I took it, although nothing was ever harder for me to do. Kramer
hurriedly stepped into the breach. "Mr.--ah--Wetzel, we're waiting for
you to repeat what you told us before."
The tall, broad-shouldered young man turned from me to face the long
table. There was a graceful dignity about him, in his posture, in the
way he held his head, that you don't see often. Again I felt the hair
move along my scalp. For a guy who was as nutty as peanut brittle, he
was certainly convincing in his role of frontiersman. Turn back the
clock far enough and this could have been one of General Anthony
Wayne's scouts at the battle of Fallen Timbers. He even _smelled_ the
part.
* * * * *
"My father got hisself put on by General Harmer as a scout a fortnight
back. The General, on orders from President Washington, was to lead
his sojers to the north after the Injuns up there. Pop allowed as I
was ready to try my luck agin the abbregynes, so he took me along.
"Three-four nights after we set out ahead the rest, Pop an' me come
onto fresh Injun signs. We move powerful careful through the woods an'
right soon we catch sight of camp fires. There's a whole grist of them
red devils prancin' around, all fixed out in war paint--more of 'em as
I ever see'd afore. Even Pop allows as how it bugs out _his_ eyes--and
Pop's a man to do an amount of travelin'."
It was a page torn out of technicolor nightmare: three of the world's
most important men hanging onto the words of a madman who claimed to
be an Eighteenth Century Indian scout in the employ of one of George
Washington's generals. Yet the man's every word, every gesture,
everything he wore, was as authentic to that period as the powder horn
around his neck.
"We draw back in the woods aways an' wait. It's gettin' along to'ard
sun-up, an' Pop says he aims to get a better idea how many Injuns
they is, an' what tribes. Most of the braves got nice new British guns
an' General Harmer'll want to know about that."
Wetzel's voice began to shake a little, remembering. "Pop an' me are
hidin' in a clump of sumac when this here sudden racket starts up,
equal to a hundred waterfalls goin' all at oncet. We look up in the
air where it's comin' from, and holy hokey if fallin' right out of the
sky ain't this round iron thing! Flat as a hoe-cake an' big around as
an acre of land, with the fires of Hell breathin' at its edges!
"Well sir, them Injuns lit a shuck out of there like the spirits was
after them. My legs were tryin' to run, too. But Pop takes a holt on
my arm an' says, 'By Janey, I aim to see this if'en I swing for it!'
"It drops down," Wetzel continued, demonstrating with a slow graceful
movement of his hand, "lookin' no less than a big shiny stove-lid, an'
settles in the clearin' as light an' easy as the feather off'en a
duck's back. It stands high as a Pennsylvany school house an' twicet
the size around, an' no sound from it at all."
* * * * *
He stood slim and straight as a Shawnee arrow, smooth-faced and
solemn, obviously not much past his twentieth birthday, yet by his own
account born before the Declaration of Independence was on paper. He
went on talking, sounding like a character out of James Fenimore
Cooper. His story, boiled down and translated, came out something like
this:
The sudden arrival of the strange object had literally paralyzed the
Indian encampment. The warriors dropped their weapons and called on
the spirits to protect them, while a hole opened in the side of what
couldn't be anything else but a spaceship. Then out of the opening
came huge steel caricatures of men. There were over a dozen of these
robots, each the height of two men, and their eyes were strange round
circles of faceted glass. In single file they moved down the ramp and
stalked through the ranks of fear-frozen Indians, disappearing into
the forest.
Enoch's father ordered his son to crawl up into a tree out of sight,
then shouldered his rifle and slipped away through the bushes to get a
better look at what was going on. Enoch "allowed" that his Pop was a
"moughty" brave man, and none of his audience gave him an argument on
that score.
From his place among the leaves, Enoch watched his father melt into
the trees. The sun was above the horizon by this time and the young
frontiersman discovered that his present position was the equivalent
of a box seat on the fifty-yard line.
The next figure to emerge from the spaceship brought an amazed murmur
from hundreds of throats. No twelve-foot robot this time, no alien
monster beyond description. Very simply, this was an Indian.
