Operation Terror

by Murray Leinster

  CHAPTER 5

  When darkness fell, Lockley and Jill were many miles away from theclearing where he had made the S.O.S. They were under a dense screenof leaves from a monster tree whose roots rose above ground at thefoot of its enormous trunk. They formed a shelter of sorts againstobservation from a distance. Lockley had spotted a fallen tree fargone with wood-rot. He broke pieces of the punky stuff with hisfingers. Then he realized that without a pot the bracken shoots he'dgathered could not be cooked. They had to be boiled or not cooked atall.

  "We'll call it a salad," he told Jill, "minus vinegar and oil andgarlic, and eat what we can."

  She'd been pale with exhaustion before the sun sank, but he hadn'tdared let her rest more than was absolutely necessary. Once he'doffered to carry her for a while, but she'd refused. Now she satdrearily in the shelter of the roots, resting.

  "We might try for news," he suggested.

  She made an exhausted gesture of assent. He turned on the tiny radioand tuned it in. There was no scarcity of news, now. A few days past,news went on the air on schedule, mostly limited to five-minuteperiods in which to cover all the noteworthy events of the world. Partof that five minutes, too, was taken up by advertising matter from asponsor. Now music was rare. There were occasional melodies, but mostwere interrupted for new interpretations of the threat to earth atBoulder Lake. Every sort of prominent person was invited to air hisviews about the thing from the sky and the creatures it brought. Mosthad no views but only an urge to talk to a large audience. Something,though, had to be put on the air between commercials.

  The actual news was specific. Small towns around the fringe of thePark area were being evacuated of all their inhabitants. Foreignscientists had been flown to the United States and were at thetemporary area command post not far from Boulder Lake. Rocket missileswere aimed and ready to blast the lake and the mountains around itshould the need arise. A drone plane had been flown to the lake with atelevision camera transmitting back everything its lens saw. Itarrived at the lake and its camera relayed back exactly nothing thathad not been photographed and recorded before. But suddenly there wasa crash of static and the drone went out of control and crashed. Itscamera faithfully transmitted the landscape spinning around until itsdestruction. Military transmitters were beaming signals on everyconceivable frequency to what was now universally called the alienspaceship. They had received no replies. The foreign scientists hadagreed that the terror beam--paralysis beam--death beam--waselectronic in nature.

  Lockley had thought Jill asleep from pure weariness, but her voicecame out of the darkness beside the big tree trunk.

  "You found that out!" she said. "About its being electronic!"

  "I had a sample stationary beam to check on," said Lockley. "Theyhaven't. Which may be a bad thing. Nobody's going to make usefulobservations of something that makes him blind and deaf and paralyzedwhile he's in the act. There are some things that puzzle me aboutthat. Why haven't they killed anybody yet? They've got the publicabout as scared as it can get without some killing. And why didn't weget the full force of the beam after the plane had been driven away?They could have given us the full treatment if they'd wanted to. Whydidn't they?"

  "If people run away from the towns," said Jill's voice, very tired andsleepy, "maybe they think that's enough. They can take the towns...."

  Lockley did not answer, and Jill said no more. Her breathing becamedeep and regular. She was so weary that even hunger could not keep herawake.

  Lockley tried to think. There was the matter of food. Bracken shootswere common enough but unsubstantial. It would need more carefulobservation to note all the likely spots for mushrooms. Perhaps theywere far enough from the lake to take more time hunting food. Theywere almost exactly in the situation of Australian bushmen who liveexclusively by foraging, with some not-too-efficient hunting. ButAustralian savages were not as finicky as Jill and himself. They ategrubs and insects. For this sort of situation, prejudices were ahandicap.

  He considered the idea with sardonic appreciation. Two days ofinadequate food and such ideas came! But he and Jill wouldn't be theonly ones to think such things if matters continued as they weregoing. The towns around Boulder Lake were being evacuated. The cordonabout it had been made to retreat. There was panic not only inAmerica, but everywhere. In Europe there were wild rumors of otherlandings of other ships of space. The stock markets would undoubtedlyclose tomorrow, if they hadn't closed today. There'd be the beginningof a mass exodus from the larger cities, starting quietly but buildingup to frenzy as those who tried to leave jammed all the routes bywhich they could get away. If the creatures of the spaceship wantedmore than the flight of all humans from about their landing place,there would be genuine trouble. Let them move aggressively and therewould be panic and disorder and pure catastrophe, with self-exiledcity dwellers desperate from hunger because they were away from marketcenters. It looked as if a dozen or two monsters could wreck acivilization without the need to kill one single human being directly.

  He heard a sound. He turned off the radio, gripping the clumsy clubwhich was probably useless against anything really threatening.

  The sound continued. There were rustlings of leaves, and then faintrattling, almost clicking noises. Whatever the creature was, it wasnot large. It seemed to amble tranquilly through the forest and thenight, neither alarmed nor considering itself alarming.

