Murray Leinster - War with the Gizmos

There was no warning. There were no fumbling touches, this time. Something clung to his face, whining shrilly, and he could see through it but he could not draw breath, and horror filled him. He staggered back to where dried leaves lay thick upon the ground. He flung himself down and buried his face in them again, and breathed deeply of the leaves.

Presently, his eyes strained, he stood up once more. He held double handfuls of dried leaves before his nostrils and lips. He breathed through them. The smell of woods-mould was strong. He waited, in a sort of desperation. Whatever meant to kill him knew him to be afoot and moving. He could not slip away unperceived. But nothing happened. After a time he dared to move onward down the hillside.

There was no other attempt upon him by anything visible or otherwise. He heard no more high-pitched whines, but the unnatural stillness remained…

A mile away, he was still pale. Two miles away, he was still shaken. He hadn’t fully recovered his normal color when he came out upon a shelving slope and saw the aluminum trailer less than half a mile away. It glittered in the bright sunshine, and beyond it the valley spread out, its trees minute so far below, and all the world very beautiful and serene.

He moved on, and saw something else. There was a curious, foot-high construction of wire screening on the ground. An ample female form in riding breeches lay at full length, squinting through one surface of screening to the other. As Lane drew near, he heard a contralto voice saying disgusted things in pseudoprofane terms.

He coughed, and she raised her head to stare at him. He recognized her. “My name’s Lane,” he said shakily. “Dick Lane. I think you’re Professor Warren. Over in Murfree they told me I’d find you here and you might know something I need to find out.”

“It’s not likely,” said Professor Warren irritably. “But what is it?”

She looked at him peculiarly as he hesitated. Happening upon the dead rabbits had confirmed his darkest suspicions—even those he would not fully admit to himself. He had no explanation yet, but he had a clue which was completely incredible. If he told anybody what he’d experienced, he’d be thought insane.

He named his profession and his connection with Forest and Field, and explained that he was trying to track down something important to sportsmen. Game animals were being killed in a strange manner. Something new and deadly was responsible. He had an extremely improbable idea about the matter, and he hoped that as a biologist and a scientific observer she might have noticed something.

She regarded him oddly. Then she pointed.

“Is that the sort of thing you mean?”

He looked. There was a tiny, pitiful heap of draggled feathers about a tiny skeleton with a sharp beak. There were eggs, befouled by rain. “A partridge,” he said, “dead on its nest. Yes.” He approved of Professor Warren. She noticed things.

“There are half a dozen others like that,” she said, still regarding him with a peculiar expression, “within a quarter of a mile. It struck me as strange. In fact—” She looked at his hands.

Lane realized that he still gripped the clumps of dead leaves he’d held before his face when leaving the clearing of the dead rabbits. He dropped them and said awkwardly: “I had a good reason for that—just now. But I suppose I look like a lunatic.”

Professor Warren grunted inelegantly. “Not quite,” she said. “Of course, holding bouquets of trash while introducing onesself isn’t normal, but I never heard of a lunatic who thought his actions strange. You do. And if you’re concerned with wild life you may be able to help me in some trouble I’m having with buzzards. This business is part of it,” she added dourly, with a wave of her hand toward the enigmatic arrangement of copper screen wire. “Come down to the trailer and have some coffee. What do you know about the manners and customs of buzzards?”

“Very little,” admitted Lane. He knew how they nested—hollow stumps, mostly—and how they defended their nests against intruders. The last was hardly a pleasant subject.

“Come along,” said Professor Warren. She strode briskly downhill, speaking over her shoulder. “I’ve been doing some research on intrasensory substitution. Cases where one sense substitutes for another. Pit-vipers have a heat nerve in their foreheads so they can detect the most trivial of temperature variations, and so find warm-blooded prey in pitch darkness where their eyes can’t work. That’s heat perception instead of light. Bats feel obstacles with their ears. Buzzards have some superior substitute for smell. Put out a dead animal, even covered over with brushwood, or in a pit where it can’t be seen. Buzzards come from everywhere, immediately, even from upwind. They couldn’t possibly smell it upwind. And when they arrive, why then they try to find it with their noses! When the first buzzard comes downwind to bait that’s barely cold, he didn’t smell it! He saw the odor. It’s the only possible explanation. He simply has to be substituting some operation of his optic nerves for the sense of smell. You see?”

Lane hardly heard. Two miles back, something had tried to kill him, and his mind had not yet recovered its “balance. He’d seen nothing. It was impossible, yet it had happened.

“I was getting good results,” said Professor Warren vexedly, “but about ten days ago the buzzards went temperamental on me! Now they float up there, looking for food, and I put out bait which ten days ago they’d have flocked to. And they ignore it. It’s ridiculous! I’ve good proof that a good reek of organic decay can be detected optically. But I have to check through buzzards that it’s really done. And there are dead chickens in a barn yonder—” she waved a large hand—“and the buzzards aren’t interested! There’s a dead cow in a pasture, and they pay no attention! Temperament among buzzards? Or is it those damned dynamic systems I only halfway believe I’ve discovered?”

She turned to scowl at him. He’d stopped. He was staring at a mole—a gopher. It had burrowed up to the open air and died. It looked pathetic, a mere shapeless blob of fur with tiny pinkish claws barely showing. It was untouched by flies or beetles.

“That’s been there for a week,” she said curtly.

“The buzzards,” said Lane painfully, “hadn’t been at some dead rabbits I passed. No blowflies have been at this mole. There was no taint in the air where the rabbits were. But there was something else.”

“What?”

“I know what happened,” said Lane wryly, “but I can’t believe it. It’s too crazy! But it fits too well into what I asked you.” He stopped. Nobody would believe—

“Hah!” said Professor Warren. “I don’t mind making a fool of myself! It looks to me as if there are some gaseous dynamic systems operating around here in what ought to be good, healthy smells! Only they act like something more. They act like pseudoliving things. And I’m wondering if they’re what’s keeping my buzzards aloft. Dynamic systems, consuming the smells that buzzards ought to see!”

Lane swallowed. Then he said: “What’s happened to the flies around here? And the mosquitos?”

“There’s not one,” said Professor Warren. She stopped short and stared at him. “That’s queer! There haven’t been, not for ten days or so!” Her expression showed puzzlement. “Queer I didn’t realize it!” She abruptly resumed her march toward the trailer.

Lane followed her, frowning. A shadow swept across the ground before him. He jumped. The shadow swept on. It was a buzzard. It swooped on in a long, beautiful glide and swung outward where the next spur jutted from the mountainside. He saw it float out over the broad, sunlit valley floor.