by Keith Laumer
“How? We don’t even know where they are, what they’re doing!”
“Remember the meteorite?” David said.
“You mean―you think there’s some connection . . . ?”
“Maybe.”
The man nodded slowly, his eyes on David’s. “So?”
“So I want to be there waiting when the big one hits. I’ve tried to interest people in it, Sergeant. I got nowhere. Now time’s running out. I’m afraid it’s up to you and me.”
“What have you got in mind? What can a couple of guys do . . . ?”
“You remember those armored vehicles parked at the base?”
“Sure. What about em?”
“You can help me steal one.”
“Steal a tank from the Army? Now I know you’re off your rocker!”
“Could it be done?”
The sergeant opened his mouth, closed it again. He nodded. “Maybe; yeah, it could be done. I know a couple angles. But―”
“Good,” David said, rising. “Let’s get started. We haven’t got much time.”
Chapter Four
Half an hour after sunset, Sergeant Joseph Anoti braked his battered station wagon to a halt at the side of the dirt road which ran beside the field of dry cornstalks bordering the Air Base on the north. A quarter of a mile distant, the lights of the flightline hangars glowed through the dusk.
“We could cut the fence anywhere along here to get in,” Anoti said. “But the trick is to get back out with the vehicle. That means we use Gate Six, over there to the right. It opens onto the Taxiway. We can make our touch on the north side of the lot―one of the half-tracks, I’d say―and instead of heading for the ramp, swing right, across the end of Runway 020! The gate hasn’t been used for maybe ten years; it’s pretty well grown up in weeds. But there’s the remains of an old blacktop road that cuts across the south end of the field there. If we do it nice, maybe they won’t spot us. It’s far enough off at the end of the base that―”
“We’ll have to take our chances,” David cut into the Sergeant’s rationalizations. “You take the jerricans; IH handle the batteries.” He stepped from the car, sweating in the Air Force blues lent him by Anoti―a crude disguise in case of emergency. Heavy laden with equipment the two men crossed the cornfield, concealed by the dry, unharvested stalks, victims of a year of less than normal rainfall. They crossed the abandoned blacktop road, scrambled through a weed-choked ditch, reached the fence. Anoti used a pair of heavy issue binoculars to scan the area for patrolling Air Police. “It’s clear,” he muttered. “Let’s go.” At the gate, a sturdy construction of galvanized pipe and wire mesh, still intact after years of neglect thanks to the dry climate, the sergeant tried keys in the heavy padlock. On the fifth attempt, it opened with a squeal of unoiled metal. He pulled the gate back a foot and they slipped through.
“OK, from here it’s gravy,” he said. “Until we start up, that is. And if my idea works right―”
“Let’s try it and see,” David suggested. He led the way in the shadows along the fence; in the shelter of the parked armor, they angled in, a minute later were among the mothballed behemoths, looming dark against the blue-black sky.
Anoti slapped the rust-streaked flank of a half-tracked ammunition carrier, mounting a 50 calibre machine gun atop the armored cab. “What about this baby?” he proposed. “I checked out in one like this, back before there was an Air Force.”
“Good enough,” David agreed. Working swiftly and silently, the two men hoisted the big twelve volt battery into place under the hood, used the tools they had brought to connect the corroded terminals.
“OK,” Anoti said. “She’s hot. Dump the gas in and I’ll check in back.” David poured five gallons in the tank and a cupful in the carburetor.
“OK back here,” Anoti called. “Two thousand rounds of armor-piercing, in belts, cases sealed. But don’t crank her yet.” He took a metal cannister from the tool kit, crawled under the ‘track, attached it to the end of the exhaust pipe.
“Home-made muffler,” he said. “Use it test-running my dragster so the neighbors don’t gripe too much. It ought to cut her down to a low purr.”
In the driver’s seat, David tried the starter; the big engine, still well-oiled, turned over with a groan, then more easily, it sputtered softly, barked a muffled backfire, caught and ran smoothly.
“She sounds like an old lady’s pet Caddie,” Anoti said as he swung up beside David. “OK, Vincent, let’s get out of here before some of these AP’s sneak over this way for a nap and stumble over us.”
