Charles Carr, page 10
“You will publish the news?” Lyon asked.
“Oh, yes. Now that the truth is known we must not keep it secret.”
“I agree,” Lyon said. “It is better that you should announce the facts than that the story should leak out as a rumour. Because the facts are not too bad.”
“To me,” said Leblanc, “it seems that they could hardly be worse.”
“But surely you see, Mr. President, that these fireballs aren’t so effective as the heat-devils.
From what we have learnt so far, they are not so easily directed. They seem usually to float at a height of from twenty to fifty metres. They don’t explode until they touch an obstruction.
They’d pass harmlessly over most of your buildings.”
“They’d fire an oxygen station.”
“Yes, but the stations could cope with the fire that started. They have their fire-fighting teams and equipment.”
Leblanc sighed.
“To me it is a nightmare,” he said. “What becomes of our plan now?”
“It continues, surely, Mr. President. I hope you will not allow yourself to be turned from the main purpose. It is possible that other devices may be used by the salamanders. We must watch for them and deal with them as they occur.”
“And meanwhile go on entrenching the oxygen stations?”
“Most certainly,” Lyon said impressively. Taylor saw that he was exerting all his formidable strength of character to hearten Leblanc.
“Remember the loss of an oxygen station throws an extra strain on the remaining stations,”
Lyon insisted. “You can’t afford to let the oxygen level drop again now. It would be a big blow to morale. If the salamanders try to fill in our trenches and restore the level, so that their heat-devils can cross, then the salamanders must be fought, that is all.”
Leblanc winced.
“You know that is a political issue. I am under pressure……”
“Then you must forgive my applying a contrary pressure,” Lyon said with a smile. “My advice is to continue the work that is going on at present. In addition you should get plenty of fire-fighting equipment distributed to all the farm settlements. Perhaps your ‘planes will be to give warning of fireballs that look likely to set alight any of your settlements or stations.”
“Or this town?”
Lyon nodded. “Locating the fireballs won’t be enough. We must find a means of destroying them. If you think ahead you will see the need for novel weapons. This is a great deal that I am asking you to organise, Mr. President.”
“It is,” said Leblanc, with a rare gleam of humour. “Nevertheless, I agree to your demands. I agree the more easily, Captain Lyon, because it is, in effect, you and not I who must carry out this reorganisation.”
16
Taylor was astounded. He had, as usual been seated unobtrusively beside Lyon, taking notes of what was said. Now he stared at Leblanc. Could he mean to hand over the presidency to Lyon? It was incredible, and yet it had sounded like that.
But Leblanc hastened to make his meaning clear.
“I believe,” he said, “that I can now take a step that I resolved on some time ago. It is a fateful step for the head of a pacifist state, but it is surely justified now. I ask you to take charge, under me, of all operations that become necessary.”
Lyon expressed no surprise.
“You speak of ‘taking charge’ and of ‘operations,’ Mr. President. You ask me, in fact, to become the military leader of your people, responsible only to you?”
Leblanc sighed. “Those words would have seemed blasphemous to me a short time ago.
Now our existence is threatened. Here on Bel we are the last survivors of the human race, and I can see that our principles must be sacrificed. I believe that we understand each other very well
- you and I, Lyon.”
“Yes,” Lyon said. “I’ve understood your problems for a long time now, and I’ve sympathised with you.”
“One of my problems,” Leblanc said, “was to choose the right time to present you to my people as” - he hesitated, and then went on deliberately - “their war chief. It was difficult. But already they are apprehensive. And now, when they are told of this new threat of the salamanders, they must accept what I propose.”
“Why don’t you take command yourself?” Lyon asked bluntly.
“I cannot. You say you have sympathised with me, and I am grateful. But how can you - the fighter - understand the true pacifist - the pacifist by birth and conviction? I see the need to fight, but my feelings go too deep for me to direct the fighting. There would be a conflict within me, and I should fail. But you - you have the qualities we need - the drive, the steadfastness, the will to attack.”
“You flatter me.” Lyon said. “I need not tell you that it is a hard task you offer me. But I accept it.”
Leblanc gave a sigh of relief. “I can perhaps lighten that task to some extent. I will give you what political support I can. There will be opposition, of course, from the extremists.”
“From the fanatics.” Lyon shrugged his shoulders. “They must be dealt with if they become troublesome.”
“I will do what I can.”
“There is another matter,” Lyon went on. “You have been generous in ascribing certain qualities to me. But, for what they are worth, those qualities are common to all my men out on the reservation. You must recognise that I have gifted scientists and technicians among my people. I would match them against yours at any time, and in the war we are fighting they will contribute more than yours to victory.”
Leblanc was embarrassed. “Since you say so,” he began. “But I find it difficult to believe -“
He was staring doubtfully at Taylor, who reddened under his gaze.
“You must try to rid yourself, please said Lyon, “of all notions of racial superiority. It has stood between us ever since I landed with my crew. Taylor here is a very well-qualified engineer. But I am giving him other duties now. I wasn’t referring to him, but to men such as Kraft, my Chief Scientist. You know him already, though you have seen nothing of his work.
