“You’ve been lucky, then, haven’t you?” and the bitterness that dripped from his words was tinged with the acidulous cynicism of the man who knows he has thrown his life away.

  The man opened a gate in the wall where he had stopped, poked his head inside, and looked around the yard. He glanced swiftly to right and left. The view which the Liberal leader now had of the tramp struck him as being incongruous. It was rather like looking at a tortoise with its head out, except that from the Liberal leader’s vantage point the head was invisible. The head suddenly re-appeared from around the door.

  “O.K.,” whispered the tramp. “Come on; follow me!” Blindly, obediently the Liberal leader followed. They were in a yard about five yards long and three or four yards wide. High stone walls on either side separated it from adjoining yards. Ahead of them were a number of outbuildings which obviously formed the rear portion of a shop. A glance at the empty packing cases laying around the doors of the outbuildings, told the Liberal leader that the tramp’s nose had not led them astray. This was a hardware merchant’s weapon business. The Liberal leader hurried to one crate which had obviously contained a standardized form of hand blaster, much favored by sportsmen, and those whose lives involved shooting for sport and survival—hunters and military men. But the hand blaster box was empty. He swore softly under his breath. The tramp had not wasted a second glance on the packing cases, and the Liberal leader realized that here was the difference between experience and the enthusiastic hit-and-miss method of the amateur. The tramp was an experienced scavenger. The politician was in the best possible hands.

  “This one’s open,” whispered the tramp, softly. The two men sidled in through the door of the outbuilding. “Time is short, someone will be out from the shop in a minute.”

  A few moments later the Liberal leader had his pockets bulging with hand blasters and ammunition. He moved more slowly with the additional weight, but he was soon out of the door and out of the yard. He closed the gate behind him.

  “You got your money’s worth, didn’t you?” said the tramp. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

  “You’re not talkative, are you, among your other faults?” demanded the Liberal leader toughly.

  The tramp’s eyes dilated with fear.

  “No, no,” he cried and backed away, “honest I’m not.”

  “I didn’t think you were,” said the Liberal leader. That sudden flash of terror in the tramp’s face told the Liberal leader something of the psychological confusion behind the man’s wretched condition.

  “O.K.,” he said, “you played it straight with me, now I’m going to play it straight with you. I want you to forget you ever saw me. I’m leaving, and I want you to beat it.”

  “Right,” said the tramp, “anything you say!” And with fear unmistakably written over his face, the tramp disappeared around the comer at the end of the alleyway.

  The Liberal leader selected a small plastic garbage disposal can that stood outside one of the yard gates. In spite of modem, more efficient methods, some of the less progressive firms still took advantage of the rather spasmodic collection service for certain types of refuse. With a swift glance either way to make sure he wasn’t observed, the Liberal leader emptied the trash from the plastic container and filled it with the guns and ammunition which he had taken from the shop a few yards away. From a packing case in the store he had also taken a length of cord. It was a flexible plastic which was much stronger than its modest diameter indicated. The politician lashed the little plastic container firmly shut, raised the manhole cover, and began lowering the precious weapons into the shaft by which he had ascended. He remembered the tramp had said that not far away was a restaurant. He had a good memory, and retraced his steps down the alleyway again until he reached the restaurant yard. Emboldened by his previous success he walked briskly inside, and, finding the yard empty, made a direct attack on the first door. It proved to be the door of a large freezer.

  With his teeth chattering in the sub-zero temperatures the politician again stuffed his pockets with goods—with whatever food he could see. He emptied another refuse container and put the tins and sealed plastic packages into it. Then, deciding that he had done very well indeed on that particular expedition, he climbed back down the ladder, clutching the canister of food in one hand.

  Before climbing down he had paused, and balancing by his legs alone he had replaced the manhole cover as best he could. It had been a tricky and difficult moment, but, at least, it wasn’t an open invitation to whoever-might-miss-the-merchandise to come looking for him down that hole. The guns and the food seemed heavy by the time he arrived back at the headquarters in the old engineer’s room, but his reward was the eager expressions on the faces of the resistance men as they unloaded his impromptu packing cases.

  Dan Matheson got to work on the food.

  ^Delicious-looking selection,” he commended. “May I congratulate you?”

  Coningsby rubbed his ample paunch in an anticipatory fashion.

  “Delectable,” he said, as he tucked in.

  The tadpolian professor nodded his agreement.

  Looking at his enormous head, the Liberal leader was reminded of a large round child’s balloon.

  “Having fortified the inner man,” said the President “perhaps we can take a few further steps towards the downfall of Recman!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - BILL STOKES

  With powerful, muscular strokes Bill’s enormous limbs propelled his great powerful body through the dark waters of the uncanny subterranean river. Strange, incongruous thoughts came to his mind. This ought not, strictly speaking, to be called a subterranean river, he thought. ‘Terra’ meant ‘earth’, and there was only one Earth. This wasn’t it. This was Gimel. Perhaps this ought to be called a sub-Gimelanean river? The word didn’t sound half as good as ‘subterranean.’ There was a certain connotation with ‘subterranean’ in the mind, an association of ideas, and those ideas did not associate with a hybrid, newly coined word like ‘sub-Gimelanian’ or ‘sub-Gimelian.’ It wasn’t right, somehow; it didn’t fit. . .

