Part 107 (1/2)
The small gray man was popping together slabs of cardboard. He would hit them on two diagonal corners and they became a fairly large red box. An unignited smoke pot and flare were on the top of each box and a small gong which would keep sounding.
In a tearing hurry, the small gray man took the first card Sir Robert signed, filled it in with a flurry of entries, initialed it, banged a seal on it, and popped it into the box. ”Hockner!” he said to Angus and trotted over to the center of the firing platform, dropped the box, and came back quickly and started to work on the next box.
Jonnie looked at his watch, took the coordinates and marks Angus had drawn out of the computer with a tape, punched them in. ”Time!” He punched the firing b.u.t.ton.
The first box s.h.i.+mmered an instant and vanished.
”Tolnep!” said the small gray man. ”Front steps of their House of Plunder.”
Angus rattled the computer. Jonnie set the console. The small gray man raced over and put the second box on the platform. The moment he was off, Jonnie punched the firing b.u.t.ton. That red box vanished.
Two Buddhist communicators saw the drill and relieved the small gray man putting the boxes out on the platform. The small gray man was getting quite out of breath. The boy, Quong, noticed the cards were the same except for the addresses and helped him fill those in so he just had to initial and seal them and pop them in a box. The small gray man caught up and everything was ready to fire forty minutes before the last one would go.
Panting a bit, the small gray man stood aside and let them get on with it.
Sir Robert said to him, ”Are you going to conduct this conference too?”
The small gray man shook his head. ”Oh dear, no. I'm just helping out. When they get here, it is all up to you!”
Jonnie and Sir Robert exchanged a look. They had better think of something fast! Six and a half hours from now authorized ministers of twenty-nine races, which apparently made up about five thousand separate planets, would be here!
The small gray man said something into his lapel.
A guard outside intercommed in, ”The lights on his s.h.i.+p just changed. The blue one is flas.h.i.+ng faster and now they have a big flas.h.i.+ng red one going.”
A communicator said to Sir Robert, ”The radio message that keeps going out just changed. It is saying 'Local truce area. Security and safety of your own representatives would be endangered by gunfire, motors, or attack. Keep five hundred miles clear of zone.”'
Sir Robert said, ”Can't you just call a general truce for the planet?”
”Oh, my no. I couldn't do that. It would be a protest producer- an usurpation of the powers of the state. I am sorry. Your people in other places will just have to hold out.”
Sir Robert went to ops to put messages on the command channel to tell them what was going on. They were encouraged. They reported there was no diminution of the attack's ferocity. They were holding out, but just barely. For some foolish reason the enemy, per pilot reports, had set ancient ruined London on fire.
Angus had tapes punched now for the bulk of the firings. But the small gray man said he could do the rest for him and then do those necessary for the ”fire and recall” after the three-hour wait.
A Chinese engineer and Chief Chong-won had been hanging back but were trying to attract Jonnie's attention.
He saw them and turned the console over to Angus.
”Forgive us,” said Chief Chong-won. ”But it is the dam. The water level is dropping and you can now see the tops of the generator intake ports. My engineer here, Fu-ching, says that you won't have any electricity in another four hours.”
And they had another six and a half to go!
Chapter 3.
Jonnie sent for Thor and some maps, including a copy of the old Psychlo defense map.
While he waited, he watched the small gray man working the computer beside the console. His fingers were flying. The handling of that computer compared to the skill of a very experienced pilot on a console. Then he realized the small gray man wasn't even looking at the computer keys. His fingers seemed to move in rapid blurs all by themselves. Jonnie thought that there was more to this small gray man than had surfaced so far. Not just his name and ident.i.ty, for they didn't know those yet either. But he had some much greater reason to help than he had let on. It was not that Jonnie distrusted him. It was just a feeling Jonnie had that even back of any information the small gray man gave them, there would be much deeper reasons for his presence. He decided that whatever the small gray man might tell them later, he, Jonnie, was going to really get the reasons which underlay all of this. Just a feeling. No, a certainty.
