Title: The Oversight
Author: Breuer, Miles J.
Language: English
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                             THE OVERSIGHT

                          by MILES J. BREUER

                _Time Accomplishes Progress On Earth._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                          Comet December 40.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


John C. Hastings, senior medical student in the Nebraska State
University Medical School at Omaha, looked out of the window of the
Packard sedan he was driving down the road along the top of the bluff,
and out in the middle of the Missouri River he saw a Roman galley,
sweeping down midstream with three tiers of huge oars.

A pang of alarm shot through him. The study of medicine is a terrible
grind; he had been working hard. In a recent psychiatry class they
had touched upon hysterical delusions and illusions. Was his mind
slipping? Or was this some sort of optical delusion? He had stolen away
from Omaha with Celestine Newbury to enjoy the green and open freshness
of the country like a couple of stifled city folks. Perhaps the nearest
he had come to foolishness had been when the stars had looked like her
eyes and he had pointed out Mars and talked of flying with her to visit
that mysterious red planet.

"Do you see it too?" he gasped at Celestine.

She saw it, too, and heard the creak of oars and the thumping of
a drum; there floated up to them a hoarse chant, rhythmic but not
musical, broken into by rough voices that might have been cursing.

It was a clumsy vessel, built of heavy timbers, with a high-beaked
prow. There was a short mast and a red-and-yellow sail that bulged in
the breeze. The long oars looked tremendously heavy and unwieldy, and
swung in long, slow strokes, swirling up the muddy water and throwing
up a yellow bow-wave. The decks were crowded with men, from whom came
the gleam of metal shields, swords, and helmets.

"Some advertising scheme I suppose," muttered John cynically.

"Or some traveling show, trying to be original," Celestine suggested.

But the thing looked too grim and clumsy for either of these things.
There was a total lack of modern touch about it. Nor was there a
word or sign of advertising anywhere on it. They stopped the car and
watched. As it slowly drew nearer they could see that the men were
coarse, rowdy, specimens; and that the straining of human muscles at
the oars was too real to be any kind of play.

Then there were shots below them. Someone at the foot of the bluff was
blazing away steadily at the galley. On board the latter, a commotion
arose. Men fell. Then voices out on the road in front of them became
more pressing than either of these things.

"A young fellow and a girl," someone said; "big, fast car. Omaha
license number. They'll do."

"Hey!" a voice hailed them.

In front, on the road, were a dozen men. Some were farmers, some were
Indians. One or two might have been bank clerks or insurance salesmen.
All were heavily armed, with shotguns, rifles, and pistols. They looked
haggard and sullen.

"Take us to Rosalie, and then beat it for Omaha and tell them what you
saw," one of the men ordered gruffly. "The newspapers and the commander
at Fort Crook."

This was strange on a peaceful country road, but John could see no
other course than to comply with their request. He turned the car back
to Rosalie, the Indian Reservation town, and the men were crowded
within it and hung all over the outside. Even the powerful Packard
found it a heavy burden. In the direction of Rosalie, the strangest
sight of all awaited them.

Before they saw the town, they found a huge wall stretching across the
road. Beyond it rose blunt shapes, the tops of vast low buildings. What
a tremendous amount of building! the thought struck John at once. For,
they had driven this way just three days before, and there had been
no sign of it; only the wide green fields and the slumbering little
village.

The armed men became excited and furious when they saw the wall. They
broke out into exclamations which were half imprecations and half
explanatory.

"They put these things down on our land. Ruined our farms. God knows
what's become of the town. Squeezed us out. Must be a good many dead.
We have telephoned Lincoln and Washington, but they are slow. They
can't wake up. Maybe they don't believe us." There were curses.

John could see great numbers of armed men gathering from all
directions. There was no order or discipline about them, except the
one uniting cause of their fury against this huge thing that had so
suddenly arisen. Far in the distance, countless little groups were
emerging from behind trees and around bends in the road or driving
up in cars; and nearby there were hundreds more arriving with every
conceivable firearm. The last man in the countryside must have been
aroused.

The men climbed out of John's car and repeated their order that he
drive to Omaha and tell what he saw.

A ragged skirmish line was closing in rapidly toward the big gray
wall, that stretched for a mile from north to south. Along the top of
it, after the manner of sentries, paced little dark figures. John and
Celestine were amazed to see that they, too, were Roman soldiers. The
sunlight glinted from their armor; the plumes on their helmets stood
out against the sky; their shield and short swords were picturesque,
but, against the rifles below, out of place.

