by Keith Laumer
"I'll see to it. Are you going to the club now?"
"On my way in a few minutes. Good-bye, Willard."
"Don't say that, friend. It's not lucky! So long, be seeing you!"
David covered Gineas Rumbold's body with a rug, crossed to the radio console, checked carefully through its dials and circuits, then he phoned the club.
"Carmen? Let me speak to Liane. It's urgent."
"She here with me. David, the club is filling with you-know-who. The street is jammed with cars. Will you be long?"
"Not long." He waited. "Liane? Will you do something for me, please—it's a little game." He felt the perspiration start on his forehead. Tricky—very tricky this could be, but he had to know. She was the only one who could tell him.
"Of course I will, David. What is it?"
"Just a moment" He took the phone across the room, placed it on the radio, then pressed his free hand over a row of switches and dials before he said, "Liane, you and I are very good friends and our minds are so in tune I want you to help me choose a number. I have my hand over a row of numbers and I want you quickly to tell me any number that comes into your head. Will you do that—now?"
"Three-seven-four," she said promptly.
"Good girl!" he said. "Thanks."
"What a funny game!"
"I'm a funny man, darling. 'Bye now." He hung up quickly, removed his hand from the instrument. In the dial face above a red switch was the number 374. The switch was at "off." He clicked it on. Below the switch a rheostat knob, with the words "Feed-in" underneath it, was set to zero. He turned it fully clockwise until its pointer was at maximum. He checked the time before going to the end of the console, where he moved the main switch to "On." Colored lights flickered as he heard the elevator door open.
Two hefty cops came in.
"We have the meat basket," said one. "You got a customer?"
"Hold it," said his companion, looking hard at David. "What's the word, Mister?"
"Starspace," said David. "It's over there."
"Okay, let's go." They made quick work of the removal. David rode down with them.
"Cripes!" said his taxi driver. "You've got one helluva bill, Mac. I hope she was worth it. Where to now?"
"Back to the club—fast." David eased into the seat. "Worth it? Sometimes it is—sometimes it isn't. Tonight could pay for all."
"That good, huh?" said the taxi driver. "Some guys get all the breaks!"
"My God," David thought to himself as he rode along, "Carmen's shock was used, too, in a way. She never told me that Gineas Rumbold was in a multiple crash. She thought only of Gin's lack of loyalty to Chick. Were Rod and Ace already 'occupied' at the time of the accident? I might have seen some things sooner if I had only known the full story… but after tonight I hope it won't matter."
Chapter 13
THE FINAL FORCE
As the motorcade cleared the city limits, police blocks went up and the last road into and out of the town was sealed off. Auto City became isolated.
County police and sheriffs all the way to Serenda County had cleared the highways, closing all intersections to crossing traffic. By the time the motorcade had traveled fifty miles, the wires were humming.
Newspapermen, TV and radio reporters found their way barred. Programs were interrupted.
"News flash! Carasel Motors and their subsidiary Monarch Motors have just announced a complete freeze on distribution of all their new cars. No dealer may sell any model. Reports of suspected sabotage are denied. Stand by for further announcements."
The motorcade had gone only another forty miles when the second news flash came.
"We have just received a report that all roads into Auto City are blocked by police. No phone or radio contact can be made. The whole city is incommunicado. Stand by."
Considering that the motorcade was moving at over a hundred miles an hour, this stop-press news traveled fast. In seconds it was linked to a nationwide hookup.
In minutes the whole country was saying, "What the hell!"
David knew it would be this way. His companions knew it would be this way. They were men of speed, but even they couldn't move as fast as the lightning flash of rumor and counterrumor.
"It has to be this way," he'd warned them. "Your city," he'd said, "your way of life. Your skills, your talents have been infiltrated so that they can be turned against you. This will be the most desperate race of your lives for the biggest prize—your country."
