The Watchers by George H. Smith

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1:02Once while driving, I came to a full stop for two seconds instead of three. However you get your kicks, just know your wealth will remain steady and secure with us. PNC Private Bank brilliantly boring since 1865. PNC Bank National Association member FDIC. This is Angus Maximus. This partner has one third of a pound of hot, using cooked to water Angus speed. It's more face than a quarter pounder. The battle of clothes! And for only $5.99 even regular juice can afford it. Like that guy! Give me that big old burger! Yes! The whole Angus Maximus, only $5.99 is cold senior. A bill for a limited time of participating restaurants, tax on included, not valid for use within a combo or in combination with any other offer or discount. Suffering from dry, tired, irritated eyes? Don't let dry eyes win. Use Sistine Pro. It hydrates, restores and protects dry eyes for up to 12 hours. Sistine Pro. Triple action, dry eye relief. A lone watcher abandons the safety of his hidden post

2:03when a human survivor falls into enemy hands. Outnumbered and almost unarmed, he must turn a frozen alien moon into a weapon before the room he escaped with their prisoner. The Watchers by George H. Smith. That's next on the Lost Sci-Fi Podcast. We are thankful for another 5 star review on Apple Podcasts in the US. This one comes to us from Dan Dan Nick, a new experience I enjoy. Other than the Psalms, I've never listened to anyone reading anything on a podcast. A new daily work commute made me try this. And the short story, The Measure of a Man, really caught me. Thank you for providing this. Well, thank you, Dan Dan. We're glad you found us. And we hope we can make that daily commute a little more enjoyable. And if you'd like to wear your support for the Lost Sci-Fi Podcast,

3:06we've got some great new merchandise with a brand new look. I'd love to get your feedback on it. Send me an email, Scott at LostSciFi.com, after you check it out at LostSciFi.com, forward slash merch, or just click the link in the description. Now, on to today's story and an author who is making his debut on the podcast. This is our first story from George H. Smith. We've featured George O. Smith five times on the podcast. But despite very similar names, the two writers were not related. George Henry Smith was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1922. I'd never heard of him before discovering today's story, which is one of the things I love about digging through old science fiction magazines. There are always authors waiting to be discovered. Smith began publishing science fiction in the early 1950s

4:08and went on to write 15 novels in around 40 short stories during a career that stretched from 1953 to 1985. Published in March 1954, in the fourth issue of Universe Science Fiction, a magazine that lasted for only 10 issues from 1953 to 1955. Turn to page 118 for The Watchers by George H. Smith. Man had been happy back in his little two by four system. Happy, but not contented. So he had invented himself a stellar drive and had burst out of his nice, safe little system into a galaxy that he wasn't really ready for. A galaxy where there just wasn't enough of him to go around and where other races were on the move.

5:09Some of them, races that also wanted oxygen planets. That's why there was a space frontier watcher service, just as if there could be any frontiers in space. Man was spread so wide and far between that sometimes he was only a rumor, but always how it on the periphery of his empire was the watcher service. The watchdogs of space, they call us. That's why I was sprawled in front of my fire on a tiny hunk of moon they called thirty, which wound its way around a worthless molten planet named Nestron. In a system you probably never heard of on the other side of Wolf-359. Thirty was a small jagged planet with just enough gravity to hang on to a breathless atmosphere. The thirty a thawed among Nestron's huge litter of moons. There were nights on thirty when the big planet hung overhead

6:09like a bloated pumpkin, the bulges in its gaseous mass, lending an impossibly grotesque appearance to its face. Sometimes I would watch it as it came peeping over the ragged edge of thirty. It seemed so close that you held your breath for fear it would puncture itself. There were other nights when Nestron was eclipsed by clouds of gaseous matter and by the nearer moons and men that I'd lie there, and listen to the stars whispering, whispering the same age-old stories that were always new, the stories that lured man to Luna, then to Mars, and finally right out of the solar system itself. But mostly I watched the screens in my underground bunker, watched the space search radar screens, and listened to the robot patrol rockets as they reported back. Their mechanical voices reeling off the endless series of numbers

