CHAPTER IV
A Han Air Raid
There was a girl in Wilma's camp named Gerdi Mann, with whom Bill Hearnwas desperately in love, and the four of us used to go around a lottogether. Gerdi was a distinct type. Whereas Wilma had the usual darkbrown hair and hazel eyes that marked nearly every member of thecommunity, Gerdi had red hair, blue eyes and very fair skin. She hasbeen dead many years now, but I remember her vividly because she was athrowback in physical appearance to a certain 20th Century type which Ihave found very rare among modern Americans; also because the four of uswere engaged one day in a discussion of this very point, when I obtainedmy first experience of a Han air raid.
We were sitting high on the side of a hill overlooking the valley thatteemed with human activity, invisible beneath its blanket of foliage.
The other three, who knew of the Irish but vaguely and indefinitely, asa race on the other side of the globe, which, like ourselves, hadsucceeded in maintaining a precarious and fugitive existence inrebellion against the Mongolian domination of the earth, were listeningwith interest to my theory that Gerdi's ancestors of several hundredyears ago must have been Irish. I explained that Gerdi was an Irishtype, evidently a throwback, and that her surname might well have beenMcMann, or McMahan, and still more anciently "mac Mathghamhain." Theywere interested too in my surmise that "Gerdi" was the same name as thatwhich had been "Gerty" or "Gertrude" in the 20th Century.
In the middle of our discussion, we were startled by an alarm rocketthat burst high in the air, far to the north, spreading a pall of redsmoke that drifted like a cloud. It was followed by others at scatteredpoints in the northern sky.
"A Han raid!" Bill exclaimed in amazement. "The first in seven years!"
"Maybe it's just one of their ships off its course," I ventured.
"No," said Wilma in some agitation. "That would be green rockets. Redmeans only one thing, Tony. They're sweeping the countryside with theirdis beams. Can you see anything, Bill?"
"We had better get under cover," Gerdi said nervously. "The four of usare bunched here in the open. For all we know they may be twelve milesup, out of sight, yet looking at us with a projecto'."
Bill had been sweeping the horizon hastily with his glass, butapparently saw nothing.
"We had better scatter, at that," he said finally. "It's orders, youknow. See!" He pointed to the valley.
Here and there a tiny human figure shot for a moment above the foliageof the treetops.
"That's bad," Wilma commented, as she counted the jumpers. "No less thanfifteen people visible, and all clearly radiating from a central point.Do they want to give away our location?"
The standard orders covering air raids were that the population was toscatter individually. There should be no grouping, or even pairing, inview of the destructiveness of the disintegrator rays. Experience ofgenerations had proved that if this were done, and everybody remainedhidden beneath the tree screens, the Hans would have to sweep mile aftermile of territory, foot by foot, to catch more than a small percentageof the community.
Gerdi, however, refused to leave Bill, and Wilma developed an equalobstinacy against quitting my side. I was inexperienced at this sort ofthing, she explained, quite ignoring the fact that she was too; she wasonly thirteen or fourteen years old at the time of the last air raid.
However, since I could not argue her out of it, we leaped together abouta quarter of a mile to the right, while Bill and Gerdi disappeared downthe hillside among the trees.
Wilma and I both wanted a point of vantage from which we might overlookthe valley and the sky to the north, and we found it near the top of theridge, where, protected from visibility by thick branches, we could lookout between the tree trunks, and get a good view of the valley.
No more rockets went up. Except for a few of those warning red clouds,drifting lazily in a blue sky, there was no visible indication of man'spast or present existence anywhere in the sky or on the ground.
Then Wilma gripped my arm and pointed. I saw it; away off in thedistance; looking like a phantom dirigible airship, in its coat oflow-visibility paint, a bare spectre.
"Seven thousand feet up," Wilma whispered, crouching close to me."Watch."
The ship was about the same shape as the great dirigibles of the 20thCentury that I had seen, but without the suspended control car, engines,propellors, rudders or elevating planes. As it loomed rapidly nearer, Isaw that it was wider and somewhat flatter than I had supposed.
Now I could see the repellor rays that held the ship aloft, likesearchlight beams faintly visible in the bright daylight (and stillfaintly visible to the human eye at night). Actually, I had beeninformed by my instructors, there were two rays; the visible onegenerated by the ship's apparatus, and directed toward the ground as abeam of "carrier" impulses; and the true repellor ray, the complement ofthe other in one sense, induced by the action of the "carrier" andreacting in a concentrating upward direction from the mass of the earth,becoming successively electronic, atomic and finally molecular, in itsnature, according to various ratios of distance between earth mass and"carrier" source, until, in the last analysis, the ship itself actuallyis supported on an upward rushing column of air, much like a ballcontinuously supported on a fountain jet.
