He repeated just what Vale had told him. Somehow, telling it to someone else, it seemed at once even less real but more horrifying as a possible danger to Jill. It didn’t strike him forcibly that other people were endangered, too.
When Sattell signed off to forward the report, Lockley found himself sweating a little. Something had come down out of space. The fact seemed to him dangerous and appalling. His mind revolted at the idea of non-human creatures who could build ships and travel through space, but radars had reported the arrival of a ship, and there were official inquiries that nearly matched Vale’s account, which was there fore not a mere crackpot claim to have seen the incredible. Something hadhappened and more was likely to, and Jill was in the middle of it.
He swung the instrument back to Vale’s position. His hands shook, though a part of his mind insisted obstinately that alarms were commonplace these days, and in common sense one had to treat them as false cries of “Wolf!” But one knew that some day the wolf might really come. Perhaps it had.…
Lockley found it difficult to align the carrier beam to Vale’s exact location. He assured himself that he was a fool to be afraid; that if disaster were to come it would be by the imbecilities of men rather than through creatures from beyond the stars. And therefore.…
But there were other men at other places who felt less skepticism. The report from Vale went to the Military Information Center and thence to the Pentagon. Meanwhile the Information Center ordered a photo-reconnaissance plane to photograph Boulder Lake from aloft. In the Pentagon, hastily alerted staff officers began to draft orders to be issued if the report of two radars and one eye-witness should be further substantiated. There were such-and-such trucks available here, and such-and-such troops available there. Complicated paper work was involved in the organization of any movement of troops, but especially to carry out a plan not at all usual in the United States.
Everything, though, depended on what the reconnaissance plane photographs might show.
Lockley did not see the plane nor consciously hear it. There was the faintest of murmuring noises in the sky. It moved swiftly toward the north, tending eastward. The plane that made the noise was invisible. It flew above the cloud cover which still blotted out nearly all the blue overhead. It went on and on and presently died out beyond the mountains toward Boulder Lake.
Lockley tried to get Vale back, to tell him that radars had verified his report and that it would be acted on by the military. But though he called and called, there was no answer.
An agonizingly long time later the faint and disregarded sound of the plane swept back across the heavens. Lockley still did not notice it. He was too busy with his attempts to reach Vale again, and with grisly imaginings of what might be done by aliens from another world when they found the workmen near the lake—and Jill among them. He pictured alien monsters committing atrocities in what they might consider scientific examination of terrestrial fauna. But somehow even that was less horrible than the images that followed an assumption that the occupants of the spaceship might be men.
“Calling Vale…Vale, come in!” He fiercely repeated the call into the instrument’s microphone. “Lockley calling Vale! Come in, man! Come in!”
He flipped the switch and listened. And Vale’s voice came.
“I’m here.” The voice shook. “I’ve been trying to find where that exploring party went.”
Lockley threw the speech switch and said sharply, “The Army asked Survey if any of us had seen anything come down from the sky. I gave Sattell your report to be forwarded. It’s gone to the Pentagon now. Two radars reported tracking the thing down to a landing near you. Now listen! You go to the construction camp. Most likely they’ll get orders to clear out, by short wave. But you go there! Make sure Jill’s all right. See her to safety.”
The switch once more. Vale’s voice was desperate.
“A…while ago a party of the creatures started away from the lake. An exploring party, I think. Once I saw a puff of steam as if they’d used a weapon. I’m afraid they may find the construction camp, and Jill.…”
Lockley ground his teeth. Vale said unsteadily, “I…can’t find where they went.… A little while ago their ship backed out into the lake and sank. Deliberately! I don’t know why. But there’s a party of those…creatures out exploring! I don’t know what they’ll do.…”
Lockley said savagely, “Get to the camp and look after Jill! The workmen may have panicked. The Army’ll know by this time what’s happened. They’ll send copters to get you out. They’ll send help of some sort, somehow. But you look after Jill!”
Vale’s voice changed.
“Wait. I heard something. Wait!”
