“Possibly both,” said Lane. “Or it could be something else entirely. An animal doesn’t think like a man.”
“They’re not animals!” snapped the professor. “They’re gas. They’re not even protoplasm! How could they be animals?”
The singular, tense rigidity with which Carol obeyed the orders of invisible things ceased. She came back to the others, trembling.
“They let me go,” she said shakily. “I hate them!”
The professor said, “Did you understand the trick of holding your breath? A carnivorous animal keeps up its attack until its prey ceases to offer resistance to being eaten. These creatures aren’t carnivorous. They’re foetiverous—a good term. It would mean an cater of foul smells. They will keep up their attack until their victim is ready to decay. So when one stops trying to breathe—” She stopped, and filled her lungs. She said curtly: “I’m getting orders now. I shall try it.”
She sat immobile. There was silence. The professor was perhaps five yards from Lane, who sat with clenched hands in the somehow grisly moonlight in a silent world. Nor was there any movement. The professor sat stony-still, while something whined faintly. Lane watched with burning eyes. Carol pressed her hand to her mouth, watching.
After an inordinately long time, the professor breathed again.
“It worked,” she said unsteadily. “Now they’ll talk that over and try to figure out how we can stop breathing and then start up again. At least I suppose they’ll talk it over!”
Carol said, in a faintly apologetic tone: “When you stopped fighting, Dick, back in the trailer, Aunt Ann and I got desperate. So we put sheets over our heads, with holes for our eyes, and we—went in the laboratory to try to help you. We had a sheet to put over your head, too. But there were too many Gizmos. We could breathe, but they closed us in. They even got underneath the sheets, making that awful whine…”
The professor added: “They drowned us—stifled us, by keeping air from us. I collapsed, and Carol did a moment later. Apparently they drew back and let us recover. I thought they’d gone away, satisfied that we were dead. We dragged you out to the open air. We heard no winnings. We tried to make you breathe again. Then they closed in on us once more…” She shuddered. “Three times they stifled us! Three times they drew back before we quite died!” She added abruptly, “They had us, even in the trailer.” “I believe they did,” agreed Lane slowly. “The way they got me, in the laboratory just now—” He stopped short. There were whinings at his ear. Something touched him. He said very grimly, “They know I’m breathing again. I’m obeying, this time, just to make it confusing.”
He rose. He was urged forward. He was halted by a touch on his forehead. He obeyed, while shame filled him that he obeyed even to gain time. He stumbled and fell, and his hands touched dry grass. He seized it, and when he rose, he stuffed dry grass into his pockets.
“I gathered some dry grass,” he said coldly, as he allowed himself to be directed to the right. “I have a lighter. Gather dry stuff if you can. We burned a Gizmo in the trailer!”
Carol began to fumble about her, as the professor gave an inarticulate sound of comprehension. She began to scrabble for dead grass, too.
Lane halted in obedience to a touch on his forehead. He walked backward, at another touch. He heard the rustling of dry straw being gathered.
“I’m wondering,” he said tautly, “if they are trying to train us. They could be trying to panic us. They might want us to run and exhaust ourselves, to make our suffocation easier. If we’re out of breath—”
Something sealed his nose and mouth, somehow deliberately. He dropped to the ground. He lay with his nose against the earth, his arms moving out to gather straw.
There were no more touches. No more whines. It seemed as if the Gizmo which had exercised him had contemptuously flung him to the ground. He shook with fury. But he gathered straw as he went back to the others.
“Here’s my straw,” he said briefly. “I’ve got matches, too, and here—my lighter’s dependable. But we haven’t enough burnable stuff…”
Carol crawled a little distance away. He heard additional rustlings. He stared up at the sky. Stars twinkled. Then he saw a star which wavered and wobbled without twinkling at all. Once he had seen that, he could perceive the distortion of the star field in a nearly circular space. He could see that the wavering moved. He could see, in fact, a Gizmo.
“There’s gasoline in the trailer,” said the professor. He heard her also at work in the tall grass about them. “It’s for the light generator. Two gallons.”
“It’ll help,” said Lane.
They crawled, pulling dry grass. Their small pile became a larger one. There were no more winnings, but there were muted fluting sounds in the air.
“They’re talking us over,” said the professor. With a pile of straw before her, she grew vengeful. “What is the time?”
“Four,” said Lane. “I think this straw will do. Better twist some for handling. I doubt they’ll let us live to daybreak. There’ve been daylight killings, but usually—”
“Yes, they’d hunt by night and feed by day, normally,” Professor Warren said. “The gases they feed on would naturally develop more quickly in hot sunshine.”
There was a sort of moaning somewhere in the night. It could have been made by voices which ordinarily whined. It could have been a sudden sweep of wind among many branches. But it had too unearthly a quality to be anything so natural.
“That,” said Lane, “could be a decision, if they’ve been discussing us.”
The three humans tensed. Lane twisted masses of straw into bundles whose farther ends were loose and frayed, but which had a tightly bunched end to serve as a handle.
“I think they’re moving,” said the professor tautly. “In a body. Toward us.”
“Maybe,” said Carol unsteadily, “they—sent word about us somewhere and waited for orders. And now they’ve got them.”
“Ridiculous!” scoffed the professor.
Lane inconspicuously snapped his cigarette lighter. He held it ready, its flame very small, rising undisturbed in the still air.
He saw the stars waver, toward the south. He looked uphill. Stars wavered there, too. To the east and the north. Overhead there were moving areas in which the stars did not seem to stay still, but to waver erratically to and fro, exactly as if masses of hot gases moved about between the people and the sky.
“They’re closing in,” said Lane curtly. “Overhead and all around.”
He saw a little flare. Professor Warren, bent over, absorbedly struck a safety match on the cover of its packet. Carol waited, her body tense.
Things touched Lane, and the air about him ceased to be. He felt even his clothing stir all over his body as invisible things pressed against it, throbbing and suddenly emitting spiteful, snarling whines. His face and neck felt ticklings like thousands of spider webs thrown to cover and enmesh him. He saw nothing. He heard only the whines. And he could not breathe.
The hand that held the cigarette lighter was untouched. He moved it, to a torch of dry straw. The straw caught and flames leaped up, and the winnings about him seemed to become shrieks, unspeakably eerie and horrible. The air—the Gizmos—touching his body acquired the feel of a ghastly, throbbing wall. The violence of its movement almost toppled him. He waved the torch savagely, and sparks flew in every direction, and there were more ghostly, keening, wailing sounds. Then he could breathe, but the air about him was foul with mephitic odors. He turned triumphantly to the others, to see how the fire was aiding them.
Carol sat tensely with a flaming torch before her. The professor had fallen. Her first match had gone out. Her hands still tried desperately to strike a second, but the brittle bit of cardboard had bent in her grasp.