The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds Page 2

metal...."

  But now the city began to seethe with excitement. Farmers and theirfamilies flocked in from the Seep Springs district, and from Jayhnes,telling weird tales of drifting globes and encroaching jungle. TheSouthern Pacific announced that traffic northward was disrupted. Extrasappeared on the streets with shrieking headlines. Everything was inconfusion.

  A flyer from the local airport flew over Oracle and announced on hisreturn that he could see no signs of the town, that its immediatevicinity was buried under an incredibly tall and tangled mass ofvegetation. "From the air it looks like giant stalks of spaghetti,twisted, fantastic," was his description. He went on to say that henoticed quite a few drifting globes and large birds with black,glistening wings, but these offered no hindrance to his flight.

  Now the wires hummed with the startling news. All the world wasinformed of the tragedy. The great cities of the nation stood aghast.An aroused Washington dispatched orders for the aerial forces of thecountry to proceed to Arizona without delay. The governor of Arizonamobilized the state militia. All border patrol officers proceeded tothe area affected. And yet in the face of what was happening they werepowerless to do a thing.

  At two o'clock of the day following the wiping out of Oracle, the firstblack globes approached Tucson. They floated down from the north,skirting the granite ridges and foothills of the Catalinas, and weremet with a withering hail of lead from anti-aircraft guns, and burst,scattering wide their contents. When some three hours later the firstsquadron of the air fleet came to earth on the landing field a fewmiles south of the city, the northern environs of Tucson, all the areathe other side of Speedway, and running east and west as far as the eyecould see, was a monstrous jungle a hundred or more feet tall--andstill growing.

  Terrified residents fled before the uncanny invasion. People congestedthe streets. Thousands fled from the city in automobiles, and thousandsof others thronged the railroad station and bus-line offices seekingfor transportation. Rumors ran from lip to lip that Russia wasattacking the United States with a newly invented and deadly method ofwarfare; that it wasn't Russia but Japan, China, England, Germany, acoalition of European and Asiatic powers.

  Frantically, the city officials wired railroad companies to send inemergency trains. The mayor appealed to the citizens to be quiet andorderly, not to give way to panic, that everything was being done toinsure their safety. Hastily deputized bodies of men were set topatrolling streets and guarding property. Later, martial law wasestablished. The south side of Speedway rapidly assumed the appearanceof an armed camp. At the landing field Flight Commander Burns refueledhis ships and interviewed the flyer who had flown over Oracle. Thatworthy shook his head.

  "You're going out to fight, Commander," he said, "but God knows what.So far we have been unable to detect any human agency back of thoseglobes. They just drift in, irrespective of how the wind is blowing. Sofar our only defense has been to shoot them down, but that does littlegood; it only helps to broadcast their seed. Then, too, the globes shotdown have never been examined. Why? Because where they hit a junglesprings up. Sometimes they burst of their own accord. One or two ofthem got by us in the darkness last night, despite our searchlights,and overwhelmed a company of National Guards."

  The flight commander was puzzled.

  "Look here," he said, "those globes don't just materialize out of thinair. There must be a base from which they operate. Undoubtedly an enemyis lurking in those mountains." He got up decisively. "If it is humanlypossible to locate and destroy that enemy, we shall do it."

  Flying in perfect formation, the bombing squadron clove the air.Looking down, the observers could see the gigantic and mysteriousjungle which covered many square miles of country. Like sinuous coilsof spaghetti, it looked, and also curiously like vast up-pointedgirders of steel and iron. The rays of the late afternoon sun glintedon this jungle and threw back spears of intense light. Over the ironridges of the Catalinas the fleet swept at an elevation of severalthousand feet. Westward, numerous huge globes could be seen driftingsouth. The commander signaled a half dozen of his ships to pursue andshoot them down.

  In the mountains themselves, there was surprisingly little of theuncanny vegetation. Mile after mile of billowing hills were quartered,but without anything of a suspicious nature being noted. Here and therethe observers saw signs of life. Men and women waved at them fromisolated homesteads and shacks. At Mount Lemmon the summer colonistsappeared unharmed, but in such rugged country it was impossible tothink of landing. Oracle, and for a dozen miles around its vicinity,was deserted.

