William Fitzgerald Jenkins - Operation Terror

W >> William Fitzgerald Jenkins >> Operation Terror

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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.

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 reassuring."

"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--ambassador 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 passed 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 bumbling 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 assured 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
passenger 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."

On the instant he regretted bitterly that he'd said it. It was a
guess, only, with all the evidence against it. The driver visibly
jumped. Then he turned his head.

"Where'd you get that idea?" he demanded. "What's the evidence? Why
d'you think it?"

"They blindfolded me," said Lockley briefly.

A pause. Then the driver said vexedly, "That's a funny thing to make
you think they was men! Hell! Excuse me, ma'm!--they coulda had all
kindsa reasons for blindfoldin' you! It coulda been part of their
religion!"

"Maybe," said Lockley. He was angry with himself for having said
something which was needlessly dramatic.

"Didn't you have any other reason for thinkin' they were men?"
demanded the driver curiously. "No other reason at all?"

"No other at all," said Lockley.

"It's a crazy reason, if you ask me!"

"Quite likely," conceded Lockley.

He'd been indiscreet, but no more. He'd said what he thought, perhaps
because he was tired of watching all the country round him for a
menace to Jill, and then watching every word he spoke to keep her from
abandoning hope for Vale.

Jill said, "Where are we headed for? I hope I can get to a telephone.
I want to ask about somebody.... He wants to tell the soldiers
something."

"We're headed for a army supply dump," said the driver comfortably,
"to load up with stuff for the guys that're watching all around the
Park. We'll be goin' through Serena presently. Funny. Everybody moved
out by the Army. A good thing, too. The folks in Maplewood couldn't
ha' been got out last night before the Martians got there."

The trailer-truck went on through the night. The driver lounged in his
seat, keeping a negligent but capable eye on the road ahead. The
headlights showed a place where another road crossed this one and
there was a filling station, still and dark, and four or five
dwellings nearby with no single sign of life about them. Then the
crossroads settlement fell behind. A mile beyond it Jill said
startledly, "Lights! There's a town. It's lighted."

"It's Serena," said the driver. "The street lights are on because the
electricity comes from far away. With the lights on it's a marker for
the planes, too, so they can tell exactly where they are and the Park
too. They can't see the ground so good at night, from away up there."

The white street lamps seemed to twinkle as the trailer-truck rumbled
on. A single long line of them appeared to welcome the big vehicle. It
went on into the town. It reached the business district. There were
side streets, utterly empty, and then the main street divided. The
truck bore to the right. There were three and four-story buildings.
Every window was blank and empty, reflecting only the white street
lamps. No living thing anywhere. There had been no destruction, but
the town was dead. Its lights shone on streets so empty that it would
have seemed better to leave them to the kindly dark.

Jill exclaimed, "Look! That window!"

And ahead, in the dead and lifeless town, a single window glowed from
electric light inside it, and it looked lonelier than anything else in
the world.

"I'm gonna look into that!" said the driver. "Nobody's supposed to be
here."

The truck came to a stop. The driver got out. There was a stirring,
behind, and the small man who'd given his place to Jill and Lockley
popped out of the trailer body. Lockley saw the name of a local
telephone company silhouetted on the lighted windowpane. He opened the
door. Jill followed him instantly. The four of them--driver, helper,
Lockley and Jill--crowded into the building hallway to investigate
the one lighted room in a town where twenty thousand people were
supposed to live.

There was a door with a frosted glass top through which light showed.
The driver turned the door-knob and marched in. The room had an
alcoholic smell. A man with sunken cheeks slept heavily in a chair,
his head forward on his chest.

The driver shook him.

"Wake up, guy!" he said sternly. "Orders are for all civilians to
clear outa this town. You wanna soldier to come by an' take you for a
looter an' bump you off?"

He shook again. The cadaverous man blinked his eyes open. The smell of
alcohol was distinct. He was drunk. He gazed ferociously up at the
driver of the truck.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded belligerently.

The driver spoke sternly, repeating what he'd said before. The drunk
assumed an air of outraged dignity.

"If I wanna stay here, that's my business! Who th' hell are you
anyways, disturbin' a citizen tax-payer on his lawful occasions? Are
you Martians? I wouldn't put it pasht you!"

He sat down and went back to sleep.

The driver said fretfully, "He oughtn't to be here! But we ain't got
room to carry him. I'm gonna use the truck radio an' ask what to do.
Maybe they'll send a Army truck to get him outa here. He could set the
whole town on fire!"

He went out. The small man who was his helper followed him. He hadn't
spoken a word. Lockley growled. Then Jill said breathlessly, "The
switch-board has some long distance lines. I know how to connect them.
Shall I try?"

Lockley agreed emphatically. Jill slipped into the operator's chair
and donned the headset. She inserted a plug and pressed a switch.

"I did an article once on how--Hello! Serena calling. I have a very
important message for the military officer in command of the cordon.
Will you route me through, please?"

Her manner was convincingly professional. She looked up and smiled
shakily at Lockley. She spoke again into the mouthpiece before her.
Then she said, "One moment, please." She covered the mouthpiece with
her hand.

"I can't get the general," she said. "His aide will take the message
and if it's important enough--"

"It is," said Lockley. "Give me the phone."

She vacated the chair and handed him the operator's instrument with
its light weight earphones and a mouthpiece that rested on his chest.

"My name's Lockley," said Lockley evenly. "I was in the Park on a
Survey job the morning the thing came down from the sky. I relayed
Vale's message describing the landing and the creatures that came out
of the--object. I was talking to him by microwave when he was seized
by them. I reported that via Sattell of the Survey. You probably know
of these reports."

