The Pool of Fire (The Tripods)

by John Christopher

  “You are all right? Get away from it, just in case.”

  “I have done that. But nothing is happening. There is no sign of the fire.”

  Nor was there. I strained my eyes into blackness. Perhaps it had been out for too long. Perhaps there was something else that needed doing, which we could not begin to guess at. His voice showing his disappointment, Fritz said, “I’m on my way back.”

  I put a hand out, and he grasped at it. He said, “It will have to be the rope, or the river. It is a pity. I had hoped we could control the City.”

  I thought at first it might be my eyes playing tricks with me, showing spots of brilliance as they sometimes do in darkness. I said, “Wait . . .” And then, “Look!”

  He turned with me, and we both stared. Down in what must be the bottom of the pit, a spark flickered into being, followed by another and another. They grew, ran together, began glowing brightly. The fire spread and leaped as we watched, and the hissing noise began. Then the whole pit was shimmering with it, as radiance filled the room.

  Seven

  A Summer on the Wind

  The Masters were dead, but the City lived again.

  The leaden weight dragged at us as before but we did not mind that. In the Hall outside, the yellow-green lamps glowed, and the Machines hummed with their ceaseless mysterious activity. We went up to the streets and, finding a carriage, climbed in and drove along to where we had left the others. They stood and goggled at us. At the perimeter of the City, a green fog was rising, showing that the machine which produced the Masters’ air had also begun working again. But it did not appear to be a danger. It simply rose up through the shattered dome, and was lost in the sky’s immensity.

  We collected what followers we could, and set out once more for the Entering Place. This time, the door worked at the touch of a button. Inside, we found the Capped whose duty had been to prepare new slaves. They were bewildered, and the air was not good after eighteen hours, but otherwise they were all right. It was they who showed us how to operate the room that moved, and the opening of the Wall.

  I said, “Tripods . . . Many of them will have been caught outside. They may be waiting there. If we open up . . .”

  “Waiting for what?” Fritz said. “They know that the dome is wrecked.”

  “If the Tripods come in, the Masters in them may have masks. And the machine that makes their air is still working. They could do something—perhaps repair things.”

  Fritz turned to the one who had showed us how the Wall was made to open. He said, “The Hall of Tripods has human air. How did they get into the part where they could breathe?”

  “The Masters’ door in the hemispheres fitted against ports high up in the inner part of the Hall. They could step through.”

  “Did the ports open from the outside?”

  “No. From here. We pressed a button to open them when the Masters commanded us.” He pointed to a grille in the wall. “Their voices came through that, though they themselves were outside in the Tripods.”

  “You will stay here,” Fritz said, “with a few others that you can choose. Later, you will be relieved, but until then your duty will be to see the ports are kept closed. Is that understood?”

  He spoke with the authority of someone who expects obedience, and his order was accepted without demur. The four of us left from the six who had invaded the City were treated altogether with deference and respect by the others. Although no longer forced by the Caps to think of the Masters as demigods, they felt awed by our having fought against them and destroyed them.

  The rest of us went down through the room that moved, and came out into the Hall of the Tripods. The yellow-green lamps were on, but their light was lost in the daylight that shone through the open section of the Wall, a gap more than fifty feet wide and twice that in height. Ranks of Tripods stretched away along the Hall, but motionless, and presumably untenanted. In their presence we were pygmies again, though conquering pygmies. We walked through the opening, and Jan clutched my arm. Directly outside another Tripod looked down at us.

  Fritz cried, “Prepare to scatter! As widely as you can. It cannot catch us all.”

  But the Tripod did not move, and its tentacle hung flaccid and lifeless. As the Masters within must be. After a few moments we knew this was so, and our tension relaxed. We walked, unconcerned, under its shadow, and some of those who had been Capped climbed up on the great metal feet, and shouted and laughed for joy.

  Fritz said to me, “I should have thought they would have enough air, and food and water, to survive longer than that. In fact, they must have, since they go on journeys that last for days, or even weeks.”

  “Does it matter?” I said. “They’re dead.” I was tempted to join those clambering on the Tripod’s foot, but told myself it would be childish. “Perhaps of broken hearts!”

  (And perhaps my jest was not so far from the truth. We found later that all the Tripods had stopped working within a few hours of the fire going out in the City. Our scientists examined the bodies of the Masters inside them. It was impossible to tell how they had died, but it may have been through despair. Their minds were not like ours.)

  The day was bright, as though in celebration of our victory. Great fluffy clouds hung white in the heavens, but the areas of blue were larger still and the sun was rarely hidden. The breeze was slight, but warm, and smelled of growing things and of the spring. We made our way around the Wall’s circumference, back to the river and the outpost from which we had set out. Figures waved to us as we approached, and I realized again that the days of hiding and subterfuge were over. It seemed that the earth was ours.

  André was there. He said, “Good work! We thought you might be trapped inside.”

