Operation Terror Read online

  CHAPTER 2

  The car was ordinary enough; it was one of those scaled-down vehicleswhich burn less fuel and offer less comfort than the so-calledstandard models. For fuel economy too, its speed had been lowered. ButLockley sent it up the brand-new highway as fast as it would go.

  Now the highway followed a broad valley with a meadow-like floor. Nowit seemed to pick its way between cliffs, and on occasion it ran overa concrete bridge spanning some swiftly flowing stream. At least onceit went through a cut which might as well have been a tunnel, and thecrackling noise of its motor echoed back from stony walls on eitherside.

  He did not see another vehicle for a long way. Deer, he saw twice.Over and over again coveys of small birds rocketed up from beside theroad and dived to cover after he had passed. Once he saw movement outof the corner of his eye and looked automatically to see what it was,but saw nothing. Which meant that it was probably a mountain lion,blending perfectly with its background as it watched the car. At theend of five miles he saw a motor truck, empty, trundling away fromBoulder Lake and the construction camp toward the outer world.

  The two vehicles passed, combining to make a momentary roaring noiseat their nearest. The truck was not in a hurry. It simply lumberedalong with loose objects in its cargo space rattling and bumpingloudly. Its driver and his helper plainly knew nothing of untowardevents behind them. They'd probably stopped somewhere to have aleisurely morning snack, with the truck waiting for them at theroadside.

  Lockley went on ten miles more. He begrudged the distances added bycurves in the road. He tended to fume when his underpowered carnoticeably slowed up on grades, and especially the long ones. He saw abear halfway up a hillside pause in its exploitation of a berry patchto watch the car go by below it. He saw more deer. Once a smalleranimal, probably a coyote, dived into a patch of brushwood and stayedhidden as long as the car remained in sight.

  More miles of empty highway. And then a long, straight stretch ofroad, and he suddenly saw vehicles coming around the curve at the endof it. They were not in line, singlelane, as traffic usually is on acurve. Both lanes were filled. The road was blocked by motor-driventraffic heading away from the lake, and not at a steady pace, but inheadlong flight.

  It roared on toward Lockley. Big trucks and little ones; passengercars in between them; a few motorcyclists catching up from the rear byriding on the road's shoulders. They were closely packed, as if bysome freak the lead had been taken by great trucks incapable of theroad speed of those behind them, yet with the frantic rearmost carsunable to pass. There was a humming and roaring of motors that filledthe air. They plunged toward Lockley's miniature roadster. Truck hornsblared.

  Lockley got off the highway and onto the right-hand shoulder. Hestopped. The crowded mass of rushing vehicles roared up to him andwent past. They were more remarkable than he'd believed. There weredirt mover trucks. There were truck-and-trailer combinations. Therewere sedans and dump trucks and even a convertible or two, and thenmore trucks--even tank trucks--and more sedans and half-tonners--acomplete and motley collection of every kind of gasoline-drivenvehicle that could be driven on a highway and used on a constructionproject.

  And every one was crowded with men. Trailer-trucks had their bodydoors open, and they were packed with the workmen of the constructioncamp near Boulder Lake. The sedans were jammed with passengers. Dirtmover trucks had men holding fast to handholds, and there were men inthe backs of the dump trucks. The racing traffic filled the highwayfrom edge to edge. It rushed past, giving off a deafening roar andclouds of gasoline fumes.

  They were gone, the solid mass of them at any rate. But now there cameolder cars, no less crowded, and then more spacious cars, not crowdedso much and less frantically pushing at those ahead. But even thesecars passed each other recklessly. There seemed to be an almosthysterical fear of being last.

  One car swung off to its left. There were five men in it. It brakedand stopped on the shoulder close to Lockley's car. The driver shoutedabove the din of passing motors, "You don't want to go up there.Everybody's ordered out. Everybody get away from Boulder Lake! Whenyou get the chance, turn around and get the hell away."

  He watched for a chance to get back on the road, having delivered hiswarning. Lockley got out of his car and went over, "You're talkingabout the thing that came down from the sky," he said grimly. "Therewas a girl up at the camp. Jill Holmes. Writing a piece about buildinga national park. Getting information about the job. Did anybody gether away?"

