by Various
He clung there like a sloth to a branch. Fortunately the beams were recessed enough to prevent his being scraped off when he reached the opening into the hull. When the ramp finally ground to a halt he found himself in darkness beyond anything in his experience. There was cold metal under him now and he lowered himself gingerly onto it. When he tried to crawl into the open, he discovered that the edges of the ramp were now flush with the floor.
Suddenly a deep humming note tore at his ears, became a shrill whine, then passed into silence. The floor seemed to press harder and harder into his back, his lungs fought for air, a sharp burst of light seemed to explode soundlessly before his bulging eyes and consciousness left him....
The rasp of metal against metal aroused him. The ramp was moving again. Once more he attached himself to its girders and was slowly carried from the spaceship. Sunlight on the grass told him the night had passed, and the moment the ramp came to a halt, he dropped to the ground and squirmed into the open. He was close enough to the ship to keep from being seen by those aboard, and he slipped quickly around one side before making a break for the shelter of a clump of trees bordering the clearing.
* * * * *
"And that, Mr. Quinlan," Kramer said, "just about brings you up to date. At 4:07 this afternoon Mr. Wetzel was found by the crew of an Army tank twelve miles west of Burdette, Colorado. He told his story to the colonel in charge of that perimeter of operations, and was then flown directly to Washington." He paused and allowed himself a humorless smile. "I assume you have some questions?"
I said, "I'm not going to ask if you take this man's story seriously. Considering the positions of the men in this room you obviously do. What I'd like to know is why?"
Kramer hesitated. "Let me ask you this, Quinlan," he said, choosing his words carefully. "Based solely on this man's costume and speech, would you say he is an impostor?"
"No," I told him promptly. "Frontiersmen dressed exactly that way, the long gun is authentic and his pronunciation, phrases and idiom comes straight out of pre-Revolutionary times. But I still fail to see why you give a second thought to his story."
"You don't think it true?"
"My God, man, how can it be? Unless you're trying to tell me that this character was brought here by a time machine!"
"One moment, Mr. Quinlan." Secretary of War McClave was back in the picture. "Let me tell you why we do not regard Mr. Wetzel as a mental case. Shortly after one o'clock this afternoon, Rocky Mountain Time, a section of Washington County, Colorado, roughly thirty miles in circumference was suddenly cut off from the rest of the country--cut off as completely as though it never existed. Telephone lines ceased to function, a radio station in the same area went off the air in the middle of a soap commercial. All traffic, vehicular and foot, ceased to come out of it. The Governor of Colorado sent in a detachment of the National Guard; nothing has been heard from it since. Air observers report all cars and trains appear to have stalled. Two planes trying a bit of hedge-hopping apparently conked out and were forced to land. No radio contact with them."
I said, "I heard some of this on a news broadcast shortly before midnight tonight. According to the announcer the area involved was larger than thirty miles."
McClave nodded soberly. "The affected area is expanding steadily. It now reaches as far west as Strasburg, Colorado, and as far east as the Nebraska state line. The north and south limits seem to be somewhat narrower."
I looked at him and at the other men around the table. Their faces held a quiet tautness, and General Ohlmsted's hand, holding a cigar, was shaking a little. "And," I said, "you feel that this spaceship holds the answer. Is that it?"
"It's all we have to go on," the President said softly.
"One more question," I said. "Where do I fit into this?"
There was a moment's awkward silence, broken by the creak of the chair holding the man who had been introduced to me as a Mr. Proudfit. His round face smiled at me almost jovially.
"I expect I'm the one to explain that, Mr. Quinlan. Wetzel tells us the man in charge of the spaceship appeared to be an Indian. It seems our best move is to send an emissary into the blacked-out section to learn the reason for this--well--this attack. Such a representative should be qualified to deal intelligently with this--this Indian. Somebody able to understand the Indian temperament. In short, Mr. Quinlan, you!"
* * * * *
I rubbed a hand along the back of my neck and smiled. "You know, this whole thing is utterly mad! Indians, time machines, robots, spaceships! But then these days the most fertile imaginations can't seem to keep up with reality. If you gentlemen want me to try to get to this Indian and ask him what's the big idea, I'll do my best. Not because I want to, but because I wouldn't know how to go about refusing the President of my country."
