by Eando Binder
Captain Pompersnap shrugged his shoulders. “Am I supposed to try to talk to the damned things?”
“No, Captain. You just picket and keep strict guard so the—the things don’t gallivant around. Washington is sending a Secret Service man. there to solve the mystery.”
A little later, a long line of transport trucks left Fort Sheridan on Lake Michigan and wound its way to the southwest, loaded with National Guardsmen and their paraphernalia. Captain Pompersnap ruminated during the three-hour trip and felt foolish. Beyond a doubt, he reflected, it would eventually turn out to be some elaborate advertising scheme. Probably United Alloys had built the ship and armored suits out of a new and amazingly tough metal, had then dashed it ground-ward to demonstrate its strength, and would soon announce the prices per ton and per square yard. Then the sassy reporters would indulge in a bit of sarcasm and tell the public: “Captain Pompersnap and his men, fully armed and prepared for anything short of war, found the only charge they could make was one for which United Alloys would extend them thirty days credit . . .
It was the morning of the third day after the “meteorite” had startled ail of northern Illinois and parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana, when the National Guard arrived and forthwith set up camp, to see that a possible menace to the peace of the nation be effectively ensnared. With military precision, the soldiers set up their canvas tents, distributed their trusty rifles, and put a ring of “guards” around the mystery ship.
Lieutenant Arpy of the Joliet Police arrived before noon, emissary of Chief Saunders who had certain weighty duties that prevented his coming. He sought out Captain Pompersnap immediately, finding him at the top of the knoll overlooking the landing place of the ship.
“What d’you think of it?” asked Arpy when introductions and preliminaries were over.
“Pretty clever, I’d say,” answered the captain.
“Clever, you mean—er—”
“Of course it’s clever,” repeated Pompersnap with firm conviction. “Obviously, it’s sensational advertising, some big steel company.”
Arpy removed his hat and scratched his head slowly, turning his gaze to the ellipsoid as though to verify for himself the captain’s statement.
In the twenty-four hours since the first metal creature had stepped from a hole in the ellipsoid’s hull—thereby frightening a hundred people as they had never been frightened before—several new developments had come about. The original monster had proved to have two companions exactly like itself, one of which, however, had had its legs so badly smashed that its locomotive powers were destroyed. A timid and distant crowd of humans—using binoculars and tensed to the last man to run at a second’s notice had seen the two undamaged metal monsters lug out the third and set it upright on the ground. Then they had brought out from the interior of the ship various complicated and small devices with innumerable markings and controls. These they all three had played around with all day, using their multi-jointed tentacular arms and the human-like hands with amazing dexterity.
Then at night, the metal monsters had again entered the ship and brought forth a tripod affair whose spherical summit cast a brilliant white light all around them, so that their queer manipulations could go on uninterrupted. By morning, the ground just outside the ship was littered with a motley array of unnamable instruments, most of them metallic and mirrored; some containing jars of colored solutions.
In all that time, the mysterious creatures had taken no direct notice of the humans silently watching them, although, at times, an uncanny hinged eye would fasten to the hilltop and apparently take in the scene.
Arpy thought over Pompersnap’s odd idea in his slow, incoherent way and finally ventured to remonstrate. “But, Captain, what the devil would a steel company be having them machines playing with a lot of crazy toys for?”
Pompersnap shot him a scornful glance. “For the effect, man!—and to drag out the mystery so that it’ll be headlined longer.”
“Is that why the gov’ment sent you here?” asked Arpy.
“No,” snapped the Army man, flushing. “We are here because your Chief of Police thought this was war-stuff and was afraid he was risking his precious life. Why, take a look! There ain’t a weapon around that ship.”
Arpy muttered some sort of an agreement, but thought it proper at the moment to add, “I’ll tell you, though, Captain, them things is ornery-looking from closer up. If you’d ha’ seen that first one stepping toward you like a skyscraper on legs, you might kinda—sorta shiver!”
