The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF

by Martin Greenberg

  “Scared? Why should it be scared?”

  “Listen. Something went on in that thing when the arc hit it. What’s that I read in a magazine once about heat – something about molecules runnin’ around with their heads cut off when they got hot?”

  “Molecules do. They go into rapid motion when heat is applied. But—”

  “But nothin’. That machine was hot for four hours after that. But she was hot in a funny way. Not just around the place where the arc hit, like as if it was a welding arc. But hot all over – from the mouldboard to the fuel-tank cap. Hot everywhere. And just as hot behind the final drive housings as she was at the top of the blade where the poor guy put his hand.

  “And look at this.” Tom was getting excited, as his words crystallized his ideas. “She was scared – scared enough to back off from that welder, putting everything she could into it, to get back from that welding machine. And after that, she was sick. I say that because in the whole time she’s had that whatever-ya-call-it in her, she’s never been near men without trying to kill them, except for those two days after the arc hit her. She had juice enough to start herself when Dennis came around with the crank, but she still needed someone to run her till she got her strength back.”

  “But why didn’t she turn and smash up the welder when Dennis took her?”

  “One of two things. She didn’t have the strength, or she didn’t have the guts. She was scared, maybe, and wanted out of there, away from that thing.”

  “But she had all night to go back for it!”

  “Still scared. Or . . . oh, that’s it! She had other things to do first. Her main idea is to kill men – there’s no other way you can figure it. It’s what she was built to do. Not the tractor – they don’t build ’em sweeter’n that machine; but the thing that’s runnin’ it.”

  “What is that thing?” Kelly mused. “Coming out of that old building – temple – what have you – how old is it? How long was it there? What kept it in there?”

  “What kept it in there was some funny grey stuff that lined the inside of the buildin’,” said Tom. “It was like rock, an’ it was like smoke.

  “It was a colour that scared you to look at it, and it gave Rivera and me the creeps when we got near it. Don’t ask me what it was. I went up there to look at it, and it’s gone. Gone from the building, anyhow. There was a little lump of it on the ground. I don’t know whether that was a hunk of it, or all of it rolled up into a ball. I get the creeps again thinkin’ about it.”

  Kelly stood up. “Well, the heck with it. We been beatin’ our gums up here too long anyhow. There’s just enough sense in what you say to make me want to try something nonsensical, if you see what I mean. If that welder can sweat the Ol’ Nick out of that tractor, I’m on. Especially from fifty feet away. There should be a Dumptor around here somewhere; let’s move from here. Can you navigate now?”

  “Reckon so, a little.” Tom rose and together they followed the cut until they came on the Dumptor. They climbed on, cranked it up and headed towards camp.

  About halfway there Kelly looked back, gasped, and putting his mouth close to Tom’s ear, bellowed against the screan of the motor, “Tom! ’Member what you said about the rat in the trap biting off a leg? Well, Daisy did too! She’s left her blade an’ pushbeams an’ she’s followin’ us in!”

  They howled into the camp, gasping against the dust that followed when they pulled up by the welder.

  Kelly said, “You cast around and see if you can find a draw-pin to hook that rig up to the Dumptor with. I’m goin’ after some water an’ chow!”

  Tom grinned. Imagine old Kelly forgetting that a Dumptor had no drawbar! He groped around to a tool box, peering out of the narrow slit beneath swollen lids, felt behind it and located a shackle. He climbed up on the Dumptor, turned it around and backed up to the welding machine. He passed the shackle through the ring at the end of the steering tongue of the welder, screwed in the pin and dropped the shackle over the front towing hook of the Dumptor. A Dumptor being what it is, having no real front and no real rear, and direct reversing gears in all speeds, it was no trouble to drive it “backwards” for a change.

  Kelly came pounding back, out of breath. “Fix it? Good. Shackle? No drawbar! Daisy’s closin’ up fast; I say let’s take the beach. We’ll be concealed until we have a good lead out o’ this pocket, and the going’s pretty fair, long as we don’t bury this jalopy in the sand.”

  “Good,” said Tom as they climbed on and he accepted an open tin of K. “Only go easy; bump around too much and the welder’ll slip off the hook. An’ I somehow don’t want to lose it just now.”

