The Airlords of Han
Page 11
CHAPTER XI
The Forest Men Attack
Many times during the months I remained prisoner among the Hans I hadtried to develop a plan of escape, but could conceive of nothing whichseemed to have any reasonable chance of success.
While I was allowed almost complete freedom within the confines of thecity, and sometimes was permitted to visit even the military outpostsand disintegrator ray batteries in the surrounding mountains, I wasnever without a guard of at least five men under the command of anofficer. These men were picked soldiers, and they were armed withpowerful though short-range disintegrator-ray pistols, capable ofannihilating anything within a hundred feet. Their vigilance neverrelaxed. The officer on duty kept constantly at my side, or a couple ofpaces behind me, while certain of the others were under strict ordersnever to approach within my reach, nor to get more than forty feet awayfrom me. The thought occurred to me once to seize the officer at my sideand use him as a shield, until I found that the guard were under ordersto destroy both of us in such a case.
So in this fashion I roamed the city corridors, wherever I wished. Ivisited the great factories at the bottom of the shafts that led to thebase of the mountain, where, unattended by any mechanics, great turbineswhirred and moaned, giant pistons plunged back and forth, and immensesystems of chemical vats, piping and converters, automatically performedtheir functions with the assistance of no human hand, but under theminute television inspection of many perfumed dandies reclining at theirease before viewplates in their apartment offices in the city, thatclung to the mountain peak far above.
There were just two restrictions on my freedom of movement. I wasallowed nowhere near the power-broadcasting station on the peak, nor thecomplement of it which was buried three miles below the base of themountain. And I was never allowed to approach within a hundred feet ofany disintegrator ray machine when I visited the military outposts inthe surrounding mountains.
I first noticed the "escape tunnels" one day when I had descended to thelowest level of all, the location of the Electronic Plant, wheremachines, known as "reverse disintegrators," fed with earth and crushedrock by automatic conveyors, subjected this material to thedisintegrator ray, held the released electrons captive within theirmagnetic fields and slowly refashioned them into supplies of metals andother desired elements.
My attention was attracted to the tunnels by the unusual fact that menwere busily entering and leaving them. Almost the entire repair forceseemed to be concentrated here. Stocky, muscular men they were, with thesame modified Oriental countenances as the rest of the Hans, but with acertain ruggedness about them that was lacking in the rest of theindolent population. They sweated as they labored over the constructionof magnetic cars evidently designed to travel down these tunnels,automatically laying pipe lines for ventilation and temperature control.The tunnels themselves appeared to have been driven with disintegratorrays, which could bore rapidly through the solid rock, forming glassyiridescent walls as they bored, and involving no problem of debrisremoval.
* * * * *
I asked San-Lan about it the next time I saw him, for the officer of myguard would give me no information.
The supreme ruler of the Hans smiled mockingly.
"There is no reason why you should not know their purpose," he said,"for you will never be able to stop our use of them. These tunnelsconstitute the road to a new Han era. Your forest men have turned ourcities into traps, but they have not trapped our minds and our powersover Nature. We are masters still; masters of the world, and of theforest men.
"You have revolutionized the tactics of warfare with your explosiverockets and your strategy of fighting from concealed positions, milesaway, where we cannot find you with our beams. You have driven our shipsfrom the air, and you may destroy our cities. But we shall be gone.
"Down these tunnels we shall depart to our new cities, deep underground, and scattered far and wide through the mountains. They arenearly completed now.
"You will never blast us out of these, even with your most powerfulexplosives, because they will be more difficult for you to find than itis for us to locate a forest gunner somewhere beneath his leafy screenof miles of trees, and because they will be too far underground."
"But," I objected, "man cannot live and flourish like a mole continuallyremoved from the light of day, without the health-giving rays of thesun, which man needs."
"No?" San-Lan jeered. "Wild tribesmen might not be able to, but we are acivilization. We shall make our own sunlight to order in the bowels ofthe earth. If necessary, we can manufacture our air synthetically; notthe germ-laden air of Nature, but absolutely pure air. Our undergroundcities will be heated or refrigerated artificially as conditions mayrequire. Why should we not live underground if we desire? We produce allour needs synthetically.
"Nor will you be able to locate our cities with electronic indicators.
"You see, Rogers, I know what is in your mind. Our scientists haveplanned carefully. All our machinery and processes will be shielded sothat no electronic disturbances will exist at the surface.
