The spearhead of the nomad infantry attack broke through between two lightly manned guard posts whose garrisons fled in retreat with a few ineffective shots. The column came through in a widening wedge. As it met more defenders it fell back, but it appeared to the nomads that the whole defense line had crumbled or had been diverted to the south, as anticipated.
They poured along Main Street in the faint dawnlight until they reached 12th Avenue. There, they split and fanned along 12th, east and west. It was their strategy, obviously, to occupy and seal off this large northern sector of the town, which amounted to one-quarter of its total area and cut across a large portion of the business section. They would solidify their position here, destroy all opposition, then move to still another sector until they were in command of the entire town.
It was a strategy that would work, unless everything Mayfield possessed were thrown against it, Ken thought. He saw now why 12th Avenue had been chosen as the line of attack: the defenders were intrenched there and were offering forceful opposition.
He looked for a moment to the south again. The defenses there were light, yet the charge of the mounted nomads had to be contained or they would drive all the way to the center of town, burning and killing as they went. If they succeeded in joining with the infantry they would have split Mayfield's defenses in two.
Johnson had mounted his best men, using the captured nomad horses as well as the town's own. Desperately, this small force was trying to contain and exterminate the fierce-riding enemy. Picked sharpshooters had been carefully stationed with the best rifles available. Although the gunfire was not heavy, Ken could see Johnson's men were taking a heavy toll of the invader.
In the north, the lines of fixed battle had now been established. The nomads had drawn back to positions of cover in the empty houses facing 12th. Their flanks were more mobile, fighting for advantage along streets parallel to Main but some blocks away on either side, and extending all the way back to the point of breakthrough. While he surveyed the scene from the roof, Ken watched the stealthy movement of defenders moving behind the main line to try to surround the enemy. That was the strategy of the defense, and the gamble on which their entire fate hung.
If they succeeded they would have the breach closed, leaving no retreat for the surrounded invader.
The comet slowly appeared, illuminating the scene of battle as if it lay upon some other planet. The day was clear so far, but a band of stratus hung low over the western hills. It would probably be snowing by nightfall, Ken thought.
Through the glasses he recognized the leader of a small patrol that was moving east on 18th Avenue. It was Tom Wiley, the barber. His men were mostly students from the college. They were trying to gain a house farther up the block to provide a covering point from which a general advance of the line on both sides of them could hinge. Tom could not see that an opposing patrol had him under observation.
He led his men into the open to cross the street. Ken wanted to shout for him to go back, but it was impossible to be heard at such distance. The enemy patrol moved out slightly. They centered Tom and his men in a murderous burst of rifle fire. The barber fell. Two of the others were hit, but they managed to reach cover with the rest of their companions.
The body of Tom Wiley lay motionless where it fell in the snow-covered street. Ken could see the sign, just a block away, that read, "Wiley's Barber and Beauty Shop." From where Ken stood, the sign, which jutted out over the sidewalk, seemed to project just above the body of the fallen barber.
Ken hesitated in his resolve to go down there in the midst of the fighting. He thought of Johnson's words and Hilliard's orders. Would the defense strategy succeed? The nomads were trained and toughened by their weeks of fight for survival, but Mayfield's men were only weakened by their strained effort to keep the town alive.
On the eastern side of the encirclement a burst of smoke with a core of orange flame at its center spurted upward from a house. This was followed by a second and a third and a fourth. Defending fighters ran from the rear of the burning houses to the row beyond. Behind the screen of billowing smoke the nomads crept forward to repeat their tactics and fire the houses where the defenders now had cover. It was obvious they recognized the danger of encirclement by forces stronger than any they had anticipated. They were making a desperate effort to straighten their lines parallel to the barbed wire, with their flanks and rear clear of threat.
Ken watched the success of their second incendiary thrust. They could go on indefinitely unless the defenders succeeded in flanking them. That was being attempted now. The defenders moved under the cover of the smokescreen to fire on the advancing nomads. The latter recognized their danger and held to solid cover of houses adjacent to those they had fired.
North of this bulge, however, another column was forming, and Ken saw in sudden horror that it was headed directly toward the warehouse! A house only a half-block from the warehouse burst into flame.
There was a flurry of activity from the defenders as they, too, recognized the fresh danger and brought up reinforcements before the threatened warehouse.
This added resistance seemed to inflame the determination of the nomads. They answered the increased fire sharply. Another incendiary ignited a wooden building a step nearer the warehouse. The defenders tried to flank the threatening column but the latter ran between a row of burning houses along an alleyway, firing additional incendiaries as they went.
Then sudden flame burst against the wooden walls of the old skating rink and licked with red fury along its painted surface. In moments the warehouse was bathed on all sides in seething flame, and the nomad column spread beyond it, unaware of the mortal damage they had done.
Ken turned away. He walked slowly and decisively down the stairs. He told his father what had just happened. "I'm going out there, Dad," he said. "They're going to wipe us out, or destroy every chance we'll have to survive even if we drive them off. Half of our food supply is gone now. What chance have we got even if we kill every nomad in the valley?"
Ken's father turned to a closet and drew out a .30-06. From a hook he took down a hunter's jacket. Its pockets were loaded with shells, and he had an extra box he gave to Ken.
"Johnson left this here," he said. "He intended it for our use if the nomads reached this far. I think maybe it had better be used before the medical center needs defending."
Ken's eyes lighted with gratefulness. "Thanks, Dad," he said. "I'm glad you're willing."
"I don't know if I'm willing or not. However, I think I agree with you that there's nothing else to be done."
Ken ran from the building, clutching the solid, reassuring weight of the rifle in his hand. His coat pockets and the hunting jacket were weighted heavily with the supply of ammunition. There was a feeling of security in the weapon and the shells, but he knew it was a short-lived, deceptive security.
