The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (56 page)

He pulled forth a pipe and tobacco. He filled and lighted his pipe. The watching men stirred hungrily.

“Smoke up on me,” Lucky said hospitably. “I got some more.”

He tossed a bulging bag to the nearest man. It went from hand to hand. Some of the men had not smelled tobacco for weeks.

“They’d cleared out, all right, but we looted the place of grub,” he added. ‘We burned the house, too, and set fire to the crops in the field. It was the boss of the gang who done that. That fella kinda—uh—int’rested me. How’d he know about a farm that hadn’t been raided, and why’d he want to burn crops that coulda been come back for after they was ripe?”

The atmosphere was not cordial. These men were farmers, too, and half their number had been killed by looters exactly like those Lucky said he’d joined.

“I kinda figured things out,” said Lucky. “If I was right, he’d have some kinda report to make, that night. So I didn’t go off to sleep like the others. I hid out an’ watched. And when everybody else was snorin’, the boss of the gang he walked off beyond the fire, and he listened awhile, and he went on a ways farther, and then he started mutterin’ like he was mutterin’ to himself.

“I let him talk himself out, and when he quit and started back to the fire I jumped ’im. Knocked him cold. I tied him up an’ heaved him on my back and carried him till I was tired. Then I made sure he was tied tight and went to sleep.”

Steve felt a light touch against his shoulder. It was Frances, sitting on the floor beside him to listen to Lucky. She leaned comfortably, unconsciously, against Steve. Any trace of jealousy he might have felt evaporated on the instant.

“Come mornin’ I woke up with a shot-gun in my middle. There was a man and two women there, and the man was ready to blow me to here-and-gone. He was the farmer that we’d burned his house and crops. He’d watched us loot and burn his place. He’d have shot me whilst I was asleep, only he recognized the man I was carryin’ all tied up as the guy who’d fired his wheatfield. So he was curious to know what it was all about, and he meant to ask me before he killed me. I told him.”

Lucky grinned and puffed on his pipe. He enjoyed an audience, did Lucky. A little while before, most of his present hearers had been favorably impressed by his present of tobacco, and then turned to instinctive hatred by his narration of a share in a guerilla raid. Now they wavered. They did not know what to think. And Lucky enjoyed their indecision.

“That guerilla boss, he sure got eloquent. I never heard any man beg for his life so hard. So the farmer, he took my word for what I was after—the evidence was pretty good—and we staked that guerilla boss out and we built a fire and begun to ask him questions. When he started lyin’ we stripped him—that was when I found the first one of the dinguses, Steve—and got some brands ready, and then he told the truth.”

The eyes of the refugees burned, now. They no longer hated Lucky. They waited hungrily to hear of torture.

“What nationality was he, Lucky,” Steve said suddenly. “What language did he speak into that transmitter?”

“Huh!” said Lucky scornfully. “He was nothin’ but a lowdown looter! He talked American same as you and me. He’d been bossin’ a kinda small gang, lootin’ and burnin’ and killin’, and fellas would turn up and join and drop out again, and he wasn’t makin’ out so good. But a fella turned up and offered confidential to give him guns and whisky to build his gang up with if he’d take tips by short-wave radio and report what he seen and done.”

Lucky turned and gave Steve a quick glance.

“You and me, Steve, woulda shot that guy for a spy, but this boss guerilla took him up. And the fella gave him a short-wave set and told him how to use it—but he warned him not to open it—and sure enough, next night the short-wave set told him where to find a cache of whisky and a few guns, and he began to prosper. He had thirty—forty men under him when I joined up. Mostly they were raidin’ farms that the short-wave told him about, burnin’ ’em and gettin’ the grub and killin’ the people just for the deviltry of it.”

He paused.

“It took us a right long time to get all the details outa him,” he added drily. “Once we had to start a little bit of fire on his middle. But he told us everything he knew, and I treated him fair.” His tone was virtuous. “I done just like I promised I would, if he told me everything he knew without holdin’ back none.”

A bearded man leaned forward, his eyes burning.