  They took off, zooming up the beach. A quarter of a mile up, they sighted the Seven across the flat. It immediately turned and took a course that would intercept them.

  “Here she comes,” shouted Kelly, and stepped down hard on the accelerator. Tom leaned over the back of the seat, keeping his eye on their tow. “Hey! Take it easy! Watch it!”

  “Hey!”

  But it was too late. The tongue of the welding machine responded to that one bump too many. The shackle jumped up off the hook, the welder lurched wildly, slewed hard to the left. The tongue dropped to the sand and dug in; the machine rolled up on it and snapped it off, finally stopped, leaning crazily askew. By a miracle it did not quite turn over.

  Kelly tramped on the brakes and both their heads did their utmost to snap off their shoulders. They leaped off and ran back to the welder. It was intact, but towing it was now out of the question.

  “If there’s going to be a showdown, it’s gotta be here.”

  The beach here was about thirty yards wide, the sand almost level, and undercut banks of sawgrass forming the landward edge in a series of little hummocks and headlands. While Tom stayed with the machine, testing starter and generator contacts, Kelly walked up one of the little mounds, stood up on it and scanned the beach back the way he had come. Suddenly he began to shout and wave his arms.

  “What’s got into you?”

  “It’s Al!” Kelly called back. “With the pan tractor!”

  Tom dropped what he was doing, and came to stand beside Kelly. “Where’s the Seven? I can’t see.”

  “Turned on the beach and followin’ our track. Al! Al! You little skunk, c’mere!”

  Tom could now dimly make out the pan tractor cutting across directly towards them and the beach.

  “He don’t see Daisy Etta,” remarked Kelly disgustedly, “or he’d sure be headin’ the other way.”

  Fifty yards away Al pulled up and throttled down. Kelly shouted and waved to him. Al stood up on the machine, cupped his hands around his mouth, “Where’s the Seven?”

  “Never mind that! Come here with that tractor!”

  Al stayed where he was. Kelly cursed and started out after him.

  “You stay away from me,” he said, when Kelly was closer.

  “I ain’t got time for you now,” said Kelly. “Bring that tractor down to the beach.”

  “Where’s that Daisy Etta?” Al’s voice was oddly strained.

  “Right behind us.” Kelly tossed a thumb over his shoulder. “On the beach.”

  Al’s pop eyes clicked wide almost audibly. He turned on his heel and jumped off the machine and started to run. Kelly uttered a wordless syllable that was somehow more obscene than anything else he had ever uttered, and vaulted into the seat of the machine. “Hey!” he bellowed after Al’s rapidly diminishing figure. “You’re runnin’ right into her.” Al appeared not to hear, but went pelting down the beach.

  Kelly put her into fifth gear and poured on the throttle. As the tractor began to move he whacked out the master clutch, snatched the overdrive lever back to put her into sixth, rammed the clutch in again, all so fast that she did not have time to stop rolling. Bucking and jumping over the rough ground the fast machine whined for the beach.

  Tom was fumbling back to the welder, his ears telling him better than his eyes how close the Seven was – for she was certainl
y no nightingale, particularly without her exhaust stack. Kelly reached the machine as he did.

  “Get behind it,” snapped Tom. “I’ll jamb the tierod with the shackle, and you see if you can’t bunt her up into that pocket between those two hummocks. Only take it easy – you don’t want to tear up that generator. Where’s Al?”

  “Don’t ask me. He run down the beach to meet Daisy.”

  “He what?”

  The whine of the two-cycle drowned out Kelly’s answer, if any. He got behind the welder and set his blade against it. Then in a low gear, slipping his clutch in a little, he slowly nudged the machine towards the place Tom had indicated. It was a little hollow in between two projecting banks. The surf and the high-tide mark dipped inland here to match it; the water was only a few feet away.

  Tom raised his arm and Kelly stopped. From the other side of the projecting shelf, out of their sight now, came the flat roar of the Seven’s exhaust. Kelly sprang off the tractor and went to help Tom, who was furiously throwing out coils of cable from the rack back of the welder. “What’s the game?”

