"Christopher, John - Tripods 03 - The Pool of Fire 2.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Christopher Barbara)

"A good point," Julius said, "but we have an answer to it. You brought back samples from the City. We have learned how to reproduce the green air in which they live. A room has already been prepared here in the castle, sealed and with an air lock to enable us to pass in and out."

Fritz said, "But if you manage to bring a Tripod here, and wreck it here . . . the others will come looking for it. They can destroy the castle easily enough."

"We also have a box big enough to hold one of them, and can seal that. If we make the capture farther along the coast, we can bring him here by boat:"

I said, "And the means of capturing, sir? I would not have thought that was easy."

"No," Julius agreed, "not easy. But we have been studying them. They are creatures of routine, and generally follow particular paths. We have mapped and timetabled many of them. There is a place, some fifty miles to the north, where one passes every nine days. It strides across rough commonland at the sea's edge. Between one passing and the next we have nine days to dig a hole and cover it lightly with brush and clods. We will bring our Tripod down, and after that all we have to do is winkle the Master out and get him into his box and onto the boat lying hard by. From what you and Fritz told us-that their breathing is much slower than ours-there should be no danger of his suffocating before we can get a mask on him."

Fritz objected, "They can communicate with each other, and with the City, by invisible rays."

Julius smiled. "We can handle that part, too. Now, talk to us about the Tripods. There is paper in front of you, and pencils. Draw diagrams of them. Drawing will refresh your memories also:"

We were a week at the castle before moving north. During that time I learned a little, from Beanpole and the others, of the great strides that had been taken, during the previous year, in relearning the skills of the ancients. A breakthrough had been made by an expedition into the ruins of one of the great-cities, where a library had been found containing thousands on thousands of books which explained the marvels of the time before the Tripods came. These gave access to an entire world of knowledge. It was possible now, Beanpole told me, to make those bulbs which, by means of the power called electricity, would glow with light far brighter and more constant than the oil lamps and candles to which we were accustomed. It was possible to get heat from an arrangement of wires, to build a carriage which would travel along not pulled by horses but by means of a small engine inside it. I looked at Beanpole, when he said that.

"Then the Shmand-Fair could be made to work again, as it used to work?"

"Very easily. We know how to machine metals, to make the artificial stone which the ancients called concrete. We could put up towering buildings, create great-cities again. We can send messages by the invisible rays that the Masters use -even send pictures through the air! There is so much that we can do, or could learn to do in a short time. But we are concentrating only on those things which are of direct and immediate help in defeating the enemy. For instance, at one of our laboratories we have developed a machine which uses great heat to cut through metal. It will be waiting for us in the north."

Laboratories, I wondered-what were they? My mind was confused by much of what he said. We had both learned a lot during the time we had been separated, but his knowledge was so much greater and more wonderful than mine. He looked a lot older. The ridiculous contraption of lenses, which he had worn when we first set eyes on him, at the other side of the smoky bar in the French fishing town, had been replaced by a neat symmetrical affair which sat on the bridge of his long thin nose and gave him an air of maturity and authority. They were called spectacles, he had told me, and others among the scientists wore them. Spectacles, scientists . . . so many words, describing things outside my ken.

I think he realized how much at a loss I felt. He asked me questions about my own experiences, and I told him what I could. He listened to it all intently, as though my ordinary travels were as interesting and important as the fantastic things he had been learning and doing. My heart warmed to him for that.

We set up camp in caves not far from the intended place of ambush. The boat we were to use, a forty-foot fishing smack, stayed close at hand, her nets out to provide an appearance of innocence. ( In fact, she caught a fair haul of fish, mostly mackerel; some provided rations for us and the rest were thrown back.) On a particular morning, we kept well out of sight while two of our number went farther up, to hide behind rocks and watch the Tripod pass. Those of us who stayed in the cave heard it, anyway: it was making one of the calls whose meaning we did not know, an eerie warbling sound. As it faded in the distance, Julius said, "On time, to the minute. Now we start to work."

We labored hard at preparing the trap. Nine days was not so long a time, when it involved digging away enough earth to serve as a pitfall for a thing with fifty-foot legs, leaving a pattern of supports on which the camouflage must rest. Beanpole, pausing in his digging, spoke wistfully of something which had been called a bulldozer, and which could move earth and stones by the ton. But that was another thing there had not been time enough to recreate.

At any rate, we got through the task, with a day to spare. The day seemed longer than the previous eight had. We sat in the mouth of the cave, looking out to a gray, calm, cold sea, patched with mist. At least, the sea journey should not offer much difficulty. Once we had trapped our Tripod, and caught our Master, that was.

The weather stayed cold and dry next morning. We took up our places-all of us this timean hour before the Tripod was due to pass. Fritz and I were together, Beanpole with the man working the jammer. This was a machine that could send out invisible rays of its own, to break up the rays coming to and going from the Tripod and isolate it, for the time being, from any contact with the others. I was full of doubts about this, but Beanpole was very confident. He said these rays could be interrupted by natural things like thunderstorms: the Masters would think something like that had happened, until it was too late to do anything about it.

The minutes and seconds crawled by. Gradually my concentration turned into a sort of daze. I was jolted back to reality by Fritz silently touching my shoulder. I looked and saw the Tripod swing around the side of a hill to the south, heading directly for us. Immediately I tensed, in body and mind, for the part I was to play. It was traveling at an average speed. In less than five minutes . . . Then, without warning, the Tripod stopped. It halted with one of its three feet raised, looking absurdly like a dog begging for a bone. For three or four seconds it stayed there. The foot came down. The Tripod continued its progress; but it was no longer heading our way. It had changed course, and would miss us by a couple of miles at least.

In stunned amazement, I watched it travel on and disappear. From behind a clump of trees on the other side of the pitfall, Andre, our leader, came out and waved. We went to join him, along with the others.

It was soon established what had gone wrong. The Tripod's hesitation had coincided with the ray jammer being turned on. It had stopped, and then shied away. The man who had worked the machine said, "I should have waited till it was on top of the trap. I didn't expect it to react like that."

Someone asked, "What do we do now?"

The let-down feeling was apparent in all of us. All the work and waiting for nothing. It made our entire project, of overthrowing the Masters, seem hopeless, childlike almost.

Julius had come hobbling up. He said, "We wait, of course." His calmness was steadying, "We wait till next time, and then we don't use the jammer until the absolutely last moment. Meanwhile, we can extend the trap farther still."

So the working and waiting went on, for nine more days, and zero hour came around again. The Tripod appeared, as it had done previously, marched around the side of the hill, reached the point where it had stopped the time before. This time it did not stop. But it did not come on toward us, either. Without hesitation, it took the identical course it had taken after its earlier check. Seeing it go, well out of our reach, was yore than a double bitterness.

Holding a council of war, we were in low spirits. Even Julius, I thought, was dismayed, though he did his best not to show it. I found it quite impossible to conceal my own despair.

Julius said, "One sees how it works. They follow set courses on these patrols. If the course is varied for some reason, the variation is kept on subsequent trips."