Operation Terror Part 11

They went on and on. At mid-morning Lockley found some mushrooms. They were insipid and only acute hunger would make them edible raw, but he filled his pockets. A little later there were berries, and as they gathered and ate them he lectured learnedly on edible wild plants to be found in the wilderness. Jill listened with apparent interest. When they left the berry patch they swung to the left to avoid a steep climb directly in their way. And suddenly Lockley stopped short. At the same instant Jill caught at his arm. She'd turned white.

They turned and ran.

A hundred yards back, Lockley slackened his speed. They stopped. After a moment he managed to grin mirthlessly.

"A conditioned reflex," he said wryly. "We smell something and we run.

But I think it's the old familiar terror beam that crosses highways to stop men from using them. If it were a portable beam projector with somebody aiming it, we wouldn't be talking about it."

Jill panted, partly with relief.

"I've thought of something I want to try," said Lockley. "I should have tried it yesterday when I first smashed my watch."

He retraced his steps to the spot where they'd caught the first whiff of that disgusting reptilian-jungle-decay odor which had bombarded their nostrils. Jill called anxiously, "Be careful!"

He nodded. He got the coiled bronze watchspring out of his pocket. He went very cautiously to the spot where the smell became noticeable.

Standing well back from it, he tossed one end of the spring into it.

He drew it back. He repeated the operation. He moved to one side.

Again he swung the gold-colored ribbon. He dangled it back and forth.

Then he drew back yet again and wrapped his left hand and wrists with many turns of the thin bronze spring, carefully s.p.a.cing the turns. He moved forward once more.

He came back, his expression showing no elation at all.

"No good," he said unhappily. "In a way, it works. The spring acts as an aerial and picks up more of the beam than my hand. But I tried to make a Faraday cage. That will stop most electromagnetic radiation, but not this stuff! It goes right through, like electrons through a radio tube grid."

He put the spring back in his pocket.

"Well," he grimaced. "Let's go on again. I had a little bit of hope, but some smarter men than I am haven't got the right gimmick yet."

They started off once more. And this time they did not choose a path for easier travel, but went up a steep slope that rose for hundreds of feet to arrive at a crest with another steep slope going downhill. At the top Lockley said sourly, "I did discover one thing, if it means anything. The beam leaks at its edges, but it's only leakage. It doesn't diffuse. It's tight. It's more like a searchlight beam than anything else in that way. You can see a light beam at night because dust motes scatter some part of it. But most of the light goes straight on. This stuff does the same. It's hard to imagine a limit to its range."

He trudged on downhill. Jill followed him. Presently, when they'd covered two miles or more with no lightening of his expression, she said, "You said you understand how it works. Radio and radar beams don't have effects like this. How does this have them?"

"It makes high frequency currents on the surface of anything it hits.

High frequency doesn't go into flesh or metal. It travels on the surface only. So when this beam hits a man it generates high frequency on his skin. That induces counter currents underneath, and they stimulate all the sensory nerves we've got--of our eyes and ears and noses as well as our skin. Every nerve reports its own kind of sensation. Run current over your tongue, and you taste. Induce a current in your eyes, and you see flashes of light. So the beam makes all our senses report everything they're capable of reporting, true or not, and we're blinded and deafened. Then the nerves to our muscles report to them that they're to contract, and they do. So we're paralyzed."

"And," said Jill, "if there's a way to generate high frequency on a man's skin there's nothing that can be done?"

"Nothing," said Lockley dourly.

"Maybe," said Jill, "you can figure out a way to prevent that high frequency generation."

He shrugged. Jill frowned as she followed him. She hadn't forgotten Vale, but she owed some grat.i.tude to Lockley. Womanlike, she tried to pay part of it by urging him to do something he considered impossible.

"At least," she suggested, "it can't be a death ray!"

Lockley looked at her.

"You're wrong there," he said coldly. "It can."

Jill frowned again. Not because of his statement, but because she hadn't succeeded in diverting his mind from gloomy things. She had reason enough for sadness, herself. If she spoke of it, Lockley would try to encourage her. But he was concerned with more than his own emotions. Without really knowing it, Jill had come to feel a great confidence in Lockley. It had been rea.s.suring that he could find food, and perhaps more rea.s.suring that he could chase away a bear. Such talents were not logical reasons for being confident that he could solve the alien's seemingly invincible weapon, but she was inclined to feel so. And if she could encourage him to cope with the monsters--why--it would be even a form of loyalty to Vale. So she believed.

In the late afternoon Lockley said, "Another four or five miles and we ought to be out of the Park and on another highway we'll hope won't be blocked by a terror beam. Anyhow there should be an occasional farmhouse where we can find some sort of civilized food."

Jill said hungrily, "Scrambled eggs!"

"Probably," he agreed.

They went on and on. Three miles. Four. Five. Five and a half. They descended a minor slope and came to a hard-surfaced road with tire marks on it and a sign sternly urging care in driving. There were ploughed fields in which crops were growing. There was a row of stubby telephone poles with a sagging wire between them.

"We'll head west," said Lockley. "There ought to be a farmhouse somewhere near."

"And people," said Jill. "I look terrible!"

He regarded her with approval.

"No. You look all right. You look fine!"

It was pleasing that he seemed to mean it. But immediately she said, "Maybe we'll be able to find out about ... about...."

"Vale," agreed Lockley. "But don't be disappointed if we don't. He could have escaped or been freed without everybody knowing it."

She said in surprise, "Been freed! That's something I didn't think of. He'd set to work to make them understand that we humans are intelligent and they ought to make friends with us. That would be the first thing he'd think of. And they might set him free to arrange it."

Lockley said, "Yes," in a carefully noncommittal tone.

Another mile, this time on the hard road. It seemed strange to walk on so unyielding a surface after so many miles on quite different kinds of footing. It was almost sunset now. There was a farmhouse set well back from the road and barely discernable beyond nearby growing corn.

The house seemed dead. It was neat enough and in good repair. There were clackings of chickens from somewhere behind it. But it had the feel of emptiness.

Lockley called. He called again. He went to the door and would have called once more, but the door opened at a touch.

"Evacuated," he said. "Did you notice that there was a telephone line leading here from the road?"

He hunted in the now shadowy rooms. He found the telephone. He lifted the receiver and heard the humming of the line. He tried to call an operator. He heard the muted buzz that said the call was sounding. But there was no answer. He found a telephone book and dialed one number after another. Sheriff. Preacher. Doctor. Garage. Operator again.

General store.... He could tell that telephones rang dutifully in remote abandoned places. But there was no answer at all.

"I'll look in the chicken coops," said Jill practically.

She came back with eggs. She said briefly, "The chickens were hungry.

I fed them and left the chicken yard gate open. I wonder if the beam hurts them too?"

"It does," said Lockley.

He made a light and then a fire and she cooked eggs which belonged to the unknown people who owned this house and who had walked out of it when instructions for immediate evacuation came. They felt queer, making free with this house of a stranger. They felt that he might come in and be indignant with them.

"I ought to wash the dishes," said Jill when they were finished.

"No," said Lockley. "We go on. We need to find some soldiers, or a telephone that works...."

"I'm not a good dishwasher anyhow," said Jill guiltily.