The Moon Is Down (15 page)

“Now don't anybody touch it,” the sergeant said. “Harry, you go down to the mine and get the captain. We'll keep an eye on this damn thing.”

The late dawn came and the people moving out of their houses in the country saw the spots of blue against the snow. They went to them and picked them up. They unwrapped the paper and read the printed words. They saw the gift and suddenly each finder grew furtive, and he concealed the long tube under his coat and went to some secret place and hid the tube.

And word got to the children about the gift and they combed the countryside in a terrible Easter egg hunt, and when some lucky child saw the blue color, he rushed to the prize and opened it and then he hid the tube and told his parents about it. There were some people who were frightened, who turned the tubes over to the military, but they were not very many. And the soldiers scurried about the town in another Easter egg hunt, but they were not so good at it as the children were.

In the drawing-room of the palace of the Mayor the dining-table remained with the chairs about as it had been placed the day Alex Morden was shot. The room had not the grace it had when it was still the palace of the Mayor. The walls, bare of standing chairs, looked very blank. The table with a few papers scattered about on it made the room look like a business office. The clock on the mantel struck nine. It was a dark day now, overcast with clouds, for the dawn had brought the heavy snow clouds.

Annie came out of the Mayor's room; she swooped by the table and glanced at the papers that lay there. Captain Loft came in. He stopped in the doorway, seeing Annie.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

And Annie said sullenly, “Yes, sir.”

“I said, what are you doing here?”

“I thought to clean up, sir.”

“Let things alone, and go along.”

And Annie said, “Yes, sir,” and she waited until he was clear of the door, and she scuttled out.

Captain Loft turned back through the doorway and he said, “All right, bring it in.” A soldier came through the door behind him, his rifle hung over his shoulder by a strap, and in his arms he held a number of the blue packages, and from the ends of the packages there dangled the little strings and pieces of blue cloth.

Loft said, “Put them on the table.” The soldier gingerly laid the packages down. “Now go upstairs and report to Colonel Lanser that I'm here with the—things,” and the soldier wheeled about and left the room.

Loft went to the table and picked up one of the packages, and his face wore a look of distaste. He held up the little blue cloth parachute, held it above his head and dropped it, and the cloth opened and the package floated to the floor. He picked up the package again and examined it.

Now Colonel Lanser came quickly into the room, followed by Major Hunter. Hunter was carrying a square of yellow paper in his hand. Lanser said, “Good morning, Captain,” and he went to the head of the table and sat down. For a moment he looked at the little pile of tubes, and then he picked one up and held it in his hand. “Sit down, Hunter,” he said. “Have you examined these?”

Hunter pulled out a chair and sat down. He looked at the yellow paper in his hand. “Not very carefully,” he said. “There are three breaks in the railroad all within ten miles.”

“Well, take a look at them and see what you think,” Lanser said.

Hunter reached for a tube and stripped off the outer covering, and inside was a small package next to the tube. Hunter took out a knife and cut into the tube. Captain Loft looked over his shoulder. Then Hunter smelled the cut and rubbed his fingers together, and he said, “It's silly. It's commercial dynamite. I don't know what per cent of nitroglycerin until I test it.” He looked at the end. “It has a regular dynamite cap, fulminate of mercury, and a fuse—about a minute, I suppose.” He tossed the tube back onto the table. “It's very cheap and very simple,” he said.

The colonel looked at Loft. “How many do you think were dropped?”

“I don't know, sir,” said Loft. “We picked up about fifty of them, and about ninety parachutes they came in. For some reason the people leave the parachutes when they take the tubes, and then there are probably a lot we haven't found yet.”

Lanser waved his hand. “It doesn't really matter,” he said. “They can drop as many as they want. We can't stop it, and we can't use it against them, either. They haven't conquered anybody.”

Loft said fiercely, “We can beat them off the face of the earth!”

Hunter was prying the copper cap out of the top of one of the sticks, and Lanser said, “Yes—we can do that. Have you looked at this wrapper, Hunter?”

