The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction Megapack 01

by George Allan England

  Long he mused over his find. But not a single word did he ever say to Beatrice concerning it or the flint spear-point. Only he kept his eyes and ears well open for other bits of corroborative evidence.

  And he never ventured a foot from the building unless his rifle and revolver were with him, their magazines full of high-power shells.

  The girl always went armed, too, and soon grew to be such an expert shot that she could drop a squirrel from the tip of a fir, or wing a heron in full flight.

  Once her quick eyes spied a deer in the tangles of the onetime Gramercy Park, now no longer neatly hedged with iron palings, but spread in wild confusion that joined the riot of growth beyond.

  On the instant she fired, wounding the creature.

  Stern’s shot, echoing hers, missed. Already the deer was away, out of range through the forest. With some difficulty they pursued down a glen-like strip of woods that must have once been Irving Place.

  Two hundred yards south of the park they sighted the animal again. And the girl with a single shot sent it crashing to earth.

  “Bravo, Diana!” hurrahed Stern, running forward with enthusiasm. The “deer fever” was on him, as strong as in his old days in the Hudson Bay country. Hot was the pleasure of the kill when that meant food. As he ran he jerked his knife from the skin sheath the girl had made for him.

  Thus they had fresh venison to their heart’s content—venison broiled over white-hot coals in the fireplace, juicy and savory—sweet beyond all telling.

  A good deal of the meat they smoked and salted down for future use. Stern undertook to tan the hide with strips of hemlock bark laid in a water pit dug near the spring. He added also some oak-bark, nut-galls and a good quantity of young sumac shoots.

  “I guess that ought to hit the mark if anything will,” remarked he, as he immersed the skin and weighed it down with rocks.

  “It’s like the old ‘shotgun’ prescriptions of our extinct doctors—a little of everything, bound to do the trick, one way or another.”

  The great variety of labors now imposed upon him began to try his ingenuity to the full. In spite of all his wealth of practical knowledge and his scientific skill, he was astounded at the huge demands of even the simplest human life.

  The girl and he now faced these, without the social cooperation which they had formerly taken entirely for granted, and the change of conditions had begun to alter Stern’s concepts of almost everything.

  He was already beginning to realize how true the old saying was: “One man is no man!” and how the world had been the world merely because of the interrelations, the interdependencies of human beings in vast numbers.

  He was commencing to get a glimpse of the vanished social problems that had enmeshed civilization, in their true light, now that all he confronted and had to struggle with was the unintelligent and overbearing dominance of nature.

  All this was of huge value to the engineer. And the strong individualism (essentially anarchistic) on which he had prided himself a thousand years ago, was now beginning to receive some mortal blows, even during these first days of the new, solitary, unsocialized life.

  But neither he nor the girl had very much time for introspective thought. Each moment brought its immediate task, and every day seemed busier than the last had been.

  At meals, however, or at evening, as they sat together by the light of their lamp in the now homelike offices, Stern and Beatrice found pleasure in a little random speculation. Often they discussed the catastrophe and their own escape.

  Stern brought to mind some of Professor Raoul Pictet’s experiments with animals, in which the Frenchman had suspended animation for long periods by sudden freezing. This method seemed to answer, in a way, the girl’s earlier questions as to how they had escaped death in the many long winters since they had gone to sleep.

  Again, they tried to imagine the scenes just following the catastrophe, the horror of that long-past day, and the slow, irrevocable decay of all the monuments of the human race.

  Often they talked till past midnight, by the glow of their stone fireplace, and many were the aspects of the case that they developed. These hours seemed to Stern the happiest of his life.

  For the rapprochement between this beautiful woman and himself at such times became very close and fascinatingly intimate, and Stern felt, little by little, that the love which now was growing deep within his heart for her was not without its answer in her own.

  But for the present the man restrained himself and spoke no overt word. For that, he understood, would immediately have put all things on a different basis—and there was urgent work still waiting to be done.