Captain Pompersnap expanded his manly chest at these words and allowed a look of noble bravery to come over his handsome features. “Lieutenant Arpy, I see you don’t know us men of the Army. We would fight the Devil himself! Don’t you ever get the idea that those things, just because they’re big and strong looking, would scare us. Nothing scares us.”
“Well, when you get down to it, fellows like us,” said Arpy, “soldiers and police, are above the average that way. Take us and our criminals now—”
From this congenial start, the two brave minions of law and order began a delightful conversation in which each considered it a point of honor to match stories of bravery and prowess. Captain Pompersnap had in reserve tales of the riotous times of the decade before when the working classes had been inflamed because of the bad times. Lieutenant Arpy had the vast field of criminology from which to extract proofs of his fearlessness and undaunted spirit.
• In the afternoon, the Secret Service man arrived from Washington—Colonel Snoosharp by name. He had a secretive air about him and his pursed lips seemed to betoken that he had much to say, only that duty withheld him from revealing important secrets. He drew Captain Pompersnap away from the camp to have a heart to heart talk with him.
“Now, Captain,” he began, “this whole affair may prove more serious than anyone thinks. You are under my orders—I have the proper authority from the Secretary of War—and first of all increase your sentry line, for it is altogether too skimpy. Furthermore, set up your machine-guns and—let’s see, have you any larger pieces?”
“Why, no, except grenades and tear bombs. But, good Lord! What—”
“Now listen to me,” went on Snoosharp in a low, rapid hiss as though spies might be about eavesdropping, “give your sentries grenades and impress upon them they must be alert at all times. In fact, all your men must be on their toes. You really should have some heavier pieces—well, later for that. Captain, detail me a party of ten armed men who will accompany me—I was told to clear up the mystery and I’m going to approach those metal monsters or robots and attempt to communicate with them. And for Heaven’s sake, keep the people back; there’s at least ten thousand of them around here.”
Captain Pompersnap picked nine men and himself joined the colonel. The crowd immediately sensed that something important was occurring and only the stern line of bayonet-armed Guardsmen kept them from pouring closer.
At the top of the knoll, the party formed in military step, two rows of five each, with Colonel Snoosharp in front. Halfway down the slope, the captain’s voice barked out: “Present arms!”
In this formidable fashion, the party reached the foot of the knoll and halted. Not twenty yards away was the nearest of the three metal monsters. Long before they had come up, the Robot Aliens had ceased their mysterious work with the queer instruments, and two of them had faced directly about.
The humans, seeing the creatures close up for the first time, felt a vague dismay—even a little fear—sneak upon them. Ominously quiet and inhumanly proportioned, the Aliens struck a note of unreasoning terror in the human heart of flesh and blood. The ground beside the ship had been trampled hard as though steam-rollers had gone over it, attesting that the creatures had terrific weights. Mechanical eyes, with lurking, unfathomable depths, peered unblinkingly at the puny men.
Colonel Snoosharp could only bolster up confidence by periodically shifting his eyes to the shiny bayonets back of him. Captain Pompersnap remembered suddenl
y Arpy’s words: “. . . you might . . . kinda—sorta shiver!” Several of the bayonets were dancing in the sun from hands that trembled.
Pompersnap nudged the Secret Service man who had fallen into a trance of enervated staring. Snoosharp started and licked dry lips. Then he shouted out at the motionless Robot Aliens: “Who are you?”
Beyond a click from mechanical ears that turned funnel-shaped objects toward them, there was no sound from the metal monsters.
Snoosharp tried several different languages without success.
Suddenly the Robot Aliens retaliated. The foremost raised one of his tentacular arms and stretched it out till it pointed skyward. Holding it there, a second tentacular arm swung in circles, paused, swung again, and twice again swung and paused. Then the tentacular arms fell limply into the coils with a faint sound of whirring machinery and rubbing metals.
The captain and colonel, equally pale and disconcerted, looked at each other helplessly. The creatures could not speak or understand, and gesticulated in a quite incomprehensible way.