7:11that were their only language. Numbers that were punched into cards and fad into interpreters as fast as the information came over the Hyperwave radio. They picked you out for this service because your mother and father and their mothers and fathers had been watchers. The training course was your whole life up to the time you were graduated to the tune of speeches and cheering. Then they pinned a little gold radar scope on your collar and assigned you to your first six months of lonely vigil somewhere away off from everywhere. You ate and you slept and you were bored and you were lonely. But you watched. And then one day you weren't bored anymore. You were excited and maybe just a trifle scared because the keys of the translators were pounding out a report from one of your brood of robots.

8:12A report that meant that something was coming in from outside a fleet of somethings and a fleet could only mean one thing, a roomy raid. Man had managed to get along with the flying squid from serious with intelligent plants on Varga, but never with the roomy. They were just too much alike. Two races of oxygen breathing bipeds in one galaxy were about one too many. This was why I was here on a moon and a deserted system that had been ignored by men until the space patrol had learned that roomy raiders sometimes pass through it on their sporadic raids on the colonial worlds of Wolf 359. Now they were coming. And I had only to wait and watch my radar screens until they were in range. Count them and press the red labeled button

9:14that activated the hyper wave general alarm radio. The radio buried deep in the solid granite of 30. A radio which would keep broadcasting even if the roomy should blast my bunker off the face of the moon and sear it from end to end. Then the roomy squadron came onto my screen. Man and roomy had fought a five-year war, a war without a fleet action or a general battle. A war of slashing cruiser raids of surprise and trap. A war of sudden raids in the night of atomic torpedo smashing into the hulls of ships, of men dying in suddenly airless compartments. A war of blasted frontier towns and brief flaming battles over distant worlds. A war of attrition in which the heavy terrain battle fleet could never quite bring its full weight to bear

10:14on the light-roomy forces. It was always a city blasted here or a convoy cut to pieces someplace else. Slowly the beeps on the screen drew closer, dividing themselves into half a dozen pencil-thin cruiser shapes. With a quick leap across the room, I pressed the general alarm stud and started the hyper wave signals on their way. The warnings would alert every Taran cruiser squadron within range and would give the teaming cities of Asgard and Olympia a few hours notice before the disruptor bombs of the roomy rain down on them. Then my purpose on thirty accomplished. I settled back to watch my excitement fading away, fading away, and then suddenly flaring up again. As a seventh object came on the screen, an object that showed as a red dot, which meant a Taran ship,

11:14an unarmed, private craft, for a warship would have shown as orange on the IFF screen. The roomy had picked up the Taran craft also, because even as I watched, one of the alien cruisers peeled off and headed toward it. The Taran craft was aware of its danger now, and it changed course and was heading directly toward the Nestron system. My eye is glued to the space-cofe. I watched as the two ships came within visual range. The long black roomy cruiser, with its bulging blaster turrets, was closing in quickly on a small Taran crossly eighteen of a type used mostly for private yachts. I watched as the Taran ship went into what must have been a body-racking turn in a desperate attempt to throw off the cruiser. The pilot of the crossly was good, but not good enough. A disruptor beam from the radar caught the airship and the port tubes,

12:17and it fell away spiraling into the gravity of thirty, with flames and gulfing its after-portion as it reached atmosphere. With only a few hundred feet to spare, the damaged spacer pulled out of its fall with a flare of landing rockets, slowly levelled off into a wobbly glide, and headed for a fairly level plateau about twenty miles from my bunker. Then the roomy ship was coming back, orbiting just outside atmosphere, and finally plunging into it to pass over my concealed post with the heavy beat of ion rockets. The big ship filled my whole vision screen for a few moments, and I would have given my ears for a pair of six-inch blasters in turret mounting, but I didn't even have as much as a sidearm. Watchers were supposed to watch and mourn, not fight. The radar swept across the bow of the crippled Taran ship,

