by Earl
Delahre was there, but he never once looked at the anguished youth. It seemed as though he thought the incident overshadowed any possible good that could come of Roy’s research. Roy suddenly realized that Delahre had never thought well of the project and had yielded to it only because of Vina’s influence. Delahre had never dropped in to see how he was progressing, and had never evinced the slightest interest when they had occasionally met at his home. Probably Delahre thought it only meet that the young upstart who had wheedled a month’s vacation from him should now suffer for his folly.
From the court, Roy was taken back to the detention cells of which there were only three. Miscreants were never kept jailed in idleness; they were either sentenced to death, if the crime was heinous, or sentenced to hard labor if the crime was small. Bitterly, Roy thought it over. Could they but know how close he had been to success! Could he but get to Delahre and convince him of it; one word from the sectional head would assure his parole. Too tired to think further, he took the opportunity to catch up on his sleep.
In the morning before change of shift, Vina appeared. Without hesitation she threw herself into his arms, and for a moment, the thrill of it brought the man an ecstasy that rose above his trials.
“Darling, can’t they see you are innocent?” sobbed the girl.
Roy lowered her tenderly to a seat. “It’s no use fighting it. You know how strict the law is with people who do harm, whether unwittingly or not. When it comes to food—they hold it more precious than human life, it seems!”
“But isn’t it ironical,” said the girl with dry sobs shaking her, “that this should come when success was so near? I prevailed upon father last night to extend your release, but now. . . .”
Roy suddenly knelt down before her. “Vina, you’ve got to do more than that! When I’m sentenced and put away at whatever servitude they pick out for me, you’ve got to convince your father that the work must go on. It means too much, and I have too much faith in it to let it lie forgotten. They must get someone to follow my notes and continue! You, Vina, must carry on after me!”
The girl had listened with tears in her eyes. Now she dashed them away as though a new courage had come to her. “Since there is no other way, then I’ll see that it does go on.”
For a while, they said nothing further. Then Roy spoke. “Vina, did Spardo have any hold on you?”
“None whatever. I suppose he considered himself a suitor of mine, but I never gave him any particular encouragement.”
“Do you suppose he would have had the nerve to sow those spores?”
Vina’s eyes opened wide in astonishment when Roy told how Spardo had threatened him with dire trouble if he, Roy, kept up her friendship. She sprang to her feet. “That’s it! Why didn’t I think of it? I thought he had been acting queerly ever since I met you. It must be that. . . .”
She flew from the cell as though possessed. Roy passed the day in torment, wondering what the outcome would be. He knew that the girl had gone to accuse Spardo point-blank and probably to bring her father to see the truth.
She returned after the working shift, despair in her face.
“It’s terrible, Roy,” she sobbed, clinging to him. “Father became angry and resisted my every effort. Spardo—oh, I see him now in all his evil nature—laughed at me. No one will listen to me.”
Roy felt his heart sink at her next words; “But the worst of it is . . . . your sentence will be death! Father told me. . . .”
l Vina made one more visit to the prison cell, and when she left, Roy’s face shone with hope. He looked at what she had left in his hands. It was a tiny blast gun, such as were used in cutting small sections of rock away from solid walls. It had charges enough to disintegrate through the thin walls of his prison. How the girl had procured it, what danger she had defied in pilfering it, Roy could only guess.
He drew in his breath sharply. Would he dare try it? He must—for tomorrow they would announce his sentence and three hours later would carry it out. The girl had breathed words of courage in his ear before she left; and words of love. Both inspired him to go through with the hazardous undertaking. He had nothing to lose and much to gain.
He waited till the middle hours of the night shift, when those who were not at work were at home in bed. Carefully holding the blast gun a foot from the stone wall which faced an outside corridor, he pressed the control. Immediately the spang of disintegrating rock filled the room with its noise. Roy stopped it then, tiptoed with beating heart to the door, and listened at the ventilation slit for a minute. Satisfied that the guard had not been alarmed, he returned to his position.
Again the invisible pencil beam spanged the rock. Roy carefully cut a round groove in the wall; then retraced it again and again, burning deeper each time. The room became filled with the suffocating dust of partially disintegrated rock, but he held the gun in its course despite the pain to his lungs. Finally the whine changed its tone and he knew that the beam had worked through at one point. Another minute and it was done.
He bored the thin beam then in the center obliquely to give him a finger hold, and with a savage tug, pulled the block inward and laid it on the floor. The corridor was a short way ahead, beyond the bend in the rock roof that sloped downward from the prison building. Roy scrambled from the aperture and warily examined the corridor before stepping full into it.
He whirled suddenly upon a figure that came from a nearby indented public bench, distributed along all corridors for those who wearied of walking and wished a rest. It was Vina, much to his relief.
“Good God, girl! You’ll get yourself in trouble, being seen with me. You’d better go so that I can get to the air-lock . . . .”
“Roy, I’m going with you!”
The man started, gazed into her firm eyes, then pressed her hand silently. “Come—then it’s the two of us!”
