SLEEPING PLANET
Chapter Six
The Llralan gun‑truck rolled slowly down the road, twin blast‑cannon pointing at the sky in preparation for quick unlimbering in any direction. A lone head, weighed down by a blue‑green combat helmet, poked up through a hatch; the Llralan was scanning the underbrush along the road with binoculars. From various vents in the vehicle’s armor, periscopes did the same. A mounted autogun jutted from the prow, shifting occasionally as the unseen gunner jiggled it.
For what seemed like the thousandth time, James Rierson lay in concealment and sweated.
There could be no doubt now. Llralans were everywhere.
Silent, ghosting patrols in the woods; grinding, gas‑reeking vehicles on the roads; whirring flivvers overhead. Roads were closed, and “sleeper” units were infiltrating the area ‑ units that spread out in thin nets, dug in
and waited for the unwary to come bumbling into them.
For the past four days he had lived on the brink of discovery, walking shoulder to shoulder with death. Once he had crouched beneath a ground‑sweeping cedar tree while a patrol bearing a wounded soldier on a litter went by. Snatches of half‑heard conversation informed him that the soldier had been cut down by a jittery watcher.
Three things he knew with utter certainty: Llralans were on Terra in force and virtually unopposed; they had thrown a gigantic trap around Baxter and were slowly squeezing it shut; and he was caught in the center of that trap.
Steadily, inexorably ‑ step by step, tree by tree ‑ he was being forced back toward the town he had left so hurriedly five days ago.
Whether he slipped up out here, or was pushed back into Baxter ‑ to be systematically cut off and bottled up until no escape
was left ‑ it was only a matter of time until he lost the nerve‑jangling game.
The irony inherent in the death of an alien soldier atop a Sunday‑school building was present here, too. He was a man who had built his life around language and the usage thereof, and yet he was skulking through the woods like a hunted Apache where even to open one’s mouth or clear one’s throat was to precipitate a blast of gunfire. A respected attorney at law, he was playing a game as old as history ‑ a game of grim, silent, deadly maneuvering through light and shadow, glade and growth,
where the first misstep was also the last.
A lawyer lives by his persuasiveness of argument, and by his wits. His tongue is his foil; he parries and thrusts, he tries to wear down, catch off guard or bewilder his opponent into a position for the fatal blow. A lawyer uses his tongue as a soldier uses his gun ‑ to rattle, scatter, pin down and ultimately destroy.
But destructiveness is a relative thing. In a courtroom, destruction is confined to arguments ‑ arguments are destroyed. And even then there is an appeal. In the tangled flora north of Baxter, a life would be destroyed. His. And there would be no appeal.
Cold, constant fear had come to be his companion since he had fled Baxter ‑ a bubbling terror just below the surface that
threatened momentarily to well up and choke him. That and the dull, unfamiliar ache of hunger that cramped his stomach and
sapped his strength.
But apart from the depression brought on by his state of being and the morbid conviction that his fate was sealed, his doom inevitable, a different side of his nature sat up and ‑ albeit in a small voice ‑ raged in indignation that he should be submitted to such treatment. Who did they think they were, these Larrys? By what right did they burst in on a perfectly serene planet and disrupt his life? By what right did they hunt the hunter?
And he knew the answer to that, too: by the right of might. There was no one to say them nay. No Terran rockets, war robots or divisions ‑ no nothing.
Just him, a hunting rifle and twenty‑three rounds of ammunition. Those, he felt, were not the best odds in the world.
The truck ground around a curve with a rasp of changing gears, disappeared from view. The engine noise faded gradually,
died out altogether. Rierson waited. If the Larrys patrolling this road followed standard procedure, there would be a second
truck following at a discreet distance ‑ but close enough to pounce on anyone crossing the road behind the first one. That lesson he had learned painlessly by seeing the method work on a road winding beneath a hill upon which he hid under a tangled windfall while troopers scoured the slopes.