There came a shot, and another from the approaching attackers, and a
figure on top of the wall toppled and fell sprawling to its foot and
lay still on the ground. Hoarse shouts arose. A dense knot of Roman
soldiers gathered on top of the wall. A fusillade of shots broke out
from below, men running frantically to get within close range. The
group on the wall melted away, many crashing down on the outside, and
a heap remaining on top. The wall was completely deserted. The wind
wafted a sulphurous odor to the nostrils of the two young people in the
Packard.

Then followed a horrible spectacle. John, hardened to gruesome sights
in the course of his medical work, came away from it trembling,
wondering how Celestine would react.

A huge gate swung wide in the wall, and a massed army of Roman soldiers
marched out. Bare thighs and bronze greaves, and strips of armor over
their shoulders, plumed helmets, small, heavy shields; one company
with short swords, the next with long spears; one solid company after
another poured out of the gates and marched forth against their
attackers.

The Farmers and Indians and other dispossessed citizens opened fire on
the massed troops with deadly effect. Soldiers fell by the hundreds;
huge gaps appeared in the ranks; whole companies were wiped out. But,
with precise and steady discipline, others marched in their places.
Blood soaked the ground and smeared the trees and shrubbery. Piles
of dead were heaped up in long windrows, with twitching and crawling
places in them. New ranks climbed over them and marched into the blaze
of lead, only to fall and be replaced by others. The peaceful Nebraska
prairie was strewn with thousands of armed corpses.

Terror gripped the hearts of the couple in the Packard. The firing
began to halt. It became scattered here and there as ammunition became
scarce. As the troops poured out in unlimited numbers, men in overalls,
sweaters, and collars and shirt sleeves began to retreat. The grim
ranks closed upon the nearest ones. Swords rose and fell, spears
thrust, clubbed rifles were borne down. There was more blood, and the
bodies of American citizens littered the ground that they themselves
had owned and tried to defend.

John and Celestine, paralyzed by the spectacle, came to with a jerk.

"It's time to move," John said.

He swung the car around just as, with a rattle and a roar, a score of
chariots dashed out of the great gates and the horses came galloping
down the road. The ranks of the infantry opened to permit pursuit of
the retreating skirmishers. The clumsy vehicles rattled and bumped
behind flying hoofs at a rapid clip, the men in them hanging on to
the reins and keeping their footing by a miracle. Gay cloaks streamed
backward in the wind, and gold gleamed on the horses' harness.

[Illustration: _Roman soldiers, armor glistening in the sun! Chariots!
Galleys! They came in endless columns, fearless...._]

John bore down on the accelerator pedal, and the car leaped ahead with
a roar, a scattered string of chariots swinging in behind it. He headed
down the road and, once the Packard got a proper start, it left its
pursuers ridiculously behind. Celestine shrieked and pointed ahead.

"Look!"

A group of Roman soldiers with drawn swords were formed on the road
ahead, and more were swarming out of the shrubbery.

An officer waved a sword and shouted a sharp word.

"Stop, nothing!" John said through gritted teeth, remembering bloody
overalls and sprawling limbs gripping battered rifles.

He put his full weight on the accelerator pedal and the huge machine
throbbed and rumbled into life, a gleaming, roaring gray streak.

"Duck down below the windshield, dear," he said to Celestine. Never
before had he used that word, though he had often felt like it.

The Roman soldiers quailed as they saw the big car hurtling toward
them, but they had no time to retreat. The bumper struck the mass of
men with a thud and a crash of metal. Dark spatters appeared on the
windshield and things crunched sickeningly. The car swerved and swung,
dizzily, and John's forehead bumped against the glass ahead of him, but
his hands hung to the wheel. The fenders crumpled and the wheels bumped
over soft things. Just as he thought the car would overturn, he found
himself flying smoothly down a clear road; in his windshield mirror a
squirming mass on the road was becoming rapidly too small to see.

He laughed a hard laugh.

"They didn't know enough to jab a sword into a tire," he said grimly.

And, there to their left, was the tiresome galley, sliding down the
river. The countryside was green and peaceful; in a moment even
the galley was out of sight. Except for the crumpled fenders and
the leaking radiator it seemed that they had just awakened from an
unpleasant dream and found that it had not been true.

They talked little on the way to Omaha; but they could not help talking
some. Who were these men? Where did they come from? What did it mean,
the piles of dead, the sickening river of blood?

