Day of the beasts v1 0, p.6
Day of the Beasts (v1.0), page 6
“Any idea where we are, sir?”
“No idea at present. We ought to be somewhere over New York right now. It’s long past dawn, but the cloud cover is so low that I can’t see a thing down there.”
“Think anything’s wrong?”
“God knows. Where the blazes is that robot?”
He climbed from his seat and moved along the central aisle toward the control room. Before he reached it, the door swung open and the humanoid robot stood in front of him, glassite eyes watching him impassively.
“There was something you required, Major?”
“Yes, there certainly is,” he retorted angrily. “Where the devil are we? We were supposed to arrive at New York before dawn. Is something wrong with the plane?”
“Nothing is wrong, Major.”
Brad felt irritated by the other’s smoothly metallic voice. Now it was beginning to grate on his nerves.
“Then why haven’t we landed? I thought these planes were supposed to be completely automatic. That nothing could go wrong with them, not even the timing along the route.”
“I regret that there is some technical hitch at the other end, Major.” The robot spread its hands in a peculiarly human gesture. “There is nothing wrong with the plane, I can assure you. I’ve checked all of the instruments. They are functioning perfectly.”
“Then what is it that’s holding us up?” muttered Norton crisply. For some unaccountable reason, he could feel the small hairs on the nape of his neck prickling uncomfortably. Even now, he was sufficient of a human to get gooseflesh at the idea of a robot doing what ought to have been a man’s job.
“I—” For the first time in his life, Brad realized that the robot was no longer sure of himself, that there was something beyond its orbit of reference, beyond its mechanical comprehension. When they had been created, everything necessary for the proper and full performance of their particular jobs had been built into their positronic brains. Now the unforeseen had apparently happened.
“Go on,” he snapped.
“We are no longer receiving the signals from the airfield at New York.”
That didn’t make sense. There were secondary control circuits. Everything had been allowed for. During the whole thirty years that these things had been functioning, there had never been the slightest suspicion of anything going wrong with the robot set-up.
Still there always had to be a first time, he told himself dismally; and this seemed to be it. He shook the thought away.
“Then what is going to be done about it?” he inquired, keeping his temper. “We can’t remain airborne like this until our fuel gives out.”
He stiffened his mind, closed his eyes momentarily and fought the temporary panic which threatened to overwhelm him.
“Can the plane be brought in to land manually?” asked Gourlay, speaking directly to the robot The other paused, regarding him curiously for a moment with unwinking eyes, then nodded.
“It can be done. There are instruments which enable the plane to be operated from here. But they are never used. They may not even function. Our only hope is to make for another airfield.”
“And that would take us away from New York.” Brad shook his head and turned to Gourlay. “We’ve got to get through if possible. I’ve got a feeling, a bad feeling. I don’t know if you feel the same about this thing as I do, Sergeant.”
“I think I know what you mean, sir. If possible I’d like to try to get this plane down. There ought to be radarscopes on board which could pick out the ground details for us in spite of the cloud.”
Brad eyed him in mild surprise. “Have you ever flown a plane before?”
“Used to do it back in the old days, sir, five-six years ago. It wasn’t a plane like this, of course, but the principle is the same, so long as we can take it out of automatic and put the controls into manual.”
“Then do what you can, Sergeant. If you need any help in this—” He threw a meaningful glance at the robot standing in the entrance to the cabin. “I’ll do everything I can.”
“Then tell this hunk of metal to get out of the way while there’s still time, sir.” Gourlay shared the major’s inner hatred for robots.
Brad gave the necessary command. For a moment, he thought that the robot intended to ignore it, but after a momentary pause, it stepped aside and Gourlay slipped through into the control cabin. Brad followed him, and stood behind the pilot”s seat while the other examined the complexity of the instrument board.
“Think you can find your way around it?” Brad asked anxiously.
“I think so, sir. The basic principles are the same as I’d figured.”
“Good. Then get us down in one piece; that’s all I ask of you.”
“I’ll do my best, sir. Better hang onto something, though; this is going to be a little more bumpy than a normal landing.”
They cut down through the cloud, losing altitude a little more quickly than Brad had anticipated. He clung onto the back of the pilot’s chair as the sergeant followed the circling radarscope with one eye, keeping the other on the banks of dials and instruments.
The landing was rough. The ground seemed to come up to meet them in a rush and blur of grey and brown. The runway stretched away in front of them, and the wheels touched down, then lifted momentarily before hitting again. Brad fought savagely to keep his balance as Gourlay applied the brakes.
Then they were down safely and taxiing along the perimeter track toward the hangars and airport buildings. Around them the mist swirled, obscuring most of the details.
Exhaling deeply, he pulled himself upright, then turned and went along the empty rows of seats to the door. The robot stood waiting. The door swung open and the telescopic steps unfolded themselves to the ground. He climbed down slowly, with the sergeant clattering behind him.
Seconds later, they stood on the concrete with the cold mist stinging their eyes and the backs of their nostrils.
