by Philip Wylie
Except that Pete Williams! Funny, to get him in the grab! Do you suppose we're going to have a maniac on our hands?"
Ben replied slowly, quietly, "I can't even guess. I've been wishing all evening--
since George Hyama seems able to cope with every machine and electronic gadget in the place--that instead or a physics doctorate I had an M.D. Be a lot more valuable to all of you, as a medical doctor."
Farr did not dispute that. He yawned gustily before replying at all. "I know. It was the only thing I was unable to arrange. A way to be sure, if the whistle blew, that an M.D.
would be included in whatever group made it here fast enough. Couldn't hire an M.D. to merely wait. I wouldn't have anyhow. Three local men I talked to, promised to try for it, if circumstances allowed. I knew that was meaningless. They'd have maybe twenty minutes to get from their offices, housecalls, the little hospital in Penwich. Did what I could, though." His casual speech came to a sudden stop. His gaze was now intently directed upward. He pointed. "Say!"
Ben followed the finger and saw only the gray limestone ceiling, irregular, pale, with many linear drill marks its only variation.
Parr said, "Isn't it lighter than it has been?"
"Lighter?" Ben stared. "You mean, starting to glow?"
"Lord no, man! That wouldn't be possible! But it was a few shades darker, earlier, I'm certain. Damp. Down here from time to time you have to reset the air-conditioning machinery to take the moisture out of the place. Prom human breathing. Cooking. And when you do, the ceilings get paler. Lose the moisture they soak up. I haven't dried the joint for a month. And yet it looks drier than when we came in. I'll have to climb up and see. Why should it dry out?"
Ben had a one-answer word but Vance had already leaped from the uncomfortable chair, rushed across the great chamber, and was unlocking a door in one of its numerous passageways. "Gimme a hand!"
The scientist helped Parr take from a deep closet a lightweight extension ladder.
They set it against a near wall and Parr began to pull a nylon rope which serially raised four, interlocking sections. Ben steadied the base of the now-long ladder.
"Magnesium," Vance grinned, as he pulled rope. "Got several of these ladders.
Lighter than aluminum, and strong enough." He had, by then, started climbing. Halfway up the fifty-foot reach he called quietly, "Getting warmer!" He descended. "Take up a thermometer. What does it read yonder?" He pointed.
Ben hurried to a thermometer set in the wall near the place where the elevator, now closed off by a steel door, had brought them down. "Seventy-four."
Farr emerged from a big closet with another thermometer and began climbing again. From the summit of the ladder he called to Ben, who was bracing its feet, "Rising fast! Real hot up here!"
He descended, leaving the thermometer hooked on the top rung of the ladder.
"We'll have to do some checking," he said quietly.
"How can we?"
"Elevator. "
Ben pictured the "psi doors"--the three double portals, thick as battleship armor and designed to withstand blast forces of five thousand psi. These had closed and intermeshed, mechanically and in sequence, as they had descended. He thought of other factors. "They may be jammed, now, Vance! They may have broached. In that case--
radiation."
"We'll carry counters!"
CHAPTER 7
Minutes later Ben and Vance, loaded with instruments, stood at the closed face of the elevator. After the shortest of consultations they had agreed not to trouble any of the others unless they encountered circumstances that required help. Vance opened a concealed, locked panel. Threw a switch. The steel door of the elevator slid aside and its dim-lit, empty floor appeared. They stepped onto it cautiously, holding out metal rods attached to boxes. The earphones they wore showed, to the unspoken relief of both men, no increase in the clicks of the normal "background count," which was low. For the sake of safety, they closed the portal.
Farr manipulated controls set into the floor. The elevator rose. Soon they could hear overhead a rumble-jangle as the first mighty baffles rolled apart. The radiation-counting clicks did not increase, even though, as the elevator ascended at a slow tempo, the air became hotter. There was no smell of smoke, or glow of fire.
Farr halted the lift above the level of the first psi door and gazed up, in the dark, toward the second set of doors, some two hundred feet above them. Shrugging, he started the elevator again and the air became torrid. But the radiation counters clicked little faster.