Two hundred and forty miles of slashing speed as the racing cars pounded through the night. Helicopters and planes would have been quicker, but David had refused them. Not as a vainglorious gesture but because he considered them illogical weapons against an invader who was using the car in his transmutation into their world of cars. Not even David knew the power of the aliens in the air. But they obviously had progressed beyond the groping moonshots and mammoth rocket launchings by earth scientists. The aliens had conquered space, perhaps even conquered time.
"We call them UFOs," he'd said. "But the fact that they can reach earth is proof that they have surpassed us in the air. We dare not do battle with their own weapons. Out in that desert valley I believe there are numbers of aliens being taught to take over our roads by learning how the car works. When they are proficient, they will be sent to our highways to enter the bodies of victims in crashes caused by other aliens, who have been trained for that purpose. This is their first phase. The phase of infiltration into our world of wheels, and the site of the source of those wheels—Auto City.
"In a few weeks every new car in the country will crash and aliens will be waiting to occupy the bodies. Others will occupy the minds of those emotionally unhinged by the shock. We have witnessed the first phase. We cannot afford to let it be completed."
"How do you know?" they'd asked. "How do you know? How about the authorities?"
He'd laughed. "What do you expect them to do—prosecute every alien for driving with a false license? We are the authorities because we are the people. That's all the authorities are when it comes to the showdown—you and me."
The drivers hadn't really taken much persuading. They were natural intuitives, anyway. All top racing drivers are, because their reflexes have to be so fast that without realizing it they operate a telepathic sixth sense that warns them of danger outside the norm. When men like Thias Rumbold and Clive Shelden added their measure of belief to David's assessments, his plan was completely accepted.
He rode in the lead car with Ollie Temper. Wayne Draycott followed with Clem Makim. Then came the solo drivers, Mike Lasser, Ken Holt and Pietro Donelli. Sergeant Bert Dace, one of Thias's key men and an electronics expert, rode with Orvel Pitt, an amateur race driver and one of Rumbold's security intelligence squad, also a specialist in computer technology.
Halfway through Serenda County they turned off the highway onto a blacktop road, which fizzled out after passing a farm and became a track across scrubland. The moon rode high over their shoulders. They cut their lights, eased the speed to around sixty, keeping in top gear so the exhaust notes were muffled.
After some thirty miles the track was scarcely visible, but Ollie knew the route into the valley so there was no need to check. They drove between sandhills and rocky outcroppings until, after much twisting, the lead car halted under a rock face. The other cars pulled in behind it. The valley lay below them—silver and black in the moonlight. A tall mast, its upper section retractable, reared against the sky to their right. David beckoned to Sergeant Dace and Orvel Pitt.
"That's your target, men." He pointed to the mast. "As soon as you see the flaring glow starting—do your stuff. Watch out for burns as the mast heats up. The reading is 374 on the microwave band."
Sergeant Dace patted the small computer he carried.
"This baby will line up our sending signal."
Orvel Pitt said, "And mine will neutralize all other signals." He grinned. "I didn't really believe we'd find a mast here. But now that I can see it—well, I
guess everything else clicks for me."
"That goes for me, too," said Dace. "Directional telepathy isn't new, you know—the ancient Greeks knew a thing or two about it. You figure these invisible hombres are Greeks?"
"Who cares?" said Wayne Draycott. "Let's go get 'em!"
Sergeant Dace and Orvel Pitt moved off to their positions. David and the others circled the rim until they could see all of the valley floor. A weird sight it was. Row upon row of care—some very old, some shiny new—were speeding up and down the valley, spaced as if they were on clearly defined traffic lanes. Every few minutes one of the lanes of cars would stop dead, apparently without damage.
"Master control," said David. "The transmutes have fed back the physical pattern. The master control assimilates everything, then releases energy containing any particular pattern required at the time."
"A computer process?" asked Ken Holt. "Providing the aliens are fed the correct information they will perform the correct task?"
"Oversimplified," said David, "but it comes near."