“I—I think,” whispered Snoosharp hoarsely, “we’ll just have to give it up—”
Captain Pompersnap responded with alacrity. “Right about face! March!”
Then a surprising thing happened. The foremost metal monster, the one which had gesticulated, moved forward toward the retreating men, waving all its appendages violently. As it moved, the three prongs on its “head” sparkled with electricity—a sound which associated itself in the soldiers’ collective mind as machine-gun fire.
In a blind panic at hearing this dreadful crackling, the Guardsmen, without an order from the captain, who was incapable of giving orders at the time anyway, fired at the Robot Alien and then ran precipitately. But neither the captain, nor yet the colonel, were last to reach the hilltop. The former, completely unrattled, shouted for his men to “repel the attack,” at which several soldiers flung their grenades. None reached down to the Robot Alien, which now strode quite rapidly up the slope like a nightmare horror, throwing all the human watchers into a frenzy of blind fear. Scattered bullets flew through the air, and a few rang upon collision with hard metal. In a moment of sanity, Captain Pompersnap tried to rally his men, but they were absolutely deaf to his commands. They ran, pausing to shoot at times at the twelve-foot tower of metal that lumbered along behind.
The crowd on the other side of the knoll, hearing the shots and explosions and hoarse cries, screamed in mortal fear and trampled over itself without thought and poured across the fields away from the scene of action.
The Robot Alien gained the top of the knoll and then stopped. Clicking eyes swept the scene—the black of scurrying humanity, the brown of moving soldiers, some of whom stood their ground, and the still bodies lying on the ground, unfortunates who had been swept off their feet and crushed. A hand grenade arched from a resolute-faced man in khaki and exploded not a foot from the machine-man’s feet. Beyond a slight swaying and a short backward step, the metal monster took no notice. It stood there for a long minute and then slowly turned and descended the knoll back to its fellows.
* * *
It will be easily understood that the reports that reached the public ears and eyes were vastly distorted. In the main, the individual reporters had used their imaginations and painted the Robot Aliens as malign enemies of mankind, armed with terrible weapons. One reporter said it had long metal whips with which it had scourged and beat people during that hectic affair. But it is less easily credited that the official reports should be prevarications designed to protect the honor and name of two men—Captain Pompersnap and Colonel Snoosharp. They had to fabricate a story of attack by the vicious Aliens to cover their own cowardly panic and shameful lack of competence in such a crisis.
Not only was Captain Pompersnap an arrant weakling (even Lieutenant Arpy had sensed that, listening to his bombastic oral exploits) but he was also an accomplished liar. Worst of all, Major Whinny (a political officer and therefore incompetent) believed him, sympathized with him, and promised retribution.
Colonel Snoosharp’s report to Washington by telephone aroused the whole War Department, and due to the conflicting newspaper accounts and the still more garbled radio effusions, there was none to gainsay that “the Metal Monsters are inimical to human life, dangerous to the continued peace of our glorious nation, and absolutely void of human feelings or sympathies.” The government, with its characteristic sagacity and wisdom, promptly ordered the territory under martial law and transmitted secret orders to Major Whinny to destroy the enemy.
There had been thirty people killed, most of them by the panic of a fleeing mob, the rest by stray bullets, and some thrice that number injured in various ways. Yet all the Robot Alien had done was walk up the slope and stand at its summit for one minute! Truly it was a formidable destroyer of human life!
CHAPTER IV
The Panic in Chicago
• Major Whinny, small and wizened, thin-voiced and arrogant—and incidentally allied with powerful political interests—sent the entire Fort Sheridan soldiery to the spot, along with numerous small guns and several larger pieces of ordnance. In wartime he would have made one of those commanders who run hastily over important data, disregard perfectly obvious precautions, and pour a flood of cannon-fodder at the laughing enemy. He was the type to turn down advice not to his liking and to run his one-dimensional thoughts along its sole single track—in other words, as fitted for his position as most “political” choices are in any other position.