Silence. Around Lockley there were the usual sounds of the wilderness. Insects made chirping noises. Birds called. There were those small whispering and rustling and high-pitched sounds which in the wild constitute stillness.
A scraping sound from the speaker. Vale’s voice, frantic.
“That…exploring party. It’s here! They must have picked up our beams. They’re looking for me. They’ve sighted me! They’re coming.…”
There was a crashing sound as if Vale had dropped the communicator. There were pantings, and the sound of blows, and gasped profanity—horror-filled profanity—in Vale’s voice. Then something roared.
Lockley listened, his hands clenched in fury at his own helplessness. He thought he heard movements. Once he was sure he heard a sound like the unshod hoof of an animal on bare stone. Then, quite distinctly, he heard squeakings. He knew that someone or something had picked up Vale’s communicator. More squeakings, somehow querulous. Then some thing pounded the communicator on the ground. There was a crash. Then silence.
Almost calmly Lockley swung his instrument around and lined it up for Sattell’s post. He called in a steady voice until Sattell answered. He reported with meticulous care just what Vale had said, and what he’d heard after Vale stopped speaking—the roaring, the sound of blows and gasps, then the squeakings and the destruction of the instrument intended for the measurement of base lines for an accurate map of the Park.
Sattell grew agitated. At Lockley’s insistence, he wrote down every word. Then he said nervously that orders had come from Survey. The Army wanted everybody out of the Boulder Lake area. Vale was to have been ordered out. The workmen were ordered out. Lockley was to get out of the area as soon as possible.
When Sattell signed off, Lockley switched off the communicator. He put it where it would be relatively safe from the weather. He abandoned his camping equipment. A mile downhill and four miles west there was a highway leading to Boulder Lake. When the Park was opened to the public it would be well used, but the last traffic he’d seen was the big trailer-truck of the Wild Life Control service. That huge vehicle had gone up to Boulder Lake the day before.
He made his way to the highway, following a footpath to the spot where he’d left his own car parked. He got into it and started the motor. He moved with a certain dogged deliberation. He knew, of course, that what he was going to do was useless. It was hopeless. It was possibly suicidal. But he went ahead.
He headed northward, pushing the little car to its top speed. This was not following his instructions. He wasn’t leaving the Park area. He was heading for Boulder Lake. Jill was there and he would feel ashamed for all time if he acted like a sensible man and got to safety as he was ordered.
Miles along the highway, something occurred to him. The base line instrument had to be aimed exactly right for Vale or Sattell to pick up his voice as carried by its beam. Vale’s or Sattell’s instruments had to be aimed as accurately to convey their voices to him. Yet after the struggle he’d overheard, and after Vale had been either subdued or killed, someone or something seemed to have picked up the communicator, and Lockley had heard squeakings, and then he had heard the instrument smashed.
It was not easy to understand how the beam had been kept perfectly aligned while it was picked up and squeaked at. Still less was i
t understandable that it remained aimed just right so he could hear when it was flung down and crushed.
But somehow this oddity did not change his feelings. Jill could be in danger from creatures Vale said were not human. Lockley didn’t wholly accept that non-human angle, but something was happening there and Jill was in the middle of it. So he went to see about it for the sake of his self-respect. And Jill. It was not reasonable behavior. It was emotional. He didn’t stop to question what was believable and what wasn’t. Lockley didn’t even give any attention to the problem of how a microwave beam could stay pointed exactly right while the instrument that sent it was picked up, and squeaked at, and smashed. He gave that particular matter no thought at all.
He jammed down the accelerator of the car and headed for Boulder Lake.
CHAPTER 2
The car was ordinary enough; it was one of those scaled-down vehicles which burn less fuel and offer less comfort than the so-called standard models. For fuel economy too, its speed had been lowered. But Lockley sent it up the brand-new highway as fast as it would go.
Now the highway followed a broad valley with a meadow-like floor. Now it seemed to pick its way between cliffs, and on occasion it ran over a concrete bridge spanning some swiftly flowing stream. At least once it went through a cut which might as well have been a tunnel, and the crackling noise of its motor echoed back from stony walls on either side.
