Collected Short Fiction, page 533
During the town meeting, a hundred men roamed the village, armed with tactical weapons and carrying communicators, in case the monsters should make an unheralded return visit. Even if weapons were useless against them, the colonists had to remain on guard lest they be taken again by surprise.
At the Rostrum, the colony’s leaders discussed the bewildering invasion.
“I think it’s an invasion from some other continent of Cameron,” suggested Martin Baird, the colony’s chief medical man. “The survey scouts examined this part of our planet pretty thoroughly before they recommended it for human colonization, and they didn’t report seeing any such animals of the size we saw today. Perhaps these creatures were lurking on the other side of the sea, and came across to try to drive us out.”
Paul McAfrey, head of the colony’s construction teams, shook his head. “I disagree, Martin. The survey scouts took a good look at all the continents of Cameron before we came here. And they reported that the place was not inhabited by any form of large animal life. I don’t see how they could have overlooked beasts so big. My guess is that it’s an invasion from some other planet.”
Colony Director Majeski broke in to say, “It doesn’t matter much where the creatures came from, at the moment. What we have to decide is what to do if they come back for another visit.
“Is there anything we can do?” Martin Baird asked in a pessimistic tone.
“I don’t know,” Majeski said heavily. “Our guns didn’t do any harm to them. All we achieved was the blowing up of our own streets.”
“The creatures seem to exist on two states of matter,” said the colony’s scientific leader, Henry Brickman. “When they’re in the normal state, they can do damage—and presumably they can be destroyed. But the moment we try to destroy them, they shift to that state of non-matter, and our shells go right through them.”
“At least they can’t do any damage themselves while they’re in the non-matter state,” McAfrey pointed out.
“But we can’t very well keep up a constant bombardment,” said Brickman. “For one thing, we don’t have enough ammunition for the kind of perpetual barrage we’d need. For another, our shells do damage when they, land. If we don’t shoot at the monsters, they remain in normal state and kill our people and wreck our homes. And if we do shoot at them, our own shells destroy what we’ve built.”
“Call in the Patrol!” shouted a deep voice from the first or second row of assembled colonists.
Director Majeski rose to his feet. Anger and pain showed on his massive face. “If we call in the Patrol to help us, we’ll be admitting our weakness as a colony. I refuse to believe that this is a situation Cameron can’t ultimately handle itself.”
“How are you going to handle it, then?” Brickman challenged. “What happens if the monsters come back?”
“We’ll work something out!” Majeski thundered. “There has to be a defense.”
“Not against creatures that are unlike anything else in the galaxy,” Brickman retorted. “I think it’s definitely a case for the Patrol. We can’t possibly fight off these creatures ourselves.”
“No Patrol,” Majeski said adamantly. “Not until we’re sure we need outside help.”
“Put it to a vote!” someone yelled from the back of the hall.
Doubt appeared on Majeski’s face. Calling in the Interstellar Patrol was a risky step; it indicated a possible lack of self-reliance that might go hard against the colony when the time came to ask Earth for complete independence. And Cameron’s record was spotless up to this point.
“Put it to a vote!” someone else cried.
Majeski shrugged. “All right,” he said. “We’ll put it to a vote. Those of you who think Cameron Colony can fight its own battles without calling in outsiders, stand up and let yourself be counted.”
There was silence in the big hall. Hesitantly a few men in the front rows came to their feet, looking around at the others self-consciously. Then, gradually, the ringing fervor of Majeski’s words began to take hold. A dozen colonists rose; then fifteen and twenty more. The movement became contagious. Within moments, nearly three quarters of the people in the hall were standing.
“Very well,” Majeski said. “Now let’s see those who think we ought to yell for help.”
Rarely fifty people stood up, most of them rising half-heartedly and slipping quickly back into their seats when they saw that they were very much in the minority.
“I don’t think it’s necessary to call for a count,” said Majeski. “I’ll assume it as the wish of this assembly that we’ll refrain from calling in the Patrol. Now—in case of further attack—the first step will be to work out a schedule of alarms. Regular work schedules will be temporarily suspended and reassignments will be made. We’ll have a round-the-clock lookout squad posted effective right away.
“Brickman, I want you to call a meeting of your science people and see if you can figure out any convincing explanation for these on-again-off-again monsters that attacked us today.
“Tomorrow morning we’ll send out scouting planes to search for the home base of these monsters. Perhaps if we drop a bomb on them by surprise, they won’t get a chance to shift to their non-matter state. Does anyone have any questions?”
“Just one,” Brickman said. “How are we going to defend ourselves against monsters that can’t be harmed by artillery fire?”
“We’ll work something out,” Director Majeski said darkly. “We’ll have to.”
IT was an uneasy night in the colony. The lookouts paced the streets all night, while in the bubble-houses the colonists slept in uneasy half-wakefulness, fearing that at any moment some lookout would cry that the attackers had returned. But the night passed without incident; the morning sun rose as always above the little colony, and no further attack had taken place.
Majeski and his innermost council had worked all night, preparing revised schedules for the colony in the current emergency, and when morning came the schedules were posted at the usual notice-boards.
