Chapter Two
Beneath the cloudless blue bowl of the midday sky, the Georgia countryside was a shout of autumnal color, stretching as far as the eye could see in all directions, unbroken by industrial smoke or gleaming skyscraper. In the glades and pastures the golden sunlight ruled, forcing the stubborn chill of November back under the evergreens and into the shade of leaves yet unfallen. Off across the overgrown fields an exact replica of an abandoned farmhouse leaned tiredly against the earth. Bobwhite quail scratched dirt and preened beneath fallen rail fences; rusted and sagging barbed wire hung from decaying wooden posts. Near the house an untended pecan grove laced dead limbs against the sky.
The man sitting flat on his rump with his back propped against a big oak tree puffed contentedly on his pipe and took it all in through the frostbitten branches of a gooseberry bush. The ground was cold beneath his denim clad legs and the wind blowing in his face made him wish his dungaree jacket’s insulation was thicker, but he wouldn’t have swapped places with anybody on ten worlds at the moment.
James Rierson was in what he considered to be his element, matching wits and gun against the cunning of animals in their native habitat. The ten months of the year in which he lived and matched legal talent and persuasiveness of argument against another attorney before the bar of justice in the air conditioned and near hermetically sealed environs of Atlanta were as nothing compared to this.
From the first day of November to the end of the year, Rierson the lawyer underwent a Jekyll-Hyde metamorphosis and became Rierson the country squire, living in a rambling and rustic log dwelling and devoting his exclusive attention to the pursuit of game across the thousand square miles of reclaimed semi-wilderness graciously provided by the state of Georgia for just such sentimental reactionaries as himself, men who wistfully recalled the halcyon days of yore, with frost on the pumpkin and a harvest moon and men with shotguns following quartering bird dogs across the back forty.
Not that he was a complete fool; he realized those days spoken of so longingly by others of his bent had not been entirely without their shadows, without their empires and wars and heartaches. But five centuries is a deadening opiate, and names become empty things, a dusty roll call upon a little used book tape. Sherman and Shiloh and the Battle of Atlanta fade into insignificance; and was the Kaiser an automobile or a king? Hiroshima and hypocrisy and the hydrogen bomb; Communism and censorship and cerebral palsy…
The names, and the meanings behind the names, fade. But the vague longings somehow manage to perpetuate themselves, handing themselves down from generation to generation, stubbornly refusing to die like the names of old soldiers and old battles and old issues.
Daniel Rierson, his uncle, had had such a longing a desire for uncluttered skies and fresh air in his nostrils and the feel of a good gun in his hands. And so Daniel Rierson, who scoffed at the reclaimed areas of Earth as phony and artificial, packed his gear and his dreams and boarded a stellar liner heading out beyond the furthermost reaches of the Terran Federation. He had found his dream and settled in to stay, and had once prevailed upon his brother to allow his nephew to make the long voyage one summer for a visit. The visit had been short, but the fifteen-year-old managed to kill three tarl, fur-bearing, goat-like forest dwellers during his stay, and the flame was ignited. He had returned home a dedicated hunter and determined to rejoin his uncle as soon as his schooling was finished.
That, as it turned out, was not to be. Within the year, worsening relations between Terra and the Llralan Empire had forced the recall of all settlers beyond the boundaries of Terran holdings and Dan Rierson had come home aboard a Federation warship, his dream finished.
James Rierson, twenty three years later, had modified his own longings to coincide with what lay within the realm of possibility, and thereby managed to attain a balance in life men with twice his years and forty times his financial status found themselves envying. For ten months of the year he operated as part of the legal machinery that held his society together; for the remaining two, he forsook that society and rolled back the clock five centuries to a less complicated era devoid of its own indigenous miseries, took it easy, and enjoyed life.
His pipe had gone out. Rather than relight it, he stuck it in a pocket and lifted the rifle lying across his knees. That was another part of the illusion; outwardly, the weapon was not much different from the sporting arms of five hundred years ago. Its synthetic stock was stained to resemble walnut, its barrel dyed a deep blue-black. The sleek design of the stock, the telescopic sight raised just enough to permit use of the iron sights beneath, the leather carrying sling, all were features straight out of the distant past. The differences in the gun lay beneath the surface and were still quite in keeping with the tradition. The scope was lighter, more compact, magnified better than its ancient counterparts; the long, tapering cartridges in the gun’s magazine reached further and hit harder.
Putting the scope to his eye, he scanned the edge of a meadow eight hundred yards away, where tall, frost-burnt grass ended and a swamp had its beginnings. Just there — the cross-hairs paused on the spot — was where his quarry should have appeared long since. He started to swing on, but a flicker of movement caught his eye. He held steady, waiting for a repetition.
