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William Fitzgerald Jenkins - Operation Terror

W >> William Fitzgerald Jenkins >> Operation Terror




The back of a building. An alleyway. They ran down it. There was a
street with trees, where the street lights cast utterly black shadows
in between intolerable glare. They ran across the street. On the other
side were residences--the business district was not large. Lockley
found a gate, and opened it quietly and as quietly closed it behind
them. They ran into a lane between two dead, dark, dreary structures
in which people had lived but from which all life was now gone.

A back yard. A fence. Lockley helped Jill get over it. Another lane.
Another street. But this street was not crossed--not here, anyhow--by
another which led back to the street of the telephone office. A man
could not look from there and see them running under the lights.

The blessed irregularity of the streets continued. They ran and ran
until Jill's breath came in pantings. Lockley was drenched in sweat
because he expected at any instant to smell the most loathesome of
all possible combinations of odors, and then to see flashing lights
originating in his own eyes, and sounds which would exist only in the
nerves of his ears, and then to feel all his muscles knot in total and
horrible paralysis.

They heard the truck motor rumble into life when they were many blocks
away. They heard the clumsy vehicle move. It continued to growl, and
they knew that it was moving about the streets with its occupants
trying to sight fleeing figures under the darknesses which were trees.

"I hit--I hit the generator," panted Lockley. "I must have! Else
they'd swing a beam on us!"

He stopped. Here they were in a district where many large homes pooled
their lawns in block-long stretches of soft green. The street lights
cast arbitrary patches of brightness against the houses, but their
windows were blank and dark. This street, like most in this small
town, was lined with trees on either side. There were the fragrances
of flowers and grass.

"We aren't safe now," said Lockley, "but I just found out there may
not be any safety anywhere."

Jill's teeth chattered.

"What will we do? What was that machinery? I felt--frightened because
it wasn't what he said was back there. So I told you. But what was
it?".

"At a guess," said Lockley, "a terror beam generator. The invaders
must have human friends. To us they're spies. They're cooperating with
the monsters. Apparently they're even trusted with terror beam
projectors."

He stood still, thinking, while in the distance the trailer-truck
ground and rumbled about the streets. It was not a very promising
method for finding two fugitives. They could hide if it turned onto a
street they used. It could not continue the search indefinitely. The
most likely final course would be to leave some of the unknown number
of men in its trailer to search the town on foot. Even that might not
be successful. But it wouldn't be a good idea for Lockley and Jill to
remain here, either.

"We look for two-car garages," said Lockley. "It's not a good chance,
but it's all we've got. _If_ somebody had two cars, they might have
left one behind when they evacuated. I can jump an ignition switch if
necessary. Meanwhile we'll be moving out of town, which is a good idea
even if we do it on foot!"

They ceased to use the streets with their dramatic contrast of vivid
lights with total shadows. They moved behind a row of what would be
considered mansions in Serena, Colorado. Sometimes they stumbled over
flower beds, and once there was a hose over which Jill tripped, and
once Lockley barked his shin on a garden wheelbarrow. Most of the
garages were empty or contained only tools and garden equipment.

Then something made Lockley look up. A slender, truss-braced, mastlike
tower rose skyward. It began on the lawn of a house with wide porches.
There was a two-car garage with one wide door open.

"A radio ham," said Lockley. "I wonder--"

But he looked first in the garage. There was a car. It looked all
right. He climbed in and opened the door. The dome light came on. The
key was still in the ignition. He turned it and the gauge showed that
the gas tank was three-quarters full. This was unbelievable good
fortune.

"They probably intended to use this and then changed their minds,"
said Lockley. "I'll get the door open and attempt a little burglary.
Just one burglary with a prayer that he used a storage battery for
his power!"

Breaking in was simple. He tried the windows opening on the main wide
porch. One window slid up. He went inside, Jill following.

The ham radio outfit was in the cellar. Like most radio hams, this one
had battery-powered equipment as a matter of public responsibility. In
case of storm or disaster when power lines are down, the ham operators
of the United States can function as emergency communication systems,
working without outside power. This operator was equipped as
membership in the organization required.

Lockley warmed up the tubes. He tuned to a general call frequency. He
began to say, "May Day! May Day! May Day!" in a level voice. This
emergency call has precedence over all other calls but S.O.S., which
has an identical meaning. But "May Day" is more distinct and
unmistakable when heard faintly.