  The man who'd warned him continued to watch for a reasonable gap inthe flood of racing cars. They weren't crowded now as they had been,but it was still impossible to start in low and get back in thestream of vehicles without an almost certain crash. Then he turned hishead back, staring at Lockley.

  "Hell! Somebody told me to check on her. I was routing men out andloading 'em on whatever came by. I forgot!"

  A man in the back of the sedan said, "She hadn't left when we did. Isaw her. But I thought she had a ride all set."

  The man at the wheel said furiously, "She hasn't passed us! Unlessshe's in one of these...."

  Lockley set his teeth. He watched each oncoming car intently. A girlamong these fugitives would have been put with the driver in the cabof a truck, and he'd have seen a woman in any of the private cars.

  "If I don't see her go by," he said grimly, "I'll go up to the campand see if she's still there."

  The man in the driver's seat looked relieved.

  "If she's left behind, it's her fault. If you hunt for her, make itfast and be plenty careful. Keep to the camp and stay away from thelake. There was a hell of an explosion over there this morning. Threemen went to see what'd happened. They didn't come back. Two more wentafter 'em, and something hit them on the way. They smelled somethingworse than skunk. Then they were paralyzed, like they had hold of ahigh-tension line. They saw crazy colors and heard crazy sounds andthey couldn't move a finger. Their car ditched. In a while they cameout of it and they came back--fast! They'd just got back when we gotshort wave orders for everybody to get out. If you look for that girl,be careful. If she's still there, you get her out quick!" Then he saidsharply, "Here's a chance for us to get going. Move out of the way!"

  There was a gap in the now diminishing spate of cars. The driver ofthe stopped car drove furiously onto the highway. He shifted gears andaccelerated at the top of his car's power. Another car behind himbraked and barely avoided a crash while blowing its horn furiously.Then the traffic went on. But it was lessening now. It was mostlyprivate cars, owned by the workmen.

  Suddenly there were no cars coming down the long straight stretch ofroad. Lockley got back on the highway and resumed his rush toward thespot the others fled from. He heard behind him the diminishing rumbleand roar of the fugitive motors. He jammed his own accelerator down tothe floor and plunged on.

  There'd been an explosion by the lake, the man who'd warned him said.That checked. Three men went to see what had happened. That wasreasonable. They didn't come back. Considering what Vale had reported,it was almost inevitable. Then two other men went to find out whathappened to the first three and--that was news! A smell that was worsethan skunk. Paralysis in a moving car, which ditched. Remainingparalyzed while seeing crazy colors and hearing crazy sounds....Lockley could not even guess at an explanation. But the men hadremained paralyzed for some time, and then the sensations lifted. Theyhad fled back to the construction camp, evidently fearing that theparalysis might return. Their narrative must have been hair-raising,because when orders had come for the evacuation of the camp, they hadbeen obeyed with a promptitude suggesting panic. But apparentlynothing else had happened.

  The first three men were still missing--or at least there'd been nomention of their return. They'd either been killed or taken captive,judging by Vale's account and obvious experience. He was eitherkilled or captured, too, but it still seemed strange that Lockley hadheard so much of that struggle via a tight beam microwave transmitterthat needed to be accurately aimed. Vale had been cap
tured or killed.The three other men missing probably had undergone the same fate. Thetwo others had been made helpless but not murdered or taken prisoner.They'd simply been held until when they were released they'd flee.

  The car went over a bridge and rounded a curve. Here a deep cut hadbeen made and the road ran through it. It came out upon undulatingground where many curves were necessary.

  Another car came, plunging after the others. In the next ten milesthere were, perhaps a dozen more. They'd been hard to start, perhaps,and so left later than the rest. Jill wasn't in any of them. There wasone car traveling slowly, making thumping noises. Its driver made thebest time he could, following the others.

  Sober common sense pointed out that Vale's account was fully verified.There'd been a landing of non-human creatures in a ship from outerspace. The killing or capture of the first three men to investigate agigantic explosion was natural enough--the alien occupants of a spaceship would want to study the inhabitants of the world they'd landedon. The mere paralysis and release of two others could be explained onthe theory that the creatures who'd come to earth were satisfied withthree specimens of the local intelligent race to study. They had Vale,too. They weren't trying to conceal their arrival, though it wouldhave been impossible anyhow. But it was plausible enough that they'dtake measures to become informed about the world they'd landed on, andwhen they considered that they knew enough, they'd take the actionthey felt was desirable.

