by Philip Wylie
A wall opened.
As the women stepped through the sliding doorway and the men, unthinkingly obeying custom, followed them, Ben found himself standing on one side of a prodigious, man-made cavern. Seventy-five feet long, he thought, about fifty feet in width and almost that high. A cavern carved from naked limestone, lighted by a half-dozen hanging fixtures of the sort used to throw a strong but not glaring radiance on department-store counters, and furnished with a long, bare table and a dozen plain chairs. Five dim-lit tunnels led from the chamber, like the passages connecting buildings with subways.
It held a single occupant beside themselves, a muscular, young Japanese who stood nearby, frozen-faced save for black eyes that attached themselves to the arrivals in swift recognition, or, once, with surprise that was brief as the blink of a flash bulb.
"I think," Farr said, and in saying it, for the first time showed signs of his measureless perturbation, "everybody knows George Hyama except you, Ben." Farr had overlooked the stranger in the blue shirt.
George Hyama came forward lithely. He was wearing tennis shoes, gray slacks, a collarless shirt. He shook Ben's hand and said, "I've read your papers, Dr. Bernman. This is an honor."
Ben felt baffled.
Farr laughed, shortly but pleasantly. "George Hyama," he explained to Ben, "is the son of a very fine gardener who's been with us for many years. George was a math whizz at Fenwich High and went on to graduate from M.I.T. At the moment--and for some three years, as a matter of fact--he's been my full-time, stand-by technical man.
Ready, I mean, to be here if the balloon ever went up, and run the place."
Ben said, "I see." He looked interestedly at George Hyama and felt he could not say any more than "I see" at the moment.
Farr went on, rather mechanically and as if he had rehearsed the lines many times until he had them letter perfect--which was almost correct, as he had endlessly gone over this scene in his mind. "Valerie, Faith--you and Connie can show Miss Li a room--let her pick from those you haven't already chosen. I'll take Ben. I suppose that when it starts we'll more or less want to be here. Together, anyhow. That could be any moment now.
Meantime, Ben--?"
He got no further.
"It" started. . . .
The day just past, Ben Bernman reflected, had surely been the most catastrophic any human being had ever endured, and, for himself and those with him, probably the most bizarre of any in human experience.
At midnight and as a new morning was to be born on the boiling world above, Ben sat in the communications chamber of Vance Farr's magnificent stronghold.
Headphones were clamped to his ears. Off and on, that afternoon and evening, he had tried with his consummate skill to reach through the ionized air above, and, from the chaos of static, catch some signal. Now, Ben gently turned one of the scores of dials on the "black boxes" that lined walls around him, and after listening a bit, disgustedly threw down his headphones. Wearily, he slumped in a chair long-occupied and often, in that time span.
Somebody opened the door. Ben didn't notice. His eyes were fixed on the high walls above the batteries of electronic equipment--stone walls, naked, gray, showing clearly the marks of jackhammer drills, used to make holes for dynamite. Identical gray limestone walls formed the four sides of every chamber and corridor in the complex he inhabited, including the lofty central room, and the small, individual rooms for sleeping, as well as vast chambers that contained diesels, generators, fuel, endless ranks of storage cabinets, stand-by apparatus, prodigious "tanks" of oxygen, lakes of water and of other liquid supplies, the vast air-regeneration and air-filtration systems, a complete machine shop, and other unknown devices for life maintenance five hundred feet below the earth in the hewn-out midst of a limestone mountain.
The person at the door spoke. "Hi! Coffee?"
It was George Hyama, grinning. Ben grunted, "Sure," and added, "What's going on?"
"Not much." George put down two coffee cups, offered sugar and powdered cream. "Lemme see. There's a bridge game still, in the main hall. Miss Farr and Miss Li against the boss and his wife. Mrs. Farr is--well--she'll soon be going to bed."
"I see. How about Pete?"
