Murray Leinster - War with the Gizmos

An inter-city bus pulled into its terminal in Atlanta, Georgia, with a load of hysterical living passengers and three apparently dead men in the back. The three had collapsed, one after another, following a stop by the bus driver to survey a three-car wreck. Passengers had opened windows to look out. Within minutes, one passenger flailed his arms wildly, his face grew purple, and he fell, unconscious. Other passengers tried to be helpful, but it was evident a doctor was needed. The bus driver pushed his vehicle to its topmost speed, to get his stricken passenger to medical care. But before he reached help, two other passengers went into comas after passing through the same symptoms. The rest of the bus occupants were nearly out of control when the bus reached its terminal, where doctors were available.

By midday the reported number of traffic deaths in the United States was put at six hundred, which was par for a long holiday weekend, but not for a midweek forenoon. It was considered very probable that the tally was far from complete. When Lane drove into Clifton Forge for the second time and stopped the car at a restaurant, there was a considerable amount of speculation on the increasing traffic accidents on the radio news broadcasts.

Lane listened grimly, at the restaurant table. There was a phone booth in the restaurant, and while the others ordered their meals, he called again to New Jersey, to the Diebert Pharmaceutical Company, Inc. His friend, the research director, was not available.

“I want to leave a message,” said Lane. “This is important. Write it down word for word, please. This is the message. ‘No excess single-car accidents happened while the driver was smoking.’ It’s from Dick Lane. Can you read it back?” He listened. “Right. It’s important!”

He went back to the table. He told the professor what he’d done.

“That’s just what I should have done!” she explained. “Instead of letting that idiot back at the University think I was a practical joker, I should have made predictions. But I didn’t know what to predict.”

“You could ask for checking observations,” suggested Lane. “Wire to any biologists you know that sportsmen report unusual numbers of game animals found dead. Buzzards are not touching what would ordinarily be most attractive food to them. Say there appears to be a correlation of high mortality in game and a refusal of buzzards to approach bait, all in the same areas. Ask them to verify, and suggest an answer. Have ’em send their answers to my friend, since we’re headed for his laboratory.”

The professor’s expression grew bitter. “I should have realized it,” she protested. “I’ve been saying for years that your typical scientist sees and hears no theory but his own, but he speaks his theory to distraction! I’ve been wanting to tell people what I’ve found out, when what they want to do is tell me! Oh, Dick, I’m afraid I’m a typical scientist! I’ll make out a list of people to wire!”

She began to scribble names on the back of a menu, eating abstractedly when her food came.

Carol smiled at her, and then met Lane’s eyes. But Burke said uneasily: “I don’t get that, Mr. Lane. What’s smoking got to do with automobile drivers? And what have dead animals got to do with it?”

Lane explained that if a flame would destroy a Gizmo, a glowing coal should at least discourage one. The lighted end of a cigar or cigarette being smoked would project into the space a Gizmo must occupy while strangling someone. Hence it would be nearly impossible for a Gizmo to suffocate a man who happened to be smoking.

Burke said, relieved, “I see! That’s important.”

“Dick,” said Carol hesitantly, “wouldn’t an increase in Gizmo food supply increase the number of Gizmos?”

“Probably,” he agreed. “Fish and game outfits work as hard at keeping up the food supply for wild life as at anything else.”

Carol hesitated, as Burke got up and went over to the cashier’s desk of the restaurant. Then she said diffidently: “I’m wondering… I’ve read about a species of parrot in Australia that somehow developed the habit of pecking at sheep’s backs until they got through to the sheep’s kidneys, which they ate, though their normal food was merely what parrots usually eat. They killed thousands of sheep.”

Lane nodded again. Professor Warren looked at her niece with a sudden expectant intentness.

“What’s up, Carol?” she demanded.

“I’ve been wondering,” said Carol, looking from her aunt to Lane, “if that species of parrot multiplied very fast when it found out the unlimited supply of food it could get by killing sheep.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” exulted the professor. “She’s got the answer, Dick! No physical mutation, only an instinctual one! The parrots needed no new equipment. Any parrot could do the same, but only those parrots did, so they multiplied out of all reason, and killed sheep out of all conscience. They had to be wiped out! That’s the mechanism by which the Gizmos have appeared, Dick. Carol, you’ve solved the problem of the ecological imbalance which has made the Gizmos what they are.”

Her gaze was warmly triumphant, bent upon Carol. But Carol looked uncertainly to Lane for approval. He grinned at her.

“Smart girl!” he said. “Now figure out some more!”

She flushed. Burke came back with his pockets stuffed with cigars. He sat down at the table again.

“I got some cigars,” he said. “You’ll find me puffing pretty steady from now on. You better get yourself some too, Mr. Lane. I don’t know what the ladies’ll do, but if they stay close to us, and we keep puffing—”

“I have a hope in that line,” the professor said darkly, “that may prove even more repugnant. But right now I gloat over what Carol has suggested. Do you see the picture, Dick? The Gizmos were a foetiverous race of foul descent, consuming bad smells. Then one of them, undoubtedly, found out that the process by which they drew evil smells out of carrion could be used to draw foul breath out of an animal’s lungs, and that the animal would die immediately, when an enterprising Gizmo could continue happily to feed. It is an exact parallel to a parrot’s discovering that he could kill a sheep and have a meal. The kidney-eating parrots increased to a multitude; the strangling Gizmos have multiplied into hordes. How or why they contrived their dust clouds I do not know, but from the tales of jinn traveling in clouds like theirs, it is not a novelty to their kind.”

Carol said gently: “But I didn’t say all that, Aunt Ann!”

“It was all implicit in what you did say. Dick, can we send my telegrams now?”

They sent the professor’s telegrams and headed back toward Covington. Highway 220 was not far from Clifton Forge. They had passed over this road only a couple of hours earlier, but much had happened in that interval. There was a station wagon against a tree beside the road, stalled by an impact not even great enough to dent its bumper. Its windows were open, but no one could be seen inside. Lane stopped.

“There are blurrings,” he said grimly. “Give me one of the torches, Carol. We might as well try out our armory again.”

She gave him a blowtorch which had not been used there. It was filled, and its pressure pump worked, but it was not lighted. He checked it and got out of the car, and walked toward the stalled station wagon.

There were very familiar sounds in the air about him. He plucked out his cigarette lighter and snapped it alight, and out again. His breath cut off. Something vicious whined.

He burned the thing with the flame of his lighter. There was a tiny shriek and he grimaced at the smell. He went on, and looked through the car window. He swore, and raised the torch, turning it on. This torch burned gasoline. A small air-pump built up pressure in its tank, which would feed the fluid through a preheated burning tube. But it was not preheated now, so a fine thin stream of gasoline sprayed out for several feet. Most of it evaporated before it touched the ground. Lane snapped his lighter under the near end of the stream.