He went to Eighth Street and turned north, which would bring him close to the burned warehouse. He could see the immense, rolling column of black smoke and hear the bursting crackle of its flames. The whole town could go, he thought, if the fire became hot enough. It would spread from building to building regardless of the snow cover. He glanced at the sky and hoped the snow might soon resume.
From the rooftop, it had seemed to Ken that the small units of the defenders were almost leaderless, and there was lack of co-ordination between them. He came up in their rear ranks and confirmed this suspicion. They seemed to be depending as best they could on unanimous and intuitive agreement about a course of action. What had happened to their sergeants and lieutenants, Ken did not know. Perhaps in their haste of organization there never had been any.
There was top-level command, of course, as appointed by Sheriff Johnson for the entire sector, but it did not extend to the lower levels in any degree Ken could see.
The men paid no attention as Ken joined them. He knew a few of the dozen nearby, but they seemed to regard him as a total stranger. The shock of battle was in their eyes, and they seemed wholly unaware of anything in the world except the desperate necessity to find cover and to destroy the invader.
Ken followed them into the shelter of a house flanking the still-advancing incendiaries. He crouched at a window with an older man whom he did not know and leveled his rifle through an opening. A pair of figures appeared momentarily at the edge of the smoking cloud. The older man jerked his gun and fired frantically and ineffectively.
"Slow!" Ken cried. "Aim before you shoot!"
The man glanced at him in a kind of daze. Ken sighted patiently and carefully. The smoke cloud parted once again and he squeezed the trigger. One of the figures dropped and the smoke cloud closed down again.
Ken's calmness seemed to penetrate his companion who leaned back for a moment to wipe a shaking hand across his sweat-stained face.
"I've never done anything like this before," he murmured helplessly.
"None of us have," said Ken; "but we've got to do it now. Watch it! We're drawing their fire!"
Bullets shattered the window casing above and beside them. Across the room a man crumpled. Ken risked a glance through the window. "We've got to get out!" he exclaimed. "They're going to rush the house!"
It might have been possible to hold if he knew what cover and reinforcements they had in the adjacent houses, but as far as he could tell the small, 12-man patrol might be entirely alone in the area.
Suddenly, it all seemed utterly hopeless without communication, without leadership—how could they hope to withstand?
"Let's go!" he cried. The others seemed willing to follow him. As they went through the back he saw that the next house had indeed been occupied, but they, too, were retreating, not knowing what strength was near.
A new line of defenders was moving up from halfway down the block. Ken held back to shout to the other patrol and to those coming, "Let's stand in the next street!"
There were shouts of assent from down the line and they moved to the shelter of the empty houses.
They were close to the edge of town, near the barbed-wire barricade, and the nomads would obviously make their biggest effort here to wipe out the forces that threatened to close them off. His own group, Ken saw, would also have to make their stand here or risk being pocketed by the uncoiling line of nomads.
"Don't let them get close enough to fire the buildings!" he shouted down the line. The word was passed along with agreement. They broke into small patrols and occupied the houses, Ken joining one that took over the top floor of a 2-story house. This gave them the advantage of good observation, but the added danger of difficult escape in case the house was set on fire. Its walls were brick, however, and offered a good chance of being held.
Within minutes, the nomads had occupied the houses just abandoned. Ken fired rapidly and carefully as he saw them exposed momentarily in their move to new positions. His marksmanship had a telling effect on the enemy, and encouraged his companions. As soon as the nomads had obtained cover however, it was a stalemate.
It was mid-morning already, and Ken wondered how it had grown so late. For an hour or two they exchanged shots with the enemy. Twice, attempts were made to hurl firebombs. Both were driven back.
Beyond this, however, the nomads seemed in no mood to make further attack. They were waiting for darkness, Ken thought, and then they would advance with their firebombs and grenades and have free choice of battle setting. If that happened, Mayfield might be a huge inferno by midnight. They had to seize the initiative from the invaders.
He called his companions and told them how it looked. They agreed. "What can we do?" a tired, middle-aged man asked.
"We've got to take the initiative before they come at us again." Ken glanced at the sky. "Within an hour it may be snowing hard. That will make it more difficult to hit a target. When daylight is almost gone we'll attack them instead of waiting for them to come after us. It can be done if we hit hard and fast enough. We'll lose some men, but not as many as if we wait and let them pick us off with their grenades and incendiaries as they feel like it."
The men considered it dubiously. "We've got a better chance to hit them as they break from cover," someone suggested.
"Not after dark, and that's what they're waiting for. They'll burn our houses and drive us back all night long if we give them the chance. We must not give it to them!"
Reluctant nods of agreement came from his group. "The way you put it, I guess it's the only chance we've got," the former objector agreed.
"I'll talk with the other groups," Ken said.
He moved down the stairs and out the back door of the house. The space between the two houses was entirely open. He flung himself down and crawled. Twice, he heard the whine of bullets above his head.
After heated argument, the group in the next house agreed to the plan to rush the invaders. He moved on down the block, regretting his own lack of authority that made it necessary for him to have to plead for co-operation. He wondered what was happening in the rest of the town. There had been gunfire all day, but it seemed incredible there had been no communication from any other sector or any evidence of command. No one he talked to had any idea what had happened to their command. There had been some in the beginning, but it had simply seemed to vanish. Ken's pleading for co-operation in an attack was the nearest thing to leadership they had seen for hours.
The snow was swirling hard and the sun was almost beyond the hills, what little of it was visible in the clouds. It was getting as dark as he dared allow before giving the signal for attack, but there was one more group to contact. He debated and decided to go to them.
Then, as he entered the rear of the house, he heard the cries of alarm from those houses he had been to. The invaders were breaking out for an incendiary attack.
He seized his gun and fired the signal for their own advance. He ran into the street shouting for the others to follow. The nomads were concentrating their fire charge at the other end of the row of houses, and there the defenders fell back without an attempt to advance.