Yet what an Indian! He stood on the ramp, wearing only leather
breeches and unadorned moccasins, muscles rippling across a powerful
sun-tanned chest, his head thrown back in a posture of arrogant
dignity. He wore a single crimson feather in his black topknot, and at
his belt was a tomahawk only slightly less deadly looking than a
howitzer.
Arms folded across his chest, he swept his stunned audience with an
eye like an eagle's, then began to speak. His voice, deep and ringing,
carried beyond the edges of the crowd, so that Enoch was able to catch
a portion of what he was saying.
Wetzel admitted he understood very little of any of the Indian
tongues. He thought the one he was hearing had its roots in the
Delaware tribe, but admitted this was no more than a guess. However,
it appeared that the visitor was summoning the chiefs of the assembled
tribes to a meeting within the spaceship.
* * * * *
Evidently it took some doing. Faced with a familiar danger, there is
no human more courageous than an Indian. But the thought of entering
the yawning maw of that steel cavern would have shaken the nerves of
Manabus himself.
Finally the visiting Indian's oratory paid off, and nine or ten of the
tribal leaders reluctantly entered the spaceship. Two robots took up
positions on the ramp to discourage kibitzers, and after an hour or so
in which nothing more happened, the rest of the camp returned pretty
much to normal.
Mid-afternoon came and passed, and still the meeting inside the ship
went on. Enoch was finding the tree branch not the most comfortable
place to spend a weekend, and he was growing steadily more uneasy by
his father's continued absence.
More hours passed. The sun was gone now and campfires began to dot the
night. Orders or no orders, Enoch decided, he was going to find his
Pop. With a stealth equal to that of any Indian, he dropped to the
ground and began a cautious advance in the direction his father had
taken hours before.
Suddenly the bushes crashed apart directly in front of him, and his
father came bounding through. Only a few yards back, its giant strides
rapidly closing the gap, came one of the huge steel men.
Enoch's gun flashed up and he fired without aiming. The bullet struck
one of the robot's huge eyes, shattering the glass and sending the
towering figure crashing headlong into a tree. At the same instant, an
ear-shattering wail came from the fallen robot, and powerful rays of
light flashed from the rim of the spaceship to bathe the spot where
the two Wetzels stood.
Mixed with the siren wail from the fallen man of steel came a chorus
of blood-curdling warhoops as the Indians made out the figures of the
two men, and a hundred braves came pouring across the clearing toward
them. Instantly the two scouts took to their heels, darting through
the inky blackness of the forest with the sure-footed celerity of long
practice.
They would have escaped easily under ordinary circumstances. But
suddenly the blast of another siren sounded directly ahead and a lance
of light impaled them. Blinded, they stumbled aside, only to be caught
by still another beam.
The two men split apart and dived for cover. Enoch, finding himself
shielded from the rays by the thick bole of a tree, scrambled into its
branches. A moment later the first wave of Indians passed below him.
For fully ten minutes he crouched there among the leaves. The barrage
of light, he discovered, had come from the towering robots, and he
recalled the dozen or so steel monsters that had left the camp soon
after the spaceship landed. Evidently they had been sent out to
encircle the camp so that no one might leave or enter until the
visitors permitted it.
* * * * *
Finally Enoch heard the Indians returning toward camp. He knew they
would search every tree hunting for him. Reloading his rifle, he
dropped to the ground and adopting the only maneuver they would not
expect, made his way cautiously back toward the camp.
He had hoped to skirt the camp itself and find an avenue to freedom in
the opposite direction. But his hopes were almost immediately dashed,
for he soon made out the darting rays of light marking more of the
robots.
Enoch was trapped. Taking advantage of every possible means of cover,
he inched ahead, changing his direction a dozen times, until he
suddenly stopped short, his path barred by the towering spaceship
itself. Staying within the dense shadows at its base, he began to
skirt the ship, hoping to find a place where he could hide out until
the enemy gave up the search.
But again his luck failed to hold. This time he was stopped by a wall
of metal fully ten feet high, which turned out to be one side of the
entrance ramp to the spaceship. Circling it would bring him right into
the camp, to climb over it was impossible; to turn back, useless. This
was the end of the line!
As he stood there trying to figure out his next move, he caught the
sound of a guarded movement some distance behind him. Instantly he
dropped to the grass, his long rifle ready to take at least one of his
enemies with him. And that was when he learned that the bottom of the
ramp was nearly two feet above the ground.