Almost silently, without fights, the low-slung track moved out, concealed by the ranked vehicles, reached the gate, pulled out on the unused road. Anoti jumped down, closed the gate behind them. “OK,” he muttered as he clambered back into his seat. “All clear for points north―and don’t spare the horses.”
2
“Only two hours left,” Anoti said, glancing at the glowing dial of his wristwatch. “And we’ve still got sixty miles to cover.” In the dim dash lights, his heavy features were grim, determined―and at the same time, more relaxed than David had seen him before. “We’ll make the next forty easy on the Interstate, then Switch to State 101 for the last stretch.” He frowned. “We’ll have to leave the road here . . . “ he pointed to the folded map in his hand with a blunt forefinger. “I wish we had a better fix on that target area.”
“Plus or minus ten miles was the best figure I could get,” Davis said. “I had to twist a certain professor’s arm pretty hard to get that much. And he made it plain it was just an educated guess, at that. We might be off by fifty miles.”
“In that case, we’re sunk.” Anoti gnawed his hp. “Listen; I know a guy in meteorology, back at the base. Maybe if we stop up the line someplace, I give him a call . . . .”
“Good idea.”
An horn later, with new data confirming the original target area, David wheeled the ‘track off the expressway, bumped down a pot-holed approachway to a narrow state road. After half an hour, Anoti pointed ahead.
“Up there by the billboard, Vincent. That’ll be the county line where the road swings east I say we should peel off there.”
David steered the armored car down across a gravelled shoulder, up a steep bank to level ground. Ahead, a wasteland of rock-strewn desert stretched to a moonlit mountain range on the horizon.
“Hough looking country,” Anoti commented. “A good place to disappear in,” David said. “They’ll have missed the car by now―and we won’t be hard to trace.”
“Another half hour and it won’t matter,” Anoti said.
“Unless your meteor shower is late.”
“It won’t be. And we’d better not be either.” David put the heavy car in gear and headed out into the vast desolation.
3
“Look!” Anoti grabbed at David’s arm. A faint white arc streaked across the sky. “And there’s another one!”
“Those are just a few advance guards,” David said, steering on into the dusty lane of light cast by his headlamps. “We’re almost to ground zero now; another mile and we’ll start looking for a spot to hole up.”
More bright streaks appeared, radiating from a point high over the eastern horizon. The ground here was rolling, a series of shallow depressions angling across their path, separated by low ridges. David slowed as the headlight’s beam caught a hillock topped by a massive boulder, upraised by some long-past glacier.
“How about that?” he suggested.
“Looks OK to me,” Anoti said. “Let’s get set, so I can break out that ammo and get ready to say hello.”
David pulled the ‘track up the steep slant of rock, parked it in the lee of the multi-ton slab of limestone. Anoti used a bar to open cases, lay out the heavy links of finger-thick cartridges.
“A hundred rounds to a belt,” he said. “According to the alert plan, this is supposed to be all fresh stuff, less than a year old.” He undamped the barrel of the big water-cooled gun, traversed and
elevated it. It moved smoothly, silently.
“She looks good,” he said, after checking the receiver mechanism. He fed in the end of a belt, jacked the lever.
“Ready to go,” he said. Beside him, David was scanning the sky with the binoculars. The meteorites, like streaks of briefly luminous chalk on a vast blackboard, were flaring thick and fast now, scarcely a second apart. One, brighter than the others, burned its way down in a long curve almost to the horizon, then burst in a spray of silent fire.
“Wow!” Anoti breathed. “Some fireworks!”
“That was no pin-head,” David said. “It―
“Hey!” Anoti hissed. “‘Listen!”
David tinned his head slowly―and heard a soft, stealth scraping. It came from the shadowy jumble of rocks downslope.
“There’s somebody down there,” Anoti whispered through his bared teeth. He swung the gun silently around, aimed it downslope.