Like watching a wave turned back by a rocky shore, Ken saw his companions fleeing in disorderly retreat through the rear of the houses to the block beyond. A bullet whizzed by his head. He dropped to the ground and crawled on his stomach to the safety of cover behind a brick house.
For a long time he lay in the snow, unmoving. He could not hold back the sobbing despair that shook him. He had never before known what it was like to be utterly alone. Mayfield was dying and taking away everything that was his own personal world. He had listened to news of the destruction of Chicago and of Berkeley without knowing what it really meant. Now he knew.
For all he knew, the nomads might even now be in control of the major part of the town. He could not know what had happened to his father, to Maria, to anyone.
The crackling of flames in the next house aroused him. He crawled inside the brick house, which was still safe, for a moment of rest. He knew he should be fleeing with the others, but he had to rest.
He heard sporadic shooting. A few nomads were straggling after their companions at the other end of the street. It was too far to shoot. However, one nomad stopped and swung cautiously under the very windows of the burning house next door. Ken leveled his rifle and fired. The bullet caught the man in the shoulder and flung him violently against the wall. Ken saw that he would be buried by the imminent, flaming collapse of that wall.
The man saw it, too. He struggled frantically to move out of the way, but he seemed injured beyond the power to get away.
Ken regarded him in a kind of stupor for a moment. The man out there was responsible for all this, he thought, for the burning and for the killing....
He swung his rifle over his shoulder and went out. Brands were falling upon the wounded enemy. Ken hoisted the man under the arms and dragged him to the opposite side of the adjacent house. The nomad looked at Ken with a strange fury in his eyes.
"You're crazy!" he said painfully. "You're the one who shot me?"
Ken nodded.
"You'll be cut off. Well, it won't matter much anyway. By tomorrow your town will be burned and dead. Soon, we'll all be dead."
Ken kneeled on the ground beside him, as if before some strange object from a foreign land. "What were you?" he asked. "Before, I mean."
The man coughed heavily and blood covered his mouth and thick growth of beard. The bullet must be in his lungs, Ken thought. He helped wipe away the blood and brushed the man's mouth with a handful of snow.
"You're crazy," the nomad said again. "I guess we're all crazy. You're just a kid, aren't you? You want to know what I was a million years ago, before all this?"
"Yes," Ken said.
The man attempted a smile. "Gas station. Wasn't that a crazy thing? No need of gas when all the cars quit. I owned one on the best little corner in Marysvale."
"Why are you with them?" Ken nodded in the darkness toward the distant attackers.
The man glared, twisting with the pain. Then his glance softened. "You'd have done it, too. What else was there? I had a wife, two kids. No food within a hundred miles after we used what was in our own pantry and robbed what we could from the supermarket downtown.
"We all got together and went after some. We got bigger as we went along. We needed men who were good with rifles. We found some. We kept going. People who had food fought to keep it; we fought to take it. That's the way it had to be.
"We heard about your town with its big hoard of food. We decided to get it."
"Did you know you burned half of it this morning?"
"No. That's tough. That's tough all the way around. Don't look at me that way, kid. You would have done the same. We're all the same as you, only we didn't live where there was plenty of food on hand. We were all decent guys before. Me, those guys out in the street that you knocked off. I guess you're decent, too."
"Where's your family now?"
"Twenty miles down the valley, waiting with the rest of the women and children for us to bring them food."
Ken rose slowly to his feet. The man was bleeding heavily from the mouth. His words were growing muffled. "What are you going to do?" he asked.
"Get on with what has to be done," said Ken wearily. He felt sure he must be walking in a nightmare and in just a little while he would awaken. "If there's a chance, I'll try to send somebody after you."
"Never mind me!" the nomad said with sudden fierceness. "I'm done for. You've finished me. If our outfit should be unlucky enough to lose, see my wife and try to do something for my kids. Get some food to them. Tom Doyle's the name," the man said.
A fit of coughing seized him again and blood poured from his mouth. His eyes were closed when he lay back again. "Tom Doyle's the name," his bloody lips murmured. "Don't forget that, kid. Tom Doyle's Service, corner of First and Green in Marysvale. We were all good guys once."
The snow was so heavy it seemed like a solid substance through which Ken walked. In spite of it, row upon row of houses burned with a fury that lit the whole scene with a glow that was like the comet's own. Above this, the blanket of black smoke lay as if ready to smother the valley as soon as the light was gone.
Ken didn't know for sure where he was going. A kind of aimlessness crept over him and there no longer seemed any rational objective toward which to move. He crept on from house to house in the direction his group had gone, but he could not find any of them. Somewhere he touched the edge of combat again. He had a nightmare of going into a thousand houses, smashing their windows out, thrusting his rifle through for a desperate shot at some fleeing enemy.
The night was held back by a hundred terrible fires. He shot at shadows and ghosts that moved against the flames. He sought the companionship of others who fought, like himself, in a lonely vastness where only the sound of fire and gunshots prevailed.
Later, he moved through the streets stricken with cold that he could not lose even when he passed and stood close to a mass of burning rubble. He had stopped shooting quite a long time ago, and he guessed he was out of bullets. The next time he met someone, he thought, he would ask them to look in his pockets and see if any were left.
He kept walking. He passed streets where the black, charcoal arms of the skeletons of houses raised to the sky. He passed the hot columns of smoke and continued to shiver with cold as they steamed upward to the clouds. He passed others but no one spoke. After a while he threw his gun away because it was too heavy to carry and he was too tired to walk any more.
The falling snow was covering the ruins with a blanket of kind obscurity. Ken kneeled down and was surprised to observe that he wasn't cold any more. He lay full length in the whiteness, cradling his head on his arms, and peace and stillness such as he had never known before closed over him.
It seemed an eternity later that there was a voice capable of rousing him, a familiar voice calling out in anguish, "Ken, Ken—this is your dad."