"And then, from our underground cities we will emerge at leisure to wagemerciless war on your wild men of the forest, until we have at last donewhat our forefathers should have done, exterminated them to the lastbeast."
* * * * *
He thrust his jeering face close to mine. "Have you any answer to that?"he demanded.
My impulse was to plant my fist in his face, for I could think of noother answer. But I controlled myself, and even forced a hearty laugh,to irritate him.
"It is a fine plan," I admitted, "but you will not have time to carry itthrough. Long before you can complete your new cities you will have beendestroyed."
"They will be completed within the week," he replied triumphantly. "Wehave not been asleep, and our mechanical and scientific resources makeus masters of time as well as the earth. You shall see."
Naturally I was worried. I would have given much if I could have passedthis information on to our chiefs.
But two days later a mighty exultation arose within me, when from far tothe east and also to the south there came the rolling and continuousthunder of rocket fire. I was in my own apartment at the time. The Hancaptain of my guard was with me, as usual, and two guards stood justwithin the door. The others were in the corridor outside. And as soon asI heard it, I questioned my jailer with a look. He nodded assent, and Idid what probably every disengaged person in Lo-Tan did at the samemoment, tuned in on the local broadcast of the Military HeadquartersView and Control Room.
It was as though the side wall of my apartment had dissolved, and welooked into a large room or office which had no walls or ceiling, thesebeing replaced by the interior surface of a hemisphere, which was infact a vast viewplate on which those in the room could see in everydirection. Some 200 staff officers had their desks in this room. Eachdesk was equipped with a system of small viewplates of its own, and eachofficer was responsible for a given directional section of the "map,"and busied himself with teleprojectoscope examination of it, quiteindependently of the general view thrown on the dome plate.
At a raised circular desk in the center, which was composed entirely ofviewplates, sat the Executive Marshal, scanning the hemisphere, callingoccasionally for telescopic views of one section or another on his deskplates, and noting the little pale green signal lights that flashed upas Sector Observers called for his attention.
* * * * *
Members of Strategy Board, Base Commanders of military units, andSan-Lan himself, I understood, sat at similar desks in their privateoffices, on which all these views were duplicated, and in constantverbal and visual communication with one another and with the ExecutiveMarshal.
The particular view which appeared on my own wall fortunately showed theeast side of the dome viewplate and in one corner of my picture appearedthe Executive Marshal himself.
Although I was getting a view
plate picture of a viewplate picture, Icould see the broad, rugged valley to the east plainly, and therelatively low ridge beyond, which must have been some thirty milesaway.
It was beyond this, evidently far beyond it, that the scene of theaction was located, for nothing showed on the plate but a misty hazepermeated by indefinite and continuous pulsations of light, and againstwhich the low mountain ridge stood out in bold relief.
Somewhere on the floor of the Observation room, of course, was a SectorObserver who was looking beyond that ridge, probably through aprojectoscope station in the second or third "circle," located perhapson that ridge or beyond it.
At the very moment I was wishing for his facilities the ExecutiveMarshal leaned over to a microphone and gave an order in a low tone.The hemispherical view dissolved, and another took its place, from thethird circle. And the view was now that which would be seen by a manstanding on the low distant ridge.
There was another broad valley, a wide and deep canyon, in fact, andbeyond this still another ridge, the outlines of which were alreadybeginning to fade into the on-creeping haze of the barrage. The flashesof the great detonating rockets were momentarily becoming more vivid.
"That's the Gok-Man ridge," mused the Han officer beside me in theapartment, "and the Forest Men must be more than fifty miles beyondthat."
"How do you figure that?" I asked curiously.
"Because obviously they have not penetrated our scout lines. See thatline of observers nearest the dome itself. They're all busy with theirdesk plates. They're in communication with the scout line. The scoutline broadcast is still in operation. It looks as though the line isstill unpierced, but the tribesmen's rockets are sailing over andfalling this side of it."
All through the night the barrage continued. At times it seemed to creepcloser and then recede again. Finally it withdrew, pulling back to theAmerican lines, to alternately advance and recede. At last I went tosleep. The Han officer seemed to be a relatively good-natured fellow,for one of his race, and he promised to awake me if anything further ofinterest took place.
He didn't though. When I awoke in the morning, he gave me a briefoutline of what had happened.
It was pieced together from his own observations and the public newsbroadcast.