Battlefield Earth Part 43

"I know it's all electrical. I've been through all this before at the first school! Electrical, electrical, electrical! It takes generators. And they're just piles of congealed rust! Even if you got one to run, there's no fuel- it's just sludge in the tanks. And even if you put in juice, those light bulbs won't work and the electric motors are frozen solid."

Robert murmured something.

"Sure the wires may be all right. But even if you got juice in them, all you'd have is an intercom and we've got that. So stick to miner's lamps! I'm sorry, Sir Robert, but there's just so much dinosaur you can revive from a pile of bones!"

Jonnie heard Robert laughing. He himself differed a little bit with Angus's point of view. They did not know that there weren't emergency systems that might work some other way, and they did not know that there might not be other fuels in sealed containers that might still function. The chances were thin, but they could not be ruled out. They were despairingly going to rig mine cables to get to the other levels when a Scot found ramps and stairwells going down.

Operations...operations...

They found a communications console, the communicator's remains at the desk. Under the dust that had been his hand was a message: "URGENT. Don't fire. It isn't the Russians."

"Russians? Russians?" said a Scot. "Who were the Russians?"

Thor had come, absent without leave from his shift at the lode but intending to get back. He was part Swedish. "They're some people that used to live on the other side of Sweden. They were run by the Swedes once."

"Don't disturb any messages," said Robert the Fox.

Operations...operations...

They found themselves in an enormous room. It had a huge map of the world on a middle table. Apparently clerks with long poles pushed little models around on the map. There were sidewall maps and a balcony overlooking it. Miner's lamps flicked over maps, models, and the remains of the dead. Impressive and well preserved. There were lots of clocks, all stopped long ago.

A crude, hastily made cylinder model rested on the map just east of the Rockies. A long pole was still touching it, the last action of a dead arm. Another map on the wall was plotting the course of something and the last "X" was straight above this base.

It was too much data to sort out in a moment. Jonnie went on looking.

They found themselves in a nearby room. It had lots of consoles. "Top Secret" had been the name of this room.

One console said "Local Defense" and had a chart and map over it. Jonnie went to it and looked closely. "TNW Minefields," he read.

Then suddenly he found himself looking at marks of the string mines in the meadow below them. "TNW 15."

There was a firing b.u.t.ton: "TNW 15." But there were rows and rows of these b.u.t.tons.

TNW? TNW?.

The reedy voice of the historian piped up behind him. " 'TNW' means 'tactical nuclear weapons.' Those are the mines!"

Angus came over. "Och! Electrical firing b.u.t.tons. You push the console b.u.t.ton and up they go."

"Might also be fused for contact," said Jonnie cautiously. "No wonder the Psychlos thought these mountains were radioactive!"

"What's a 'silo'?" said the parson at another board. "It says 'Silo 1,' 'Silo 2' and so on."

"A silo," said Thor, "is where you keep wheat. They used to have them in Sweden. You put wheat in them for storage."

"I can't imagine why they'd be that interested in wheat. Look at the way these b.u.t.tons are marked. 'Standby,' 'Ready,' 'Fire.' "

The historian was hastily rifling through a dictionary he habitually carried. He found it. " '1. A cylindrical upright storage facility for wheat, grain, and other foodstuffs. 2. A large, underground structure for the storage and launching of a long-range ballistic missile.' "

Jonnie reached out and grabbed the parson's wrist. "Don't touch that console! It could contain emergency systems about which we know nothing." He turned, excited. "Robert, get this whole board and layout picto-recorded. We have to know the exact location of every silo on that board. Those missiles might have uranium in them!"

Chapter 3.

They were in a storeroom area now. Angus had found a huge ring of keys and was scampering ahead of Jonnie, opening doors. Robert the Fox was following more sedately; he had his worn old cape wrapped very tightly about him for it was bitterly cold in this place- probably the temperature seldom rose much, even in summer. Robert's radio crackled occasionally as some Scot elsewhere reported in- the radios worked well underground, designed for miner use.

Jonnie had not yet found all he wanted by a long shot. The planning of a battle against an enemy whose battle tactics were all but unknown was a chancy business. And he did not yet know exactly how the Psychlos had done it. So he had half an ear to Robert's radio and was not paying all that much attention to Angus.