Even Macy's shopping service couldn't have furnished him with a better
hiding place. Enoch wriggled himself under the edge and lay there
breathing quietly, while, a moment later, three pairs of moccasined
feet moved over the spot where he had been hiding.
* * * * *
Some time passed. He could hear voices very near and the rustle of
feet moving through the grass. Then came the dull thud of metal
against metal over his head in a rhythmic tempo like the tread of
marching soldiers. Hardly had this ceased before he heard another
sound which he could not identify, and the ramp itself began to move!
It was drawing in toward the ship, very slowly. To stay where he was
would mean the loss of his hiding place; to try to run away would
almost certainly be fatal. And so Enoch acted in the only way left to
him.
By hooking his arms and legs around the girders forming the underside
of the ramp, he was able to lift himself clear of the ground. It meant
being carried into the ship, but even that, he decided, was better
than falling into the hands of Indians.
He clung there like a sloth to a branch. Fortunately the beams were
recessed enough to prevent his being scraped off when he reached the
opening into the hull. When the ramp finally ground to a halt he found
himself in darkness beyond anything in his experience. There was cold
metal under him now and he lowered himself gingerly onto it. When he
tried to crawl into the open, he discovered that the edges of the ramp
were now flush with the floor.
Suddenly a deep humming note tore at his ears, became a shrill whine,
then passed into silence. The floor seemed to press harder and harder
into his back, his lungs fought for air, a sharp burst of light seemed
to explode soundlessly before his bulging eyes and consciousness left
him....
The rasp of metal against metal aroused him. The ramp was moving
again. Once more he attached himself to its girders and was slowly
carried from the spaceship. Sunlight on the grass told him the night
had passed, and the moment the ramp came to a halt, he dropped to the
ground and squirmed into the open. He was close enough to the ship to
keep from being seen by those aboard, and he slipped quickly around
one side before making a break for the shelter of a clump of trees
bordering the clearing.
* * * * *
"And that, Mr. Quinlan," Kramer said, "just about brings you up to
date. At 4:07 this afternoon Mr. Wetzel was found by the crew of an
Army tank twelve miles west of Burdette, Colorado. He told his story
to the colonel in charge of that perimeter of operations, and was then
flown directly to Washington." He paused and allowed himself a
humorless smile. "I assume you have some questions?"
I said, "I'm not going to ask if you take this man's story seriously.
Considering the positions of the men in this room you obviously do.
What I'd like to know is why?"
Kramer hesitated. "Let me ask you this, Quinlan," he said, choosing
his words carefully. "Based solely on this man's costume and speech,
would you say he is an impostor?"
"No," I told him promptly. "Frontiersmen dressed exactly that way, the
long gun is authentic and his pronunciation, phrases and idiom comes
straight out of pre-Revolutionary times. But I still fail to see why
you give a second thought to his story."
"You don't think it true?"
"My God, man, how can it be? Unless you're trying to tell me that this
character was brought here by a time machine!"
"One moment, Mr. Quinlan." Secretary of War McClave was back in the
picture. "Let me tell you why we do not regard Mr. Wetzel as a mental
case. Shortly after one o'clock this afternoon, Rocky Mountain Time, a
section of Washington County, Colorado, roughly thirty miles in
circumference was suddenly cut off from the rest of the country--cut
off as completely as though it never existed. Telephone lines ceased
to function, a radio station in the same area went off the air in the
middle of a soap commercial. All traffic, vehicular and foot, ceased
to come out of it. The Governor of Colorado sent in a detachment of
the National Guard; nothing has been heard from it since. Air
observers report all cars and trains appear to have stalled. Two
planes trying a bit of hedge-hopping apparently conked out and were
forced to land. No radio contact with them."
I said, "I heard some of this on a news broadcast shortly before
midnight tonight. According to the announcer the area involved was
larger than thirty miles."
McClave nodded soberly. "The affected area is expanding steadily. It
now reaches as far west as Strasburg, Colorado, and as far east as
the Nebraska state line. The north and south limits seem to be
somewhat narrower."