“You didn’t let him go, man!”

“Shucks, no!” said Lucky in surprise. “But I kept to my promise. The farmer wanted to do it, so I let him, but that fella got just what I promised him—killed quick, with one shot. It took a lotta argument to get him to be satisfied with that, but I—uh—persuaded him.” Lucky’s eyes glowed with a satisfaction that comes when a long pent-up hatred is released by brutal revenge.

Frances’ hand, in Steve’s, tightened convulsively. Steve made no move. There could be no ethics in a war such as was now being fought.

“And after that, Lucky?” Steve said evenly. “That’s only one transmitter. Here are a half dozen.”

“Oh, we found out how to get from him. There’s other fellas like him that got transmitters, and there’s fellas that pass ’em out The ones who pass ’em out are from the folks with planes and bombs. One of those dials is for locatin’ another fella who’s got one. It’s so they can join up and know each other and not waste time fightin’ each other. He explained all about it. So the farmer and me, we used that one. We set it to make a kinda call, like he told us how, and we set and waited. Two-three days later some fellas come by and one of ’em told the others to go on ahead while he set down. When his fellas were outa sight, he came straight toward our sendin’ set. I killed him.”

Lucky’s air was tranquil; his tone conversational.

“That fella had two pistols and more ammunition than you’d think one man could carry! And he had another set just like the one I had. I give it to the farmer and he said he was gonna go in the business of sendin’ out calls for fellas with those sets. They’d always arrange to meet him quiet—naturally. And it’d be profitable work, when you think of it. Anybody hidin’ out would give a lotta grub for a gun or pistol and some shells, and him and the two women, all havin’ guns, could take care of themselves easy.

“Him and the women went off to where he said he knew there was another fella hidin’ out. He said he guessed he’d set his friend up in the business too, if it turned out good. In fact, he might set up several fellas, killin’ off men with sendin’ sets that talk with the folks that have planes an’ bombs.

“So I arranged a recognition-signal that everybody in that business would use to know everybody else, and we parted. A right nice fella, that farmer. He said he hoped I’d come to see him some time if things ever got better and he got his house built back up again.”

Lucky seemed to consider his story ended. He puffed on his pipe and grinned at his audience.

“That still accounts for only two sets,” said Steve. “And you’ve got a half dozen.”

“Yeah,” said Lucky. “It was a kinda interestin’ business. And it’s surprisin’ how many decent folks there are around, even yet. Hidin’ out, all of ’em, and half-starved, most of ’em.

“But I set three-four of ’em up in business, and they’re kinda gettin’ a little confidence. They’re even darin’ to get in touch with each other. I told ’em it was ploughed fields that tip off the planes, and the planes tip off the guerillas, so they oughta make out better.

“They’ll plant stuff in little patches. No furrows. No neat fields. That’ll help a lot, all by itself. And they’ll pass on the word. It’s bound to spread, when all the sendin’ sets in this locality get wiped out and the fellas that are huntin’ ’em have to go travelin’ to stay in business.”

There was a deeply satisfied silence all around the room. The men who had suffered so horribly from guerillas had, at last, the satisfaction of knowing that guerillas were being killed. That spies were being hunted. That at least a small dent had been made in the disaster that had befallen civilization.

There was still no safety for them, however. There was still no real reason to hope. Their food depended upon the operation of a device to control chance, which they did not understand and which instinct forbade them fully to believe in. And they were definitely, terribly vulnerable.

This meant not only against guerillas and bandit gangs, armed and directed from the planes which could drop bombs. They could be blasted at any instant of any day or night if the folk who had destroyed civilization heard so much as a whisper, of a suspicion that they clung to anything—those folk who had been doomed to die.

And there was worse, which they did not know. When the house was filled with the minor turmoil of people finding their resting-places for the night in so crowded a menage, Lucky Connors plucked at Steve’s sleeve and beckoned with his head. Steve followed him out of doors.

“Frances looks okay, fella,” said Lucky.

“I think she is,” said Steve. “I hope so, anyhow.”

