by Various
The War of the Giants
AS they made the turn, their missiles sought the tanks through the murkfish-shaped torpedoes with long wings at their heads, carrying sound devices like those controlling the robot guns, and trailing behind them the pennons of smoke that indicated rocket propulsion. Nearly all fell fallow, blowing great pits in the ground, their sound control failing in the multiple uproar of the battle. But one struck a whippet and disorganized it into tattered ribbons of metal and another, its mechanical ears caught by the sound of a badly working motor on a cruiser tank, struck the landship squarely at the base of the turret. In a burst of intense flame the running fort of steel folded together as though it had been cardboard, the turret pitching in on the ruins of the rest. When the fleet had passed only the forefront of the tank remained, leaning at an odd angle above the shattered remains from which bright flames still burned.
Right on the heels of the aerial attack a pillar of smoke between two hills announced the approach of an enemy tank fleet, rushing up to support the now close-pressed robot guns, and at almost the same time, a titanic discordant buzzing beat down all the other sounds of battle. Another, or perhaps two more, of the queer porcupine-tanks had followed the attackers in the rear and were adding their sound camouflage to the din. The robot guns swung to and fro, helpless in this torrent of sound, till the operators were fain to come out of their pits, cut loose the automatic controls and fire them by the old hand method.
Of all this the small man above his motor knew nothing. Locked in his gas helmet he heard only the irregular shock of bursting missiles around the tank, saw only the jerking indicator before him as more or less speed was demanded. To the gunner with the scarred chin the battle was hardly more intelligible. The only thing his eyes could catch through the malleable glass that formed his window was the billowy smoke, shot with color here and there as a shell exploded. The odor of the helmet was fetid, the strain of merely waiting intense; again and again the turret gun above went off, firing at its far-away targets, but there came no call for the broadside artillery.
Then without warning, the smoke thinned and altogether ceased. He perceived they were just mounting a ridge; two or three whippets dashed past for the head of the line, and he noted that one of them had her wide torpedo-port open and that an aerial torpedo was pointing outward, ready for release. The bell for loading rang sharply, the Thunderbolt pivoted round like a ballet dancer, and through his peep-hole the gunner caught a glimpse of dim figures emerging from a low-hung cloud of smoke that moved toward them down a gentle slope a Mile and a half away.
The turret gun fired again, with a violence audible even in that torrent of sound, and the gunner just caught a glimpse of the trail of smoke that marked the passage of an aerial torpedo bound toward the enemy fleet. The Thunderbolt changed direction again. A shell pitched a column of dirt across his vision and a small voice cried—"Fire at will, concentrate on third tank," and to his astonishment he was looking down the sights at a line of enemy cruisers. He went into a fury of action.
Smoke, dirt, flame—the sound of a million anvils as the fleets, firing together, swept round each other in a great circle. Perhaps five minutes that were an eternity; then from the opposing fleet billowed clouds of smoke as, too late, they made the fatal discovery that they were opposing a battleship attack with mere cruisers. Too late—a mushroom growth of smoke and flame marked where one had been blown up; another was stopped where her fleet left her, with flames of a peculiar orange hue pouring out of her turret. A third staggered out of line like an injured animal and moved oddly across the space between the two fleets, still firing steadily, but losing motion and life as it became the target of the concentrated fires.
But at that moment there came a huge uprush of dirt right ahead of the Thunderbolt. Hammers pounded on her carapace; she lurched violently through a snowstorm of dirt and rocks, across the crater the shell had made. The gunner caught a glimpse of whippets emitting smoke again; of the enemy fleet, which should have been retreating, closing in instead. The robot guns, hand-trained now, were in action again, and at point-blank range.
NOTHING visible but smoke; a loud-speaker voice began suddenly to call off range and deflections, and the gunner with the scarred chin worked like a fiend, perspiring violently inside his coat of mail, setting his sights on the indicator that ran round the gun mouth according to the data shouted through the loud-speaker. A thinner streak of smoke; through it a cruiser visible, canted over on her side and burning vigorously. "230, deflection fifteen right—fire!" They bumped violently over, something, whether tree, house, ruins of a tank or merely a lump in the ground the gunner could not tell. Then a stunning explosion which drowned the insistent voice for a moment; the Thunderbolt changed direction with such speed as to almost throw him from his seat, and through his window he saw the torn remains of a big tank, her forepart shot with flames, one of her side guns drooping like a melted candle, while two or three of her crew ran a step or two from the wreck and fell writhing to the ground. On a still-intact stern-plate a painted halo still showed.
"My God," thought the gunner. "The Glory's gone." What did it mean? Defeat? and he wondered would it would be like to be a prisoner, carried off to work on the farms for the enemy, or to dig in their mines. Not so very different from—
The smoke rolled clear again, and he looked out on a different section of landscape. Right against them stood the slope of a hill; out of the tail of his eye he could see the wreckage of a big robot gun, and as the tank swung along, caught sight of another, pointed right at them, but riven by a direct hit in the fraction of a second before it could fire. The enemy's fleet must be done for! They were cleaning out the guns.
