The girl was Esther Warren, and the small boy was her brother. Her father had been a prosperous farmer and dairyman, and when the warning of the coming earthquake came he had attempted to save his family and some of his stock by placing them on tall hay-stacks, tying their feet together. He had realized that the concussion of the asteroid’s fall would be terrific, and had hoped that the hay-stacks would break the shock. His hopes had been realized. His daughter, his son and himself had been badly shaken up but were quite unharmed by the earth-tremor, and his cattle had fared almost as well. When the shocks ceased, he had put his son and daughter behind a high wall of rock that had not been overthrown by the quake and began to lead his cattle to the same place of safety. Some of his stock was secure and he was trying to save the rest when the storm broke. He had not anticipated the wall-like blast of wind which struck him. The fiercest cyclone ever known was as nothing to that convulsion of the elements. He was torn from the earth as a bit of straw might be carried away by a whirlwind. Esther had seen nothing of him since, or of any other human being. She spoke quite simply.
Andrews nodded his head when she had finished.
“I only hope there were many others who tried waiting for the earthquake on haystacks,” he remarked. “We’re going to need them.”
“Going to need them?” Esther asked.
Andrews told her about the Esthonians and showed her the proclamation he had taken from the blazing arrow, with its insolent declaration that every living person was to be forced to obey a cowardly king who had deserted his people to save his own life. Esther had heard of the Esthonian court and the arrogance of the Junkers who ruled the kingdom, and her face grew pale when she realized that even the few who had survived the earthquake were threatened with slavery under those same people.
“What are you going to do?” she asked anxiously. “They wounded you, and they’ll surely—”
“They’ll have to catch me before they can do anything to me,” said Andrews grimly, “and in the mean time I’m going to try to make a little trouble for them. The first thing is to find a secure place to work in. After that I’ll try to get tools and build a proper flying-machine, which will have to be well-armed. I’ll need arms. With that, though, I can look for other survivors and get really to work.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“In the first place,” Andrews said slowly, “I’m going to try to escape the notice of the Esthonians. They’ve an immense advantage in stores of weapons and supplies. If enough of us survivors band together, though, and work hard enough and long enough, we can defy any attempt of the Esthonians to enslave us. My idea is to get a number of survivors with me, build several dirigibles with the metallic foam I used in my aerostat, and settle in some place sufficiently remote not to be reached by the Esthonians for a long time. We’ll be constantly scouting for more survivors, constantly trying to make faster and better fliers, and in time, if need be, we can fight the Esthonians in the air. I hope we won’t have to. We’ll hope they’ll leave us alone. But that’s too much to expect,” he added gloomily.
Far to the west the sun was setting in a blaze of red, far deeper and richer than had ever been known before the Great Catastrophe. Great quantities of volcanic dust still floated in the air, and the sun-rays were turned the color of blood as they passed through the clouds of suspended mineral matter. The party by the tiny fire was silent for a moment. The dog lay with his head upon Andrews’ knee. The small boy had curled up in Esther’s lap and was sleeping soundly. Andrews and Esther stared thoughtfully at the high sunset. As they looked, they became conscious of an infinitely faint sound, and saw silhouetted blackly against the crimson arch, a great sea-plane flying steadily onward. A flag fluttered behind it, and a thin trail of black vapor floated in the air through which it had passed.
“Out with the fire,” said Andrews sharply, and kicked the embers with his heel. They flew apart and in an instant he was stamping upon them until the last faint wisp of smoke had ceased.
“They probably won’t see us in any event, but certainly not if we sit still,” said Andrews quietly. “You have some cows?”
“Yes,” said Esther, “but they’re feeding among torn-down trees and won’t be seen unless the plane comes directly overhead.”
Andrews nodded and fixed his eyes again upon the aeroplane. It flew on steadily, unseeing.
“Tomorrow,” he remarked grimly, “we’ll set out on our way. We’ll go up into the mountains and find a cave or narrow valley, where we’ll settle down to build a small dirigible in which we can travel to a place that will be really secure from the Esthonians. It will have to be a long way off.”
