CHAPTER VIII

"Well," said Trace, sucking in his breath, "there _is_ some hope."

"Where?" asked Bill Blacknight with deepest woe.

"Tell you later. Did I hear something out there?"

Bill jumped to the apertures and peered into the lighted theater. "There are half a dozen of 'em coming up the aisle," he said. "We are sunk."

"Not yet. What's that film on the reels there? Is it the main feature or a short?"

Bill gave him a glance that said he was out of his head, but obediently pulled the negative out a little and squinted sideways at it. "Feature. All ready to run. You want to entertain these lousy green hellions, Trace?" He shook his head. "My Lord, of all films to show 'em. _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich._ I saw that eight years ago, and it stunk then--about three-fourths of it's old newsreel clips."

"I know, I saw it," said Trace impatiently. "I noticed the marquee outside and I've been thinking ... can you work one of those gadgets? Those cameras?"

"The projector? Hell, yes. I can do anything in show business. You want sound too?" Bill, mystified, was trying to take orders without thinking about them.

"Yeah. Better start now, I want that ready to run as soon as we get a lot of greenies inside." As Bill began working over the projector, Trace scowled and did his best to remember the Grade C thriller he'd been conned into seeing so long ago. If only he was right about the opening scene! Slough, at the view-holes, said, "They're crowding in. The lights must suggest our presence."

"Get the show on the road," snapped Trace. He stood up; and the alien Glodd, seized the opportunity, rose as though he were spring-propelled and leaped for the stairs that led to freedom. Trace snatched at him, snarling; the Graken hit him with the flat of one big hand and Trace was hurled clear across the tiny room and into a stack of film cans. The one-eye slammed open the door and vanished down the steps, croaking like a buzzard in pain.

"Roll it!" yelled Trace at Bill. "Roll it! And throw up the sound as loud as you can, or we're stew for their supper tonight!"

The ten seconds were an eternity; then it was suddenly a chaos of noise in the theater, a crash of artificial thunder breaking out of nowhere to engulf the startled green men who choked the aisles and searched among the seats of main floor and balcony. Even in the projection booth, where the sound was muffled, the effect was that of some dreadful cataclysm. The thunder merged into a titanic roll of many military drums, and Trace barked, "House lights down!" but Bill Blacknight, the old showman, had already flicked them low.

On the screen appeared a countryside, through which a broad highway cut straight from the camera's position. Far down the road something moved, growing slowly and menacingly as the drums tattooed. The aliens were held petrified, staring with their great single eyes at the panoramic screen and the black and white picture thereon. Even Glodd had halted at the foot of the booth's steps, gazing immobile across the heads of his closest companions, all laved and assaulted by the strange burst of sound.

* * * * *

Trace stood in the open door, looking at their erstwhile prisoner. Glodd was their worst danger for the moment. There was no telling how much of their conversation about the movie he could have understood; yet even if he'd grasped none of it, he was still the only Graken who knew where they were--and he was not stupid. Trace had one of the ray pistols in his hand. Risking everything, he centered it on Glodd and hauled back the stiff trigger.

Glodd puffed into steam and fire without a sound.

Not one greenie turned his head to see. Not an eye flickered from the giant screen.

Trace prudently shut the door, and jumped for the nearest aperture to watch the movie unroll. Bill had managed to lift the volume of the film even higher, and like a hymn to pandemonium, a paean of ear-shattering vociferance, the drums roared from the screen. Now the movement on the two-dimensional roadway was closer, and the front ranks of countless marching soldiers could be seen. It was an old film clip, taken in Germany at least seventeen years before: Hitler's legions, goose-stepping grandly toward the cameras of a world then--however uneasily--at peace. The soldiers grew, widened, shot higher as they neared. The drums remained like endless thunder, and with them there now lifted the for-long-hateful marching song of the Third Reich.

The green men broke. They fled toward the front of the theater, croaking and squawking, and without doubt their thought-radiating helmets flung the fear and panic from one to another, filling the hall and passing through space and metal into the lines of saucers that lay across the continent and the world. At the front door they were jammed into a struggling mass; someone with a hold on himself thought of using his pistol on the locks, and the wave of green erupted into the dark street.

There was no firing at the screen. The soldiers there had grown to quadruple human size. "Giants!" whispered Bill to himself. "They think they're giants!" Then aloud, over the racket from the screen, he said to Trace, "It's like those natives of India or wherever the hell it was, who ran out of the movie houses to get away from the locomotives that were ramming out at 'em from--"

"It's better than that," said Trace. Once more Bill felt that the sergeant wasn't telling something he knew; but again he shrugged and let it go. Trace was a smart boy and what happened from now on was up to him.

The Graken in the balcony had all tumbled and hurtled to the bottom; the last few stragglers were pounding across the small lobby, uttering their birdlike cries of fear. The German Army was enormous on the screen, now their bootsoles showed huge in the goose-step, now the song and the drums were almost unbearably stentorian. Trace Roscoe grinned widely as the first letters of the title and credits flashed out to an empty house. "Come on," he yelled, "hop to it, you two. I'd guess we have ten minutes to clear this town, before the saucers rip in after the bunch of Goliaths we unleashed on 'em." He laughed as they made for the steps. "First time the Nazis ever did anything good for anybody!"