_18._ An illiterate patchwork of lifeless and uninteresting scribbling appeared under my byline day after day in the _Intelligencer_. Not a word, not a thought of my own was left. I was not restrained from protest by the absurd threats of Le ffacase, but prudence dictated not throwing away dirty water before I got clean, and the money from the paper, while negligible of course, yet provided my most pressing needs.

As I was being paid for my name while my talents went to waste, I was free to go anywhere I pleased, but I had little desire to leave the vicinity of the gra.s.s. It exerted upon me, more understandably, the same fascination as on the merely curious.

But I was not permitted unmolested access to the phenomenon with which I was so closely concerned. An officious young guardsman warned me away brusquely and I was not allowed to come near until I swallowed my pride and claimed connection with the _Intelligencer_. Even then it was necessary for me to explain myself to several nervous soldiers on pain of being ordered from the spot.

I was struck as I had not been before by the dynamic quality of the gra.s.s; never the same for successive instants. Constant movement and struggle as the expanding parts fought for room among themselves, pushing upward and outward, seemed to indicate perceptible sentience permeating the whole body. Preparing, brooding, it was disturbed, searching, alert.

Its external aspect reflected the change. The proportions of height to breadth had altered since the explosion. The peak had disappeared, flattening out into an irregular plateau. Its progress across the ground, however, had been vastly accelerated; it had crossed the streets on all sides of the block and was spreading with great rapidity over the whole district. For the moment no new effort was apparently being made to halt its progress, the activities of the militia being confined to patrolling the area and shooing decent citizens away. I wondered if a new strategy contemplated allowing the thing to exhaust itself. Since it looked more vigorous with each pa.s.sing hour, I saw myself on the payroll of the _Intelligencer_ for a long time to come.

Captain Eltwiss walked by and I asked him if this were so. "Don't worry," he rea.s.sured me. "We're hep now, with the actual, unbeatable mccoy. Park the body and watch what happens to old Mr Gra.s.s."

I had every intention of staying and I thought it advisable to remain close to the captain in order, if his boast were wellfounded, to be in on the kill. He was in excellent spirits and although I did not think it tactful to refer to it, it was evident his little difference with the colonel about the unreceived orders had not affected him. We chatted amiably. I mentioned what Miss Francis had said about the weed springing up in new places from each of the shreds dispersed by the explosion, but he merely shrugged and laughed.

"I know these longbearded scientific nuts. They can find calamity around the corner quicker than a drunk can find a bar."

"The discoverer of the Metamorphizer is a woman, so her long beard is doubtful," I told him, just a little irritated by his c.o.c.ksureness.

He laughed with as much ease at himself as at anything else. "A woman scientist, ay? Funny things womenll do when they can't get a man. But longbearded or flatchested it's all the same. Gruesome, that's what they are, gruesome. Forget it. After we get this cleaned up we'll take care of any others that start, but personally I don't think therell be any. Sounds like a lot of theory to me."

I looked contemptuously at him, for he had that unimaginative approach which disdains Science and so holds Civilization back on its upward path. If the world's future rested with people like this, I thought, we should never have had dynamite or germtheories or airplanes capable of destroying whole cities at a blow.

But Captain Eltwiss was a servant to the Science he looked down on. The answer he had bragged about now appeared and it was a scientific contribution if ever there was one. A division of tanks, twenty or thirty of them with what appeared to be sledrunners invertedly attached to their fronts, rolled into sight. "Wirecutters," he explained with pride. "Same equipment used for barbedwire on the Normandy beachhead. Go through anything like cheese."

The tanks drew up in a semicircle and the drivers came out of their vehicles for lastminute preparations. A final check was made of gas, oil, and the positions of the wirecutters. Maps, showing the location of each house now covered by the gra.s.s, were studied and compa.s.spoints checked against them. I admired the thoroughness and efficiency of the arrangements. So did the captain.

"The idea is simple. These tanks are shocktroops. Theyll cut their way into the middle of the stuff. This will give us entranceways and a central operating point, besides. .h.i.tting the gra.s.s where its strength is greatest. From there--" he paused impressively--"from there we'll throw everything in the book at it and a few that arent. All the stuff they used before we came. Only we'll use it efficiently. And everything else.