The raider neared with incredible speed. Its rays were both slantedastern at a sharp angle, so that it slid forward with tremendousmomentum.
The ship was operating two disintegrator rays, though only in a casual,intermittent fashion. But whenever they flashed downward with blindingbrilliancy, forest, rocks and ground melted instantaneously intonothing, where they played upon them.
When later I inspected the scars left by these rays I found them somefive feet deep and thirty feet wide, the exposed surfaces beinglava-like in texture, but of a pale, iridescent, greenish hue.
No systematic use of the rays was made by the ship, however, until itreached a point over the center of the valley--the center of thecommunity's activities. There it came to a sudden stop by shooting itsrepellor beams sharply forward and easing them back gradually to thevertical, holding the ship floating and motionless. Then the work ofdestruction began systematically.
Back and forth traveled the destroying rays, ploughing parallel furrowsfrom hillside to hillside. We gasped in dismay, Wilma and I, as timeafter time we saw it plough through sections where we knew camps orplants were located.
"This is awful," she moaned, a terrified question in her eyes. "Howcould they know the location so exactly, Tony? Did you see? They werenever in doubt. They stalled at a predetermined spot--and--and it wasexactly the right spot."
We did not talk of what might happen if the rays were turned in ourdirection. We both knew. We would simply disintegrate in a split secondinto mere scattered electronic vibrations. Strangely enough, it was thisself-reliant girl of the 25th Century, who clung to me, a relativelyprimitive man of the 20th, less familiar than she with the thought ofthis terrifying possibility, for moral support.
We knew that many of our companions must have been whisked into absolutenon-existence before our eyes in these few moments. The whole thingparalyzed us into mental and physical immobility for I do not know howlong.
It couldn't have been long, however, for the rays had not ploughed morethan thirty of their twenty-foot furrows or so across the valley, when Iregained control of myself, and brought Wilma to herself by shaking herroughly.
"How far will this rocket gun shoot, Wilma?" I demanded, drawing mypistol.
"It depends on your rocket, Tony. It will take even the longest rangerocket, but you could shoot more accurately from a longer tube. But why?You couldn't penetrate the shell of that ship with rocket force, even ifyou could reach it."
I fumbled clumsily with my rocket pouch, for I was excited. I had anidea I wanted to try; a "hunch" I called it, forgetting that Wilma couldnot understand my ancient slang. But finally, with her help, I selectedthe longest range explosive rocket in my pouch, and fitted it to mypistol.
"It won't carry s
even thousand feet, Tony," Wilma objected. But I tookaim carefully. It was another thought that I had in my mind. Thesupporting repellor ray, I had been told, became molecular in characterat what was called a logarithmic level of five (below that it was apurely electronic "flow" or pulsation between the source of the"carrier" and the average mass of the earth). Below that level if Icould project my explosive bullet into this stream where it began tocarry material substance upward, might it not rise with the air column,gathering speed and hitting the ship with enough impact to carry itthrough the shell? It was worth trying anyhow. Wilma became greatlyexcited, too, when she grasped the nature of my inspiration.
Feverishly I looked around for some formation of branches against whichI could rest the pistol, for I had to aim most carefully. At last Ifound one. Patiently I sighted on the hulk of the ship far above us,aiming at the far side of it, at such an angle as would, so far as Icould estimate, bring my bullet path through the forward repellor beam.At last the sights wavered across the point I sought and I pressed thebutton gently.
For a moment we gazed breathlessly.
Suddenly the ship swung bow down, as on a pivot, and swayed like apendulum. Wilma screamed in her excitement.
"Oh, Tony, you hit it! You hit it! Do it again; bring it down!"
We had only one more rocket of extreme range between us, and we droppedit three times in our excitement in inserting it in my gun. Then,forcing myself to be calm by sheer will power, while Wilma stuffed herlittle fist into her mouth to keep from shrieking, I sighted carefullyagain and fired. In a flash, Wilma had grasped the hope that thisdiscovery of mine might lead to the end of the Han domination.
The elapsed time of the rocket's invisible flight seemed an age.
