Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition, December 1955 — page 60: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

58 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION Leigh used both hands to scrabble the desk, then roared, “Get him out of it. Plant him in his contraption and shove it down the road. At once.” Then he lay back in his chair and muttered to himself. ““How’d you like to resign and buy a farm?’ Pascoe asked. The new landing-point was along the crest of the only bald hill for miles around. Charred stumps provided evidence of a by-gone forest fire which had started on the top, spread down the sides until halted, probably by heavy rain. Thickly wooded hills rolled away in every direction. No railroad tracks ran nearby but there was a road in the valley and a winding river beyond it. . Two villages were visible within four miles distance and a medium-sized town lay eleven miles to the north. Experience of local conditions enabled a considerable speed-up in in- vestigation. Earnshaw, the relief pilot, took out the ’copter with Walterson and four other experts crowded inside. The patrol wagon set off to town bearing a load of specialists including Pascoe. Three botanists and an arboriculturalist tusk to the woods accompanied by a dozen of Harding’s men who were to bear their spoils. Hoffnagle, Romero and Nolan traipsed cross-country to the nearest village, spread their explanatory charts in the small square and prayed for a rural genius able to grasp the meaning of a basic gesture in less than a week. A bunch of ship’s engineers set forth to examine lines strung on lattice masts across hills to the west and south. A piscatorial expert, said to have been conditioned from birth by the cognomen of Fish, sat for hours on the river bank dangling his lines without knowing what bait to use, what he might catch, or whether it could be caught in less than a lifetime. Leigh stayed by the ship during this brief orgy of data-gathering. He had a gloomy foreboding concerning the shape of things to come. Time proved him right. Within thirty hours Earnshaw had handed over to Ogilvy twice and was flying for the third time. He was at fifteen thousand above the Thunderer when he called. “Commodore, I hate to tell you this, but they’re coming again. They seem to have caught on quicker. Maybe they were warned over that visi- screen system they’ve got.” “How long do you give them?” “The villagers will take about two hours. The mob from the town want five or six. I can see the patrol wagon heading back in front of them.” “You'd better bring in whoever you’re carrying and go fetch those three communicators right away,’ said Leigh. “Then pick up anyone else on the loose.” “All right, sir.” The siren moaned eerily across the valleys. Over in the village Hoffnagle suddenly ceased his slow-motion gesturing and launched into an impassioned tirade that astonished the Waitabits two days later. Down in the woods the arboriculturalist fell off a tree and flattened a marine who also became vocal. It was like the ripple effect of a stone cast into a pond. Somebod cpused COMMEMOOLG COM