Even hush-hush stuff. Just got the release from Washington. The minute one of these stems shows we'll stamp it out. We'll fight it and fight it until we beat it and we won't leave a bit of it, no, sir, not one bit of it, alive."

He looked at me triumphantly. Behind his triumph was a hint of the vast resources and the slowmoving but una.s.sailable force his uniform represented. It sounded as though he had been correct in his boast and something drastic indeed would "happen to Mr. Gra.s.s."

The tanks were ready to go at last and the drivers climbed back into them and disappeared, leaving the steel monsters looking as though theyd swallowed the men. Like bubbles of air in a narrow gla.s.s tube they began to jerk backward and forward, until at some signal--I presume given by radio--they jumped ahead, their exhausts bellowing defiance of the gra.s.s mauled and torn by their treads.

They went onward with careless scorn, leaving behind a bruised and trampled pathway. The captain followed in the track and I after him, though I must admit it was not without some trepidation I put my feet upon the battered and now lifeless ma.s.s packed into a hard roadbed, for I recalled clearly how the gra.s.s had wrenched the ladder from the firemen and how it had impishly attacked the broadcaster's equipment.

The tanks moved ahead steadily until the slope of the mound began to rise sharply and the runners of gra.s.s, instead of flattening obediently behind, curled and twisted grotesquely as the tracks pa.s.sed over them, lightly slapping at the impervious steel sides. Small bunches, mutilated and crushed, sprang back into erectness, larger ones flopped limply as their props were pushed aside.

Then, suddenly, the tank we were trailing disappeared. There was no warning; one second it was pursuing its way, an implacable executioner, the next it had plunged into the weed and was lost to sight. The ends of the gra.s.s came together spitefully behind it, weaving themselves together, knitting, as we watched, an opaque blanket. It closed over and around so that the smooth track ended abruptly, bitten by a wiry green portcullis.

I was dismayed, but the captain seemed happy. "Now we're getting somewhere," he exclaimed. "The little devils are eating right into the heart of the old sonofab.i.t.c.h."

We stood there gaping stupidly after our lost champion, but the gra.s.s mound was enigmatic and offered us no information as to its progress. A survey of the other tracks showed their tanks, too, had burrowed into the heart of the weed like so many hounds after a rabbit.

"Well," said the captain, who by now had apparently accepted me as his confidant, "let's go and see what's coming in over the radio."

I was glad to be reminded the tanks werent lost, even temporarily, and that we would soon learn of their advance. Field headquarters had been set up in a house about two blocks away and there, after exchanging salutes, pa.s.swords, and a.s.sorted badinage, the captain led. The men in contact with the tanks, shoulders hunched, fingers rapid with pad and pencil, were sitting in a row by a wall on which had been tacked a large and detailed map of the district.

In addition to their earphones, a loudspeaker had also been thoughtfully set up, apparently to take care of any such curious visitors as ourselves. The disadvantage, soon manifest, was that no plan had been devised to unscramble the reports from the various tanks. As a consequence, whenever two or three came in together, the reports overlapped, resulting in a jumble of unintelligible sounds from the loudspeaker.

"Brf brf brm," it was saying as we entered the room. "Rrr rrr about three hundred meters khorof khorof khorof north by northeast. Can you hear me, FHQ? Come in, FHQ."

There was a further muddle of words, then, "I think my motor's going to conk out. Shall I backtrack, FHQ? Come in, FHQ."

"Rugged place to stall," commented captain Eltwiss sympathetically, "but we can pull him out in halfashake soons we get things under control."

The loudspeaker, after a great deal of gibberish, condescended to clarity again. "... about five hundred meters. Supposed to join SMT5 at this point. Can't raise him by radio. What do you have on SMT5, FHQ?

Come in, FHQ."

I was still speculating as to what had happened to SMT5 when the loudspeaker once more became intelligible. "... and the going's getting tougher all the time. I don't believe these G.o.dd.a.m.ned wirecutters are worth a p.i.s.sinasnowhole. Just fouled up, that's what they are, just fouled up. Got further if theyd been left off."

His grumbling was blotted out. For a moment there was complete babel, then "... if I can guess, it's somehow got in the motor and shorted the ignition. Ive got to take a chance and get out to look at it. This is SMT3 reporting to FHQ. Now leaving the transmitter."

