Prescription for Chaos (51 page)

"It hits gas and Diesel engines both. But there's a kind of engine it doesn't hit, and I want to know about it."

"There are at least
two
other kinds of engines it doesn't hit. The starters in the cars worked, so low-voltage electrical motors aren't stopped."

"That's right. What's the other kind?"

"My turn, Tarface. Is Route 27 the only place this has happened?"

"Until about an hour ago, yes. But this thing, whatever it is, has also begun moving out along an arc, like a crayon on the end of a forty-mile string. Rail, truck, and highway travel are stopped dead, along a quarter-circle with this forty-mile radius, and the arc is still spreading out with mathematical accuracy. We've had three plane crashes so far, but some planes at high altitudes have gotten over all right."

"O.K. Where's this forty-mile string centered?"

"Wait a minute. How about that nuclear car?"

"Not nuclear. Steam."

"Steam-propelled, eh? What heats the boiler?"

"A main burner fired by kerosene, and pilot burner run on gasoline. Where's the center of this forty-mile arc?"

"Smack in the middle of the industrial district north of Milford."

Cardan stiffened.

Whitely said, "You hear me, Bugs?"

"Yes, and I think that's a blind. Take a look at the low land opposite that traffic jam I mentioned on Route 27."

Cardan could hear faint voices as if someone had covered the mouthpiece. "All right, Bugs," came Whitely's voice suddenly. "You got anything more? I'm in a rush here."

"Nothing more yet," said Cardan.

"O.K. You know how to reach me. Keep away from that traffic jam on 27."

Cardan heard a click, and he was holding a dead phone.

Smitty was standing on the other side of the desk, and the belligerent towhead was just coming in the door.

Cardan glanced at Smitty. "What did you find out?"

Smitty said, "Pretty straightforward coverage on radio and TV. Motorists are warned to keep off the out-of-town highways, because some unknown effect causes car engines to stall. Travel within town, and between specified points on a map shown on TV, is O.K. The airport is closed, but travel out-of-town by train is all right for now, and emergency travel on Route 34 is permitted, subject to cancellation any time if the trouble spreads. They call it the 'stalling effect.'"

"What explanation do they give?"

"They've got some professor from the local college at a blackboard showing how ionized air around the spark plugs can short a high-voltage spark from the plug to the cylinder head. The professor has a very cultured voice, and treats the whole thing as if it were a trivial matter."

"What causes the ionized air around the spark plugs?"

"He's a little vague about the exact connection, but bears down heavy on the fact that cosmic rays cause ionization in a cloud chamber. When I left he was saying something about sunspots."

"What's the conclusion?"

Smitty grinned, "It would be premature at this time to attempt a definitive characterization of the precise nature of this disturbance. There is, however, no cause for alarm. This is nothing more serious than the slightly irritating situation encountered when the porcelain insulating material of the automobile's spark plugs becomes moist due to fog or mist."

One of the men at the table snorted. "Some of those spark plugs are buried under valve covers bolted down on waterproof gaskets. You could run those engines under Niagara Falls if you had the air intakes clear."

"Well," said Smitty, "it's an explanation, anyway, and to see this authority sneer at the whole business certainly has a calming effect."

Donovan said, "I heard you ask about Diesel trucks, Chief. Any information on that?"

"They got stopped, too."

"Then there goes the spark-plug argument. A Diesel fires by compression, not by spark plugs."

Cardan glanced at the towhead, who shook his head, and said, "All I could get was the same stuff. The police say they aren't responsible for sunspots and to keep off the highways except in case of emergency. Apparently the trains are still running, and Route 34 is still clear. About the car that went through the traffic jam, they say they're sorry, but for security reasons, they can't give any information on it. The government is investigating the tie-up, and that was a new experimental kind of car. I'm not supposed to repeat that, and if anybody asks me about seeing the car, I'm supposed to say 'no comment,' or deny any knowledge of it."

Cardan laughed.

Somebody said, "What's this about a secret governmental car?"

