Operation Terror Part 12

Lockley put a banknote on the kitchen table, with a weight on it to keep it from blowing away. They closed the house door. They'd eaten fully and luxuriously of eggs and partly stale bread and the sensation was admirable. They went out to the highway again.

"West is still our best bet," said Lockley. "They've blocked the highway to eastward with that terror beam."

The sun had set now, but a fading glory remained in the sky. They saw the slenderest, barest crescent of a new moon practically hidden in the sunset glow. They walked upon a civilized road, with a fence on one side of it and above it a single sagging telephone wire that could be made out against the stars.

"I feel," said Jill, "as if we were almost safe, now. All this looks so ordinary and rea.s.suring."

"But we'd better keep our noses alert," Lockley told her. "We know that one beam comes nearly this far and probably--no, certainly crosses this road. There may be more."

"Oh, yes," agreed Jill. Then she said irrelevantly, "I'll bet they do make him a sort of--amba.s.sador to our government to arrange for making friends. He'll be able to convince them!"

Again she referred to Vale. Lockley said nothing.

Night was now fully fallen. There were myriad stars overhead. They saw the telephone wire dipping between poles against the sky's brightness.

They pa.s.sed an open gate where another telephone wire led away, doubtless to another farmhouse. But if there was no one at the other end of a telephone line, there was no point in using a phone.

There came a rumbling noise behind them. They stared at one another in the starlight. The rumbling approached.

"It--can't be!" said Jill, marvelling.

"It's a motor," said Lockley. He could not feel complete relief.

"Sounds like a truck. I wonder--"

He felt uneasiness. But it was absurd. Only human beings would use motor trucks.

There was a glow in the distance behind them. It came nearer as the sound of the motor approached. The motor's mutter became a grumble. It was definitely a truck. They could hear those other sounds that trucks always make in addition to their motor noises.

It came up to the curve they'd rounded last. Its headlight beams glared on the cornstalks growing next to the highway. One headlight appeared around the turn. Then the other. An enormous trailer-truck combination came b.u.mbling toward them. Jill held up her hand for it to stop. Its headlights shone brightly upon her.

Airbrakes came on. The giant combination--cab in front, gigantic box body behind--came to a halt. A man leaned out. He said amazedly, "Hey, what are you folks doin' here? Everybody's supposed to be long gone!

Ain't you heard about all civilians clearing out from twenty miles outside the Park? There's boogers in there! Characters from Mars or somewhere. They eat people!"

Even in the starlight Lockley saw the familiar Wild Life Control markings on the trailer. He heard Jill, her voice shaking with relief, explaining that she'd been at the construction camp and had been left behind, and that she and Lockley had made their way out.

"We want to get to a telephone," she added. "He has some information he wants to give to the Army. It's very important." Then she swallowed. "And I'd like to ask if you've heard anything about a Mr.

Vale. He was taken prisoner by the creatures up there. Have you heard of his being released?"

The driver hesitated. Then he said, "No, ma'm. Not a word about him.

But we'll take care of you two! You musta been through plenty! Jud, you go get in the trailer, back yonder. Make room for these two folks up on the front seat." He added explanatorily, "There's cases and stuff in the back, ma'm. You two folks climb right up here alongside of me. You sure musta had a time!"

The door on the near side of the truck cab opened. A small man got out. Silently, he went to the rear of the trailer and swung up out of sight. Jill climbed into the opened door. Lockley followed her. He still felt an irrational uneasiness, but he put it down to habit. The past few days had formed it.

"We've been cartin' stuff for the soldiers," explained the driver as Lockley closed the door behind him. "They keep track of where that terror beam is workin', and they tell us by truck radio, and we dodge it. Ain't had a bit of trouble. Never thought I'd play games with Martians! Did you see any of 'em? What sort of critters are they?"

He slipped the truck into gear and gunned the motor. Truck and trailer, together, began to roll down the highway. Lockley was irritated with himself because he couldn't relax and feel safe, as this development seemed to warrant.

Later, he would wonder why he hadn't used his head in this as in other matters during the few days just past.

He plainly hadn't.

CHAPTER 7

The driver was avidly curious about the area where supposedly no human being could survive. He asked absorbed questions, especially and insistently about the aliens. Jill said that she'd seen a few of them, but only at a distance. They'd been investigating the evacuated construction camp. They were about the size of men. She couldn't describe them, but they weren't human beings. He seemed to find it unthinkable that she hadn't examined them in detail.