  The clickings again. And suddenly Lockley knew what it was. Of course!He'd heard it in the compost pit shell, when he was a prisoner of theinvaders from space. He rose and moved toward the noise. The creaturedid not run away. It went about its own affairs with the same peacefulindifference as before. Lockley ran into a tree. He stumbled over afallen branch on the ground. He came to the place where the creatureshould be. There was silence. He flicked the flint of his pocketlighter and in the flash of brightness he saw his prey. It had heardhis approach. It was a porcupine, prudently curled up into a spikyball and placidly defying all carnivores, including men. A porcupineis normally the one wild creature without an enemy. Even mencustomarily spare it because so often it has saved the lives of losthunters and half-starved travelers. It accomplishes this by its blandrefusal to run away from anybody.

  Lockley classed himself as a half-starved traveler. He struck withthe club after a second spark from his lighter-flint.

  Presently he had a small, barely smouldering fire of rotted wood. Hecooked over it, and the smell of cooking roused Jill from herexhausted slumber.

  "What--"

  "We're having a late supper," said Lockley gravely. "A midnight snack.Take this stick. There's a loin of porcupine on it. Be careful! It'shot!"

  Jill said, "Oh-h-h-h!" Then, "Is there more for you?"

  "Plenty!" he assured her. "I hunted it down with my trusty club, andonly got stuck a half-dozen times while I was skinning and cleaningit."

  She ate avidly, and when she'd finished he offered more, which sherefused until he'd had a share.

  They did not quite finish the whole porcupine, but it was an odd andcompanionable meal, there in the darkness with the barely-glowingcoals well-hidden from sight. Lockley said, "I'm sort of a newsaddict. Shall we see what the wild radio waves are saying?"

  "Of course," said Jill. She added awkwardly: "Maybe it's the suddenfood, but--I hope you'll remain my friend after this is all over. Idon't know anyone else I'd say that to."

  "Consider," said Lockley, "that I've made an eloquent and gratefulreply."

  But his expression in the darkness was not happy. He'd fallen in lovewith Jill after meeting her only twice, and both times she had beenwith Vale. She intended to marry Vale. But on the evidence at handVale was either dead or a prisoner of the invaders; if the last, hischances of living to marry Jill did not look good, and if the first,this was surely no time to revive his memory.

  He found a news broadcast. He suspected that most radio stationswould stay on the air all night, now that it was officially admittedthat the object in Boulder Lake was a spaceship bringing invader
s toearth. The government releases spoke of them as "visitors," in abelated use of the term, but the public was suspicious of reassurancesnow. At the beginning the landing had seemed like another exaggeratedhorror tale of the kind that kept up newspaper circulations. Now thepublic was beginning to believe it, and people might stop going totheir offices and the trains might cease to ran on time. When thathappened, disaster would be at hand.

  The news came in a resonant voice which revealed these facts:

  Four more small towns had been ordered evacuated because of theirproximity to Boulder Lake. The radiation weapon of the aliens hadpushed back the military cordon by as much as five miles. But the bignews was that the aliens had broken radio silence. Apparently they'dexamined and repaired the short wave communicator from the helicopterthey'd knocked down.

  Shortly after sundown, said the news report, a call had come throughon a military short wave frequency. It was a human voice, firstmuttering bewilderedly and then speaking with confusion anduneasiness. The message had been taped and now was released to thepublic.

  _"What the hell's this ...? Oh.... What do you characters want me todo? This feels like the short wave set from the 'copter.... Hmm....You got it turned on.... What'll I do with it, Broadcast? I don't knowwhether you want me to talk to you or to back home, wherever thatis.... Maybe you want me to say I'm havin' a fine time an' wish youwas here.... I'm not. I wish I was there.... If this is goin' on theair I'm Joe Blake, radio man on the_ '_copter two 'leven. We wereheadin' in to Boulder Lake when I smelled a stink. Next second therewere lights in my eyes. They blinded me. Then I heard a racket likeall hell was loose. Then I felt like I had hold of a powertransmission line. I couldn't wiggle a finger. I stayed that way tillthe 'copter crashed. When I come to, I was blindfolded like I am now.I don't know what happened to the other guys. I haven't seen 'em. Ihaven't seen anything! But they just put me in front of what I thinkis the 'copter's short wave set an' squeaked at me_--"

  The recorded voice ended abruptly. The news announcer's voice cameback. He said that the member of the 'copter crew had given some otherinformation before he was arbitrarily cut off.

  "I'll bet," said Lockley when the newscast ended, "I'll bet the otherinformation was that the invaders have managed to tell him that earthmust surrender to them!"

  "Why?"

  "What else would they want to say? To come and play patty-cake, whenthey can push the Army around at will and have managed to keep planesfrom flying anywhere near them? They may not know we've got atombombs, but I'll bet they do! Part of that extra information could havebeen a warning not to try to use them. It would be logical to bluffeven on that, though they couldn't make good."

  Jill said very carefully, "You hinted once that they might be men,pretending to be monsters. But that would mean that somebody I careabout would probably be killed because he'd seen them and knew theyweren't creatures from beyond the stars."

