by Earl
Finally he stopped the tripod-car beside a section of jagged wall that yet stood erect. “In that building,” he pointed, “we may find what we want,” Donning oxygen helmets, they stepped out into the cool air of spring and clambered down the jagged wall to the ground. They had to thread their way past heaps of piled masonry.
“To think,” said Roy, his voice reaching the girl through a vibrating diaphragm, “that a long time ago our ancestors lived here and roamed these very streets. To think that once the whole earth was free to them; they could wander where they wanted to without coming up against stone walls and barring air-locks!”
To these two it was strange indeed to picture a city of the surface as it might have been. Their restricted underground lives had pressed their thoughts together so that the sight of open sky above them almost made them shrink in instinctive fear. A mind used to four walls feels lost when there is no roof.
But Roy was practical-minded. He entered the yet intact doorway of the low stone building that had first attracted his eye. Past a small vestibule he found a large room whose cement floor had stood the ravages of time. Its several windows were devoid of glass and the wind blew in unhindered.
“This will do,” said Roy. They ate first of the large store of fruits they had in the tripod-car, whose juices also satisfied their thirst, then talked over the future.
“Right here on this cement floor we’ll spread a layer of dirt and start our crossbreeding. I’m going to write down from memory as much of my notes as I can. We’ll work ahead from that. For food and water, of course, we’ve got fruits. If we run short, you, Vina, can go out with the tripod-car and get more. I’ll point out to you certain types of fruit that are never poisonous, as I know from years of testing. During the day, the temperature is warm enough. Nights well spend in the tripod-car. Since from now on well breathe mainly in our helmets, our oxygen consumption will be economical. If any of those surface storms rages around here, we’ll be protected in this building. And once we finish our experiments and have the type of plant I want, we’ll be able to buy our freedom back from the law.”
CHAPTER VI
Spardo on the Trail
l Immediately, they set to work, each knowing their lives depended on it. Getting dirt into the building was a laborious task. Roy, using a withering gun with which all tripod-cars were equipped, burnt to ashes the grasses and bushes growing around the building. Then he scraped away the humus layer and scratched the dirt loose with a spike of broken cement. This he loaded on the broad leaves of certain plants, and Vina carried them in to the experiment room.
Two days of this monotonous work—however not much more monotonous than work had been in the city—and Roy called a halt. A twenty-foot square of virgin soil was now spread on the floor six inches high, suitably criss-crossed with narrow footpaths. Over the whole he played the withering pistol for hours to make certain that all seeds and spores were destroyed. Then for a day they scoured the countryside with the tripod-car, picking up the spores needed for breeding. These Roy wrapped separately in large leaves, labeling each with a slip of white bark scratched with identifying signs.
Then the work began. To a botanist of centuries before, the processes would have seemed miraculous. His eyes would have popped at the rapidity with which the fungi grew, and at their strange and varied forms. He would have wondered what miraculous form of life imbued the plant life of that time, that they completed life cycles in short days, sometimes hours! But to Roy it was not strange. He took it as natural. To him the old forms of plant life that grew before the advent of the freak fungi, would have seemed dead and ungrowing. For all the vegetation, in a greater or lesser degree, of that age had absorbed (by the activity of the blender fungi) the amazing fecundity of the first freak fungus. Where in earlier times, the plant species had bred according to earths seasons, now they bred at any and all times, except when the greatest rigors of winter checked them momentarily.
And Roy’s cross-breeding, which would have been years of work in the twentieth century, took place in just weeks. And the rapid-growing vegetation that grew in his century would have choked and obliterated pre-freak fungus plant life in no time at all. That was why the earth was covered with a vast jungle of vegetation. Genesis in the botanical world had speeded up a hundredfold.
Had Roy unfolded his plans to a botanist of surface times, that he expected to evolve new freak forms of plant life in time measured by mere hours, the latter would have laughed aloud in derision. But that was what he did.