  He was counting the strokes as he took them. Twenty-five ... twenty-six. . .there was not much breathing space between the top of the water and the tunnel through which it flowed.

  The feat which Bill was undertaking required an enormous amount of courage and a very high degree of physical skill and ability. It would be grossly untrue to say that Bill was a man who did not know the meaning of fear. It would also have been grossly untrue to say that in any circumstances was Bill Stokes a coward. The real hero is not the man who does not know the meaning of fear, but a man who is afraid, perhaps terribly afraid, and is able to overcome his fear. To do a thing which we find easy is not courage. Real courage is to perform a task which we find desperately difficult.

  Bill Stokes did not suffer from claustrophobia, or even his tremendous courage would have been taxed almost beyond endurance, but he had a natural healthy dislike of the waters which enclosed him. All kinds of odd analogies went flashing through his mind. He imagined that he was a speck of plankton being swallowed by a whale. Stokes continued to swim, counting every stroke he made. He didn’t increase his pace; he didn’t slow down. His lungs were coming very close to the limit of their capacity. To ease the pressure on his rib muscles, he eased out a few cubic centimeters of air. He lost the improvised snorkle which the professor had given him. It made no substantial difference to the oxygen content of his lungs, but it did relieve some of the cramping effect on his pectoral muscles which the prolonged breath-holding had produced. He reached the last stroke which the professor had calculated as necessary. His face met air at the surface. The air was tainted with a smell that was horrible and unmistakable. Bill Stokes could smell death. More than that; he could smell decay. The air was putrid! In spite of the unpleasantness of the air which he was now called upon to breathe, he had to empty and refill his lungs, and his body seemed grateful. Even tainted oxygen is better than no oxygen at all. He trod water and looked around. He gradually became accustomed to the grim Stygian darkness. He saw a dark shaft leading up, and he caught his breath, this time from excitement not necessity.

  Stokes was a man to whom action was the very breath of life. He was already overcoming the natural revulsion which he felt towards the putrescent odor that filled the space in which he trod water. He swam to the base of the shaft. It was about thirty-six inches above the top of the water in which he swam. A few slight movements were enough to maintain his position, with relation to the current, which did not move very swiftly at this particular point.

  In other reaches, not very far from where he now swam in leisurely fashion, the river moved far more rapidly. Bill’s immediate problem was to find some way of giving himself a start in that tunnel. He let himself sink to see whether the river bed was near enough to the surface to give him an adequate footing from which to kick upwards. Unfortunately, this was not the case. He bit his lip in frustration as he came to the surface again. The difference between a man and an animal is partly in man’s superior problem-solving ability. But the solving of problems is only one mental function. As long ago as the twentieth century apes and monkeys had 128

  even been taught such interesting concepts as primitive recognition of the use of money. One brilliant twentieth-century psychologist had even given money to the apes in his charge in exchange for performing certain specified acts. Machines in the cages produced food in exchange for coins. Some of the apes, however, hoarded their coins instead of using them immediately in the machines which were provided in the cages by the psychologists doing the experiments.

  Stokes continued to tread water as he surveyed the hole. There were, he thought, a number of basic ways to solve any problem. The first was straightforward trial and error. This was not a particularly human way of solving a problem. It had not lifted man above the animal creation Bill Stokes continued to turn the problem over in his mind, trial and error wasn’t going to help him much. What other ways were there of solving problems, he wondered? There was the associative approach. Some problems are solved because we tackle them in a way in which we have tackled similar problems. We are presented with a piece of long multiplication or a piece of long division to do, in a mathematical paper then; we multiply or divide by means of a method which we have found successful when faced with similar mathematics problems. When a man is short of money he goes and gets a job and earns some, because he has found that in the past his behavior—that is, working—had produced the money that he requires. But Stokes was now faced with a situation which, though it had certain parallels in his past experience, did not have an exact parallel. He continued to tread water tirelessly. His brain raced logically onwards pursuing its train of thought. There were four stages in what might be termed genuine problem solving, he decided. The first stage was an accurate realization of the problem. The second stage was a kind of codifying step in which all relevant past experience was brought to bear on the particular problem. The third step seemed to lie in the formulation of a hypothesis, or the putting forward of a theory as to how the problem might be solved. The fourth, and most important stage, was the testing of the hypothesis, putting the theory into practice and seeing whether it worked. These four processes did not necessarily have to follow in the order in which Stokes had just mulled them over in his mind. After the realization of the problem it might be possible to throw forward a hypothesis of some kind before really calling upon past experience. The first thing to do was to realize the problem. Here he was, a man weighing more than two hundred and sixty pounds. The thing he had to do was to raise his two hundred and sixty pounds a distance of thirty-six inches for a sufficiently long period of time to obtain a satisfactory grip on the lower reaches of the tunnel mouth, the end of that shaft above his head. There were other factors influencing his problem:

  One—the shaft was slippery.

  Two—the substance that made it slippery was decaying organic matter. It reeked of death, and psychologically, there was the problem of his own natural revulsion to overcome.