  “There’s no doubt in my mind,” said he one day as they sat talking, “that you and I are absolutely the last human beings—civilized I mean—left alive anywhere in the world.

  “If anybody else had been spared, whether in Chicago or San Francisco, in London, Paris or Hong-Kong, they’d have made some determined effort before now to get in touch with New York. This, the prime center of the financial and industrial world, would have been their first objective point.”

  “But suppose,” asked she, “there were others, just a few here or there, and they’d only recently waked up, like ourselves. Could they have succeeded in making themselves known to us so soon?”

  He shook a dubious head.

  “There may be some one else, somewhere,” he answered slowly, “but there’s nobody else in this part of the world, anyhow. Nobody in this particular Eden but just you and me. To all intents and purposes I’m Adam. And you—well, you’re Eve! But the tree? We haven’t found that—yet.”

  She gave him a quick, startled glance, then let her head fall, so that he could not see her eyes. But up over her neck, her cheek and even to her temples, where the lustrous masses of hair fell away, he saw a tide of color mount.

  And for a little space the man forgot to smoke. At her he gazed, a strange gleam in his eyes.

  And no word passed between them for a while. But their thoughts—?

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

  The idea that there might possibly be others of their kind in far-distant parts of the earth worked strongly on the mind of the girl. Next day she broached the subject again to her companion.

  “Suppose,” theorized she, “there might be a few score of others, maybe a few hundred, scattered here and there? They might awaken one by one, only to die, if less favorably situated than we happen to be. Perhaps thousands may have slept, like us, only to wake up to starvation!”

  “There’s no telling, of course,” he answered seriously. “Undoubtedly that may be very possible. Some may have escaped the great death, on high altitudes—on the Eiffel Tower, for instance, or on certain mountains or lofty plateaus. The most we can do for the moment is just to guess at the probabilities. And—”

  “But if there are people elsewhere?” she interrupted eagerly, her eyes glowing with hope, “isn’t there any way to get in touch with them? Why don’t we hunt? Suppose only one or two in each country should have survived; if we could get them all together again in a single colony—don’t you see?”

  “You mean the different languages and arts and all the rest might still be preserved? The colony might grow and flourish, and mankind again take possession of the earth and conquer it, in a few decades? Yes, of course. But even though there shouldn’t be anybody else, there’s no cause for despair. Of that, however, we won’t speak now.”

  “But why don’t we try to find out about it?” she persisted. “If there were only the remotest chance—”

  “By Jove, I will try it!” exclaimed the engineer, fired with a new thought, a fresh ambition. “How? I don’t know just yet, but I’ll see. There’ll be a way, right enough, if I can only think it out!”

  That afternoon he made his way down Broadway, past the copper-shop, to the remains of the telegraph office opposite the Flatiron.

  Into it he penetrated with some difficulty. A mournful sight it
was, this onetime busy ganglion of the nation’s nerve-system. Benches and counters were quite gone, instruments corroded past recognition, everything in hideous disorder.

  But in a rear room Stern found a large quantity of copper wire. The wooden drums on which it had been wound were gone; the insulation had vanished, but the coils of wire still remained.

  “Fine!” said the explorer, gathering together several coils. “Now when I get this over to the Metropolitan, I think the first step toward success will have been taken.”

  By nightfall he had accumulated enough wire for his tentative experiments. Next day he and the girl explored the remains of the old wireless station on the roof of the building, overlooking Madison Avenue.

  They reached the roof by climbing out of a window on the east side of the tower and descending a fifteen-foot ladder that Stern had built for the purpose out of rough branches.

  “You see it’s fairly intact as yet,” remarked the engineer, gesturing at the bread expanse. “Only, falling stones have made holes here and there. See how they yawn down into the rooms below! Well, come on, follow me. I’ll tap with the ax, and if the roof holds me you’ll be safe.”

  Thus, after a little while, they found a secure path to the little station.

