“Tell me,” said Lane.
“It smashes what it can’t grab!” Burke told him. “It attacks what’d be needed to organize a counterattack.
Factories, railheads, warehouses, communications—it grabs what it can and smashes what the invaded country would need to start to fight back with. That’s strategy! The atackin’ army makes the defendin’ army helpless to fight back. Y’see?”
Lane shook his head.
“These Martians—these Gizmos,” said Burke. “They’re going to grab all the ground they can. With people scattered like they are nobody can fight ’em. They won’t even know they’re there! So the Gizmos take over all the ground outside the cities. Either they’ve done it or they’re doing it! But the scientists who’d have to find out that there are Gizmos and what they’re like live in the cities. It’s in the cities that there’re chemicals and explosives and things to make flame throwers. It’d be in the cities that counterattacks would be figured out and started.”
“Well?” asked Lane.
“The Gizmos got to hit the cities now,” said Burke. “They got to smash our industrial potential.” He savored that phrase with pleasure. “Yes, smash our industrial potential. Turn all the people into refugees. Fill the roads with folks running away from what they think is plague. Keep the government busy trying to organize the evacuation of the cities and trying to feed everybody and lick the plague at the same time, not guessing that what they’re up against is invasion and war!” He said raptly: “They could smash civilization that way! The cities’d be empty and the highways would be full, and the factories’d stop and people’d die in their refugee camps and they’d break out and go somewhere else, and they’d die along the Toads, and they’d try to stay by themselves. They’d go back to bein’ savages! And when it was all over and the Gizmos ruled the earth, they’d go whinin’ through the forest, hunting people. Maybe they’d have kind of hunting preserves for people to live in and be hunted when the Martians felt like it… Maybe they’d keep the empty cities for that, picking out and strangling the people that tried to hide in all empty buildings.”
“That couldn’t happen,” Carol said curtly. “It’s impossible!”
“It could happen,” insisted Burke. “Some places-most places—it will. But there’ll be some places where folks will find out how to defend themselves. Maybe it’ll be only one place, but that’ll be enough. There’ll be a little town where folks are smart enough to make flame throwers and explosives, and they’ll study the Gizmos scientific-like and learn how to kill ’em. And so they’ll stand off the Martians—the Gizmos. And there’ll come a time when they’ve learned plenty and can take the offensive. They’ll go sweeping over the world, fighting the Martians on the land and on the sea, and kill ’em and kill ’em, getting even for the cities the Gizmos destroyed and the countries they murdered.”
Professor Warren came bustling back to the car, carrying filled brown paper bags. She said crisply: “Dick, there’s a hardware store right across the way. Can’t you think of something that would be of use to us in a hardware store?”
Lane started. He got out of the car.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “You have matches handy?”
“I bought cartons of them,” said the professor. “And some things to make sandwiches with and lighter fluid for you. I was thinking of a possible gasoline torch. Have you money?”
He nodded and went across the street, pausing twice to let a car pass him. His eye caught the waverings of objects seen through the film of hot air next to the hot metal of a car hood and his blood stopped. Only thermal refraction, he decided, but startlingly like a Gizmo.
He went into the hardware store. It was cool, air conditioned. Normally he wouldn’t have noticed even that.
He bought two gasoline blowtorches. The clerk was mildly surprised that he bought two. On the way to the front of the store he saw a portable brazing torch—a tank of compressed gas with a spark maker near the tip. One had only to turn on the gas and strike a spark, and a blue-white flame leaped out. There was even a trigger by which the flame could be increased or diminished. He bought two of those, also. Then he invested in pocket lighters and more fuel for them.
“Is there something else?” asked the clerk.
“I’d like,” said Lane dryly, “to buy some Very pistols, but I’m afraid you wouldn’t have them on hand.”
He went out. Somehow he had a feeling of extreme urgency. He hurried back across the street. It had the leisurely atmosphere of almost any small-town business district. The professor, looking embarrassed, put something out of sight when he appeared. Lane automatically chose Carol as the person to whom to show the mechanism of the brazing torches. Burke watched, but appeared absorbed in other thoughts.
“I see,” said Carol. “It works like this.”
She lighted and handled the torch with competence, and Lane approved of her warmly.
“I forgot,” he said suddenly. “We need a garbage can.”
He went back across the street. His unreasonable feeling of urgency made him short with the clerk who insisted on wrapping the can for him. Back at the car, he learned the professor had gone to another store. Carol said:
“She went to buy some pillowcases. When you mentioned a garbage can she realized that a pillowcase was the thing to use with it. She may get a sheet or two, besides.”
Lane got into the driver’s seat. All about him the people of Murfree went about their business with a comfortable lack of haste. The business district was contained in four blocks, the only part of the town without shade trees. Here the sunshine was already baking hot.
Sitting in the car, Lane felt what amounted to truculent uneasiness, although there had been no sign of Gizmos since the ear came over the pass from the next valley to the east. He waited with growing impatience for the professor’s return. He wanted to get out of town, now. He’d gotten equipment with which they could defend themselves more adequately than before. He didn’t want to be attacked—if they were to be attacked—in the middle of a town whose people would not know what was happening, but only that they died.
A dog trotted across the street, wisely watching the traffic and moving with that matter-of-fact acceptance of the ways of men which is so casual among dogs, and of which no other lower animal seems capable.
Carol followed his eyes. The dog paused in the middle of the street to let a car go by, and trotted the rest of the way. A man on the sidewalk spoke to the dog. It was one of those trivial incidents which seldom happen in a city where dogs have only their masters, no other human acquaintances, to greet them. The dog politely wagged his tail and trotted on.
Lane was still uneasy, but it was necessary to wait. He opened his mouth to speak—
The man on the sidewalk opened his mouth to gasp. He staggered. He beat the air before him. His eyes went panicky; he choked, and fell to his knees. He jerked his head from side to side, his mouth open, fighting crazily against nothingness.
The Monster howled.
“Shut the windows,” snapped Lane.
He was out of the car, rushing for the fallen man. Other people were hurrying to help. Somebody bent over the victim as he collapsed to the street. Lane thrust other figures aside. He snapped his lighter before the face of the semiconscious, panic-crazed man. There was a leaping, momentary, lambent flame. There was a horrible odor. A thin shrill shriek ended before it was well begun. The fallen man could fill his lungs. He did. He gasped for breath which now he could draw in.
The Monster howled again.
Lane said sharply. “I’ve seen this before. If it ever happens to you again, or to anybody else, make a flame. Wave it close! You’ll be able to breathe! Pass it on!”