“I don’t mind,” said Esther, faintly.
They sat there in the darkness for a long time, comparing notes and ideas. Esther had two cows, and on their milk her small brother had been living almost exclusively. Her father had put a number of his possessions in a stoutly built ice-house sunk deep into the ground, but the earthquake had caved that in, and Esther had been unable to dig them out. It was agreed that Andrews would extricate as many of them as possible and they would load down the cows with all that they could carry. Then they would start off, caravan-fashion, searching for whatever the future might hold.
The moon was shining down with a faintly pinkish tinge when Andrews rose abruptly.
“You need some rest,” he said cheerfully. “Here’s a revolver of mine. You two folks turn in in your shack over here, and Limpy and I will camp out here. I’ll try to catch some fish in the morning, for breakfast.”
Esther lifted the small boy and went into the shack. Limpy, the dog, now limping no longer, followed Andrews as he moved off to curl up for the night. Deep silence fell over the little ravine…
VII.
Andrews came back to where Esther was waiting, half-hidden beneath an overhanging mass of rock.
“I think I’ve found the ideal place,” he said enthusiastically. “It’s where two cliffs started to cave in toward each other from the ’quake, and met half-way. There’s an arch-way there a good forty feet high, where I can build the new dirigible quite safely. And there are numberless boulders and big rocks just outside the arch, and we can easily improvise a living-cave.”
Esther smiled, and sighed in some relief.
“Well, after poking about in these hills for over a week, I hope it is all right.”
“You’ll agree with me,” Andrews promised light-heartedly. “Come along, Bobby, and see your new home.”
Bobby, seated in state on one of the two cows, grinned. He had grown very fond of Andrews during the week of their journeying to reach the mountains, and the other week during which they had searched for a suitable abode. Andrews grasped the halter of one of the cows and with Esther leading the other began to retrace his footsteps. He halted after a little more than a mile of traveling.
“There,” he said. “There’s the place.”
As he had described it, two overhanging walls of rock had started to fall and met midway, where they hung and formed a perfect arch. The cavern beneath the arch was nearly a hundred feet long, and would really make a splendid workshop if Andrews found tools and materials with which to attempt a dirigible airship.
“There’s a spring just around the corner, and that settles the water supply. Southern exposure, and all the rest of it.”
A mass of boulders promised building material just without the archway. Andrews lifted Bobby down from the cow on which he was riding and began to unload the two animals, which had not yet become accustomed to their new role of beasts of burden.
“We’ll really set to work tomorrow,” said Andrews, “and get sleeping quarters fixed up. Then the day after I’ll start to back-trail and try to get that motorcar we saw a week ago.”
In a twisted mass of wreckage, rust-covered and broken, they had seen a motor-car. It had been hurled against a mass of rock and mangled almost beyond recognition, but Andrews had hopes of extracting the motor, or at any rate a number o
f useful metal parts. He would take one of the long-suffering cows and load the heavier parts upon her. Then, returning, he would set up his workshop in the cavern.
All three of them worked with a will the next day. Even little Bobby manfully dragged sticks and small stones back to the inside of the arch-way, where walls of rock and clay were being reared in a clumsy series of apartments. By nightfall two alcoves in the big cave had been closed in, and a stock of wood was being gathered. Andrews planned to leave the next morning, and spent a large part of the evening showing Esther just how to use the rifle he intended to leave with her. With Limpy, the dog, to warn her of danger and her rifle to protect her, he thought she would be safe. He impressed on her, however, the necessity of keeping well within the cave during the day, and of gathering branches outside after nightfall and bringing them in to the cow she would keep.
Andrews started off before the sun was fully up, and made his way by landmarks he had observed toward the wrecked motor-car. He soon had reason to realize the wisdom of the advice he had given Esther. Not three hours after he had left the cave, he heard the muttering roar of an aeroplane motor. Fortunately he was near the wrecked remnant of a once-blooming orchard, and managed to hide himself and his pack-animal among the foliage of the trees before the flying machine passed overhead. Three times that day he was forced to conceal himself from passing air-craft, and deduced from their frequency that he was not far from the spot selected by the Esthonians for their headquarters. He knew that some center of organization must have been established, from which their aeroplanes would radiate. It worried him, however, to find it so near the cavern he and Esther had selected as a temporary home.
