Tunnel in the Sky

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “It doesn’t look it to me, but if so, we’ll see it in time. Right now we are going into the dry season. So let’s talk it over a few months from now.”

  Rod gave up. He refused to resume as “City Manager” nor would Caroline keep it when Rod turned it down. Bill Kennedy was appointed and Rod went to work under Cliff as a hunter, slept in the big shed upstream with the bachelors, and took his turn at night watch. The watch had been reduced to one man, whose duty was simply to tend fires. There was talk of cutting out the night fires, as fuel was no longer easy to find nearby and many seemed satisfied that the thorn barrier was enough.

  Rod kept his mouth shut and stayed alert at night.

  Game continued to be plentiful but became skittish. Buck did not come out of cover the way they had in rainy weather; it was necessary to search and drive them out. Carnivores seemed to have become scarcer. But the first real indication of peculiar seasonal habits of native fauna came from a very minor carnivore. Mick Mahmud returned to camp with a badly chewed foot; Bob Baxter patched him up and asked about it.

  “You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Try me.”

  “Well, it was just a dopy joe. I paid no attention to it, of course. Next thing I knew I was flat on my back and trying to shake it loose. He did all that to me before I got a knife into him. Then I had to cut his jaws loose.”

  “Lucky you didn’t bleed to death.”

  When Rod heard Mick’s story, he told Roy. Having had one experience with a dopy joe turned aggressive, Roy took it seriously and had Cliff warn all hands to watch out; they seemed to have turned nasty.

  Three days later the migration of animals started.

  At first it was just a drifting which appeared aimless except that it was always downstream. Animals had long since ceased to use the watering place above the settlement and buck rarely appeared in the little valley; now they began drifting into it, would find themselves baffled by the thorn fence, and would scramble out. Nor was it confined to antelope types; wingless birds with great “false faces,” rodents, rooters, types nameless to humans, all joined the migration. One of the monstrous leonine predators they called stobor approached the barricade in broad daylight, looked at it, lashed his tail, then clawed his way up the bluff and headed downstream again.

  Cliff called off his hunting parties; there was no need to hunt when game walked into camp.

  Rod found himself more edgy than usual that night as it grew dark. He left his seat near the barbecue pit and went over to Jimmy and Jacqueline. “What’s the matter with this place? It’s spooky.”

  Jimmy twitched his shoulders. “I feel it. Maybe it’s the funny way the animals are acting. Say, did you hear they killed a joe inside camp?”

  “I know what it is,” Jacqueline said suddenly. “No ‘Grand Opera.’”

  “Grand Opera” was Jimmy’s name for the creatures with the awful noises, the ones which had turned Rod’s first night into a siege of terror. They serenaded every evening for the first hour of darkness. Rod’s mind had long since blanked them out, heeded them no more than chorusing cicadas. He had not consciously heard them for weeks.

  Now they failed to wail on time; it upset him.

  He grinned sheepishly. “That’s it, Jack. Funny how you get used to a thing. Do you suppose they are on strike?”

  “More likely a death in the family,” Jimmy answered. “They’ll be back in voice tomorrow.”

  Rod had trouble getting to sleep. When the night watch gave an alarm he was up and out of bachelors’ barracks at once, Colonel Bowie in hand. “What’s up?”

  Arthur Nielsen had the watch. “It’s all right now,” he answered nervously. “A big buffalo buck crashed the fence. And this got through.” He indicated the carcass of a dopy joe.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “Just a nip.”

  Others gathered around. Cowper pushed through, sized the situation and said, “Waxie, get that cut attended to. Bill…where’s Bill? Bill, put somebody else on watch. And let’s get that gap fixed as soon as it’s light.”

  It was greying in the east. Margery suggested, “We might as well stay up and have breakfast. I’ll get the fire going.” She left to borrow flame from a watch fire.

  Rod peered through the damaged barricade. A big buck was down on the far side and seemed to have at least six dopy joes clinging to it. Cliff was there and said quietly, “See a way to get at them?”

  “Only with a gun.”

  “We can’t waste ammo on that.”