“Hold your fire,” David said softly. “But be ready.” He slipped over the side, moved away from the car, a dark shadow among shadows. He skirted the scatter of rock fragments, worked his way down almost to the level, then traversed the bottom of the slope. Now looking up, he could see the path clear to the high silhouette of the rock by which the car was hidden. And in that space, something moved: a hunched figure, scuttling awkwardly. David moved quickly up behind a screen of rocks, paralleling the other’s course. Emerging from between two slabs, he saw the furtive figure crouched twenty feet from him.
As the figure rose to move forward, David switched on the big ten cell flashlight he carried, directed the beam full in the man’s face.
“Hold it right there,” he snapped. “Joe!” he called. “If he moves, open up!”
The startled intruder half whirled as the light struck him; David caught only a glimpse of stark, age-ravaged features before the man whipped up the corner of his tattered sheepherder’s cloak to shield his eyes. Under his faded garments, his limbs were crooked, gnarly, his back twisted. He stood unmoving as David came up, stopped ten feet from him.
“Who are you?” David demanded, hearing the harshness in his own tone. “What are you doing out here?” Pale light flashed on the old man’s seamed forehead, his colorless garments, flashed again as meteorites burned their way across the sky.
“Hey―what’s an old geezer like that doing out here in the middle of noplace?” Anoti called. “Brother, he gave me a scare for a second―”
“Hold that gun on him,” David snapped. Again he spoke to the old man. The latter stood in a half-crouch, as though paralyzed with fear. He made no reply.
“Probably a Mexican,” Anoti called. “At, babo, che vuoi? . . . Perche non parlano . . . ?
The old man tinned slowly toward the voice from the darkness. Still he made no sound.
Probably he can’t talk,” Anoti said. “You know, deaf and dumb. But listen, Vincent, never mind this guy! We’ve got other things to do right now!” Upslope, his bulky shape atop the half-track was visible now in the flickering light as meteors fell by the half dozen, illuminating the landscape like summer lightning. “The poor old bum is probably scared to death,” Anoti said. “Superstitious, you know. Leave him be―” He broke off as a vivid light flared above, burning its way across the sky.
“My God, Vincent! Look!”
David stared upward at the swelling brilliance. “That’s our baby,” he called. “And it looks like we’re in the right spot to welcome it!”
Chapter Five
As david raced up the slope, the line of fire lengthened, arcing over, down, down. Now a rumble like a distant freight train was audible, increasing steadily in intensity. 的t痴 going to land right on top of us! Anoti yelled. 鏑et痴 get out of here!”
“Hold it!” David barked, grabbing the other’s arm. “It just looks like it’s headed straight for us! The odds are it won’t hit within a couple of miles at the closest! This is what we came for, remember?”
“Yeah-but . . . “
“From two hundred miles up, it will take it about a minute to reach the ground,” David called over the rising thunder. Now the meteor was a blazing fireball, rushing swiftly closer, dropping, dropping.
“My God, look at it!” Anoti shouted. “You can feel the heat from here―!”
“That’s your imagination,” David shouted in his ear. The light was blindingly bright now, like a new-risen sun. The fireball’s shape changed, elongated. Suddenly it separated into two parts. The smaller portion moved away from the parent object, which plummeted on, plunging straight down―
The blast lit the sky from horizon to horizon. From the point of impact―perhaps five miles distant―a graceful fountain of crimson jetted slowly up, glaring a fiery red as the glow died across the sky, falling back to a pit of white-hot incandescence.
“My God!” Anoti started―and at that moment the noise struck: wave after wave of deafening sound, like the crashing of a titanic surf. David clapped his hands over his ears, almost fell as the shock wave rocked the car, started small stones bounding down the slope.
“What . . . what . . . ?” Anoti croaked. He had fallen, and blood trickled from a cut on his cheekbone.
“That was it!” David yelled. In his ears, his own voice sounded remote, far away. “That was the ship separating! It had to be! The thing was below the radar horizon for the nearest installation! All the instruments will read is a massive body dropping in, followed by the impact!”
“Yeah―but where did it go?” Anoti was on his feet, staring wildly into the darkness. “Vincent, we’re out of our class! That thing was the size of a battleship! And us with a popgun―!”
“Look!” David pointed. Low above the horizon, lights moved, travelling on a course that angled toward their position.