He did not see another vehicle for a long way. Deer, he saw twice. Over and over again coveys of small birds rocketed up from beside the road and dived to cover after he had passed. Once he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and looked automatically to see what it was, but saw nothing. Which meant that it was probably a mountain lion, blending perfectly with its background as it watched the car. At the end of five miles he saw a motor truck, empty, trundling away from Boulder Lake and the construction camp toward the outer world.
The two vehicles passed, combining to make a momentary roaring noise at their nearest. The truck was not in a hurry. It simply lumbered along with loose objects in its cargo space rattling and bumping loudly. Its driver and his helper plainly knew nothing of untoward events behind them. They’d probably stopped somewhere to have a leisurely morning snack, with the truck waiting for them at the roadside.
Lockley went on ten miles more. He begrudged the distances added by curves in the road. He tended to fume when his underpowered car noticeably slowed up on grades, and especially the long ones. He saw a bear halfway up a hillside pause in its exploitation of a berry patch to watch the car go by below it. He saw more deer. Once a smaller animal, probably a coyote, dived into a patch of brushwood and stayed hidden as long as the car remained in sight.
More miles of empty highway. And then a long, straight stretch of road, and he suddenly saw vehicles coming around the curve at the end of it. They were not in line, singlelane, as traffic usually is on a curve. Both lanes were filled. The road was blocked by motor-driven traffic heading away from the lake, and not at a steady pace, but in headlong flight.
It roared on toward Lockley. Big trucks and little ones; passenger cars in between them; a few motorcyclists catching up from the rear by riding on the road’s shoulders. They were closely packed, as if by some freak the lead had been taken by great trucks incapable of the road speed of those behind them, yet with the frantic rearmost cars unable to pass. There was a humming and roaring of motors that filled the air. They plunged toward Lockley’s miniature roadster. Truck horns blared.
Lockley got off the highway and onto the right-hand shoulder. He stopped. The crowded mass of rushing vehicles roared up to him and went past. They were more remarkable than he’d believed. There were dirt mover trucks. There were truck-and-trailer combinations. There were sedans and dump trucks and even a convertible or two, and then more trucks—even tank trucks—and more sedans and half-tonners—a complete and motley collection of every kind of gasoline-driven vehicle that could be driven on a highway and used on a construction project.
And every one was crowded with men. Trailer-trucks had their body doors open, and they were packed with the workmen of the construction camp near Boulder Lake. The sedans were jammed with passengers. Dirt mover trucks had men holding fast to handholds, and there were men in the backs of the dump trucks. The racing traffic filled the highway from edge to edge. It rushed past, giving off a deafening roar and clouds of gasoline fumes.
They were gone, the solid mass of them at any rate. But now there came older cars, no less crowded, and then more spacious cars, not crowded so much and less frantically pushing at those ahead. But even these cars passed each other recklessly. There seemed to be an almost hysterical fear of being last.
One car swung off to its left. There were five men in it. It braked and stopped on the shoulder close to Lockley’s car. The driver shouted above the din of passing motors, “You don’t want to go up there. Everybody’s ordered out. Everybody get away from Boulder Lake! When you get the chance, turn around and get the hell away.”
He watched for a chance to get back on the road, having delivered his warning. Lockley got out of his car and went over, “You’re talking about the thing that came down from the sky,” he said grimly. “There was a girl up at the camp. Jill Holmes. Writing a piece about building a national park. Getting information about the job. Did anybody get her away?”
The man who’d warned him continued to watch for a reasonable gap in the flood of racing cars. They weren’t crowded now as they had been, but it was still impossible to start in low and get back in the stream of vehicles without an almost certain crash. Then he turned his head back, staring at Lockley.
“Hell! Somebody told me to check on her. I was routing men out and loading ’em on whatever came by. I forgot!”