He responded, although it was like answering in a dream. "Take care of them, Dad," he said. "Don't let anything happen to them. A woman and two children. Tom Doyle's the name—don't forget that, Tom Doyle."
He lay between white sheets, and the stench of burning things was everywhere, in the air that he breathed, in the clean white covers that were over him. His own flesh seemed to smell of it.
He was not quite sure if he were still in a world of dreams or if this were real. It was a golden world; the snow-covered ground beyond the window was gilded with rich, yellow light. He remembered something about such light that was not pleasant. He had forgotten just what it was.
Maria Larsen stood at the foot of his bed. She smiled as his eyes opened. "Hello, Ken," she said. "I've been waiting so long. I've been afraid you'd never wake up."
"Tom Doyle," he said. "Did you find Tom Doyle?"
Maria frowned. "I don't know who you mean!"
"You haven't found his family yet?" Ken cried, struggling to rise in the bed. "Go and find them right now. I promised Tom Doyle I'd do it."
Maria approached and pushed him gently back upon the pillow, drawing the covers over him once more. "Tell me about Tom Doyle," she said. "You've never told me who he is."
It seemed utterly stupid for her not to know, but Ken patiently told her about Doyle's Service, the best little station in the world, at the corner of First and Green. "I told Tom I'd take care of them," he said. "Now go and bring them here!"
"Ken," Maria said, "all the nomads who escaped, and there weren't many, retreated around the south end of town and picked up the women and children they'd left there. They moved on south. That was 3 days ago. We've no idea where they've gone."
Ken tried to rise again against her struggles to hold him down. "They couldn't have gone so far that a man on horseback couldn't find them! Why won't you help me? I promised I'd see to it!"
He lay back weakly, covering his face with his arm. "Go and find Tom Doyle," he said. In detail he described where he had left the man. "You don't believe what I'm saying. Get Tom Doyle and he'll tell you it's the truth."
"He wouldn't be there now. All the wounded, including the nomads, have been moved to homes where they are being cared for. The dead, both theirs and ours, have been burned and their ashes buried."
"Do what I tell you!" Ken implored.
With bewilderment and fear on her face, Maria stood back from the bed and looked at Ken's troubled face. Then quietly she stole from the room and shut the door behind her.
He had been overworking himself for weeks, Dr. Adams was saying, and had been living on a poor diet that would scarcely keep a medium-sized pup going.
"Then you had a shock, the kind of shock that shakes a man to his very roots. Now you're on your way up again."
Ken glanced about the room. It seemed normal now and there was only a great emptiness within him to replace the frantic urgency he remembered.
"What you're trying to say, Doc, is that I went off my rocker for a while."
Dr. Adams smiled. "If you want to put it that way. However, you're fine now."
Ken stared at the ceiling for a few moments. "Will you still say so if I ask again about Tom Doyle?"
"What do you want to know?"
"Was he found?"
"No. Maria actually tried to find him for you. I'm afraid your Tom Doyle was among the dead."
"I killed him."
"We killed a lot of them—and they killed a lot of our people."
"How did it end?" asked Ken. "I remember the darkness and just wandering around the streets shooting, but I don't know what I hit or where I went."
"That's the way it ended," said Dr. Adams. "House-to-house street fighting, and we won. Don't ask me how. You were in a sector that was cut off almost as soon as you entered it. Even where communication was maintained things were nearly as chaotic.
"Johnson says it was just plain, dumb luck. Hilliard says he doesn't think it really happened. Dr. Aylesworth calls it a miracle, a gift and a blessing that shows we're meant to survive. Most of the rest of us are willing to look at it his way."
"I could do something for Tom Doyle," Ken said finally. "He was a decent guy. They all were, once. I could find his wife and children."
The doctor shook his head. "All who are left of that group of nomads are going to die. We've got to let them die, just as we let the people in Chicago and Berkeley and ten thousand other towns die. We have no more power to save Tom Doyle's family than we had to save them."
"We're taking care of the nomad wounded! We could do as much for just one woman and two kids!"
"We're helping the wounded until they get on their feet," Dr. Adams said quietly. "Then they'll be sent on—to wherever they came from."
Ken stared at him.
"There is only one thing we could never forgive ourselves for," the doctor continued. "That one thing would be letting the Earth itself die. As long as there are people alive who can fight the comet, we still have a chance. Nothing else in the whole world matters now. Don't you see there is no other purpose in keeping Mayfield alive except to support the few people who understand the dust and can fight it? Beyond that, Mayfield has no more right to live than any other town that has already died. But Mayfield has to stay alive to keep you and your father and the others like you fighting the dust."
Dr. Adams gave permission for Ken to be out of bed for a short time. He tried, after the doctor had left, and almost fell on his face. The whole world seemed to spin in enormous cart wheels. He persisted though, and 2 hours later he was making his way slowly up College Hill with the help of Maria who walked beside him and lent her arm for support.
At the top of the hill they stopped and turned for a look at the valley below them. The ruin was plain to see in spite of the snow cover. A third of the town had been completely burned. At the old skating rink, workmen were clawing through the debris for usable remains of food. A miserably small pile of items showed the extent of their success.
Curls of smoke still rose from the ashes, and the nauseating smell of death and burning floated over the whole valley.
Of his own experience Ken felt only a numbing confusion as yet. He thought he should feel like a fool for his collapse at the height of the battle, but he did not. He felt as if he had marched to the absolute edge of human endurance and had looked to the dark pit below.
He turned to Maria. "I'll be okay now. It's time for you to get back to the radio station. Tell them what has happened and get their reports. I'll see you tonight."
It seemed a long time since he had last been in the laboratory. The workers were once more in the midst of their thousands of trials and failures to produce a colloidal, non-poisonous form of the decontaminant, which could be infused in the atmosphere of the world to destroy the comet dust.
He stayed until his father left at 7 o'clock, and they went home together. He still had to depend on someone else for assistance on the steep and slippery hill.