A week of constant application produced a freak that he reasoned should have a high fungi-degree. To test it, having no facilities to make chemical tests, he had to plant it in a square foot of soil along with the terrible oxygen-consuming fungus, to see which would grow the faster and produce spores the quickest. While waiting for these results, he began again, breeding the new freak with a harmless fungus that had a high fecundity.
His former work at the city had placed him at the threshold of the riddle he wished to solve. But a few weeks more and he would have formulated a process of interbreeding that could produce at will harmless vegetation with a fungi-degree so high, that, if it were sowed in large numbers over the land, would successfully compete with and crowd out the oxygen-eating fungus which now occupied most of the land surface of the globe.
Working now under poor conditions and trying circumstances, he yet made progress. He knew that suddenly, some day—if their oxygen did not run out before that time—he would fall upon the Great Law of interbreeding with freak fungi. Then it would be easy.
Vina worked like a slave with him, disregarding the troublesome things that made life so irksome. The oxygen helmet chafed at times, the air was once blue-cold, again sweating-hot. Used as they were to constant temperature, the weather changes made them miserable. Only their splendid health, for the underground cities’ inhabitants were all dieted and medicined to almost perfect health, held them up.
But there were moments of happiness, too. They made it a habit to watch sunrise and sunset, whose beauty struck exquisite joy-pains in their scenic-starved souls. During warm rains they gamboled in the open, delighting in the sensation of feeling pelting raindrops on their skin. A thunder and lightning storm thrilled them once with its majestic power, sights and sounds unknown to most people of that time. And no less than all other of their few joys—they had each other.
It was three weeks after their escape from the city that Roy turned a grave face to Vina, after examining the oxygen supply. “Only enough for a short week, Vina. Then, if I fail in my work, we must either die of asphyxiation out here, or deliver ourselves back to the law.”
“Do you. . . . think we’ll succeed before then?” asked the girl tremulously.
Roy looked at her weary eyes. He pursed his lips as though what he was about to say might hurt. “Yes and no. The fact of it is, Vina, that I’ve gotten this far only to realize that without the results of my work in the city, I can’t finish in time. I am positive, I simply know, that if I could get the spores of a certain freak plant in my city laboratory, and breed the plant with the one I’ve got here, it’ll be over, or very nearly over.”
He looked out of the window in the tripod housing in which they sat and viewed the ruins of the ancient city with an eye that suddenly took fire.
“Vina, there’s one thing left to do. We tnust go back to the city! I’ll sneak in somehow and get those spores I need. If they are destroyed and if my notes are gone, then we’ll sneak off with a different tripod-car and that will give me another month to finish this work here.”
l When the giant outer seal to the city opened to allow a group of fruit-pickers to enter for change of shift, a scurrying figure darted in at the corner, unseen by the occupants of the tripod-cars. And when a large group of people entered the triple inner seals, bound for home, Roy was with them, having thrown his oxygen helmet into a dim-lit corner. Boldly he entered the city proper with the group, then unobtrusively branched away as did many oth
ers.
He was hardly recognizable as the Roy Cantwell of a month before when he had flown from the city, a marked man. His hair was longer and cut in a different style (by Vina), his complexion was darker, and his face and figure were emaciated. For this reason, he felt a great security, though he knew were he once recognized, he would be hunted down. Furthermore, and this lent him great courage, none would expect him. They must by now think him dead and lost in the surface jungles.
Yet he used caution, scanning the people ahead for possible acquaintances whom he would have to avoid, and passed the police with face turned away. He penetrated directly to the botanical building, growing more wary as he drew near. Finally it lay before him. He seated himself on a public bench as though merely resting, but ran a careful, eye over the place. From where he sat, he could not see the one open window that led to the room in which he had carried out his experiments, it being beyond a corner, out of view from the corridor.
Roy thanked kind fate that the window did not face the corridor. It became his one chance, therefore, of getting in, as it would have been too dangerous to walk in the entrance. Too many of the workers would see him and give an alarm. But what if the room were occupied? Suppose someone else Had been installed in there by now?