There were answers within minutes. Lockley snapped for them to stay
tuned while he called for others. He had half a dozen hams waiting
curiously when he began to broadcast what he wanted the world to know.

He told it as briefly and as convincingly as he could. Then he said,
"Over" and threw the reception switch for questions.

There were no questions. His broadcast had been jammed. Some other
station or stations were transmitting pure static with deafening
volume, evidently from somewhere nearby. Lockley could not tell when
it had begun. It could have been from the instant he began to speak.
It was very likely that not one really useful word had been heard
anywhere.

But a direction finder could have betrayed his position.




CHAPTER 8


It was a ticklish job getting the car out of the garage and into the
street. Lockley was afraid that starting the motor would make a noise
which in the silence of the town's absolute abandonment could be heard
for a long way. The grinding of the starter, though, lasted only for
seconds. It might make men listen, but they could hardly locate it
before the motor caught and ran quietly. Also, the trailer-truck was
still in motion and making its own noise. Of course it was probably
posting watchers and listeners here and there to try to find Lockley
and Jill.

So Lockley backed the car into the street as silently as was possible.
He did not turn on the lights. He stopped, headed away from the area
in which the truck rumbled. He sent the car forward at a crawl. Then
an idea occurred to him and cold chills ran down his spine. It is
possible to use a short wave receiver to pick up the ignition sparks
of a car. Normally such sparkings are grounded so the car's own radio
will work. But sometimes a radio is out of order. It was
characteristic of Lockley's acquired distrust of luck and chance that
he thought of so unlikely a disaster.

He eased the car into motion, straining his ears for any sign that the
truck reacted. Then he moved the car slowly away from the business
district. It required enormous self-control to go slowly. While among
the lighted streets the urge to flee at top speed was strong. But he
clenched his teeth. A car makes much less noise when barely in motion.
He made it drift as silently as a wraith under the trees and the
street lamps.

They got out of town. The last of the street lamps was behind them.
There was only starlight ahead, and an unknown road with many turns
and curves. Sometimes there were roadsigns, dimly visible as
uninformative shapes beside the highway. They warned of curves and
other driving hazards, but they could not be read because Lockley
drove without lights. He left the car dark because any glare would
have been visible to the men of the trailer-truck for a very long way.

Starlight is not good for fast driving, and when a road passes through
a wooded space it is nerve-racking. Lockley drove with foreboding,
every sense alert and every muscle tense. But just after a painful
progress through a series of curves with high trees on either side
which he managed by looking up at the sky and staying under the middle
of the ribbon of stars he could see, Lockley touched the brake and
stopped the car.

"What's the matter?" asked Jill, as he rummaged under the instrument
panel.

"I think," said Lockley, "that I must have damaged something in that
truck. Otherwise they'd have turned their beam on us just to get even.

"But maybe they'll be able to make a repair. In any case there are
other beams. Those are probably stationary and the truck knows where
they are and calls by truck radio to have them shut off when it wants
to go by. That would work. Using the Wild Life truck was really very
clever."

He wrenched at something. It gave. He pulled out a length of wire and
started working on one end of it.

"If they guess we got a car," he observed, "they'll expect us to run
into a road block beam that would wreck the car and paralyze us. I'm
taking a small precaution against that. Here." He put the wire's end
into her hand. "It's the lead-in from this car's radio antenna. It
ought to warn us of beams across the road as my watch spring did in
the hills. Hold it."

"I will," said Jill.

"One more item," he said. He got out of the car and closed the door
quickly. He went to the back. There was the sound of breaking glass.
He returned, saying, "No brake lights will go on now. I'll try to do
something about that dome light." With a sharp blow he shattered it.
"Now we could be as hard to trail as that Wild Life truck was the
other night."

Jill groped as the car got into motion again.

"You mean it was--Oh!"

"Most likely," agreed Lockley, "it was the thing that went out of the
park and occupied Maplewood, flinging terror beams in all directions.
Some of the truck's crew would have had footgear to make hoofprints.
They committed a token burglary or two. And there was the illusion of
aliens studying these queer creatures, men."

They went on at not more than fifteen miles an hour. The car was
almost soundless. They heard insects singing in the night. There was a
steady, monotonous rumbling high above where Air Force planes
patrolled outside the Park. After a time Jill said, "You seemed
discouraged when you talked to that general."