Sure enough, the second truck rolled into view presently, repeated the scanning activities of the first almost perfectly, then
moved out of sight.
When it did, Rierson was on his feet and moving swiftly. Out of the trees, across the highway, into the cover beyond. If there were ever a third truck, this maneuver might get him killed ‑ but a third one didn’t make sense. No matter how many trucks they had, dozens of them following each other around and around could accomplish nothing more than tire wear and
frayed nerves. The patrols were the more serious threat, and even they could be avoided.
Reaching the safety of the other side he slipped through a gap in the solid wall of greenery, crouching along for a bit, then straightened as the tangle thinned and large trees replaced it. He slowed his pace, began to glide from trunk to trunk, pausing often to look and listen, his rifle held ready across his chest. Just such areas were favored by the sleeper patrols, and here was where one should be. Continuing at right angles to the highway just crossed would allow him to skirt Baxter and eventually wind up on the coast.
As it turned out, there was no waiting squad. Whether they had something else in mind ‑ were herding him into some as‑yet‑unsuspected trap ‑ or had simply missed a bet, he had no way of knowing. He decided to take the setup with several grains of salt and veered toward Baxter. Toward Baxter was probably where they wanted him to go, but this gaping hole in
their dragnet reeked of contrivance. So he moved toward Baxter.
He didn’t have far to go. He had only been fifty miles away when they slammed the door to the north in his face. Since then he had been pushed back until the city limits couldn’t be more than two miles away. Weariness pulled at him; he had not slept more than twenty hours out of the one hundred and twenty since he had last slept peacefully in his hunting cabin. His hunger had only been whetted by scraps of food stolen from isolated farmhouses, but was not yet such that he could put aside his civilized conditioning and eat without cooking some of the various small animals he had come across unconscious. A fire, of course, was out of the question. Tension, fear, lack of food and sleep ‑ all coupled with endless miles of
walking ‑ had just about extended him as far as he could go. He wasn’t thinking too coherently; only one clear thought remained. One thought, one purpose, that threatened to ride him until he collapsed.
Keep away from the Larrys.
Left foot, right foot; look ahead, look behind; look up, look around…
Keep moving.
Stop and you sleep. Sleep and you’re caught. Caught and you die.
Move. Keep your gun up. Watch. Keep your eyes and ears open. Keep away from the Larrys…
Move or you sleep; keep your gun up or you’re beaten to the draw; keep your eyes and ears open or you’re surprised; keep away from the Larrys or you’re dead.
Sleepy….Don’t sleep….So blasted sleepy…
The woods were darkening rapidly with another sunset ‑ the fifth one since he had killed the Larry on the Sunday‑school building ‑ when he found the house. It was squarish, two‑storied and possessed of a circular landing apron with skidway leading to the garage appended to the main building. The clearing around it was vacant, undisturbed.
He waited until full dark before deciding to chance entry, the promise of food overcoming caution. Once decided he made a bold approach, marched up the front stairs and tried the doorknob. It twisted easily and the door opened. He went in. He found himself in a parlor straight out of another century, complete with fireplace and overstuffed furniture. The sole glaring inconsistency in the decor consisted of a section of quasi wood paneling swung out at right angles to the wall to reveal a rounded steel door. Going to the steel door, he worked the handle. The door swung back on unoiled hinges, complaining squeakily. Revealed was a flight of stairs leading down into the earth. He went down them. At the lower end of
the stairs he found a second door, went through it and into a smallish room equipped with steel let‑down bunks and various
survival items ‑ a bomb shelter.
Sprawled on one of the bunks was an old codger of ninety or ninety‑five; crumpled in the limited floor space was a woman of at least equal age, and a short‑legged beagle hound. He checked the trio over, using more or less the same procedure followed at the trucker’s stop. They were neither dead, drunk. nor normally sleeping. Rierson stepped on the beagle’s tail
twice, and neither time did the little dog do so much as quiver. He lifted the frail little woman onto the second bunk, moved the beagle out of further harm’s way beneath his master’s resting place.