They were at a heavy door that said "a.r.s.enal" and Angus was changing keys about to open it. Some faint hope that it might contain nuclear weapons rose in Jonnie. The door opened.

Boxes! Cases! Endless rows of them!

Jonnie played his lamp over the stencils. He did not know what all these letters meant: this military certainly loved to obscure things under letters and numbers.

Angus danced up with a book, fluttering the well-preserved pages. " 'Ordnance, Types and Models'!" he crooned. "All the numbers and letters will be here. Even pictures!" "inventory that," said Robert the Fox to a Scot beside him who was making lists.

"Bazooka!" said Angus. "There, up there! Those long boxes! 'Ant.i.tank, armor-piercing missile projectiles.' "

"Nuclear?" asked Jonnie. "Non-nuclear. Says so."

"I think" said Robert, "this is just their local a.r.s.enal for possible base use. They wouldn't be supplying the whole army from this spot."

"Lots of it," said Angus.

"Enough for a few thousand men," said Robert.

"Can I open a box?" asked Angus to Robert.

"One or two for now just to ascertain condition," said Robert and waved a couple of the following Scots forward to a.s.sist.

Angus was flipping through the catalogue, miner's lamp dancing on the pages. "Ah, here! 'Thompson submachine gun'..." He stopped and looked up at the boxes. He shook his head and looked back at the page. "No wonder!"

"No wonder what?" prompted Robert, a bit impatient. The recon drone must have pa.s.sed overhead by this time, and they had had no lunch and needed a break to recharge their air bottles outside.

"That ammunition we found was very well preserved. Airtight. Well, it maybe had to be. This sub-Thompson was a century out of date when we found the truckload. They must have just been sending them to the cadets to practice with. They were relics!"

Jonnie was not about to try to fight Psychlos with sub-Thompsons. He started to pa.s.s on.

Boxes were being opened behind him.

Angus raced up. His lamp was shining on an all-metal, light-weight hand rifle. It was block-solid covered with grease that ages ago had formed into a tight, hard cast.

"Mark 50 a.s.sault rifle!" said Angus. "The last thing they issued! I can clean these up so they purr!"

Jonnie nodded. It was a sleek weapon. "MAGAZINE" said the door ahead of him. It was a doubly thick door. Meant ammunition. Maybe tactical nuclear weapons?

Angus let another Scot open it for him. He was back there rummaging in cases.

A box right ahead, standing among vast tiers of boxes, said "Ammunition, Mark 50 a.s.sault." Jonnie took a jimmy out of his belt and pried open the top. It was not airtight. The cardboard dividers were decayed and stained.

The bra.s.s was okay and the bullet clean, but the primer at the bottom told its tale. The ammunition was dud. He called Angus and showed him the cartridge.

They went on looking for nuclear weapons.

More storerooms and more storerooms.

And then pay dirt!

Jonnie found himself looking at literally thousands of outfits, neatly arranged on shelves, even with sizes, complete with shoes and face-plated helmets, packed in a kind of plastic that was airtight and nearly imperishable: "COMBAT RADIATION PROTECTION UNIFORMS."

His excited hands ripped open a package. Lead-impregnated clothing. Lead-gla.s.s faceplates.

And in mountain camouflage: gray, tan, and green.

Riches! The one thing that would let them handle radiation!

He showed Robert the Fox. Robert put it on the radio as real news but told the others to go on with their own searches and inventories.

They were on their way outside for food and air when another piece of news came through. It was Dunneldeen. Apparently he had relieved Thor, who had to go on shift at the mine. Dunneldeen wasn't even supposed to be there. "We got some great big huge security safes here," Dunneldeen's voice came over the radio. "No combination. One is marked 'Top Secret Nuclear' and 'Cla.s.sified Personnel Only.' 'Manuals.' We need an explosives team. End com."

He guided them to him. Robert the Fox looked at Angus and Angus shook his head. "No keys," said Angus.