A deer stepped into his field of view, a bullnecked, heavy-chested buck carrying a massive rack of incredibly symmetrical antlers.
Rierson had seen him before: this was the one he had been waiting for. But he had never seen him act quite like he was acting now. He held his fire, watching.
The buck, normally regal in bearing as befitted his advancing age and magnificent physical proportions, was now weaving like a drunk. His head drooped, as if that basketwork of rapier-honed points had suddenly become too much to bear. He braced himself on trembling legs, tried to draw himself up, failed, tried again and partially succeeded, only to lose his footing altogether and go down heavily. He raised his head feebly, a leg thrashed once or twice. Then he fell back and lay still.
Rierson lowered his rifle, and the image of the fallen deer was gone. To the unaided eye, the buck across the fields was simply a brownish splotch blending into the ground. He put the scope back to his eye and the deer was lying exactly as he had fallen, unmoving.
In the time it took him to cross the distance separating his stand from his collapsed quarry the deer didn’t stir. When he arrived it was lying exactly as it had been when he last observed through the scope.
There was no wound on the animal; he hadn’t thought there would be. The game ranger had said he would have the whole section to himself, and he had heard no shooting to prove the ranger wrong.
Most hunters these days were either in the armed forces or sticking close to home, hearthside and the family bombproof in case one of the increasingly frequent Larry nuisance raids managed to penetrate the defenses. The latter group seemed a little ridiculous to Rierson; no Larry bombardier living or robotic would waste bombs, if he ever got the chance to use them, on trees. But timid nimrods were not his concern right now. This deer was.
This deer that staggered into the open like a city slicker lubricated with mountain dew and proceeded to collapse in remarkable imitation of same…
And lay there breathing far too slowly, breathing in great surging billows so gradual the eye was hard put to catch the movement of the chest…
And snored.
Sitting down on a log James Rierson tried to remember all such similar occurrences he had ever heard or read about. After a careful tally, he came up with exactly none. Meaning something had caused it to act so strangely, meaning something definitely unusual.
And meaning the Wildlife Service should be notified posthaste.
He took his leave of the fallen deer and headed for where he had left his aircar in the early-morning hours to take his stand. Before he went out of sight he took one last look back.
The deer was still sleeping peacefully.
He made it back to his aircar in fifteen minutes’ steady walking, climbed in and let it drift up just clear of the treetops before scooting for the ranger’s cabin. Another ten minutes and he was there. He dropped in for a landing on the graveled expanse before the cabin, went to the check station’s open door. The ranger wasn’t in, but one of his little robotic assistants was. The five-foot humanoid was busily sticking colored pins in a large map.
“I have a report concerning a sick animal,” Rierson told him.
“Where?” The robot continued to impale the map as fast as he could scoop up pins.
“Right there.” Rierson pointed out the location on the map.
“Type of animal?”
“Deer.”
“Deer,” repeated the robot, selecting a green pin and jabbing it into the indicated spot. He pointed to a stack of forms on a counter. “Fill out one of those, please.”
Rierson went to the counter, saw that the mimeographed sheets wanted all information known by the individual reporting the sick or hurt animal, and the identity and license number of the reporter. He filled it out quickly, handed it to the robot.
“This is a rather unusual case…” he began.
The robot stopped his enigmatic exercise with the colored pins and flicked emotionless camera lens eyes over the form.
“What is unusual about it?”
Rierson was taken aback. “You mean it isn’t unusual?”
“Perhaps in the overall sense of the word, yes. In relationship to this game management area, no.”
“You mean things like this have happened before?”
“Eighty-four times in the past week.”
“And before then?”
“Never.”
“But… but then why haven’t I heard about it? Why haven’t the newspapers picked it up?”
“That I do not know.”
“Would the ranger know?”
“Perhaps.”
“Where is the ranger?”
“At present, he is investigating a lake where fourteen lesser scaup drowned.”
“Drowned? Ducks drowned?” Rierson stared at the robot incredulously. “And eighty-four cases similar to the one I just reported in one week alone?”
“Yes.”
“I see. Where did you say the ranger was?”
“As I told you, he is…”
“Not that. Where. What section? What lake? There’s a thousand square miles out there he could be in.”
“Hardly, sir,” reproved the robot mildly. “His jurisdiction extends over only a tenth of the area, not the whole.”
“Then where is he?”
“I don’t know. When I last tried to reach him by short wave he didn’t respond. Perhaps he wasn’t listening. Did you wish to leave a message for him?”
“No no, never mind.” Rierson started for the door. “Is that all you need me for?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you for your cooperation.”