“So we finally made it. After all that trouble, we’re here, and the first thing we’ve got to do is—”
He stopped short in mid-sentence, because earlier, there had been too much to do to see the details of the landing ground beneath them, and he had had too much on his mind to wonder why there had been no signals from the airfield; but now he saw for the first time…
He saw the shattered ruins of the tall, once graceful buildings, harsh outlines blurred a little by the swirling wraiths of mist, but not blurred sufficiently for him to escape the full horror of the scene.
Sergeant Gourlay moved forward with a sudden shout, but the other caught desperately at his arm, holding him back.
“Smashed completely,” breathed Gourlay. “Now we know why there were no signals.”
“Now we know,” repeated Brad hoarsely. “We’ll go and take a look at the full extent of the damage. It may not be as bad at it looks here. Keep your gun handy, just in case.”
“I’m not likely to do otherwise, sir,” said the other grimly. He fell into step beside Brad. Behind them, the robot stood in the doorway of the plane for a moment as though unable to make up its positronic mind what to do in these unfamiliar circumstances. Then it moved smoothly and sinuously down the ladder and followed them at a respectable distance.
Minutes later, they were clambering over the twisted wreckage which blocked the entrance to the control tower. Normally, it was a massive concrete building filled with a complex array of electronic and positronic devices, manned by a staff of trained robots, controlling the movements of possibly several hundred planes within a fifty mile radius.
Now it was a shambles. Broken pillars of concrete, several over a foot thick, lay strewn in all directions. Brad stared at the scene for some time without thinking. Then, gradually, his mind began to assimilate what he saw. In the strange half-light of the mist, the strangeness of the smashed interior was almost unremarkable.
Broken glass littered the floor. The instruments had been smashed beyond all hope of repair. The dural casings of the receivers and transmitters had been bent and crushed by some terrible force beyond his comprehension. Cable harnesses twisted and ran all over the floor.
In front of the splintered glass of the large curved window, looking out over the silent airfield, they found the remains of the robot operators. All had been crushed almost beyond recognition. None of them had apparently left his post when the catastrophe had struck. That was one of the prime directives built into them. Most of them looked so lifelike that he had come to regard them as human, possessing human failings and instincts. This fact alone was sufficient for him to realize how wrong he had been.
“There’s nothing here that will help us one little bit,” he muttered finally, half to himself. His voice sounded harsh and strangely loud in the clinging silence. He moved toward the door, glass splintering under his feet. “I suppose that we’d better—”
A harsh, metallic voice said: “What is going on out there? Who is that speaking?”
Brad whirled. There was no one there, no one who could have spoken.
Then the voice came again, from the comer of the room. “If there is anyone still alive out there at the airport, for God’s sake answer. This circuit still seems to be open.”
Circuits! Something clicked into place in his brain. Moving forward through the rubble, it was the work of a few moments to locate the small receiver-transmitter unit, balanced precariously on the edge of a small shelf, but still intact in spite of all the chaos around it.
“This is Major Norton of the United States Army,” he said in a rush of words. “Who’s that—and where are you?”
“The Army.” There was a deep note of incredulous surprise in the voice, then a deep, relieved chuckle. “Thank God, we could have done with you boys ten hours ago.
Where the devil have you been all this time? Didn’t any of the messages get through to Washington?”
“We got them all right. We’ve just gotten in. Found the place wrecked and had to pilot in manually. Where are you right now?”
“Thirty-Second Street. Get here as soon as you can, Major. This is an emergency. The subway is still working, but none of the surface traffic. We’ll be watching out for you when you arrive.”
“O.K. We’re on our way.”
“One other thing, Major.” The other’s voice, in spite of its metallic timbre, had altered subtly.
“Yes. What is it?”
“Watch your step when you reach the streets. There may still be some of them around.” The line went dead with a final click.
V
The first street they came to outside the airport looked as if it had been hit by a couple of hydrogen bombs. There was not a single foot of the road surface which was not lying under a pile of rubble where the buildings on either side had toppled toward the street, crashing in a shower of bricks and steer and glass.
The need for care was justified. If any of those creatures were still in the vicinity, Brad had no doubt as to what chances he and the sergeant had of remaining alive. At the end of the street they found the entrance to the subway. It was almost blocked by rubble, but they managed to scramble over it and down the escalator toward the platform fifty feet or so beneath the surface of the city.
They heard a low rumble as they reached the bottom of the moving escalator. For a moment, Brad wondered how the power managed to continue sending the trains moving, operating everything in spite of all the damage above. Then he remembered the auxiliary generators which had been installed in the event of an atomic attack on the city and knew that the automatic controls had switched over to them.
Down here they discovered few survivors. They sat crouched in huddled groups against the tilted walls or on the platforms, scarcely moving when the trains came sliding in with a faint hiss, moving on again, almost completely empty. The faces of the survivors were dull and vacant, eyes staring with shock. Brad paused in front of one middle-aged man who stood with his back against the wall, staring straight in front of him. The eyes kept twisting horribly, as though they had seen something which was not for human eyes.