The explosives team rigged nonflame blasting cartridges to the hinges and everyone went into the next corridor while the explosives team trailed wire. They held their ears. The concussion was head-splitting. A moment later they heard the crash of a door hitting the floor. The fire member of the team raced in with an extinguisher but it was not needed.

Lamps beamed through the settling dust.

Presently they were holding in their hands operations manuals, maintenance manuals, repair manuals, hundreds and hundreds of separate manuals that gave every particular of every nuclear device that had been built, how to set it, fire it, fuse and defuse it, store it, handle it, and safeguard it.

"Now we've got everything but the nuclear devices," said Robert the Fox.

"Yes," said Jonnie. "You can't shoot with papers!"

Chapter 4.

It must have been night outside, but nothing could be darker than the deep guts of this ancient defense base. The black seemed to press in upon them as though possessed of actual weight. The miner's lamps were darting shafts through ink.

They had come down a ramp, gone through an air-sealed door, and found an enormous cavern. The sign said "Heliport." The time-decayed bulks of collapsed metal that stood along the walls had been some kind of planes, planes with large fans on top. Jonnie had seen pictures of them in the man-books: they were called "helicopters." He stared at the single one sitting in the middle of the vast floor.

The small party of Scots with him were interested in something else. The doors! They were huge, made of metal, reaching far right and far left and up beyond their sight. Another entrance to the base- a fly-in entrance for their type of craft.

Angus was scrambling around some motors to the side of the doors. "Electrical. Electrical! I wonder if these poor lads ever thought there would be a day when you had to do something manually. What if the power failed?"

"It's failed," said Robert the Fox, his low voice booming in the vast hangar.

"Call me the lamp boys," said Angus. And presently the two Scots who were packing lamps, batteries, wires, and fuses for their own lighting trotted down the ramp, pushing their gear ahead of them on a dolly they had found.

Hammering began over by the motors that operated the doors.

Robert the Fox came over to Jonnie. "If we can get those doors to open and close we can fly in and out of here. There's a sighting port over there and it shows the outside looks like a cave opening, overhung, not visible to the drone."

Jonnie nodded. But he was looking at the center helicopter. The air was different here; he could feel it on his hands. Drier. He went over to the helicopter.

Yes, there was his eagle. With arrows in its claws, dim but huge on the side of this machine. Not like the other machines, which had minor insignia. He made out the letters: "President of the United States." This was a special plane!

The historian answered his pointing finger. "Head of the country. Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces."

Jonnie was puzzled. Yes, possibly he had gotten here on that day of disaster a thousand or more years ago. But if so, where was he? There had been no such sign on the offices. He walked around the hangar. Ha! There was another elevator, a smaller one in a different place. He looked further and found a door to a stairwell that led upward. The door was hard to open, apparently air-sealed. He got through it and mounted upward. Behind him the hammer and clang of the group faded and died. There was only the soft pat of his feet on the stairs.

Another air-sealed door at the top, even harder to open.

This was an entirely different complex. It stood independent of the rest of the base. And due to dry air and seals and possibly something else, the bodies were not dust. They were mummified. Officers on the floor, slumped over desks. Only a few.

Communication and file rooms. A briefing room with few chairs. A bar with gla.s.ses and bottles intact. Very superior grade of furnishings. Carpets. All very well preserved. Then he saw the door symbol he was looking for and went in.

The sign was on the splendid polished desk. A huge eagle plaque on the wall. A flag, with some of its fabric still able to stir when he caused a faint breeze opening the door.

The man was slumped over the desk, mummified. Even his clothing still looked neat.

Jonnie looked under the parchment hand and without touching it slid out the sheaf of papers.

The top date and the hour were two days later than the ones that ended in the operations room in the other complex.

The only explanation Jonnie could think of was that the ventilation systems didn't join: when gas. .h.i.t the main base, the system was turned off here. And they had not dared turn it back on.

The president and his staff had died from lack of air.

Jonnie felt strangely courteous and respectful as he removed more papers from the desk and trays. He held in his hands the last hours of the world, report by report. Even pictures and something from high up called "satellite pictures."

He hastily skimmed through the reports to make sure he had it all.

A strange object had appeared over London without any trace of where it came from.

Teleportation, filled in Jonnie.