He's stupid on the conscious level, but subconsciously he's a genius.
Somehow, part of his mind absorbed the stuff, integrated it, and came up with this bassoon thing.
It's got a weird little L-shaped crystal in it, impinging on the reed, and when you blow the crystal vibrates.
We don't know why it works —but it sure does!"
"You mean the—uh—the fourth dimension?"
"Precisely.
Though we've left yesterday behind, the gnurrs have not.
They're there now.
When a day becomes our yesterday, it becomes their today."
"But—but how 'does he get rid of them?"
"He says he plays the same tune backwards, and reverses the effect."
Papa Schimmelhorn, who had been encouraging Katie Hooper to feel his biceps, turned around.
"You vait!" he laughed uproariously.
"Soon, vith my gnurrpfeife I broadcast to the enemy!
Ve vin the var!"
The colonel shied. "The thing's untried, unproven!
It—er—requires further study—field service—acid test."
"We haven't time, sir.
We'd lose the element of surprise!"
"We will make a regular report through channels," declared the Colonel.
"It's a damn' machine, isn't it? They're unreliable. Always have been.
It would be contrary to the principles of war."
And then Lieutenant Hanson had an inspiration. "But, sir," he argued, "we won't be fighting with the gnurrpfeife!
The gnurrs will be our real weapon, and they're not machines—they're animals!
The greatest generals used animals in war!
The gnurrs aren't interested in living creatures, but they'll devour just about anything else—wool, cotton, leather, even plastics—and their numbers are simply astronomical.
If I were you, I'd get through to the Secretary right, away!
For an instant, the Colonel hesitated—but only for an instant.
"Hanson," he said decisively, "you've got a point there—a very sound point!" And he reached for the telephone.
It took less than twenty-four hours to organize Operation Gnurr.
The Secretary of Defense, after conferring with the President and the General Staff, personally rushed over to direct preliminary tests of Papa Schimmelhorn's secret weapon.
By nightfall, it was known that the gnurrs could:
Completely blanket everything within two hundred yards of the gnurrpfeife in less than twenty seconds.
Strip an entire company of infantry, supported by chemical weapons, to the skin in one minute and eighteen seconds,
Ingest the contents of five Quartermaster warehouses in just over two and a half minutes, and,
Come from the voodvork out when the gnurrpfiefe was played over a carefully shielded short-wave system.
It had also become apparent that there were only three effective ways to kill a gnurr—by shooting him to death, drenching him with liquid fire, or dropping an atomic bomb on him—and that there were entirely too many gnurrs for any of these methods to be worth a hoot.
By morning, Colonel Powhattan Fairfax Pollard—because he was the only senior officer who had ever seen a gnurr, and because animals were known to be right up his alley—had been made a lieutenant-general and given command of the operation.
Lieutenant Hanson, as his aide, had suddenly found himself a major.
Corporal Colliver had become a master-sergeant, presumably for being there when the manna fell.
And Katie Hooper had had a brief but strenuous date with Papa Schimmelhorn.
Nobody was satisfied.
Katie complained that Papa Schimmelhorn and his gnurrs had the same idea in mind, only his technique was different.
Jerry Colliver, who had been dating Katie regularly, griped that the old buzzard with the muscles had sent his Hooper rating down to zero. Major Hanson had awakened to the possibility of somebody besides the enemy tuning in on the Papa Schimmelhorn Hour.
Even General Pollard was distressed.
"I could overlook everything, Hanson," he said sourly, "except his calling me `soldier boy.'
I won't stand for it!
The science of war cannot tolerate indiscipline.
I spoke to him about it, and all he said was, `It iss all right, soldier boy.
You can call me Papa.' "