"... stalled so I turned on my lights. Can you hear me, FHQ? Come in FHQ, O K, O K, don't get sore. So I turned on my lights. I'm not going to do a Bob Trout, but I want to tell you it's pretty creepy. I guess this stuff looks pretty and green enough on top, especially in daylight, but from where I am now it's like an ill.u.s.tration out of Grimm's _Fairy Tales_--something about the place where the wicked ogre lived. Not a bit of green. Not a bit of light except from my own which penetrate about two feet ahead and stop. Dead. Yellow and reddishbrown stems. Thick.

Interlaced. How the h.e.l.l I ever got this far I'd like to know. But not as much as how I'm going to get out.

"I'm sticking my head out of the turret now. As far as these stemsll let me. Which isnt far. Theyre a solid ma.s.s on top of the machine. And beside it. I'm going to take a few tools and make for the engine. Only thing to do. Can't sit here and describe gra.s.sroots to you dogrobbers all day long. See if I can't get her running and back out. Then I resign from the state of California. Right then. This is SMT7 leaving the transmitter for essential repairs and signing off."

For hours the reports kept coming in, all in identically the same vein: rapid progress followed by a slowdown, then either engine trouble or a failure to keep rendezvous by another tank, all messages concluding alike: "Now leaving transmitter." It was no use for field headquarters frantically to order them to stay in their tanks no matter what happened. They were young, ablebodied, impatient men and when something went wrong they crawled out to fight their way through a few feet of gra.s.s to fix it. Afterall they were in the heart of a great city. Their machines had burrowed straightforwardly into the gra.s.s and no threats of courtmartial could make them sit and look silly till help arrived and they were tamely rescued. So one by one they wormed their way out to fix the ignition, adjust the carburetor, or hack free the cogs which moved the tracks. And one by one their radios became silent and were not heard again.

The captain went from c.o.c.kiness to doubt, from doubt to anxiety, and then to anguished fury. He had been so completely confident of the maneuver's outcome that its failure drove him, not to despair, but to anger. He knew most of the tankdrivers personally and the picture of these friends trapped in their tiny, evernarrowing pockets of green sent him into a frenzy. "SMT1--that's Lew Brown. Don't get out, Lew--stay where you are, you jacka.s.s. Stay where you are, Lew," he bellowed into the unresponsive loudspeaker.

"Jake White. Jake White's in four. Said I'd buy him a drink afterwards.

Joke. He's a cocacola boy. Why can't you stay inside, Jake? Why can't you stay put?"

Unable to bear it longer, he rushed from field headquarters shouting, "Let's get'm out, boys, let's get'm out," and would personally have led a volunteer party charging on foot into the gra.s.s if he had not been forcibly restrained and sympathetically led away, sobbing hysterically, toward hospitalization and calming treatment.

The captain's impulse, though impractical, was shared by all his comrades. For the moment the destruction of the gra.s.s became secondary to the rescue of the trapped tankmen. If field headquarters had bustled before, it now turned into a veritable beehive, with officers shouting, exhorting, complaining, and men running backwards and forwards as though there were no specific for the situation except unlimited quant.i.ties of their own sweat.

_19._ It would be futile to relate, even if I could recall them, all the various methods and devices which were suggested and rejected or tried and proved failures in the attempt to rescue the tankdrivers. Press and radio followed every daring essay and carefully planned endeavor until the last vicarious quiver had been wrung from a fascinated public. For twentyfour hours there was no room on the front pages of the newspapers for anything but the latest on the "prisoners of the gra.s.s," as they were at first called. Later, when hope for their rescue had diminished and they were forced from the limelight to make way for later developments, they were known simply as "heroes in the fight against the weird enemy."

For the gra.s.s had not paused chivalrously during the interval. On the contrary, it seemed to take renewed vigor from the victims it had entombed. House after house, block after block were engulfed. The names of those forced from their homes were no longer treated individually and written up as separate stories, but listed in alphabetical order, like battle casualties. Miss Francis, frantically trying to get all her specimens and equipment moved from her kitchen in time, had been ousted from the peeling stucco and joined those who were finding shelter (with some difficulty) in other parts of the city.