Some of the tension seemed to go out of the room. The President said, "You won't find me or your country ungrateful, Mr. Quinlan," and the Secretary of War nodded approvingly, and General Ohlmsted's cigar stopped shaking. Proudfit took out a sheaf of papers from an inner pocket of his coat, leafed through them quickly and handed one to me. "This authorizes you as a representative of the United States Government, answerable only to the President, and with full authority to act accordingly."
"Fine," I said, putting it away. "Maybe I can use it on these robots Wetzel mentioned!"
Proudfit looked at his strap-watch. "An Army jet bomber will take you and Mr. Wetzel to a point as close to Burdette, Colorado, as can be managed. Wetzel tells us he can locate the spaceship from that point. We don't know, of course, how closely guarded the ship is--or even if it's guarded at all. But Wetzel is confident his training and background as a frontiersman and Indian fighter can get you there under cover of darkness. Once you reach the spaceship, the rest is up to you."
"And if I don't make it?"
Proudfit spread his hands. "Two companies of Army regulars entered that area at 6:30 tonight. They were fully armed, with orders to use those arms if necessary. Nothing has been heard from them since. We're sending you on the theory that where many can't get through perhaps one or two can. You have until noon--slightly more than eleven hours from now--to get word to us. If we don't hear from you by then or if the 'dead' area continues to expand after that time, then we throw our Sunday punch!"
Enoch Wetzel was still standing exactly as he had while telling his story. I walked over to him. "Let's get one thing straight, mister. If you and I are going to work together, we leave personal feelings out of it. A few minutes ago I passed a remark or two about one of your relatives and you tried to knock my head off. I'm willing to forget it if you are. But I don't want any more cracks out of you about my being a half-breed. Is that clear?"
He eyed me stonily, then without change of expression spat on the rug within a quarter-inch of my left shoe. I felt the muscles in my arms twang like plucked wires as I resisted the impulse to swing on him. "Is that your answer, Wetzel?"
"I'll git you thar," he said tonelessly. "I promised these yere gennelmen I'd do thet much. But it don't hold I gotta cotton to you."
We stood there staring into each other's eyes. There was a wall of hatred between us that could never be destroyed, a wall not fashioned by us but by our forefathers generations before. Yet a chain of incredible events had made us allies against an alien foe. In spite of our mutual dislike we must work together.
* * * * *
I turned back to Proudfit. "I'll need a pair of heavy black basketball shoes, dark coveralls, a good heavy sweater, a .38 Colt automatic with plenty of ammunition, and a compass."
* * * * *
The bomber pilot was a fresh-faced youngster who chewed gum and claimed to have been the second-ranking tennis player in Des Moines, Iowa. He shook hands gravely with me, eyed Wetzel and his strange garb and out-size rifle with blank-faced wonder, and mentioned that it was a nice night for flying.
The plane took off at 1:27. We were due over our target by 4:00 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, or 2:00 Mountain Time. T
he plans called for the bomber to fly at a high altitude, then come in on Burdette with jets off and drop us by 'chute. Wetzel had balked for a while at the idea of stepping off into space, but a brief but patient explanation of how a parachute worked finally brought him grudgingly around.
The trip seemed to take forever. I was torn by a thousand doubts, saddened by not being allowed to say goodbye to Lois, not a little afraid of what I would likely run into in Colorado. And all the while, my companion, out of his normal world and time, surrounded by wonders beyond his wildest nightmares, slept sound as an infant....
A hand shook me awake. In the faint glow of a flashlight I made out the face of the co-pilot. "Twenty minutes, Mr. Quinlan."
Wetzel was already on his feet. The co-pilot helped us don the 'chutes, and five minutes before arrival opened the heavy side door. A rush of wind tore in, but there was no other sound. The jets had already cut off and the plane was gradually losing altitude in a shallow dive. As this was not a plane used for parachute troops there was no wire to hook the 'chute cord to. It meant we would have to pull our own, but both of us had been thoroughly versed in what to do.
