“I got a hunch,” said Lucky happily. “I got a hunch there’s a plane comin’ in. Right on the line where they keep their atom bombs.”
“They’d be fools to keep them assembled,” said Steve. “Take a chance. There’ll not be more than one or two in firing condition, anyhow.”
Lucky aimed, chanting softly. “Will that plane crash the atom-bomb stores, if I knock it down now—now—now—now?”
The wires glowed.
“Mmmh!” he said.
There was a long wait. Then, utterly without warning, there was a flash of such awful radiancy and such ghastly, overwhelming heat, that the five momentarily were blinded. There was the smell of hot paint in the little lookout-building. There was a sound which was beyond sound. The building rocked on its foundation.
Steve’s voice came out of a deathly stillness.
“Really,” he said into the telephone in a chiding tone. “We’re getting impatient! Will you connect your commanding officer or do you want more atom bombs?”
Chattering, disjointed buzzings came from the telephone instrument.
“You chaps look hungry for something to do,” Steve said to the three bearded men of his following. “Set fire to part of the town. Only part of it, though, mind you!”
If wires and nails and even kitchen utensils poured out arcs of electric fire, flames would follow. The three small hand-instruments did not have to furnish the energy for the arcs. That was already present in the metal objects which would emit them. The three men grimly used their weapons.
“Hello!” said Steve into the telephone. “You’re in command? Good! I suppose you’re a general?…Then, General, you will immediately order all your troops under arms, march them to the nearest prison-camps, have them stack arms and deposit all cartridge-belts with their small-arms, and release the prisoners and take their places.
“I am sure the prisoners will arm themselves. They may mount guard over your men. I wouldn’t know about that. But certainly if you haven’t started the carrying out of those orders in five minutes you’ll regret it.”
He looked inquiringly at Lucky, who spoke softly.
“The arsenal, where they stock their ammunition.”
“And just to urge you on,” said Steve gently. “Listen!”
Little wires glowed where four riflelike instruments pointed along the line Lucky indicated. Heavy detonating tumult began off in the night.
“Your high-explosive bombs will go next,” added Steve. “Or we can set the rest of the town ablaze, as part of it is burning now.”
Screaming, squealing sounds came out of the telephone.
“Very well,” said Steve pleasantly. “All your men in the prison camps, and all the prisoners out, or I’ll get quite provoked. I’m going to hang up now, General, and there’ll be no more arguments. Obey your orders or we will begin wiping you out.”
He hung up. His features were pinched and very tired, but he was smiling. There was a dim red light in the sky to the east.
“It’s queer that I don’t feel like a murderer,” he said softly. “We must have killed a lot of them in the last few minutes. But it doesn’t bother me at all. After all, we haven’t killed one in a hundred—no, not one in a thousand—of the murders they’ve done. We really ought to wipe them out. Only we can’t do that sort of thing.”
“Maybe you can’t,” said a bearded man grimly. “We can!”
“You’ll probably have to kill a few,” Steve told him. “But it will pall on you when they can’t fight back. That’s an odd thing about us Americans. We’re about finished here, I suspect. We’ll have to tip off the released prisoners what it’s all about, and let them organize themselves. I imagine they’ve been used to cultivating ground as well as for work in factories. They’ll put their former bosses at those jobs instead. Then we’ll go back home.
“No,” he now added reflectively. “We’ll have to leave one of our number here to knock off any plane from other bases that may turn up, and we’ll have to figure on taking over all the other bases there are. By plane, I guess, in time.”
Then he said, with an unconscious gesture of brushing off his fingers:
“Let’s go out and look at the sunrise.”
* * * *
It was three days before they started back. Five of them had started, and five men rode back, but one of the five was a stranger. They rode on splendidly-groomed horses from the general’s stables, and each of the five had, besides, a led horse trailing behind him with food for the journey and other items that would be welcome. Wire, for example, and seemingly more other parts for more duplications of the probe and thought-recorder and the generator-making combination that each of them carried, save one. But there was cloth, and some toys, and sugar, and pepper, and such items as conquering heroes may lawfully loot and take home to their womenfolk.