  Though the commander searched the landscape thoroughly with hisglasses, he could detect the headquarters of no enemies; and yet theexistence of the drifting globes would seem to presuppose a sizablebase from which they operated. Mystified, he nevertheless subjected theOracle area to a thorough bombing, and it was while engaged in doing sothat he and his men observed a startling phenomenon.

  High in the heavens, seemingly out of nothing, the mysterious globesgrew. The aviators stared, rubbed their eyes in amazement, doubted thetruth of what they saw. Their commander recollected his own words,"Those globes don't just materialize out of thin air." But thatactually seemed to be what they were doing. Out of empty space theyleaped, appearing first as black spots, and in a moment swelling totheir huge proportions.

  One pilot made the mistake of ramming a globe, which burst, and hehurtled to earth in a shower of seed, seed which seemed to root andgrow and cover his craft with a mass of foliage even as it fell.Horrified, ammunition and explosives exhausted, the amazed commanderordered his ships back to Tucson. What he had to tell caused asensation.

  "No," he said, finishing his report to the high military official whohad arrived with federal forces, "I saw nothing--aside from theglobes--that could possibly account for the attack. Nothing."

  But none the less the attack went on. Though hundreds of planes scouredthe sky, though great guns bellowed day and night and thousands ofsoldiers, state and federal, were under arms, still the incredibleglobes continued to advance, still more and more of the countrysidecame under the sway of the nightmarish jungle. And this losing battlewas not waged without loss of human life. Sometimes bodies of artillerywere cut off by globes getting beyond their lines in the darkness andhemming them in. Then they had literally to hack their way out orperish; and hundreds of them perished. One company sergeant told of athrilling race with three globes.

  "It was a close thing," he said, scratching his head, "and only a thirdof us made it."

  Fear gripped the hearts of the most courageous of men. It was terrifyingand nerve-racking to face such an _unhuman_ foe--weird, drifting globesand invading jungles whose very source was shrouded in mystery. Againstthis enemy no weapons seemed to prevail. All the paraphernalia ofmodern warfare was proving useless. And looking at each other withwhite faces--not alone in Arizona, but in New York, Chicago, LosAngeles--men asked themselves these questions, and the newspapers posedthem:

  "What if this thing can't be stopped?"

  "What if it keeps on and on and invades every city and state?"

  "It is only starting now, but what will it be like a month from now, a year?"

  The whole nation awoke to a realization of its danger. The Administrationat Washington solemnly addressed itself to the capitals of the world.

  "If some power, jealous of the greatness of America, has perfected a new and barbarous weapon of warfare, and without due warning and declaration of hostilities has launched it against us, not only do we denounce such uncivilized procedure, but demand that such a power speak out and reveal to us and the world who our enemy is."

  But the powers of the world, as one, united in disclaiming any handin the monstrous attack being made on the United States. As for thatattack, it proceeded inexorably. On the fourth day Tucson was evacuated.Then Winkleman awoke one morning to find that the drifting globes hadreached the river. The town was abandoned. California mobilized citizenforces in cooperation with Nevada. The gre
at physicist Miller was saidto be frantically at work on a chemical designed to destroy thegigantic growths, specimens of which had been sent him. Such was thecondition of affairs when, at Washington, Milton Baxter, the youngstudent, told his incredible story to a still more incredulous Senate.

  The Senate had been sitting in anxious session for five days, and waslittle inclined to give ear to the stories of cranks. Fortunately forthe world, young Baxter came of an influential family and had taken theprecaution of having himself introduced by two prominent financiers,who demanded that he be heard.

  "Gentlemen," he said earnestly, "contrary to current opinion, Americais not being assailed by a foreign power. No! Listen to me a moment andI shall tell you what is attacking America."

  He paused and held the assemblage with compelling eyes.

  "But first let me explain how I know