When they reached home Maria had a lengthy report ready from the Pasadena people, and one from Schenectady.
Professor Maddox read the reports at the dinner table. He passed the sheets to Professor Larsen as he finished them. Ken saw he was not reading with his usual thorough analysis. When he had finished he returned to his eating with perfunctory motions.
"Anything new?" Ken asked.
"The same old story. A thousand hours of experiments, and no success. I feel we're all on the wrong track, trying to perfect a chemical colloid, based on the decontaminant, which will destroy the dust. I feel that nothing's going to come of it."
Ken said, "I had a crazy dream the other day while Dr. Adams had me under drugs. I had almost forgotten it. I dreamed I was walking along the street and had a special kind of flashlight in my hand. When I came to a car that wouldn't run, standing by the curb, I turned the beam of the flashlight on it. Then whoever owned it could step in and drive away. After I had done that to all the cars in Mayfield I turned it on the sky and just kept flashing it back and forth and the comet dust fell down like ashes and the air was clean."
Professor Maddox smiled. "A nice dream! I wish we could make it come true. I'm afraid that idea will have to go back to the pages of your science fiction, where it probably came from in the first place."
"Dad, I'm serious!" Ken said earnestly.
"About making a magic flashlight?" His father was almost sarcastic, which revealed the extent of his exhaustion, Ken thought. He was never like that.
"What I'm trying to say is that there are other ways to precipitate colloids. We haven't even given any thought to them. Colloids can be precipitated by heat, by pressure, by vibration. Maybe a dozen other ways that I don't know anything about.
"Maybe some kind of physical means, rather than chemical, is the answer to our problem. Why don't we let Pasadena and the other labs go on with the chemical approach but let us do some work on possible physical means?"
Professor Maddox sat very still. His glance passed from Ken to Professor Larsen. The latter nodded. "I think we have indeed been foolish in ignoring this possibility up to now. I wonder if Ken hasn't got a very good thought there."
"Have you anything specific to suggest?" Ken's father asked.
"Well, I've been wondering about supersonic methods. I know that a supersonic beam can be used for coagulation and precipitation."
"It would depend on the size of the colloidal particles, and on the frequency of the wave, wouldn't it? Perhaps wecouldfind a frequency that would precipitate the dust, but I wonder if we wouldn't have the same problem as with mechanical treatment of the Earth's atmosphere. Even if we succeeded on a laboratory scale, how could it be applied on a practical, worldwide scale?"
"I don't know," said Ken. "It may not work out, but I think it's worth trying."
"Yes, I agree. I don't think we'll give up the chemical research, but a group of you can begin work on this supersonic approach tomorrow."
The losses of food at the warehouse were enormous. Less than 5 percent of the contents could be removed in usable form. Most of the canned goods had burst from internal pressure. Grain and other dried products were burned, for the most part. The food supply of the community was now reduced to six-tenths of what it had been.
The population had been reduced by one-tenth, in men killed by the nomads.
Mayor Hilliard and his councilmen struggled to work out a reasonable ration plan, based upon the ratio of supplies to number of consumers. There was no arithmetical magic by which they could stretch the food supply to satisfy minimum needs until next harvest.
There was going to be death by starvation in Mayfield before spring.
Hilliard fought through an agreement in the Council that the researchers on College Hill, and all their families, were to have first priority, and that they were to get full rations at all times in order to keep on with their work.
There were grumblings among the councilmen, but they finally agreed to the wisdom of this. They agreed there were babies and small children who needed a somewhat normal ration, at least. There were over four hundred wounded who had to be cared for as a result of the battle. There were also the aged, like Granny Wicks, and her companions.
"Well try to give the little ones a chance," said Mayor Hilliard, "but the old ones don't need it. Perhaps we can spare a little extra for the wounded who have a chance of survival, but not much. We're going to see that College Hill survives."
Before spring, however, a choice would still have to be made—who was to have the remaining share of food, and who was not?
Privately, Hilliard wondered if any of them had a chance to see another spring.
The decision to support the scientists at the expense of the other inhabitants of Mayfield could not be kept secret. When it became known, a tide of fury swept the community. The general public no longer had any capacity to accept the larger view in preference to relief of their own suffering. One of the college students who worked in the laboratory was beaten by a crowd as he walked through town. He died the same evening.
Suddenly, the scientists felt themselves standing apart, pariahs among their own people. They debated whether to take the allotment. They asked themselves over and over if they were tempted to take it because they shared the same animal greed that gripped the whole town, or if genuine altruism prodded them to accept.
Dr. Adams met their arguments. "You accept," he said, "or everything we fought for is worthless. You can stand the hate of the townspeople. Scientists have done it before, and it's a small sacrifice so long as you can continue your work. Those of us who are supporting you believe in that work. Now get on with it, and let's not have any more of these ridiculous arguments!"
The suggestion of physical means of precipitating the dust came like a burst of light to the entire group as they began to examine the possibilities. Within a week, they had determined there was indeed a broad range of supersonic frequencies capable of precipitating the dust.
The night Professor Maddox and his companions came home to announce their success they were met with the news that Mrs. Larsen was ill. During the day, she had developed a high temperature with severe pains in her body.
Professor Larsen was deeply worried. "She's never been ill like this before."
Ken was sent for Dr. Adams, but the latter did not come for almost 2 hours. When he did arrive, they were shocked by his appearance. His face was lined and hollow with exhaustion, beyond anything they had seen as long as they had known him. He looked as if he were on the verge of illness himself.
He brushed away their personal questions and examined Mrs. Larsen, rather perfunctorily, they thought. However there was no hesitation as he announced his diagnosis. "It's the sixteenth case I've seen today. Over a hundred and fifty this week. We've got an epidemic of flu on our hands. It's no mild, patty-caking kind, either. It's as virulent as any that's ever been experienced!"