They made the trip back in five days. And when the horses emerged from the woods near the house and pushed on across weedy fields toward it, yells greeted them. Yells of purest triumph. And Frances ran and ran and ran to meet Steve, so that when he swung her up before him she could only pant and hold him close while she put up her face to be kissed.
“We did it,” he told her. “One base was smashed and taken over by the slave-labor they had there. Decent people, the captives were, most of them. The other kind were more useful outside, as guerillas. The released victims are planning an organized sweep to wipe out the other bases all over America, and then they’ll start on the rest of the world.”
She held fast to him and he could feel the beating of her heart.
“Where’s Lucky?” she said suddenly.
“He stayed,” Steve told her. “Somebody had to, and he stayed with a gadget to protect the place until we can send back some more stuff. He’s rather wonderful with the probe, Frances. He can find anything with It. So just before we left he told me to tell you, he’s using it for himself. He’s trying to find a girl he can like as much as he likes you. He says the probe says there’s one among the released prisoners.
“The probe says so. But he hasn’t caught up with her yet. She keeps moving around. He’s sticking to the job of finding her, though. And then, too, he wants to go on and help wipe out the other bases.”
Frances looked up at him in alarm.
“But you, won’t go, Steve! You’ll stay here, won’t you? If it—if it wasn’t so crowded, this house would be wonderful to live in!”
Steve smiled.
“It won’t stay crowded, I suspect. And anyhow I’ll remain right here and do some experimenting. We’ve started a new kind of science and I want to dig into it. That business of molecular motion, now—” Then he stopped. “I brought back what I told you I would. Found him among the released prisoners. He didn’t mind coming for the job on hand.”
Frances stared. She peered around Steve’s shoulder at the patient-faced man—thin as from long hunger—who had taken Lucky Connor’s place on the return journey.
She suddenly flushed crimson.
Steve reined his horse aside and beckoned to the thin man.
“Reverend, here’s the lady,” he said contentedly. “If it’s all right with you, we’ll have the wedding this afternoon.”
*
THE DAY OF THE DEEPIES
(Originally Published in 1947)
Kenie waked with all the shivering ecstasy one feels at the age of thirteen on a morning when excitement looms deliciously ahead. She lay still for a moment, listening to the noises that told her the house was awake. Her brother Tom, down the hall, was doggedly enduring the squawks and howls of the television set he’d put together from wreckage their father had brought back from what used to be Camden. Then there was the whooshing roar of the tractor, pulling past the front of the house with its monstrous wood-gas generator on the back and the squeak that Bub Taylor said was metal-fatigue setting in. But it couldn’t be dismantled, for youthening, until the fall wheat had been planted.
Her mother’s voice came out of wha
t had been the air-conditioning duct when air conditioners still worked.
“Kenie! It’s late!”
“I’m up and practically dressed,” said Kenie, anticipating the fact by seconds. “Right down, Mother!”
She slid out of bed. She almost danced across the room to look at herself in the mirror.
The mirror was a trifle leprous, in spots, where the silver had tarnished through, but she found her own eyes bright and anticipating. She beamed at her reflection. She didn’t know how things would turn out, but excitement was sure.
Her very best boy friend, Bub, had told her in strict confidence that the neighbors were coming over today to warn her father that Tom had to stop fiddling with science. And that ghastly deepie, Mr. Wedderson, was coming to receive the family’s answer to his proposal for Aunt Sarah’s hand. And Kenie was practically certain that Roland—whom her sister Cissie used to be in love with—was hiding out somewhere in the woods. So it would be a full day.
She went blithely down the stairs in work-stained shorts and jumper. It was just as exciting to be thirteen in the year 2096 as it had been when Kenie’s great-great-grandmother watched soldiers march off to some war or other, back in the days when they had wars. Now, of course, war was just a word. There couldn’t be a war when there was nothing to fight with and you didn’t know whom to fight.
