For the first time since the coming of the comet, Ken sensed defeat in
his father. Professor Maddox seemed to believe at last that they were
powerless before the invader out of space. He seemed like a runner who
has used his last reserve of strength to reach a goal on which his eye
has been fixed, only to discover the true goal is yet an immeasurable
distance ahead.
Professor Maddox had believed with all his heart and mind that they had
hurdled the last obstacle with the construction of the pilot projector.
With it gone, and all their tools and instruments and notes, there was
simply nothing.
As Ken considered the problem, it seemed to him the situation was not as
bad as first appeared. The most important thing had not been lost. This
was the knowledge, locked in their own minds, of what means could
prevail against the dust. Beyond this, the truly essential mechanical
elements for starting over again were also available.
Art Matthews had been very busy, and he had parts enough for six more
motor-generator sets. These were decontaminated and sealed in protective
packing. It would be only a matter of hours to assemble one of them, and
that would power any supersonic projector they might choose to build.
And they _could_ still choose to build one. In the radio supply stores
of the town, and in the junk boxes of the members of the science club,
there were surely enough components to build several times over the
necessary number of generator elements. In the barns and chicken sheds
of the valley there was plenty of aluminum sheeting to build reflectors.
The more he considered it, the more possible it seemed to take up from
where they had left off the night before the fire. There was one
important question Ken asked himself, however: Why stop with a replica
of the small pilot model they had built on the roof of Science Hall?
As long as they were committed to building a projector to test for
effectiveness, they might as well build a full-scale instrument, one
that could take its place as an actual weapon against the dust. If there
were errors of design, these could be changed during or after
construction. He could see no reason at all for building a mere 30-foot
instrument again.
The greatest loss suffered in the fire was that of the chemistry
laboratory and its supplies and reagents. Materials for running tests on
the dust could not be replaced, nor could much of their microchemical
apparatus. The electron microscope, too, was gone. These losses would
have to be made up, where necessary, by having such work done by
Pasadena, Schenectady or Detroit. If the projector were as successful as
all preliminary work indicated, there would be little need for further
testing except as a matter of routine check on the concentration of dust
in the atmosphere.
Before approaching his father, Ken talked it over with his fellow
members of the science club. He wanted to be sure there was no loophole
he was overlooking.
"Labor to build the reflector is what we haven't got," said Joe Walton.
"It would take months, maybe a whole year, for us to set up only the
framework for a 250-foot bowl!"
"Getting the lumber alone would be a community project," said Al.
"That's what it's going to be," Ken answered. "Johnson is behind us.
He'll give us anything we want, if he knows where to get it. I don't
think there's any question of his authorizing the construction by the
men here."
There was nothing else they could think of to stand in the way of the
project.
It had been two days since the fire, but Ken's father still seemed
stunned by it. After dinner, he sat in his old chair where he used to
read, but he did not read now. He sat for hours, staring at the opposite
corner of the room.
Professor Larsen seemed locked in a similar state of shock. In addition
to his wife's death, this destruction of their entire scientific
facilities seemed a final blow from which he could not recover.
Ken recognized, too, that there was a burden these men had carried that
no one else knew. That was the burden of top-level responsibility for a
major portion of the world's effort against the "invader." It was an
Atlas-like burden that men could not carry without suffering its
effects.
Ken approached them that evening, after he and Maria had helped his
mother with her chores and had gathered snow to melt overnight for their
next day's water supply.
"Dad," Ken said, "I've been wondering when we could get started on the
project again. The fellows in the club are all ready to go. I guess most
everyone else is, too."
His father looked as if Ken had just uttered something absolutely
unintelligible. "Start!" he cried. "Start what? How can we start
anything? There's nothing left to work with, absolutely nothing!"
Ken hesitated, an ache in his heart at the defeat he saw in his father's
eyes. He held out his hands. "We've got these," he said. He tapped the
side of his head. "And this."
Professor Maddox's face seemed to relax a trifle. He looked at his son
with a faint suggestion of a smile on his lips. "Yes? What do you
propose to do with them?"
Carefully, then, Ken outlined the results of his inventory. "Art can
build up to six engines, if we need them. We've got plenty of electronic
parts, and tubes big enough to put 60 or 70 kilowatts of supersonic
energy in a beam. We don't want to build a little reflector again; we
want to put up a full-scale instrument. When that's done, build another
one, and still another, until we've used every scrap of material
available in the valley. By that time maybe we'll have some cars running
and can go to Frederick and other towns for more parts."