  All of which was perfectly rational, but there was anotherpossibility. The other possible explanation was--consideringeverything--more probable. And it seemed to offer even more appallingprospects.

  He drove on. Jill Holmes. He'd seen her four times; she was engaged toVale. It seemed extremely likely that she hadn't left the camp withthe workmen. If Lockley hadn't been obsessed with her, he'd have triedto make sure she was left behind before he tried to find her. If shewas still at the camp, she was in a dangerous situation.

  There'd been no other car from the camp for a long way now. But therecame a sharp curve ahead. Lockley drove into it. There was a roar, anda car came from the opposite direction, veering away from the road'sedge. It sideswiped the little car Lockley drove. The smaller carbucked violently and spun crazily around. It went crashing into aclump of saplings and came to a stop with a smashed windshield andcrumpled fenders, but the motor was still running. Lockley had brakedby instinct.

  The other car raced away without pausing.

  Lockley sat still for a moment, stunned by the suddenness of themishap. Then he raged. He got out of the car. Because of its smallsize, he thought he might be able to get it back on the road withsaplings for levers. But the job would take hours, and he wasirrationally convinced that Jill had been left behind in theconstruction camp.

  He was perhaps five miles from Boulder Lake itself and about the samedistance from the camp. It would take less time to go to the camp onfoot than to try to get the car on the road. Time was of the essence,and whoever or whatever the occupants of the landed ship might be,they'd know what a road was for. They'd sight an intruder in a car ona road long before they'd detect a man on foot who was not on ahighway and was taking some pains to pass unseen.

  He started out, unarmed and on foot. He was headed for the nearneighborhood of the thing Vale had described as coming from the sky.He was driven by fear for Jill. It seemed to him that his best pacewas only a crawl and he desperately needed all the speed he couldmuster.

  He headed directly across country for the camp. All the world seemedunaware that anything out of the ordinary was in progress. Birds sangand insects chirruped and breezes blew and foliage waved languidly.Now and again a rabbit popped out of sight of the moving figure of theman. But there were no sounds, or sights or indications of anythinguntoward where Lockley moved. He reflected that he was on his way tosearch for a girl he barely knew, and whom he couldn't be sure neededhis help anyway.

  Outside in the world, there were places where things were not sotranquil. By this time there were already troops in motion in longtrains of personnel-carrying trucks. There were mobile guided missiledetachments moving at top speed across state lines and along theexpress highway systems. Every military plane in the coastal area wasaloft, kept fueled by tanker planes to be ready for any sort ofoffensive or defensive action that might be called for. The short waveinstructions to the construction camp had become known, and all theworld knew that Boulder Lake National Park had been evacuated to avoidcontact with non-human aliens. The aliens were reported to have huntedmen down and killed them for sport. They were reported to haveparalysis beams, death beams and poison gas. They were described asindescribable, and described in "artist's conceptions" on televisionand in the newspapers. They appeared--according to circumstances--toresemble lizards or slugs. They were portrayed as carnivorous birdsand octopods. The artists took full advantage of their temporarilygreater importance than cameramen. They pictured these diverse aliensin their one known aggressive action of trailing Vale down andcarrying him away. This was said to be for vivisection. None of theartists' ideas were even faintly plausible, biologically. Thecreatures were even portrayed as turning heat rays upon humans, whodramatically burst into steam as the beams struck them. Obviously,there were also artist's conceptions of women being seized by thecreatures from outer space. There was only one woman known to be inthe construction camp, but that inconvenient fact didn't bother theartists.

  The United States went into a mild panic. But most people stayed ontheir jobs, and followed their normal routine, and the trains ran ontime.

  The public in the United States had become used to newspaper andbroadcast scares. They were unconsciously relegated to the samecategory as horror movies, which some day might come true, but notyet. This particular news story seemed more frightening than most, butstill it was taken more or less as shuddery entertainment. So most ofthe United States shivered with a certain amount of relish as ever newand ever more imaginative accounts appeared describing the landing ofintelligent monsters, and waited to see if it was really true. Thetruth was that most of America didn't actually believe it. It was likea Russian threat. It could happen and it might happen, but it hadn'thappened so far to the United States.

