Page:Stirring Science Stories, February 1941.djvu/36

 The boy and girl looked at each other.

"What—" began the girl.

Then the car seemed to shake itself. gave a lurch and settled wearily.

"Earthquake!" yelled Jim, jumping to conclusions. "Letts get out of here!" He opened the door and leaped out, pulling the girl with him.

Outside, he stopped suddenly and looked down at his hand with a puzzled air. In it was the plastic handle of the door. The rest of the door was a pile of rusty dust scattered between him and the car.

Then, as they watched, the metal body of the car ran away in little streams, leaving the upholstery and the plastic windows and fittings lying in a pile of the same dust.

The two looked at each other in silence.

O HELP me God," muttered Traffic Officer Koehler as he threaded his way among the jammed cars, "if another of them women has tried to make a U-turn at that corner, I'll tear off my badge, and then I'll take her by the hair and yank her out of her car—and I'll get at least twenty years, but it'll be worth it."

Then he stopped short and stared speechlessly ahead of him. Between two cars came the cause of the jam; a string of little men in sky-blue coats and metal caps, swinging tiny tubes back and forth at the cars and buildings around.

The foremost of the Little Men calmly rayed Officer Koehler, and started to pass on. Koehler, however, came to his official self with a start, and made a grab for him.

As his fingers closed about the mite's body, he was horrified to feel it bend inward like a piece of rubber. He let go hastily. Then he dazedly watched the Little Man's belly snap back into place, also like rubber. He marched on, as if nothing had happened.

A few seconds later, Officer Koehler failed to notice that his metal suspender clasps had given way, on account of the fact that a street-full of cars and a number of buildings were falling at the same time as his trousers.

S THAT them?" asked one of the soldiers incredulously, looking through the bushes at the column of little figures. "Yep," 'whispered another. "They have some kinda ray that makes your gun fall to pieces. That's why we gotta ambush 'em."

"Ready," came the command. "Aim Fire!"

The rifles barked.

"Hell," said a soldier, clearly. "We only got five!"

"They're too damn small," another replied. "Whadda they think we are, Dead-eye Dicks?"

The surviving Little Men swiftly scattered out and fell flat, raying the bushes. The next volley got none of them.

As their guns fell to dust and the Little Men marched on past them, a soldier said, disgustedly, "Hell, we shoulda used fly-swatters."

S I UNDERSTAND it," said Professor Ferrin. "the—ah—invaders employ a ray which induces what is known as 'fatigue' in metals, making them lose their molecular cohesion. If it were not for that, our militia would no doubt have been able to pick them off from ambush, but, you see, they are so very small that it is—ah—extremely difficult to hit one. Machine guns are no good, either,