Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 2)

by Anthology

"God damn, Bert! I don't know," said Sweets, leaning around Luke. "We was out here all night; it was a regular party; most of the time we was up on the lip up there. Maybe thirty or forty people comin' and goin' all the time. We was all talking and hoorawing, and then we heard something about an hour ago. We looked down, and I'll be damned if the whole top of that thing didn't come off like a mason jar!

  "We was watching, and these damn things started coming out— they looked like big old leather balls, big as horses, with snakes all out the front—"

  "What?"

  "Snakes. Yeah, tentacles Leo called them, like an octypuss. Leo'd come back from town and was here when them boogers came out. Martians he said they was, things from Mars. They had big old eyes, big as your head! Everybody was pushing and shoving; then one of them pulled out one of them gun things, real slow like, and just started burning up everything in sight.

  "We all ran back for whatever cover we could find—it took 'em a while to get up the dirt pile. They killed horses, dogs, anything they could see. Fire was everywhere. They use that thing just like the volunteer firemen use them water hoses in Waco!"

  "Where's Leo?"

  Sweets pointed to the draw that ran diagonally to the west. "We watched awhile, finally figured they couldn't line up on the ditch all the way to the rise. Leo and the others got away up the draw—he was gonna telegraph the university about it. The bunch that got away was supposed to send people out to the town road to warn people. You probably would have run into them if you hadn't been coming from Theobald's place. Anyway, soon as them things saw people were gettin' away, they got mad as hornets. That's when they lit up the Atkinsons' barn."

  A flash of fire leapt in the roots of the tree, jumped back thirty feet into the burnt grass behind them, then moved back and forth in a curtain of sparks.

  "Man, that's what I call a real smoke pole," said Luke.

  "Well," Lindley said. "This won't do. These things done attacked citizens in my jurisdiction, and they killed my horse."

  He turned to Luke.

  "Be real careful, and get back to town, and get the posse up. Telegraph the Rangers and tell 'em to burn leather gettin' here. Then get aholt of Skip Whitworth and have him bring out The Gun."

  * * *

  Skip Whitworth sat behind the tree trunk and pulled the cover from the six-foot rifle at his side. Skip was in his late fifties. He had been a sniper in the War for Southern Independence when he had been in his twenties. He had once shot at a Yankee general just as the officer was bringing a forkful of beans up to his mouth. When the fork got there, there were only some shoulders and a gullet for the beans to drop into.

  That had been from a mile and a half away, from sixty feet up a pine tree.

  The rifle was an .80-caliber octagonal-barrel breechloader that used two and a half ounces of powder and a percussion cap the size of a jawbreaker for each shot. It had a telescopic sight running the entire length of the barrel.

  "They're using that thing on the end of that stick to watch us," said Lindley. "I had Sweets jump around, and every time he did, one of those cooters would come up with that fire gun and give us what-for."

  Skip said nothing. He loaded his rifle, which had a breechblock lever the size of a crowbar on it, then placed another round—cap, paper cartridge, ball—next to him. He drew a bead and pulled the trigger. It sounded like dynamite had gone off in their ears. The wobbling pole snapped in two halfway up. The top end flopped around back into the pit.

  There was a scrabbling noise above the whirring from the earthen lip. Something round came up.

  Skip had smoothly opened the breech, put in the ball, torn the cartridge with his teeth, put in the cap, closed the action, pulled back the hammer, and sighted before the shape reached the top of the dirt.

  Metal glinted in the middle of the dark thing. Skip fired. There

  314 Howard Waldrop

  was a squeech; the whole top of the round thing opened up; it spun around and backward, things in its front working like a daddy longlegs thrown on a roaring stove.

  Skip loaded again. There were flashes of light from the crater. Something came up shooting, fire leaping like hot sparks from a blacksmith's anvil, the air full of flames and smoke. Skip fired again.

  The fire gun flew up in the air. Snakes twisted, writhed, disappeared.

  It was very quiet for a few seconds.

  Then there was the renewed whining of machinery and noises like a pile driver, the sounds of filing and banging. Steam came up over the crater lip.

