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Doorstep

by Keith Laumer

Steadying his elbow on the kitchen table serving as a desk, Brigadier General W. F. Straut leveled his binoculars and stared out through the second-floor window of the farmhouse at the bulky object lying canted at the edge of the wood lot. He watched the figures moving over and around the gray mass, then flipped the lever on the field telephone.

“Bill, how are your boys doing?”

“General, since that box this morning—”

“I know all about the box, Bill. It’s in Washington by now. What have you got that’s new?”

“Sir, I haven’t got anything to report yet. I’ve got four crews on it, and she still looks impervious as hell. ”

“Still getting the sounds from inside?”

“Intermittently, General. ”

“I’m giving you one more hour, Major. I want that thing cracked. ”

The General dropped the phone back on its cradle, and absently peeled the cellophane from a cigar. He had moved fast, he reflected, after the State Police notified him at 9:41 last night. He had his men on the spot, the area evacuated of civilians, and a preliminary report on the way to Washington by midnight. At 2:36, they had discovered the four inch cube lying on the ground fifteen feet from the object—ship, capsule, bomb, whatever it was. But now—four hours later—nothing new.

The field phone jangled. He grabbed it up.

“General, we’ve discovered a thin spot up on the top surface; all we can tell so far is that the wall thickness falls off there. ”

“All right. Keep after it, Bill. ”

This was more like it. If he could have this thing wrapped up by the time Washington woke up to the fact that it was something big—well, he’d been waiting a long time for that second star. This was his chance, and he would damn well make the most of it.

Straut looked across the field at the thing. It was half in and half out of the woods, flat-sided, round-ended, featureless. Maybe he should go over and give it a closer look personally. He might spot something the others were missing. It might blow them all to kingdom come any second; but what the hell. He had earned his star on sheer guts in Granada. He still had ’em.

He keyed the phone. “I’m coming down, Bill. ” On impulse, he strapped a pistol belt on. Not much use against a house-sized bomb, but the heft of it felt good.

The thing looked bigger than ever as the jeep approached it, bumping across the muck of the freshly plowed field. From here he could see a faint line running around, just below the juncture of side and top. Greer hadn’t mentioned that. The line was quite obvious; in fact, it was more of a crack.

With a sound like a baseball smacking the catcher’s mitt, the crack opened; the upper half tilted, men sliding—then impossibly it stood open, vibrating, like the roof of a house suddenly lifted. The driver gunned the jeep. There were cries, and a ragged shrilling that set Straut’s teeth on edge. The men were running back now, two of them dragging a third. Major Greer emerged from behind the object, looked about, ran toward him, shouting.

“… a man dead. It snapped; we weren’t expecting it…”