IV
984 Words
IVAND—EVEN HE COULD NOT have foreseen the astounding results of his piping! What happened next was as astonishing as it was incomprehensible. For as the pipes, filled now and primed to burst into whatever substitute for melody they were prodded into, wailed into action—the Grannies’ rush came to an abrupt halt!
As one, they stopped cold in their tracks and turned dull, colorless, questioning eyes upward into the tree whence came this weird and vibrant droning!
So stunned with surprise was Isobar that his grip on the pipes relaxed, his lips almost slipped from the reed. But Brown’s delighted bellow lifted his paralysis.
“Sacred rings of Saturn-look! They like it! Keep playing, Jonesy! Play, boy, like you never played before!”
And Roberts roared, above the skirling of the piobaireachd into which Isobar had instinctively swung, “Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast! Then we were wrong. They can hear, after all! See that? They’re lying down to listen—like so many lambs! Keep playing, Isobar! For once in my life I’m glad to hear that lovely, wonderful music!”
Isobar needed no urging. He, too, had noted how the Grannies’ attack had stopped, how every last one of the gaunt grey beasts had suddenly, quietly, almost happily, dropped to its haunches at the base of the tree.
There was no doubt about it; the Grannies liked this music. Eyes raptly fixed, unblinking, unwavering, they froze into postures of gentle beatitude. One stirred once, dangerously, as for a moment Isobar paused to catch his breath, but Isobar hastily lipped the blow-pipe with redoubled eagerness, and the Granny relapsed into quietude.
Followed then what, under somewhat different circumstances, should have been a piper’s dream. For Isobar had an audience which would not—and in two cases dared not—allow him to stop playing. And to this audience he played over and over again his entire repertoire. Marches, flings, dances—the stirring Rhoderik Dhu and the lilting Lassies O’Skye, the mournful Coghiegh nha Shie whose keening is like the sound of a sobbing nation.
The c**k o’ the North, he played, and Mironton ... Wee Flow’r o’ Dee and MacArthur’s March ... La Cucuracha and—
And his lungs were parched, his lips dry as swabs of cotton. Blood pounded through his temples, throbbing in time to the drone of the chaunter, and a dark mist gathered before his eyes. He tore the blow-pipe from his lips, gasped,
“Keep playing!” came the dim, distant howl of Johnny Brown. “Just a few minutes longer, Jonesy! Relief is on the way. Sparks saw us from his turret window five minutes ago!”
And Isobar played on. How, or what, he did not know. The memory of those next few minutes was never afterward clear in his mind. All he knew was that above the skirling drone of his pipes there came another sound, the metallic clanking of a man-made machine ... an armored tank, sent from the Dome to rescue the beleaguered trio.
He was conscious, then, of a friendly voice shouting words of encouragement, of Joe Roberts calling a warning to those below.
“Careful, boys! Drive the tank right up beneath us so we can hop in and get out of here! Watch the Grannies—they’ll be after us the minute Isobar stops playing!”
Then the answer from below. The fantastic answer in Sparks’ familiar voice. The answer that caused the bagpipes to slip from Isobar’s fingers as Isobar Jones passed out in a dead faint:
“After you? Those Grannies? Hell’s howling acres—those Grannies are stone dead!”
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AFTERWARD, ISOBAR JONES said weakly, “But—dead? I don’t understand. Was it the sound-waves that killed them?”
Commander Eagan said, “No! Grannies absolutely cannot hear. That is one thing we do know about them—though we will soon know a great deal more, now that our biologists have a dozen carcasses to dissect, thanks to you. But Grannies have no auditory apparatus.”
“But then—what?” puzzled Isobar. “It couldn’t be vibration, because our Patrolmen tried shootin’ ‘em with the vibro-ray pistol, and nothin’ never happened—”
“Nevertheless,” said Dr. Loesch quietly, “it was vibration which killed them, Isobar. That is, of course, only my conjecture, but I believe subsequent study will prove I am correct.
“It was the effect of dual, or disharmonic vibration. You see, the vibro-ray pistol expels an ultrasonic wave which disrupts molecular construction sensitive to a single harmonic. The Grannies’ composition is more complex. It required the impact of two different wave-lengths, impinging on their nerve centers at the same moment, to destroy them.”
“And the bagpipe—” said Isobar with slowly dawning comprehension—“emits two distinct tones at the same time!”
The full meaning of his words flashed upon Isobar. He turned to Commander Eagan, sallow cheeks glowing with new color.
“Then—then what means we’ve licked our problem!” he cried. “We’ve found a weapon that’ll kill the Grannies, and it won’t be necessary to live inside Domes no more! Now we can move out into the open and live like human beings!”
“Absolutely true!” agreed the Commander. “But you will not be living Outside, Jones. Not right away, anyway.”
“H-uh? W-hat do you mean, Commander?”
“I mean,” said Eagan sternly, “that regardless of results, you are still guilty of flagrant disobedience to orders! That, as Commander of this outpost, I cannot tolerate. You are hereby sentenced to thirty days confinement to quarters!”
“But—” stammered Isobar—“but tarnation golly—”
“In the course of which time,” continued Commander Eagan imperturbably, “you will serve as Instructor for every man in the Dome—at double salary!”
“You can’t do me like this!” wailed Isobar. “Jinky-wallopers, I won’t—Huh? What’s ‘at? Instructor? Instructor in what?”
“In the—er—art,” said Eagan, “of bagpipe playing. If we are to rid Luna of the Grannies, we must all learn how to perform on that—er—lethal weapon. And, Jones, I think I can truthfully say that this punishment hurts me more than it hurts you!”
THE BALLAD OF BLASTER BILL
By Nelson S. Bond
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