The name of the stranger who had been taken into the shelter along with his heavy satchel was by then known to be Peter Williams. An examination of his wallet had disclosed that much. It had also revealed he was an electric company's meter reader and that (again, by inference) the young man (his driver's license had put his age at twenty-eight) had a hobby: collecting rocks and minerals. His satchel, at any rate, contained many pounds of rock samples, of some rarity but no real value. Presumably he had been on the point of knocking on the door of the Davey's cottage, when Paulus' daughter,
"Connie," bursting out with the siren sound, encountered him.
No one after that had had an opportunity to question him. He had been there. The whistle had blown. There was ample room in Farr's shelter for more than the available people. So the young man had been summarily rushed underground.
When the elevator's passengers lingered in the central room, the naked rock walls began intermittently to shake, as did the surrounding mountain. Stone chips spattered about. They'd stood in silent panic, merely looking. The persons who at least knew the identity of one another remained too preoccupied with inner upheaval, with spoken prayers, tears, terror, and crushing thoughts of others dear to them, to pay attention to Mr.
Williams.
After a few shocked moments-perhaps five minutes-when a near hit, possibly on Bridgeport, brought a quite large chunk of rock crashing from the ceiling, narrowly missing Kit and Faith, Mr. Williams fainted. Ben, having noticed a kitchen only rods down the nearest corridor, at once went for water. When he returned, Vance Farr already had procured smelling salts from a first-aid cabinet and Mr. Williams was choking.
After that, with the rest watching, he recovered his sensibilities briefly. At least, he asked, "Where's this? What happened?"
A relatively close explosion brought down an even larger fragment of the roof.
Vance said, "Get into the passageways, everybody! They'll be safer!"
People started toward various corridors leading from the main chamber. Ben assisted Farr in trying to lift the stranger to his feet. And Lodi Li attempted to explain:
"The atomic war happened," she said, stepping in front of the rising, wobbling man. "But you're all right. This is a very deep shelter."
"Atomic war!" the man bellowed that, then screamed, "I've got to get to Hartford at once! My mom's there— alone!"
Farr said, quietly, "You can't get anywhere, fellow."
The distraught man had by then focused his eyes on Lodi Li. Fantastically, he yelled, pointing a finger. "You're Chinese!"
She snapped, "I can't help it!"
He continued to scream. "I've been captured! You want to torture me!" And he began to struggle so violently that it took both men, with Kit and George helping, to convey him by force to one of the bedrooms. There, nothing sufficed to diminish his frenzy. After half an hour of cold showering, of wrestling, of frantic efforts to reach his raving mind with calm words, they decided that a hypodermic shot, from the dispensary stocks, was necessary. That had put him to sleep for some hours, although later more sedation had been necessary to halt his screams.
Recollection of that facet of the day's experiences made the Japanese youth grin.
"Pete's still out cold. Funny, how it hit him!"
"Yes. And sad." Ben picked up the headphones. "The rest okay?"
George nodded. "Asleep--or reading in bed, I think. Mr. Farr issued sleeping pills-
-you heard him say he would when we ate dinner."
Ben nodded. "Good thing." He felt in a pocket of his shirt. He still wore just that, and slacks, and loafers--his own clothing. George had changed to one of the coveralls stored in the shelter. "Hardly ever took a sleeping pill." Ben smiled. "Think I will, by-and-by. "
"Still nothing?"
Ben
shook his head. "Now and again a phrase comes through, on some frequency or other. Nothing intelligible. No wonder, either, with the radioactive disturbances up there."
"Like me to try awhile?"
"If you want." Ben knew by then that George Hyama understood the use of every item in the communications chamber. "Motors okay?"
George smiled. "Purring." He took the scientist's place. They exchanged an unselfconscious gaze, each reflecting on the change in the other--the hollow-eyed look, the paleness, the tendency to perspire, though the average, interior temperature of the chambers was, at the moment, seventy-three degrees. George asked, "Tried every possible frequency?"
"Everything, but for satellites."
"Why not that?" The inky, oriental eyes gleamed. "I think the weather-station people might be sending, still."
Ben said, "Damn! Never thought!"
Instead of leaving, he took a chair beside George and assisted in a complex tuning. "Wish," Ben muttered, "we had more aerial than the pair of antennas we could extrude."