  “No.” Rod thought about it, then went to a pile of bamboo poles, cut for building. He selected a stout one a head shorter than himself, sat down and began to bind Lady Macbeth to it with rawhide, forming a crude pike spear.

  Caroline came over and squatted down. “What are you doing?”

  “Making a joe-killer.”

  She watched him. “I’m going to make me one,” she said suddenly and jumped up.

  By daylight the animals were in full flight downstream as if chased by forest fire. As the creek had shrunk with the dry season a miniature beach, from a meter to a couple of meters wide, had been exposed below the bank on which the town had grown. The thorn kraal had been extended to cover the gap, but the excited animals crushed through this weak point and now streamed along the water past the camp.

  After a futile effort no attempt was made to turn them back. They were pouring into the valley; they had to go somewhere, and the route between water and bank made a safety valve. It kept them from shoving the barricade aside by sheer mass. The smallest animals came through it anyhow, kept going, paid no attention to humans.

  Rod stayed at the barricade, ate breakfast standing up. He had killed six joes since dawn while Caroline’s score was still higher. Others were making knives into spears and joining them. The dopy joes were not coming through in great numbers; most of them continued to chase buck along the lower route past camp. Those who did seep through were speared; meeting them with a knife gave away too much advantage.

  Cowper and Kennedy, inspecting defenses, stopped by Rod; they looked worried. “Rod,” said Grant “how long is this going to last?”

  “How should I know? When we run out of animals. It looks like—get him, Shorty! It looks as if the joes were driving the others, but I don’t think they are. I think they’ve all gone crazy.”

  “But what would cause that?” demanded Kennedy.

  “Don’t ask me. But I think I know where all those bones on that beach came from. But don’t ask why. Why does a chicken cross the road? Why do lemmings do what they do? What makes a plague of locusts? Behind you! Jump!”

  Kennedy jumped, Rod finished off a joe, and they went on talking. “Better detail somebody to chuck these into the water, Bill, before they stink. Look, Grant, we’re okay now, but I know what I would do.”

  “What? Move to your caves? Rod, you were right—but it’s too late.”

  “No, no! That’s spilt milk; forget it. The thing that scares me are these mean little devils. They are no longer dopy; they are fast as can be and nasty…and they can slide through the fence. We can handle them now—but how about when it gets dark? We’ve got to have a solid line of fire inside the fence and along the bank. Fire is one thing they can’t go through… I hope.”

  “That’ll take a lot of wood.” Grant looked through the barricade and frowned.

  “You bet it will. But it will get us through the night. See here, give me the ax and six men with spears. I’ll lead the party.”

  Kennedy shook his head. “It’s my job.”

  “No, Bill,” Cowper said firmly. “I’ll lead it. You stay here and take care of the town.”

  Before the day was over Cowper took two parties out and Bill and Rod led one each. They tried to pick lulls in the spate of animals but Bill’s party was caught on the bluff above, where it had been cutting wood and throwing it down past the cave. They were treed for two hours. The little valley had been cleaned out of dead wood months since; it was necess
ary to go into the forest above to find wood that would burn.

  Cliff Pawley, hunter-in-chief, led a fifth party in the late afternoon, immediately broke the handle of the little ax. They returned with what they could gather with knives. While they were away one of the giant buck they called buffalo stampeded off the bluff, fell into camp, broke its neck. Four dopy joes were clinging to it. They were easy to kill as they would not let go.

  Jimmy and Rod were on pike duty at the barricade. Jimmy glanced back at where a couple of girls were disposing of the carcasses. “Rod,” he said thoughtfully, “we got it wrong. Those are stobor…the real stobor.”

  “Huh?”

  “The big babies we’ve been calling that aren’t ‘stobor.’ These things are what the Deacon warned us against.”

  “Well… I don’t care what you call them as long as they’re dead. On your toes, boy; here they come again.”

  Cowper ordered fires laid just before dark and was studying how to arrange one stretch so as not to endanger the flume when the matter was settled; the structure quivered and water ceased to flow. Upstream something had crashed into it and broken the flimsy pipe line.