Cardan said, "I had to give some explanation for that steam car. I didn't
say
it was a secret government car. But if they want to think so, that's
their
business."

Maclane said, "Excuse me, Chief. I'd better see how those circuits are coming along. You want to watch this?"

Cardan said, "Sure," and Maclane handed him the headset. Maclane went out, and Cardan sent everyone but Donovan out of the room to keep watch on the radio and TV news coverage, to go down to the local supermarkets and bring back some meat and fresh grocery orders, and to drop in at nearby sporting goods and Army-Navy stores to pick up weapons and ammunition.

Cardan put on the headset for a moment to study the tripod, then took the headset off, and, frowning, fired up his cigar.

Donovan said, "I wish we could change the focus on this thing. I'm sitting here watching nothing while there's no telling what may be going on just twenty feet away."

"When Mac gets the other sets ready," said Cardan, "we ought to be a lot better off."

"I keep hoping that when we can see more of this, we'll find out it's just a big flap over nothing. Maybe, say, the filming of a motion picture. But this trough on a tripod just isn't dramatic enough for that. And they acted too casual when they used it."

"It's no flap over nothing," said Cardan. He described his phone conversation with Whitely.

Donovan shook his head. "You'd think a race that
could
do this would have gotten past the point where it
would
do it."

"Why?"

"It seems to me to be a basic truth that when you set out to injure someone else, you may succeed. But, in due time, the thing will curve around in such a way that you get your own teeth rammed down your throat. I'd think an interstellar race would have had enough experience to have learned that."

Cardan blew out a cloud of smoke. "You're talking about how it
ought
to be. But what if this interstellar race isn't perfect? What if they have competition from
another
interstellar race? For that matter, by the time
we
can travel from star to star, will the whole human race have turned into saints?"

Donovan hesitated. "Maybe not the
whole
human race."

"There's another catch."

"Why?" Donovan asked abruptly.

"The bulk of our own people are law-abiding. But how does that help you if you run into a gang of murderers? How do we know your wise interstellar race won't have a band of fanatics, or frustrated adventurers, who will get a ship, go off to some planet out in the hinterlands, take the planet over and run things
their
way?"

Donovan frowned. "Kind of a rough situation. They'd have the advanced technology, but not the restraints that went with it."

"Which would be our tough luck."

"Yeah."

A cold, hard expression passed over Donovan's face, then he said, "I don't know if you're watching this or not, Chief. If you aren't, you'd better take a look"

Cardan put on the headset. Directly before him sat the tripod, still deserted, and with its half-cylinder pointed at the horizon. For a moment there was nothing else nearby but tracks in the snow. Then a thing like a huge, pale gray oil drum rolled from the left into Cardan's field of view, wheeled, and swung back in the opposite direction, the long snout of a gun showing momentarily in outline against the sky.

Cardan looked at the snow, where there were two broad tracks, each of which appeared to be about four feet wide, with roughly a two-and-a-half foot space between them.

A moment later, another of the gray drums rolled into view, and Cardan glanced rapidly from point-to-point on this drum, noting the non-rotating central part, the wide treads turning on either end, the slit between these two treads, and the long gun that thrust out, canted slightly skyward, below the right end of the slit.

Then the vehicle wheeled, and Cardan had a brief glimpse of a tube like a short length of fifty caliber machine gun, thrust out the rear of the cylinder and aimed straight at him. Then the thing was out of his range of vision.

Cardan slipped off the headset, and snapped on the intercom. "Miss Bowen, see if you can get General Whitely for me."

"Yes, Mr. Cardan."

Donovan said, "Those guns
could
be for self-defense."

"Sure. Which is why they try to paralyze traffic along a circle eighty miles across."

"Yeah," said Donovan slowly.

"A circle eighty miles across takes in about five thousand square miles," said Cardan. "That's about the size of the state of Connecticut. What's going to happen to all the people inside the circle when neither trucks nor trains can get through with food?"

"They'll have to get out."

"How? On foot?"

