< … the Ministry of Meteorology forecasts a week of warmer weather ahead as a cave megathermal comes our way. The winds of victory blow forever in our favour! … >
But then the keening voices of a women’s agricultural choir were interrupted –
< … now we return to the New London criminals captured in the recent failed raid. You will remember the Father-Brother’s exceedingly generous offer of a hostage exchange – these twenty-seven criminals in return for one Icarus D. Earthstar. Well, we have heard nothing from New London, and the clock is ticking. If they do not respond in the next ten hours, their hands will be stained with the blood of the first criminal, one Biff Woodwax. What message do you have for your New London masters, Raider Woodwax? >
And Icarus recognised his friend’s voice. Biff was clearly reading a prepared script –
< My name is Raider Biff Woodwax. We are being well-treated by the Neufundland Army, and have no complaints… >
“You lied!” cried Icarus. “You never tried to rescue them!”
The landau screeched to a halt. Gus turned in his seat, face red with anger and pain.
“I did try, Icarus!” Gus opened his shirt to reveal the fresh, bloody wound in his shoulder. “I nearly got myself killed for my efforts! All might have been revealed, and everything lost…”
“But we have to rescue them!” said Icarus. “Biff’s only got ten hours left…”
“There – is – no - TIME!”
Victor’s face was a mask of fury. Then he made a visible effort to soften his tone. “Icarus, Icarus, there is something we must do first – then we will rescue your friends. You have my word, brother. You have my word.”
“Ten hours…” Icarus noted the time. “Biff only has ten hours… What can Victor possibly have to do that is more important than saving my friends?”
They swept into an industrial area, and Icarus found himself gawping at a chamber vaster than any he had ever seen. It was filled with some machine that he could not comprehend – a giant elongated bag, the size of a row of terraced houses, seemingly filled with gas of a buoyancy that pulled it upwards – and suspended below, a great gondola of steel and glass. Scores of men in grey overalls scurried around it like busy ants – workmen, engineers, guards. Along one wall ran a railway track.
Suddenly Icarus realised.
“This is a – a – flying machine?”
Victor nodded.
“It’s not witchcraft, no matter what people may have told you. Bats fly, moths fly, flies fly – so why shouldn’t we?”
Icarus was trying to digest the significance of what he was looking at.
“A flying machine… Flight… Humans might fly, into the air, free as bats? But this – this changes everything!”
The whole Vertical War, where Above was Above and Below was Below… The need for fungee cords when you Raided, to haul you back up… The one great factor that New London held to its advantage, outnumbered and outgunned as it was in every other way - the fact that it was Above the Enemy - would be lost! Did that mean – New London would also be lost?
Victor’s privileged status smoothed their landau’s passage through checkpoint after checkpoint, as they took Icarus deeper and deeper into the bowels of Neufundland. Icarus noted that the checkpoints, the barriers, the guards and gates were becoming more numerous, the security ever tighter and more oppressive… but Victor and the Brigadier were still ushered through without so much as a single inspection. Icarus noted the time.
“An hour gone already. Biff has just nine hours to live…”
At last they came to a vast industrial complex of delved rock and steel and concrete, cold blue lights and cold-eyed guards – and the landau swept to a halt in a chamber to rival the Zeppelin hangar. It was a factory of some kind, and judging by the numbers of guards, armed to the teeth, Icarus judged it wasn’t producing fungus casseroles. He gazed up at a huge metal sphere, the size of a swollen bus, which was being attended to by a small army of technicians clad in white overalls and dust masks. A great steel crane loomed over the sphere, and Icarus noticed that along one side of the chamber ran a railway track that vanished into a tunnel. A locomotive stood, sweating smoke and steam, hitched to a wagon with a broad platform-bed that looked built to take a heavy load. Empty. Waiting for a cargo…
General Amadeus Eisenberg strolled up to greet Victor and Gus with outstretched hand and gleaming smile, revealing two gold teeth. Gus winced as the General’s hand clutched his.
“So good, so good to see you! And – who is this? My word, another Little King? Ach, if only I had known, I would have smartened up this humble little place… Will your Majesties be accompanying us on our little jaunt today?”
They watched as the sphere was lifted, slowly, slowly, by the crane, and swung round to be deposited, as gently as if it were an egg that could break, onto the platform-bed of the wagon.
And Victor whispered to Icarus –
“This is the second Secret Weapon that you have seen today. An Atomic Bomb…”
They rode on the train, as it slowly carried its precious cargo through tunnels filled with cold blue light and cold grey guards, until it emerged into the Zeppelin hangar. Then another crane gently lifted it across and placed it into the grasp of two great steel arms that hung down below the airship’s belly. Icarus listened as General Eisenberg chatted with Victor and Gus – today they were taking the Zeppelin and Bomb out on the latest in a series of field trials. Assembled before them was the General’s hand-picked test crew – top men all, unswerving in their loyalty to the Father-Brother, and sworn to silence about the Zeppelin and the Bomb. But when the General’s back was turned – did Icarus imagine Victor and the Zeppelin Chief exchanging the most fleeting of hand signals? Making V’s with both hands and overlapping the index fingers to made a third V?