“That’s it!” Anoti jumped down, grabbed for the cab door. “Vincent, we’ve got to get help!”―
‘Too late,” David snapped. “By the time we got back, it would be all over! We’ve got to handle it the best we can!”
“It’s coming this way!”
“We’ll wait until it stops, then make our play.”
In silence, the two men watched as the lights moved steadily nearer. Now they could make out the dull gleam of reflected light on a surface that flared out below the horizontal light slits. Half a mile distant, the vessel halted, hung in the air, perhaps twenty feet above the rocky ground, a cold blue glare shining from its underside. Slowly, panels unfolded, reaching downward, settling against the ground.
“Hail Mary, full of grace . . . .” Anoti muttered half aloud.
“All right, let’s go!” As David put his hand on the side of the car to jump down, there was a flicker of motion off to the left. Anoti whirled as the old man sprang toward the car.
“Hey!” he yelled. “What the―” He jumped forward, caught at the old man’s arm-
There was a blur of motion, and Anoti whirled up, over, to slam stunningly against a boulder. He sprawled, moving feebly.
“Vincent,” he croaked as the old man crouched, as if ready to spring. ‘The way he moved―like lightning! And he’s strong! Watch out, Vincent..
David had already reached for the grips of the machine gun, swung it to cover the old man, who turned slowly, staring up at him with strange, pale eyes-
Eyes that he had seen before. Ochre eyes, blazing with yellow fire . . . .
The old man straightened, dropped the arm with which he had covered his face, exposing features twisted and knotted with scars, drawn into a grimace of pain and hate. David felt icy cold strike through him as he looked into the ruined face of the unkillable alien, Dorn.
2
“Yes, David Vincent,” Dorn’s voice was a thin rasp, a shadow of its former vibrant strength. “I still five! Does it shock you to look at what you’ve done to me?” With a savage gesture, the alien threw back the ragged cloak, tore open the faded shirt beneath it. Sick with horror, David stared at the gnarled, knotted mass of scar tissue that covered the creature from chin to
navel.
“You burned my body, broke my bones,” Dorn keened. “And now, again, you aim a weapon at me! But I ask you―as one living being to another―hold your fire!”
“Don’t move,” David said between gritted teeth.
“Vincent. . .” Anoti croaked. “Shoot him―he’s not human―can’t you see―”
“That’s right,” Dorn cut in. “Shoot the alien, kill the stranger! That’s the way of your tribe, is it not, Vincent? You boast of your civilization, your enlightenment, your mercy! And yet you’ve hunted me and my kind like vermin! Dorn’s eyes seemed to gleam in the fitful glow of the silent, flaring meteorites. “Does not the sight of your handiwork sicken you, David Vincent?”
“I took my cue from you, Dorn!” David’s voice was ragged. “You killed four men in my sight; you killed a factory manager named Winthrop, and unless I’m mistaken, you killed General Moore―and God knows how many others. You dumped my friend, Al Lieberman out of your copter to die―”
“Listen to me, Vincent!” Dorn hissed, urgency in his voice. “Consider our plight―and be merciful! We are few―strangers, and afraid, outnumbered a million―ten million to one! Yes, we killed―but out of fear, caution―out of our desperate need to keep our presence secret! It was an error, I see that now! But how could we know? We searched for so long, Vincent, to find a world where we could survive! A million years have passed since our world died―burned to vapor in the explosion of our sun! Only we escaped―one shipload, out of all the billions of the Great Race! For a thousand millennia we’ve cruised across the void, searching, searching! A thousand of us have lived and died, serving out our lonely hundred years tours of duty, scanning each sun, studying each planet, tending the brood racks where the larva wait for the day when once again we can give them life! And at last―we found this world, Vincent! Almost too late, we found it! We find it cold its sun dim―but still―we can survive here! And survive here we must, or die for all eternity! Our fuel, our supplies are exhausted! We managed to bring our vessel to orbit, far beyond your moon. A few of us―volunteers―have descended to scout out the terrain, find nesting sites. Would you deny us that? Would you be guilty of genocide, the most heinous of all crimes?”
