Suddenly from the balcony over George"s head a man leaned over, a metal folding chair in his hands, aiming at George"s head. An instant later the man disappeared in a flash and the chair dropped toward George. He moved only a few inches and the chair thudded to the platform before him. He had not looked up.
For a moment the crowd sat stunned. Then they rose and started for the blue man. Some drew guns they had brought. The hall was filled with blinding flashes, with smoke, with a horrible stench, screams, swearing, cries of fear and pain. There was a rush for the exits. Some died at the feet of their fellow men.
In the end, when all were gone, George of Zanthar still stood on the platform, alone. There was no movement except the twitching of the new dead, the trampled, on the floor.
Events happened fast after that. The Illinois National Guard mobilized, sent a division to Brentwood to hunt George down. He met them at the city square. They rumbled in and trained machine guns and tank rifles on him. The tanks and personnel flashed out of existence before a shot was fired.
Brentwood was ordered evacuated. The regular Army was called in.
Reconnaissance planes reported George was still standing in the city square. Jet planes materialized just above the hills and made sudden dives, but before their pilots could fire a shot, they were snuffed out of the air in a burst of fire.
Bombers first went over singly, only to follow the jets" fate. A squadron bloomed into a fiery ball as it neared the target. A long-range gun twenty miles away was demolished when its ammunition blew up shortly before firing.
Three days after George had killed his first man, action ceased. The countryside was deathly still. Not a living person could be seen for several miles around. But George still stood patiently in the square. He stood there for three more days and yet nothing happened.
On the fourth day, he sensed that a solitary soldier had started toward the city from five miles to the east. In his mind"s eye he followed the soldier approaching the city. The soldier, a sergeant, was bearing a white flag that fluttered in the breeze; he was not armed. After an hour he saw the sergeant enter the square and walk toward him. When they were within twenty feet of one another, the soldier stopped and saluted.
"Major General Pitt requests a meeting with you, sir," the soldier said, trembling and trying hard not to.
"Do not be frightened," George said. "I see you intend me no harm."
The soldier reddened. "Will you accompany me?"
"Certainly."
The two turned toward the east and started to walk.
Five miles east of Brentwood lies a small community named Minerva.
Population: 200. The highway from Brentwood to Chicago cuts the town in two. In the center of town, on the north side of the road, stands a new building--the Minerva Town Hall--built the year before with money raised by the residents. It was the largest and most elaborate building in Minerva, which had been evacuated three days before.
On this morning the town hall was occupied by army men. Maj. Gen. Pitt fretted and fumed at the four officers and twenty enlisted men waiting in the building.
"It"s an indignity!" he railed at the men who were forced to listen to him. "We have orders to talk appeas.e.m.e.nt with him! Nuts! We lose a few men, a few planes and now we"re ready to meet George halfway. What"s this country coming to? There ought to be something that would knock him out. Why should we have to send in _after_ him? It"s disgusting!"
The major general, a large man with a bristling white mustache and a red face, stamped back and forth in the council room. Some of the officers and men smiled to themselves. The general was a well known fighting man.
Orders he had received hamstrung him and, as soldiers, they sympathized with him.
"What kind of men do we have in the higher echelons?" He asked everybody in general and n.o.body in particular. "They won"t even let us have a field telephone. We"re supposed to make a report by radio. Now isn"t that smart?" He shook his head, looked the men over. "An appeas.e.m.e.nt team, that"s what you are, when you ought to be a combat team to lick h.e.l.l out of George.
"Why were you all a.s.signed to this particular duty? I never saw any of you before and I understand you"re all strangers to each other, too.
h.e.l.l, what will they do next? Appeas.e.m.e.nt. I never appeased anybody before in my whole life. I"d rather spit in his eye. What am I supposed to talk about? The weather? What authority do I have to yak with a walking collection of nuts and bolts!"
An officer strode into the room and saluted the general. "They"re coming, sir," he said.