It was a daring plan they had conceived. They were going to leave the underground city, via the air-lock, in one of the surface machines and flee for their lives. Roy knew how to run a surface machine, as most every man served in them for a year or more. Once safely away from the danger of the city that had demanded his life, they would formulate further plans.
Warily they traversed the corridors, walking nonchalantly past the few they met, knowing no stranger would realize who they were. Two things they had to watch for—police and friends. Police they avoided by taking cross corridors, and only once they saw a person who might recognize them. That person they avoided as they had the police.
After penetrating some way through the city, their fears lessened, for the police from then on would not know them and they were very unlikely to meet anybody they knew. Finally, as they neared the air-lock, they strode along boldly, for none would question them now.
Soon they traversed the winding passages that ascended toward the surface. It was quite a steep grade, and hurrying as they were, they stood breathless before the air-lock door.
“Shall we wait for the next shift to enter and walk in with them?” asked Vina.
“No. It won’t do for us to stand here that long. Someone might get suspicious, or they may give the alarm that I’ve escaped from prison.”
“But the guard inside . . . .”
“I’ll take care of him,” returned Roy grimly.
Accordingly, he pulled the release handle. Automatic controls opened the door. They stepped into the first of three sealed rooms. When the door behind hissed shut, the door ahead opened. In the two succeeding seal-chambers, the same process occurred, and the final door opened into the drome, a huge room filled with the towering heights of surface machines.
l Due to the impossibility of pushing any ground vehicle through the dense masses of vegetation on the surface, the most practicable affair had long proven to be a housing perched on geared tripods. The housing was a flat cylindrical air-tight chamber, large enough for three people. It contained its own oxygen and engines, thus being totally independent of the city once it was on the surface. Fr
om the center of the lower flat base of the cylindrical housing extended the tripod legs, each about thirty feet long, and each geared separately to the engines. With these vehicles, the underground people could ascend to the surface and traverse it, lifting the jointed legs high over the vegetation at each step forward.
This drome contained at the moment but two machines; all the rest being out on duty. The main use of the tripod-cars was to pick surface fruit and bring it to the city for food. The fruits, picked by the four long dexterous flexible arms or tentacles that extended from the housing, were placed in a shallow pan with upturned edges that completely encircled the base of the housing. Two operators were needed: one to run the tripod legs, and one to run the tentacles; a third was often taken along to facilitate the handling of the arms. But a skilful man could handle them all if necessary.
The two tripod-cars in the drome that Roy and Vina entered were in ready position, that is, placed alongside an overhead balcony. One had but to ascend the balcony by steps, and enter the machines by the open hatches.
The guardian of the tripod-cars looked at them in surprise. It was long before change of shift, and no one was due to go out on the surface.
Roy, lips grim, wasted no time. He had already sent the girl running toward the balcony steps, and he himself advanced upon the guard.
“We’re taking one of the tripod-cars . . .”
The guard sensed something amiss in the matter and ran for the telephone to call the police. Roy leaped upon him before he could get there. The guard gamely fought back, knowing no one would hear his cries. He was a burly man and the crash of his fist knocked Roy staggering back. Recovering, Roy plunged at him, fists pounding. The guard wilted under the rain of blows for a moment, then suddenly grasped Roy about the waist and threw him heavily to the floor. His fist crashed again on Roy’s chin, with the added force of stone floor beneath. Summoning all his strength, Roy squirmed to his stomach, arched his back with a jerk, and threw the guard off. With the swiftness of thought, he pounced on him, fingers to his throat, and squeezed till the fellow’s face turned purple, unmindful of the jolting blows he received.
Roy, panting and face bloody, looked down a moment at the senseless guard, then looked up to Vina, who stood, wideeyed and terrified, clutching the balcony railing as though about to faint. In another moment, Roy had dashed up the steps and along the narrow balcony.
“Quick, get in! The sooner we leave the city now, the better.”
They scrambled into the open hatch of one of the tripod-cars, swung it shut, and sealed it by several turns of a draw-screw.
While Roy snapped the engine button, he motioned the girl to start the oxygen valves, for now they were sealed off from the city’s air. The low hum of the atomic motor filled the interior, and in another moment the tripod-car trembled, swayed, then arched one of its legs and lurched toward the outer air-lock. A weaving tentacle uncurled and knocked the handle that controlled the seals to the surface. It was all automatic then. Roy guided the vehicle forward through three air-locks, doors opening and then closing behind them. The tripod-car finally waddled in its jerky way from the air-lock’s last seal, which was built vertically in the side of a cliff.
CHAPTER V
Amid the Ruins
l The last seal hissed shut behind them, and before them through the large windows they saw the illimitable stretch of jungle of the surface world. It was night-time now and overhead hung the silvery half-moon. Roy, after a glance in all directions, sent the tripod-car away from the air-locks.
“Get ready for some shaking-up,” admonished Roy. “I haven’t handled one of these affairs for years now, and we may take a tumble or two.”
Both were securely strapped into seats that were held in place purely by a dozen strong springs that hitched to the walls in every direction. The jerky motion of the vehicle caused the passengers to swing and sway in constant gyrations, but the tough springs limited the motion considerably.
