Land Beyond the Map

He wasn’t surprised when she joined him. Together they walked across the snow-covered road, leaving large and splodgy footprints. It was not at all cold now and the snow gradually ceasing had no power to lay. Their feet rang hard on the old road surface by the time they reached the wreck.

The hissing noise had stopped.

“Something hot against the snow,” surmised Polly.

Crane walked up the road to the tank warily, wishing he had a gun and yet recognizing the weak fallibility of that.

“Yes,” he said, not taking his eyes off the machine.

The body, he could see more clearly now the thing was in repose, arched out into a rugged barrel-shape, with plenty of room inside for power-sources, controls, radio-equipment — and people. The tank sprocket system appeared at first glance to be relatively simple and uncomplicated without an armored skirting to protect the return rollers. The bogey wheels were small and set in three pairs of four, each set sprung on a rocker arm and coil springing. He eyed the mess of tracks snarled around the driving sprocket.

“Reminds me of our old Mark One Infantry tanks, as far as suspension and tracks go. No wonder a grenade could do all this. The track snarled up on the sprocket, probably a link jammed in and held. Nasty mess.”

“You sound sorry for it, Rolley. Were you in Tanks?”

“No, thank goodness. But I received an intensive and highly unpleasant training in dealing with them.” He added out of the pit of his own dissatisfaction with his military career, “Not that those poor devils of terrorists used tanks.”

“Well,” Polly said brightly. “You’ll be able to use your tank-busting technique around here. Quite fortuitous, really. And you’re doing all right so far.”

“Why do you imagine I volunteered for an anti-tank course?” Crane fairly snarled the words at her. “D’you think I’d forgotten the clanking monsters when I joined the Army?”

And, at once, they were both contrite and apologizing to each other.

“Anyway,” he said after the spate of words that neither really understood, “the Infantry Mark One had leaf springing and only two sets of four, rubber and steel bogie wheels. The old bashers did well for themselves, too, I’m told, before Dunkirk.”

“That’s all ancient history, Mac. What about those?”

And Polly pointed one slender finger at the tank’s flail-like arms.

“They do pose a different problem. Have you seen anything like them before?”

Polly shook her head. “No. Can’t say I have.”

Crane mused, worrying at odd memories, trying to bring into focus an elusive picture. Those sinuous tentacular arms were really alien; but the jointed arms, now, they rang a bell somewhere. Beneath his feet the group still trembled slightly, a diminishing shudder that rippled in dying waves out across the land from which the snow melted visibly in swathes of irregular gray and green. The sun began to pull steam from the sodden fields. Somewhere — and most strangely — a bird was singing. Now there seemed to be more trees than before, thick groves and clumps of them stretching out in all directions. A river, too, had appeared, winding slowly close to the road. Glints sparkled from its surface. Fish plopped satisfyingly, rippling the surface.

All the time he stood there Crane was aware of the background thought in his mind: What happens next in this nightmare world?

Polly said: “Only things I can think of are cranes.” And she laughed.

Crane smiled weakly. “Yes. The arms are like derricks. But it’s not that He pushed the elusive memory away and bent closer to the smashed tank. He could see no hole or hatchway by which he might have entered. On the broad back, canted now, protruded three radar bowls and a mat of complex and incomprehensible design and purpose. Whip aerials rose springily from the rear where the dramatic venturi showed blackened and pitted orifices. The metal looked blued and tough and the bright vermilion paint a scabrous unnecessary growth, peeling here and there, scratched, bubbled by the sun, slapped on carelessly — odd.

“We could build something like this if we had to with our present techniques,” Crane said slowly. “But it would all be fakery. There’d be no need for half of all this dramatic appearance.”

He touched the Venturis disdainfully. They were still warm.

“How about the arms?”

“They’d be more difficult—” And then he had it. “Of course. They remind me of the long-range handling gear used by nuclear physics men behind shields when they deal with hot stuff. You put your hands in controls and operate the remote extension metal hands and peer through the glass — that’s it.”

“So someone could sit miles off and control these things by radio, see by tv and radar, and manipulate the arms?”

“Something like that.”

Polly shivered and turned away. “Let hope he — or it — isn’t watching us now.”

“I think my grenade fouled up the works inside when the thing went over. It looks pretty defunct to me.”