"Get more pushed out, later," George replied. "Hey!"
They both heard the voice, faintly. They both turned dials, delicately. Words came in more clearly, though still with a far-away sound that at times faded to near-inaudibility. What they heard was a very tired, male voice with a noticeably Yankee accent saying:
"Repeat. This is Station Three, Project Icarus, United States of America.
Commander Clyde speaking. We are still in our original, experimental position, over the equator, at longitude seventy-five degrees west of Greenwich, altitude seven hundred eighteen miles. Arrived on station as scheduled, midnight, day before yesterday, Thursday." The monotonous words faded and came again--"gather that there has been an all-out nuclear attack. Entire mid-section of North America, under generally fair weather as of earlier report which was sent from this station and acknowledged, is now completely covered with dust and smoke, through which can be observed some hundreds of separate fires. From this position, they appear as glowing dots. Assume these to be firestorms in American cities--United States and Southern Canada, only. No fires, Mexico; but Mexico overcast by edge of the dust envelope covering the United States.
Initial bursts, individually or closely-grouped, visible here, eleven thirty-four, Washington time, and thereafter. Continental obscurity became total during ensuing hour.
Brilliant flaring, and subsequent occlusion, direction of China and on British Isles and France, indicated thermonuclear strikes, those areas. Nocturnal glow now visible, in evident massive haze, to east, covering all visible portion of Soviet Union, indicated retaliatory weapons have had massively destructive effect there. Clyde reporting.
Smoller, Dale, and self, okay. Request orders! What further details are desired? Shall we move station? Shall we return to earth? If so, what landing place? No answer, these signals, past twelve hours. Will repeat up-dated message in one hour. This is Commander Clyde. Weather Station Three." The space vehicle's location was restated, also its receiving frequencies. The sign-off words were brief and spoken plaintively, "All A-okay and go, here. But please reply! Repeat. Urgent. Reply-- anybody!"
From the moment Ben had realized this message would be more than a baffling (or appallingly suggestive) fragment, he had sat at the table, under the banked black boxes, as motionless as a mummy. His imagination visualized with shock the state of mind of the crew of the high-altitude weather satellite: their stunned feelings, their likely predicament. For a while, as happened often with Ben, a fraction of his brain contemplated the electronic circumstances which permitted receiving that distant, short-wave message, on the their present, usable antennas, in the midst of chaos of ions. After the sign-off Ben stirred and saw with surprise that George Hyama had been writing steadily during the broadcast.
Shorthand. Taking down the words. A singularly cool and very capable young man, Ben thought. George perceived he was watched and looked up, grinning." "Box seat, eh?"
The weather vehicle was that: a "box seat." But at what a cost! For where would the meteorologists be able to descend, now? Ben gave a somber smile.
George levered up a typewriter in a covered well and began to copy the message.
Ben then left the communications room and looked into the smaller chamber beside it, where recording seismographs inked a record of the day's shocks. They were setting forth, at the moment, in wavery, small, saw-toothed lines, proof of a complicated mass of new tremors, some as heavy as the violent quakes made by the uncountable enemy H-bombs. Ben, at first startled, soon began, with steely concentration, to "read"
the record of oscillation in the earth and to study the dials of associated instruments.
These foresighted installations of Vance Farr's were both sensitive and rugged. They could register fine and faraway shocks yet still "take" near, mighty quakes; they could also indicate the distance and the intensity through the assist of computer-scanned data from a second set of seismographs located at the end of the most remote tunnel in the subterranean complex. This furnished an approximation of impact points.
As Ben studied the coded data, he realized that what appeared to be happening was a continuous series of multimegaton explosions along the East Coast, offshore, and though additional "information" was somewhat scrambled by the nearer blasts, it seemed a similar series of much heavier chain-bursts was occurring at sea off the West Coast. For half an hour Ben concentrated perplexedly on the incoming data. Finally he left the seismographic chamber and walked slowly over to and down the long hall, off which, behind closed doors and in separate "rooms"--stone vaults, he told himself--most of the refugees lay sleeping . . . or, George had said, reading. Or weeping. Or in prayer.