They must hurry with the news, so that help would be sent to the
stricken area.

The hum of the motor became a song that ate up miles. John worried
about tires. A blowout before he reached the army post at Fort Crook
might cost many lives. There was no time to waste.

Just as the roof-covered hills of Omaha appeared in the distance, two
motorcycles dashed forward to meet the car and signalled a stop. The
khaki clad police riders eyed the bloody radiator and nodded their
heads together.

"You've been there?" they asked. John nodded.

"You've been there?" he queried in return.

"The telephone and telegraph wires are hot."

"They need help--," John began.

"Are you good for a trip back there in a plane, to guide an observer?"
the officer asked. "We'll see the lady home."

So John found himself dashing to the landing field on a motorcycle,
and then in an Army plane, a telephone on his ears connected with the
lieutenant in front of him. It was all a mad, dizzy, confused dream. He
had never been up in a plane before, and the novelty and anxiety of it
fought with his tense observation of the sliding landscape below. But
there was the galley on the river, and three more following it in the
distance. There was an army marching along the top of the bluffs down
the river, a countless string of densely packed companies with horsemen
and chariots swarming around. There were the huge flat buildings in the
walled enclosure where Rosalie had stood. Out of the buildings and out
of the enclosures, marched more and more massed troops, all heading
toward Omaha.

Then they were back in the City Hall, he and the lieutenant, and facing
them were the chief of police and an Army colonel. There was talk of
the Governor and General Paul of the State Militia due to arrive from
Lincoln any moment in an airplane; and the National Guard mobilizing
all over the state, and trucks and caissons and field guns already en
route from Ashland with skeletonized personnel. Secretaries dashed out
with scribbled messages and in with yellow telegrams. A terrific war
was brewing, and what was it all about?

The lieutenant stepped up to the colonel and saluted.

"If you please, sir, the galleys on the river--"

"Yes?" asked the worried colonel.

"They've got to be sunk."

"We have no bombs," the colonel answered. "We're just a toy army here,
in the middle of the continent."

"No bombs!" The lieutenant was nonplussed for a moment, and hung his
head in study. "Will you leave it to me, sir? Somehow--"

"Good fellow. Thank you," said the colonel, very much relieved. "Your
orders are, then, to sink the galleys."

"Come!" The lieutenant said to John.

"Me?" gasped John.

"Don't you want to?" the lieutenant asked. "Men are scarce. I need
help. You're the closest. And you've got a level head."

"Just give me a chance," John said eagerly.

The lieutenant spent fifteen minutes in a telephone booth. Then they
dashed in a motorcycle to the city landing field where the plane lay.
They made the short hop to the Army flying field. This all took time;
but when they taxied towards the Army hangars, there stood men ready
to load things into the plane. A stack of kegs labeled "Dynamite" and
white lengths of fuse did not look very military, and their source was
indicated by the departing delivery truck of a hardware firm. The men
knocked the stoppers out of the kegs and wadded the fuses into the
bungholes with paper.

"Bombs!" The lieutenant spread his hands in a proud gesture. "The
Q.M.G. in Washington ought to see this. Maybe he'd trust us with real
ones some day."

He turned to John.

"We'll use a cigarette-lighter down in the cockpit, and heave them over
the side."

Out over the city they flew, and up the river. The trireme was steadily
approaching, and the lieutenant flew his plane a hundred feet above the
ship. They could see gaping mouths and goggling whites of eyes turned
up at them. The decks were a mass of coarse looking faces.

"Hate to do it," remarked the lieutenant, looking down on the decks
packed with living men. "But, Lord, it seems to be the game, so light
up!" he ordered sharply.

As John applied the cigarette-lighter and the fuse began to fizzle, the
lieutenant circled about and again flew over the creeping galley.

"Now!" He shouted, and John rolled the keg over the side. It turned
over and over endwise as it fell, and left a sputtering trail of smoke
in the air.

It fell on the deck and knocked over several men. The lieutenant was
putting height and distance between themselves and the galley as
rapidly as possible, and rightly. In another moment there was a burst
of flame and black smoke. Blotches of things flew out sidewards from
it, and a dull roar came up to them. For a few minutes a mangled
mass of wreckage continued the galley's course down the river. Then
it slowed and drifted sidewise, and flames licked over it. Struggling
figures stirred the water momentarily and sank. Not a swimmer was left;
bronze armor does not float on muddy Missouri River water.