13:17and poured everything she had into it at point blank range. I could see that she had been whole repeatedly, but was still not finished. She had a pair of jets in action, and someone of the controls who knew his business. The one thing that the automatics can't do is to set a spacer down in one piece. The intricate business of landing takes a pilot. Not exactly a Superman, but the closest thing to Homo superior in reflexes and know-how you could find. And setting a damaged ship down on a pillar of fire with only half your jets in action just can't be done. The guy in this ship came close though. He was at tree-top level now, shaving off trees like blades of grass and splashing flame about like a Martian fire dancer, fighting the ship all the way. He just couldn't keep her level, and the ship knowsed over and smashed itself

14:17into a ball of smoke and flame, in a dry riverbed. The odds against anyone surviving that crack-up seemed overwhelming. But with my scanner train for close range, I thought I saw a space-suited figure stumble fall, and then crawl away from the ship. Just before the fuel tanks let go of the blast that shook every instrument in my station. The raider had swung up out of 30s atmosphere and was turning its nose outward, but it had launched a lifeboat which was circling down for a landing. Those cat-faced devils never miss a trick. That landing force was to make sure that no one had survived to send a possible warning. If those cat-men thought someone had survived that crash, maybe I thought so too. My orders were very specific about not leaving my bunker,

15:17and about not taking any chances of my whereabouts being discovered. But something within me was just as specific, about not leaving an injured human being to the roomies none to tender mercies. In a matter of minutes I was into my outer clothing, and hurrying up the ramp from my bunker. The cold on 30 was unlike the cold anyplace else. It seemed to have the ability to seep its way through the thickest clothing or the stoutest walls. Even hurrying as I was through the gathering whore frost, I could feel it creeping into my flesh. I hoped fervently that I would be back in the warmth of the bunker by the time the sun set, because then it really got cold. To travel a mile on 30, you have to climb 20 up and down. It was hard going all the way, and my breath was coming in heavy, gasping pants.

16:18By the time I reached a ledge over the dry riverbed, in which the wrecked spacer lay, it took me only one look to see that I was too late. Your morning starts, your coffee pours, the city moves. But beneath it all, something else is moving. It's energy transfer. One of America's largest pipeline companies, transporting oil, natural gas, and refined products across the US. These products keep homes warm, businesses running, and everyday life on track. People rely on energy transfer to safely deliver oil and gas whenever and wherever it's needed. Learn more at energytransfer.com. Superhero values take on powerful new forms. USMIT's Comic-art Coin and Metal Program, featuring DC Superheroes in all new original designs. Shop exclusive coins and medals at USMIT.gov slash DC. Suffering from dry, tired, irritated eyes,

17:18don't let dry eyes win. Use Sistine Pro. It hydrates, restores, and protects dry eyes for up to 12 hours. Sistine Pro. Triple action, dry eye relief. This is Angus Maximus. This partner has won over the pound of heart. That sushi cooked to water Angus speed. It's more fish than a quarter pounder. The battle is closed. And for only $5.99, even regular juice can afford it. Like that guy. Give me that big old burger. Yeah! The whole Angus Maximus, only $5.99 is whole senior. A bill for a limited time of participating restaurants, tax on included, not valid for use within a combo or in combination with any other offer or discount. Beside the twisted mass of the ship, sat a small, gleaming object. The spaceboat from the Rumi Cruiser. Six of the raiders were gathered about the space-suited figure of a human being. In a few minutes, they would either have loaded the injured person into their ship and taken off,

18:18or they would have done away with him. My first thought was to try to get to their ship. But since it lay only a few hundred feet away from where they stood, that was impossible. If I only had some sort of weapon, I thought, I would be in an ideal spot to pick them off, one by one. The closest I could come to a weapon was a small pocket magnesium flare for signaling purposes. If I was to do anything before it was too late, I realized that I would have to get closer. Dropping down on my stomach, I began to crawl in-spy inch down among the rocks and scrub growth, toward where the Rumi were busying themselves over the supine human figure. After ten minutes of crawling and slithering through underbrush that ripped my clothing, and scratched me badly about the face, I had worked my way to within twenty feet of the Rumi.

