| Show ro ll 11 by edwin balanc and all philip wylie Copy rigi 1934 by edwin balme a d philip wylle service CHAPTER XI continued 19 in ID the most In evasive way it Is plain from his bis diary that in his time there was doubt or at least the best scientists were divided over the point as to whether the approaching star would tear this planet completely away from its sun or would merely alter its ita orbit so BO as to make the climate for part of the year very much colder lagon itol considered both of those possibilities tie lie made a plan for survival val under colder condl conditions alous he also speculated on the possibilities of survival even in the dark and cold of space but said tony you found no actual diagram of the engineering arrangements under the cities at the time in which I 1 now flud find myself said eald these cities existed only in lagon atols fancy ills ilia diary either was missed by ou our fr friends the when they tried to remove all diagrams that thai would have been useful to us or else they considered this book barm harmless less 0 0 0 0 0 9 0 steadily the sun diminished in size blue shadows stole across the plains of the adopted planet as the long late afternoons dwindled to dark and in the night the outer temperature dropped far below zero under the shield of the city heat remained and was renewed from the huge transformers fed from impulses far awny away liy by mercy of the sl by mercy or by policy CHAPTER XII HE enemy made no attack indeed T THE only at a distance did they reappear at all and then it was in the sky larks hovered but far away watching that was all and tony told his pilots who also were flying larks not to molest them or even appear to attack them what if they sent down a few flyers from the sky attack upon the city with a few planes would be absurd attack from the ground would be fantastic the defense established in any of these great metal cities must be impregnable the advantage of cover was overwhelming wh elming the themselves appreciated this after the pursuit of von beltz they made no move which even suggested an attack upon gendron nen Ilen dron to the contrary they continued to send through the conduits under the ground the alie power impulses which kept lighted and warm the city of Ilen hendron dron much as it had been when it was khorll a million years ago khorll wend strahl Gor fulu and banot so the other people had named the five cities they had built a million years ago in defiance of the destruction stealing upon thern them wend was the great shielded metropolis which tony and eliot james first had visited strahl and banot were the two similar cities seen and mapped to the south was the greatest and riot not only that it was the control city of the group for it dominated the underground works which generated the power tor for the entire group of cities it was that the ultes had seized for them selves and to which 11 they lly had brought the survivors sun Ivors of the t be english space ship as captives attack upon this city with the weapons at hand band and tra transportable 11 would lie be tolly folly every feature and material of construction of the cities le s gave overwhelming advantage to the defense no one offered a scheme of attack that suggested Bug any chance of 0 success the fact is said eliot james ence putting frankly in open words what they all were feeling so far from being able to conquer them were altheir at their mercy this minute and they know it when are they going to shut us ditl they asked d each other and while they did not utter the words they wanted to the waiting had become art an obsession the long aliers ahers had turned to ice the lake became a sheet of ice which the sun at noonday scarcely affected floes filled the seas the pilots of the larks reported frequently itly at noonday when the small sun un stood nearly overhead surfaces thawed but when the world began to turn away and long before the darkness it wits was bitterly cold again and the night wits was arctic it was at night that it came at dinner time the company under tonys com mand viere nere assembled in the great hall where meals were served A few of the men stood at salient posts always on watch there was a watch at the top of the tallest towers and at the eight gates guards were vere posted also at the passages to the chief channels below the city the lights went out later it was realized that simultaneously the movement of the currents of warmed air ceased but at first this was appreciated only b by y those stationed near the fans which whirred whirled to a stop in a humming diminuendo not only the great halls were blackened but the streets became tombs in the stygian oppressiveness veness of the dining hall tony arose an invisible figure ue ile felt blotted out ne ile wondered whether his voice when he spoke could be heard done it my ay friends this Is no accident no failure which they will repair they have shut off our power source so immediately we put into effect our plans for this emergency we go eo under the power loss orders which you all already know matches were struck and applied to torches previously fixed fired on brackets above the hall everyone pretended to like it everybody sat down again dinner went on la in a medieval gloom 11 its begun said dodson to james 1 I wont worry about putting