Anyhow, Kenie doubted that a war would be as exciting as knowing that Bub was secretly working on an electric generator in the cellar he’d dug under his father’s barn, or having a delicious suspicion that Roland was hiding nearby and that Cissie had seen him at least once.
Roland would be hung as a matter of public safety if he were discovered, because he was a scientist. And if she merely hinted her suspicion of his presence to her brother Tom, he’d go crazy trying to find Roland to pump scientific information out of him, because Tom meant to be a scientist, too.
She felt that she could burst, but she seemed completely demure as she went into the kitchen. The great electric range and storage cabinet, off to one side, was used as a cupboard and working space for the preparation of meals. Her mother said it was wonderful, before a bomb fell over at Westport and then there wasn’t any more electricity. Kenie’d always thought vaguely that it wasn’t scrapped because they hoped that some day there might be electricity again. But she was not sure.
“Stay close to the house, Kenie,” said her mother, as she put breakfast before her. “I may need you. Some of the neighbors are coming over to your father and we’ll have to offer refreshments.”
Kenie said mildly, “Does Tom know yet?”
Her mother looked at her sharply.
“What do you mean by that, Kenie?”
“Aren’t they coming over to tell father that Tom has to stop messing with science? I told him not to get so confidential with that revolting Mr. Wedderson. I’ll bet he’s the one who passed the word that Tom was experimenting.”
Her mother pressed her lips together.
“Kenie—”
“He’s a deepie,” said Kenie scornfully. “Oh, I know, Mother! Deepies are just displaced persons, and some of them are quite nice. They are people who’ve never settled down or who are afraid to settle down even if people would let them. They think if they keep moving, they’ll be safe. ’Fraidy-cats! But some deepies are snoopers, too, and you know it!”
“Kenie!” said her mother. “Mr. Wedderson wants to marry your Aunt Sarah! He’s quite a good blacksmith, he says, and with a family connection so he’d be allowed to settle down here—”
Kenie started to stuff her mouth full, and remembered that she was growing up, and took a dainty mouthful instead. She said with a vast calmness:
“Darling Mother, you don’t fool me. You don’t like him any more than I do. You’re just as afraid he’s a snooper. And with Roland—”
Her mother went white. Kenie’s heart turned one complete somersault. Then it was true! Roland was back, and hiding out! Her mother knew it, as well as Cissie! Kenie’s hand shook with the thrill as she gulped her milk in outward composure.
“Don’t worry, Mother,” she said calmly. “I won’t say that to anyone else. But I notice things. I’m thirteen, now.”
“I don’t know where you get silly ideas about Roland,” her mother began. But there were footsteps in the hall and she stopped short. She went on in an even, unhurried tone, “I think that if you took over the new calf this morning, since your father is so busy—Good morning, Sarah!”
Kenie’s Aunt Sarah came into the kitchen. Kenie spoke to her politely. Aunt Sarah looked thrilled and haggard and defiant and sorrowful all at once, with a hint of tragedy queen thrown in. Kenie used to feel sorry for her because she’d never gotten married—Kenie intended to marry Bub when they both grew up—but Mr. Wedderson had ended her sympathy. He couldn’t be anybody’s ideal! He was untidy with a hint of greasiness. He wore thick eyeglasses and a smug air which wasn’t suitable to a deepie, and he petted Kenie. With the pretense of treating her, as a child, he patted her: Kenie frankly despised him—with an uneasy feeling underneath.
“Good morning, Martha,” said Aunt Sarah. “Where is John? I simply must have a talk with him! Mr. Wedderson is coming—”
Kenie’s mother said vaguely, “He’s running the tractor, Sarah. I think he’s been asking the neighbors if they object—”
“What have they to do with it?” demanded Aunt Sarah sharply. “My brother John is a leading citizen! If I choose to marry, why should the neighbors have anything to say?”