Rierson sent his car up to two hundred feeling vaguely uneasy. Something was in the air. He could sense it, feel it, almost smell it. Something about the very air itself didn’t seem quite right. And this matter of the sleeping buck, the eighty-four similar cases, the drowned ducks. He made a spur of the moment decision to stop by the Chief Ranger’s office in Baxter Township to find out what was happening; this management area was his favorite, and if anything untoward was going on he wanted to know about it and what, if anything, he could do to help correct it.
Setting his course for Baxter he leaned back in his seat, letting the autopilot take over. While half of his mind dwelled on the memory of the big whitetail sprawled unconscious, the other half proposed and discarded a hundred fantastic reasons for its being so. He was really reaching when an alien sound intruded itself upon his consciousness, interrupting his train of thought.
His first thought was that it was an irregularity in the beat of his alo engine and he scanned his instruments. Nothing. Then he realized the sound was not coming from the car, but from an outside source. Another ship, then. He made a quick radar sweep, found the ship miles behind and at twelve thousand feet, closing rapidly. He checked his airspeed with thoughts of a Sky Patrol unit, then realized the ship’s angle of descent would bring it down far ahead of him.
Within seconds the ship was above him, blunt prow glinting in the sun. It was then he realized what had been bothering him about the cadence of its engine. Black, oily smoke was pouring out of its motor hatch and pluming away behind, leaving a dirty trail across the clean blue of the sky. As he watched, the ship slewed sideways, corrected, plunged on. Unpronging his short-wave mike, he switched the selector to general traffic.
“Civilian Craft XD 4538 P calling ship in distress over Robert E. Lee Game Management Area. Do you read?”
There was no response. He tried again.
“Civilian Craft XD 4538 P calling ship in distress. What’s your trouble? If your sender’s dead, do a mild bank to south-southwest.”
The ship bore determinedly onward.
Switching channels he said, “This is CC XD 4538 P, over REL GMA. Have sighted ship in distress heading due south, speed… do you read me, Savannah Control?”
Savannah Control obviously didn’t. There was no answer.
“Savannah Control, this is CC XD 4538 P, over REL GMA, reporting ship in distress. Do you read?”
No answer.
He swore. So it was his own radio at fault. He could not tell anyone of the other ship’s plight. He consulted his map. It said an ancient superhighway now a truck route ran through the area from east to west, then bent south into Florida. A truck stop was indicated not far from his present position. Nosing over, he headed for there.
He overran his destination, circled back and put down so hastily he left skid marks on the landing area. No one showed themselves despite his overhead acrobatics and reckless landing; he climbed out and went around to the front.
The place was the stereotype of truck stops on any of fifty Federation worlds. The building was surrounded by a sea of concrete broken at intervals by banks of fuel pumps and maintenance racks; the structure itself was large and rectangular, housing a robo- repair unit at one end and a mechanic’s office and automat at the other. A big red groundcar, a Catamount, was pulled up at the pumps nearest the building. Otherwise, the place was deserted.
The paunchy individual seated behind the Cat’s wheel seemed to be the sole occupant. The glass walled office was empty and no one answered Rierson’s hail. He walked toward the Catamount. “Hey… where’s the attendant?”
The fat man maintained his hunched, head-down embrace of the steering wheel and offered no answer. He didn’t even bother to look up at the big man stalking toward him.
Rierson went around the car to the driver’s window. “You deaf or something? I asked you where…”
His voice trailed off. The man’s eyes were closed, and suddenly his utter laxness was very apparent. He was either dead, very drunk or a sound sleeper.
Rierson reached through the open window, shook him gently by the shoulder. “Hey…”
The fat man’s bulk shifted slightly; that was all. His eyelids didn’t even flutter.
The lawyer grabbed the door handle, lugged at it. The door swung open — and the driver toppled out. Rierson was caught by surprise but managed to grab a handful of expensive suit fabric to keep the other from dashing his brains out on the pavement. Lowering him gently, he dropped to his knees beside him.
Leaning over, Rierson sniffed his breath suspiciously. There was breathing, but at least but there was no odor of liquor. Just one of strong nicotine. So he wasn’t dead and he wasn’t drunk. Rierson straightened. What did that leave? Stun shock? Some sort of seizure? Or was the man just a really heavy sleeper? He let the head down on the pavement, carefully, stood up.
The shifted position brought forth snores from his unconscious friend. Long-drawn and noisy inhalations followed by a prolonged hesitation and then equally long-drawn and noisy exhalations. There was something about that extreme slowness of breath…
Uttering a wordless exclamation, Rierson dropped back to his knees and lifted the other into a sitting position against the side of the car. Then he slapped the flabby face gently, a light blow intended to sting into consciousness.