Mike Lasser said, "I suppose the transmutes get the cars—or are they an optical illusion?"
"They're real enough, but I've an idea that the aliens' control has mastered the fuel problem. Those cars aren't making any engine noise. Listen!"
They could hear only a distant swishing of many tires over hard-packed earth.
Pietro Donelli shivered. "My friends, I am one scared bambino! Why did I ever leave Italy? Such things are not real, yes?"
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio," said Clem Makim.
"Horatio?" said Donelli. "He is one of us, no?"
"Skip it," said Clem. "Boy, I wish I could patent that alien power control of a car! I'd be a millionaire overnight!"
"If you were, you couldn't spend it," said Wayne Draycott, "because you'd have to join them, and they have no use for money."
"There ain't no justice," said Clem. "Why in hell's name do they want to take us over? They've no time for sex, and they don't use money. What do they aim to do here all day and night—especially night?"
"Think beautiful thoughts," said Mike Lasser.
"What! In our company?" said Clem. "You're joking, of course."
David said, "At the risk of sounding pompous, I must remind you gentlemen that there would be no company, nor life as we know it, if the invading aliens succeeded in obtaining control. They have come a long way since their first crude attempts. We must smash them. Annihilate them through their own power." He raised night glasses, stared through them for a long time, then passed them around.
"There are no drivers," he said. "And you can see the steering wheels turning. If we were closer, I expect we'd see the gearshifts moving." He pointed to a shaded patch in the valley. "Over there they have simulated a street with parked vehicles. Notice how they keep shunting the cars in and out. We're witnessing a most amazing feat. It's the next step after making transmutes do the physical work. Imagine a highway with driver-less cars threading in and out among the lanes, or halting suddenly in the fast lanes. They tested their plans out on your Halo Highway. Now they're preparing to control vehicles through their direct power. A much less cumbersome method. But they must acquire knowledge of the physical control. This valley is filled with power." He pointed to a spot immediately below them where the valley floor was etched by a great smooth ring. "Their power ship lands there. I've seen it come down."
Wayne Draycott said, "Then they must know we are here?"
David nodded. "They know." He pointed to the mast "And right now they're sending power calls to Auto City." He paused. "And receiving back the telepathic pictures of a confused scene. They don't yet know they've lost their transmitting control, and that the feed control and general diffuser is dead. Really dead. He was Gineas Rumbold."
"Then they must be in a panic," said Ollie.
"They don't panic," said David. "They just go on remorselessly regrouping their energy cells and learning all over again." He looked around at the men. "Relax," he said. "You're too tense. Have a smoke. The aliens don't understand humor or general conversation unless there's a transmute to send telepathic impulses. But they can use fear because it emanates as a power. So let yourselves go, relax and listen. Here's what we do…"
They squatted around him, smoking and listening. After a time each put questions until at last all understood their parts in the plan.
"That's clear to all of us," said Wayne Draycott. "But I don't care much for leaving you alone down there after we've done our stuff."
"You have to," said David. "And no arguments. The master control will come for me. It has to. I shall be the telepathic focal point drawing it to me. You can't help."
"My God, it's a gamble! Suppose you don't see this—this thing?"
"I'll see it," said David. "You're letting fear creep in again. Cut it out You do your stuff—I'll do mine."
Clem Makim rubbed his hands gleefully. "Y'know something? Those lines of cars down there remind me of our highways on a weekend. Full of Sunday drivers getting in every good driver's way and thinking they're goddam experts because they're behind a wheel! That's what those goddam spooks are to me, and I'm going to have myself a whale of a time!" He ran toward his car.
The others followed. In minutes the air was crashing with the full-blooded roar of exhausts as this handful of the world's finest drivers sent their cars hurtling down into the valley—lights blazing, horns blaring.
Driving according to the agreed-on plan, each took his own section. They spread out, small among the massed rows of moving cars that went up and down to a traffic circle at each end of the area.