Mrs. Maddox uttered a low cry of despair. "How much more must we be called upon to endure?"
No one answered. Dr. Adams rummaged in his bag. "I have vaccine for all of you. I don't know how much good it will do against this brand of bug that's loose now, but we can give it a chance."
"Is everyone in town getting it?" Professor Maddox asked.
Dr. Adams snorted. "Do you think we keep supplies of everything in emergency proportions? College Hill gets it. Nobody else."
"We can't go on taking from everyone else like this!" protested Mrs. Maddox. "They have as much right to it as we. There should be a lottery or something to determine who gets the vaccine."
"Hilliard's orders," said Dr. Adams. "Besides, we've settled all this. You first, Ken."
For a few days after the battle with the nomads, it had seemed as if the common terror had welded all of Mayfield into an impregnable unit. There was a sense of having stood against all that man and nature could offer, and of having won out against it. However, the penetrating reality of impending competition among themselves for the necessities of life, for the very right to live, had begun to shatter the bonds that held the townspeople as one.
The killing of the college student in protest against the partiality to College Hill was the first blast that ripped their unity. Some protested openly against the viciousness of it, but most seemed beyond caring.
There were two events of note in the days following. The first was a spontaneous, almost valley-wide resurgence of memory of Granny Wicks and her warnings. Everything she had said had come true. The feeling swept Mayfield that here in their very midst was an oracle of truth who had been almost wholly ignored. There was nothing they needed to know so much as the outcome of events with respect to themselves and to the town as a whole.
Almost overnight, streams of visitors began to pour toward the home for the aged where Granny lived. When they came, she smiled knowingly and contentedly, as if she had been expecting them, waiting for them. Obligingly, and with the peaceful aura of omniscience, she took them into her parlor and told them of things to come.
At the same time, Frank Meggs felt new stirrings within him. He sensed that he had been utterly and completely right in all his years of criticism of those who managed the affairs of Mayfield. The present condition of things proved it. The town was in utter chaos, its means of survival all but destroyed. Incompetently, its leaders bumbled along, not caring for the mass of the people, bestowing the people's goods on the leaders' favorites. He began saying these things on the streets. He got a box, and used it for a platform, and he shouted from the street corners that the leaders were corrupt, and none of them were safe unless College Hill and City Hall were wiped out. He said that he would be a better mayor than anyone else in Mayfield.
He had listeners. They gathered on the corners in the daytime, and they listened at night by the light of flaming torches. Many people began to believe that he was right.
A week after Mrs. Larsen's illness, it was evident beyond all doubt that Mayfield was the victim of a killer epidemic. Mayor Hilliard himself was stricken, and he sent word that he wanted Professor Maddox, Ken, and Dr. Larsen to come to his bedside.
He was like a feeble old man when they arrived. All the fire and the life had gone from his eyes, but he brightened a little as they came into the room.
"At least you are still alive," he said gruffly. "I just wanted to make sure of that fact, and I wanted to have a final understanding that it's soaked into your thick heads that nothing is to interfere with your own survival."
"We hope you're not overestimating our worth," said Professor Maddox.
"I don't know whether I am or not! All I know is that if you're not worth saving then nobody is. So, if this town is going to die, you are going to be the last ones left alive, and if you don't give me your word on this right now I'll come back and haunt you every minute you do survive!"
"In order to haunt, you have to be in the proper realm," said Professor Maddox, attempting a joke.
Mayor Hilliard sighed. "I think I can take care of that, too. I'm beat. You're close to it, but you've got to hang on. Carry on with your work on the hill. One thing more: This fellow Meggs has got to be crushed like a worm. When I go, there won't be any election. Johnson is taking over and he'll look out for you, the same as I have done."
"You're going to be all right!" said Professor Maddox. "You'll be up on your feet in another week!"
The Mayor seemed not to have heard him. He was staring at the ceiling, and there was an amused smile at the corners of his lips. "Ain't Mother Nature a funny old gal, though?" he said. "She's planned this to work out just right, and I think it's another of old Doc Aylesworth's signs that Mayfield and College Hill are going to live, so that the rest of the world will, too. It may get knocked pretty flat, but it's going to get up again."
"What are you talking about?" said Ken.
"The invasion of the nomads, and then this flu. Don't you see it? First we get our food supply knocked out, and now old Mamma Nature is going to cut the population down to match it. We tried to figure out who was going to eat and who was going to starve, and now it's going to be all figured out for us.
"Balance of nature, or something, you scientists call it, don't you?" He glanced up at the professors and Ken. "It's a wonderful thing," he said, "just absolutely wonderful!"
Three days later, Mayor Hilliard died. It was on the same day that Maria's mother was buried.
Maria had watched her mother day and night, losing strength and finally lapsing into a coma from which she never emerged.
Maria and her father did their best to control their grief, to see it as only another part of the immense reservoir of grief all about them. When they were alone in their section of the house they gave way to the loss and the loneliness they felt.
There were no burial services. The deaths had mounted to at least a score daily. No coffins were available. Each family dug its own shallow graves in the frozen ground of the cemetery. Sheriff Johnson posted men to help, and to see that graves were at least deep enough to cover the bodies. Beyond this, nothing more could be done. Only Dr. Aylesworth came daily to hold prayer services. It was little enough to do, but it was all there was left for him.
When the death of Mayor Hilliard became known, Sheriff Johnson called an immediate session of the councilmen and announced himself as Hilliard's successor. Visitors were invited, and Professor Maddox thought it of sufficient importance to attend.
The tension in the air was heavy as the group sat in thick coats in the unheated hall. Johnson spoke without preliminaries. "There are some of you who won't like this," he said. "Our town charter calls for an emergency election in case of the Mayor's death, and some of you think we should have one now.
"So do those out there." He waved a hand toward the window and the town beyond. "However, we're not going to have an election, and I'll tell you why. I know the man who would win it and you do, too. Frank Meggs.