Fifty men were assigned to the task of repairing the shattered streets. A hundred workers were given the task of building new dwelling-places for the families that had been made homeless during the attack. A crew of ten scouts was chosen to man the colony’s five two-seater jet planes, and an investigation area was chalked out for each of the scout teams.
The upheaval caused by the attack of the monsters would set the colony’s growth schedule back badly. But, Majeski realized grimly, nothing could be done about that. He had no choice but to suspend construction of the new school, the recreation center, and the other half-finished colony buildings.
Agriculture and food production had to go on, of course, but colony expansion would have to be curtailed until the threat of the monsters was ended.
Work continued through the morning. The morale of the colonists remained high despite the surprise attack, and they set to work vigorously clearing away the damage and rebuilding the ruined houses. Director Majeski held meetings all morning, in the hope that someone would be able to suggest a workable means of fighting off the monsters.
No one had any suggestions to offer. The situation was simply beyond their comprehension. For three years they had labored peacefully to build their colony, and now, out of the blue, came unkillable creatures to shatter their tranquil existence.
The chief hope was a surprise attack on the monsters’ home base. But, as reports came in from one after another of the airborne scouts during the morning, that hope grew dimmer and dimmer. They had covered hundreds of square miles already, without a single sign of the creatures.
There was not even a hint of the track that monsters so huge must have created while travelling through the heavily-wooded regions surrounding the settled areas. The scouts were instructed to range still farther afield, within the limits of their fuel supply, before returning to the colony.
In the colony, no one could refrain from looking back over his shoulder frequently to see whether the new attack had come. No one doubted that there would be a second attack, and probably a third and a fourth and a fifth. The dark shadow of fear hovered over, the colony.
And, shortly after noon that day, the alarm sirens began to scream.
This time the marauders had approached the city from the north. They had first been sighted by the lookout squad posted at the extreme northern end of the settlement, along the wide central avenue known as. Madison Boulevard that ran lengthwise through the colony. At five minutes after twelve the monsters appeared—winking abruptly into view at the entrance to Madison Boulevard.
There were seven of them this time. Two were flying creatures of the kind that had seized Police Chief Eames, but they differed from the original in that they bore a single bony spike ten feet long mounted between their crimson eyes.
Behind these two came the remaining five: a ponderous thing that looked like a magnified hippopotamus, but with none of the hippo’s sleepy characteristics; this was a fiercely vigorous creature whose gaping mouth snapped shut and open hungrily. Its marching-companion was a thin, towering monster forty feet high, with dangling boneless tentacles and a cilia-girdled orifice in its midsection.
Three others brought up the rear—an eight-legged scaly creature with a long, powerful tail surmounted with six sharp bony projections; a scuttling, crawling thing like an animated carpet covered with eyes; and a creature that hopped along on a single powerful leg, reaching for its prey with arms that tripled their length to make the catch and then contracted to normal size again.
The first casualty was recorded only moments after the appearance of the new monsters. One of the winged beings flew downward, impaling a lookout squadman on the point of its unicorn-like spear, and flew off with the man still feebly writhing. The other lookouts fled, sounding the alarm as they ran. The attack had been resumed.
As the shrill wailing of the general alarm burst out over the colony, Majeski’s defense plan went into effect. Women and children hastened to shelter. The men ran to the weapons dispensaries, grabbed their artillery, and hastened into the streets.
“The invasion is at the north end of the city,” came Majeski’s booming amplified voice. “Five creatures are advancing down Madison Boulevard, and two flying beasts are at large over the city.”
Machine-gun emplacements were established in the middle of Madison Boulevard, while snipers stationed themselves atop buildings along the path of the invasion That proved a poor idea; the two winged creatures dropped from the sky without warning, spearing the defenders unawares and carrying them away to death.
The weird procession advanced down the streets. Only a couple of unwary colonists were captured—the one-legged hopper lashed out with a telescoping arm to snare a fleeing woman, and the animated carpet seized a man and tore him to shreds. The machine-gunners waited in the middle of Madison Boulevard—but, before the creatures came within range, they split off, shuffling into the side streets.
Cursing, Majeski ordered pursuit to counteract the change of tactics. The monsters were at large, roaming through the streets where colonists lay hidden. The dull boom on gunfire echoed through the city, but again to no avail; the monsters simply shifted into their non-matter state whenever under fire, returning to their more destructive normal phase once they were out of range.
The onslaught continued for nearly an hour. The monsters, moving at will, wrecked house after house, smashing or overturning the bubbles in search of victims, while the winged creatures disorganized the defenders by their downward plunges.
Then, as quickly as they came, all of the monsters vanished, except one of the winged ones. It circled leisurely over the town, too high for the guns of the defenders—and a loud voice boomed out, “This is only the beginning, Earthmen! Leave this planet at once or you will be completely destroyed!”
THERE was no need for an open town meeting this time. Majeski and his group of advisers came together, two hours after the end of the raid, to decide on the colony’s next step.
Majeski read. the statistics of the second attack. “Fifty houses destroyed, nearly seventy people killed and a hundred injured.”
“And it was a brand new bunch of monsters this time,” Brickman said. “What nightmarish horrors these were! I didn’t believe the universe could spawn such repulsive-looking things.”