  This diminutive building, fortunately constructed of concrete, still stood almost unharmed. Into it they penetrated through the crumbling door. The winds of heaven had centuries ago swept away all trace of the ashes of the operator.

  But there still stood the apparatus, rusted and sagging and disordered, yet to Stern’s practiced eye showing signs of promise. An hour’s careful overhauling convinced the engineer that something might yet be accomplished.

  And thus they set to work in earnest.

  First, with the girl’s help, he strung his copper-wire antennae from the tiled platform of the tower to the roof of the wireless station. Rough work this was, but answering the purpose as well as though of the utmost finish.

  He connected up the repaired apparatus with these antennae, and made sure all was well. Then he dropped the wires over the side of the building to connect with one of the dynamos in the sub-basement.

  All this took two and a half days of severe labor, in intervals of food-getting, cooking and household tasks. At last, when it was done—

  “Now for some power!” exclaimed the engineer. And with his lamp he went down to inspect the dynamos again and to assure himself that his belief was correct, his faith that one or two of them could be put into running order.

  Three of the machines gave little promise, for water had dripped in on them and they were rusted beyond any apparent rehabilitation. The fourth, standing nearest Twenty-Third Street, had by some freak of chance been protected by a canvas cover.

  This cover was now only a mass of rotten rags, but it had at least safeguarded the machine for so long that no very serious deterioration had set in.

  Stern worked the better part of a week with such tools as he could find or make—he had to forge a wrench for the largest nuts—“taking down” the dynamo, oiling, filing, polishing and repairing it, part by part.

  The commutator was in bad shape and the brushes terribly corroded. But he tinkered and patched, hammered and heated and filed away, and at last putting the machine together again with terrible exertion, decided that it would run.

  “Steam now!” was his next watchword, when he had wired the dynamo to connect with the station on the roof. And this was on the eighth day since he had begun his labor.

  An examination of the boiler-room, which he reached by moving a ton of fallen stone-work from the doorway into the dynamo-room, encouraged him still further. As he penetrated into this place, feeble-shining lamp held on high, eyes eager to behold the prospect, he knew that success was not far away.

  Down in these depths, almost as in the interior of the great Pyramid of Gizeh—though the place smelled dank and close and stifling—time seemed to have lost much of its destructive power. He chose one boiler that looked sound, and began looking for coal.

  Of this he found a plentiful supply, well-preserved, in the bunkers. All one afternoon he labored, wheeling it in a steel barrow and dumping it in front of the furnace.

  Where the smoke-stack led to and what condition it was in he knew not. He could not tell where the gases of combustion would escape to; but this he decided to leave to chance.

  He grimaced at sight of the rusted flues and the steam-pipes connecting with the dynamo-room-pipes now denuded of their asbestos packing and leaky at several joints.

  A strange, gnome-like picture he presented as he poked and pried in those dim regions, by the dim rays of the lamp. Spiders, roaches and a great gray rat or two were his only companions—those, and hope.

  “I don’t know but I’m a fool to try and carry this thing out,” said he, dubiously surveying the pipe. “I’m liable to start something here that I can’t stop. Water-glasses leaky, gauges plugged up, safety-valve rusted into its seat—the devil!”

  But still he kept on. Something drove him inexorably forward. For he was an engineer—and an American.

  His next task was to fill the boiler. This he had to do by bringing water, two pails at a time from the spring. It took him three days.

  Thus, after eleven days of heart-breaking lonely toil in that grimy dungeon, hampered for lack of tools, working with rotten materials, naked and sweaty, grimed, spent, profane, exhausted, everything was ready for the experiment—the strangest, surely, in the annals of the human race.

  He lighted up the furnace with dry wood, then stoked it full of coal. After an hour and a half his heart thrilled with mingled fear and exultation at sight of the steam, first white, then blue and thin, that began to hiss from the leaks in the long pipe.