The fat man didn’t even flinch.
He took a deep breath, struck again, harder.
He might as well have been slapping jelly; the consistency and response were about the same.
Rocking back on his heels, he looked around him, feeling cold. There was nothing but the warm golden sunlight, the deserted station, and the chill wind rustling pines across the road.
First the deer, now a man. And the robot ranger had said there were eighty-four similar cases among other forms of life.
The ducks, he saw with a sudden flash of insight, drowned because they had become unconscious, even as the deer and Fatso here. And the ranger had not answered his assistant’s hail…
Rierson left the fat man to his dreams and went in search of the attendant. It wasn’t a long search; it ended at the right flank of the Catamount. A dark haired youth in greasy coveralls was huddled between the fuel pumps and the car, hose still gripped loosely in his right hand. Fuel had leaked from the nozzle to form a reeking pool in which his pants legs were soaking.
He, like the Catamount’s driver, was snoring in slow motion.
Getting him under the armpits Rierson dragged him clear, then carried him around the car and deposited him beside the fat man. Then he stepped back and looked them over. To his way of thinking, this had definitely gone beyond the province of the Wildlife Service, had become a matter for the police. He went into the office, found a battered phone with a scarred visi-plate and consulted a list of emergency numbers scribbled on a desk calendar. Finding the one he wanted, he dialed it.
The phone rang and rang, without answer.
Finally a voice cut in on the line and the smooth, featureless mug of a worker-class robot appeared on the screen. “What number are you calling, please?”
“Who’re you?” countered Rierson.
“South Georgia Switchboard, sir.”
“Okay, George I’m calling EXN 988. Highway Patrol.”
“One moment, please.”
Rierson waited impatiently, had about given up when George came back with, “The trouble is not with the line, sir. No one is answering.”
“All right… try Sky Patrol Barracks at Savannah.”
“Yes, sir.” Again the screen went blank, and Rierson could hear a distant phone jangling. There was no response. George’s unlovely face appeared once more. “Sir, there is no answer.”
“I heard. Doesn’t that strike you as peculiar?”
“Sir?” George sounded puzzled.
“Doesn’t the fact that neither of the two forces supposed to protect the public can be reached by the public? That no one is answering the phone in the middle of the afternoon?”
“It is a little irregular, sir, but…”
“But what?”
“Sir, I wouldn’t let it worry you… humans are a chronically erratic species.” George let go the equivalent of a superior sniff. “There is hardly any logic or order to anything they do.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” commented Rierson sourly.
“Sir,” began George earnestly, “it was not meant as a compliment but as a serious observation upon the follies of…”
George never finished his sentence. The phone went dead and the visi-plate did likewise. Completely, utterly dead. Rierson jiggled the receiver, but there was no response. It was as if a curtain had been dropped — a thick, all absorbent curtain.
Rierson became aware of a muted humming he had not heard before, hunted around until he found a minuscule transistorized radio. It was on, but the station to which it was attuned was very obviously off. He twisted the selector as far as it would go to both sides, turning up the volume. Not one word did he get. No station seemed to be broadcasting. He looked out at the Catamount, found himself wondering if the radio stations had stopped sending before or after the attendant and fat man had succumbed to… to whatever they had succumbed to.
In any event, he couldn’t just stand here wondering for the remainder of the day and into the night. Some definite move was called for. Since he had started for Baxter, he might as well continue in that direction, the direction the burning ship had taken.
Thinking of the burning ship brought up another point: whatever was in the wind, it boded no good for airships judging from the looks of the only one he’d seen all day. If he were going anywhere, his traveling should be done on the ground...
Accidentally truncated chapter end:
In keeping with that decision he went out and dragged the two sleepers inside, finished filling the fuel tank of the Catamount, replaced the cap and racked the hose. Then he went to his aircar and got out his rifle and cartridge belt, strapping the latter, with its row of gleaming shells and long‑bladed hunting knife, around his middle. He could well imagine the sensation his dirty denim garb, artillery and week’s growth of beard was going to cause in Baxter, but that couldn’t be helped. The familiar presence of the rifle bolstered his confidence, and at this point ‑ what with dead radios, blanketed phone lines, burning airships, and sleeping deer and sleeping men ‑ his confidence could use a little bolstering.
As for taking the car, it looked as if Fatso needed medical help worse than he needed the Catamount, and it was necessary for Rierson to requisition the latter in order to provide the former. Which he hoped would sound plausible to local authorities when he showed up in Baxter armed to the teeth and driving a “borrowed” car. One could never tell how small‑town cops would react to anything.
Climbing into the Cat, he pulled out onto the highway and pointed its sleek prow at Baxter.