Brad shook him gently by the arm, then more savagely, hoping to evoke a shock response, but the other was sunk too deeply in his self-imposed trance to be brought out of it by such normal methods. Perhaps if he were gotten to a hospital, there might still be time to save his mind.
“Are they all the same?” he asked, as the sergeant came slowly toward him.
The other nodded wordlessly. Three minutes later, the indicator flashed the destination of the train due to arrive next at the platform, and they moved forward as the low, hissing rumble sounded in the distance, somewhere along the empty black tunnel of midnight darkness which stretched away beneath the bowels of the city on their right.
The short journey was quickly over. Almost before Brad realized it, the train had slowed at their destination, and he got stiffly to his feet, waited for the door to slide back automatically, then stepped out onto the platform. A draught of chill air swirled briefly about him, chilling him to the bone. The train clattered away into the dark mouth of the tunnel as they ran swiftly toward the escalators, running up them two steps at a time in spite of the fact that they were still moving.
From the entrance at the top, it was possible to look out over far more of New York than had ever been possible before. Tall skyscrapers had been pulled down to their foundations. As they worked their way forward, they were forced to skirt around huge masses of rubble, so that their hands and knees were bruised and bleeding by the time they reached the end of Thirty-Second Street Brad paused at the end of it and peered into the dust haze which was still settling slowly in places. The sun was trying to break through the mist, and as it thinned in places, it was possible to make out the ugly scarred gashes of the city.
Slowly, cautiously they went forward, the only sound in the whole city being the crunch of their boots on that smashed stone underfoot and the harsh gusts of their breathing as they pulled themselves over rearing piles of debris.
“There’s nothing here,” said Gourlay after a short pause.
“What did you expect to see?” Brad looked at him out of the comer of his eye. “You didn’t think they’d be waving a flag of welcome, did you? For all we know, those creatures might be on the other side of those buildings. The minute they see anything moving, they move in for the kill. So far, we know nothing about them whatsoever. They may have senses that we don’t even know about.”
In the distance, there was a sudden thunder as a tall building crashed, swaying, to the ground. The earth beneath their feet shuddered convulsively for a few moments, and a dust cloud rose up, blending with the thinning mist.
Ten yards farther on they came across the first real horror they had encountered in the city. The automobile lay half-buried beneath rabble and stone, but it was not the weight of the debris which had smashed the vehicle to pulp. Something had stepped on it, flattening it completely. The man inside, what little they could see of the body, had stood no chance at survival.
“At least the poor devil probably never knew what hit him,” said Gourlay hollowly.
They pushed on. A few of the buildings toward the far end of the street seemed to have escaped major damage, as though whatever it was that had caused all of the mess had suddenly turned off and headed south across the city.
“Major Norton?” The voice called harshly to them from the opposite side of the ruined street.
Brad whirled instinctively, and relaxed as he saw the two men standing on the sidewalk gesturing to them. He heaved a sigh of relief. For a time he had imagined that it might have been a robot calling them on that communicator, instead of another human being.
“Over here.”
He waved to indicate that he understood. Carefully he followed the sergeant, picking his way cautiously over the bricks and splintered shards of glass.
“Glad you guys got here,” said the other. He thrust out his hand and shook Brad’s warmly. “For some time, we’ve been trying to contact anybody else who might still be alive in this city.”
He motioned to his companion, a tall, gangling man with a couple of days’ growth of beard on his chin. “This here is Bill Wade. I’m Rod Thomson.”
“How come you managed to escape?” Brad asked. “We met up with a few survivors in the subway, but they seemed shocked. We could get nothing out of them.” “That doesn’t surprise me in the least,” muttered the other grimly. He threw a swiftly apprehensive glance about him, peering up into the sky.
“Let’s get off the street, Major. It isn’t safe to be out in the open.”
The other led them into a doorway cluttered with debris, through a hollowly echoing room into the rear of the building. There were three more people in the room, two men and a tall, fair-haired woman.
“We found them, Ben.” Thomson nodded to the short, oldish man seated’ in front of the transmitter. “No sign of those nightmare creatures.”
“They’ve probably gone back to the country. That seems to be where they’ve holed up during the daytime.” Brad remained silent for a while, listening to the others. He had a feeling that here they might discover something important which would give them a clue to go on. At the moment, they were groping in the dark.
He managed a thin smile as the older man looked at him curiously. “We got your message in Washington yesterday,” he said quietly. “That’s why we’re here. It looks as though we’re a little too late. The place looks as though it’s been atom-bombed.”
“Worse than that” There was an odd edge to the woman’s voice. She lowered herself into the chair. Brad noticed that the wall behind her was cracked in several places, and there was a thin white film of plaster on the carpet. “Where do these creatures come from? How could they exist? Why haven’t we seen them on earth before?” “If we could answer even one of those questions, we might know how to fight them,” he said grimly. “So far we don’t. But that’s why we’re here.”
“You?” Wade looked at him in astonishment. “If we’re to stop them, we need the entire Army. We may even need the most potent weapons they have. Somebody has got to do something to protect us—and fast!” There was a rising note of hysteria in his tone. “We can’t be expected to remain here and be killed without a chance.”