"They'll drive to the place where their cars stall. Then they'll walk."

"What happens to the cars they leave behind when they get out to walk?"

"They—" Donovan stopped.

"Say the cars average sixteen feet in length," said Cardan. "If half a dozen drivers, with or without their families, just stop their cars one behind the other, there's a hundred feet of road blocked up. Five hundred and twenty of these cars will block a mile of a single-lane road. If you stand on a highway, with the cars going past fifty feet apart and at sixty miles an hour, it will only take about four minutes for that number of cars to go by."

"But can't the police—"

Cardan snorted. "The police can operate for two reasons. First, their own organization and discipline. Second, the fact that the great bulk of the people are on their side, actively or passively. Now, what's going to happen when everybody, including the police, realizes that the only way to get food for themselves and their families is to get on the other side of this eighty-mile circle?"

Donovan was silently thinking that over when the door opened up and Maclane stepped in. He grinned at Cardan, and said, "Anything new?"

Cardan described the cylindrical vehicles, with their guns fore and aft.

Maclane whistled and put on the headset. "Nothing in sight now but the tripod and a lot of packed snow. What do you mean, this vehicle is like a big thick axle with a wheel on each end?"

"More like an overgrown oil drum, with broad treads turning on each end."

"Does the drum itself rotate?"

"Not while I was looking at it. How about you, Don?"

"The drum rotates a little, but not much, just the way a car dips a little in the front when you stop suddenly."

Maclane said, "How much clearance between the underside of this drum and the ground?"

"Oh, I'd guess about a foot."

The door opened, and Cardan's secretary said, "I have General Whitely on the phone, sir. And Mr. Farrell—he's working on the circuits—said to tell Mr. Maclane they're having an 'h' of a time focusing the circuits."

Cardan grinned. "You'd better get back down there, Mac. When you get them focused, send one up here, and take another down to the subbasement and see if it works down there."

Maclane nodded and went out.

Cardan picked up the phone, and held it cautiously a little way from his ear. The general's voice jumped out at him. "What are we up against here, Bugs? Have you got any inside dope on this?"

Cardan said cautiously, "I've got a kind of long-range viewer with a very narrow fixed field of view, overlooking what I think is the spot where the trouble is. How about you?"

"I've got aerial TV and blown-up aerial photographs."

"What do you see?"

The general snorted. "There's a big cylinder piled into the snow, with one end open, and things like pale blue fuel drums dropping out and rolling away."

"Rolling away toward what?"

"The highway. Where that traffic jam is, on the curve south of Milford."

"What are you doing about it?"

"I managed to get a couple of helicopters around this arc of interference to take a close look. Their engines quit before they could get close. I've got some special jets high overhead."

"How about their engines?"

"They give out, too. Whether because of what hits the others, or because of a kind of drifting fluff or fuzz we've run into, I don't know."

"What does the fuzz do?"

"It gets sucked into the air intakes, and apparently knocks out the engines. I've told you something. How about something in return?"

"Well," said Cardan, "this thing I'm looking through has a narrow fixed field of view, but I'm trying to get that fixed. Meantime, those drums you saw are a pale blue, is that right?"

"Right. What about them?"

"I got a close view of them but without color, and it didn't last very long. The drums seem to be about twelve feet long, the center section fitted with a view slit and a gun in front, a gun behind, and broad treads mounted on either side of the center with about a foot ground clearance. The treads look about four feet wide. They may actually be several treads mounted side-by-side. The whole drum doesn't roll over, but just the treads. Directly in my field of view, there's a heavy tripod mounting a half-cylinder that looks about a foot through and six feet long. This half-cylinder is something like a big bazooka split lengthwise, and mounted on a tripod with two adjusting wheels, graduated circles—apparently for elevation and azimuth, and several locking levers. About an hour ago, a big brawny individual in coveralls was dropping cylinders a foot or so long in his end of this split bazooka, and the cylinders streaked up the trough and shot out for the horizon. I don't know what the means of propulsion is."