A man in the back of the sedan said, “She hadn’t left when we did. I saw her. But I thought she had a ride all set.”
The man at the wheel said furiously, “She hasn’t passed us! Unless she’s in one of these.…”
Lockley set his teeth. He watched each oncoming car intently. A girl among these fugitives would have been put with the driver in the cab of a truck, and he’d have seen a woman in any of the private cars.
“If I don’t see her go by,” he said grimly, “I’ll go up to the camp and see if she’s still there.”
The man in the driver’s seat looked relieved.
“If she’s left behind, it’s her fault. If you hunt for her, make it fast and be plenty careful. Keep to the camp and stay away from the lake. There was a hell of an explosion over there this morning. Three men went to see what’d happened. They didn’t come back. Two more went after ’em, and something hit them on the way. They smelled something worse than skunk. Then they were paralyzed, like they had hold of a high-tension line. They saw crazy colors and heard crazy sounds and they couldn’t move a finger. Their car ditched. In a while they came out of it and they came back—fast! They’d just got back when we got short wave orders for everybody to get out. If you look for that girl, be careful. If she’s still there, you get her out quick!” Then he said sharply, “Here’s a chance for us to get going. Move out of the way!”
There was a gap in the now diminishing spate of cars. The driver of the stopped car drove furiously onto the highway. He shifted gears and accelerated at the top of his car’s power. Another car behind him braked and barely avoided a crash while blowing its horn furiously. Then the traffic went on. But it was lessening now. It was mostly private cars, owned by the workmen.
Suddenly there were no cars coming down the long straight stretch of road. Lockley got back on the highway and resumed his rush toward the spot the others fled from. He heard behind him the diminishing rumble and roar of the fugitive motors. He jammed his own accelerator down to the floor and plunged on.
There’d been an explosion by the lake, the man who’d warned him said. That checked. Three men went to see what had happened. That was reasonable. They didn’t come back. Considering what Vale had reported, it was a
lmost inevitable. Then two other men went to find out what happened to the first three and—that was news! A smell that was worse than skunk. Paralysis in a moving car, which ditched. Remaining paralyzed while seeing crazy colors and hearing crazy sounds.… Lockley could not even guess at an explanation. But the men had remained paralyzed for some time, and then the sensations lifted. They had fled back to the construction camp, evidently fearing that the paralysis might return. Their narrative must have been hair-raising, because when orders had come for the evacuation of the camp, they had been obeyed with a promptitude suggesting panic. But apparently nothing else had happened.
The first three men were still missing—or at least there’d been no mention of their return. They’d either been killed or taken captive, judging by Vale’s account and obvious experience. He was either killed or captured, too, but it still seemed strange that Lockley had heard so much of that struggle via a tight beam microwave transmitter that needed to be accurately aimed. Vale had been captured or killed. The three other men missing probably had undergone the same fate. The two others had been made helpless but not murdered or taken prisoner. They’d simply been held until when they were released they’d flee.
The car went over a bridge and rounded a curve. Here a deep cut had been made and the road ran through it. It came out upon undulating ground where many curves were necessary.
Another car came, plunging after the others. In the next ten miles there were, perhaps a dozen more. They’d been hard to start, perhaps, and so left later than the rest. Jill wasn’t in any of them. There was one car traveling slowly, making thumping noises. Its driver made the best time he could, following the others.
Sober common sense pointed out that Vale’s account was fully verified. There’d been a landing of non-human creatures in a ship from outer space. The killing or capture of the first three men to investigate a gigantic explosion was natural enough—the alien occupants of a space ship would want to study the inhabitants of the world they’d landed on. The mere paralysis and release of two others could be explained on the theory that the creatures who’d come to earth were satisfied with three specimens of the local intelligent race to study. They had Vale, too. They weren’t trying to conceal their arrival, though it would have been impossible anyhow. But it was plausible enough that they’d take measures to become informed about the world they’d landed on, and when they considered that they knew enough, they’d take the action they felt was desirable.
The Murray Leinster Megapack Page 199