"He hated Hilliard, he hates us, and he hates this town, and he'll do everything in his power to destroy it. Today he would win an election if it were held. He's used the discomfort of the people to stir them to a frenzy against Hilliard's policy of protection for College Hill. He'll stir them up against anything that means a sacrifice of present safety for long-range survival. Meggs is a dangerous man.
"Maybe this isn't the way it ought to be done, but I don't know any other way. When this is all over there will be time enough for elections, and if I don't step down you can shoot me or run me out of the country or anything else you like. For the time being, though, this is the way things are going to be. It's what Hilliard wanted, and I've got his written word if any of you care to see it."
He looked about challengingly. There was a scuffling of feet. Some councilmen looked at their neighbors and back again to the Sheriff. None stood up to speak, nor did any of the visitors voice objections, although several of Frank Meggs' lieutenants were in the group.
"We'll carry on, then," Sheriff Johnson said, "just as before. Food rations will remain as they are. We don't know how many of us there will be after this epidemic is over. Maybe none of us will be here by spring; we can only wait and see."
Although his assumption of power was accepted docilely by the Council, it sparked a furor among the populace of Mayfield. Frank Meggs fanned it with all the strength of his hatred for the town and all it stood for.
Granny Wicks' fortunetelling business continued to grow. Considerations had been given to the desirability of putting a stop to it, but this would have meant literally imprisoning her, and, it was reasoned, this would stir up more fire than it would put out.
Her glory was supreme as she sat in an old rocker in the cottage where she lived. Lines of visitors waited all day at her door. Inside, she was wrapped in a blanket and wore an ancient shawl on her head against the cold of the faintly heated room. She cackled in her high-pitched voice with hysterical glee.
To those who came, her words were solemn pronouncements of eternal truth. To anyone else it would have been sheer mumbo jumbo, but her believers went away in ecstasy after carefully copying her words. They spent hours at home trying to read great meanings into her senile nonsense.
It was quite a time before Frank Meggs realized the power that lay in the old woman, and he berated himself for not recognizing it earlier. When he finally did go to see her, he was not disappointed. It was easy to understand how she, with her ancient, wrinkled face and deep-black eyes, could be confused with a source of prophecy and wisdom in these times of death and terror.
"I want to lead this people, Granny," he said, after she had bade him sit down. "Tell me what to do."
She snorted and eyed him sharply. "What makes you think you can lead this people?" she demanded.
"Because I see they have been led into disaster by selfish, ignorant fools," said Frank Meggs; "men who believe that in the laboratories on the hill there can be found a way to dispel the power of the great comet. Because they believe this, they have persecuted the people. They have taken their food and have given it to the scientists. They have protected them, and them alone, from the disease that sickens us.
"You do not believe these men can overcome the power of the comet, do you, Granny?"
Wild flame leaped in the old woman's eyes. "Nothing can overwhelm the power of this heavenly messenger! Death shall come to all who attempt such blasphemy!"
"Then you will give your blessing to my struggle to release the people from this bondage?"
"Yes!" Granny Wicks spoke with quivering intensity. "You are the man I have been waiting for. I can see it now! You are appointed by the stars themselves!
"I prophesy that you shall succeed and drive out those who dare trifle with the heavens. Go with my blessings, Frank Meggs, and do your great work!"
Elation filled him as he left the house. It was certain that Granny Wicks would pass the word of his "appointment" to all who came to her audience chamber. The way things were going, it looked as if that would be nine-tenths of the people in Mayfield.
The occupation of the Mayor's chair by Sheriff Johnson gave Frank Meggs a further opening that he wanted. The crowds grew at his torchlight harangues. Even though one-third of the population lay ill with the flu, the night meetings went on.
"Sheriff Johnson has no right to the office he holds," he screamed. His appreciative audience huddled in their miserable coldness and howled their agreement.
"This is not the way things should be done. Our charter calls for an election but when will there be an election? My friends, our good Sheriff is not the real villain in this matter. He is but the tool and the dupe of a clever and crafty group who, through him, are the real holders of power and privilege in this town.
"While we have starved, they have been fed in plenty; while we have been cold, they have sat before their warm fires; while we sicken and die of disease, they are immune because the only supply of vaccine in this whole valley was used by them.
"You know who I am talking about! The scientists who would like to rule us, like kings, from the top of College Hill!
"They tell us the comet is responsible for this trouble. But we know different. Who has been responsible for all the trouble the world has known for ages? Science and scientists! The world was once a clean, decent place to live. They have all but destroyed it with their unholy experiments and twistings of nature.
"They've always admitted their atom experiments would make monsters of future generations of men, but they didn't care about that! Now they're frightened because they didn't know these experiments would also destroy the machines on which they had forced us to be dependent. They try to say it is the comet.
"Well, the world would have been better off without their machines in the first place. It would have been better off without them. Now we've got a chance to be free of them at last! Are we going to endure their tyranny from College Hill any longer?"
Night after night, he repeated his words, and the crowds howled their approval.
On College Hill, morale and optimism were at their highest peak since the appearance of the comet. On the roof of Science Hall there was being erected a massive, 30-foot, hyperbolic reflector whose metal surface had been beaten out of aluminum chicken-shed roofs. At its center, and at intervals about the bowl, there projected a series of supersonic generating units, spaced for proper phasing with one another in beaming a concentrated wave of supersonic energy skyward.
Power to this unit was supplied by a motor generator set constructed of decontaminated parts, which had been operating for a full week without sign of breakdown.
Ken and his companions had worked day and night on the rough construction, while the scientists had designed and built the critical supersonic generating equipment. In a solid, 24-hour shift of uninterrupted work they had mounted and tested the units. It was completed on their second day of work. Tomorrow it would be turned on for a full week's run to test the practicability of such a method of precipitating the comet dust.