19 – Flight
Final preparations were being made for the day’s field trials. General Eisenberg chatted away to Victor and Icarus in his friendly, patronising way, and Icarus realised –
“The Neufundland regime is humouring us, indulging us. These young aristocrats, it thinks, are harmless fossils from an obsolete age…”
The General flashed another of his gold and ivory grins. “So today, my young Majesties, we will be testing the Zeppelin and the Bomb… Fürchte dich nicht! Don’t worry, nothing is going to go bang today!”
Victor and Gus exchanged glances.
“No, today the Zeppelin is going to fly a long, long way out over the Acid Sea… This is to evade detection by New London’s radar stations. Already we have flown a long way out, a hundred miles across the Cave, to the next great stalagmite-stalactite pillar, Columna Proxima. And we have performed extensive experiments on Columna Proxima itself, as a dress rehearsal for what we plan to do to the stalactite of New London…”
As Icarus, Victor, Gus and the General observed from the bridge, the Zeppelin Chief gave the order to launch. Two vast doors were set at an angle above them, and these doors slowly ground open, revealing the dark, windblown void of the Cave beyond. The crew scurried to cast off mooring ropes, and the Chief set the engine to
Icarus could only marvel at this miracle of flight. He peered over the handrail and gazed at the Acid Sea beneath him, pallid grey-blue, bubbling and steaming with clouds of acrid fumes that even at this height stung his eyes and throat. Now and then the surface was broken by the vast, bulbous shape of a sea salamander, or some great sightless fish with teeth as long as a man was tall…
But then Icarus looked at his watch…
“Eight hours. Eight hours before Biff is executed. And then how much longer before Arla is killed? And the others, one Raider after another? The clock is ticking down, and I am doing nothing more than standing here, gawping at the view…”
The Zeppelin glided out into the Cave for four, five, six miles, until their radar operator confirmed they wer
e out of radar range of New London’s scanners. Then the General gave the word to the Chief, and the Zeppelin began to climb, up, up, above the summit of Neufundland with all its bristling fortifications, up, up, crossing the mile-deep gap between stalagmite and stalactite, higher still, until Icarus craned his head up and saw that they were approaching the roof of the Cave, thickly carpeted with fungi that glowed in soft shades of blue-green, yellow-green, or sickly grey.
As they drew near the roof the Chief checked their ascent, and they glided over to the point where the Cave roof curved down and became a stalactite – the vast rocky roots of New London. As they drifted closer, Icarus saw that they were heading for a large notch in the angle between roof and stalactite, a kind of natural cave with a broad flat ledge. And as they drew closer still, he realised that the ledge had been visited before. It was decked out with a range of machinery:
There appeared to be a broadcasting station, with a large, powerful-looking transmitter mast.
There was a radio suite.
There were film cameras.
And there was another kind of camera, bulky, brutish, which Icarus guessed to be that new-fangled technology, television. They had a television set at home, he and his father, a large Bakelite cabinet with a little milky grey screen – but there never seemed to be anything interesting to watch…
There was a large crane.
And there was a large, curved steel cradle, just the right size to accommodate a…
… an Atomic Bomb…
20 – Devourer of Worlds
The Zeppelin drew alongside the ledge, and crewmen jumped out to secure it with mooring ropes. General Eisenberg strode briskly down the gantry, followed by Victor, Gus and Icarus. Crewmen were getting to work, manning the crane which now reached out, took hold of the Bomb, and slowly, delicately, lifted it over to the giant cradle. On the side of the cradle was a copper-green control console and a large clock display, set to
05:00 Minutes
Gently, gently, the Bomb settled into its new nest. Other crewmen were at work at the radio suite -
“Sound levels, check…”
On the film cameras -
“Some fill light, please…”
And on the television cameras -
“Shutter down the key light, we’re getting image burn…”
Icarus looked on as General Eisenberg prepared to broadcast. The film crew, television crew and radio crew all signalled their readiness.
“Silence on set… Lights check… Film rolling… TV rolling…
Action!”
General Amadeus Eisenberg flashed his ivory-gold smile.
“People of New London, I bring you greetings from Neufundland, on this Day of Days. For today, Neufundland is not only Below you, but also Above you…
The camera panned away from him to take in the immensity of the Bomb.
“This Bomb sits above New London. This Bomb sits above Neufundland. And this Bomb is an engine of destruction the likes of which our world has never seen before. It harnesses the power of the atom , to produce a blast ten times greater than all the bombs exploded in the fourteen years of the Vertical War! I am put in mind of the ancient scriptures, the Celestial Songs, where the great bat Weltenfresser declares -
“I am Death, the Devourer of Worlds”…
“He surely loves the sound of his own voice”, thought Icarus. “We’ll be here all day if nobody interrupts him…”
“This Bomb”, the General explained, “Would blow this whole stalactite from the roof of the Cave, destroying New London in a single blow…
People of New London, you must listen to reason! You must see that surrendering to Neufundland, and ending this pointless war, is your only option. Otherwise, death awaits us all…
But do not fear, people of New London! This is the dawning of a new day for all of you! For at last you will be freed from the shackles of the so-called ‘democracy’ that claims to govern you, a democracy that is weak, unable to do anything of worth…
And at last you will be part of the Neufundland commonwealth, under the blessed leadership of the Father-Brother. Peace at last! And New London and Neufundland, Above and Below, will work together for a brighter tomorrow…”
They wrapped up the shoot.
