He went back to the table. He told the professor what he’d done.
“That’s just what I should have done!” she explained. “Instead of letting that idiot back at the University think I was a practical joker, I should have made predictions. But I didn’t know what to predict.”
“You could ask for checking observations,” suggested Lane. “Wire to any biologists you know that sportsmen report unusual numbers of game animals found dead. Buzzards are not touching what would ordinarily be most attractive food to them. Say there appears to be a correlation of high mortality in game and a refusal of buzzards to approach bait, all in the same areas. Ask them to verify, and suggest an answer. Have ’em send their answers to my friend, since we’re headed for his laboratory.”
The professor’s expression grew bitter. “I should have realized it,” she protested. “I’ve been saying for years that your typical scientist sees and hears no theory but his own, but he speaks his theory to distraction! I’ve been wanting to tell people what I’ve found out, when what they want to do is tell me! Oh, Dick, I’m afraid I’m a typical scientist! I’ll make out a list of people to wire!”
She began to scribble names on the back of a menu, eating abstractedly when her food came.
Carol smiled at her, and then met Lane’s eyes. But Burke said uneasily: “I don’t get that, Mr. Lane. What’s smoking got to do with automobile drivers? And what have dead animals got to do with it?”
Lane explained that if a flame would destroy a Gizmo, a glowing coal should at least discourage one. The lighted end of a cigar or cigarette being smoked would project into the space a Gizmo must occupy while strangling someone. Hence it would be nearly impossible for a Gizmo to suffocate a man who happened to be smoking.
Burke said, relieved, “I see! That’s important.”
“Dick,” said Carol hesitantly, “wouldn’t an increase in Gizmo food supply increase the number of Gizmos?”
“Probably,” he agreed. “Fish and game outfits work as hard at keeping up the food supply for wild life as at anything else.”
Carol hesitated, as Burke got up and went over to the cashier’s desk of the restaurant. Then she said diffidently: “I’m wondering… I’ve read about a species of parrot in Australia that somehow developed the habit of pecking at sheep’s backs until they got through to the sheep’s kidneys, which they ate, though their normal food was merely what parrots usually eat. They killed thousands of sheep.”
Lane nodded again. Professor Warren looked at her niece with a sudden expectant intentness.
“What’s up, Carol?” she demanded.
“I’ve been wondering,” said Carol, looking from her aunt to Lane, “if that species of parrot multiplied very fast when it found out the unlimited supply of food it could get by killing sheep.”
“Out of the mouths of babes,” exulted the professor. “She’s got the answer, Dick! No physical mutation, only an instinctual one! The parrots needed no new equipment. Any parrot could do the same, but only those parrots did, so they multiplied out of all reason, and killed sheep out of all conscience. They had to be wiped out! That’s the mechanism by which the Gizmos have appeared, Dick. Carol, you’ve solved the problem of the ecological imbalance which has made the Gizmos what they are.”
Her gaze was warmly triumphant, bent upon Carol. But Carol looked uncertainly to Lane for approval. He grinned at her.
“Smart girl!” he said. “Now figure out some more!”
She flushed. Burke came back with his pockets stuffed with cigars. He sat down at the table again.
“I got some cigars,” he said. “You’ll find me puffing pretty steady from now on. You better get yourself some too, Mr. Lane. I don’t know what the ladies’ll do, but if they stay close to us, and we keep puffing—”
“I have a hope in that line,” the professor said darkly, “that may prove even more repugnant. But right now I gloat over what Carol has suggested. Do you see the picture, Dick? The Gizmos were a foetiverous race of foul descent, consuming bad smells. Then one of them, undoubtedly, found out that the process by which they drew evil smells out of carrion could be used to draw foul breath out of an animal’s lungs, and that the animal would die immediately, when an enterprising Gizmo could continue happily to feed. It is an exact parallel to a parrot’s discovering that he could kill a sheep and have a meal. The kidney-eating parrots increased to a multitude; the strangling Gizmos have multiplied into hordes. How or why they contrived their dust clouds I do not know, but from the tales of jinn traveling in clouds like theirs, it is not a novelty to their kind.”
Carol said gently: “But I didn’t say all that, Aunt Ann!”
“It was all implicit in what you did say. Dick, can we send my telegrams now?”
They sent the professor’s telegrams and headed back toward Covington. Highway 220 was not far from Clifton Forge. They had passed over this road only a couple of hours earlier, but much had happened in that interval. There was a station wagon against a tree beside the road, stalled by an impact not even great enough to dent its bumper. Its windows were open, but no one could be seen inside. Lane stopped.
“There are blurrings,” he said grimly. “Give me one of the torches, Carol. We might as well try out our armory again.”
She gave him a blowtorch which had not been used there. It was filled, and its pressure pump worked, but it was not lighted. He checked it and got out of the car, and walked toward the stalled station wagon.
There were very familiar sounds in the air about him. He plucked out his cigarette lighter and snapped it alight, and out again. His breath cut off. Something vicious whined.
He burned the thing with the flame of his lighter. There was a tiny shriek and he grimaced at the smell. He went on, and looked through the car window. He swore, and raised the torch, turning it on. This torch burned gasoline. A small air-pump built up pressure in its tank, which would feed the fluid through a preheated burning tube. But it was not preheated now, so a fine thin stream of gasoline sprayed out for several feet. Most of it evaporated before it touched the ground. Lane snapped his lighter under the near end of the stream.
There was a whoosh and an uprush of fire. He had touched off not only the liquid gasoline, but the vapor of that which had evaporated. There was a stirring of air as invisible things fled away, with thin shrieks.
He opened the station wagon door and made sure of what had happened. He made flashes within, clearing it of Gizmos. He closed the car windows and felt fury as he started heavily back to the car. Halfway there, he heard sounds about him again. He stood still, holding his breath. He felt fumblings all over his body before he sprayed gasoline again and again set it off. There was a flicker of unbearable heat and a dull booming sound, and he stumbled out of the vitiated air and caught a deep breath of something breathable while the high-pitched small screams still sounded.
He reached the car. Burke stared at him, puffing furiously upon a cigar, his face very pale. Carol said anxiously: “Dick! What was it? Were they—” “Yes,” said Lane thickly. “All dead. I won’t tell you any more.”
He climbed into the driver’s seat and drove away, his face a mask of fury, his hands trembling.
“You killed a lot of them,” said the professor, forlorn because she could offer no other comfort. “I should have tried to catch one. But you killed a great many. I saw them flare up.”
“I didn’t kill enough,” said Lane.
Within a mile there was another wreck. Before he turned north he had passed four more.
It was well into the afternoon before he reached Hot Springs. The highway had been a shambles all the way. On the outskirts of Hot Springs there was a barrier across the highway. Men with shotguns and improvised surgeon’s masks waved him to a halt.