Under the middle set of portals blocking the shaft they stopped again. Farr went over to one of the U-shaped sidings of the elevator and climbed it, blowing on his metal-burned hands. He was about to reach up to test the temperature of the four-foot-thick armor plate when Ben yelled, "Don't!"
Farr drew his hand back. "Why not, Ben?"
"Come back down! I'll show you!"
Farr joined him and Ben pointed. Farr then said, "I don't--? Oh!" He ran to the controls and switched off the dim bulbs. Then Ben's reason for warning was plain. In the center of the shaft, where the two halves of the overhead "door" locked together, the metal glowed dimly.
They stared at that in a brief silence which Farr broke. "Top doors must have been bashed in! That being so, it'll be radioactive as all hell above this set!"
Ben answered, slowly, "Not necessarily. I mean--the top door could still be holding. Our--your--pressure gauges showed no blast wave, in this area, forceful enough to burst your upper-most door."
"Then, how the devil--?"
Ben walked to the nearest wall of stone. Touched it delicately. Farr followed suit, and whistled. "Hot as a smelter!"
"Yeah. Remember, around four this afternoon, we felt a different sort of crash?
Didn't register as much, on the seismographs? But shook the place?"
"Vaguely. Yes."
"At the time it occurred to me something big and heavy had landed upstairs.
Fallen out of the mushroom clouds, maybe. Like a whole building. I suspect--no way to be sure, of course--it may have been something very big-the lumber of fifty houses, say, picked up, anywhere within miles, tossed high, supported for hours by secondary explosions and rising heat in the icy stratosphere, where it didn't bum, and finally dropped above us, here. Been burning, along with your house, the woods below your place, the big planting of trees in your lawn, ever since. I'd assume the underlying structure of rock, even this deep down, was now heating up, from some such multiple addition of fuel to whatever was available."
Farr thought that over. "How good a heat conductor is limestone?"
Ben almost grinned. He said, amusedly, "A question that takes me back to undergraduate physics! I don't know. Offhand, I'd say, fairly good. But if we've got some accidentally added heat source, in a matter of, oh, say twelve more hours, the situation could be about like this: coals, piled deep at the entrance of your shelter, could make everything below ground very hot--even this far down. Some hot charcoal--tons-- might have been shoved around the housing of the first door and be resting on this one now.
Even so, I'd guess--but merely guess--the heat up top would be diminishing. Such heat might increase, perhaps, for hours in the deep rock. But not significantly, down where we are, I feel pretty sure."
"God, I hope not!" Farr switched the lights on. "We can come back and check. In a hour, say?" He saw the slight nod. "We could--if we had to--open a tunnel I had cut around the door up there." He looked at the dark steel ceiling with its faint, central bloom of heated metal. "It's plugged, but open able, so we could get fire-foam into the shaft above this upper door."
"Why a tunnel up there?"
Farr grinned faintly. "In the event that people did get down below in time, but lived in the old caves, say, till it got safe to leave. Or in case we found the two top psi doors jammed. We could still cut through with torches to that tunnel. Make an escape hatch. It's only about six feet in diameter. Has carved stairs and landings."
They returned to the main chamber, which the group was already calling "The Hall." No one was there. Farr shot up the ladder again and reported, as he reached the top,
"Ninety-one degrees. Not too bad."
From his level Ben answered, "Up three degrees. Not bad, either!"
The other man resumed his chair, glanced at his wrist watch, and then, remembering a nightly habit, wound it. "Funny. It was always cool down here, even in the hottest part of summers. In winter, though, it never got icy; but it would become pretty chilly. So I installed heating equipment. But I never thought of extra cooling machinery. Hope we don't cook!"
Ben took a chair facing Farr. "Hope not! In a few hours we ought to find out."
They sat thus, silent, for a very long time. Once in a while one or the other slightly shifted his position. That was all. But at last Vance Farr said, "Thinking about everybody?"
"Yes."