Then we saw the ship falling. It seemed to plunge lazily, but actuallyit fell with terrific acceleration, turning end over end, itsdisintegrator rays, out of control, describing vast, wild arcs, and oncecutting a gash through the forest less than two hundred feet from wherewe stood.
The crash with which the heavy craft hit the ground reverberated fromthe hills--the momentum of eighteen or twenty thousand tons, in a sheerdrop of seven thousand feet. A mangled mass of metal, it buried itselfin the ground, with poetic justice, in the middle of the smoking,semi-molten field of destruction it had been so deliberately ploughing.
The silence, the vacuity of the landscape, was oppressive, as the lastechoes died away.
Then far down the hillside, a single figure leaped exultantly above thefoliage screen. And in the distance another, and another.
In a moment the sky was punctured by signal rockets. One after anotherthe little red puffs became drifting clouds.
"Scatter! Scatter!" Wilma exclaimed. "In half an hour there'll be anentire Han fleet here from Nu-yok, and another from Bah-flo. They'll getthis instantly on their recordographs and location finders. They'llblast the whole valley and the country for miles beyond. Come, Tony.There's no time for the gang to rally. See the signals. We've got tojump. Oh, I'm so proud of you!"
Over the ridge we went, in long leaps toward the east, the country ofthe Delawares.
From time to time signal rockets puffed in the sky. Most of them werethe "red warnings," the "scatter" signals. But from certain of theothers, which Wilma identified as Wyoming rockets, she gathered thatwhoever was in command (we did not know whether the Boss was alive ornot) was ordering an ultimate rally toward the south, and so we changedour course.
It was a great pity, I thought, that the clan had not been equippedthroughout its membership with ultrophones, but Wilma explained to me,that not enough of these had been built for distribution as yet,although general distribution had been contemplated within a couple ofmonths.
We traveled far before nightfall overtook us, trying only to put as muchdistance as possible between ourselves and the valley.
When gathering dusk made jumping too dangerous, we sought a comfortablespot beneath the trees, and consumed part of our emergency rations. Itwas the first time I had tasted the stuff--a highly nutritive syntheticsubstance called "concentro," which was, however, a bit bitter andunpalatable. But as only a mouthful or so was needed, it did not matter.
Neither of us had a cloak, but we were both thoroughly tired and happy,so we curled up together for warmth. I remember Wilma making some sleepyremark about our mating, as she cuddled up, as though the matter wereall settled, and my surprise at my own instant acceptance of the idea,for I had not consciously thought of her that way before. But we bothfell asleep at once.
In the morning we found little time for love making. The practicalproblem facing us was too great. Wilma felt that the Wyoming plan mustbe to rally in the Susquanna territory, but she had her doubts about thewisdom of this plan. In my elation at my success in bringing down theHan ship, and my newly found interest in my charming companion, who was,from my viewpoint of another century, at once more highly civilized andyet more primitive than myself, I had forgotten the ominous fact thatthe Han ship I had destroyed must have known the exact location of theWyoming Works.
This meant, to Wilma's logical mind, either that the Hans had perfectednew instruments as yet unknown to us, or that somewhere, among theWyomings or some other nearby gang, there were traitors so degraded asto commit that unthinkable act of trafficking in information with theHans. In either contingency, she argued, other Han raids would follow,and since the Susquannas had a highly developed organization and morethan usually productive plants, the next raid might be expected tostrike them.
But at any rate it was clearly our business to get in touch with theother fugitives as quickly as possible, so in spite of muscles that weresore from the excessive leaping of the day before, we continued on ourway.
We traveled for only a couple of hours when we saw a multi-coloredrocket in the sky, some ten miles ahead of us.
"Bear to the left, Tony," Wilma said, "and listen for the whistle."
"Why?" I asked.
"Haven't they given you the rocket code yet?" she replied. "That's whatthe green, followed by yellow and purple means; to concentrate fivemiles east of the rocket position. You know the rocket position itselfmight draw a play of disintegrator beams."
It did not take us long to reach the neighborhood of the indicatedrallying, though we were now traveling beneath the trees, with but anoccasional leap to a top branch to see if any more rocket smoke wasfloating above. And soon we heard a distant whistle.
We found about half the Gang already there, in a spot where the treesmet high above a little stream. The Big Boss and Raid Bosses were busyreorganizing the remnants.
We reported to Boss Hart at once. He was silent, but interested, when heheard our story.
"You two stick close to me," he said, adding grimly, "I'm going back tothe valley at once with a hundred picked men, and I'll need you."