Above the second galley they were met by a flight of arrows, and the
lieutenant hurriedly performed some dizzy gyrations with the plane to
get out of bowshot, but not before several barbed shafts struck through
the wings and thumped against the bottom. So they lit their fuse and
passed low over the galley at full speed. There was less regret and
more thrill as they rolled the keg with its sputtering tail over
the side; the humming arrows made the game less one-sided. The high
speed of the plane spoiled the aim, and the keg of dynamite plumped
harmlessly into the water just ahead of the galley. The second time
they figured a little more closely, and before very long, all four of
the galleys were a mass of scattered, blackened wreckage.

John leaned back in the seat.

"Terrible way to squander human beings," he said.

The lieutenant's teeth were set.

"You haven't seen anything yet," he said to John. "We've got two more
kegs of dynamite and no orders to the contrary. Let's go back to the
front lines."

"Front lines!" exclaimed John.

The lieutenant smiled.

"You've studied medicine; I've studied war. It is two and a half hours
since we left the meeting. The Roman--or whatever the blank they
are--infantry has made ten miles south and west. Our troops from the
Fort have easily made thirty or forty in their trucks, and started
digging trenches and emplacing guns. That would mean that there must be
fighting north and west of here. Isn't that so?"

"I hadn't thought of it," John admitted.

"Also by this time there must be two or three regiments of State
militia on trucks and bound in this direction; and the artillery and
machine-guns from Ashland ought to be ready any minute. We've got two
more kegs. Are you game?"

As if in answer, a dull boom sounded from the northwest, followed by
another; and in five minutes the banging was almost continuous.

John nodded his head. The lieutenant swung the plane around, and it was
less than ten minutes before they saw the trenches of the Fort Crook
troops spread below them; and from far into the north there poured
column upon column of densely formed Roman troops, with the gleam of
the afternoon sun upon the metal of their armor and swords. On the
eastern end of the line the Roman infantry had reached the trenches and
a sickening carnage was taking place. As they advanced steadily toward
the trenches, the Roman troops were mowed down by the machine-guns of
the Federal soldiers and the Omaha police, in swaths like meadow-grass
laid flat by the blade of the scythe. During the period of a few
minutes as they looked down they saw thousands of men fall; great heaps
of twitching and bloody dead in armor and plumes were piled before the
thin line of khaki.

"They don't need us much, but here goes!"

Far back over the enemy's lines, where the troops were massed the
densest, they sailed, and dropped their black and smoking blasts and
scattered several companies of bewildered soldiers. But others took
their places and pressed steadily on.

"If we only had a few fighting planes and some ammunition for
them--wouldn't we clean up the place!" gloated the lieutenant. "But
there isn't a plane with a machine-gun on it in this division, and not
an aerial bomb except some dummies for practice. The War Department
isn't ever so very fast, and this certainly came suddenly. However,
I'm sure that they must be getting busy sending things over by now.
Let's look westward."

The line was flung a dozen miles west of the Missouri River, and
gradually was crawling still further west. The artillery from Ashland
had stopped ten miles southwest of the place where fighting first
began, and by now had set up their pieces and gotten the range with the
aid of a commandeered, tri-motored, passenger plane; they were banging
shells at the rate of one every three seconds into the thickest of
the troops. Even at the height of three thousand feet, the sight was
horrible; there were red areas against the green of the landscape, and
red areas on the piled up heaps that twitched and gleamed with spots of
metal; the heaps piled up and grew into hills, between the gaping holes
that the shells dug into the wheatfields.

"Ha! Look!"

The lieutenant pointed near the line at the middle.

"An artillery captain is looking for prisoners."

The barrage of one of the batteries was laying flat a wide area, but
preserving a little circle intact in the middle of it. On this island,
among a sea of smoky holes, stood a huddled group of Roman soldiers.
One by one they fell, for flying fragments of high-explosive shell
traveled far, and they did not know enough to fall flat on their faces.
Then the barrage stopped and a platoon of men in khaki with rifles
crept toward them.

The lieutenant looked like a man on the side-lines of a football game.
He flew his plane low and gazed breathlessly at the combat below. For
it was an exciting one.

The khaki-clad soldiers wanted prisoners alive. But the Roman soldiers
understood nothing of the threat of the gun. Rifles and pistols were
leveled, but served in no wise to stop them from making a fierce attack
on the Americans with swords and spears. To save their own lives, the
latter had to stop and shoot the Romans down.

All but a half a dozen armored men now lay flat on the ground. These
gathered together for a moment's council, adjusted their shields, and
balanced their swords and spears. They were preparing a charge.

