Tarrano the Conqueror

  CHAPTER XXXI

  _Industriana_

  It must have been two days later when at last we were rescued by the_Rhaal_ patrol and taken to Industriana. Back there in the forest I hadsuddenly remembered that the mate to the thing I had killed woulddoubtless be lurking in the vicinity. We fled. Subsisting on what foodof the wilds we could find, at last we were picked up and taken to theCity of Work.

  The Great City had been destroyed. Wanton capital of the Central State,we learned now that it lay dead. To outward aspect, unharmed. Fair,serene, alluring as ever it lay there on its shimmering waters; but thelife within it, was dead. Refugees--a quarter perhaps of theinhabitants--had escaped; hourly the search patrols were picking themup, bringing them to Industriana. Rescue parties were searching thecity, to find any who might still be alive.

  And out in the forest lay a great pile of ashes, still exhaling a thinwisp of its deadly breath--where Tarrano had created the Black Cloud;lost his captive Elza, but doubtless had escaped himself back to hisCity of Ice.

  We found Georg and Maida safe at Industriana. Marvelous city! Elza hadnever seen it before. She sat gazing breathless as from the air on thepatrol vessel, we approached it.

  The land of this region was a black, rocky soil upon which vegetationwould not grow. A rolling land, grimly black, metallic; withoutcroppings of ore, red and white and with occasional patches of thinwhite sand whereon a prickly blue grass struggled for life.

  Rolling hills; and then places where nature had upheaved into a turmoil.Huge naked black crags; buttes; hills with precipitous black sides ofsleek metal; narrow canyons with tumultuous water flowing through them.

  In such a place stood Industriana. The City of Work! Set in an areawhere nature lay scarred, twisted in convulsion, its buildings clung toevery conceivable slope and in every position. Many-storiedbuildings--residences and factories indiscriminately intermingled. Allbuilt in sober, solid rectangles of the forbidding black stone.

  A long steep slope from an excavated quarry deep in the ground, ranstraight up to a commanding hilltop--the slope set with an orderly arrayof buildings clinging to it in terraces. Buildings huge, or tiny huts;all anchored in the rear to the ground, and set upon metal girders inthe front. Bisecting the slope was a vertical street--a broad escalatorof moving steps, one half going upward, the other down. Beside it, aseries of other escalators for the traffic of moving merchandise.

  Cross streets on the hill were spider bridges, clinging with thin, stifflegs. And at the summit of the hill stood a tremendous funnel belchingflame and smoke into the sky.

  To one side of the hill lay a bowl-like depression with a single squatbuilding in its center--a low building of many funnels; and about it theblack yawning mouths of shafts down into the ground--mines vomiting ore,broken chunks of the metallic rock coming up as though by the invisiblemagic of magnetism, hunting through the air in an arc to fall with aclatter into great bins above the smelter.

  In another place, at the bottom of a canyon roared a surging torrent ofriver. A harnessed river; plunging into turbines; emerging to tumbleover a cascade, its every drop caught by turning buckets spilled againat the bottom. Water pursuing its surging course downward, its powerused again and again. The canyon dry at one place near the lower edge ofthe city, the water all electrified, resolved into piped hydrogen andoxygen. Like a tremendous clock ticking, the water, momentarily dammedback, was released in a torrent to the electrolysis vats. The hissinggases, under tremendous pressure, raised up the heavy-weighted tops oftwo expanding tanks. Another tick of this giant clock--the gasesreleased, were merged again to water. The tops of the tanks lowered,each in turn, one coming down as the other went up--hundreds of tons ofweight--their slow downward pull geared to scores of whirlingwheels--the power shifted to dynamos scattered throughout the city.

  It was the twilight of nightfall when we arrived over Industriana. Athousand funnels and chimneys belched their flame and smoke--the flametinting the sky with a lurid yellow-green glare, the smoke hanging likea dim blue gauze through which everything seemed unreal, infernal.

  From the city rose a roar--the myriad sounds of industry mingled by themagic of distance. And as we got closer, the roar resolved into itscomponent parts; the grinding of gears; clicking of belts and chains;whirring of dynamos and motors; shrill electrical screams; theclattering of falling ore; clanking of swiftly moving merchandise, boundin metal, magnetized to monorail cars shifting it to warehouses on thenearby hills. And over it all flashed the brilliant signal lights of themerchandise traffic directors whose stentorian electrical voicesbroadcasting commands sounded above the city's noises.

  An inferno of activity. A seeming confusion; yet the aspect of confusionwas a fallacy, for beneath it lay a precision--an orderly precision ascalm and exact as the mind of the Director of a Signal Tower countingoff the split seconds of his beams.

  An orderly precision--the brain of one man guiding and dominatingeverything; at his desk alone for long hours throughout the days andnights. A quiet, grey-haired gentleman; unhurried, unharassed, seeminglyalmost inactive; always seated at his empty desk smoking endlessarrant-cylinders. The dominating business brain of Industriana.