McAfrey said, “It seems obvious to me that we’re the victims of some kind of illusionary process.”
“What do you mean?” Majeski asked.
“Simply that Brickman’s right—the universe can’t spawn giant horrors like these. There’s no rhyme or reason to these monsters. They look like something out of nightmares, all right—not like any creatures that could have evolved normally on any known planet.”
“So you think we dreamed them, eh?” Majeski demanded.
McAfrey shook his head. “I didn’t say that. But it might be some kind of mass hypnotism—”
“Hypnotism that can kill seventy people?” Majeski asked sharply.
McAfrey shrugged. “I don’t have any explanations at all. Neither do the rest of us.”
“What about that message?” Martin Baird said. “We all heard it. In English, warning us to leave this planet at once.”
“It’s some kind of planetsized blackmail,” Majeski said. “An attempt to frighten us off Cameron.”
“A damned good attempt, too,” Brickman said acidly. “A few more raids like these two and we might just as well pull up and go. We can’t defend ourselves. And so far it’s only been a handful of monsters. What would happen to us if a hundred came at a time? Or a thousand? We’d be wiped out before we could fire a shot.”
Majeski was silent, brooding over the abrupt and violent end to three years of peaceful progress on Cameron. His council members discussed the situation back and forth in increasing tones of hoplessness. Finally Brickman turned to Majeski and said, “I think there’s only one possible thing to do.”
“And that is?” Majeski asked.
“The Patrol. Dammit, we can’t be stubbornly proud about it any more. We’re licked. Maybe even the Patrol won’t be able to help us. But at least they’ll evacuate us while we’re still alive. We can settle somewhere else—”
“After three years of hard work here,” Majeski said.
“What else can we do?”
Majeski did not reply. His eyes showed pain—the pain of a strong man faced with a situation totally beyond his own strength. It was a defeat for Majeski to have to call in the Patrol. But he knew he had no choice.
Further stubborn insistence that Cameron could handle these invaders itself was suicidally wrongheaded. If he kept maintaining that the Patrol should not be summoned, his advisers might possibly remove him from office and summon the Patrol themselves.
He gestured hoplessly. In a heavy voice he said, “Is it the opinion of this council that we should ask for help?”
The vote was unanimous. Majeski rose from his place at the head of the table. “Very well. Prepare a request for help and send it out on wideband galactic communication at once.”
The message was duly sent. And, several hours later, it was picked up by the relay monitor station of the Interstellar Patrol’s base on Kandoris IV, five hundred light-years from Cameron.
The Patrol’s main job was a troubleshooting one. Its staff roved from galaxy to galaxy as required to help out any of Earth’s multitude of newly planted stellar colonies. But it was considered a black mark against a world to call in the Patrol for anything but the most dire emergency. A sun going nova, a sudden alien attack—these were valid reasons for asking for help. Anything less might be construed by Earth as a sign of weakness.
Signalman Dworshak read the Cameron message off the decoder intake, ran a check to verify it, and switched on the communicator channel of Patrol Leader Avery.
“What is it, Dworshak?” the Patrol Leader asked.
“Message just came in, sir. A request from Cameron Colony on Danimor III—they’ve been invaded by some kind of weird monsters and they’re unable to fight back.”
Avery glanced at his adjutant, Captain Morse. “Morse, get me the specifications on Cameron Colony, Danimor III. Go ahead, Dworshak. Do they give any further details about this invasion?”
“All they say is the monsters are of enormous size and don’t seem to mind artillery shelling. So far they’ve had two attacks, eighty-five dead and a lot of property damage. They ask immediate help.”
“I see. Hold on, Dworshak.” Avery took the chart from Captain Morse, ran his finger down the list of planets, and stopped at Danimor III. He nodded. Earthtype planet, third out of six worlds, located at a distance of some five hundred light-years from Kandoris IV. That meant it fell within his jurisdiction. “All right,” Avery said. “Send a message to Cameron right away. Tell them we’ll have a Patrol squad out there in—ah—make it eight hours. When you’ve sent that message, ring up Crew Seven and get them ready for immediate departure.”
Avery let the communicator unit drop back into its magneto-field. “Giant monsters,” he snorted. “Impervious to artillery shells. What won’t these colonials think of next?”
AN hour later, the three slim ships that comprised Crew Seven of the Kandoris wing of the Interstellar Patrol were en route, gliding through the nospace congruencies across the light-years to Cameron. Avery himself piloted the leading ship; Morse guided the second, and a Captain named Norton handled the third.
Six hours after departure, the three ships snapped out of nospace and into the normal continuum. Ahead of them lay the golden star that was Danimor. The Patrol fleet homed in on Danimor’s third world, the one that had been named Cameron for its first discoverer.
At his signal controls, Dworshak made contact with the groundside operative at the Cameron space field and received landing coordinates. The three ships spiralled round the green-and-brown world in front of them, hooking into the diminishing orbits of landing, and made perfect touchdowns on the bare soil of the spacefield. It was exactly ten hours since the S.O.S. from Cameron had gone out to the Patrol.