"Get ready," shouted the co-pilot.
I grasped the door frame and waited, my heart pounding in my ears. Wetzel stood directly behind me, the muzzle-loader in his hand, the tail of his coonskin cap bouncing in the wind, his eyes narrowed.
"Five," the co-pilot said suddenly. "And a four, and a three, and a two, and a one--target!"
I dived headfirst into blackness. I spun madly earthward, but in the back of my mind a calm voice counted off the seconds. Then I yanked at the ring-cord, black folds of nylon rustled above me, I heard a sharp report like the crack of a giant whip, the straps at my shoulders yanked painfully, and I was floating gently down toward the night-shrouded surface of Colorado.
I landed in a meadow, if that was what they called it this far west. I came down hard but in the way they had told me would prevent injury. There was no wind to yank me about before I could unship the parachute, and within seconds I was on my feet and searching for some sign of Enoch Wetzel.
* * * * *
Unexpectedly a hand struck me lightly on the back. I was jumping aside and reaching for my gun when the frontiersman's quiet voice reached me. "You scare mighty easy for an Injun."
I said, "We should be about a mile, two at the most, south of the road where that Army tank picked you up yesterday afternoon. Let's find it."
"Aye."
The land was by no means as flat as I had expected. Fortunately most of it was relatively open, with only scattered clumps of trees and bushes. There were too many small unexplained night sounds, but none of these appeared to alarm Wetzel in the slightest, so I managed to ignore them. Once we flushed a long-eared rabbit, and it was five minutes before I could get my heart out of my throat.
A barbed-wire fence, the first we had encountered, told me we had reached a road. It wasn't paved or even graveled--just a ribbon of dirt pointing east and west as straight as an Apache lance. Nothing moved along it in either direction as far as I could see. A line of telephone poles bordered one side.
"Recognize any landmarks?" I asked.
Wetzel shook his head.
"We're probably east of where you were found," I said. "We might as well start walking."
He grunted in agreement and we started out. It was a lovely starlit night, no moon at this hour, and a lot warmer than I had expected for October in Colorado. Now and then the road dipped and climbed, and as we reached the crest of the third hill, I saw a good-sized farmhouse set well back from the road among a group of out-buildings.
I pointed to the house. "Maybe they can tell us what's been happening around here."
Wetzel nodded and we turned in at a fieldstone path leading across the large yard to the front door. There were no lights visible from within, no dog barked, no rustle of livestock in the barns or pens.
I saw him just before I stepped on his head. He was lying across the path in the shadow cast by a gnarled tree, a stocky man in overalls and a blue work shirt. A double-barrelled twelve-gauge shotgun lay on the ground near his right hand. One side of his chest was black with a sticky substance that could have been only one thing, and the top of his head was black in the same way, except that no hair was there anymore....
"Scalped!" I whispered hoarsely.
Enoch Wetzel stooped suddenly and picked up the shotgun and wordlessly held it out to me. My jaw fell in astonishment. The twin barrels were bent into a rude V.
I licked my lips and backed away. "Let's get out of here, Wetzel."
He tossed the gun aside and we turned back to the road. Neither of us said anything for fully a mile. "No human hands could have done that to a gun," I said. "I'm beginning to believe what you said about robots. Robots that take scalps!"
* * * * *
Another hill, another valley ... and Wetzel caught hold of my arm. "I come across them sojers about here," he said.
"Okay. From now on you act as guide."
We went on. Several times Wetzel's long, swinging, tireless stride left me behind and he was forced to wait until I caught up with him again. I had the feeling that I was holding him back, and there was something faintly contemptuous in his obvious patience. But the life of a book-writing newspaper man hadn't prepared me for cross-country marathons, and there was nothing to be done about it now.
The fairly level, open ground was giving place to a heavily wooded countryside. After another mile of winding roadway, Wetzel suddenly turned aside and plunged into the forest. It was as dark as the inside of an undertaker's hat, and after I had banged into a few dozen trees and tripped over a few dead branches, making enough racket to alert half the state, Wetzel slowed his pace to a crawl.