The lieutenant on the ground obviously had orders to get live
prisoners. He also knew his battle psychology well.

He formed his men in line; bayonets flashed out of scabbards and in
a moment a serried line of them bristled forward on the ends of the
rifles. The khaki-clad line started first. The men on the flanks ran
as fast as they could go and dodged through shell-holes. The Romans
started slowly toward the thin looking center of the American line.

The aviation lieutenant rose in his seat and dropped the stick of the
plane for a moment in his excitement. The plane veered and the fight
below was lost to view for a moment. By the time he had swung the
plane back, the circle of khaki had almost closed around the Romans.
The latter stood back to back, spears straight out in front of them.
It must have taken nerve to face that circle of advancing bayonets,
outnumbering them six to one. They held, stolid as a rock wall, and
John was almost beginning to think that they would fight to the death
and kill a few American soldiers. But, just as the ring of bayonets was
within a foot of the ends of their spears, they suddenly dropped their
weapons on the ground, and held their hands in the age-old gesture,
straight above their heads.

The men in khaki pushed them apart with their bayonets, and two to a
prisoner, marched them back to the line; others stopping to pick up
weapons. For the first time John noted that these men were all giants;
even from the altered perspective of the aeroplane it was clear that
they were six and a half to seven feet tall, and burly.

"We'll go back and report, then get a rest," the aviation lieutenant
said, heading the plane toward the Army field. There he shook hands
with John, and arranged to meet in the morning for further work.

After a telephone conversation with Celestine, and a meal, John settled
down in his room and turned on the radio. Program material had been
crowded off all stations by the news of the war.

"The front lines are now fully equipped with portable searchlights and
flares. But the Roman soldiers have quit coming. Apparently there will
be no fighting during the night."

There followed a resume of happenings with which John was already
familiar, and he shut the instrument off. Just as he was beginning to
doze, his telephone rang. It was the pathologist at the Medical School.

"Hello, Hastings," he said. "You have been in on this from the start,
and I thought you would be interested in our prisoners."

John hurried over to the hospital, where in one of the wards there
was a squad of soldiers with fixed bayonets, and two of the giants
on the beds. One had a shoulder wound and one a thigh wound from
high-explosive fragments. Both wounds were very slight.

"Mr. Hastings," said the pathologist, presenting him to a man bending
over one of the prisoners, "Professor Haven is from Creighton
University, and is the head of the Latin Department. He is trying to
talk to these men."

Professor Haven shook his head.

"These men speak Latin but I don't," he sighed. "I've studied it a
lifetime, but I can't speak it. And they speak a very impure, corrupted
Latin. But, I'm making out, somehow."

He spoke slowly, in ponderous syllables to the prisoner. The man
grumbled surlily. In the meantime, the pathologist called John away.

"One of the prisoners died," he said, "and we are doing a post-mortem.
Just a slight flesh-wound; no reason under the sun why it shouldn't
heal easily. He seemed to have no vitality, no staying power."

The post-mortem failed to make clear what had been the cause of death;
the slight bullet wound in the shoulder could not have caused it. No
other abnormality was found. They went back to the ward, and found
another of the prisoners dead.

"Strange," the pathologist muttered. "They can't resist anything. And
there is some odd quality about their tissues, both anatomical and
physiological, that I can't put my finger on. But they're different."

"They're certainly stupid," the Latin professor said. "I have succeeded
in making myself understood to this man. I asked him, who are they,
what they wanted, why they were fighting us, where they come from. He
does not know. '_Non scio, non scio, non scio!_' That's all I got out
of either one of them, except that they are hungry and would prefer to
lie on the floor rather than on the bed. They give me the impression of
being feeble-minded."

"Good fighting machines," John remarked.

When he got back to his room, the radio was urging everybody to go
to sleep and rest. There were guards detailed for necessary night
work, and there was no danger. Freshness and strength would be needed
tomorrow. But John was too excited following his strenuous day, and
knew that sleep would be impossible. He kept on listening to the news
from the radio, which was trying to solve the mystery of these Roman
hordes.