"I was," said Lockley. "I am. He played it safe, refused to admit that
anybody in authority over him could possibly be mistaken. That's sound
policy, and I was contradicting the official opinion of his superiors.
I've got to find somebody of much lower rank, or much higher.
Maybe--"

Jill said in a strained voice, "Stop!"

He braked. She said unsteadily, "Holding the wire, I smell that
horrible smell."

He put his hand on the wire's end. He shared the sensation.

"Terror beam across the highway," he said calmly. "Maybe on our
account, maybe not. But there was a side road a little way back."

He backed the car. He'd smashed the backing lights, too. He guided
himself by starlight. Presently he swung the wheel and faced the car
about. He drove back the way he had come. A mile or so, and there was
another hard-surface road branching off. He took it. Half an hour
later Jill said quickly, "Brakes!"

The road was blocked once more by an invisible terror beam, into which
any car moving at reasonable speed must move before its driver could
receive warning.

"This isn't good," he said coldly. "They may have picked some good
places to block. We have to go almost at random, just picking roads
that head away from the Park. I don't know how thoroughly they can
cage us in, though."

There was a flicker of light in the sky. Lockley jerked his head
around. It flashed again. Lightning. The sky was clouding up.

"It's getting worse," he said in a strained voice. "I've been taking
every turn that ought to lead us away from the Park, but I've had to
use the stars for direction. I didn't think that soldiers would keep
us from getting away from here. I was almost confident. But what will
I do without the stars?"

He drove on. The clouds piled up, blotting out the heavens. Once
Lockley saw a faint glow in the sky and clenched his teeth. He turned
away from it at the first opportunity. The glow could be Serena, and
he could have been forced back toward it by the windings of the
highway he'd followed without lights. Twice Jill warned him of beams
across the highway. Once, driven by his increasing anxiety, his brakes
almost failed to stop him in time. When the car did stop, he was aware
of faint tinglings on his skin. There were erratic flashings in his
eyes, too, and a discordant composite of sounds which by association
with past suffering made him nauseated. Perhaps this extra leakage
from the terror beam was through the metal of the car.

When he got out of that terror beam the sky was three-quarters blacked
out and before he was well away from the spot there was only a tiny
patch of stars well down toward the horizon. There were lightning
flickers overhead. After a time he depended on them to show him the
road.

Then the rain came. The lightning increased. The road twisted and
turned. Twice the car veered off onto the road's shoulders, but each
time he righted it. As time passed conditions grew worse. It was
urgent that he get as far as possible from Serena, because of the Wild
Life truck which could seize Jill and himself if its beam generators
were repaired, and whose occupants could murder them if they weren't.
But it was most urgent that he get away beyond the military cordon to
find men who would listen to his information and see that use was made
of it. Yet in driving rain and darkness, without car lights and daring
to drive only at a crawl, he might be completely turned around.

"I think," he said at last, "I'll turn in at the next farm gate the
lightning shows us. I'll try to get the car into a barn so it won't
show up at daybreak. We might be heading straight back into the Park!"

He did turn, the next time a lightning flash showed him a turn-off
beside a rural free delivery mailbox. There was a house at the end of
a lane. There was a barn. He got out and was soaked instantly, but he
explored the open space behind the wide, open doors. He backed the car
in.

"So," he explained to Jill, "if we have a chance to move we won't have
to back around first."

They sat in the car and looked out at the rain-filled darkness. There
was no light anywhere except when lightning glittered on the rain. In
such illuminations they made out the farmhouse, dripping floods of
water from its eaves. There was a chicken house. There were fences.
They could not see to the gate or the highway through the falling
water, but there had been solid woodland where they turned off into
the lane.

"We'll wait," said Lockley distastefully, "to see if we are in a tight
spot in the morning. If we're well away--and I've no real idea where
we are--we'll go on. If not, we'll hide till dark and hope for stars
to steer by when we go."

Jill said confidently, "We'll make it. But where to?"

"To any place away from Boulder Lake Park, and where I'm a human being
instead of a crackpot civilian. To where I can explain some things to
people who'll listen, if it isn't too late."

"It's not," said Jill with as much assurance as before.

There was a pause. The rain poured down. Lightning flashed. Thunder
roared.

"I didn't know," said Jill tentatively, "that you believed the
invaders--the monsters--had people helping them."