He did get advice, too. There were sane and intelligent people who saw from the conflicting reports that it was quite possible that imagination had made the Robot Aliens so destructive. One of Captain Pompersnap’s own men, a quiet-mannered private who had calmly climbed a tree of the orchard during the excitement and watched the whole thing with unprejudiced eyes, came to him at the news of armed attack and declaimed the action as unwarranted. Major Whinny listened to only half his speech and then had him arrested for dishonorable action (he had climbed a tree, it will be understood).
So, by the afternoon of the fourth day, elaborate preparations for attack were made. Troops were stationed at all points of the compass in a huge circle of three miles, armed with one-pound cannons. Artillery crews were stationed farther back with four- and six-inch pieces and enough ammunition to bomb all Chicago. The flying corps was also scheduled to bombard after preliminary small shell fire. It was to be quick and decisive.
“What Pm worried about,” admitted Major Whinny as he looked out the window of a farmhouse which he had commandeered as his temporary headquarters, “is whether they have any weapons more dangerous than that one you mentioned; I mean any guns or bombs.”
“I suspect they might have, sir,” commented Captain Pompersnap. “But I only know definitely of the one that sparkles like rifle fire and makes guns go off accidentally—which, as I’ve said before, accounts for so many wounded by stray bullets. It’s obvious that my men could not have shot those bullets voluntarily.”
Major Whinny nodded in agreement. He believed it as gospel truth that the rifles had been fired by foreign agency; in fact, so did the captain—almost.
“I am prepared to say, though,” the major said reflectively, “that those numerous instruments they had strewn about and were assembling are sure to be some form of lethal weapon.”
“In that case, our sudden attack will catch them unprepared,” cried the captain eagerly.
A helicopter plane landed in a plowed field and its pilot came in with a salute.
“I beg to report, sir, that there is no particular sign of activity from the enemy. They are just outside the ship engaged in fingering certain instruments I can’t define, sir, and seem oblivious to anything else.”
Major Whinny waved a finger for him to go.
“They are together and unsuspecting, Captain. Let’s give it to ’em!”
The one-pounders burst out into rapid fire, which at first missed its mark but gradually crept closer as obser
vation planes above radioed range figures. At the bursting of shells and the flying of clods and shattered rocks, the Robot Aliens jerked to their feet (except, of course, the one whose pedal extremities had been previously mangled) and gazed about. When the explosions of larger shells joined those of the one-pounders, the two standing creatures hastily tugged at their helpless companion and started to carry him into the ship. Then the first direct hit came: a one-pounder tore a hole at their very feet Another struck the ship and tore a small fragment of the hull away.
At this alarming episode, the two wholebodied Aliens abruptly left their companion and raced away from the ship. For the first time, human eyes saw with what amazing speed they could move. At the rate of a slow automobile, legs flying like pistons, the two metal monsters quickly traversed several fields (plowing through barbed-wire fences without a pause) and neared a troop of soldiery who fired several sporadic rifle volleys and then scuttled away like frightened rabbits. Bullets had no apparent effect on the monsters and they disappeared in the distance.
Major Whinny got two pieces of news at once: one that the ships and surroundings had been bombarded to dust and the other that two of the Robot Aliens had escaped and flown the cage.
* * *
“Just what are we faced with?” gasped the President of the United States, his tone betraying inward agitation.
Secretary of War Rukke ran a finger around his tight collar. “That is not easy to answer, Mr. President. Suggestions have been pouring in upon me but they are all guesses. Some say they are a foreign threat, first members of an invading army of metal monsters; again they are creatures from the ocean depths, encased in pressure suits; or they are people from the center of the earth; or they are the invention of a crank who wishes to see the downfall of civilization; or they are the brain-child of a mad scientist who made thinking machines which then destroyed him and ran amuck; or they are an evolutionary product of a remote and unknown island. But the suggestion that most appalled me was that they are creatures from another planet!”