"Me, too." The redheaded man sighed softly. "I had moments of hoping some friends, a few relations--oh, people on ranches, or abroad, or visiting South America--
were all right. Some may even be. But"--he did something Ben had not before witnessed: swore at length and vividly--"if those so-and-so's hadn't poured that secondary crop-dusting from the sea into the American air, quite a few might have come through!"
Ben raised a long, thin hand and lowered it, in assent. He had been thinking of his father, in Newark, New Jersey, his sister in Chicago, of her husband and kids, and of his other sister, in Detroit. Of his friends at Brookhaven, in Cambridge, at M.LT., in California, at Caltech, at the Livermore Lab, at Los Alamos, and a dozen other places where they worked or had their homes.
Another stretched-out silence. Again, Farr ended it. "I'm mighty glad, as I've been meaning to say, that you're among us! Believe me! Not because of the help your knowledge brings. But because you're a steady man. Decent. Controlled. And we're going to need a lot of that!"
Ben's furrowed brow showed a question and his eyes, raised under those horizontal ridges, were puzzled. "I thought everybody was--terrific!--except that meter reader."
"Don't mean that. But we may not be able to leave here in any three weeks, as you must be aware, Ben. Or even three months. Maybe much, much longer. Depending."
"Three months ought to do it. If we're careful when we do get outside."
"As things are, yes. Suppose they attack again in a month? And again in three?"
Ben shivered, but replied, thoughtfully, "It would be preposterous, Vance, to assume--here, now--that my Q-clearance is still important. Right? Or that the facts I know about our defenses must still be kept secret. I'm too darned tired to go into them all.
But let me say this: from what I know of our retaliatory power, its nature, dispersal, and so on, the Reds won't attack anybody, even a month from now."
Farr seemed surprised. "Could you guarantee it?"
"Almost. Not absolutely, maybe. One or two things that everybody in the United States who wanted to learn could have known as possible, might make a difference. But I'm pretty sure-after--after two weeks"--he blurted the words--"the enemy will be dead."
"You mean," Vance almost whispered, "there won't be anybody left anywhere on earth?"
"Lord, no! People below the equator should come through in good shape! The air doesn't exchange across the equator fast enough to endanger them. What I mean is merely, the U.S.S.R. will be a graveyard. Europe, too, undoubtedly. The North Temperate Zone pretty much clear around the globe. Except where people can hold out in shelters comparable to this, or in certain military bases underground. And so on. Submarines.
They will be safe."
Farr made no reply. His expression showed his effort to visualize a circumstance he had, in fact, foreseen and prepared against. Yet even he, Ben decided, as he watched that taut face grimace, even this man, who had so imaginatively constructed a suitable refuge in his own home area, had not really been able to conceive of the northern half of his planet, from near its pole to its tropic seas, girdled with radioactive air and spread with universal death, on hot-dusted plains, valleys, mountains, seas, deserts, and tundra--
all of it blotched, too, with the stratosphere-touching pyres of cities and by raging, uncountable forest fires. Half a world turned hell, and nearly everybody dead in that in-fernal belt. Or so vilely burned, so savagely injured, that death would come, finally, and be welcome.
Who could conceive it?
Could he, really, Ben thought? Not clearly.
By-and-by, Farr spoke. "Hour’s up."
Be realized he had been dozing in his chair.
Together they re-entered the elevator and repeated their inspection. This time they thought--though they were not certain--that the faint blush on the underside of the mighty doors was less extensive. They returned and Farr climbed the Hall ladder. He found, to his joy, the air temperature at its top rung was still exactly ninety-one degrees. No change. A good omen.
Again they resumed their vigil, this time with more hope. Farr remembered something he had started to say to the scientist and forgotten, as their thoughts shifted to the world outside.
Starting to say things, and forgetting them in mid-statement, characterized their behavior for many days. But now Farr took up the matter.
"About the reason, aside from your science, I'm so glad you're with us."
"Oh," Ben responded. "That. Yes?"
"Assume we may spend months here. We'll have some sticky trouble."
"Trouble?"
"Kit. Possibly that Williams person, if he recovers. Even you. Or myself! George-absolutely!"
Ben was frowning. "The men?"