  In addition, he knew that he must bear in mind that strong as he was, there was a limit to even his colossal strength.

  He glowered angrily at the shaft above his head, but he was coming no nearer to a solution of the problem that assailed him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - INTO THE DEN

  Bill Stokes knew that he must find a solution, or swim back and admit failure. If there was one thing that he liked least in life, it was admitting failure, either in himself, or in others ...

  Time passed and still no answer presented itself. From somewhere behind him, Stokes heard a splash. It was not the sort of splash that would be associated with a stone, or a falling corpse. It was a controlled splash, like a small animal diving into the water, carefully, and deliberately, and with the skill of long practice. The kind of splash that a small seal might make.

  Stokes knew that those little aquatic mammals did not live and move and have their being in underground rivers in Gimel. Gimel’s seas were not without their seals. Some had been imported from Earth long ago by one of the pioneer expeditions .. .

  Another thought passed rapidly through Stokes' mind, and it was not one that filled him with any degree of enthusiasm. In fact, big and tough as he was, Bill Stokes shuddered! The word rats kept presenting itself on the screen of his consciousness. It was a program that he world dearly have loved to turn off. He tried to argue that rats wouldn’t have been able to get in. They wouldn’t have been able to swim as far up the underground river as this, but why not? he asked himself interrogatively. He was there. It had been said long ago on distant Earth that where a man can go a rat can go, too, usually more efficiently. It had been said, and truly, that there are some places in the world which are inaccessible to men, but there are no places in the world which are inaccessible to rats.

  Stokes took a deep breath and floated silently. He made no movements or sound; still he could hear the noise of something swimming very close to him. He turned his head gently and there was a dark brown body moving sleekly past him in the darkness. It was a huge rat—all of two feet long, and it looked very prosperous and well fed.

  Bill’s stomach flipped wildly and finished up by twisting into a knot of revulsion.

  “Ugh!” said Stokes out loud, as he contemplated the rat. He lacked the professor’s intellectual tolerance of rats and couldn’t control his natural revulsion.

  The sleek monster paddled unconcernedly on its way. It occurred to Stokes that, noxious as the rat’s diet might be, its size did at least ensure that the rodent was well-fed and a well-fed rat is less dangerous than a lean and hungry rat. The immortal bard had made a similar comparison about men.

  Stokes continued to tread water, but his thoughts were filled with pictures of the rat. He knew that rats were gregarious beasts, if a group of beasts can be said to be gregarious! Stokes changed his thought pattern. Was he going insane in his struggle with the underground river. He laughed at the incongruity of his own thought processes at that juncture. What a time to be thinking of the personalities of rats!

  There was a clang and a crash above him. It came echoing down the shaft. Stokes looked up grimly in the darkness. He moved back, for there was the sound of grinding machinery. Something indescribable that had once been a human being began to drip into the water. Stokes retched violently, swam to the side of the tunnel where the water was shallower and leaned on the tunnel wall for support. There was the smell of fresh blood in the air. The grinding grew louder. It rose to a whining frenzy. There was a horrible grating noise, a jarring grinding shudder that dislodged particles and then there was quiet, a silence, the sound of nonlife that was more horrible and sinister than the grinding had been. The dripping stopped. The great rat swam back, accompanied by two others. They began feeding in a leisurely manner. Stokes was sick again.

  Above him he could hear voices. He listened intently to the conversation. By a chance in a million, had the grinding mechanism broken down? Perhaps one of the dead man’s shoes, or a metal buckle that he had been wearing had proved too much for it.

  Stokes thought grimly that the machinery had probably been overworked since Recman took power of the masses. Light suddenly appeared in the shaft, and there was a scrape of the mechanism being hauled up the side. A voice said:

  “We’ll have to free it from underneath.”

  Another voice said:

  “I’ll use the side tunnel.”

  Side tunnel? Stokes pricked up his ears. He swam soundlessly back to the base of the shaft at the center of the river. A man appeared, or rather a man’s foot appeared, at the base of the shaft. Stokes saw the whole picture now. The side tunnel, which was an obvious necessity if the mechanism was going to be repaired, must run parallel to the main shaft, then branch in such a way that it came out under the grinders, so that repairmen could climb down and along it, and work at the device from underneath. Stokes looked at the foot. The man was obviously sitting in some kind of cradle or ledge that was there specifically for that purpose. Stokes dived under the water to give him the impetus that he needed. He only hoped that the man would be firmly lodged in his cradle. A lot depended on that. Bill came up through the water like a torpedo, a strong right hand locked around the ankle of the man in the tunnel. The man lurched forward, clutching desperately at a projecting stanchion . . . Bill’s left hand seized his other ankle. With a powerful, athletic heave, Stokes used the dictator’s mechanic as though he were a human rope. Within seconds, Bill was standing in the entrance of the repair tunnel. A voice came down the shaft.

  “You all right, Alvin?”

  Stokes had a gigantic hand over the repairman’s mouth. He hissed in the man’s ear:

  “Tell him that everything is all right, or die now.”

  “Yes, I just slipped,” replied the repairman as Stokes took his hand away. Stokes nodded approvingly.

 

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