It is good, I assure you. And there are others. They are busy already, working in your cause.”
“Yes,” said Leblanc. “You are right, of course. We must close our ranks. We are one people now.”
“If you can get others to see that, Mr. President, we shall succeed.”
“I shall do my best,” Leblanc promised. “Within an hour I shall give a broadcast talk. I shall speak of what we have said.”
“Good!” said Lyon. “I suggest that you should introduce me, and let me speak after you.”
“Yes, you must make yourself known to all the people.”
“Not only that. I must tell them what I expect of them.”
Leblanc and Lyon began hastily to prepare their speeches. Lyon dismissed Taylor.
“Speak to Harper at the reservation,” he said. “Tell him to fly in with Kraft, if he’s fit to travel, and Loddon.”
Taylor passed the message to Harper, saying that he would send a ‘plane.
“Thanks,” said Harper. “Tell Lyon that Kraft will come with me. What’s happening in Una?”
“The best news is that Lyon’s been put in command against the salamanders. But he’ll tell you all about that himself.”
Harper chuckled over the radio.
“That’s quick promotion,” he said. “There’s just one other thing. We sighted a queer object, something like a red star, passing over here. I thought you should know.”
“They cause a fire if they touch anything,” Taylor told him.
“You’ve seen others, then?”
“I’ll leave Lyon to tell you about that, too. But you should organise fire-fighters. Foam extinguishers would be best.”
After that Taylor rang Nesina, who said she was going home again. He joined her there, and they sat side by side to listen to the President’s broadcast talk.
It was hard for Taylor to judge what the effect would be on the audience at whom the speech was aimed. But it seemed to him that Leblanc struck the right note.
He gave the listeners a factual and unemotional account of the fireball attack. He did not minimise the danger, but made it clear that the menace was neither supernatural nor invincible.
So far his tone had been quiet and matter-of-fact. Next he spoke of the ethics involved, and in this he became more eloquent and persuasive.
They must ask themselves, he said, whether their faith allowed them to resist the attack of a power that already existed on Bel before they themselves arrived there. The answer was plain.
The salamanders were living creatures, but their aggression came from hell - the hell of the hot side. The human race was justified in opposing the attack, not only by passive defence, but by more active measures.
“Defence,” he concluded, “we can compass ourselves. But to go further than that, though it is vital to us, is something for which our lives hitherto have not prepared us. We need not feel ashamed, therefore, to seek guidance outside our own community. For this purpose, until the danger is passed from us, we need a leader. Happily one has been found. I shall now present him to you.”
And after that Lyon spoke. He told of the steps that had already been taken, and of the success achieved. “You must prepare for a long struggle and a hard one,” he said. “You must be organised to fight for yourselves and for each other. And since you must fight, fight whole-heartedly.”
When it was over, Nesina switched off the radio. Taylor prepared to relax. He felt heartened and confident. When Nesina turned to him, however, he saw her stricken face with a shock of surprise and dismay.
“It is a declaration of war,” she said. “War! We are going back into a dark age.”
“The battle is joined,” he replied. “We’re all in it together. You must believe that we shall go through the darkness into the light again.”
“You are so very sure,” she said. For a moment she closed her eyes wearily. Then she looked at him again, bracing herself. “I feel that you will win.”
He laughed. “I! I am a very small cog in the new war machine. But I rely on my leader. I know him. He is -“
” You may rely on him. But I rely on you,” she said. “You are my hope. Mine.”
Taylor had to leave soon after that. As he left the building, a tall man passed him, going in the opposite direction. It was Sanger. He stared inquisitively at Taylor, but he did not speak.
17
“I’m ready now,” said Loddon.
With Taylor and Kraft he stood beside an intricate apparatus of coiled tubes surmounted by a long cylinder.
“All ready for the Skipper,” Loddon went on with cheerful irreverence. “We could try it before he comes.”
“You’d better wait for him,” Taylor said.
He turned and stared back along the road to the city. An area of open country had been chosen for the tests. It was flat ground, clear of all high vegetation, a desolate place under the grey sky. But for all that it was barely fifteen kilometres from Una; and Lyon, when he joined them, would come not by ‘plane but by car.
Loddon squatted easily on his heels. He still loved to test the suppleness of limbs that once had been stiff with age, and now felt young again. He grinned up at Taylor.
“You’re the boss now. Queer to think there was a time when I could give you orders.”
Taylor grinned back at him. “I’m one of the boss’s assistants, Chief, and a long way down the list at that - too far down to get conceited.”
“You must explain that headquarters organisation of yours to me some time,” Loddon said.
Then he looked up at the Chief Scientist and spoke more seriously.
“This target practice, Kraft,” he said. “It may show us something, but not a lot. What I need to test the thing on is a real live salamander - if they are alive.”
Kraft had been making adjustments to an instrument like a large camera. It was evidently heavy. He set down his burden before he replied to the engineer.