"Who are they?" the announcer asked rhetorically. "Where are they
from? What do they want?" His questions were asked but not answered.
He reported that during the afternoon the entire world had been
searched by cable and radio, and nowhere was there any trace of the
departure of such vast numbers of men. Italy and Russia were especially
suspected; but it was out of the question that such hundreds of
thousands could have been transported without leaving some evidence.
How had they reached the middle of the North American continent? No
railroad knew anything about them; there had been no unusual number
of airships observed in any direction. One was tempted to think that
they came out of the ground. Someone proposed the idea, based on the
popularity of Einstein's recent conceptions, that these men had somehow
crossed the time dimension from Julius Caesar's time; a fold in the
continuum might readily bring the period of the Roman Senate in contact
with the period of radio and automobiles.

A few minutes later the announcer stated that he had received a dozen
contemptuous and scornful messages about the idea from scientists and
historians. If these troops had come from Caesar's time, their sudden
disappearance would certainly have caused enough sensation to be
recorded; and no such record existed. If they came from such a period,
they must have disappeared from the sight of the people who lived then;
otherwise one must assume that they went on existing in their own time
as well as the present day. The idea was rent to bits. The announcer
went on with rhetorical questions:

How many more men were there? What would happen tomorrow? At least
there were comforting reports that in the morning the sky would be
crowded with planes bearing tons of high-explosive bombs. It could not
last long.

Suddenly John slapped his thigh. He went to the telephone and called up
the aviation lieutenant.

"Hello!" he said. "Did I get you out of bed? Well, it looks as though
neither one of us is so bright about war."

"Now what?" the lieutenant asked.

"Those last two kegs of dynamite that you dropped on Caesar's army--"

"Yes?" the lieutenant asked.

"They ought to have been dumped on the buildings on the Indian
Reservation, what?"

A faint oath came over the phone.

"Say, Hastings, I feel like resigning my commission and getting a job
selling bananas. But, what do you say to correcting the oversight? At
once?"

"I'm there. But wait. I'm getting positively brilliant tonight. Why not
get the Latin prof to go with us and see what we can find out?"

"If I could slap you on the back by phone, I'd do it. I'm waiting for
you with the ship. Hurry."

Professor Haven was delighted at the opportunity; the wizened little
fellow seemed oblivious to the dangers of the undertaking. They put
rifles in the plane, and two forty-fives apiece in their belts.

The walled enclosure was visible to the plane from a distance, because
of a strange reddish glow that came up from it. The glow enabled
the lieutenant to note that a long, flat-roofed building offered a
far better opportunity for a landing than did the ground, which was
systematically spaced with guards. He shut off his motor several miles
away, and managed his landing with marvelous skill and silence. Only
the landing-wheels, bumping over the rough places on the roof, made any
sound. They waited for thirty minutes in silence, and as no further
sounds came from the camp, they crept out of the cockpit and stole
along the roof.

The guards pacing about below seemed not to have noticed their landing.
Ahead of them was a large, square affair like a chimney, with a red
glow coming out of it. But, it was not a chimney, for no heat came from
it. It might have been a ventilator; in fact as they approached they
found that a strong current of air drew _downward_ into it. They could
lean over the edge and see a large, bright room immediately below them.

It was certainly no crude Roman room. It was a scientific laboratory,
crowded with strange and delicate apparatus. Most of it was quite
unfamiliar to John in use or nature, despite the fact that he was well
posted on modern scientific matters, and could make intelligent guesses
about scientific things or equipment even out of his own line. He could
make nothing out of the things he saw below.

Just beneath them stood a huge Roman officer; the numerous gold
insignia on his chest indicated high rank. He stood in front of a glass
jar about four feet high, from which numerous cords led to a table full
of intricate apparatus. Inside the jar there was something that looked
like a piece of seaweed. It was hard, tough, leathery. In the bright
light, it might have been a sort of a branching cactus. But it moved
about within its jar. It gestured with one of its branches. It pointed
at the Roman soldier, and nodded a large, head-like portion. A rapid
rattle of words in a foreign tongue came up to them, and Haven, the
Latin professor, craned his neck. John recognized a Latin word here and
there, but could make out no meaning. Haven later translated what he
had heard. The first words he distinguished were those of the big Roman
general.

"We need fifty more legions of men by morning," he said apologetically.

"Why not?" a metallic voice replied. It continued monotonously, with
scant intonation. "I'll start them at once and have them ready by
daylight." There was a quick gesture of the leathery thing in the jar.
Little groups of long, red thorns scattered over it.

The general went on.

"These people are good fighters. They may conquer us. We haven't a
thousand soldiers left."

The metallic voice that replied conveyed no emotion, but the gesture of
the cactus-like thing in the jar was eloquent of deprecation.

