The Flying Eyes. J. Hunter Holly
how to handle weapons. Then, of course, there are us.”
“I think we can probably pick our own ground,” Wes said. “The Eyes will undoubtedly come anyplace they see a crowd.”
Iverson stood up. “You two go ahead and plan a strategy. I’ll make the calls to the police and students. I think I carry enough weight around here to get them. In fact, I know I do—I’ve got the whole reactor behind me for blackmail.”
He left, and Linc pulled out a piece of paper and bent with Wes over the desk, setting up a plan of action. Tomorrow morning, with the first light, he would win back his beautiful time of the year by wrenching it violently away from the ungodly things that had stolen it.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dawn had climbed two hours up the sky, and the sun slanted through the east windows of the lab. The assembled men were restless; forty of them, shifting about, fingering their rifles and shotguns with eager hands. Linc waited close to Wes for Iverson to join them and give the final word. The excitement inside him was a bubbling, a churning in his stomach.
This morning would be his. A real fight, a hand-to-hand battle—this kind of action he knew backward and forward, and the feel and taste of it, the pending wildness of it, were spurs that made his feet want to stride outside on their own will, made his voice want to come up shouting.
“I think we’re going to do it,” Wes’s voice was thick with enthusiasm. “Look at those men, Linc. They’re like tigers, every one of them. I think we’re going to do it this morning.”
Linc glanced over the forty men again, a frown edging between his blue eyes. “Some of those kids are so blatantly kids. Nineteen, twenty. I wish Iverson could have enlisted some seniors, at least. I worry about them.”
“Don’t,” Wes said. “They’re eager. They’ll be your best men this morning. Just wait and see.”
Iverson’s entrance interrupted them. “Are we all set?”
“All set,” Linc nodded.
“Good. Then we’ll move out in ten minutes. You men will go out in a group, so that we can lure the Eyes simply by our show of numbers. The police first, and then the students.” He lowered his voice and addressed Linc directly. “We’ll follow behind, at a safe distance.”
Linc glanced up quickly to meet the old man’s gaze. “What do you mean, safe distance? You’ve got this all wrong, Doc, if you think I’m here to be an observer, or some back-line general. I’ve brought my gun, and I’m going to fight.”
Iverson shook his head. “You’re not going to fire one shot. The lab needs you; if this doesn’t work, then who knows, maybe the whole town needs you for another try. However it is, you’re not going to join the fight. No one from the Lab is to engage in combat. And for once, I won’t stomach any arguments. Argue, and you’re out altogether. Understood?”
Iverson stepped away before Linc could protest. He faced the men and began to outline the plan.
“I don’t like this,” Linc said to Wes. “I don’t like to be counted out of something I planned myself.”
“We have no choice. Who knows—” Wes tried to joke the scowl off Linc’s face—“maybe we can get rich by selling our observations to the Sunday magazines.”
A moment later, the quiet was broken by the sharp shuffling of eighty feet. The men were moving out. Linc reached for his gun, but Wes’ hand closed over his arm, and he laid it back down. “Okay,” Linc grunted, “so I’m out—put to pasture—an observer. Let’s go. I guess our battle group is forming over there.”
He indicated Iverson and the knot of lab men who had formed around him. None of them had guns, and their empty hands were nervously clenching and unclenching. The morning was warm, the Indian summer sun lying on Linc’s shoulders like a sweater. He stayed beside Wes, walking along the concrete of the parking lot, then across trimmed grass, through the crackle of fallen leaves. The students and police were well in advance, already off the lab grounds, onto the brushy weed growth of the open meadow.
A woods loomed one thousand feet ahead of them, and a pheasant took flight at their approach, its bright head glinting metallic green in the sunshine. Everything was strangely quiet. Somewhere in the forest, a flicker sounded its jungle cry, warming up for its journey south to tropical forests.
Fifteen minutes had passed, and the guns in the hands of the men had dropped from the ready position. Conversations had sprung up, carried to Linc’s hearing by the breeze that rustled the leaves and parachuted others to the ground.
“I guess the Eyes are late sleepers,” chuckled Myers, “and just can’t get themselves open this early.”
Linc winced at the levity; yet he felt an answering laugh within himself. Relief? He didn’t know. There was as yet nothing to be relieved about. Maybe the battle wouldn’t be fought and no men would die this morning; but there would be another morning.
With a whir of wings that shattered the morning stillness, the forest suddenly erupted, spewing forth birds of all sizes. They soared up from the trees, a cloud of them, noisy flaps that were crows, and whirring flutters that were warblers. Joining in a crowded sky, they drove straight over the approaching men and off toward the lab. Their calls were loud, and the men stopped still, startled by the sudden activity.
Squirrels which had been nibbling along the edge of the woods suddenly were dashing headlong into the dimness, making for cover, and rabbits leaped after them.
Then, up and over the highest elm came the skin and ball of a giant Eye. It sailed up in a great swoop, clearing the forest, and arcing down for the field.
“There’s another one.” Wes grabbed his arm. “To the west.”
They came in a steady dive, now, eight of them—oval obscenities, wide-open, staring in a challenge that sent quivers of gooseflesh down Linc’s back. They banked and rolled and settled groundward with a swaying motion from side to side.
“When are the fools going to open fire?” Hendricks cursed. “They’ll come right through to us, if they’re not stopped!”
The Eyes were nearly over the heads of the fighting force, and just as Linc opened his mouth to scream orders, the guns jerked up and spat orange fire into the morning. The simultaneous explosion of forty guns was a thunder in his ears.
The Eye Linc was watching shot upward twenty feet in a convulsive jerk, hung there for an instant, then started a wobbling descent. There were two holes in it. It skimmed the heads of the men, coming for Linc’s group. Tears streamed out of the corners of it, dripping to the ground like a trail of rain. And as it neared Linc, blood started to come, seeping from the holes, mixed with fluid.
Wes was pulling him down, trying to make him crouch with the rest of them, but the sight of the Eye bearing down, bleeding and dying, held him frozen. It halted fifty feet away, ten feet above the ground, soaking the land and the leaves beneath it with red. A glaze came over it as though it had drawn into itself, and as its life ebbed before him, he cursed it, eager to watch it die.
But the glaze that spread across it reached the bullet holes and the blood congealed on the edges of them. The glaze continued to spread, and before his horrified sight, the sides of the holes firmed up, drew themselves together from a gaping hole to a red line, and then the line changed color, the fresh purple of a scar fading to a gray that softened out until it was gone from sight.
The Eye was whole again—healed and whole—and it gazed at him with the same empty, alien expression he had seen before. He stared back, into the iris that was bigger than his head, accepting its challenge. There was a pull upon him, a bodily pull, drawing him closer to it, compelling him to walk into it. He wanted to rip it apart with his hands; he wanted to rid the world of the sight of it. He stepped forward.
“You idiot!” Wes was upon him, knocking him down. “Get away from here. You haven’t got a gun!”
Linc