Triumph (8 page)

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.

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.