“You know how it is,” said Kenie’s mother soothingly. “People resent newcomers settling—”
“Would John send his own sister wandering?” demanded Aunt Sarah fiercely. “Must I wander through the woods and forests to be with the man I love, when he is a good blacksmith and one is needed here?”
Kenie choked on her milk. Aunt Sarah always managed to mess things up when she tried to be dramatic. Her mother said:
“Kenie! The calf—”
“Yes, Mother,” said Kenie.
She drained the mug and managed not to giggle until she got out of doors. Then she went down to the barn. It was a good barn, very old and with the wires for electric lights still in place. There were iron stalls for the cows and there had been an electric milking machine. It would be nice to have electricity to do things for you, Kenie reflected.
She milked an anxious cow who was bitterly indignant because her calf was muzzled. She led the calf into another stall and set to work to teach him to drink. It was rather fun, but she felt all churned up inside herself.
Roland was nice. He’d been gone for two years, now, because of course, when he practically said he was a scientist he couldn’t stay around. It wouldn’t have mattered before things happened and the big cities were either abandoned or destroyed, and before the railroads stopped running, and all that. But since the world had got to be as it was, scientists weren’t good neighbors. Everybody knew that. When scientists set to work to find out things, sooner or later a bomb fell from the sky. Then there was an empty place three or four miles across where people had lived, and things wouldn’t grow there for a long time because the ground was all baked to a bricky, glassy kind of stuff that Kenie had never seen but had heard about. Only eight years ago a bomb had fallen on a locality only fifty miles away. And people said it was because there was a scientist there.
It wasn’t his fault directly, though. It was because of the deepies. There were always deepies coming around—brighteyed, usually skinny people who worked awhile and got a store of food and moved on. Lots of deepies were very respectable and nice, but there were some snoopers among them, and if a snooper found out that there was a scientist around, somehow or other they got word to whoever had planes and bombs—and then a bomb fell. So one must always be careful not to say anything nice about science. Bub was especially bitter because one mustn’t even have electricity, and he was making a generator down in a secret cellar he’d dug. He was going to have electricity and keep
it a secret.
The trouble with Roland was that he talked. As long as he just kept machinery in repair and made funny stuff that made welding easier, he was all right. He was crazy about Cissie, too, and she about him. But one day somebody said that people were better off nowadays than back when cities had millions of people in them, and Roland got mad. Right in front of everybody he said that people lived like pigs, now, compared to the old days. Running tractors on wood-gas and burning tallow lamps wasn’t his idea of living, he said.
Science had made a world fit to live in, and fools had smashed it, Roland said. And then he declared defiantly that some day science would come back and the world would be better than ever, with electricity and airplanes and great cities and universities and books and television everywhere. And he said it where everybody could hear him!
Deepies were listening, so the neighbors had to act at once. They tried him right on the spot for advocating science, after what it had done to the world, and they ordered him to leave the locality and said they’d hang him if he came back. And they made sure all the deepies knew it. Kenie’s own father was the sternest of Roland’s judges, though he liked Roland a lot. Cissie’d cried for weeks, too, because she’d been going to marry him. But of course being ordered away from home made Roland a deepie, and nobody would let a deepie settle anywhere. Everybody was afraid that almost any deepie might be a snooper, reporting to whoever had bombs and planes. So naturally Cissie couldn’t marry Roland.
Teaching the calf to drink, Kenie’s anticipations rose. Roland’s return was exciting. And Mr. Wedderson wanting to marry Aunt Sarah. He was a deepie who pretended to be enormously smitten with Aunt Sarah’s charms. Now she was hounding Kenie’s father to stand sponsor for him and get him permission to settle down here. Otherwise, of course, she’d have to go off and be a deepie, too, if she married him. But Kenie was scornfully sure that Mr. Wedderson was a snooper, and if he found out that Roland was back…
That was something to shiver about! Cissie’d seen Roland. Kenie knew it. She used to be in love with him and still must be or she wouldn’t have risked seeing him.
The Second Murray Leinster Megapack Page 44