The racing cars came among them, weaving in and out, sliding in controlled skids, bucketing alongside, cutting in, roaring ahead, then slamming on brakes. Every driving trick in the book, and a dozen more not in any book, until they had the orderly lines snarled up at all angles. They almost got caught themselves, but the aliens' control could not cope with something they hadn't yet received in their own power form, so their vehicles' formations disintegrated. The simulated street became chaos when Pietro Donelli went waltzing through it, causing car after car to crash.
The racing drivers all escaped safely and sped clear, horns tooting derisively, leaving behind them a swirling mass of crashing cars.
David had driven back and forth between the mast and the traffic circle while the drivers carved up the lanes of cars. He now pulled over into the shadow, climbed out and walked to where an oblong jutted out from the landing ring.
Had anyone asked him to explain his actions in these minutes, he would have replied:
"Hunches, that's all I can go on—just hunches." But he knew this wasn't so. At least, not in the accepted meaning of a hunch. Nor did he "hear voices" nor "see visions." Yet he moved and positioned himself with all the calm assurance of a man receiving clear and precise instructions.
Slowly he became aware of the presence. Felt it by the growing power of resistance in his own mind—an overpowering mental urge to defend himself, to resist with all his power, but without desire to express this in physical force. He had no fear. Merely a stony, unemotional calmness.
He saw it materializing. Felt it gathering power into itself. Not a shape. Not really a form. He knew he could endow it with any shape he wished from the creative power of his own physical mind. This was the zenith of telepathic transference. The force of the physically formless against a resistance power enclosed in a physical form.
No staring eyes, no screaming voice, no weapon-clutching hands, no intimidation by massive-muscled flesh. Yet its presence contained all of these, for this was a power that could be fed into all of them.
David fought silently, calmly. The power of his mind allied to human intelligence thrust out against this discarnate form, denying it entry into himself.
For one wavering second he felt its agonizing desire to belong, to be a part of his own life force. It reached him as the power of a thousand screaming pleas from a thousand l
onely women desiring not to love but to possess. Not to give but to take, yet layering the hysterical cries with sobbing protestations of undying love. This thing had no more valid cause than that, but, lacking physical form, could concentrate its whole possessive desires into the breaking of human resistance through creating a chaos of emotion within him—pity for its need, guilt at denying it, fear that it would destroy itself because of his resistance. In the final milliseconds of that wavering second, the light of sudden understanding blazed into David's mind. He knew now why this alien force did not attempt to kill women and occupy them, but only fill an emotional vacuum. Because this was a female force. This was the controlling power of the invaders.
He raised his gloved hands. One held three of the mercury and acid pellets. He crushed them between his fingers and flung them at the shape, then turned and raced back to his car.
The engine was running. David jumped in the car as he pulled down his dark-glass goggles. Then he fitted a green vizor above them before he looked toward the shape. He saw three small areas of bluish-white light spreading out to join with each other.
He put the car in gear and sent it roaring away. For a few moments he could scarcely see, his eye protection being so dark, then from behind him a great white light grew and grew in intensity. He glanced back, saw it seeping in thin tracks toward the mass of tangled cars, and knew this was the umbilical cord of the controlling power that carried the alien power to each segment contained in each vehicle.
He set his car at the steep-sloping road, hitting over a hundred as it began the climb, snaking and slithering under its power. Then it shot over the top edge, front wheels airborne, landed side-on, bucketed in a mild skid. He fought the wheel, brought the car around, straightened and slammed to a halt close to the other cars. He leapt out, joined the men grouped on a rock. Sergeant Dace and Orvel Pitt were running back to join them.
The valley floor was a maze of bluish-white light—a vast capillary-cell map, with veins of light Unking with bloblike cells of light. Each cell was growing larger in area until it joined the next, and the next and the next—until the whole area became incandescent. Real flames began to merge into and discolor the light as the massed vehicles melted into flame.