A week of hazardous journeying followed, and then the motor-car was reached. Whenever he passed the ruins of a house, Andrews had stopped to investigate, with the result that he now possessed a number of tools and something he valued even more highly—a blacksmiths portable forge. He had found it dangling from the splintered top of a shattered tree, and knew that with a little tinkering he could make it work as well as ever. He went at the battered motor-car with caution and determination. The motor was not much injured, but the rest of the machine was hopelessly ruined. Andrews found, however, that the framework of the chassis was the duralumin alloy developed a year or two before the Catastrophe, and proceeded happily to cut away every bit of the precious metal. The base of the duralumin alloy was aluminum, and aluminum was the metal needed for the gas-container of his new dirigible.
Another week of journeying, this time at night. Esther had made the cavern almost homelike in his absence, and he reached it with the pleasant sensation of one eagerly awaited arriving at a home from which he has been missed. Then work, work, work. For three weeks Andrews was busily engaged in preparing materials alone. He had to have fuel. He had to have gas. He had to have any number of different tools and apparatus for his task of building, and every tool and every appliance had to be improvised from such meager resources as he had at his command.
Fuel was a problem until he found a patch of land on which potatoes had been grown. He gathered bag upon bag of the vegetables, while Esther back in the cavern was shredding and cutting them into tiny bits. Then they were boiled into a pasty mass in an improvised boiler, made from a find of bent and crumpled sheet-iron. When the mass was but a thick paste, it was buried underground with a bit of leaf-mold to start fermentation. In three weeks the paste had undergone its chemical changes and was practically pure alcohol, which the carburetors of the motor could readily be adjusted to burn.
He needed hydrogen gas. He set a pile of wood burning into charcoal, and labored mightily making an earthen-ware crucible and pipes. He made other piping of his duralumin alloy, expanded into the metallic foam of which his first aerostat had been built. When all was ready he packed one of his crucibles with charcoal and put it upon the forge he had found. The second clay vessel was filled with water and heated. When the charcoal had reached red heat in the airtight crucible, Andrews admitted steam from the other boiler. Water is composed of two parts of hydrogen to one of oxygen in a chemical combination which becomes almost unstable when the water is turned to steam. When the vaporized water entered the mass of red-hot charcoal, the oxygen was absorbed by the hot charcoal and nearly pure hydrogen remained, which was carried off and forced into the molten alloy kept bubbling and hissing on a third furnace.
The process was slow, and not more than a thousand or two thousand cubic feet of gas could be produced in a day, but there was no waste. Slowly but surely a slender, cigar-shaped mass of metallic foam was formed, an infinitude of bubbles filled with hydrogen gas, a shimmering, iridescent spindle of metal, which floated and swayed gently back and forth in the long cavern, tugging at the stays that held it to the ground.
Then the car was built and the motor fitted into place. Without instruments to measure the speed of the motor, and without the formulae governing the efficiency of propellors, Andrews could not hope to get the best results possible from his motor. He had simply to cast from his metallic foam half a dozen different two-bladed propellors and try one after another until he found the one that gave the best results. It was more than six weeks from the time of his first labor before the dirigible was complete, but then he was nearly satisfied with it.
Eighty feet long from tip to tip and twenty feet through at its greatest diameter, the shimmering, fish-like shape looked as though it should make considerable speed. Wide rudders and elevating planes promised perfect control of its flight, and the fuel-tanks with the queer alcohol-fuel he had improvised were of sufficient capacity to assure him a wide radius of action. The car would contain four people easily, and up in the metallic gas-bag there was a tiny cabin that would provide sleeping quarters. Because of the metallic gas-container there was no danger of fire, and the exhaust of the engine would heat a small stove and keep the interior of the car at a comfortable temperature.