  An official announcement helped to guide public opinion in this safechannel. The Defense Department released a bulletin: An object hadfallen from space into Boulder Lake, Colorado. It was apparently alarge meteorite. When reported by radar before its landing, defenseauthorities had seized the opportunity to use it for a test ofemergency response to a grave alarm. They had used it to trigger atraining program and test of defensive measures made ready againstother possible enemies. After the meteorite landed, the defensemeasures were continued as a more complete test of the nation'sfighting forces' responsive ability. The object and its landing,however, were being investigated.

  Lockley tramped up hillsides and scrambled down steep slopes with manyboulders scattered here and there. He moved through a landscape inwhich nothing seemed to depart from the normal. The sun shone. Thecloud cover, broken some time since, was dissipating and now a goodtwo-thirds of the sky was wholly clear. The sounds of the wildernesswent on all around him.

  But presently he came to a partly-graded new road, cutting across hisway. A bulldozer stood abandoned on it, brand-new and in perfectorder, with the smell of gasoline and oil about it. He followed thegash in the forest it had begun. It led toward the camp. He came to aplace where blasting had been in progress. The equipment for blastingremained. But there was nobody in sight.

  Half a mile from this spot, Lockley looked down upon the camp. Therewere Quonset huts and prefabricated structures. There were streets ofclay and wires from one building to another. There was a long, low,open shed with long tables under its roof. A mess shed. Next to itmetal pipes pierced another roof, and wavering columns of heated airrose from those pipes. There was a building which would be acommissary. There was every kind of structure needed for a small city,though all were temporary. And there was no movement, no sound, nosign of
life except the hot air rising from the mess kitchenstovepipes.

  Lockley went down into the camp. All was silence. All was lifeless. Helooked unhappily about him. There would be no point, of course, inlooking into the dormitories, but he made his way to the mess shed.Some heavy earthenware plates and coffee cups, soiled, remained on thetable. There were a few flies. Not many. In the mess kitchen there wasgrayish smoke and the reek of scorched and ruined food. The stovesstill burned. Lockley saw the blue flame of bottled gas. He went on.The door of the commissary was open. Everything men might want to buyin such a place waited for purchasers, but there was no one to buy orsell.

  The stillness and desolation of the place resulted from less than anhour's abandonment. But somehow it was impossible to call out loudlyfor Jill. Lockley was appalled by the feeling of emptiness in suchbright sunshine. It was shocking. Men hadn't moved out of the camp.They'd simply left it, with every article of use dropped andabandoned; nothing at all had been removed. And there was no sign ofJill. It occurred to Lockley that she'd have waited for Vale at thecamp, because assuredly his first thought should have been for hersafety. Yes. She'd have waited for Vale to rescue her. But Vale waseither dead or a captive of the creatures that had been in the objectfrom the sky. He wouldn't be looking after Jill.

  Lockley found himself straining his eyes at the mountain from whoseflank Vale had been prepared to measure the base line between his postand Lockley's. That vantage point could not be seen from here, butLockley looked for a small figure that might be Jill, climbingvaliantly to warn Vale of the events he'd known before anybody else.

  Then Lockley heard a very small sound. It was faint, with an irregularrhythm in it. It had the cadence of speech. His pulse leaped suddenly.There was the mast for the short wave set by which the camp had keptin touch with the outer world. Lockley sprinted for the building underit. His footsteps sounded loudly in the silent camp, and they drownedout the sound he was heading for.

  He stopped at the open door. He heard Jill's voice saying anxiously,"But I'm sure he'd have come to make certain I was safe!" A pause."There's no one else left, and I want...." Another pause. "But he wasup on the mountainside! At least a helicopter could--"

  Lockley called, "Jill!"

  He heard a gasp. Then she said unsteadily, "Someone just called. Waita moment."

  She came to the door. At sight of Lockley her face fell.

  "I came to make sure you were all right," he said awkwardly. "Are youtalking to outside?"