  "I think you can forget that idea," said Lockley. "They don't act likemen. Chasing away the plane that was going to land for us, and notusing the beam on the fugitives it was plainly going to landfor--that's not like men preparing to take over a continent! Andnudging the Army back to make the cordoned space larger--that's notlike our most likely human enemy, either. They'd wipe out the cordonby stepping up the terror beam to death ray intensity."

  "Suppose they couldn't?"

  "They wouldn't have landed with a weapon that couldn't kill anybody,"said Lockley. "It's much more likely that they're monsters. But theydon't act like monsters, either."

  Jill was silent for a moment.

  "Not even monsters who wanted to make friends?"

  "They," said Lockley drily, "would hardly make a surprise landing.They'd have parked on the moon and squeaked at us until we gotcurious, and then they'd arrange to land, or to meet men in orbit, orsomething. But they didn't. They made a surprise landing, and cleareda big space of humans, keeping themselves to themselves. But if theydo think we're animals, like rabbits, they'd kill people instead ofstinging them up a bit, or paralyzing them for a while and thenletting them go. That's not like any monster I can imagine!"

  "Then--"

  "You'd better go to sleep," said Lockley. "We've got a long day's hikebefore us tomorrow."

  "Yes-s-s," agreed Jill reluctantly. "Good-night."

  "'Night," said Lockley curtly.

  He stayed awake. It was amusing that he was uneasy about wild animals.There were predators in the Park, and he had only an improvised clubfor a weapon. But he knew well enough that most animals avoid manbecause of a bewildering sudden development of instinct.

  Grizzly bears, before the white man came, were so scornful of manthat they could be considered the dominant species in North America.They'd been known to raid a camp of Indians to carry away a man forfood. Indian spears and arrows were simply ineffective against them.When Stonewall Jackson was a lieutenant in the United States Army,stationed in the West to protect the white settlers, he and adetachment of mounted troopers were attacked without provocation by agrizzly who was wholly contemptuous of them. The then LieutenantJackson rode a horse which was blind in one eye, and he maneuvered toget the bear on the horse's blind side so he could charge it. With hiscavalry sabre he split the grizzly's skull down to its chin. It wasthe only time in history that a grizzly bear was ever killed by a manwith a sword. But no grizzly nowadays would attack a man unlesscornered. Even cubs with no possible experience of humankind areterrified by the scent of men.

  All that was true enough. In addition, preparations for the Parkincluded much activity by the Wild Life Control unit, which persuadedbears to congregate in one area by putting out food for them, and tookvarious other measures for deer and other animals. It had seeded troutstreams with fingerlings and the lake itself with baby big-mouthedbass. The huge trailer truck of Wild Life Control was familiar enough.Lockley had seen it headed up to the lake the day before the landing.Now he found himself wondering sardonically to what degree the WildLife Control men determined where mountain lions should hunt.

  He'd slept in the open innumerable times without thinking of mountainlions. With Jill to look after, though, he worried. But he washorribly weary, and he knew somehow that in the back of his mind therewas something unpleasant that was trying to move into his consciousthoughts. It was a sort of hunch. Wearily and half asleep, he tried toput his mind on it. He failed.

  He awoke suddenly. There were rustlings among the trees. Somethingmoved slowly and intermittently toward him. It could be anything, evena creature from Boulder Lake. He heard other sounds. Another creature.The first drew near, not moving in a straight line. The secondcreature followed it, drawing closer to the first.

  Lockley's scalp crawled. Creatures from space might have some of thehighly-developed senses which men had lost while growingcivilized--full keenness of scent, for example.

  Such a creature might be able to find Lockley and Jill in the darknessafter trailing them for miles. And so primitive a talent, in acreature farther advanced than men, was somehow more horrifying thananything else Lockley had thought of about them. He gripped his clubdesperately, wholly aware that a star creature should be able toparalyze him with the terror beam....

  There were whistling, squealing noises. They were very much like thesqueaks his captors had directed at each other and at him when he wasblindfolded and being led downhill to imprisonment in the compost pitshell. Very much like, but not identical. Nevertheless, Lockley's hairseemed to stand up on end and he raised his club in desperation.

  The whistling squeals grew shriller. Then there was an indescribablesound and one of the two creatures rushed frantically away. Ittraveled in great leaps through the blackness under the trees.

  And then there was a sudden whiff of a long-familiar odor, smelled ahundred times before. It was the reek of a skunk, stalked by acarnivore and defending itself as skunks do. But a skunk was nothinglike a terror beam. Its effluvium offended only one sense, affectedonly one set of sensation nerves. The terror beam....

/>   Lockley opened his mouth to laugh, but did not. The thing at the backof his mind had come forward. He was appalled.

  Jill said shakily, "What's the matter? What's happened? That smell--"

  "It's only a skunk," said Lockley evenly. "He just told me some verybad news. I know how the terror beam works now. And there's not athing that can be done about it. Not a thing. It can't be!"

  He raged suddenly, there in the darkness, because he saw the utterhopelessness of combatting the creatures who'd taken over BoulderLake. There was nothing to keep them from taking over the whole earth,no matter what sort of monsters or not-monsters they might be.