"Who"s coming?... My G.o.d, man," the general spluttered angrily, "be specific. Who the h.e.l.l are "they"?"
"Why, George and Sergeant Matthews, sir. You remember, the sergeant who volunteered to go into Brentwood--"
"Oh, _them_. Well, all I have to say is this is a h.e.l.l of a war. I haven"t figured out what I am going to say yet."
"Shall I have them wait, sir?"
"h.e.l.l, no. Let"s get this over with. I"ll find out what George has to say and maybe that"ll give me a lead."
Before George entered the Council chamber, he already knew the mind of each man. He saw the room through their eyes. He knew everything about them, what they were wearing, what they were thinking. All had guns, yet none of them would kill him, although at least one man, Maj. Gen. Pitt, would have liked to.
They were going to talk appeas.e.m.e.nt, George knew, but he could also see that the general didn"t know what line the conversation would take or what concessions he could make on behalf of his people.
Wait--there was one man among the twenty-three who had an odd thought.
It was a soldier he had seen looking through a window at him. This man was thinking about eleven o"clock, for George could see in the man"s mind various symbols for fifteen minutes from then--the hands of a clock, a watch, the numerals 11. But George could not see any significance to the thought.
When he entered the room with the sergeant, he was ushered to a table.
He sat down with Maj. Gen. Pitt, who glowered at him. Letting his mind roam the room, George picked up the numerals again and identified the man thinking them as the officer behind and a little to the right of the general.
What was going to happen at eleven? The man had no conscious thought of harm to anyone, yet the idea kept obtruding and seemed so out of keeping with his other thoughts George a.s.signed several of his circuits to the man. The fact that the lieutenant looked at his watch and saw that it was 10:50 steeled George still more. If there was to be trouble, it would come from this one man.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
"I"m General Pitt," the general said drily. "You"re George, of course. I have been instructed to ask you what, exactly, your intentions are toward the United States and the world in general, with a view toward reaching some sort of agreement with you and others of your kind, who will, as you say invade the Earth."
"Invade, General Pitt," George replied, "is not the word."
"All right, whatever the word is. We"re all familiar with the plan you"ve been talking about. What we want to know is, where do you go from here?"
"The fact that there has been no reluctance on the part of the armed forces to talk of an agreement--even though I see that you privately do not favor such a talk, General Pitt--is an encouraging sign. We of Zanthar would not want to improve a planet which could not be educated and would continually oppose our program. This will make it possible for me to turn in a full report in a few days now."
"Will you please get to the point?"
George could see that the lieutenant was looking at his watch again. It was 10:58. George spread his mind out more than twenty miles, but could find no installation, horizontally or vertically, that indicated trouble. None of the men in the room seemed to think of becoming overly hostile.
"Yes, General. After my message goes out, there ought to be a landing party on Earth within a few weeks. While waiting for the first party, there must be certain preparations--"
George tensed. The lieutenant was reaching for something. But it somehow didn"t seem connected with George. It was something white, a handkerchief. He saw that the man intended to blow his nose and started to relax except that George suddenly became aware of the fact the man _did not need to blow his nose_!
Every thought-piercing circuit became instantly energized in George"s mind and reached out in all directions....
There were at least ten shots from among the men. They stood there surprised at their actions. Those who had fired their guns now held the smoking weapons awkwardly in their hands.
George"s eyes were gone. Smoke curled upward from the two empty sockets where bullets had entered a moment before. The smoke grew heavier and his body became hot. Some of him turned cherry red and the chair on which he had been sitting started to burn. Finally, he collapsed toward the table and rolled to the floor.
He started to cool. He was no longer the shiny blue-steel color he had been--he had turned black. His metal gave off cracking noises and some of it buckled here and there as it cooled.
A few minutes later, tense military men and civilians grouped around a radio receiver in Chicago heard the report and relaxed, laughing and slapping each other on the back. Only one sat unmoved in a corner.