  "Yes. Do you know anything about--"

  "I'm afraid I do," said Lockley. "Right now the important thing is toget you out of here. I'll tell them we're starting. All right?"

  She stood aside. He went up to the short wave set which looked muchlike an ordinary telephone, but was connected to a box with dials andswitches. There was a miniature pocket radio--a transistor radio--ontop of the short wave cabinet. Lockley picked up the short wavemicrophone. He identified himself. He said he'd come to make sure ofJill's safety, and that he'd been passed by the rushing mass of carsand trucks that had evacuated everybody else. Then he said, "I've gota car about four miles away. It's in a ditch, but I can probably getit out. It'll be a lot safer for Miss Holmes if you send a helicopterthere to pick her up."

  The reply was somehow military in tone. It sounded like a civilianbeing authoritative about something he knew nothing about. Lockleysaid, "Over" in a dry tone and put down the microphone. He picked upthe pocket radio and put it in his pocket. It might be useful.

  "They say to try to make it out in my car," he told Jill wryly. "Ascivilians, I suppose they haven't any helicopters they can give ordersto. But it probably makes sense. If there are some queer creaturesaround, there's no point in stirring them up with a flying contraptionbanging around near their landing place. Not before we're ready totake real action. Come along. I've got to get you away from here."

  "But I'm waiting...." She looked distressed. "He wanted me to leaveyesterday. We almost quarrelled about it. He'll surely come to makesure I'm safe...."

  "I'm afraid I have bad news," said Lockley. Then he described, asgently as he could, his last talk with Vale. It was the one whichended with squeaks and strugglings transmitted by the communicator,and then the smashing of the communicator itself. He didn't mentionthe puzzling fact that the communicator had stayed perfectly aimedwhile it was picked up and squeaked at and destroyed. He had noexplanation for it. What he did have to tell was bad enough. She wentdeathly pale, searching his face as he told her.

  "But--but--" She swallowed. "He might have been hurt and--not killed.He might be alive and in need of help. If there are creatures fromsomewhere else, they might not realize that he could be unconsciousand not dead! He'd make sure about me! I--I'll go up and make sureabout him...."

  Lockley hesitated. "It's not likely," he said carefully, "that he wasleft there injured. But if you feel that somebody has to make sure,I'll do it. For one thing, I can climb faster. My car is ditched backyonder. You go and wait by it. At least it's farther from the lake andyou should be safer there. I'll make sure about Vale."

  He explained in detail how she could find the car. Up this hillside toa slash through the forest for a highway. Due south from an abandonedbulldozer. Keep out of sight. Never show against a skyline.

  She swallowed again. Then she said, "If he needs help, you could--domore than I can. But I'll wait there where the woods begin. I can hideif I need to, and I--might be of some use."

  He realized that she deluded herself with the hope that he, Lockley,might bring an injured Vale down the mountainside and that she couldbe useful then. He let her. He went through the camp with her to puther on the right track. He gave her the pocket radio, so she couldlisten for news. When she went on out of sight in brushwood, he turnedback toward the mountain on which Vale had occupied an observationpost. It was actually a million-year-old crater wall that he climbedpresently. And he took a considerable chance. As he climbed, for sometime he moved in plain view. If the crew of the ship in Boulder Lakewere watching, they'd see him rather than Jill. If they took action,it would be against him and not Jill. Somehow he felt better equippedto defend himself than Jill would be.

  He climbed. Again the world was completely normal, commonplace. Therewere mountain peaks on every hand. Some had been volcanoesoriginally, some had not. With each five hundred feet of climbing, hecould see still more mountains. The sky was cloudless now. He climbeda thousand feet. Two. Three. He could see between peaks for a fullthirty miles to the spot where he'd been at daybreak. But he wasmaking his ascent on the back flank of this particular mountain. Hecould not see Boulder Lake from there. On the other hand, no creatureat Boulder Lake should be able to see him. Only an exploring partywhich might otherwise sight Jill would be apt to detect him, a slowlymoving speck against a mountainside.

  He reached the level at which Vale's post had been assigned. He movedcarefully and cautiously around intervening masses of stone. The windblew past him, making humming noises in his ears. Once he dislodged asmall stone and it went bouncing and clattering down the slope he'dclimbed.