  Fritz told him about restarting the pool of fire, and he listened intently.

  “That’s even better. The scientists will go mad with delight. It means their secrets are open to us.”

  I stretched, and then winced as I was reminded of my ribs. I said, “They’ll have time enough to study them. We can take things easy now.”

  “Not easy,” André said. “We have won here, but there may be counterattacks.”

  “From the other Cities?” Fritz asked. “How long will it be before we have news from them?”

  “We have it already.”

  “But the pigeons could not travel so fast.”

  “The invisible rays are much faster than pigeons. Although we dared not use them to transmit messages, we have been listening to those the Masters sent. They have stopped from two Cities, but are still coming from the third.”

  “The one in the east?” I suggested. “The little yellow men failed then . . .”

  “No, not that,” André said. “The one in the west.”

  That was the attack in which Henry would have taken part. I thought of him, and of the two we ourselves had lost, and the bright day seemed to cloud over.

  • • •

  But Henry was still alive. Two months later, at the castle, he told the other three of us—Fritz, Beanpole and me—about it.

  From the start, things had gone wrong for them. Two of their six had developed, at the last minute, a sickness which was common among humans in that part; and their places had been taken by two others who were less well trained. One of these had got into difficulties during their attempt to swim up the underground tunnel, forcing them to turn back and try again the following night. Even when they had gained access to the City, there were irritating setbacks and delays. They had difficulty in finding a warehouse with sufficient supplies of starch foods to make the mash for fermentation, and when they did succeed their first efforts were failures, because some of the yeasts would not grow. They had also been unable to find a hideout within close reach of the water purification plant, which meant a lot of exhausting transportation of the liquor by night.

  But they had reached their quota by the time appointed, and Henry thought it would be easy from that point. Although our attempt had to be made at mid
day, they were able to start theirs at dawn, before the first duty shift of Masters came on. Or, at least, they thought they could. The way to the ramp leading down to the water purification plant, however, as in the City which we had tackled, was through an open place with garden-pools, and they found that one of them was occupied by two Masters.

  They looked as though they were wrestling, pushing and tugging at each other with their tentacles, threshing the water and sending up gouts of spray. Fritz and I had seen a similar thing, during the night when we were searching for the river and a way out of the City. We had made nothing of it—it was one of the many strange habits of the Masters over which the scientists had shaken their heads—and Henry did not, either. All he could do was hope that, whatever it was, they would soon put an end to it and go away. But they did not, and time was passing, whittling away the minutes that remained before the first day shift would arrive.

  In the end, deliberately, he took a chance. The two Masters seemed entirely preoccupied and they were in the pool farthest from the ramp. He decided to have his men worm their way along the wall that enclosed the second pool, and then dash for the ramp where the shadows were deepest. Three did so successfully, but the fourth must have been seen. With a surprising swiftness, the Masters heaved themselves out of the pool and came to investigate.

  They killed one, and would have killed the other, Henry thought, if he had stood his ground. But this one had actually seen the incredible happen—Masters attacked by slaves—and went spinning from the scene. He would obviously return with others: there was no hope of getting more than half a dozen containers of alcohol into the culvert before he did, and they were alerted any way. Not only there, perhaps, but in the other two Cities as well; for the messages would go to them immediately on the invisible rays.

  The enterprise had failed. Avoiding capture—at least long enough for the attacks on the other two Cities to go through—must be the objective now. Henry told his men to scatter, and set off through the warren of the City’s streets, heading for the river exit.

  He got through, and so did two others. He had no idea of what had happened to the remaining three, but thought they must have been captured: they had watched the river for their bodies, but found nothing. (It was not a true river but a creation of the ancients—a canal connecting the western ocean with the even vaster ocean on the far side of the isthmus.) There had been great activity by patrolling Tripods, but they had lain low in an underground refuge and had escaped detection. Eventually, they had managed to get away, to the ship and so back here.

  “A miserable failure altogether,” he concluded.

  “You had bad luck,” I said. “We all needed good luck to succeed, and you didn’t have it.”

  “It was not a failure, even,” Fritz said. “Whatever happened to those you lost, they must have avoided capture until it was too late. No warning came to the other Cities.”

  Beanpole said, “I was with Julius when the news arrived. He said he would have been pleased to have taken one City. Two was more than anyone could have hoped for.”

  Henry said, “That doesn’t alter the fact that they have the continent of the Americans still. What do we do now? They may not know quite what went wrong, but they certainly won’t trust human slaves again.”

  I said, “I can’t understand why they have not counterattacked.”

  “They may still,” Fritz said.

  “They’re leaving it a bit late. If they had been able to set up another transmitter over here before we fixed the Caps, they would have made things much more difficult for us.”

  The Caps, which were woven into the very flesh of those who wore them, could not be removed, but our scientists had found how to tamper with the mesh so that they would no longer serve their own purpose.