  The town had long since abandoned waterskins. Now they were caught with only a few liters in a pot used by the cooks, but it was a hardship rather than a danger; the urgent need was to get a ring of fire around them. There had already been half a dozen casualties—no deaths but bites and slashings, almost all from the little carnivores contemptuously known as dopy joes. The community’s pool of antiseptics, depleted by months of use and utterly irreplaceable, had sunk so low that Bob Baxter used it only on major wounds.

  When fuel had been stretched ready to burn in a long arc inside the barricade and down the bank to where it curved back under the cave, the results of a hard day’s work looked small; the stockpile was not much greater than the amount already spread out. Bill Kennedy looked at it. “It won’t last the night, Grant.”

  “It’s got to, Bill. Light it.”

  “If we pulled back from the fence and the bank, then cut over to the bluff—What do you think?”

  Cowper tried to figure what might be saved by the change. “It’s not much shorter. Uh, don’t light the downstream end unless they start curving back in on us. But let’s move; it’s getting dark.” He hurried to the cooking fire, got a brand and started setting the chain of fire. Kennedy helped and soon the townsite was surrounded on the exposed sides by blaze. Cowper chucked his torch into the fire and said, “Bill, better split the men into two watches and get the women up into the cave—they can crowd in somehow.”

  “You’ll have trouble getting thirty-odd women in there, Grant.”

  “They can sit up all night. But send them up. Yes, and the wounded men, too.”

  “Can do.” Kennedy started passing the word. Caroline came storming up, spear in hand.

  “Grant, what’s this nonsense about the girls having to go up to the cave? If you think you’re going to cut me out of the fun you had better think again!”

  Cowper looked at her wearily. “Carol, I haven’t time to monkey. Shut your face and do as you are told.”

  Caroline opened her mouth, closed it, and did as she was told. Bob Baxter claimed Cowper’s attention; Rod noticed that he looked very upset. “Grant? You ordered all the women up to the cave?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry but Carmen can’t.”

  “You’ll have to carry her. She is the one I had most on my mind when I decided on the move.”

  “But—” Baxter stopped and urged Grant away from the others. He spoke insistently but quietly. Grant shook his head.

  “It’s not safe, Grant,” Baxter went on, raising his voice. “I don’t dare risk it. The interval is nineteen minutes now.”

  “Well…all right. Leave a couple of women with her. Use Caroline, will you? That’ll keep her out of my hair.”

  “Okay.” Baxter hurried away.

  Kennedy took the first watch with a dozen men spread out along the fire line; Rod was on the second watch commanded by Cliff Pawley. He went to the Baxter house to find out how Carmen was doing, was told to beat it by Agnes. He then went to the bachelors’ shed and tried to sleep.

  He was awakened by yells, in time to see one of the leonine monsters at least five meters long go bounding through the camp and disappear downstream. It had jumped the barrier, the stakes behind it, and the fire behind that, all in one leap.

  Rod called out, “Anybody hurt?”

  Shorty Dumont answered. “No. It didn’t even stop to wave.” Shorty was bleeding from a slash in his left calf; he seemed unaware of it. Rod crawled back inside tried again to sleep.

  He was awakened again by the building shaking. He hurried out. “What’s up?”

  “That you, Rod? I didn’t know anybody was inside. Give me a hand; we’re going to burn it.” The voice was Baxter’s; he was prying at a corner post and cutting rawhide strips that held it.

  Rod put his spear where it would not be stepped on, resheathed Colonel Bowie, and started to help. The building was bamboo and leaves, with a mud-and-thatch roof; most of it would burn. “How’s Carmen?”

  “Okay. Normal progress. I can do more good here. Besides they don’t want me.” Baxter brought the corner of the shed down with a crash, gathered a double armful of wreckage and hurried away. Rod picked up a load and followed him.

  The reserve wood pile was gone; somebody was tearing the roof off the “city hall” and banging pieces on the ground to shake clay loose. The walls were sunbaked bricks, but the roof would burn. Rod came closer, saw that it was Cowper who was destroying this symbol of the sovereign community. He worked with the fury of anger. “Let me do that, Grant. Have you had any rest?”

  “Huh? No.”