  He saw where Vale could have been as he watched something come downfrom the sky. He found Vale's sleeping bag, and the ashes of hiscampfire. Here too was the communicator. It had been smashed by a hugestone lifted and dropped upon it, but before that it had been moved.It was not in place on the bench mark from which it could measureinches in a distance of scores of miles.

  There was no other sign of what had apparently happened here. Theashes of the fire were undisturbed. Vale's sleeping bag looked as ifit had not been slept in, as if it had only been spread out for thenight before. Lockley went over the rock shelf inch by inch. No redstains which might be blood. Nothing....

  No. In a patch of soft earth between two stones there was a hoofprint.It was not a footprint. A hoof had made it, but not a horse's hoof,nor a burro's. It wasn't a mountain sheep track. It was not the trackof any animal known on earth. But it was here. Lockley found himselfwondering absurdly if th
e creature that had made it would squeak, orif it would roar. They seemed equally unlikely.

  He looked cautiously down at the lake which was almost half a milebelow him. The water was utterly blue. It reflected only the craterwall and the landscape beyond the area where the volcanic cliffs hadfallen. Nothing moved. There was no visible apparatus set up on theshore, as Vale had said. But something had happened down in the lake.Trees by the water's edge were bent and broken. Masses of brushwoodhad been crushed and torn away. Limbs were broken down tens of yardsfrom the water, and there were gullies to be seen wherever there wassoft earth. An enormous wave had flung itself against the nearlycircular boundary of the lake. It had struck like a tidal wave dozensof feet high in an inland body of water. It was extremely convincingevidence that something huge and heavy had hurtled down from the sky.

  But Lockley saw no movement nor any other novelty in this wilderness.He heard nothing that was not an entirely normal sound.

  But then he smelled something.

  It was a horrible, somehow reptilian odor. It was the stench ofjungle, dead and rotting. It was much, much worse than the smell of askunk.

  He moved to fling himself into flight. Then light blinded him. Closinghis eyelids did not shut it out. There were all colors, intolerablyvivid, and they flashed in revolving combinations and forms whichsucceeded each other in fractions of seconds. He could see nothing butthis light. Then there came sound. It was raucous. It was cacophonic.It was an utterly unorganized tumult in which musical notes anddiscords and bellowings and shriekings were combined so as to beunbearable. And then came pure horror as he found that he could notmove. Every inch of his body had turned rigid as it became filled withanguish. He felt, all over, as if he were holding a charged wire.

  He knew that he fell stiffly where he stood. He was blinded by lightand deafened by sound and his nostrils were filled with the nauseatingfetor of jungle and decay. These sensations lasted for what seemedyears.

  Then all the sensations ended abruptly. But he still could not see;his eyes were still dazzled by the lights that closing his eyelids hadnot changed. He still could not hear. He'd been deafened by the soundsthat had dazed and numbed him. He moved, and he knew it, but he couldnot feel anything. His hands and body felt numb.

  Then he sensed that the positions of his arms and legs were changed.He struggled, blind and deaf and without feeling anywhere. He knewthat he was confined. His arms were fastened somehow so that he couldnot move them.

  And then gradually--very gradually--his senses returned. He heardsqueakings. At first they were faint as the exhausted nerve ends inhis ears only began to regain their function. He began to regain thesense of touch, though he felt only furriness everywhere.

  He was raised up. It seemed to him that claws rather than fingersgrasped him. He stood erect, swaying. His sense of balance had beenlost without his realizing it. It came back, very slowly. But he sawnothing. Clawlike hands--or handlike claws--pulled at him. He felthimself turned and pushed. He staggered. He took steps out of the needto stay erect. The pushings and pullings continued. He found himselfurged somewhere. He realized that his arms were useless because theywere wrapped with something like cord or rope.

  Stumbling, he responded to the urging. There was nothing else to do.He found himself descending. He was being led somewhere which couldonly be downward. He was guided, not gently, but not brutally either.

  He waited for sight to return to him. It did not come.

  It was then he realized that he could not see because he wasblindfolded.

  There were whistling squeaks very near him. He began helplessly todescend the mountain, surrounded and guided and sometimes pulled byunseen creatures.