The southernmost runners crept down toward Hollywood Boulevard where every effort was being marshaled to combat them, and the northernmost wandered around and seemingly lost themselves in the desert of sagebrush and greasewood about Hollywood Bowl. Traffic through Cahuenga Pa.s.s, the great artery between Los Angeles and its tributary valley, was threatened with disruption.

But while the parent body was spreading out, its offspring, as Miss Francis foresaw, had come into existence. Dozens of nuclei were reported, some close at hand, others far away as the Sunset Strip and Hollywoodland. These smaller bodies were vigorously attacked as soon as discovered but of course they had in every case made progress too great to be countered, for they were at first naturally indistinguishable from ordinary devilgra.s.s and by the time their true character was determined so rapid was their growth they were already beyond all possibility of control.

The gra.s.s was now everyone's primary thought, replacing the moon (among lovers), the incometax (among individuals of importance), the weather (among strangers), and illness (among ladies no longer interested in the moon), as topics of conversation. Old friends meeting casually after many years' lapse greeted each other with "What's the latest on the gra.s.s?" Radiocomedians fired gagmen with weeks of service behind them for failure to provide botanical quips, or, conversely, hired raw writers who had inhabited the fringes of Hollywood since Mack Sennett days on the strength of a single agrostological illusion. Newspapers ran long articles on _Cynodon dactylon_ and the editors of their garden sections were roused from the somnolence into which they had sunk upon receiving their appointment and shoved into doubleleaded boldfaced position.

Textbooks on botany began outselling popular novels and a mere work of fiction having the accidental t.i.tle _Greener Than You Think_ was catapulted onto the bestseller list before anyone realized it wasnt an academic discussion of the family Gramineae. Contributors to scientifiction magazines burst bloodvessels happily turning out ten thousand words a day describing their heroes' adventures amid the red gra.s.s of Mars or the blue gra.s.s of Venus after they had singlehanded--with the help of a deathray and the heroine's pure love--conquered the green gra.s.s of Tellus.

Professors, shy and otherwise, were lured from their cla.s.srooms to lecture before ladies' clubs. .h.i.therto sacred to the accents of transoceanic celebrities and Eleanor Roosevelt. There they competed on alternate forums with literate gardeners and stuttering horticultural amateurs. Stolon, rhizome and culm became words replacing crankshaft and piston in the popular vocabulary; the puerile reports Gootes fabricated under my name as the man responsible for the phenomenon were syndicated in newspapers from coast to coast, and a query as to rates was received from the _Daily Mail_.

Brother Paul's exhortations on the radio increased in both length and intensity as the gra.s.s spread. Pastors of other churches and conductors of similar programs denounced him as misled; realestate operators, fearful of all this talk about the gra.s.s bringing doom and so depreciating the value of their properties, complained to the Federal Communications Commission; Sundayschools voted him the Man of the Year and hundreds of motherly ladies stored the studio with cakes baked by their own hands. Brother Paul's answer to indorser and detractor alike was to buy up more radiotime.

No one doubted the government would at length awaken from its apathy and counter the menace swiftly and efficiently, as always before in crises when the country was threatened. The nation with the highest rate of production per manhour, the greatest efficiency per machine, the greatest wealth per capita, and the greatest vision per mindseye was not going to be defeated by a mere weed, however overgrown. While waiting the inevitable action and equally inevitable solution the public had all the excitement of war without suffering the accompanying privations and bereavements. The gra.s.s was a nuisance, but a nuisance with t.i.tillating compensations; most people felt like children whose schoolhouse had burned down; they were sorry, they knew there'd be a new one, they were quite ready to help build it--but in the meantime it was fun.

The _Daily Intelligencer_ was gorged with letters from its readers on the subject of the gra.s.s. Many of them wanted to know what a newspaper of its standing meant by devoting so much s.p.a.ce to an ephemeral happening, while many more asked indignantly why more s.p.a.ce wasnt given to something affecting their very lives and fortunes. Communist partymembers, using improbable pennames, asked pa.s.sionately if this was not a direct result of the country's failure to come to a thorough understanding with the Soviet Union? Terrified propertyholders irately demanded that something, SOMETHING be done before realestate became as valueless in Southern California as it already was in Red Russia.