  “We got to ground that Seven some way,” panted Tom. He threw the last bit of cable out to clear it of kinks and turned to the panel. “How was it – about sixty volts and the amperage on ‘special appreciation’?” He spun the dials, pressed the starter button. The motor responded instantly. Kelly scooped up ground lamp and rod holder and tapped them together. The solenoid governor picked up the load and the motor hummed as a good live spark took the jump.

  “Good,” said Tom, switching off the generator. “Come on, Lieutenant General Electric, figure me out a way to ground that maverick.”

  Kelly tightened his lips, shook his head. “I dunno – unless somebody actually clamps this thing on her.”

  “No, boy, can’t do that. If one of us gets killed—”

  Kelly tossed the ground clamp idly, his lithe body taut. “Don’t give me that, Tom. You know I’m elected because you can’t see good enough to handle it. You know you’d do it if you could. You—”

  He stopped short, for the steadily increasing roar of the approaching Seven had stopped, was blatting away now in that extraordinary irregular throttling that Daisy Etta affected.

  “Now what’s got into her?”

  Kelly broke away and scrambled up the bank. “Tom!” he gasped. “Tom – come up here!”

  Tom followed, and they lay side by side, peering out over the top of the escarpment at the remarkable tableau.

  Daisy Etta was standing on the beach, near the water, not moving. Before her, twenty or thirty feet away, stood Al Knowles, his arms out in front of him, talking a blue streak. Daisy made far too much racket for them to hear what he was saying.

  “Do you reckon he’s got guts enough to stall her off for us?” said Tom.

  “If he has, it’s the queerest thing that’s happened yet on this old island,” Kelly breathed, “an’ that’s saying something.”

  The Seven revved up till she shook, and then throttled back. She ran down so low then that they thought she had shut herself down, but she caught on the last two revolutions and began to idle quietly. And then they could hear.

  Al’s voice was high, hysterical. “—I come t’ he’p you, I come t’ he’p you, don’ kill me, I’ll he’p you—” He took a step forward; the dozer snorted and he fell to his knees. “I’ll wash you an’ grease you and change yo’ ile,” he said in a high singsong.

  “The guy’s not human,” said Kelly wonderingly.

  “He ain’t housebroke either,” Tom chuckled.

  “—lemme he’p you. I’ll fix you when you break down. I’ll he’p you kill those other guys—”

  “She don’t need any help!” said Tom.

  “The louse,” growled Kelly. “The rotten little double-crossing polecat!” He stood up. “Hey, you Al! Come out o’ that. I mean now! If she don’t get you I will, if you don’t move.”

  Al was crying now. “Shut up!” he screamed. “I know who’s bawss hereabouts, an’ so do you!” He pointed at the tractor. “She’ll kill us all if’n we don’t do what she wants!” He turned back to the machine. “I’ll k-kill ’em fo’ you. I’ll wash you and shine you up and f-fix yo’ hood. I’ll put yo’ blade back on . . .”

  Tom reached out and caught Kelly’s leg as the tall man started out, blind mad. “Git back here,” he barked. “What you want to do – get killed for the privilege of pinnin’ his ears back?”

  Kelly subsided and came back, threw himself down beside Tom, put his face in his hands. He was quivering with rage.

  “Don’t take on so,” Tom said. “The man’s plumb loco. You can’t argue with him any more’n you can with Daisy, there. If he’s got to get his, Daisy’ll give it to him.”

  “Aw, Tom, it ain’t that. I know he ain’t worth it, but I can’t sit up here and watch him get himself killed. I can’t, Tom.”

  Tom thumped him on the shoulder, because there were simply no words to be said. Suddenly he stiffened, snapped his fingers.

  “There’s our ground,” he said urgently, pointing seaward. “The water – the wet beach where the surf runs. If we can get our ground clamp out there and her somewhere near it—”

  “Ground the pan tractor. Run it out into the water. It ought to reach – partway, anyhow.”

  “That’s it – c’mon.”

  They slid down the bank, snatched up the ground clamp, attached it to the frame of the pan tractor.

  “I’ll take it,” said Tom, and as Kelly opened his mouth, Tom shoved him back against the welding machine. “No time to argue,” he snapped, swung on to the machine, slapped her in gear and was off. Kelly took a step towards the tractor, and then his quick eyes saw a bight of the ground cable about to foul a wheel of the welder. He stooped and threw it off, spread out the rest of it so it would pay off clear. Tom, with the incredible single-mindedness of the trained operator, watched only the black line of the trailing cable on the sand behind him. When it straightened, he stopped. The front of the tracks were sloshing in the gentle surf. He climbed off the side away from the Seven and tried to see. There was movement, and the growl of her motor now running at a bit more than idle, but he could not distinguish much.