Lockley came to her rescue. He observed that he'd been a prisoner of the invaders, and had escaped. Then the driver's curiosity became insatiable. He wanted to know every imaginable detail of that experience. He expressed almost incredulous disappointment that Lockley couldn't give even a partial description of the creatures.

When convinced, he launched a detailed recital of the descriptions offered by the workmen from the camp. He pictured the aliens as hoofed like horses, equipped with horns like antelopes, fitted with multiple arms like octopi and huge multi-faceted eyes like insects.

He seemed to contemplate this picture with vast satisfaction as the truck growled and rumbled through the night.

The headlights glared on ahead of the truck. There were dark fields and darker mountains beyond them. From time to time little side roads branched off. They undoubtedly led to houses, but no speck of lamp light appeared anywhere. This part of the world was empty, with the loneliness of a landscape from which every hint of human activity had been removed.

Jill asked a question. The driver grew garrulous. He gave a dramatic picture of terror throughout the world, the suspension of all ordinary antagonisms in the face of this menace to every man and nation on the earth. There was peace even in the world's trouble spots as appalled agitators saw how much worse things could be if the monsters took over the world to rule. But the driver insisted that the United States was calm. Us Americans, he a.s.sured Lockley, weren't scared. We were educated and we knew that them scientists would crack this nut somehow. Like only yesterday a broadcast said this Belgian guy had come up with calculations that said this poison beam had to be something like a radar beam or a laser beam or something like that.

And the American scientists were right out there in front, along with guys from England and France and Italy and Germany and even Russia.

All the big brains of the world were workin' on it! Those Martians were gonna wish they'd come visitin' polite instead of barging in like they owned the world! They'd be lucky if they wound up ownin' Mars!

Lockley pressed for details about the scientists' results. He didn't expect to get them, but the driver cheerfully obliged.

Radio, said the driver largely, worked by making waves like those on a pond. They spread out and reached places where there were instruments to detect them, and that was that. Radar made the same kind of waves, only smaller, which bounced back to where there was an instrument to detect them. These were ripple waves.

Lockley interpreted the term to mean sine waves, rounded at top and trough. It was a perfectly good word to express the meaning intended.

These were natural kindsa waves, pursued the driver. Lightning made them. Static was them, and sparks from running motors and blown fuses.

Waves like that were generated whenever an electric circuit was made or broken besides their occurrence from purely natural causes.

"We can't feel 'em," said the driver expansively. "We're used to waves like that. Animals couldn't do anything about 'em and didn't need to before there was men. So when we come along, we couldn't notice 'em any more than we notice air pressure on our skin. We're used to it!

But these scientists say there's waves that ain't natural. They ain't like ripples. They're like storm waves with foam on 'em. And that's the kind of waves we can notice. Like storm waves with sharp edges. We can notice them because they do things to us! These Martians make 'em do things. But now we know what kinda waves they are, we're gonna mess them up! And I'm savin' up a special kick for one o' those Martians when they're licked just as soon as I can find out which end of him is which an' suited to that kinda attention!"

Lockley found himself suspicious and was annoyed. Jill was safe now.

This driver was well-informed, but probably everybody was well-informed now. They had reason to become so!

The truck trundled through the night. High overhead, a squadron of planes arrived to take its place in the ever-moving patrol around the Park. Another squadron, relieved, went away to the southwest. There was a deep-toned, faraway roaring from the engines aloft. All the sky behind the trailer seemed to mutter continuously. But the roof of stars ahead was silent.

Lockley stayed tense and was weary of his tenseness, Jill was safe. He tried to reason his uneasiness away. The cab of the truck wobbled and swayed. The feel of the vehicle was entirely unlike the feel of a pa.s.senger car. It felt tail-heavy. The driver had ceased to talk. He seemed to be musing as he drove. He'd asked about the invaders but seemed almost indifferent to any adventures Jill and Lockley might have had on their way out. He didn't ask what they'd done for food. He was thinking of something else.

Lockley found himself questioning the driver's statements just after they got in. Driving for the Army. The Army kept track of where the terror beams existed, and notified this truck by truck radio, and he dodged all such road barriers. That was what he said. It seemed plausible, but--

"One thing strikes me funny," said the driver, musingly. "Those critters blindfoldin' you and those other guys. What' you think they did it for?"

"To keep us from seeing them," said Lockley, curtly.

"But why'd they want to do that?"

"Because," said Lockley, "they might not have been Martians. They might not have been critters. They might have been men."