“Not yet, I haven't had time.”

“It's kind of devilish, this thing,” said Colonel Lanser. “The wrapper is blue, so that it's easy to see. Unwrap the outer paper and here”—he picked up the small package—“here is a piece of chocolate. Everybody will be looking for it. I'll bet our own soldiers steal the chocolate. Why, the kids will be looking for them, like Easter eggs.”

A soldier came in and laid a square of yellow paper in front of the colonel and retired, and Lanser glanced at it and laughed harshly. “Here's something for you, Hunter. Two more breaks in your line.”

Hunter looked up from the copper cap he was examining, and he asked, “How general is this? Did they drop them everywhere?”

Lanser was puzzled. “Now, that's the funny thing. I've talked to the capital. This is the only place they've dropped them.”

“What do you make of that?” Hunter asked.

“Well, it's hard to say. I think this is a test place. I suppose if it works here they'll use it all over, and if it doesn't work here they won't bother.”

“What are you going to do?” Hunter asked.

“The capital orders me to stamp this out so ruthlessly that they won't drop it any place else.”

Hunter said plaintively, “How am I going to mend five breaks in the railroad? I haven't rails right now for five breaks.”

“You'll have to rip out some of the old sidings, I guess,” said Lanser.

Hunter said, “That'll make a hell of a roadbed.”

“Well, anyway, it will make a roadbed.”

Major Hunter tossed the tube he had torn apart onto the pile, and Loft broke in, “We must stop this thing at once, sir. We must arrest and punish people who pick these things up, before they use them. We have to get busy so these people won't think we are weak.”

Lanser was smiling at him, and he said, “Take it easy, Captain. Let's see what we have first, and then we'll think of remedies.”

He took a new package from the pile and unwrapped it. He took the little piece of chocolate, tasted it, and he said, “This is a devilish thing. It's good chocolate, too. I can't even resist it myself. The prize in the grab-bag.” Then he picked up the dynamite. “What do you think of this really, Hunter?”

“What I told you. It's very cheap and very effective for small jobs, dynamite with a cap and a one-minute fuse. It's good if you know how to use it. It's no good if you don't.”

Lanser studied the print on the inside of the wrapper. “Have you read this?”

“Glanced at it,” said Hunter.

“Well, I have read it, and I want you to listen to it carefully,” said Lanser. He read from the paper, “‘To the unconquered people: Hide this. Do not expose yourself. You will need this later. It is a present from your friends to you and from you to the invader of your country. Do not try to do large things with it.' ” He began to skip through the bill. “Now here, ‘rails in the country.' And, ‘work at night.' And, ‘tie up transportation.' Now here, ‘Instructions: rails. Place stick under rail close to the joint, and tight against a tie. Pack mud or hard-beaten snow around it so that it is firm. When the fuse is lighted you have a slow count of sixty before it explodes.' ”

He looked up at Hunter and Hunter said simply, “It works.” Lanser looked back at his paper and he skipped through. “‘Bridges: Weaken, do not destroy.' And here, ‘transmission poles,' and here, ‘culverts, trucks.' ” He laid the blue handbill down. “Well, there it is.”

Loft said angrily, “We must do something! There must be a way to control this. What does headquarters say?”

Lanser pursed his lips and his fingers played with one of the tubes. “I could have told you what they'd say before they said it. I have the orders. ‘Set booby traps and poison the chocolate.' ” He paused for a moment and then he said, “Hunter, I'm a good, loyal man, but sometimes when I hear the brilliant ideas of headquarters, I wish I were a civilian, an old, crippled civilian. They always think they are dealing with stupid people. I don't say that this is a measure of their intelligence, do I?”

Hunter looked amused. “Do you?”