He found Vance Farr--now alone but still at the bridge table, the cards not put away--sitting back with half-closed eyes. Hearing the scientist, Farr straightened up and smiled. "What's happening?"
Briefly, Ben told of the message from the space vehicle. Then he discussed his newer findings.
"What's your guess?" Farr asked calmly.
"It's just a guess. I'd say the enemy mined the offshore waters with hundreds of medium-yield devices this side, and monsters in the Pacific, which they are exploding in a rapid sequence."
"Why?"
"I could guess on that, too. If the blast-yield is low on our coasts, these ocean bursts won't rise so high. Much of the hot material, in consequence, will be captured in the troposphere." "I get you! If those devices are rigged to make appropriate masses of hot material for each coast! I read, years back, that sodium would be 'ideal.'"
The scientist's mouth tightened. His eyes burned. "Sodium has a hall-life of fifteen hours. It's just a guess. If we watch the counters outdoors--the few that still send readings--we can be pretty sure in a couple of hours. You see, the metropolitan areas--
forests, too, along both coasts and inland--are in firestorm, or in its red-hot aftermath, so rising heat will be pulling billions of tons of air inland from such coastal areas."
"I'd anticipated something of the sort."
Again the scientist was astonished by Farr's foresight. Said as much.
"Anybody who could read, for the last fifteen years, could have known it possible." Farr drew a breath, expelled it in a slow sigh. "All hands here have turned in at my suggestion. Barlow wanted to sit out a night watch. I appointed him instead to hit the sack early and set his alarm for 4 A.M. Just to make him feel useful. Valerie went earlier.
The three girls turned in without a murmur. Stunned. Everybody is. Do you realize, for instance, it was five in the afternoon and we'd been milling and sitting and babbling and praying around here for five hours before anybody even remembered we'd missed lunch?"
This time Ben smiled a little. "And Davey and that gorgeous daughter of his jumped to the kitchen like shots!" "And that," Farr replied, "is a thing we've got to change, at once." "I wondered"--the scientist's blue eyes held a look of warmth--"if you were going to say that."
Farr's face relaxed in a
grin. "Of course! There can't be any servant-master setup down here! We're all going to have to stand shifts. Cooking. Public-room cleaning.
Laundry. Dishwashing. All other chores. Tomorrow we'll have a meeting and I'll prepare schedules of duties for everybody, with change-off times." He sighed deeply. "My wife won't like it."
Ben started to speak, and refrained.
Vance read his repressed thought: "How did she get liquor down here? Poor soul!
I'm afraid she's lost in it. Remember--or do you?--when she hurried to the elevator, she was carrying a miniature trunk, covered with purple plush?"
"I remember a big, purple box."
"Her jewel case, and a collection of knick-knacks, she said. Kept it ready, on the outside chance that the thing she believed unlikely might happen and she'd be rushed down here. She perhaps did just that. The box actually held her most valuable jewelry--
she was throwing it in when I passed her room. But it was extremely heavy. And so futile! What did she plan to do after she'd made those few bottles of--of, I'd bet, straight grain alcohol, last as long as possible?"
Ben merely shook his head.
"Even a gallon of grain alcohol would be gone soon."
"How long, with the number of people here, could the place hold out?" It was a question Ben had put to Farr without success during their tour of the underground establishment, although he had realized that Farr had planned everything for many, many times the period that civil-defense people had continued to stress as the probable maximum.
Even now he got no definite reply. "Long enough for the bunch of us," Farr answered. "Long enough." Then he leaned so his head rested on the chair back and his eyes fixed on the distant stone ceiling. "Perhaps, Ben, you'll help me make out the work sheets?"
"Of course, if you like."
"I do. I prefer it. I don't want this group to feel it is being run as a dictatorship.
Today I had to make 'suggestions'--orders, in effect--because the place was unfamiliar to some of them. And they were in shock; so they responded only to pretty sharp authority.