Finally I grabbed one of the fringed sleeves of his buckskin shirt to stop him and sank down on a fallen log. "How much farther?"
He leaned his folded arms on the muzzle of his long gun and I could feel his deep-set eyes studying me without approval. "'Nother hour; p'rhaps more. Dependin' on you."
"Sure," I said with understandable bitterness. "I'm not the man my granddaddy was. Nobody is. When I take a walk it's down to the corner for a pack of cigarettes. Anything farther than that I use a horseless carriage. We don't need steel muscles and superior woodcraft these days, brother. Just enough eyesight to read the directions on the can, ears sharp enough to hear the boss bawling you out, enough nose to smell the whiskey on your neighboring straphanger's breath, reflexes quick enough to avoid being run down by some politician's Cadillac. If I'd have known I was going to be called on to go batting around a jungle, I'd have been down to the Y five days a we--"
He moved like a striking snake. A hand was clapped over my mouth and a knee forced me to the ground. Before I could make an effort to fight back, he placed his mouth close to my ear. "Danger! 'Tis death for so much as a broken twig!"
He removed his hand and I could breathe again. We lay there side by side close to a huge tree, deep in the shadows. And then faintly as from far off I heard the crackle of disturbed undergrowth and, slowly louder and louder, an evenly spaced thumping sound that seemed to shake the earth.
Through the trees it came, directly toward the spot where Wetzel and I hugged the ground. It loomed against the night, a tower of steel on jointed legs, a horrible travesty of the human figure, a head like King Arthur's helmet. Starlight picked out two round faceted eyes of glass.
* * * * *
My suddenly dry mouth puckered with the taste of terror. I did not breathe; even my heart seemed to beat no more. I wanted to close my eyes, but even the lids seemed paralyzed.
For almost a full minute the giant robot remained standing less than ten feet from where Wetzel and I were lying. It seemed to sense the presence of something of flesh and blood nearby. Its head turned slowly from side to side in little uneven jerks that put ice cubes in my veins. Finally the mammoth feet began their rhythmic thumping and a moment later it disappeared among the trees.<
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After what seemed a long time Wetzel rose to his feet. I got up slowly and leaned against the tree. "In a little while," I said softly, "I'll wake up. I'll be in bed with my wife, under the nice clean white sheets, and I'll know all this was a nightmare brought on by that canned salmon we had for dinner."
This, I told myself sharply, wasn't getting me anywhere except next door to hysteria. I ground my teeth together, shuddered uncontrollably for a second or two, then was all right again. Or nearly so.
"Let's go," I said.
An hour or so later, after taking a twisting route through what seemed to be the Belgian Congo, Wetzel halted under the spreading branches of a towering cottonwood. With his lips close to my ear, he whispered, "It's a-settin' out thar midst open ground." He gestured at the wall of blackness hemming us in--blackness you could have cut into hunks with an ax. "I'm thinkin' thar's plenty 'o them iron critters roamin' 'round twixt us an' it. You aimin' to await the dawn?"
"You," I said, "said it!"
* * * * *
The dawn came up nice and quiet. Blackness turned gray and then a pearl pink--and there she was: a hundred yards from us, of some gleaming metal resembling aluminum, twenty feet high and covering about as much ground as a caretaker's cottage. It resembled nothing more than a soup plate turned bottom up to dry.
A tall, semi-circular opening showed black in one side, with a sloping metallic ramp reaching from it to the ground. Two robots guarded the entrance, stiff and towering and without movement, the early light glistening along their jointed bodies.
In sharp contrast to this scene from the distant future was the anachronistic spectacle of six Indians, in war paint, fringed buckskin and stripped to the waist, squatting around a small cooking fire near the ship. Within easy reach of each was a long bow and a quiver of arrows.
Nothing about them gave me a certain clue as to which Indian family they belonged to. The single feather in each scalp lock was pure white with a vivid red tip. Two of them wore the black paint of untried warriors, and all were gnawing on strips of meat grilled over the fire.
