Troublemakers by Harlan Ellison Read Free Book Online Page A

been smuggled out West somewhere, to the mountains.”
        The General did not look at his Adjutant as he spoke the words. He stared at his clasped and shaking hands.
        “Tell them to release the missile. We’ll watch it on TV.”
        The Adjutant lifted the phone, clicked the connection buttons twice, spoke quickly, softly, into the mouthpiece. “Let it go.”
        A minute and a half later, from half a mile away on the launching strip, they heard the jet rev-up and split the evening sky with its fire.
        Then they went to the television room and watched the lines of screens.
        In one they saw the silent girdle of saucers. In another they were focused on the dirty saucer, with a sign above the screen that said INITIAL TARGET. In a third they had a line-of-sight to the night-fighter’s approach pattern.
        “There it comes!” one of the technicians yelled, pointing at the lighter dark of the jet as it streaked toward the massed saucers, leaving a trail of fire behind it. They watched silently as the plane swooped in high, dove, and they saw the parasite leave its belly, streak on forward. The jet sliced upward, did a roll, and was a mile away as the parasite homed in exactly.
        They watched with held breath as the small atomic missile deaded-in on the dirty saucer, and they flinched as it struck.
        A blinding flash covered all the screens for a moment, and a few seconds later they heard the explosion. Shock waves ripped outward and the concussion was great enough to knock out eighteen of the thirty telemetering cameras.
        But they could see the dirty saucer clearly on one. In that one the smoke and blast were clearing slowly. A mushroom-shaped cloud was rising, rising, rising from the sloping dish of the saucer’s upper side. As it moved away they could see oxidized smears and blast pattern of white jagged sunbursts. It looked as harmless as a kid’s experiment with a match, potassium nitrate, and powdered magnesium. It had not harmed the saucer in the least. But...
        There was a crack along the top face of the saucer. And from that gash spilled a bubbling white substance. The stuff frothed out and ran across the top of the saucer. It pitted and tore at the metal of the ship wherever it touched. There was a weird sound of clacking and coughing from the ship, as though some intricate mechanism within were erupting.
        Then, as they watched, the glassite pillar rose up out of the ship...
        ...and the person was within.
        Unmistakably, his face was a violence of rage and hatred. His fists beat against the glassite, and he roared-silently, for no sound could be picked up by the audio ears-inside the pillar. He spat, and blood-red and thick-dotted the clear glassite. His mouth opened screaming wide and long, sharp teeth could be seen.
         He shook a fist at the emptiness beyond the saucer, and the pillar lowered into the ship.
        A minute later, for the first time since it had arrived, the dirty saucer flicked! out of existence and was gone.
        “That was perhaps the wrong move, General...”
        The General, who had been fastened to the TV screen by some invisible linkage, tore his eyes away from the set, and whirled, glowering, on his Adjutant.
        “That’s for me to worry about, Captain Alberts. I told you the military mind can solve problems by the direct method, the uncomplicated method, while these scientists dawdle and doodle helplessly.” He was speaking loudly, almost hysterically, and the Adjutant recognized relief in the officer’s tones.
        “They’re on the run’” the General shouted, grinning hugely. “On the run, by George! Now, come on, Alberts, let’s get a few antiaircraft battalions out there on the desert and pick off the rest of them in this area. Wait till the President hears of this’”

    They were out on the desert, the ack-ack guns sniffing at the sky, pelting the saucers from six