“How was that?” asks the General breezily. “How does my hair look under these lights?”
“Perfect, General”, said the director. “We’re picking up some strange background noise, though…”
They all stopped to listen. They peered over the ledge. And Icarus saw a Company of the Shroom Raiders swarming up the stalactite towards them…
Icarus recognised their faces.
“It’s 2nd Company! All there, except the twenty-seven hostages – and me…
I have to hide!”
Icarus pressed himself into the shadows and watched in horror as the Raiders, having found a precarious route up to the ledge, now swarmed over the lip, spore-shooters blazing. The Zeppelin crew grabbed their weapons and met fire with fire. The air was filled with strangle-spores, gripping, tripping and choking. One Zeppelin crewman was so engrossed in his struggle that he didn’t notice the lip of the ledge – Icarus listened to his bat-curdling screams, fading away into the abyss…
And incendi-spores, landing in clusters of orange flame, burning through uniforms and searing the skin of Raider and crewman alike. Screams were mixed with the awful stench of burning flesh. An incendi-spore landed, hissing and smoking, on Icarus’s boot, and he kicked it away…
He looked up to find a familiar face staring back at him. It was Bert Honeycap from 3rd Platoon, famed throughout the Company as the bravest of the brave.
“He will tell everyone”, thought Icarus. “They will think I am fighting for the Enemy, and they will hang me for a traitor…”
But Bert’s eyes were blank – and Icarus realised that he had been hit by strangle-spores and incendi-spores. An incendi had become tightly lodged beneath a tangle, which was squeezing it deeper and deeper, with a burning hiss, into the side of his body…
And the only sound that came out of Bert’s lips was a faint sigh…
Before Icarus could think to help him he was gone, vanished into the melee of men and tangling, exploding, burning munitions… But he would never forget that hissing sound, and Bert’s soft sigh, and the smell, the smell…
Now a movement beside the Bomb caught his eye. Icarus watched in horror as a Raider and a crewman were locked in a desperate wrestling match, right next to the Bomb’s control console. The Raider smashed the crewman’s head against the Bomb itself, and Icarus heard the hollow clang. Then the crewman seized the Raider’s throat and pinned him against the buttons and dials of the console, bending him further and further back until it seemed that his spine must break.
“No”, said Icarus, “Don’t –“
Then the Raider sat on the activation switch….
A bank of red lights came on -
WARNING
BOMB ARMING INITIATED
…
ARMING ABORT OPTION ENDS IN
3… 2… 1… SECONDS.
…
BOMB ARMED
And Icarus broke from the shadows, and ran into the battle…
An incendi-shroom smashed into his temple and singed his skin and hair. But he ran.
He was caught up in a tussle between a Raider Sergeant and the film director, which pinned him to the ground. But he threw them aside and ran.
And as he ran, the Bomb began its countdown to destruction…
05.00…
04:59…
04:58…
04:57…
Slowly, step by step, through mud and blood and shattered spores and shattered bodies, General Eisenberg’s men drove the Shroom Raiders back towards the edge…
03:29…
… forcing them back down the route they came…
… and the General gave the command to
“Concentrate boom spores on that rock overhang!”
>
…and the boom-spores blasted the overhang, and triggered a rock-fall…
02:17…
… that blocked that path forever…
01:15…
And as he ran, Icarus prayed that all his comrades, all his friends, had escaped the falling rocks…
One Raider had left his spore-shooter behind, and without consciously deciding to do it, Icarus picked it up…
But the Bomb!
00:28…
Icarus rushed over to the console. And suddenly he realised just how alone he was. There was the Bomb, counting down for all to see, so -
“Why is nobody rushing to help me?”
So alone he struggled with the console, jabbing buttons, throwing switches, straining to return the activation switch to
“How do I turn it off?
Somebody, HELP ME!
General! Victor! Gus! HOW DO I TURN IT OFF?”
And the General just shrugged.
“We can’t turn it off now”, he said. “With less than a minute to go, the countdown cannot be over-ridden…”
00:10…
Icarus fought the console, hammering at the buttons until his hands bled, shouting and sobbing and hammering again…
00:07…
Icarus thought of all the people he had ever known.
His friends, Biff and Arla, awaiting the executioner’s bullets.
His Platoon-mates.
Poor Bert Honeycap, burning and quietly sighing.
Biff’s little sister Anne, getting the soldiers to have a tea party…
Shroom Raider Page 9
