge about that. If one considers any living creature by itself, he is apt to assume that it has intelligence close to genius. The lowliest of annelid worms, regarded by itself, performs actions to secure food and to avoid capture and to propagate its race which no mere human intellect could improve upon. Ants show amazing abilities in agriculture and mycology. The leaf-cutter ant cultivates a fungus underground which appears to be as artificial as a grapefruit: it is found nowhere but in the cities of leaf-cutter ants. In fact, ants have not only technologies but a social system with divisions of labor and a hierarchy of functions for different individuals. If human beings knew only one variety of lower animal, on the evidence they would have to believe it as intelligent as humans so far as its interests ran. That posed the problem here. For their own purposes Gizmos acted intelligently. But so do all creatures. And the behavior of Gizmos could not be compared to that of flesh-and-blood animals. If what Gizmos did was an instinctive pattern, they were beasts no matter how brilliant their behavior. If what they did was for the attainment of purposes invented by themselves, it was intelligence in the human meaning of the term. In either case, things looked black. If there had been Gizmos from time beyond remembering, as ancient tales of ghosts and devils seemed to prove, then something had multiplied their numbers so that now they menaced humanity. If Burke was right and they had landed on Earth from some other world, then they must be more intelligent than mankind, and humanity was doomed.

But Lane doggedly would not credit their extraterrestrial origin. It would require them to have ships in which to travel, and it was unthinkable that Gizmos could create or control machinery, or that swarms of spaceships bringing them would have avoided detection by radar. Gizmos themselves were detectable by radar, but as phantoms on the radar screens they were single, they moved at low speed, they were not reported from great heights. More convincingly, creatures capable of using tools and spaceships would be capable of making weapons. Gizmos would not combine themselves into gales of whirling dust if they could commit murder neatly and efficiently with suitable tools. Gizmos did not come from outer space. They were creatures of Earth. But even if Burke’s dramatic description of bases and outposts and foraging parties were correct, it could still be such an organization as an ant city or a swarm of bees.

There was a last possibility, which was most disturbing of all. The Gizmos might be Earth creatures with an unfortunately high intelligence and a long and dishonorable record of having used it. If ancient Gizmos had passed for gods and exacted tribute of burnt victims and spilt blood and foulness in general, their descendants would be no improvement. It was proven they were as ruthless as their forbears. They were lovers of corruption and decay. Current events suggested strongly that they planned to make all Earth a stinking Olympus for their monstrous feasts.

This seemed as plausible as any other idea, though Lane would not give full assent to it. But it seemed quaint, with that theory in mind, to drive presently into a sprawling, sunlit, tree-shaded country town while consciously assuring onesself that one was not being trailed by the spawn of Ares and Vulcan and Ashtaroth, and Baal and Loki and kindred fiends from all other imagined kinds of hell.