Murray Leinster - War with the Gizmos

Professor Warren grimaced. “Don’t tell me I’ve discovered a pantheon! If they’re intelligent, where’s the evidence?”

“I’ve got an idea how to get it,” said Lane, “if they haven’t the information to keep them from revealing themselves.”

He gathered up the sheet which had been the means of capture and execution of one of the creatures the professor called Gizmos, among other things. He spread the sheet over one of the closed trailer windows. Carol saw what he was about, and came to help. They draped the window so that it was completely covered by the closely woven cloth. Lane knotted it at the corners so that it was tight, yet there was a fullness in the center of the window opening. He made use of that fullness to slide aside the window and open it slightly.

Nothing happened. The distinctly audible whining sound died as soon as he began to fumble at the window. There was no sound at all—no birdcall or chirrup of insects. There was not even the whisper of wind among the trees of the mountainside. In bright sunshine, the unnatural stillness was horrible.

They waited, staring at the curiously draped window. Nothing happened at all. Lane shrugged.

“I thought I’d provoke a mass attack by opening the window. If they were stupid, I thought one might try to poke inside. But if they were intelligent, I thought they’d try to storm the trailer in a rush we couldn’t possibly handle. I was wrong.”

Then the Monster yelped in terror. His hackles rising, he backed into the farthest corner of the trailer, snarling at the open window.

“You were right,” said the professor.

Things hit the draped cloth, which billowed out tautly. It almost seemed to stretch with the violence of massed Gizmos pushing against it. They tore and tugged at it, their whining filling the interior of the vehicle. It was unspeakably horrible that they should rave so terribly at so flimsy a barrier, and not be able to rend it.

Lane leaped toward the window. The sheet could not be torn. But the tuggings and throbbings of the individually weak murderers were loosening the cloth from the corners of the window frame. One edge billowed momentarily, and a vicious whine of triumph flashed past Lane. He heard Carol cry out.

He thrust back the barrier. He beat at the cloth with his fists, as if to destroy the yielding things by blows. Carol cried out again: “Aunt Ann! Here! Come here!”

There were strugglings. The Monster screamed and snapped. It fought madly against unseeable nothingness. Another part of the cloth barrier bulged to its very edge.

Professor Warren was chalk-white when the window was safely shut again and the two Gizmos which had got inside were destroyed. Carol herself had killed one by the exact method Lane had used earlier—plucking it from its victim by forming a sack of cloth about it, and then wringing that cloth until there was nothing left inside it to struggle. The professor had been the one attacked. The second Gizmo she’d located by its raging whine and the Monster’s snarls in its direction. She drove it by a lucky stroke of a whipping cloth into the flame of the stove. It died in that flame, itself a pale and lambent flicker of fire as its complex hydrocarbon gases burned.

Now there was darkness outside, and silence again. The inside lights were on and Professor Warren sat weakly still. Carol had recovered much more quickly from the similar attempt to suffocate her. But a younger girl is always more resilient than an older woman; Professor Warren had had security and prestige and authority for so long that she was dazed at the idea of an attempt upon her life. That it had been made by what she considered a biological specimen stunned her. Carol had been able to realize her danger more promptly, and more quickly accept the fact of safety regained.

“It was—stupid of me,” said Professor Warren in a trembling voice. “I couldn’t really believe there was real danger. Even when Carol was—attacked, you got the thing off her so swiftly that I did not truly realize … I am a very stupid old woman. I thought of these horrors as things to be studied, and nothing more.”

“They’re a lot more,” Lane told her. “They’ve been cagey, but I’m sure they’ve killed people before.”

“Appalling!” said the professor. She shuddered. “The only parallel I know to such a clanger appearing suddenly, is the appearance of rabies among bats in the Southern states. That’s been taken care of. The public has been warned. But here—”

Carol said quietly: “That’s not too good a parallel, Aunt Ann. Bats were known, and rabies was known. It had only to be proved that the two had gotten together. This is more difficult. You have to prove that these—things exist. And people who’ve never encountered them are going to find it hard to believe in them.”

“I’ll take care of that!” said the professor. “Let me get to a telephone.”

“I’m afraid,” said Lane, “that that’s a problem. How do we get to a telephone?”

The professor gaped at him. “What do you mean?” Then she said angrily. “Do you mean that these—these creatures—these Gizmos—” She stopped short. She seemed to shrivel a little.

“If they’re not too intelligent,” said Lane, “we will probably be all right. They’ll get tired of hanging around outside. But if they’re really smart, I don’t like the prospects.”

He moved to a window. There was only night outside the trailer, now. He screened his eyes with his hand to peer out into the moonlight. There was the dark mountain against a star-studded sky. To the east and below there was a filmy, glamorous mist which obscured the valley. The darkness was a very picture of tranquility. But it was deathly quiet—until he strained his ears and heard a faint whining, fainter than the humming of a mosquito. But it came from many sources. The Gizmos were waiting. He turned away. Carol searched his face. “You say they’ve killed animals all over the country. Maybe someone else has found out what they are. It might be on a radio news broadcast.”

Lane turned on the trailer’s radio. There was a hum and then the last notes of a hillbilly ballad. An announcer drawled:

“…And that ends the Gourdvine Boys program for today and this is—” a burst of static—“your friendly station in Danville. News follows in a moment, but first—”

Lane breathed, and was astonished at his relief that the situation here was not typical of that of all the world. He sat down. He listened to a commercial for a brand of fertilizer, delivered with immense enthusiasm. Then the news.

He felt better when the news bulletins began with international events. The news was reassuring because it was given first place, and disturbing because such pettinesses were capable of destroying the peace of the world. Political news. Then the day’s assortment of freak items. Radar stations all over the United States were reporting an extraordinary number of “Gizmos.” They were believed to be the basis of many flying-saucer stories. It had been guessed that they were actually areas of extra-high ionization in the air.

Professor Warren said shakily: “Gizmos. That’s what I called these creatures. But—but—if there’s metabolism in gas, there has to be ionization! They can be talking about these horrors!”

She listened tensely, but the subject of Gizmos was dropped. There was local news. A truck driver had been found dead in his truck, ten miles out of Danville. Apparently he’d pulled off the road for a nap, and had never wakened. But the windshield and side windows of the truck’s cab were broken.

The professor wrung her hands. Outside Pittsburg the bodies of two children, missing for a week, had been found. Apparently they had died of exposure shortly after their disappearance, though the weather had been warm and there had been no rain.