The only light in the bomb shelter was provided by a tiny bulb set into a small radio. It glowed steadily, bloodred. The yellow, orange and white bulbs were not burning. So the attack alarm had been a Condition Red Maximum ‑ that in itself was a precedent. Never before had a Llralan task
force penetrated far enough into Terran space to warrant such an alarm here.
Now they were tramping around outside, thick as quills on a porcupine. And this old couple and their dog slept peacefully. So too had the men at the truck stop… and the whitetail buck, and the
various creatures come upon in his four days of wandering.
As for Baxter… as for Baxter, he had not seen a soul of its inhabitants during his rather short visit there. But he had wondered what the Llralan was doing on the Sunday‑school roof ‑ and now the answer was obvious. He had been guarding the bomb shelter. That there had been only that one ‑ only three plus the flivver in the whole town ‑ would infer that they were
expecting no trouble.
No trouble? Expecting no trouble from a townful of Terrans? Then they must have a hole card, and a high one. But what? Surely they would expect trouble of some sort, even from civilians, unless…
Unless the entire population of Baxter was asleep?
Whatever had put to sleep eighty‑four reported heads of game, drowned ducks, keeled over a whitetail buck and overcome four people and a beagle hound was certainly not a freakish twist of nature. It had to be an introduced element. If the Larrys were banking on that element, then they had probably introduced it ‑ and followed up with a full‑scale invasion.
Invasion of one town, Baxter, and one state, Georgia, would profit them nothing and get them promptly scattered over the landscape by planetary defense centers. But they had not been splattered. Which meant the Terrans were powerless to splatter them. Baxter was asleep. What then would prevent Atlanta from sharing the same fate ‑ or New York, or London? What would prevent the gunners of El Scorpio Southern Planetary Defense Center, in Texas, from succumbing to what had knocked men
and women over elsewhere?
Turning, he went upstairs and hunted a kitchen. Finding it, he went to the robotic chef, scanned the list of available items and dialed what he wanted. The unit started humming softly and its metal sides grew warm to the touch; mouth‑watering odors began to seep into the room. While the robochef busied itself with the meal Rierson went to the front of the house and looked out over the silent woods.
No shadows moved without; no unnatural outlines bulked suspiciously against the greater darkness. From the looks of things he had found a house as yet unwatched by the hunters. And, now that he was in, he wasn’t going to leave until his meal was served up, if it meant fighting the whole Llralan Empire between mouthfuls.
He explored further, found in the garage a trim two‑seat aircar with a fast, silent alo‑motor. He tried the overhead garage doors, found them unlocked and tested them gingerly. Unlike the rusty shelter door, they moved quietly on their tracks. His next sortie took him upstairs in search of the ignition key. He found it among other pocket junk on a bedside table. In the
drawer of that same table resided a lightweight, deadly machine pistol with two clips of ammunition beside it.
As to what fear of spooks, burglars or of a violent past catching up to its owner the weapon’s presence bespoke, he had no idea; neither did
he care. But it might come in handy. He loaded and tucked it in a jacket along with the second clip. Downstairs, a bell chimed softly. The meal was prepared, the dinner bell being rung.He wasted no time in heeding its call.
Later, belly full to an almost uncomfortable degree, he was faced with a decision: whether to leave, hoping to find a place in
the woods to sleep, or to push his luck and stay here for the night.
When he opened the front door, a chill wind swept in, biting into him after the warmth of the house. He shivered, sleepily imagining himself stumbling around in the dark trying to keep his eyes open and his sense of direction operational. The ultimate result would likely be collapse and unconsciousness for a number of hours. At worst, such an event could bring capture; at least, sleeping in the cold unprotected and with resistance lowered could bring pneumonia. Neither extreme was
pleasant to contemplate from the seeming security and undisputed comfort of the house.