Farr smiled ironically. "Not just them. But, think it over! We have five men in their prime--only Paulus is in his sixties. And three exceedingly attractive, young females."
Ben said, "Oh!"
Farr went on, calmly, "You, I am assuming, are what is idiotically called a man of the world."
Ben demurred. "I've led a fairly monkish life, if that's what you mean."
"Fairly, you said. "It implies--?"
Ben felt a flush. "I've had a few casual love affairs. In college. And when I was in Europe, taking graduate courses. Or working, afterward, in labs in England and France.
There were . . . unashamed girls. It was the way they lived. And physicists aren't prudes.
At Brookhaven, for the last years, I have hardly even thought of women seriously or importantly. Till I met your daughter. And that thought, Mr. Farr--!" Ben grinned at the other's gesture and emended: "Vance--won't be of the slightest embarrassment to her.
Ever."
The older man laughed. "I know. Ben, for mercy's sake! I could have guessed almost exactly that history for you. But see here! You're mature. You don't belong to the set--sets--Kit Barlow grew up with. Or my daughter. They're different from my generation. And even your more casual background was, I am sure, a bit nearer to mine in attitudes, than to that of my daughter! Even though you're only some few years older--
thirty-five? six? Thought so! I also happen to know that George Hyama, who went to high school in Fenwich, before Tech, was the most audacious and successful wooer of girls--and of ladies older than he!--ever to attend Fenwich High without being tossed out in disgrace. Without, so far as I ever learned, even doing his many girl friends permanent harm, emotional or other. Seemed as if they all were excited by his Japanese novelty and his good looks, but never 'serious,' in the sense any Miss A was brokenhearted when he left her for Miss B, and Miss B for Miss C, or, village gossip said, even some Mrs. C. I have no reason to imagine George Hyama has changed a bit."
Ben chuckled. "I see. We'll have to watch him. Didn't know the Japanese, after a stan
dard American upbringing, could turn out to be Lotharios."
"I'm trying to say just that: you don't really appreciate what we are up against!
Kit, by the time he reached eighteen and after he decided Faith wouldn't soon settle down with him, had an intercollegiate reputation--and now has a café-society carbon copy.
Woman's dream come true, though briefly for each 'lucky' woman. I know nothing whatever about Lotus Li's life. Born in Hawaii, went to the university there, came to what the Islanders call the 'mainland' two years ago to finish at Radcliffe. I seem to recall her father sent one daughter, for part of her education, to the Sorbonne. But he had several children and I'm not certain that one was Lotus. As for Paulus' Connie--real name's Heliconia--" He stopped. "Have you talked to her?"
"Not really. Not yet."
"Looked at her?"
"She's very beautiful."
"Beautiful!" Vance exploded the word. "You should see Connie in a bathing suit!
From the time she was sixteen, I often thought-- even I, a married man--" He broke off and laughed at himself with a sound that lacked complete integrity. It was the first falseness Ben had detected in him.
Farr presently continued. Needlessly, Ben thought. "I'm trying to be honest with you, and clear. I'm assuming you've got self-control the rest may not have. Anyhow.
Heliconia--Connie--went to Fenwich High when George did. Now, about that 'bathing-suit' thing. I daresay Faith may have told you my wife's background?"
Ben shook his head, smiled slightly. "I've only seen your daughter a few times outside the hospital. For lunch. Usually, with others. She said very little about her mother. She realized, of course, I knew about you. As everyone does."
Farr ignored that. "Valerie's mother and father were old-school liberals--the Nineteen Twenties variety. The mother had inherited money--mines in the West--and gone to Smith. Val's dad was a professor in a super-permissive school for girls who are rich, reckless, vivid, and imagine they are--or are imagined by doting parents to be--
brainy. So there was money, social position, academic status--and liberalism of the most enthusiastic, not to say, extremist, sort--all about Valerie, as a child, girl, and young woman. She first attended an advanced, moderne, or cuckoo kid's school up in Massachusetts, where they did things--were allowed to--that I still don't believe. Like, if you felt in the mood, during geometry, taking off all your clothes and singing songs that sailors usually keep to themselves. If you--?"