I looked at him and at the other men around the table. Their faces
held a quiet tautness, and General Ohlmsted's hand, holding a cigar,
was shaking a little. "And," I said, "you feel that this spaceship
holds the answer. Is that it?"
"It's all we have to go on," the President said softly.
"One more question," I said. "Where do I fit into this?"
There was a moment's awkward silence, broken by the creak of the chair
holding the man who had been introduced to me as a Mr. Proudfit. His
round face smiled at me almost jovially.
"I expect I'm the one to explain that, Mr. Quinlan. Wetzel tells us
the man in charge of the spaceship appeared to be an Indian. It seems
our best move is to send an emissary into the blacked-out section to
learn the reason for this--well--this attack. Such a representative
should be qualified to deal intelligently with this--this Indian.
Somebody able to understand the Indian temperament. In short, Mr.
Quinlan, you!"
* * * * *
I rubbed a hand along the back of my neck and smiled. "You know, this
whole thing is utterly mad! Indians, time machines, robots,
spaceships! But then these days the most fertile imaginations can't
seem to keep up with reality. If you gentlemen want me to try to get
to this Indian and ask him what's the big idea, I'll do my best. Not
because I want to, but because I wouldn't know how to go about
refusing the President of my country."
Some of the tension seemed to go out of the room. The President said,
"You won't find me or your country ungrateful, Mr. Quinlan," and the
Secretary of War nodded approvingly, and General Ohlmsted's cigar
stopped shaking. Proudfit took out a sheaf of papers from an inner
pocket of his coat, leafed through them quickly and handed one to me.
"This authorizes you as a representative of the United States
Government, answerable only to the President, and with full authority
to act accordingly."
"Fine," I said, putting it away. "Maybe I can use it on these robots
Wetzel mentioned!"
Proudfit looked at his strap-watch. "An Army jet bomber will take you
and Mr. Wetzel to a point as close to Burdette, Colorado, as can be
managed. Wetzel tells us he can locate the spaceship from that point.
We don't know, of course, how closely guarded the ship is--or even if
it's guarded at all. But Wetzel is confident his training and
background as a frontiersman and Indian fighter can get you there
under cover of darkness. Once you reach the spaceship, the rest is up
to you."
"And if I don't make it?"
Proudfit spread his hands. "Two companies of Army regulars entered
that area at 6:30 tonight. They were fully armed, with orders to use
those arms if necessary. Nothing has been heard from them since. We're
sending you on the theory that where many can't get through perhaps
one or two can. You have until noon--slightly more than eleven hours
from now--to get word to us. If we don't hear from you by then or if
the 'dead' area continues to expand after that time, then we throw our
Sunday punch!"
Enoch Wetzel was still standing exactly as he had while telling his
story. I walked over to him. "Let's get one thing straight, mister. If
you and I are going to work together, we leave personal feelings out
of it. A few minutes ago I passed a remark or two about one of your
relatives and you tried to knock my head off. I'm willing to forget it
if you are. But I don't want any more cracks out of you about my being
a half-breed. Is that clear?"
He eyed me stonily, then without change of expression spat on the rug
within a quarter-inch of my left shoe. I felt the muscles in my arms
twang like plucked wires as I resisted the impulse to swing on him.
"Is that your answer, Wetzel?"
"I'll git you thar," he said tonelessly. "I promised these yere
gennelmen I'd do thet much. But it don't hold I gotta cotton to you."
We stood there staring into each other's eyes. There was a wall of
hatred between us that could never be destroyed, a wall not fashioned
by us but by our forefathers generations before. Yet a chain of
incredible events had made us allies against an alien foe. In spite of
our mutual dislike we must work together.
* * * * *
I turned back to Proudfit. "I'll need a pair of heavy black basketball
shoes, dark coveralls, a good heavy sweater, a .38 Colt automatic with
plenty of ammunition, and a compass."
* * * * *
The bomber pilot was a fresh-faced youngster who chewed gum and
claimed to have been the second-ranking tennis player in Des Moines,
Iowa. He shook hands gravely with me, eyed Wetzel and his strange garb
and out-size rifle with blank-faced wonder, and mentioned that it was
a nice night for flying.
