Murray Leinster - War with the Gizmos

This matter was, of course, one to which official attention would be given. An invasion of fields on which crops grew would not be dismissed as unimportant. But there were innumerable other matters which would be ignored: the deaths of cats in towns and cities; the finding of many dead rats upon city dumps, unwounded, yet stiff and cold with bared fangs; and there would be some disturbance over race horses found dead in their stalls…

Lane and Carol discussed possible weapons and possible protection against the Gizmos who definitely had not gone away from the trailer. Professor Warren slept a troubled sleep on a couch which opened into a double bed. There was no thought of relaxation in the ordinary sense. The trailer was beleaguered by things which could not be seen at all unless one knew where to look and understood the significance of a very slight wavering and wobbling of the background behind them.

Presently Lane spoke coldly of the grisly possibilities if there were enough of them, and if they were as cunning and as persistent as they seemed to be. The air in the trailer seemed to grow stale. He felt an angry uneasiness for Carol. He felt that there was something he had neglected which amounted to a near and present danger.

He got up abruptly and went about the living quarters of the biological laboratory vehicle. He checked the doors, as if the Gizmos had strength to move them. He verified that the windows were tightly shut. He made certain that the ventilator above the stove had not been disturbed. Anything that a smoke ring could pass through was suspect. He found nothing wrong, but the hunch persisted. He could not believe all was right. He went into the laboratory end of the trailer and turned on the lights.

There were gossamer touches on his face. He dragged the door shut behind him, because it would have taken longer to close it if he’d passed through first. He dragged at his coat, shouting: “Carol! Professor! Watch out! Gizmos are in!” A steady whining noise sounded all about him. He saw the laboratory clearly, neat and compact. There was a camera mounted on a stand, with an extraordinarily long-focus lens attached to it; it could take a close-up picture from an incredible distance. It pointed at a small opening in the trailer wall. During travel, that opening was closed by an aluminum-faced cover. During the time when such a camera was in daily use, a cardboard shield covered it. The cardboard was one of those convenient makeshifts often used without thought.

Without thought. Because now the cardboard was toppled to the floor. Perhaps the moving of that cardboard by Gizmos was comparable to the shifting of a locomotive by the strength of men, but it had been accomplished. The laboratory was filled with faintly whining things.

Dick Lane leaned back against the door, frantically making sure that it was tightly shut. He gasped his lungs full of air before it could be denied him, and got his coat before his face. Then he shouted again to Carol and the professor that they must not open the door.

He almost exulted in the rage that filled him, because he was confident that now he knew how to handle the beasts. He heard Carol, anxious and frightened. The professor urged him to protect himself as he’d done near the dead rabbits.

Again he shouted through the muffling cloth. The Gizmos couldn’t harm him through cloth. True, there were whining noises in his ears, and gossamer touches upon his forehead and hair. But he glared vengefully above his wadded coat at the seemingly empty room. He shouted again, confidently. He was going to attack the Gizmos with something he’d pick up and use like a flail. They could tack a sheet around the doorway. When he’d cleared the laboratory—or thought he had—he’d open the door, step into the space enclosed by the sheet, and close the door behind him again. It would be like an airlock. If any surviving Gizmo should enter the lock with him, it could be spotted and destroyed. Meanwhile he was safe. There was no hurry.

He stepped forward. He felt stirring resistance, a horrible sensation. He flailed out with one arm, the other holding his coat before his face. Something gave. There was a sickening reek of carrion. He struck again.

Then he realized he was not moving in free air, in which Gizmos floated. He was submerged in Gizmos which had replaced the air. There was no air except what was entrapped by his coat. It was like being in a room packed tightly with balloons filled with unbreathable gas. He could break them, but he could not get air. There was no air. There were only Gizmos. His lungs starved. He panted in the air he had already breathed. It would not support life. It would not let him keep his senses. He began to feel dizzy.

He began to fight blindly to break through the yielding, implacable barrier about him. He heard things smash, but only dimly. It was laboratory apparatus. He heard a window break, but it meant no breath for him. He fought in a dimming horror, panting, struggling with less and less purpose.

He fell, and something whined shrilly, and then he couldn’t even gasp in air that did him no good at all. Consciousness went…

But a long, long time later he was dully aware that he was still alive. He was outside the trailer, and there were stars overhead. He could breathe. He heard Carol sobbing quietly. He stirred faintly, and the professor exclaimed: “He’s alive!”

He mumbled. Presently he could sit up. He heard winnings, but nothing touched him. He said thinly: “What happened?”

“If you want to hear it—” snapped the professor—“if you want to!” She raged. “We’ve been taken prisoner by the Gizmos! They’re intelligent, and we’re their prisoners, and they haven’t killed us yet because we’re something new! We’re human beings who know they exist! So they’re going to experiment with us. We’re guinea pigs for these damned Gizmos to do research with!”

The situation, the atmosphere, and the facts were straight out of an outrageously unreasonable nightmare. There were bright stars overhead. Low on the horizon there was a gibbous moon, risen long after sunset. There were strained, contorted tree shapes on the mountainside. There was the aluminum-bodied trailer, glittering on its moonward side and abysmally black where it cast a shadow. And there was silence—almost.

Winnings sounded very close to his ear, and the hair tended to rise all over his scalp. Carol, straining her eyes to see him, said swiftly: “That’s a signal. A steady whine is when they’re angry. But little whinings—they want us to do something.”

Lane ground his teeth. “Well?”

“You’ve been unconscious a long time. We were sure you were dead. We’ve learned some things. They expect you to move away from them when they touch you.”

There was an infinitely gentle touch at the back of Lane’s neck. He said grimly, unmoving: “Something’s touching me now.”

“Obey it!” said Carol urgently. “Get up! Move!”

Lane sat more grimly still and the touch at the back of his neck was repeated.

“Why?” he demanded.

“They’re studying us,” said Carol. “And Aunt Ann’s studying them! We’ve got to find out what they want, how intelligent they are, how we can fool them or escape them…”

“If they’re studying us,” said Lane furiously, “they’re too intellig—”

His breath cut off. He sat fiercely still, not trying to breathe. The impulse was defiance in the total absence of hope. But as he sat immobile, fiercely ignoring the thing that acted to suffocate him, he realized that to a nonhuman creature the action would be baffling. No lower animal, no bird or beast or insect, would react otherwise than directly to the stoppage of its breath. They would fight for air. A Gizmo would judge of the death of a victim by the cessation of its attempts to breathe. So if Lane held his breath, to a Gizmo he would seem dead-yet not dead, either.