"To our science they are but a puff of wind," the droning voice said.
"I can destroy them all by pressing a button. Do you think I have
studied the earth and its beast-like men for ages in vain? But, I want
sport. I've been bored for too many centuries. So, to entertain me you
shall have your five hundred companies of soldiers tomorrow morning.
Now go. I must be alone."

The general saluted with an arm straight forward and upward, turned
about, and walked out of the field of view, muttering something
dubiously under his breath. For a long time, all was silent. Then the
metallic voice spoke:

"Earth men, I perceive you up on the roof about the ventilator." The
leathery thing in the jar stirred and the machinery on the table
clicked.

The group on the roof started in alarm, but the wizened little Haven
regained his composure first.

"Who and what are you?" he exclaimed.

"You ask as though you had a right to demand," the metallic voice
droned. "But it pleases me to inform you, earth men, that I am a being
of the planet Mars. Tired of the monotony of life in our dull world, I
decided to emigrate. I came peacefully."

"_Peacefully!_" exclaimed the lieutenant, but the metallic voice went
on as though he had not spoken:

"I harmed no one until your people attacked my walled enclosure and
destroyed my defenders. They have suffered. I am sorry. Let me alone,
and I shall not molest you. I wish you no harm."

"But!" exclaimed Haven, "you cannot take possession of a hundred acres
of land that belongs to other people, and lay waste to thousands more.
That is their land. They will fight for it. How can they let you alone?"

"It is better for you not to bother me. The science of Mars is still
millions of years ahead of yours--"

There arose a shouting and a clatter among the guards below. Their
suspicions had been aroused by sounds on the roof. A trampling of
feet toward the building increased in volume. The trio hurried to
their plane, swung it about by the tail, and jumping in, took off with
a roar, leaving a band of gaping legionnaires below. John eventually
found himself in his bed at about three o'clock in the morning, and
even then too exhausted to sleep. Questions kept running through his
mind.

The creature's claim that it was a Martian, made things more mysterious
instead of less so. It was not possible to transport these hundreds of
thousands of men from Mars. And the buildings and chariots and horses.
It would have taken an enormous tonnage of vessels, whose arrival
certainly would have been noticed. And to think that Mars was inhabited
by Roman soldiers was a most preposterous and childish notion. And if
the Martians were as far advanced in science as they claimed, why did
they use the military methods of ancient Rome? Certainly there was
still plenty about this that had not been explained.

John slept late and awoke exhausted by his previous day's unwonted
stress. But the thundering of guns would let him sleep no longer.
The radio told him that fighting was going on up around Sioux City
and westward toward Fremont and Norfolk. Always the reports carried
the same statements of the incredible slaughter of innumerable Roman
soldiers by the modern engines of war against which their swords and
shields meant nothing. It was an unbelievable nightmare, creepy,
horrible destruction of life and a soaking of the earth with blood, and
piling up of mounds of dead bodies scores of feet high on the green and
peaceful prairies. The reports ended up with an optimistic note that
aeroplanes with high-explosive bombs were due to arrive from the East
at any moment.

Then his telephone rang. It was his dean calling him to a conference
with the Commanding Officer of the area. The smiling aviation
lieutenant was also present. They were discussing the advisability of
destroying the Martian in his building, and thus stamping out the rest
of the trouble.

"It might not necessarily stop all trouble, you know," the medical dean
said; "those curious men are still loose in large numbers. I think that
the creature, instead of being destroyed, ought to be captured and
studied."

The dean's view finally prevailed, and it was decided to avoid
destroying the spot on which the Martian stood. The adjutant was
already busy directing. Army and Navy planes were now arriving in
swarms from East and West. Arrangements were made to bomb all around
the Martian's retreat, and then raid it with a small party when
everything was clear.

Grimly, methodically, the Army and Navy fliers went about their tasks.
They systematically covered the entire contested territory with
high-explosive bombs. In three hours, a Nebraska county was a field
plowed by a giant, in which persisted one little island, the long house
in the walled enclosure, with its red-glowing chimney. Airplanes landed
a platoon of the National Guard on the river, and these marched to the
surviving building and searched it thoroughly. With them was John and
his friend the aviation lieutenant; and also the dean and the Latin
professor. They found nothing anywhere, except in the room below the
ventilator, where the Martian was still sealed in his glass jar.

"Earth men!" the metallic voice said suddenly, and the leathery body
jerked in surprise. "_Homines terrae!_"

Professor Haven spoke in Latin. He was imbued with the educated
person's ideal of courtesy in the victor.