  Kelly picked up the rod-holder and went to peer around the head of the protruding bank. Al was on his feet, still crooning hysterically, sliding over towards Daisy Etta. Kelly ducked back, threw the switch on the arc generator, climbed the bank and crawled along through the sawgrass paralleling the beach until the holder in his hand tugged and he knew he had reached the end of the cable. He looked out at the beach, measured carefully with his eye the arc he would travel if he left his position and, keeping the cable taut, went out on the beach. At no point would he come within seventy feet of the possessed machine, let alone fifty. She had to be drawn in closer. And she had to be manoeuvred out to the wet sand, or in the water—

  Al Knowles, encouraged by the machine’s apparent decision not to move, approached, though warily, and still running off at the mouth. “—we’ll kill ’em off an’ then we’ll keep it a secret and th’ bahges’ll come an’ take us often th’ island and we’ll go to anothah job an’ kill us lots mo’. . . an’ when yo’ tracks git dry an’ squeak we’ll wet ’em with blood, and you’ll be rightly king o’ the hill. . . look yondah, look yondah, Daisy Etta, see them theah, by the otheh tractuh, theah they are, kill ’em, Daisy, kill ’em, Daisy, an’ lemme he’p . . . heah me. Daisy, heah me, say you heah me—” and the motor roared in response. Al laid a timid hand on the radiator guard, leaning far over to do it, and the tractor still stood there grumbling but not moving. Al stepped back, motioned with his arm, began to walk off slowly towards the pan tractor looking backwards as he did so like a man training a dog. “C’mon, c’mon, theah’s one theah, le’s kill’m, kill’m, kill’m ”

  And with a snort the tractor revved up and followed.

  Kelly licked his lips without effect because his tongue was dry, too. The madman passed him, walking straight u
p the centre of the beach, and the tractor, now no longer a bulldozer, followed him; and there the sand was bone dry, sun-dried, dried to powder. As the tractor passed him, Kelly got up on all fours, went over the edge of the bank on to the beach, crouched there.

  Al crooned, “I love ya, honey, I love ya, ’deed I do—”

  Kelly ran crouching, like a man under machine-gun fire, making himself as small as possible and feeling as big as a barn door. The torn-up sand where the tractor had passed was under his feet now; he stopped, afraid to get too much closer, afraid that a weakened, badly grounded arc might leap from the holder in his hand and serve only to alarm and infuriate the thing in the tractor. And just then Al saw him.

  “There!” he screamed; and the tractor pulled up short.

  “Behind you! Get’m Daisy! Kill’m, kill’m, kill’m.”

  Kelly stood up almost wearily, fury and frustration too much to be borne. “In the water,” he yelled, because it was what his whole being wanted, “Get ’er in the water! Wet her tracks, Al!”

  “Kill’m, kill’m—”

  As the tractor started to turn, there was a commotion over by the pan tractor. It was Tom, jumping, shouting, waving his arms, swearing. He ran out from behind his machine, straight at the Seven. Daisy Etta’s motor roared and she swung to meet him, Al barely dancing back out of the way. Tom cut sharply, sand spouting under his pumping feet, and ran straight into the water. He went out to about waist deep, suddenly disappeared. He surfaced, spluttering, still trying to shout. Kelly took a better grip on his rod holder and rushed.

  Daisy Etta, in following Tom’s crazy rush, had swung in beside the pan tractor, not fifteen feet away; and she, too, was now in the surf. Kelly closed up the distance as fast as his long legs would let him; and as he approached to within that crucial fifty feet, Al Knowles hit him.

  Al was frothing at the mouth, gibbering. The two men hit full tilt; Al’s head caught Kelly in the midriff as he missed a straight-arm, and the breath went out of him in one great whoosh! Kelly went down like all timber, the whole world turned to one swirling red-grey haze. Al flung himself on the bigger man, clawing, smacking, too berserk to ball his fists.