  Fritz said, “I think maybe they decided to concentrate on defense. Their Cities here and in the east are destroyed, and they can do nothing about that. In a year and half, the great ship will come, from their home planet. They probably feel that they only have to hold out until then. As long as they still have one continent, they can set up the machines to poison our air.”

  Henry said restlessly, “A year and a half . . . It’s not long. Do you know what’s being planned, Beanpole?”

  Beanpole nodded. “Some of it.”

  “But I suppose you can’t say?”

  He smiled. “You’ll know soon enough. I think Julius is going to break it to us at the banquet tomorrow.”

  • • •

  The weather holding fine, the banquet was held in the courtyard of the castle. It was meant as a victory celebration, for those who had been concerned in the capture of the City. We had all kinds of fish from the sea, and from the rivers trout and crayfish, followed by chicken and duck, suckling pig, pigeon pie, and cuts from an ox that had been roasted whole on a spit. There were also fruit cups and cider, ales and still and sparkling wines. The food and drink were served to us by the ex-Capped. They treated us as heroes, which was embarrassing but not unpleasant.

  Julius spoke first about the recent past, praising our achievements. He singled Fritz out for special mention, as was right. It had been Fritz’s steadiness and resourcefulness which had pulled us through.

  He went on, “You will have been wondering what comes next. We succeeded in destroying the Cities of the enemy here and in the east. But one City remains untaken, and as long as it stands the knife is at our throat. More than half the short time we have has passed. We must destroy that final citadel before their ship arrives.

  “But at least there is only one. A single assault, if properly organized and carried out, will bring us victory. And a plan for this is well advanced.

  “It is based, as any with a hope of success must be, on the enemy’s special vulnerability, which stems from the fact that they are alien to this world and must carry their own environment with them to survive. In our first attack, we drugged the Masters, and switched off the power which made the City work, but victory was not final till the dome cracked, letting their air out and earthly air in. This is the way we must strike at the remaining City.

  “The approach we used before will no longer serve. The latest news we have is that the Masters in the west have stopped recruiting Capped humans. We do not know what became of those already living as slaves in the City, but it is almost certain that they will have been killed, or commanded to kill themselves. And we can be sure the river tunnels will be guarded. No, we must attack from outside, and the question is: how?

  “In the old days, as we have learned, men had means of obliterating areas as big as the City from halfway around the world. We could develop them again, but not in the time left to us. We might be able to produce a more primitive form of gun for throwing explosives, but it would not serve. Another report from across the ocean tells us that the Masters are laying waste the land for many miles both north and south, making sure that nothing can live there which might menace them. We need something else.

  “And I believe we have it. There was one thing our ancestors achieved which the Masters seem never to have equaled. This was the construction of machines which could fly through the air. The Masters came from a planet whose heaviness must have made flight difficult, if not impossible. They went straight from surface travel to travel between worlds. Presumably, they could have copied the flying machines of our ancestors, but they did not do so. Perhaps because they thought the Tripods were good enough for their purposes . . . or because some quirk in their nature made them reject the idea. We know they have weaknesses; perhaps they were afraid of flying.”

  I remembered my own fear and dizziness, climbing the ramp up the Wall and later walking along the narrow ledge high above the City’s roofs. The Masters had obviously not felt like that or they would not have built in such a way. But there is not always rationality in fear. It could be that they were all right as long as their feet had some contact with the ground; frightened otherwise.

  Julius said, “We have built flying mac
hines . . .”

  He said it without emphasis, but his words were lost in a roar of applause from all of us.

  Julius put his hand up for silence, but he was smiling.

  “Not the sort of machines that the ancients built—machines which could carry hundreds of people across the western ocean in a few hours. Yes, you may gasp, but it is true. That sort of thing, like the machines for hurling destruction halfway around the world, is beyond our present reach. These are small and simple machines. But they do fly, and a man can ride in them and also carry explosives. These are what we shall use, and hope with their aid to crack the enemy’s last shell.”

  He went on to talk more generally. I had been expecting him to say something concerning our part in the new enterprise, but he did not. Later, when we were watching an exhibition given by some jugglers, I asked him directly, “How soon do we start training on the flying machines, sir? And do we do it here, or in the land across the ocean?”

  He looked at me with merry eyes. “I should have thought you were too full to talk, Will, after the amount I have just seen you stuffing yourself with, let alone to think of flying through the air! How do you manage to eat so much and stay so small?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” I pressed on. “About the machines, though—they really have been built?”

  “They have.”

  “So we can start learning to drive them soon?”

  “We have men learning already. In fact, they have learned. It is a question of practicing now for the assault.”

  “But . . .”

  “But what about your part in it? Listen, Will, a general does not use the same troops over and over again. You have done well, you and Fritz, and earned a rest.”

  “Sir! That was months ago. We’ve been doing nothing since except live on the fat of the land. I would much rather start training on the flying machines.”