Roy set his teeth. No backing out now; he’d go in there and take his chances. If worst came to worst, and the alarm were given, he could yet vanish in the crowds of the thoroughfare. But then he would be in constant danger.
From the side corridor, which was quite deserted, Roy crept eagerly to just beneath the window and listened intently for sounds of activity within. There were apparently none. Placing hands on sill, he drew his eyes to the level of the room and peered in swiftly. Empty!
Another swift motion and he had swung his body into the room. He almost cried aloud in joy then. On the table, unmolested, stood the tubes of spores that he had produced. Swiftly he selected three of them, slipped them into his belt pouch, and looked for his notes. But they, unfortunately, were gone.
First gazing out of the window to see that no one had detected him and waylaid him, he leaped lightly to the street level. Hardly had he entered the main corridor and joined the thronging crowds, than the workers in the botanical building poured out. It was change of shift! It was best for him to get away quickly, lest one of them spy him and recognize him.
Rapidly as he dared, he walked away from the place in the crowds. He breathed easier when he was out of sight of the building. But he didn’t know that a pair of beady eyes had seen him as he shouldered his way in the crowd. Nothing warned him that Spardo, having accidentally spied him when leaving the building, had taken up his trail, a triumphant smile on his lips.
And Spardo followed him without trying to catch him up, already hatching his own little schemes. But when Roy ascended the winding passages to the air-lock, Spardo leaped upon him, knowing that the glory of capturing the outlaw single-handed would be great. But he had underestimated Roy’s strength, even though he himself was taller and heavier. Crushed to the floor by Spardo’s onslaught, Roy wriggled like an eel from the bigger man’s grasp, and pounded hard fists into his face. With muttered oaths, Spardo attempted to grapple with him and bear him to the floor again. Roy saw his plan, suddenly leaped sideways, and swung his fist with desperate fury. Spardo slumped to the floor with a groan.
After a hasty glance at the limp man, Roy dashed up the passage and pulled the inner air-lock lever. Traversing the three seals, he burst into the drone like a mad bull. The guard, a different and slighter one than he of a month before, fell beneath Roy’s fists like a sack of feathers.
Roy knew that the alarm would be given soon. He must get out quickly. He dashed up the balcony, entered a tripod-car, and brought its engines to life. In a few moments he had traversed the outer seal, and swayed out onto the surface.
But hardly had the seals closed, than Spardo dashed into the drome. He had only been stunned by Roy’s fist. One look at the senseless guard and Spardo knew what had happened. He ground out his rage and disappointment. Roy had again escaped! And when he, Spardo, had almost had him!
A sudden thought sent Spardo scurrying up the balcony and into a tripod-car. Its machines whirred to life and the vehicle lumbered through the locks, out into the open. It was darkening twilight on the surface, and Spardo looked hastily around. His eye caught a moving object, and an exclamation of pleasure escaped his lips. It must be Roy in his tripod-car!
Spardo chuckled. It was simple now. He would radio the city, tell them what he had found, and they would send out police with arms. Spardo would follow the quarry at a distance and keep the trail so that the police could catch up. But even as his hand reached for the radio switch, he turned pale. The other tripod-car was coming at him, as though to put him out of the way.
Spardo became paralyzed with fright; panic swept into his mind. Roy, maddened outlaw that he was, was going to attack him! It was only too obviously so by the way the oncoming tripod-car lumbered up, ominous and without pause.
CHAPTER VII
The Bottle of the Tripods
l The strangest battle in all history took place then. The battle-ground was not many hundred yards from the corridors of the city and its teeming life. Yet none knew of it, for the guard in the drome was still senseless.
Roy, in his tripod-car, advanced upon Spardo with the red of rage in his brain. This man, who had before crossed his path, was now in a position to ruin all of his plans, if left free to arouse the arm of the law. The one thing to do was to put him out of the way.