it down in my book tonight the diarist replied ill not forget it before tomorrow I 1 ile he was aware of an anger within him which had bid no parallel in his experience per peri lence ence doing this he said scarcely more to the surgeon than to himself doing this deliberately libera tely to freeze us out to them to take their terms what terms exactly ayou suppose some one inquired eliot turned and in the flickering glow of a flare he faced peter vanderbilt der bilt well hear soon enough ill alj say P but no terms camel no communication ni at all arrived from those in control of tile the capital city and in control therefore of the five shielded cities maintained its illumination as eliot james and ransdell ascertained by flying at dawn and sighting the great glowing dome of the ancient capital light pervaded that city as before and beyond question heat was there other pilots inspected the three other cities wend strahl and da not the shields of which like the dome of the capital remained aglow and those pilots flew back also to gendron khorll which alono alone of the five cities lay lightless and cold in the winter morning in the great hall of the council these pilots reported to james and rt ransdell ansdell cut us off and add us alone why not then some one said move to another city to wend then they cut us off there countered ll Kans ansdell dell pr practically acal the only reason those cities arent cut off Is because we arent there then how about some other cit cities es elsewhere where else questioned rani ran dell for or he had done much observation flying on some other continent perhaps in the other hemisphere there are no other cities suit able Nov nowhere here else in this world none the old globes which we found do not show them and we have never found any others but we have been told that the old population of the planet w was as one billion people 1 not at the end however 1 what happened dave Ralls ransdell dell for reply turned about to tony we can give today at least a partial answer to that tony looking about the little group of ills his council and I 1 think it can be considered pertinent to our discussion of our own emergency for we are dealing with a mechanism of living or of dying created not by ourselves but by the original people of this planet it certainly can only be of help to us to understand what they did professor philbin he said please plea sc tell us peter vanderbilt arose bully and suggested should not every one hear bear tills this certainly said tony open tile the doors and into the great room hundreds came in and stood for the hills halls without had been crowded nearly everybody was there except men on watch or detailed to definite errands 1 I can assume the little linguist began that you nil all haie bae learned what we who aho have been interpreting the books learned and rep reported ort some days ago of the time of lagon itol which was approximately two hundred years before this planet was torn from its suu sun lagon itol ito who was certainly a very grea great man one of enormous S perceptions and imagination considers in his diary the fate facing one billion people so ao we may put that as a rough figure for the population of this planet in his time but ut le he astutely observes that there would be e nothing like that number finally to face their fate and lie was right from ills his time the people of this planet rapidly reduced themselves in number by diminishing births probably there were barely ten millions of people of all ages when tho the disturbing star which they ca called lied borak came its closest and ca cast st them off into space the best of the energies ot of the dwindling millions had been put for two generations into these five cities which were planned located and created and equipped for the final defiance of extinction th they ey abandoned all older habitations and adopted these but where did they go in the end nd A dozen demanded it together of that mystery we have not yet philbin confessed a trace they had reduced themselves we know from a billion in number at the time of la lagon on itol two hundred years before to about ten millions barely 0 one 13 e per cent of th them em therefore were spared up to the time of 0 the catastrophe to attempt the tremendous task of further survival throughout at least tile the last five thousand years of their history cremation of the dead was universal among them we will find no cemeteries or entombments entomb ments except perhaps a very few archaic barrows from a very early age the people throughout their civilized period disposed of their dead la in a systematic orderly way now did the last ten million also dle die and as they went were they also cremated by their survivors so that we will find at the alie end only the bones of some small group who enduring to the last had disposed of those immediately before them or somehow did some of them escape it was tony presiding and having the advantage of having heard beard most of these facts before who first found words returning to our present problem he recalled his companions to that which had gathered them together it Is clear that we can find no other cities of the shielded type and equipped to combat the cold except the five we know for no others ever were built we know also that there Is no other