Ken's father leaned back in his chair, his eyes closed. "If enthusiasm
could do it, we could look forward to such a structure the day after
tomorrow."
"Maybe enthusiasm _can_ do it," said Professor Larsen quietly. "I
believe the boy is right. We've let ourselves despair too much because
of the fire. We still have the necessary principles in our heads. If Ken
is right, we've got the materials. The only problem is that you and I
are a pair of old, exhausted men, without the necessary enthusiasm and
energy. Perhaps we can borrow enough of that from these boys. I'm in
favor of undertaking it!"
By the light of oil lamps they planned and talked until far past
midnight. There were still no objections to be found outside the labor
problem. When they were through, rough drawings and calculations for the
first projector were finished.
"Such a projector could surely reach well into the stratosphere," said
Professor Larsen. "With the tremendous velocities of the air masses at
those heights, one projector should be able to process hundreds of tons
of atmosphere per day."
"I am wondering," said Professor Maddox, "if we should not make the
reflector parabolic instead of hyperbolic. We may disperse our energy
too widely to be effective at high levels."
"I think not. The parabola would narrow the beam to little more than its
initial diameter and would concentrate the energy more than is required.
With the power Ken speaks of, I believe the hyperbolic form could carry
an effective wave into the stratosphere. We'll make some calculations
for comparison tomorrow."
* * * * *
They authorized Ken to speak with the Sheriff the following day.
"I've been wondering when I'd see some of you people," Johnson said
bluntly. "What are you doing about the mess on the hill?"
"My father thought maybe you'd drop in," said Ken.
The Sheriff shook his head. "It's your move. I just wondered if you had
any ideas, or if this fire had knocked the props out from under you."
"It did, but now we're ready to go, and we need help." Briefly, Ken gave
a description of the projector they planned to build. "Labor is the
problem for us. If we could have all the carpenters in town, and all who
could be spared from woodcutting and every other activity for 2 or 3
weeks I think we could get it done."
"You know how many men are left," said Johnson. "Between the war with
the nomads and the epidemic of flu, one-third of those we had when this
started are dead. A third of the ones left are sick, and quite a few of
those on their feet have to take care of the ones that aren't."
"I know," said Ken.
"You know how the people feel about you scientists?"
"Yes."
The Sheriff stared at him a long time before continuing. "It won't be
easy, but we'll do it. When do you want to start?"
"Tomorrow morning. In Jenkin's pasture, north of town."
"How many men?"
"All the carpenters you can get and a hundred others to rustle materials
and tear down old buildings."
"I meet with the Council this afternoon to go over work assignments.
You'll have your men in the morning."
The rest of the day, Ken and his fellow club members chose the exact
spot to erect the projector and staked it out. They spotted the nearest
buildings that could be dismantled for materials, and made estimates of
how much they needed.
The following morning they met again on the site, and there were ten men
from town, in addition to the college students and others who had taken
part in the research on College Hill.
"Are you all Johnson could spare?" Ken asked the group.
The nearest man shook his head. "They were assigned. No one else would
come. They think you are wasting your time; they think you can't do
anything about the comet. A lot of them are like Meggs and Granny Wicks:
they think you shouldn't _try_ to do anything about it."
Ken felt a blaze of anger. "Sometimes, I think they're right!" he said
bitterly. "Maybe it would be better if we just let the whole thing go!"
"Now don't get me wrong," the man said. "We're on your side. We're here,
aren't we? I'm just telling you what they say and think in town."
"I know and I'm sorry. These other fellows will tell you what we need
done. I'm going to ride in to see Johnson."
The Sheriff was not in his office. Ken was told he had gone over to the
food warehouse where rations were being distributed. There was some
rumor of a disturbance.
Ken remounted his horse and rode to the warehouse. As he approached, he
saw the lineup before the distribution counter was motionless. In front
of the counter, Sheriff Johnson stood with a pair of revolvers in his
hands, holding back the crowd.
He glanced at Ken and said, "Don't tell me! I know you haven't any
workers out there today. They're here in line, trying to collect
groceries without working!"
"We're not going to work so those scientists on the hill can have the
fat of everything!" a man near the head of the line shouted. Others
echoed him with cries of hysteria.
Ken felt his disgust and disappointment vanish before a wave of genuine
fear. These people had ceased to be anything but frightened, hungry
animals. Their capacity for rational action had all but disappeared
under the strains they had suffered. They were ready to lash out at
anything that appeared a suitable target for their own hysterical anger
and panic.