A jet of steam ran round the inside of the casemate, clearing the gas. All over? Not quite, for the frightful uproar without did not seem to have decreased in the least, though there appeared to be no shells falling near the Thunderbolt. The gunner swung his window in its pivots, noted that the Thunderbolt was leading the line of tanks along the reverse slope of a hill, with the turret gun firing occasionally as the observers reported some new gun position visible. The battle was over for him, however. The turret gun would take care of the rest of that robot artillery before his gun ever got within range.
See there was one, now, tipped over on its side, the delicate mechanism smashed by a direct hit, the corpses of two or three gunners lying about. He could have laughed—
And then, out of the shadow of the ruined gun, came one little whippet tank, with it: torpedo port wide open. The gunner will the scarred chin saw with perfect clarity that the torpedo was about to be launched directly at him, from a distance of not over three hundred yards—realized in a flash that it would blow the Thunderbolt into a thousand fragments, and ducked. He heard no more. . . .
. . . In the rear, the track-laying machines were already preceding the railroad artillery to positions along the river, now cleared by the victory.
* * *
"I congratulate you," said the brown-faced general. "It was a much better result than I had hoped for. Of course, they were foolish in trying to stand off the attack with their position artillery and in supporting with nothing but a squadron of cruisers; but I think you were lucky, all the same."
The fussy little man could not forebear a smile of triumph. "Yes," he said, "on the whole I am satisfied with the result. The positions along the river will certainly force these people to try an attack sooner or later, and then we know what we can do. . . . And our losses were not so extraordinary, either. Two battleships and three cruisers."
"Yes, yes," said the brown-faced general. "I'm a little sorry about the old Thunderbolt though. Knew some of the men in her. Did I ever tell you I commanded her once?"
* * *
Contents
THE HOHOKAM DIG
By Theodore Pratt
At first they thought the attack was a joke. And then they realized the truth!
At first the two scientists thought the Indian a
ttack on them was a joke perpetrated by some of their friends. After all, modern Indians did not attack white men any more.
Except that these did.
George Arthbut and Sidney Hunt were both out of New York, on the staff of the Natural History Museum. George was an ethnologist who specialized in what could be reconstructed about the prehistoric Indians of North America, with emphasis on those of the Southwest. He was a tall, lean, gracious bald man in his early sixties.
Sidney was an archeologist who was fascinated by the ruins of the same kind of ancient Indians. Medium-sized, with black hair that belied his sixty-five years, he and George made an excellent team, being the leaders in their field.
They had come west on a particular bit of business this spring, trying to solve the largest question that remained about the old cliff dwellers and the prehistoric desert Indians, both of whom had deserted their villages and gone elsewhere for reasons that remained a mystery.
One theory was that drought had driven them both away. Another theory ran to the effect that enemies wiped them out or made off with them as captives. Still another supposition, at least for the Hohokam desert people, the builders of Casa Grande whose impressive ruins still stood near Coolidge, had to do with their land giving out so they could no longer grow crops, forcing them to go elsewhere to find better soil.
No one really knew. It was all pure guesswork.
* * * * *
The two scientists meant to spend the entire summer trying to solve this riddle for all time, concentrating on it to the exclusion of everything else. They drove west in a station wagon stuffed with equipment and tracking a U-Haul-It packed with more.
George drove, on a road that was only two sand tracks across the wild empty desert between Casa Grande Monument and Tonto National Monument where cliff dwellers had lived. It was here, not far ahead, in new ruins that were being excavated, that they hoped to solve the secret of the exodus of the prehistoric Indians. The place was known as the Hohokam Dig.
They topped a rise of ground and came to the site of the dig. Here the sand tracks ended right in the middle of long trenches dug out to reveal thick adobe walls. In the partially bared ruins the outline of a small village could be seen; the detailed excavation would be done this summer by workmen who would arrive from Phoenix and Tucson.
George stopped their caravan and the two men got out, stretching their legs. They looked about, both more interested in the dig, now they were back at it, than setting up camp. They walked around, examining various parts of it, and the excitement of the promise of things to be discovered in the earth came to them. "This summer we'll learn the answer," Sidney predicted.
With skeptical hope George replied, "Maybe."
It was early afternoon when they set up camp, getting out their tent from the U-Haul-It. They took out most of their gear, even setting up a portable TV set run on batteries brought along. They worked efficiently and rapidly, having done this many times before and having their equipment well organized from long experience. By the middle of the afternoon all was ready and they rested, sitting on folding chairs at a small table just outside the opening of their tent.
Looking around at the dig Sidney remarked, "Wouldn't it be easy if we could talk to some of the people who once lived here?"
"There's a few questions I'd like to ask them," said George. "I certainly wish we had some to talk with."
He had no more than uttered this casual wish than there sounded, from all sides of where they sat, screeching whoops. The naked brown men who suddenly appeared seemed to materialize from right out of the excavations. As they yelled they raised their weapons. The air was filled, for an instant, with what looked like long arrows. Most of them whistled harmlessly past the two scientists, but one hit the side of the station wagon, making a resounding thump and leaving a deep dent, while two buried themselves in the wood of the U-Haul-It and remained there, quivering.
George and Sidney, after the shock of their first surprise at this attack, leaped to their feet.