The trial flight took place by moonlight, and was a perfect success. The shimmering cigar of metal swooped and rose, turned sharply and hovered stationary above an object, just as Andrews willed. He came slowly to the ground and grappled the line that led into the cavern, then alighted and hauled the shining monster into its hiding-place again.
“Tomorrow,” he said quietly, “I shall look for other survivors. If I find none, we will leave for the West the next day.”
Esther slept little that night. She knew Andrews was taking a great risk in venturing forth in broad daylight in an airship so different from the Esthonian craft. They would attack it at sight, and Andrews had only a rifle and revolver to oppose their machine-guns and light artillery. Esther was beginning to care for Andrews. Thrown together as they were, it was inevitable that they would either come to hate each other or to love—and Esther had no cause to hate Andrews.
He rose from the valley shortly after sunrise, and she followed his shining car with her eyes until it dipped over the edge of the hills and was gone. Then a great loneliness settled upon her. She made haste to gather together the materials for a great fire which should tell him where to alight when he returned after nightfall. He was to hover over the valley and fire three shots from his rifle, when she would make a great blaze to guide him to the mouth of the cavern.
Andrews paused in doubt, and fired another three shots out of the window of the car. The moon shone down brightly from above, and he was sure he was hovering above the home valley. His trip had been unexpectedly and amazingly successful. Hardly thirty miles away he had found a huddled group of shacks in which nearly three hundred people had been gathered by the Esthonian fliers. All of them were survivors of the earthquake, and all of them were raging against the Esthonians. One hundred of their number had been drafted to work upon a city the Junkers were building for their capital, and the remainder had been robbed of what food supplies they had above their immediate needs. They were helpless. Only through the Esthonians could they hope to reconstitute civilization, yet the Esthonians evidently meant that civiliza
tion to be little more than slavery for them. The coming of Andrews had been hailed with delight, and he was promised anything he desired in the way of help and labor—the survivors had nothing else to offer—if he would only take the lead in combating the insolent invaders.
He had returned to tell Esther, happy and hopeful. Now, however, he was seized with a sudden dread. He was hovering above the valley in the shining dirigible. The noise of his motor could be plainly heard. He had twice given the signal that should have caused her to build a guiding flare. The valley was still, ominously still. Slowly and cautiously, Andrews descended until he could see the floor of the valley in the moonlight. He carefully floated toward the mouth of the cavern. A dim glimmer of light came from within. With a sudden cold fear upon him, Andrews swept up and grappled the line leading into the cavern. With his rifle held ready, he leaped from the car and slowly entered the high arch-way.
The fire was dying down. Limpy, the dog, lay stretched out on the floor, blood flowing from a wound in his head. Bobby was weeping hopelessly above the senseless dog. Esther was nowhere to be seen.
“Bobby!” cried Andrews in a panic. “Where’s Esther? What’s happened?”
Bobby turned a woe-begone face upward and cried out a little in joy at seeing him again, then wept more hopelessly than before.
“Vere was a engine-noise, an’ Esfer went an’ made a fire. She thought it was you. Ven a airship came down an bad men came out, an’ I wan away. Vey hitted Limpy an’ he’s dead, an’ vey took Ester away in airship, an’ she was cwyin’, loud.”
The Esthonians had come in Andrews’ absence and found his hiding-place, and carried Esther off to some unknown place, for a purpose Andrews dared not guess.
VIII.
Andrews’ face was white and set as he surveyed the earth below him. He was at an altitude of more than fifteen thousand feet, and the country-side was spread out like a huge map beneath his shimmering dirigible. Mist obscured the view, but not too much to keep him from discovering the city for which he searched if he should pass above it. Andrews had reasoned that the city of the Esthonians would necessarily be built near the sea, and was following the coast-line until he should discover it. Bobby and the dog had been left at the village of the survivors, to be cared for if Andrews failed to return,—and he had no intention of returning without Esther. He was one man against twenty thousand, attacking the greater number in their own strong-hold.
First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster Page 66