It was useless to expect them to help with the projector. The crew of
scientists and students would have to do it alone, no matter how many
weeks it took.
Sheriff Johnson, however, had no such thought. He fired a bullet over
the heads of the crowd and brought them to silence. "Listen to me," he
said. "I know you're sick and hungry and scared. There's not a man or
woman in this valley who isn't, and that includes me and the members of
the Council, and those you tried to burn off College Hill.
"You don't know how good you've got it! You don't deserve it as good as
you've got. You people should have been with those in Chicago or in San
Francisco. You should have known what it was really like to be suddenly
cut off from every ounce of food beyond that which was in your own
cupboards. You should have known what it was like to fight day after day
in the streets of a burning city without knowing why you were fighting,
or having any hope of victory.
"You've gone through your battle, and you've won, and you're still here,
and there's food left. A lot of us are still going to die before the
epidemic is over. We haven't the medical means to save us all. But some
of us will come out of it, and every one has just as good a chance as
his neighbor.
"That's not important. It doesn't make much difference whether any one
of us stays alive now, or dies in 50 years. What is important is trying
to keep the world alive, and that's what these scientists are doing.
"While you accuse them of every crime in the book, they are the only
chance the world has got for survival!"
"They can't do anything about it!" a woman shouted. "They're just making
it up to get more than the rest of us!"
The crowd started to take up its cry again.
"Shut up!" the Sheriff thundered at them. "I repeat: you don't deserve
to be as lucky as you are! But you aren't going to get out of taking
your part in pulling things back together again. Help is needed out
there north of town, and you're going to help.
"You help or you don't eat!"
A roar of rage thundered from the group. One man stepped forward. "You
can't pull a thing like this, Johnson. We've got guns, too. We've used
them before, and we can use them again!"
"Then you had better go home and get them right now," said Johnson. "My
men and I will be waiting for you. I suppose there could be a lot more
of you than there are of us, so you can probably shoot us down. Then you
can eat all you want for a month, and die. Go get your gun, Hank, and
come after your rations!"
The man turned to the crowd. "Okay, you heard what he said! Let's go and
get 'em!"
He strode away, then turned back to beckon his followers. In the empty
street before the converted theater, he stood alone. "Come on!" he
cried. "Who's coming with me?"
The crowd avoided his eyes. They shifted uneasily and looked at Johnson
again. "What do you mean?" another man asked. "About, we work or we
don't eat--"
"Come on, you guys!" Hank shouted.
"The assignments on the projector will be rotated," said Johnson. "We'll
spare as many men as we can from everything else. Those of you who have
been given assignment slips will get 3 days' rations. When you bring
back the slips with a verification that you did your job on the
projector you'll get an assignment somewhere else until it's your turn
again. The ones without verification on the slips don't get the next 3
days' rations. That's the way it's going to be. If there's no more
argument, we'll get on with the distribution.
"Hank, get down at the end of the line!"
By mid-afternoon, the scientists had their full crew of sullen and
unwilling helpers. The Sheriff had sent along a half-dozen of his own
men, fully armed, to see there was no disturbance, but the objectors
seemed to have had their say.
With a gradual increase of co-operativeness, they did the tasks they
were assigned, bringing up materials, laying out the first members of
the great, skeletal structure that would rise in the pasture. Johnson
came at the end of the day to see how it was going. He breathed a sigh
of relief at the lack of disturbance. "It looks like we've got it made,"
he said.
"I think so," Ken agreed. "All we have to do now is see how many more of
these we can get built in other parts of the world."
They spoke that night to all the stations on the radio net, describing
in detail what they had begun, what they were confident it would do.
Professor Larsen's words were relayed to his colleagues in Stockholm.
They estimated they could begin work almost immediately on six
projectors. Others, elsewhere in the country, were quite probable.
In his conversation with Pasadena, Professor Maddox warned, "We have not
yet been able to make tests with the big projector. Our only work so far
has been with the laboratory models, but they were highly successful."
"That's good enough for us," said Dr. Whitehead, director of the
Pasadena work. "Everything we've done here has failed so far. A direct
chemical approach seems out of the question. We'll start with one, but I
think a dozen projectors, at least, are possible for this area."
Pasadena also reported a new radio contact with Calcutta, and promised
to pass the word on to them and to Tokyo. When they closed down the
transmitter after midnight, Ken totaled the number of projectors
promised with reasonable certainty of having the promises fulfilled.
There were eighty.
"It may take a year," his father said, "or it may take 10 years, but now
we know, without a doubt, that we can someday get our atmosphere back as
it was before the comet."