The advancing tripod-car, rumbling up like a clumsy giant, stopped short barely five yards from the motionless one, which seemed like a gladiator bereft of fighting spirit. Suddenly a tentacle lashed from the attacker and whipped around one of the other’s jointed legs, just below the housing. A backward tug and the defender’s vehicle swayed a moment in delicate unbalance, then miraculously righted itself.
The defender tripod-car now seemed to come out of its trance. From it whipped a tentacle, even as the attacker curled another of its flexible arms. Both tentacles gripped legs of the opposing machine, and for a moment, there was a grind of straining gears as each sought to upset the other. Spardo’s tripod-car suddenly lashed out another tentacle, but it was met halfway by an arm from Roy’s machine. They curled upon each other and tugged frantically, filling the quiet air with metallic groans.
Suddenly they were apart, the tentacles unable to hold against the strain of tugging legs, and each tripod-car swayed drunkenly to maintain equilibrium. Spardo recovered first and rushed to push Roy farther off balance. But Roy, who had handled a tripod-car now for a month and was skilled with it, side-stepped just in time. The lumbering attacker went past, stopped short, and swung ungracefully about to find the other already upon him. Tentacles lashed out again and curled about legs, and once more the engines rose to powerful whines as titanic leverages were applied to the flexible arms. This time they did not break immediately, and Roy sent a second tentacle curling about another of Spardo’s tripod legs. But Spardo, too, flung out another weaving arm. A moment of terrific strain, then both reeled back, dangerously near to toppling off-balance.
Recovering again, the machines stood apart for a breathless moment, like two wary beasts. Suddenly Roy’s tripod-car surged forward as though to crash directly into the other. Spardo swung back a step in panic. But when the oncoming machine seemed about to collide, its two front legs buckled.
Too late Spardo saw the maneuver. From the housing of Roy’s vehicle, which now was swinging in a slow arc low to the ground, shot a tentacle, curling around the lower joint of Spardo’s tripod-car leg. Roy’s machine straightened its two doubled legs rapidly, jerked upward with its tentacle, and Spardo’s machine flew into the air to crash with a frightful noise.
Roy watched the housing of the fallen tripod-car, saw the glass split from the terrific shock, and saw Spardo’s body fly out of the interior with broken straps and one broken spring clinging to him.
Roy took one glance at the huddled figure, then turned to his controls.
l He sent the tripod-car away from the crashed ruins of his enemy’s machine, and out into the open stretch of vegetation. Soon another surface vehicle loomed out of the dim dusk. Roy placed his housing close to that of the other’s, and in a moment, a figure leaped from one hatch to the other, wearing an oxygen helmet. It was Vina.
“Oh, Roy!. . . . thank God you’ve won! I saw the whole thing from here. I so wanted to help you, and yet I was afraid to come near. . . .”
He kissed her passionately. “Were you lonely, darling, waiting for me?”
“It was agonizing!” cried the girl. “You’ve been in the city four long hours. It was eternity to me!”
She gave a shuddery glance in the direction where the tripod-cars had fought like brutal giants of metal. “Police?”
Roy turned sober blue eyes to her face. “No. Vina, I just fought and. . . . and ended the career of Max Spardo!”
The girl gasped, then nodded in understanding. “After all, he is the cause of all our trouble. It is only right that he should die at your hands.”
But Roy was fumbling in his belt. Finally he pulled out the three vials of spores. “Thank the Lord they weren’t broken in the corridor! Vina, look! With these I can finish my experiments and buy our freedom . . .
“And give to humanity its rightful heritage—life on the surface!” said the girl.
Through the magic of a moonlit night, a lone tripod-car picked its way over the mazes of vegetation.
THE END
THE ANCIENT VOICE
First of all I want to say that Norman Ross was normal. What I mean is that there was nothing odd or peculiar about him. He was just a common, ordinary, likable, erring human being like the rest of us. I say this now so that at the end of the story you won’t have any illusions about him.