To an outside observer, the sight of a tripod-car would be almost laughable. The grotesque picture of a metallic housing bouncing across the tops of vegetation on its three legs would be ludicrous. At first glance, it would seem impossible that such a top-heavy affair could remain upright, but the animated legs would always plant in the direction of fall just as the whole affair seemed about to topple over. Yet for travel in such a world of unhindered plant life, the tripod-car was ideal. The housing was always high and clear of obstruction, and the thin legs, with their tri-pronged ends, could always cut through the vegetation and plant firmly into the ground to give the necessary balance. And because of the length of the legs, each forward step was several yards, giving the vehicle a respectable forward speed.
Roy fingered the multitude of button controls with a somewhat unpracticed hand. Then the constant swinging of his body bothered him, although he knew he would soon get used to it. But before he could get into the full swing of the manipulations, he made one slight mistake. He did the only thing left, then, and straightened out the machine’s legs to give their toppling crash a horizontal pitch. The world seemed to turn upside down and they were swung viciously sideward, the springs straining them back. With a sodden crash, the housing landed amongst the vegetation and bounced and rolled a moment on the cushion of decaying leaves over the ground.
Roy looked at Vina’s white face and laughed shakily. “No harm done! Good thing they make these housings strong, and good thing the vegetation is so thick. It cushioned our fall.”
A tripod-car losing its balance in unskilled hands and toppling groundward was nothing new. It happened often and very seldom the sturdy vehicles were harmed by it. But the process of once again raising the housing into the air was quite a trick. Once at rest, the strong springs drew Roy back to position, and he reached out his hands to the buttons.
Two of the legs had to be doubled up and then drawn to the top side of the housing, which lay on its side. Then power applied to straighten these two legs slowly raised the housing off the cushion of decaying leaves. It was like a person flat on his face pushing his head from the floor by use of his arms. It was done without a hitch, but once upright, Roy planted the tripod-car firmly and left it that way.
“Let’s have a breathing spell, and while we’re at it, we can decide what to do.”
He looked at the girl. “Vina, we’re outlaws! My life is forfeit once I step into the city, and you. . . . oh, why did I ever let myself drag you with me!”
“Drag me with you? Roy, I came willingly, and I would do it again, because”—she had unstrapped herself and now flew into his arms—“because life without you wouldn’t mean a thing to me.”
For a minute, they remained in the ecstasy of mutual adoration. Then Roy pushed her gently away. “But now, what to do with ourselves? We can’t live in this tripod-car very long, a few weeks at the most—then the oxygen tanks will be empty. And outside . . .
They glanced out the window and shuddered. A nightmare world of jungle. And just outside the walls was a horrible choking death.
“Roy, we could go to some other city in this tripod-car!”
Roy nodded. “Seems about all we can do. City number 17 is about five hundred miles away—if we can find it.”
“Do you suppose we’ll have any trouble getting in?”
“I wonder myself. It will look odd to them that we should come there . . . Wait, I have an idea! We’ll go to city 17, join in with a crowd of fruit pickers and calmly walk in with them. Once we’re safe in the city, we can somehow invent excuses for our presence.”
Vina smiled her relief that it would be so easy. But Roy had fastened his eyes on the radio pilot light. It was flashing interminably, meaning that a message was being broadcast to the world. He snapped on the control and twirled the dial, his heart beating fiercely in sudden apprehension.
“. . . . escaped from this city, No. 16, in a tripod-car.” came the voice, “whose number is 109. Keep watch for it and capture him if possible, or else notify the author
ities of this city. A girl, Vina Delahre, is also with him. She is also to be captured and returned to this city, to be punished for deserting her work and for aiding the escape of a criminal.”
Then the message was repeated. “Notice to all cities! Roy Cantwell, sentenced to death, escaped from . . .
Roy snapped off the radio. “That kills our plan to go to city 17!”
“They call you a criminal!” cried Vina, tears of anger in her eyes. “Oh, if they only knew. . . .”
They remained in dejected silence then for long minutes. Suddenly a strange light glowed from the man’s eyes. “Vina! There is one alternative to going back and surrendering. I’ve read a book of previous surface life and know they used to have wonderful big cities. If we can get to one of those and find some sort of shelter, I can continue my work! I have learned enough about horticulture to do the breeding myself. It will be hard without my notes, and may take a long time—maybe longer than our oxygen will last—but we can gamble on it! Only I think I ought to return you to the city. Your punishment would be light, while I could go on working alone. . . .”
l The negative glint in her eyes and the firm way she shook her head cut the man short. “With you I go!” And so it was.
They wandered for days, eating fruit that Roy flicked from trees with the tentacles, sleeping short hours, searching, searching for a haven. They took their course by compass, so they would not lose themselves, and switched at right angles periodically so as not to draw too far away from the city.
Hope fell to ashes, but one day it flamed anew. In the distance they saw—it was bright sunlight—a break in the level jungle. Drawing near it proved to be what they had long sought, one of the crumbling ancient cities. The giant tripod-car picked its way along tom pavements, tumbled buildings, and heaps of debris, the toll of two centuries. Roy searched the shocking desolation with a keen eye.