“Yeah.” Lucky was silent for a moment. “She—uh—understood why I went off?”

“Yes,” said Steve uncomfortably.

There was a pause. Then Lucky shrugged. He said in a different tone:

“Things are comin’ to a head fella. On my way back here I picked off one last fella with a sendin’ set. He and his gang seemed to be headed this way. It worried me. I—uh—made him talk. I guess he figured I was somebody doublecrossin’ the fellas with planes and bombs. Anyhow, he’d been told to hunt up this house and find out what was goin’ on here.”

Steve frowned. “Here, eh? That’s bad. What were his instructions, Lucky?”

“If it was guerillas like his outfit, okay—he’d get paid off in whisky and grub for findin’ it out,” Lucky answered. “If it wasn’t, he was to report that, after wipin’ everybody out if he could. He ain’t goin’ to report anything. I don’t know if his gang will come on here or not. But when he don’t report, somethin’s goin’ to happen! The folks who smashed up this whole country are interested in us. They know that somethin’s wrong somewheres, with all their spies vanishin’ like they been doin’. They’re goin’ to tighten up all around. They’re pickin’ on this place to start. What are we gonna do about it?”

Steve took a deep breath.

“I guess we’ll have to fight,” he said somberly. “There’s nothing else to do. You know, it would be interesting to know who they are or where they are or what the devil we can do about them. I feel like a gnat trying to start a fight with a locomotive.”

CHAPTER XIII

Enemy Bombs

Knowing the extent of the danger which threatened, Steve made no pretense of going to sleep that night. Followed by Lucky Connors, he repaired to the room he’d set aside as a laboratory, and resumed his labors. But this time he had very specific objectives. Lucky Connors couldn’t be of much help; he merely sat on a bench and watched Steve. And Steve’s system of work seemed lunacy, at that.

Steve took one of the six child’s copy-books and wrote in it. Then he took the handles of Bob’s elaborate apparatus of wires and stray objects, and stood frowning for an instant. Nothing happened. He crossed out what he had written and wrote something else. He held the two handles again. The process went on and on. After nearly an hour, two wires in a bottle of clear liquid glowed incandescent, and a bare wire turned white with frost.

“That helps,” said Steve. He surveyed what he had written and did not cross it out. “I’m playing hot-and-cold, Lucky. This thing does the same things the crater-stones do, and I’m trying to find a way to survive, in the possible futures that lie ahead. The crater-stones get hot when they work. This thing makes those two wires glow. It gets its energy from the wire that turns white, changing its contained heat into electricity and dropping away down in temperature in the process.”

“Whatcha tryin’ to do, Steve?” asked Lucky, who obviously was puzzled.

“Right now I’m pulling for a way to make a record of a thought-pattern, so it can keep on pulling for something even when my mind gets tired,” Steve answered. “Nobody can hold a thought more than a second or two without some change. In the old days we had gadgets that did everything but think. I’ve got to make one that will wish!”

Lucky shook his head.

“Too deep for me,” he admitted. “Way over my head.”

“I’m playing hot-and-cold,” explained Steve. “You remember how I found out this house was still standing before I saw it? I’m doing the same thing now. I pulled for it, just now, that I’d find a way to make a thought-record on iron. The gadget didn’t light up. So it wasn’t in a possible future that I could make a thought-record on iron. I went on, pulling for every possible material at hand. It just lighted up on protein.

“It is possible, in the future, to make a thought-record on some sort of protein. Now I’ve got to find out what kind and how. When I get close to what I want, I’m hot and this gadget works. When I’m not, I’m cold and nothing happens. It’s a wacky way to do research, but it’s fast. I wish I were cleverer, though. I might be able to make it a game of ten questions and get my answers in a real hurry!”

He wrote in the copy-book and held the handles, frowning. Nothing happened. He crossed out the writing and wrote something else. Nothing happened. He crossed out and wrote, and crossed out and wrote. Lucky watched for a long, long time. Presently he yawned. Ultimately he dozed off.