"The car!" cried Sidney. "Let's get out of here!"
They both started to move. Then George stopped and grabbed Sidney's arm. "Wait!"
"Wait?" Sidney demanded. "They'll kill us!"
"Look," advised George, indicating the red men who surrounded them; they now made no further move of attack.
George gazed about. "Oh," he said, "you think somebody's playing a joke on us?"
"Could be," said George. He ran one hand over his bald head.
"Some dear friends," Sidney went on, resenting the scare that had been thrown into them, "hired some Indians to pretend to attack us?"
"Maybe Pimas," said George. He peered at the Indians, who now were jabbering among themselves and making lamenting sounds as they glanced about at the ruins of the ancient village. There were eighteen of them. They were clad in nothing more than a curious cloth of some kind run between their legs and up and over a cord about their waists, to form a short apron, front and back.
"Or Zunis," said Sidney.
"Maybe Maricopas," said George.
"Except," Sidney observed, "none of them look like those kind of Indians. And those arrows they shot." He stared at the two sticking in the U-Haul-It. "Those aren't arrows, George--they're atlatl lances!"
"Yes," said George.
Sidney breathed, "They aren't holding bows--they've got atlatls!"
"No modern Indian of any kind," said George, "uses an atlatl."
"Most of them wouldn't even know what it was," Sidney agreed. "They haven't been used for hundreds of years; the only place you see them is in museums."
An atlatl was the weapon which had replaced the stone axe in the stone age. It was a throwing stick consisting of two parts. One was the lance, a feathered shaft up to four feet long, tipped with a stone point. The two-foot flat stick that went with this had a slot in one end and two rawhide finger loops. The lance end was fitted in the slot to be thrown. The stick was an extension of the human arm to give the lance greater force. Some atlatls had small charm stones attached to them to give them extra weight and magic.
Charm stones could be seen fastened to a few of the atlatls being held by the Indians now standing like bronze statues regarding them.
George whispered, "What do you make of it?"
"It isn't any joke," replied Sidney. He gazed tensely at the Indians. "That's all I'm sure of."
"Have you noticed their breechclouts?"
Sidney stared again. "They aren't modern clouts. George, they're right out of Hohokam culture!"
"They aren't made of cloth, either. That's plaited yucca fibre."
"Just like we've dug up many times. Only here ..." George faltered. "It's being worn by--by I don't know what."
"Look at their ornaments."
Necklaces, made of pierced colored stones, hung about many of the brown necks. Shell bracelets were to be seen, and here and there a carved piece of turquoise appeared.
"Look at the Indian over there," George urged.
Sidney looked to the side where George indicated, and croaked, "It's a girl!"
It was a girl indeed. She stood straight and magnificent in body completely bare except for the brief apron at her loins. Between her beautiful full copper breasts there hung a gleaming piece of turquoise carved in the shape of a coyote.
At her side stood a tall young Indian with a handsome face set with great pride. On her other side was a wizened little old fellow with a wrinkled face and ribs corrugated like a saguaro.
Sidney turned back and demanded, "What do you make of this? Are we seeing things?" Hopefully, he suggested, "A mirage or sort of a mutual hallucination?"
In a considered, gauging tone George replied, "They're real."
"Real?" cried Sidney. "What do you mean, real?"
"Real in a way. I mean, Sidney, these--I sound crazy to myself saying it--but I think these are--well, Sid, maybe they're actual prehistoric Indians."
"Huh?"
"Well, let's put it this way: We a
sked for them and we got them."
Sidney stared, shocked at George's statement. "You're crazy, all right," he said. "Hohokams in the middle of the Twentieth Century?"
"I didn't say they're Hohokams, though they probably are, of the village here."
"You said they're prehistoric," Sidney accused. He quavered, "Just how could they be?"
"Sid, you remember in our Indian studies, again and again, we meet the medicine man who has visions. Even modern ones have done things that are pretty impossible to explain. I believe they have spiritual powers beyond the capability of the white man. The prehistoric medicine men may have developed this power even more. I think the old man there is their medicine man."
"So?" Sidney invited.
"I'm just supposing now, mind you," George went on. He rubbed his bald pate again as though afraid of what thoughts were taking place under it. "Maybe way back--a good many hundreds of years ago--this medicine man decided to have a vision of the future. And it worked. And here he is now with some of his people."
"Wait a minute," Sidney objected. "So he had this vision and transported these people to this moment in time. But if it was hundreds of years ago they're already dead, been dead for a long time, so how could they--"
"Don't you see, Sid? They can be dead, but their appearance in the future--for them--couldn't occur until now because it's happened with us and we weren't living and didn't come along here at the right time until this minute."
Sidney swallowed. "Maybe," he muttered, "maybe."
"Another thing," George said. "If we can talk with them we can learn everything we've tried to know in all our work and solve in a minute what we're ready to spend the whole summer, even years, digging for."
Sidney brightened. "That's what we wanted to do."
George studied the Indians again. "I think they're just as surprised as we are. When they discovered themselves here and saw us--and you must remember we're the first white men they've ever seen--their immediate instinct was to attack. Now that we don't fight back they're waiting for us to make a move."