19:21I had been careful to keep downwind of them, for I wasn't sure how strong their animal sense of smell was. Certainly the musty odor of them floated down on the wind so strongly, and I could make my way around them without having to risk looking, until I reached what I took to be a safe spot in a clump of brush on the bank of the river almost above their heads. When I did look, I saw that the Rumi had finished taking the space suit off the prisoner and had gotten her, for the survivor of the Terran Yacht was a girl to her feet. Behind them I could see clearly the wreck of the crossly with the name Star Lady on her bow. Even I had heard of the Yacht Star Lady, and her owner Charles Thompson, millionaire explorer. Without a doubt the girl was Thompson's daughter. The Rumi hadn't killed her immediately, so they probably intended to hold her for ransom,

20:23as they did so many of their prisoners. The girl was fighting and kicking as two of the raiders dragged her back toward their ship. I knew that if I didn't act quickly, they would have her aboard and far beyond any help I could give her. There was only one thing I could do, and that was to delay them until I could think of some way of getting her out of their hands. If they thought they were someone else on the satellite, they might make an attempt to get me to before they left. I shoved with my foot and sent a small avalanche of rocks and gravel down into the riverbed. They were after me instantly. Three of them bounding along in my direction with their flamers out. By the time they had scrambled up the bank, I was crashing away into the undergrowth and out of sight. Now I knew they wouldn't leave, not without tracking me down first, and I had an idea it would turn out to be quite a job.

21:26Even with their cat-like ability for following a spore, I intended to give them a run for their money, and if they caught me, at least one or two of them might regret it. I knew my satellite, and I was confident that my training would give me an advantage over them on its rugged surface. If I could get them to split up, the odds against me might even come down a little, running, climbing, crawling. I kept them always upwind of me, and always the sickening big cat odor warned me that they weren't far behind. That big cat odor that anyone who was ever visited a zoo or lion farm is familiar with. Occasionally when I stopped to catch a few breaths, I would hear them pounding along tirelessly, and I would be on my feet again and plunging ahead. A few hours before it was time for the sun to set, they split up.

22:28We had been crossing one of the few level spots on the planet, a great stretch of grassland. The tall, hearty grass reached almost over my head. The roomy were a good bit taller than I. So much taller, in fact, that I could see their heads above the grass when they still could not see me. I watched them split up in an attempt to cut me off from the hills, which they took to be my destination. Half an hour after they split up, I killed the first of them, and doubled back in the direction of the riverbed. Now I had a weapon. One of those deadly roomy heat rays called Flamers. They wear them strapped to their forepaws because of their lack of a grasping hand. As I put on an extra burst of speed, I wasn't much worried about the other two. They had gotten well off the scent and their attempt to head me off, and by the time they realized that they had lost me,

23:28night would have closed in, when night hadn't put much store in the ability of those jungle cats to survive a night on thirty. There were still three of them left back at the wreck, and they would either have returned to their lifeboat or made a camp. I hoped it would be the latter. My luck was still holding, for when I reached the riverbed, I found them huddled about a fire in the shelter of the wrecked tarant ship, an officer and two others made perfect targets against the firelight. But I couldn't fire, because the figure of the girl sat in the circle of light near them. With such an unfamiliar and widely destructive weapon, I would be almost certain to cut her down, as well as her captors. Once more I took advantage of a downwind position to work my way around their camp, and in among the wreckage of the star lady. The feel of the magnesium flare in my pocket had given me an idea.