Lanser said sharply, “No, I don't. But what will happen? One man will pick up one of these and get blown to bits by our booby trap. One kid will eat chocolate and die of strychnine poisoning. And then?” He looked down at his hands. “They will poke them with poles, or lasso them, before they touch them. They will try the chocolate on the cat. Goddamn it, Major, these are intelligent people. Stupid traps won't catch them twice.”

Loft cleared his throat. “Sir, this is defeatist talk,” he said. “We must do something. Why do you suppose it was only dropped here, sir?”

And Lanser said, “For one of two reasons: either this town was picked at random or else there is communication between this town and the outside. We know that some of the young men have got away.”

Loft repeated dully, “We must do something, sir.”

Now Lanser turned on him. “Loft, I think I'll recommend you for the General Staff. You want to get to work before you even know what the problem is. This is a new kind of conquest. Always before, it was possible to disarm a people and keep them in ignorance. Now they listen to their radios and we can't stop them. We can't even find their radios.”

A soldier looked in through the doorway. “Mr. Corell to see you, sir.”

Lanser replied, “Tell him to wait.” He continued to talk to Loft. “They read the handbills; weapons drop from the sky for them. Now it's dynamite, Captain. Pretty soon it may be grenades, and then poison.”

Loft said anxiously, “They haven't dropped poison yet.”

“No, but they will. Can you think what will happen to the morale of our men or even to you if the people had some of those little game darts, you know, those silly things you throw at a target, the points coated perhaps with cyanide, silent, deadly little things that you couldn't hear coming, that would pierce the uniform and make no noise? And what if our men knew that arsenic was about? Would you or they drink or eat comfortably?”

Hunter said dryly, “Are you writing the enemy's campaign, Colonel?”

“No, I'm trying to anticipate it.”

Loft said, “Sir, we sit here talking when we should be searching for this dynamite. If there is organization among these people, we have to find it, we have to stamp it out.”

“Yes,” said Lanser, “we have to stamp it out, ferociously, I suppose. You take a detail, Loft. Get Prackle to take one. I wish we had more junior officers. Tonder's getting killed didn't help us a bit. Why couldn't he let women alone?”

Loft said, “I don't like the way Lieutenant Prackle is acting, sir.”

“What's he doing?”

“He isn't doing anything, but he's jumpy and he's gloomy.”

“Yes,” Lanser said, “I know. It's a thing I've talked about so much. You know,” he said, “I might be a major-general if I hadn't talked about it so much. We trained our young men for victory and you've got to admit they're glorious in victory, but they don't quite know how to act in defeat. We told them they were brighter and braver than other young men. It was a kind of shock to them to find out that they aren't a bit braver or brighter than other young men.”

Loft said harshly, “What do you mean by defeat? We are not defeated?”

And Lanser looked coldly up at him for a long moment and did not speak, and finally Loft's eyes wavered, and he said, “Sir.”

“Thank you,” said Lanser.

“You don't demand it of the others, sir.”

“They don't think about it, so it isn't an insult. When you leave it out, it's insulting.”

“Yes, sir,” said Loft.

“Go on, now, try to keep Prackle in hand. Start your search. I don't want any shooting unless there's an overt act, do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said Loft, and he saluted formally and went out of the room.

Hunter regarded Colonel Lanser amusedly. “Weren't you rough on him?”

“I had to be. He's frightened. I know his kind. He has to be disciplined when he's afraid or he'll go to pieces. He relies on discipline the way other men rely on sympathy. I suppose you'd better get to your rails. You might as well expect that tonight is the time when they'll really blow them, though.”

Hunter stood up and he said, “Yes. I suppose the orders are coming in from the capital?”

“Yes.”

“Are they—”

“You know what they are,” Lanser interrupted. “You know what they'd have to be. Take the leaders, shoot the leaders, take hostages, shoot the hostages, take more hostages, shoot them”—his voice had risen but now it sank almost to a whisper—“and the hatred growing and the hurt between us deeper and deeper.”

Hunter hesitated. “Have they condemned any from the list of names?” and he motioned slightly toward the Mayor's bedroom.