  "Sounds like a steel foundry in there," said Sweets.

  "I don't like it one bit," said Lindley. "Be danged if I'm gonna let 'em get the drop on us. Can you keep them down?"

  "How many are there?" asked Skip.

  "Luke and Sweets saw four or five before all hell broke loose this morning. Probably more of 'em than that was inside."

  "I've got three more shots. If they poke up, I'll get "em."

  "I'm goin' to town, then out to Elmer's. Sweets'll stay with you awhile. If you run outta bullets, light up out the draw. I don't want nobody killed. Sweets, keep an eye out for the posse. I'm telegraphing the Rangers again, then goin' to get Elmer and his dynamite. We're gonna fix their little red wagon for certain."

  "Sure thing, Sheriff."

  The sun had just passed noon.

  * * *

  Leo looked haggard. He had been up all night, then at the telegraph office sending off messages to the university. Inquiries had begun to come in from as far east as Baton Rouge. Leo had another, from Percival Lowell out in Flagstaff, Arizona Territory. "Everybody at the university thinks it's wonderful," said Leo.

  "People in Austin would," said Lindley.

  "They're sure these things are connected with Mars and those bright flashes of gas last month. Seems something's happened in England, starting about a week ago. No one's been able to get through to London for two or three days."

  "You telling me Mars is attacking London, England, and Pachuco City, Texas?" asked the sheriff.

  "It seems so," said Leo. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

  '"Scuse me, Leo," said Lindley. "I got to get another telegram off to the Texas Rangers."

  "That's funny," said Argyle, the telegraph operator. "The line was working just a second ago." He began tapping his key and fiddling with his coil box.

  Leo peered out the window. "Hey!" he said. "Where's the 3:14?" He looked at the railroad clock. It was 3:25. In sixteen years of rail service, the train had been four minutes late, and that was after a mud slide in the storm twelve years ago.

  "Uh-oh," said the sheriff.

  * * *

  They were turning out of Elmer's yard with a wagonload of dynamite. The wife and eleven of the kids were watching.

  "Easy, Sheriff," said Elmer, who, with two of his boys and most of their guns, was riding in back with the explosives. "Jake sold me everything he had. I just didn't notice till we got back here with that stuff that some of it was already sweating."

  "Holy shit!" said Lindley. "You mean we gotta go a mile an hour out there? Let's get out and throw the bad stuff off."

  "Well, it's all mixed in," said Elmer. "I was sorta gonna set it all up on the hill and put one blasting cap in the whole load."

  "Jesus. You woulda blowed up your house and Pachuco City too."

  "I was in a hurry," said Elmer, hanging his head.

  "Well, can't be helped. We'll take it slow."

  Lindley looked at his watch. It was six o'clock. He heard a high-up, fluttering sound. They looked at the sky. Coming down was a large, round, glowing object throwing off sparks in all directions. It was curved with points, like the thing in the crater at the Atkinson place. A long, thin trail of smoke from the back end hung in the air behind it. They watched in awe as it sailed down. It went into the horizon to the north of Pachuco City.

  "One," said one of the kids in the wagon, "two, three—"

  Silently they took up the count. At twenty-seven there wa
s a roaring boom, just like the night before.

  "Five and a half miles," said the sheriff. "That puts it eight miles from the other one. Leo said the ones in London came down twenty-four hours apart, regular as clockwork." They started off as fast as they could under the circumstances.

  * * *

  There were flashes of light beyond the Atkinson place in the near dusk. The lights moved off toward the north where the other thing had plowed in.

  It was the time of evening when your eyes can fool you. Sheriff Lindley thought he saw something that shouldn't have been there sticking above the horizon. It glinted like metal in the dim light.

  He thought it moved, but it might have been the motion of the wagon as they lurched down a gulley. When they came up, it was gone.

  Skip was gone. His rifle was still there. It wasn't melted but had been crushed, as had the three-foot-thick tree trunk in front of it. All the caps and cartridges were gone.