24:30If I could just panicked them, and spread them out where the girl wouldn't be in my line of fire, I would have a good chance of picking them off. As silently as possible, I climbed up on what remained the four section of the craft, and dragged myself to a spot that was almost directly over their heads. In the leaping light of the fire, I looked almost squarely into the narrow, fur-covered faces of the raiders, and could also see the pale, pretty face of the girl framed in blonde hair. Quietly, but with my heart pounding, I edged forward even closer. I had to be close. I couldn't afford to miss. If any of them looked up now, they couldn't miss seeing me. Slowly, I worked the flare out of my pocket, and let it roll off the edge of the wreck, an intense, white light shot upward, temporarily blinding the roomy.

25:31Two of them did just what I had hoped. They stumbled off in the direction of their lifeboat. The officer did what I had hoped they wouldn't do. He grabbed the girl and pulled her back out of the light. Even with that strange weapon, I knew I couldn't miss those two running roomy. I cut them down with three quick blasts, and then slid quickly from the top of the ship as the officer poured a stream of fire at me, fire that splashed and roared over my head. As I fell to the ground, I caught a quick glimpse of the girl. She had broken away from her captor, and was darting into the undergrowth. He sent one burst of flame after her, and then had to leap for cover as I sent a steady stream of fire in his direction. Then I was running, dodging, and twisting behind boulders and rocks, and firing as I ran, until my gun clicked empty.

26:33I cursed myself for having forgotten to take the extra clips of ammo from the creature I had killed. As my quarry almost got my range, I plunged headlong into some brush and lay for a minute, getting my bearings in the rapidly fading light from the flare. Carefully now, and with more deliberate air, the roomy tried to burn me. As quietly as I could, I moved toward him in the heavy undergrowth, the light was almost gone, and I didn't think that even his cat eyes would be much good in the Ebony Dark Thirty Night. I could smell him, clearly in my nose, was that musty smell, and no matter how still he might lie, or how silently he might creep about on those padded feet of his, I could follow him. I stalked him in the darkness, and he knew he was being stalked. He blazed away at every shadow, at every bush that moved in the cold wind that whistled along the riverbed.

27:39He was afraid now, and his scent was stronger than he was running, trying to get to the lifeboat, and I was after him. He was stumbling and sobbing now, occasionally turning to fire back along the way he had come. But I had already bounded around ahead of him, and was coming into attack. He turned, his paw with the flamer darting upward. He was quick, but not quick enough. My hurtling body struck him before the gun could fire, and we went down in a struggling heap. The roomy rolled over, trying to regain his feet, but he couldn't break my grip. The heat gun had fallen into the undergrowth, and he was trying desperately to recover it, and to fight me off at the same time. Unable to find the gun, he turned his full attention to me. We fought, body to body. The muskies smell of him, almost choking me at such close quarters.

28:44At the same time, it sent a hot flood of rage surging through me. He clawed vainly for the knife in his belt. He was big, and had the muscles of a wild cat, but he had evolved too far up the scale of evolution for a battle of fang and claw. I found his throat, and he screamed wildly like the big jungle cats, his ancestors had been. Screamed and thrashed about, until I found his jugular vein. Then he lay still, and his cat blood was all over me. A few hours later I found the girl. She had been running in circles for hours, and it finally settled down near a small fire she had started with a roomy flame. She was all hunched over with her arms wrapped about her, as I stepped out into the circle of light. I came as near to dying then, as I had at any time that night. Miss Thompson screamed at first sight of me, and her heat gun leaped upward.

29:48I saw her finger tightened on the firing pin. Then she relaxed and ran toward me. Thank God! You're not a raider, are you? Come here, doggy. Nice doggy. I nuzzled her hand as she padded my head. Later I might tell her that I came from a race of mutant dogs, with IQs in the 200s, developed by man to aid him in guarding the far boundaries of his space frontiers. Later I might tell her all about the watchdogs of space. But right now I felt like having my ears scratched. Next on the Lost Sci-Fi podcast, Don Hartley is stumbled upon an invention that could make him fabulously wealthy, and give anyone who controls it the power to watch anyone anywhere. Before he cashes in, he must decide whether some discoveries are simply too dangerous to share.

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