"We regret to inform you that we have destroyed all of your men--"

"I have been watching you," the metallic voice said. Its tones conveyed
no feeling, but the attitude of the branched body was weary. "I am
surprised I must have missed something."

"Eh? What's that?"

"I must have missed something in my observations. After all, your
fighting machines are very simple. I could have destroyed them in a
breath, only, I did not know you had such things. I cannot understand
why I did not find them before."

The men stood in silence, looking at the dry, hard looking thing, not
knowing what to say. Finally the metallic speaking began again. John
noted that the voice came from a metal diaphragm among the apparatus on
the table, to which the cords led from the creature in the jar.

"I cannot understand it. When I planned to migrate to the Earth, I came
here and remained many years, studying many men, their bodies, their
language, their methods of fighting--fighting was something new to me,
and I enjoyed it; we do not have fighting on Mars. I took all necessary
observations so that I might prepare to live among them.

"Then I went back home and spent sufficient time in research to make
everything perfect. Of course it took a long time. I devised a suit in
which I could stand in your atmospheric pressure, heat, and moisture;
methods of transporting the nuclei of my apparatus to the Earth and
growing them into proper bulk when I arrived, so that I might carry
only very little with me. I was especially interested in devising
methods of growing human beings on suitable culture media. I developed
men who were just a little larger and a little stronger than yours; yet
not too much so, because I wanted to see good sport, though remaining
sure of winning you over in the end--"

"Cultured these men!" Professor Haven exclaimed. He lagged a little in
using his Latin words. "You mean you grow them like we grow bacteria in
test-tubes?" He got his meaning across by many words and much effort.

"I grew these soldiers on culture media," the metallic voice answered,
and a shriveled arm gestured in a circle. "With a forced supply of air
for carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, and water for hydrogen, I can grow a
man in a few hours; or as many men at once as I have culture medium and
containers for. They grow by simultaneous fission of all somatic cells."

"So they are not really human?" Haven seemed much relieved at the idea
that the destruction might not have been that of human life.

"That depends on what you mean by human," the dried-up Martian said, by
means of his machine. "To me, it means nothing."

"That accounts for the queer differences our pathologist found," the
dean observed when the fact had been translated to him that these
hordes of men were cultured in a laboratory.

"Now that you have me in your power," the Martian continued, "please
explain to me how you kept all your destructive engines hidden when I
was here on my preparatory observation trip."

The dean of the Medical School touched Haven on the shoulder.

"Ask him how long ago he was here."

"It took me," the machine said, "just about a thousand years (our year
is twice as long as yours) to work out my methods of transportation,
maintenance, and culture, and to make a voice instrument with which to
talk to these culture-soldiers."

The dean turned toward the Commanding Officer.

"Two thousand years ago," he said. "The Romans were just about at the
height of their military glory. Explain that to him, and how the world
and its people have changed since."

The queer, seaweed-like creature nodded in comprehension and settled
itself down in its jar in resignation.

"That is the point I overlooked. For millions of years, the Martians,
at the zenith of scientific knowledge, have remained stable. The idea
of human change, of progress in civilization, had slipped my mind. Our
race has forgotten it. Your race progressed, and left me behind."

A little discussion arose among them. All agreed that it would be most
interesting and valuable to preserve the Martian carefully in some
museum. A great deal of useful information could be obtained from him.
Many benefits would accrue to humanity from his knowledge.

"Only," reminded the Commanding Officer, "how much power does he still
have left for doing harm?"

The dean was interested, and bent close to the jar to have a better
look. He put his hand on the glass.

There was a quick rush and a crash of furniture. The big Roman general
leaped up from beneath a couch, where he had been concealed. With sword
upraised he dashed at the dean.

"Look out!" shouted John.

The Roman general gave a hoarse cry. Fortunately it took a goodly
number of seconds for him to cross the room. The Commanding Officer was
tugging at his pistol holder. His automatic came out fairly quickly and
banged twice. The Roman came rushing on almost to within a foot of the
muzzle.

Then his sword dropped with a clatter on the floor, his helmet rolling
several feet away. The case tipped. It toppled. It looked almost as
though it would go over.

Then it settled back; but a crackling sound came from it. A crack
appeared in the glass, and wound spirally around it. There was a sizzle
of air going into the jar. Machinery clicked and sparks crackled.

The creature inside jerked convulsively, and then was still. In a few
minutes it began to bloat, and a red mold spread rapidly over it.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Oversight" ***

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