"The overall picture isn't a human one," he told her. "But there's a
design that shows somebody knows us. For instance, nobody's been
killed. At least not publicly. That was arranged by somebody who
understood that if there was a massacre, we'd fight to the end of our
lives and teach our children to fight after us."

She thought it over. "You'd be that way," she said presently. "But not
everybody. Some people will do anything to stay alive. But you
wouldn't."

The rain made drumming sounds on the barn roof. Lockley said, "But
what's happened isn't altogether what humans would devise. Humans who
planned a conquest would know they couldn't make us surrender to them.
If this was a sort of Pearl Harbor attack by human enemies--and you
can guess who it might be--they might as well start killing us on the
largest possible scale at the beginning. If monsters with no
information about us landed, they might perpetrate some massacres with
the entirely foolish idea of cowing us. But there haven't been any
massacres. So it's neither a cold war trick nor an unadvised landing
of monsters. There's another angle in it somewhere. Monster-human
cooperation is only a guess. I'm not satisfied, but it's the best
answer so far."

Jill was silent for a long time. Then she said irrelevantly, "You must
have been a good friend of ... of...."

"Vale?" Lockley said. "No. I knew him, but that's all. He only joined
the Survey a few months ago. I don't suppose I've talked to him a
dozen times, and four of those times he was with you. Why'd you think
we were close friends?"

"What you've done for me," she said in the darkness.

He waited for a lightning flash to show him her expression. She was
looking at him.

"I didn't do it for Vale," said Lockley.

"Then why?"

"I'd have done it for anyone," said Lockley ungraciously.

In a way it was true, of course. But he wouldn't have gone up to the
construction camp to make sure that anyone hadn't been left behind.
The idea wouldn't have occurred to him.

"I don't think that's true," said Jill.

He did not answer. If Vale was alive, Jill was engaged to him;
although if matters worked out, Lockley would not be such a fool as to
play the gentleman and let her marry Vale by default. On the other
hand, if Vale was dead, he wouldn't be the kind of fool who'd try to
win her for himself before she'd faced and recovered from Vale's
death. A girl could forgive herself for breaking her engagement to a
living man, but not for disloyalty to a dead one.

"I think," said Lockley deliberately, "that we should change the
subject. I will talk about why I went to the Lake after you when
everything has settled down. I had reasons. I still have them. I will
express them, eventually, whether Vale likes it or not. But not now."

There was a long silence, while rain fell with heavy drumming noises
and the world was only a deep curtain of lightning-lighted droplets of
falling water.

"Thanks," said Jill very quietly. "I'm glad."

And then they sat in silence while the long hours went by. Eventually
they dozed. Lockley was awakened by the ending of the rain. It was
then just the beginning of gray dawn. The sky was still filled with
clouds. The ground was soaked. There were puddles here and there in
the barnyard, and water dripped from the barn's eaves, and from the
now vaguely visible house, and from the two or three trees beside it.

Lockley opened the car door and got out quietly. Jill did not waken.
He visited the chicken house, and horrendous squawkings came out of
it. He found eggs. He went to the house, stepping gingerly from grass
patch to grass patch, avoiding the puddles between them. He found
bread, jars of preserves and cans of food. He inspected the lane. The
car's tracks had been washed out. He nodded to himself.

He went back to the barn. There was still only dusky half-light. He
pulled the doors almost shut behind him, leaving only a four-inch gap
to see through. Now the car was safely out of sight and there was no
sign that any living being was near.

"You closed the doors," said Jill. "Why?"

He said reluctantly, "I'm afraid we're as badly off as we were at the
beginning. Unless I'm mistaken, we got turned around in that rainstorm
on those twisty roads, and the Park begins nearby. This isn't the
highway I drove up on to find you, the one where my car's wrecked.
This is another one. I don't think we're more than twenty miles from
the Lake, here. And that's something I didn't intend!"

He began to unload his pockets.

"I got something for us to eat. Well just have to lie low until night
and fumble our way out toward the cordon, with the stars to guide us."

There was silence, save for the lessened dripping of water. Lockley
was filled with a sort of baffled impatience with himself. He felt
that he'd acted like an idiot in trying to escape the evacuated area
by car. But there'd been nothing else to do. Before that he'd stupidly
been unsuspicious when the Wild Life truck came down a highway that
he'd known was blocked by a terror beam. And perhaps he'd been a fool
to refuse to discuss why he'd gone up to the construction camp to see
to her safety when by all the rules of reason it was none of his
business.