  There was a monstrous series of footprints leading from the crater down to the tree, then off into the distance to the north where Lindley thought he had seen something. There were three footprints in each series. Sweets' hat had been mashed along with Skip's gun. Clanging and banging still came from the crater.

  The four of them made their plans. Lindley had his shotgun and pistol, which Luke had brought out with him that morning, though he was still wearing his burned suit and his untouched Stetson.

  He tied together the fifteen sweatiest sticks of dynamite he could find.

  They crept up, then rushed the crater.

  * * *

  "Hurry up!" yelled the sheriff to the men at the courthouse. "Get that cannon up those stairs!"

  "He's still coming this way!" yelled Luke from up above.

  They had been watching the giant machine from the courthouse since it had come up out of the Atkinson place, before the sheriff and Elmer and his boys made it into town after their sortie.

  It had come across to the north, gone to the site of the second crash, and stood motionless there for quite a while. When it got dark, the deputies brought out the night binoculars. Everybody in town saw the flash of dynamite from the Atkinson place.

  A few moments after that, the machine had moved back toward there. It looked like a giant water tower with three legs. It had a thing like a teacher's desk bell on top of it, and something that looked like a Kodak roll-film camera in front of that. As the moon rose, they saw the thing had tentacles like thick wires hanging from between the three giant legs.

  The sheriff, Elmer, and his boys made it to town just as the machine found the destruction they had caused at the first landing site. It had turned toward town and was coming at a pace of twenty miles an hour.

  "Hurry the hell up!" yelled Luke. "Oh, shit—!" He ducked. There was a flash of light overhead. The building shook. "That heat gun comes out of the box on the front!" he said. "Look out!" The building glared and shook again. Something down the street caught fire.

  "Load that son of a bitch," said Lindley. "Bob! Some of you men make sure everybody's in the cyclone cellars or where they won't burn. Cut out all the damn lights!"

  "Hell, Sheriff. They know we're here!" yelled a deputy. Lindley hit him with his hat, then followed the cannon up to the top of the clock-tower steps.

  Luke was cramming powder into the cannon muzzle. Sweets ran back down the stairs. Other people carried cannonballs up the steps to the tower one at a time.

  Leo came up. "What did you find, Sheriff, when you went back?"

  There was a cool breeze for a few seconds in the courthouse tower. Lindley breathed a few deep breaths, remembering. "Pretty rough. There was some of them still working after that thing had gone. They were building another one just like it." He pointed toward the machine, which was firing up houses to the northeast side of town, swinging the ray back and forth. They could hear its hum. Homes and chicken coops burst into flames. A mooing cow was stilled.

  "We threw in the dynamite and blew most of them up. One was in a machine like a steam tractor. We shot up what was left while they was hootin' and a-hollerin'. There was some other things in there, live things maybe, but they was too blowed up to put back together to be sure what they was, all bleached out and pale. We fed everything there a diet of buckshot till there wasn't nothin' left. Then we hightailed it back here on horses, left the wagon sitting."

  The machine came on toward the main street of town. Luke finished with the powder. There were so many men with guns on the building across the street it looked like a brick porcupine. It must have looked this way for the James gang when they were shot up in Northfield, Minnesota.

  The courthouse was made of stone. Most of the wooden buildings in town were scorched or already afire. When the heat gun came this way, it blew bricks to dust, played flame over everything. The air above the whole town heated up.

  They had put out the lamps behind the clockfaces. There was nothing but moonlight glinting off the three-legged machine, flames of burning buildings, the faraway glows of prairie fires. It looked like Pachuco City was on the outskirts of hell.

  "Get ready, Luke," said the sheriff. The machine stepped between two burning stores, its tentacles pulling out smoldering horse tack, chains, kegs of nails, then heaving them this way and that. Someone at the end of the street fired off a round. There was a high, thin ricochet off the machine. Sweets ran upstairs, something in his arms. It was a curtain from one of the judge's windows. He'd ripped it down and tied it to the end of one of the janitor's long window brushes.

  On it he had lettered in tempera paint COME AND TAKE IT. There was a ragged, nervous cheer from the men on the building as they read it by the light of the flames.