A tinny voice said with formal cordiality that he did, indeed.

"I've just managed to get out of the park," said Lockley. "I've had a
chance to experiment with a stationary terror beam. I've information
of some importance about detecting those beams before they strike."

The tinny voice said hastily that Lockley should speak to the general
himself. There were clickings and a long wait. Lockley shook his head
impatiently. When a new voice spoke, he said, "I'm at Serena. I was
brought here by a Wild Life Control trailer-truck which picked us up
just outside the Park. I mention that because the driver says he's
driving it for the Army, now. The information I have to pass on is...."

Curtly and succinctly, he began to give exact information about the
terror beam. Its detection so that one need not enter it. The total
lack of effectiveness of a Faraday cage to check it. Its use to block
highways and its one use against a low-flying plane. The failure to
search him out with that terror beam was to be noted. There was other
evidence that the monsters were not monsters at all--

The new voice interrupted sharply. It asked him to wait. His
information would be recorded. Lockley waited, biting his lips. The
voice returned after an unconscionably long wait. It told him to go
ahead.

The driver of the truck was taking a long time to make contact with
the military. He'd have done better by telephone instead of short
wave.

The new voice repeated sharply for Lockley to go on with his story.
And very, very carefully Lockley explained the contradictions in the
behavior of the invaders. The blindfolds. The fact that it had been
absurdly easy for four human prisoners in a compost pit shell to
escape--almost as if it were intended for them to get away and report
that their captors regarded men as on a par with game birds and
rabbits and porcupines. True aliens would not have bothered to give
such an impression. But men cooperating with aliens would contrive
every possible trick to insist that only aliens operated at Boulder
Lake.

"I'm saying," said Lockley carefully, "that they do not act like
aliens making a first landing on earth. Apparently their ship is
designed to land in deep water. On a first landing, they should have
chosen the sea. But they knew Boulder Lake was deep enough to cushion
their descent. How did they know it? They didn't kill us local animals
for study, but they dropped in other local animals to convince us that
they wouldn't mind. Why try to fill us with horror--and then let us
escape?"

The voice at the other end said sharply, "_What do you infer from all
this?_"

"They've been briefed," said Lockley. "They know too much about this
planet and us humans. Somebody has told them about human psychology
and suggested that they conquer us without destroying our cities or
our factories or our usefulness as slaves. We'll be much more valuable
if captured that way! I'm saying that they've got humans advising and
cooperating with them! I'm suggesting that those humans have made a
deal to run earth for the aliens, paying them all the tribute they can
demand. I'm saying that we're not up against an invasion only by
aliens, but by aliens with humans in active cooperation and acting not
only as advisers but probably as spies. I'm--"

"_Mr. Lockley!_" said the voice at the other end of the wire. It was
startled and shocked. It became pompous. "_Mr. Lockley, what has been
your training?_" The voice did not wait for an answer. "_Where have
you become qualified to offer opinions contradicting all the
information and all the decisions of scientists and military men
alike? Where do you get the authority to make such statements? They
are preposterous! You have wasted my time! You--_"

Lockley reached over and flipped back the switch he'd seen Jill flip
over. He carefully put down the headset. He stood up.

The driver and the small man came back. They picked up the sleeping
drunk and moved toward the door. Something fell out of the drunk's
pocket. It was a wallet. They did not notice. They went out, carrying
the drunk. Jill stooped and recovered it. She looked at Lockley's
face.

"What--"

"I'm trying," said Lockley in a grating voice, "to figure out what to
do next. That didn't work."

"I'll be right back," said Jill.

She went out to deliver the wallet to the driver, who had apparently
been ordered to put the drunk in the trailer body and deliver him
somewhere.

Lockley swore explosively when she was gone. He clenched and
unclenched his hands. He paced the length of the room.

Jill came back, her face white.

"They opened the door of the trailer to pass him in," she said in a thin,
strained voice. "And there were other men back there. Several of them! And
machinery! Not cages for animals but engines--generators--electrical
things! I'm frightened!"

"And I," said Lockley, "am a fool. I should have known it! Look
here--"

The frosted-glass door opened. The driver came back. He had a revolver
in his hand.

"Too bad!" he said calmly. "We should've been more careful. But the
lady saw too much. Now--"

The revolver bore on Lockley. Jill flung herself upon it. Lockley
swung, with every ounce of his strength. He connected with the
driver's jaw. The driver went limp. Lockley had the revolver almost
before he reached the floor.

"Quick!" he snapped. "Where was the machinery? Front or back part of
the trailer?"

"All of it," panted Jill. "Mostly front. What--"

"The hall again," Lockley snapped. "Hunt for a back door!"

He thrust her out. She fumbled toward the back of the building while
he went to the street entrance. The trailer-truck loomed huge. The
driver's helper came out of it. Another man followed him. Still
another....

Lockley fired from the doorway. One bullet through the front part of
the truck. One near the middle. Then a third halfway between the first
two. The three men dived to the ground, thinking themselves his
targets. But Jill called inarticulately from the back of the dark
hall. Lockley raced back to her. He saw starlight. She waited,
shivering. They went out and he closed the door softly behind him.

He took her hand and they ran through the night. Overhead there was a
luminous mistiness because of the street light, but here were abysmal
darknesses between vague areas on which the starlight fell. Lockley
said evenly, "We've got to be quiet. Maybe I hit some of the
machinery. Maybe. If I didn't, it's all over!"

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