The gray light paled a little. Through the gap between the barn doors,
he could see past the house. Then he could see the length of the lane
and the trees on the far side of the highway.

He was laying out the food when suddenly he froze, listening. The
stillness of just-before-dawn was broken by the distant rumble of an
internal-combustion engine. It was a familiar kind of rumbling. It
drew nearer. Except for the singularly distinct impacts of drippings
from leaves and roof to the ground below, it was the only sound in all
the world.

It became louder. Jill clenched her hands unconsciously.

"I don't think there are any car tracks at the turn-off where we came
in," said Lockley in a level voice. "The rain should have washed them
out. It's not likely they're looking for us here anyhow. But I've only
got three bullets left in the pistol. Maybe you'd better go off and
hide in the cornfield. Then if things go wrong they'll believe I left
you somewhere."

"No," said Jill composedly, "I'd leave tracks in the ploughed ground.
They'd find me."

Lockley ground his teeth. He got out the pistol he'd taken from the
truck driver in the lighted room in Serena. He looked at it grimly. It
would be useless, but....

Jill came and stood beside him, watching his face.

The rumbling of the truck was still nearer and louder. It diminished
for a moment where a curve in the road took the vehicle behind some
trees that deadened its noise. But then the sound increased suddenly.
It was very loud and frighteningly near.

Lockley watched through the gap between the barn doors. He stayed
well back lest his face be seen.

The trailer-truck with the Wild Life Control markings on it rumbled
past. It growled and roared. The noise seemed thunderous. Its wheels
splashed as they went through a puddle close by the gate.

It went away into the distance. Jill took a deep breath of relief.
Lockley made a warning gesture.

He listened. The noise went on steadily for what he guessed to be a
mile or more. Then they heard it stop. Only by straining his ears
could Lockley pick up the sound of an idling motor. Maybe that was
imagination. Certainly at any other less silent time he could not
possibly have heard it. Jill whispered, "Do you think--"

He gestured for silence again. The distant heavy engine continued to
idle. One minute. Two. Three. Then the grinding of gears and the roar
of the engine once more. The truck went on. Its sound diminished. It
faded away altogether.

"They got to a place where the road's blocked with a terror beam,"
said Lockley evenly. "They stopped and called by short wave and the
beam was cut off, then they went past the block-point and undoubtedly
the beam was turned on again."

He debated a decision.

"We'll have breakfast," he said shortly. "We'll have to eat the eggs raw,
but we need to eat. Then we'll figure things out. It may be that we'd be
sensible to forget about cars and try to get to the cordon on foot,
robbing farmhouses of food on the way. There can't be too many ...
collaborators. And we could keep out of sight."

He opened a jar of preserves.

"But it would be better for you to be travelling by car, if tonight's
clear and there's starlight to drive by."

Jill said practically, "There might be some news...."

Her hands shook as she put the pocket radio on the hood of the car.
Lockley noticed it. He felt, himself, the strain of their long march
through the wilderness with danger in every breath they drew. And he
was shaken in a different way by the proof that humans were
cooperating fully with the invading monsters. It was unthinkable that
anybody could be a traitor not only to his own country but to all the
human race. He felt incredulous. It couldn't be true! But it obviously
was.

The radio made noises. Lockley turned it in another direction. There
was music. Jill's face worked. She struggled not to show how she felt.

The radio said, "_Special news bulletin! Special news bulletin! The
Pentagon announces that for the first time there has been practically
complete success in duplicating the terror beam used by the space
invaders at Boulder Lake! Working around the clock, teams of foreign
and American scientists have built a projector of what is an entirely
new type of electronic radiation which produces every one of the
physiological effects of the alien terror beam! It is low-power, so
far, and has not produced complete paralysis in experimental animals.
Volunteers have submitted themselves to it, however, and report that
it produces the sensations experienced by members of the military
cordon around Boulder Lake. A crash program for the development of the
projector is already under way. At the same time a crash program to
develop a counter to it is already showing promising results. The
authorities are entirely confident that a complete defense against the
no longer mysterious weapon will be found. There is no longer any
reason to fear that earth will be unable to defend itself against the
invaders now present on earth, or any reinforcements they may
receive!_"

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