Laboratory tests had shown it could be done on a small scale. This projector was a pilot model to determine whether it would be worthwhile building a full-size machine with a reflector 250 feet in diameter.
Ken's father looked completely exhausted, but his smile was broader than it had been for many weeks. "I'm confident we will prove the practicability of this machine," he said. "After that, we will build a really big one, and we'll tell the rest of the world how to do it. I don't know how long it will take, but this will do the job. We'll get them to build big ones in Tokyo and Pasadena and Stockholm, wherever there's civilization enough to know how to do it; they can decontaminate their own metals and build new engines that will run as long as necessary. We've got the comet on the run!"
He hadn't meant to give a speech, but he couldn't help it. They were right, and their staggering labors were nearly over, in this phase, at least.
They slept from exhaustion that night. Ken was awakened in the early-morning hours by the glare in his bedroom window. He sat up and looked out. It seemed to be a very long time before he could let his mind admit what his eyes saw.
Science Hall was in flames, the entire structure a mass of leaping, boiling fire.
Ken ran from his room, crying the alarm.
In their separate rooms, his father and Dr. Larsen stared stupidly at the flickering light as if also unable to comprehend the vastness of the ruin. In frenzy of haste, they donned their clothes and ran from their rooms.
Maria was awake as was Mrs. Maddox. "What is it?" they called. Then they, too, saw the flames through the windows.
The men ran from the house, hatless, their tousled hair flying in the night. Halfway up the hill, Ken called to his father, "You've got to stop, Dad! Don't run like that!"
Professor Maddox came to a halt, his breath bursting from him in great gasps. Ken said, "There's nothing we can do, Dad."
Dr. Larsen stopped beside them. "Nothing except watch," he agreed.
Slowly, they resumed their way. Behind, they heard the sounds of others attracted by the fire. As they came at last to the brow of the hill, Ken pointed in astonishment. "There's a crowd of people over there! Near the burning building!"
He started forward. A shot burst in the night, and a bullet clipped the tree over his head. He dropped to the ground. "Get down! They're firing at us!"
As they lay prone, sickness crept through them simultaneously. "I know who it is," Ken cried. "Frank Meggs. That crazy Frank Meggs! He's got a mob together and fired the college buildings!"
In agony of spirit they crawled to the safety of the slope below the brow of the hill. "We've got to go after Sheriff Johnson," said Ken. "We've got to fight again; we've got to fight all over again!"
Dr. Larsen watched the fire in hypnotic fascination. "All gone," he whispered. "Everything we've done; everything we've built. Our records, our notes. There's nothing left at all."
They moved down the hill, cautioning others about the mob. Sheriff Johnson was already starting up as they reached the bottom. Quickly, they told him what they'd found at the top. "We shouldn't let the mob get off the hill," said Ken. "If we do, we'll never know which ones took part."
"There are as many down here who would like to be up there," said Johnson. "You can be sure of that. We don't know who we can trust any more. Get your science club boys together and find as many patrolmen as possible. Ask each one to get fifteen men he thinks he can trust and meet here an hour from now. If we can do it in that time we may stand a chance of corralling them. Otherwise, we'll never have a chance at them."
"We can try," said Ken.
By now, others had been fired upon and driven back, so that the situation was apparent to everyone. A great many townspeople, most of those well enough to leave their houses, were streaming toward College Hill.
It would be futile to try to find the patrolmen at their own homes, Ken knew. They'd be coming this way, too. He soon found Joe Walton and Al Miner. They mingled in the crowd, calling out for other members of the club. Within minutes, all but two had been found. Word was passed to them to carry out the Sheriff's instructions.
It was easier than they anticipated. Within 20 minutes a dozen officers had been given the word to find their men. At the end of the hour they were gathered and ready for the advance.
The spectators had been driven back. The armed men fanned out to cover the entire hill in a slowly advancing line. They dwindled and became silhouettes against the flames.
At the top, Sheriff Johnson called out to the mob through an improvised megaphone. "Give up your arms and come forward with your hands up!" he cried. "In 10 seconds we start shooting!"
His command was answered by howls of derision. It was like the cries of maniacs, and their drifted words sounded like, "Kill the scientists!"
Bullets accompanied the shouts and howls. The Sheriff's men took cover and began a slow and painful advance.
There could be a thousand mobbers on top of the hill, Ken thought. The Sheriff's men might be outnumbered several times over. He wondered if they ought to try to get reinforcements, and decided against it unless word should be sent down from the top.
There was no way of telling how the battle was going. Gunfire was continuous. A freezing wind had come up and swept over the length of the valley and over those who waited and those who fought. It fanned the flames to volcanic fury.
Ken touched his father's arm. "There's no use for you to stay in this cold," he said. "You ought to go back to the house."
"I've got to know how it comes out up there, who wins."
The cold starlight of the clear sky began to fade. As dawn approached, the flames in the college buildings had burned themselves out. But the gunfire continued almost without letup. Then, almost as quickly as it had started, it died.
After a time, figures appeared on the brow of the hill and came down in a weary procession. Sheriff Johnson led them. He stopped at the bottom of the hill.
"Was it Meggs?" Ken asked. "Did you get Frank Meggs?"
"He fell in the first 10 minutes," said Johnson. "It wasn't really Meggs keeping them going at all. They had a witch up there. As long as she was alive nothing would stop them."
"Granny Wicks! Was she up there?"
"Sitting on a kind of throne they'd made for her out of an old rocking chair. Right in the middle of the whole thing."
"Did she finally get shot?"
Sheriff Johnson shook his head. "She was a witch, a real, live witch. Bullets wouldn't touch her. The west wall of Science Hall collapsed and buried her. That's when they gave up.
"So maybe you can say you won, after all," he said to Professor Maddox. "It's a kind of symbol, anyway, don't you think?"
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 theycouldstill 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 enthusiasmcando 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'ttryto 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."