Well, one thing at a time. He had the dam to worry about, for if power failed, that would be the end of all this! And he only had, really, two working hours coming up. Repair a dam that size in two hours? Ow!
The maps came. One was a sketch the Chinese engineers had lately made. They had put the village location in. They had done a sketch map of the lake and aside from the Chinese character notations and numbers, it was all quite nice and comprehensible. They had even taken soundings.
He looked at the defense map and noticed for the first time that it was ”copied from the original survey.” And from the Psychlo dates, the original survey was nearly eleven hundred years ago. By means of a gla.s.s he read the original dam data.
The original Kariba dam, as modified by the Psychlos when they first took over and installed this defense installation, was shown to be about two thousand feet long. The structure height was about four hundred and twenty feet, backed by a lake one hundred seventy-five miles long and about twenty miles wide at its widest point. A truly big dam. It had even had a road for vehicles running all along the top of it.
Jonnie compared the maps. The original had no place for any village! What was this? Had the planet changed its face?
He grabbed a man-map of the area. The river had been named the ”Zambesi,” about twenty-two hundred miles long and one of the world's major rivers. It had flowed through ”Kariba Gorge” and here it had been dammed for hydroelectric power, an immense undertaking. The sides of the gorge at this place had been steep too. No place for any village! He compared the maps.
The top of the dam that had been a road, even before the s.h.i.+p hit the lake, had been awash.
Then Jonnie knew what had happened.
The floods of the Zambesi, year after year for eleven hundred years, had been silting up this lake.
No wonder the water level had dropped so incredibly fast. The crash must have blown a million tons of silt over the dam. And now there was not enough water flow to replace it so fast for there wasn't that much lake! It was now only about one hundred twenty miles long, and the water at the dam itself was only about a thousand feet wide. The rest had been mud.
He said to Chong-won and the Chinese engineer, ”This dam had six generator intake ports where the water entered from the lake, fell through the dam, and turned the generators. Right now, I want all six of them closed. The instant they are through firing, in about twenty-five minutes, we're going to cut all power. Do that, then close the ports. When they need electricity to start firing again we will omit lake defense cable to get rid of its power drain and we will open up only two generator ports. Can you do this?”
”Ah, yes!” Then a repeat. ”You want us to shut off all power in about twenty-five minutes, close all generator ports, and about two hours later omit defense cable at the lake and open only two ports to the generators. We will also close all spillways?”
Jonnie nodded. The excess dam water hadn't ever before gone over the top of this dam. It spilled through spillways under the dam and reentered the river far below. Conserve water. That wouldn't handle the whole situation but it might help.
Thor was there. ”Get Dwight!” Jonnie said.
”He's in the hospital. Broken arm, bashed up.”
”He was also our best explosives man at the lode,” said Jonnie. ”Get him.”
They were still firing at the console but he could use this time to organize.
Dwight came. He had two black eyes and a plaster cast on his arm. He was limping. But he was grinning like a lighthouse.
Jonnie wasted no time. ”Dwight, collect two one-thousand-foot rolls of blast cord, about three one-hundred-pound drums of liquid explosive, three of those port-a-pack drill rigs with a hundred feet of shaft for each, and fuses and things.”
”What are you going to do?” asked Thor. ”Blow up the planet?”
Jonnie said, ”You, Thor, collect every man here we had with us at the lode and a lot of Chinese.”
Stormalong was there. ”Get ready to transport explosives and men across that lake,” Jonnie told him. ”The instant they are through with this first hour's firing, we've got to be ready to roll.”
He scribbled a note for a communicator to give to Angus the instant he was finished with firing boxes: ”You are going to lose all power for two hours. Inform us when you are through with this first run as we'll be running motors and blasting. Don't start firing again until you get an all-clear from us. Communicate with me by mine radio.”
Men were being sent through the pa.s.sage to the outside. Some of them were veterans from the raid, and hospital cases. Dr. Allen looked on with disapproval, especially at Jonnie. But he said nothing.