  "Cute, Sweets," said Lindley, "too cute."

  The machine turned down Main Street. A line of fire sprang up at the back side of town from the empty corrals.

  "Oh, shit!" said Luke. "I forgot the wadding!" Lindley took off his hat to hit him with. He looked at its beautiful felt in the mixed moonlight and firelight.

  The thing turned toward them. The sheriff thought he saw eyes way up in the belittling atop the machine, eyes like a big cat's eyes seen through a dirty windowpane on a dark night.

  "Goldang, Luke, it's my best hat, but I'll be damned if I let them cooters burn down my town!"

  He stuffed the Stetson, crown first, into the cannon barrel. Luke shoved it in with the ramrod, threw in two 35-pound cannonballs behind it, pushed them home, and swung the barrel out over Main Street.

  The machine bent to tear up something.

  "Okay, boys," yelled Lindley. "Attract its attention." Rifle and shotgun fire winked on the rooftop. It glowed like a hot coal from the muzzle flashes. A great slather of ricochets flew off the giant machine.

  It turned, pointing its heat gun at the building. It was fifty feet from the courthouse steps.

  "Now," said the sheriff.

  Luke touched off the powder with his cigarillo. The whole north side of the courthouse bell tower flew off, and the roof collapsed. Two holes you could see the moon through appeared in the machine: one in the middle, one smashing through the dome atop it. Sheriff Lindley saw the lower cannonball come out and drop lazily toward the end of burning Main Street.

  All six of the tentacles of the machine shot straight up into the air, and it took off like a man running with his arms above his head. It staggered, as fast as a freight train could go, through one side of a house and out the other, and ran partway up Park Street. One of its three legs went higher than its top. It hopped around like a crazy man on crutches before its feet got tangled in a horse-pasture fence, and it went over backward with a shudder. A great cloud of steam came out of it and hung in the air. No one in the courthouse tower heard the sound of the steam. They were all deaf as posts from the explosion. The barrel of the cannon was burst all along the end. The men on the other roof were jumping up and down and clapping each other on the back. The COME AND TAKE IT sign on the courthouse had two holes in it, neater than you could have ma
de with a biscuit cutter. First a high whine, then a dull roar, then something like normal hearing came back to the sheriffs left ear. The right one still felt like a kid had his fist in there.

  "Dang it, Sweets!" he yelled. "How much powder did Luke use?"

  "Huh?" Luke was banging on his head with both his hands.

  "How much powder did he use?"

  "Two, two and a half cans," said Sweets.

  "It only takes half a can a ball!" yelled the sheriff. He reached for his hat to hit Luke with, touched his bare head. "I feel naked. Come on, we're not through yet. We got fires to put out and some hash to settle."

  Luke was still standing, shaking his head. The whole town was cheering.

  * * *

  It looked like a pot lid slowly boiling open, moving just a little. Every time the end unscrewed a little more, ashes and cinders fell off into the second pit. There was a piled ridge of them. The back turned again, moved a few inches, quit. Then it wobbled, there was a sound like a stove being jerked up a chimney, and the whole back end rolled open like a mad bank vault and fell off. There were one hundred eighty-four men and eleven women all standing behind the open end of the thing, their guns pointing toward the interior. At the exact center were Sweets and Luke with the other courthouse cannon. This time there was one can of powder, but the barrel was filled to the end with everything from the blacksmith-shop floor—busted window glass, nails, horseshoes, bolts, stirrup buckles, and broken files and saws.

  Eyes appeared in the dark interior.

  "Remember the Alamo," said the sheriff.

  Everybody, and the cannon, fired.

  * * *

  When the third meteor came in that evening, south of town at thirteen minutes past six, they knew something was wrong. It wobbled in flight, lost speed, and dropped like a long, heavy leaf.

  They didn't have to wait for this one to cool and open. When the posse arrived, the thing was split in two and torn. Heat and steam came up from the inside.

  One of the pale things was creeping forlornly across the ground with great difficulty. It looked like a thin gingerbread man made of glass with only a knob for a head.