  “No way to estimate pressure, or anything,” remarked he. “It’s bull luck whether I go to hell or not!” And he stood back from the blinding glare of the furnace. With his naked arm he wiped the sweat from his streaming forehead.

  “Bull luck!” repeated he. “But by the Almighty, I’ll send that Morse, or bust!”

  CHAPTER XIV

  THE MOVING LIGHTS

  Panting with exhaustion and excitement, Stern made his way back to the engine-room. It was a strangely critical moment when he seized the corroded throttle-wheel to start the dynamo. The wheel stuck, and would not budge.

  Stern, with a curse of sheer exasperation, snatched up his long spanner, shoved it through the spokes, and wrenched.

  Groaning, the wheel gave way. It turned. The engineer hauled again.

  “Go on!” shouted the man. “Start! Move!”

  With a hissing plaint, as though rebellious against this awakening after its age-long sleep, the engine creaked into motion.

  In spite of all Stern’s oiling, every journal and bearing squealed in anguish. A rickety tremble possessed the engine as it gained speed. The dynamo began to hum with wild, strange protests of racked metal. The ancient “drive” of tarred hemp strained and quivered, but held.

  And like the one-hoss shay about to collapse, the whole fabric of the resuscitated plant, leaking at a score of joints, creaking, whistling, shaking, voicing a hundred agonized mechanic woes, revived in a grotesque, absurd and shocking imitation of its onetime beauty and power.

  At sight of this ghastly resurrection, the engineer (whose whole life had been passed in the love and service of machinery) felt a strange and sad emotion.

  He sat down, exhausted, on the floor. In his hand the lamp trembled. Yet, all covered with sweat and dirt and rust as he was, this moment of triumph was one of the sweetest he had ever known.

  He realized that this was now no time for inaction. Much yet remained to be done. So up he got again, and set to work.

  First he made sure the dynamo was running with no serious defect and that his wiring had been made properly. Then he heaped the furnace full of coal, and closed the door, leaving only enough draft to insure a fairly steady heat for an hour or so.

  This done, he toile
d back up to where Beatrice was eagerly awaiting him in the little wireless station on the roof.

  In he staggered, all but spent. Panting for breath, wild-eyed, his coal-blackened arms stretching out from the whiteness of the bearskin, he made a singular picture.

  “It’s going!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got current—it’s good for a while, anyhow. Now—now for the test!”

  For a moment he leaned heavily against the concrete bench to which the apparatus was clamped. Already the day had drawn close to its end. The glow of evening had begun to fade a trifle, along the distant skyline; and beyond the Palisades a dull purple pall was settling down.

  By the dim light that filtered through the doorway, Beatrice looked at his deep-lined, bearded face, now reeking with sweat and grimed with dust and coal. An ugly face—but not to her. For through that mask she read the dominance, the driving force, the courage of this versatile, unconquerable man.

  “Well,” suddenly laughed Stern, with a strange accent in his voice, “well then, here goes for the operator in the Eiffel Tower, eh?”

  Again he glanced keenly, in the failing light, at the apparatus there before him.

  “She’ll do, I guess,” judged he, slipping on the rusted head-receiver. He laid his hand upon the key and tried a few tentative dots and dashes.

  Breathless, the girl watched, daring no longer to question him. In the dielectric, the green sparks and spurts of living flame began to crackle and to hiss like living spirits of an unknown power.

  Stern, feeling again harnessed to his touch the life-force of the world that once had been, exulted with a wild emotion. Yet, science-worshiper that he was, something of reverent awe tinged the keen triumph. A strange gleam dwelt within his eyes; and through his lips the breath came quick as he flung his very being into this supreme experiment.

  He reached for the ondometer. Carefully, slowly, he “tuned up” the wave-lengths; up, up to five thousand metres, then back again; he ran the whole gamut of the wireless scale.

  Out, ever out into the thickening gloom, across the void and vacancy of the dead world, he flung his lightnings in a wild appeal. His face grew hard and eager.