  “Better get some. It’s going to be a long night. What time is it?”

  “I don’t know. Midnight, maybe.” Fire blazed up and Cowper faced it, wiping his face with his hand. “Rod, take charge of the second watch and relieve Bill. Cliff got clawed and I sent him up.”

  “Okay. Burn everything that will burn—right?”

  “Everything but the roof of the Baxter house. But don’t use it up too fast; it’s got to last till morning.”

  “Got it.” Rod hurried to the fire line, found Kennedy. “Okay, Bill, I’ll take over—Grant’s orders. Get some sleep. Anything getting through?”

  “Not much. And not far.” Kennedy’s spear was dark with blood in the firelight. “I’m not going to sleep, Rod. Find yourself a spot and help out.”

  Rod shook his head. “You’re groggy. Beat it. Grant’s orders.”

  “No!”

  “Well…look, take your gang and tear down the old maids’ shack. That’ll give you a change, at least.”

  “Uh—all right.” Kennedy left, almost staggering. There was a lull in the onrush of animals; Rod could see none beyond the barricade. It gave him time to sort out his crew, send away those who had been on duty since sunset, send for stragglers. He delegated Doug Sanders and Mick Mahmud as firetenders, passed the word that no one else was to put fuel on the fires.

  He returned from his inspection to find Bob Baxter, spear in hand, holding his place at the center of the line. Rod put a hand on his shoulder. “The medical officer doesn’t need to fight. We aren’t that bad off.”

  Baxter shrugged. “I’ve got my kit, what there is left of it. This is where I use it.”

  “Haven’t you enough worries?”

  Baxter grinned wanly. “Better than walking the floor. Rod, they’re stirring again. Hadn’t we better build up the fires?”

  “Mmm…not if we’re going to make it last. I don’t think they can come through that.”

  Baxter did not answer, as a joe came through at that instant. It ploughed through the smouldering fire and Baxter speared it. Rod cupped his hands and shouted, “Build up the fires! But go easy.”

  “Behind you, Rod!”

  Rod jumped and whirled, got the little devil. “Where did that
one come from? I didn’t see it.”

  Before Bob could answer Caroline came running out of darkness. “Bob! Bob Baxter! I’ve got to find Bob Baxter!”

  “Over here!” Rod called.

  Baxter was hardly able to speak. “Is she—is she?” His face screwed up in anguish.

  “No, no!” yelled Caroline. “She’s all right, she’s fine. It’s a girl!”

  Baxter quietly fainted, his spear falling to the ground. Caroline grabbed him and kept him from falling into the fire. He opened his eyes and said, “Sorry. You scared me. You’re sure Carmen is all right?”

  “Right as rain. The baby, too. About three kilos. Here, give me that sticker—Carmen wants you.”

  Baxter stumbled away and Caroline took his place. She grinned at Rod. “I feel swell! How’s business, Roddie? Brisk? I feel like getting me eight or nine of these vermin.”

  Cowper came up a few minutes later. Caroline called out, “Grant, did you hear the good news?”

  “Yes. I just came from there.” He ignored Caroline’s presence at the guard line but said to Rod, “We’re making a stretcher out of pieces of the flume and they’re going to haul Carmen up. Then they’ll throw the stretcher down and you can burn it.”

  “Good.”

  “Agnes is taking the baby up. Rod, what’s the very most we can crowd into the cave?”

  “Gee!” Rod glanced up at the shelf. “They must be spilling off the edge now.”

  “I’m afraid so. But we’ve just got to pack them in. I want to send up all married men and the youngest boys. The bachelors will hold on here.”

  “I’m a bachelor!” Caroline interrupted.

  Cowper ignored her. “As soon as Carmen is safe we do it—we can’t keep fires going much longer.” He turned away, headed up to the cave.

  Caroline whistled softly. “Roddie, we’re going to have fun.”

  “Not my idea of fun. Hold the fort, Carol. I’ve got to line things up.” He moved down the line, telling each one to go or to stay.

  Jimmy scowled at him. “I won’t go, not as long as anybody stays. I couldn’t look Jackie in the face.”