“There’s no doubt that they’re alive,” said Kraft. “If you’d seen them, as I have -“
“All right, all right! But what are they made of? Metal, silicon - or what? If I knew that it would be easier.”
Kraft shrugged his shoulders. “I saw one of them blown to dust by blast. And they move quite fast.”
“That may help you,” said Loddon. “It doesn’t help me much. What do they think with?
How do they see?”
“They don’t see.”
“Then how do they locate the oxygen plants?” Loddon argued. “They don’t grope round blindly for them, by all accounts. They make straight for them, and then set the Heat-devils on to them. They’ve never made a mistake.”
“They must have something - some organ of perception,” Kraft said. “But probably it’s outside our experience; it might even be outside our comprehension.”
“In other words,” grumbled the engineer, “you don’t understand ‘em. I’m glad to hear that, because I don’t understand ‘em either. Another thing I don’t see is why they don’t burn out, so to speak. Whatever they’re made of, surely the temperature -“
Kraft shook his head. “I wouldn’t start theorising, if I were you. There’s not enough to go on. And you’re thinking of them in terms of human beings. You shouldn’t. I mean that you want them to have eyes like ours -“
“Not like ours,” Loddon interrupted. “I think of them as animals of a sort. What else can I do? They’re an adaptation of the shug, aren’t they? And the shug has an eye, and lives nearly as long as a man.”
“But anything like an eye must disappear on the hot side,” Kraft said. “And it isn’t necessary that they should live for long. Their individual lives may be infinitely short compared with ours, or compared with that of a shug in the temperate belt. They may have some sort of collective consciousness, inherited intelligence -“
“Who’s theorising without data now?” Loddon said derisively. He stood up, quickly.
“Here’s the Skipper coming.”
A car drew near to them, and Lyon stepped out and joined them.
“Ready?” he asked. “What are you going to show me?”
Loddon answered. “Stationary targets first, sir.”
“Wait,” said Lyon quickly. “Who’s that man?”
He pointed to a robed figure standing by one of the cars.
“He’s my driver, sir,” Taylor said. “I know you want no spectators, but we shall need him for the moving targets and the other test. He won’t talk.”
“He’d better not,” said Lyon. “Now, Chief.”
Standing about a hundred metres away were the metal screens, each two metres high.
Loddon aligned his cylinder and pressed a button. With an angry hiss the blast shot out in a thin, straight stream. The right-hand screen became incandescent. Leddon shifted his aim. The centre screen flashed white hot, buckled and fell. So did that on the left.
“H’m. Now double the range,” said Lyon.
“No use, sir,” Loddon told him.
“I want to see.”
Taylor signalled to the man in the robe. A screen was set up at two hundred metres. But at that distance Loddon’s cylinder was ineffective.
“I didn’t claim any more than a hundred and twenty metres for the thing at the outside, sir,”
Loddon protested.
Lyon nodded. “I know. I’m not blaming you. Let’s see it hit something moving.”
Taylor was ready for that test. He had a screen mounted on a metal sled and harnessed to his car by means of a long cable. At the shorter range Loddon demonstrated the efficiency of his weapon.
“H’m,” said Lyon again. “Now let’s see your box of tricks, Kraft.”
“It registers and locates movement,” the Chief Scientist explained. He opened the instrument to reveal a viewing panel.
“What sort of movement?” Lyon asked.
“It depends on the distance,” Kraft said. “But any reasonably large body, of any solidity.”
“A salamander?”
“Yes, certainly a salamander.”
“A heat-devil?”
“No.”
“Try with that driver of yours, Taylor. Tell him he won’t be in any danger.”
The man, as soon as he began walking, was registered on the screen.
“Now,” Lyon directed, “we’ll use your car. Tell the driver to go over that way, about five kilometres, and then turn in a wide circle and drive back here.”
“Good work!” said Loddon approvingly, when the test was over.
But Lyon was still not satisfied.
“We’ll have another run, with the car towing a sled. And you, Taylor, take a walk over in that direction.”
Thus Taylor did not witness the test, but when he returned to the little group Lyon was summing up the results.
“I’m disappointed with your blast device, Loddon.”
“It’s limited, I know, sir,” said the engineer. “I might narrow the jet and increase the distance, but even so -“
Lyon nodded. “I’m not blaming you. Don’t think that. But you can get fifty metres with a small blast-gun, which is a lot lighter and handier than this. Don’t waste more time on this thing. We’ll have it put into production, though. It could be used on tracked and armoured vehicles. Go on working at the other thing we discussed.”
“Sir,” said Loddon.
Lyon turned to Kraft.
“This indicator of yours is something like what we want. It’s good for a single moving object, but you saw what happened when there were several in the field. There were some confused images. Can you make it more selective?”
“I think so, sir,” the Chief Scientist replied, “given time.”
“That’s something I can’t give you,” said Lyon curtly. “Or rather, something that the salamanders won’t give any of us. We’ll get back to headquarters now, and see what reports they’ve collected. There was a lot of news coming in when I left. We’ll see whether the staff have sorted it out yet.”