generating station providing II 11 light lit and heat beat and power except that close to Gor fulu for no other ever was planned or built 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 jack taylors post when on watch was the northern gate the porte de Gor fulu duquesne had dubbed it recalling the fashion in paris of naming the gate after the city to which and from which its road ran eliot gazed out the gate along the road where the shadow of a post placed by the ancient people lay long and faint upon the ground there goes the sun he be said gosh its cold already I 1 but we can burn things to keep warm its humiliating but we can burn old wood or grain or a thousand things and keep warm for or a while anyway physically were not forced to go to them but can we be men and stay away exactly how can we how in the world how on bronson beta jack are we going to be able to get at them toned like to know but its got to be without too great a risk lie wont have us killed not too many a anyway well how many of us would he think worth while to lose if we took Gorfi alu do you yon think yoi yen yo i know how to do it whew that chill certainly comes on suns gone and d n little of it there was to go we simply made to be this far away from the sun BUD naif half a year from now be we made to be as near the be sun as well be it we live ull till then yes yea nello hello heres our relief and jack hailed the pair who appeared in the twilight of the street he passed them ills his report everything quiet and started up the street with eliot toward his quarters the hurry burry soldiers some one softly hailed from froin the darkness of a hooded doorway it was a girls voice tearing provocative both men halted who are you please soldiers were only friends caught out ont in the dark and needa needing protection jack laughed and knew ter ber before he turned on his flashlight marlin marian he demanded what are you doing here and who chos with you i then her companion cot col ton made herself known we were hoping marinn jackson said ns as tile the two girls walked lions along with the two young men for somebody to come by who lin knows how to turn on tile the hnit again not to speak of tile the lights were you in that building asked her W we were and I 1 tell you iti ti hard to open the boons now that the powers off they stick terribly what were yon doenz doin marlin clarl in shall ne ie tell thorn them shirley sharley why not well said marinn speaking carefully as though she might be overheard we decided wed med see what we could do as baits balts baits baits the chunks of meat trappers used to put in traps and like minnows on hooks books balts baits you know my ade idea L then said jack generously it must have been a pippin baits ive got the general underlying scheme of you girls now go on but theres nothing to go on to happened the fish elsh come comer no nibble no but give us time boy theres some way we know by which somebody still gets in and out of this city the idea Is we hope he or they it if two of em vall try to grab us well go alon along sabane women stuff eliot shirley put in what asked marian jackson ill tell you later dear shirley offered oh sniffed marlin marian peep deep stuff I 1 well anything they teach in the first six grades of the st louis grammar school Is lost on me still you got me curious what did the sabine women do shirley they went along shirley told her with the men from the other city who grabbed them and add then what did they do 30 darling they stayed with them as will I 1 ing ng little wives no stabbing after they found the way in and out no said shirley theres where the sabine women were different jack taylor whistled softly so what you little girls girl were up to he said perhaps its just as well we came along put but they rather show us up oh ell eliot dinner was a moody meal in the evening of that prolonged day after dark there were long iong restless periods and tonight eliot james jack taylor and peter with two more of the younger men crosby and tola met for a midnight discussion tony was not called to this informal council of his friends nor was ransdell tor for tony though personally the same with all of them yet was chief of tile the central authority be bore the responsibility and it if he forbade the enterprise on foot his friends could scarcely proceed so it was agreed not to let him know and ransdell too being charged with the security of the city had tetter better learn about the plan much later the five had bad gathered in vander bilts quarters the place delighted peter it was on a root roof but near an edge of the city where the shield sloped steeply down so the root roof there was not high and was easily reached by foot also it was especially well adapted for habitation in the present emergency when the heating apparatus prepared tor for the city had bad failed or rather had been cut off for the original builders had allowed for nonsuch emergency they had been dealing with ith elements respecting spec ting which they had no reason to allow for that factor of failure the internal In heat beat and radio activity of the core of the plant stoppage of that was unthinkable and so to them was the cutting of the power conduits to any of the cities therefore they had supplied no alternative heating arrangement As a consequence the |