The plane took off at 1:27. We were due over our target by 4:00
o'clock Eastern Standard Time, or 2:00 Mountain Time. The plans called
for the bomber to fly at a high altitude, then come in on Burdette
with jets off and drop us by 'chute. Wetzel had balked for a while at
the idea of stepping off into space, but a brief but patient
explanation of how a parachute worked finally brought him grudgingly
around.
The trip seemed to take forever. I was torn by a thousand doubts,
saddened by not being allowed to say goodbye to Lois, not a little
afraid of what I would likely run into in Colorado. And all the while,
my companion, out of his normal world and time, surrounded by wonders
beyond his wildest nightmares, slept sound as an infant....
A hand shook me awake. In the faint glow of a flashlight I made out
the face of the co-pilot. "Twenty minutes, Mr. Quinlan."
Wetzel was already on his feet. The co-pilot helped us don the
'chutes, and five minutes before arrival opened the heavy side door. A
rush of wind tore in, but there was no other sound. The jets had
already cut off and the plane was gradually losing altitude in a
shallow dive. As this was not a plane used for parachute troops there
was no wire to hook the 'chute cord to. It meant we would have to pull
our own, but both of us had been thoroughly versed in what to do.
"Get ready," shouted the co-pilot.
I grasped the door frame and waited, my heart pounding in my ears.
Wetzel stood directly behind me, the muzzle-loader in his hand, the
tail of his coonskin cap bouncing in the wind, his eyes narrowed.
"Five," the co-pilot said suddenly. "And a four, and a three, and a
two, and a one--_target_!"
I dived headfirst into blackness. I spun madly earthward, but in the
back of my mind a calm voice counted off the seconds. Then I yanked at
the ring-cord, black folds of nylon rustled above me, I heard a sharp
report like the crack of a giant whip, the straps at my shoulders
yanked painfully, and I was floating gently down toward the
night-shrouded surface of Colorado.
I landed in a meadow, if that was what they called it this far west. I
came down hard but in the way they had told me would prevent injury.
There was no wind to yank me about before I could unship the
parachute, and within seconds I was on my feet and searching for some
sign of Enoch Wetzel.
* * * * *
Unexpectedly a hand struck me lightly on the back. I was jumping aside
and reaching for my gun when the frontiersman's quiet voice reached
me. "You scare mighty easy for an Injun."
I said, "We should be about a mile, two at the most, south of the road
where that Army tank picked you up yesterday afternoon. Let's find
it."
"Aye."
The land was by no means as flat as I had expected. Fortunately most
of it was relatively open, with only scattered clumps of trees and
bushes. There were too many small unexplained night sounds, but none
of these appeared to alarm Wetzel in the slightest, so I managed to
ignore them. Once we flushed a long-eared rabbit, and it was five
minutes before I could get my heart out of my throat.
A barbed-wire fence, the first we had encountered, told me we had
reached a road. It wasn't paved or even graveled--just a ribbon of
dirt pointing east and west as straight as an Apache lance. Nothing
moved along it in either direction as far as I could see. A line of
telephone poles bordered one side.
"Recognize any landmarks?" I asked.
Wetzel shook his head.
"We're probably east of where you were found," I said. "We might as
well start walking."
He grunted in agreement and we started out. It was a lovely starlit
night, no moon at this hour, and a lot warmer than I had expected for
October in Colorado. Now and then the road dipped and climbed, and as
we reached the crest of the third hill, I saw a good-sized farmhouse
set well back from the road among a group of out-buildings.
I pointed to the house. "Maybe they can tell us what's been happening
around here."
Wetzel nodded and we turned in at a fieldstone path leading across the
large yard to the front door. There were no lights visible from
within, no dog barked, no rustle of livestock in the barns or pens.
I saw him just before I stepped on his head. He was lying across the
path in the shadow cast by a gnarled tree, a stocky man in overalls
and a blue work shirt. A double-barrelled twelve-gauge shotgun lay on
the ground near his right hand. One side of his chest was black with a
sticky substance that could have been only one thing, and the top of
his head was black in the same way, except that no hair was there
anymore....
"_Scalped!_" I whispered hoarsely.
Enoch Wetzel stooped suddenly and picked up the shotgun and wordlessly
held it out to me. My jaw fell in astonishment. The twin barrels were
bent into a rude V.