Free The Zap Gun by Philip K. Dick Page A

said, "I live in one."
    Febbs, unperturbed, continued his useful exposition. "They're cam—that is, chameleon; they blend, color-wise, with whatever they land on. So you can't detect them. There they lie, until nightfall, say around ten o'clock at night."
    "How do they know when it's ten o'clock? Each has a wristwatch?" The portly businessman's tone was faintly sneering, as if he imagined that somehow Febbs was putting him on.
    With massive condescension Febbs said, "By the loss of heat in the atmosphere."
    "Oh."
    "About ten p.m., when everyone's asleep." Febbs gloated in the thought of this strategic weapon in action, its precision. It was a thin road which this weapon laid, like the gate to salvation: esthetically it was satisfying. You could enjoy knowing about this Garbage-can Banger even without its actually going into operation.
    "Okay," the portly man said. "So at ten p.m.—"
    "They start," Febbs said. "Each pellet; fully cammed, begins to emit a sound." He watched the portly man's face. Obviously this citizen did not bother to read Wep Weke, the info mag devoted exclusively to pics and articles, and, where possible, true specs, of all weapons, both Wes-bloc and Peep-East—probably by means of a data-collecting agency he had in a vague way heard of named KICH or KUCH or KECH. Febbs had a ten-year file of Wep Weke, complete, with both front and back covers intact; it was priceless. "What kind of sound?"
    "A horrid sneering sound. Buzzing. Like—well, you'd have to hear it yourself. The point is, it keeps you awake. And I don't mean just a little awake. I mean wide-awake. Once the noise of a Garbage-can Banger gets to you, for example, if a pellet is on the roof of your conapt building, you never sleep again. And four days without sleeping—" He snapped his fingers. "You can't perform your job. You're no good to anyone, yourself included."
    "Fantastic."
    "And," Febbs said, "the chances are good that pellets might land and immediately cam in the vicinity of the villa of a SeRKeb member. And that could mean the collapse of the government."
    "But," the portly man said, with a trace of worry, "don't they have hardware equally sinister? I mean—"
    "Peep-East," Febbs said, "would retaliate. Naturally. Probably they'd try out their Sheep Dip Isolator."
    "Oh yeah," the portly businessman said, nodding. "I've read about that. They used it when their colony on Io revolted last year."
    "We in the West," Febbs said, "have never smelled the Sheep Dip Isolator's implementing irritant. It's said to defy description."
    "I read somewhere that a rat that's died in the wall—"
    "Far worse. I admit they have something there. It descends in the form of condensation from a Type VI Julian the Apostate satellite. The drops spatter in an area of say ten square miles. And wherever they land they penetrate inter-mol-wise—intermolecularly—and can't be eradicated, even by Supsolv-x, that new detergent we have. Nothing works."
    He spoke calmly, showing that he faced this tearwep without blenching. It was a fact of life, like going regularly to the dentist; Peep-East possessed it, might use it, but even this Sheep Dip Isolator could be matched by something of Wes-bloc's that was more effective.
    But he could imagine the Sheep Dip Isolator in Boise, Idaho. The effect on the million citizens of the city. They would awaken to the stench, and it would be inter-mol everywhere, on and in buildings, in sub-supra- and surface-vehicles, autofacs—and the stench would drive one million people out of the city. Boise, Idaho, would become a ghost city, inhabited only by autonomic mechanisms still grinding away uncursed by the possession of noses—and by the smell.
    It made you stop and think.
    "But they won't use it," Febbs decided, aloud. "Because we could retaliate with, for instance—"
    He scanned the fantastically extensive data-collection imbedded in his mind. He could envision a host of retalweps which would make the Sheep Dip Isolator small