Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi) (4 page)

"They seem to be pretty solid," he said tentatively.

His strength was coming back to him every moment. He had been no
more than stunned. He walked out on the planking to the bronze
grating and turned.

"If you don't get dizzy, you might come on," he said. "We can swing
down the grille here to the floor."

Estelle followed gingerly and in a moment they were safely below. The
corridor was quite empty.

"When the crash came," Estelle explained, her voice shaking with
the reaction from her fear of a moment ago, "every one thought the
building was coming to pieces, and ran out. I'm afraid they've all
run away."

"They'll be back in a little while," Arthur said quietly.

They went along the big marble corridor to the same western door,
out of which they had first gone to see the Indian village. As
they emerged into the sunlight they met a few of the people who
had already recovered from their panic and were returning.

A crowd of respectable size gathered in a few moments, all still
pale and shaken, but coming back to the building which was their
refuge. Arthur leaned wearily against the cold stone. It seemed to
vibrate under his touch. He turned quickly to Estelle.

"Feel this," he exclaimed.

She did so.

"I've been wondering what that rumble was," she said. "I've been
hearing it ever since we landed here, but didn't understand where
it came from."

"You hear a rumble?" Arthur asked, puzzled. "I can't hear anything."

"It isn't as loud as it was, but I hear it," Estelle insisted. "It's
very deep, like the lowest possible bass note of an organ."

"You couldn't hear the shrill whistle when we were coming here,"
Arthur exclaimed suddenly, "and you can't hear the squeak of a
bat. Of course your ears are pitched lower than usual, and you can
hear sounds that are lower than I can hear. Listen carefully. Does
it sound in the least like a liquid rushing through somewhere?"

"Y-yes," said Estelle hesitatingly. "Somehow, I don't quite
understand how, it gives me the impression of a tidal flow or
something of that sort."

Arthur rushed indoors. When Estelle followed him she found him
excitedly examining the marble floor about the base of the vault.

"It's cracked," he said excitedly. "It's cracked! The vault rose
all of an inch!"

Estelle looked and saw the cracks.

"What does that mean?"

"It means we're going to get back where we belong," Arthur cried
jubilantly. "It means I'm on the track of the whole trouble.
It means everything's going to be all right."

He prowled about the vault exultantly, noting exactly how the cracks
in the flooring ran and seeing in each a corroboration of his theory.

"I'll have to make some inspections in the cellar," he went on
happily, "but I'm nearly sure I'm on the right track and can figure
out a corrective."

"How soon can we hope to start back?" asked Estelle eagerly.

Arthur hesitated, then a great deal of the excitement ebbed from
his face, leaving it rather worried and stern.

"It may be a month, or two months, or a year," he answered
gravely. "I don't know. If the first thing I try will work, it
won't be long. If we have to experiment, I daren't guess how long
we may be. But"—his chin set firmly—"we're going to get back."

Estelle looked at him speculatively. Her own expression grew a
little worried, too.

"But in a month," she said dubiously, "we—there is hardly any hope
of our finding food for two thousand people for a month, is there?"

"We've got to," Arthur declared. "We can't hope to get that much
food from the Indians. It will be days before they'll dare to come
back to their village, if they ever come. It will be weeks before
we can hope to have them earnestly at work to feed us, and that's
leaving aside the question of how we'll communicate with them, and
how we'll manage to trade with them. Frankly, I think everybody is
going to have to draw his belt tight before we get through—if we
do. Some of us will get along, anyway."

Estelle's eyes opened wide as the meaning of his last sentence
penetrated her mind.

"You mean—that all of us won't—"

"I'm going to take care of you," Arthur said gravely, "but there
are liable to be lively doings around here when people begin to
realize they're really in a tight fix for food. I'm going to get
Van Deventer to help me organize a police band to enforce martial
law. We mustn't have any disorder, that's certain, and I don't
trust a city-bred man in a pinch unless I know him."

He stooped and picked up a revolver from the floor, left there
by one of the bank watchmen when he fled, in the belief that the
building was falling.

Arthur stood at the window of his office and stared out toward the
west. The sun was setting, but upon what a scene!

Where, from this same window Arthur had seen the sun setting behind
the Jersey hills, all edged with the angular roofs of factories,
with their chimneys emitting columns of smoke, he now saw the same
sun sinking redly behind a mass of luxuriant foliage. And where
he was accustomed to look upon the tops of high buildings—each
entitled to the name of "skyscraper"—he now saw miles and miles
of waving green branches.

The wide Hudson flowed on placidly, all unruffled by the arrival of
this strange monument upon its shores—the same Hudson Arthur knew
as a busy thoroughfare of puffing steamers and chugging launches.
Two or three small streams wandered unconcernedly across the land
that Arthur had known as the most closely built-up territory on
earth. And far, far below him—Arthur had to lean well out of his
window to see it—stood a collection of tiny wigwams. Those small
bark structures represented the original metropolis of New York.

His telephone rang. Van Deventer was on the wire. The exchange in
the building was still working. Van Deventer wanted Arthur to come
down to his private office. There were still a great many things to
be settled—the arrangements for commandeering offices for sleeping
quarters for the women, and numberless other details. The men who
seemed to have best kept their heads were gathering there to settle
upon a course of action.

Arthur glanced out of the window again before going to the
elevator. He saw a curiously compact dark cloud moving swiftly
across the sky to the west.

"Miss Woodward," he said sharply, "What is that?"

Estelle came to the window and looked.

"They are birds," she told him. "Birds flying in a group. I've
often seen them in the country, though never as many as that."

"How do you catch birds?" Arthur asked her. "I know about shooting
them, and so on, but we haven't guns enough to count. Could we
catch them in traps, do you think?"

"I wouldn't be surprised," said Estelle thoughtfully. "But it would
be hard to catch many."

"Come down-stairs," directed Arthur. "You know as much as any of
the men here, and more than most, apparently. We're going to make
you show us how to catch things."

Estelle smiled, a trifle wanly. Arthur led the way to the
elevator. In the car he noticed that she looked distressed.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "You aren't really frightened,
are you?"

"No," she answered shakily, "but—I'm rather upset about this
thing. It's so—so terrible, somehow, to be back here, thousands
of miles, or years, away from all one's friends and everybody."

"Please"—Arthur smiled encouragingly at her—"please count me your
friend, won't you?"

She nodded, but blinked back some tears. Arthur would have tried to
hearten her further, but the elevator stopped at their floor. They
walked into the room where the meeting of cool heads was to take
place.

No more than a dozen men were in there talking earnestly but
dispiritedly. When Arthur and Estelle entered Van Deventer came
over to greet them.

"We've got to do something," he said in a low voice. "A wave of
homesickness has swept over the whole place. Look at those men. Every
one is thinking about his family and contrasting his cozy fireside
with all that wilderness outside."

"You don't seem to be worried," Arthur observed with a smile.

Van Deventer's eyes twinkled.

"I'm a bachelor," he said cheerfully, "and I live in a hotel. I've
been longing for a chance to see some real excitement for thirty
years. Business has kept me from it up to now, but I'm enjoying
myself hugely."

Estelle looked at the group of dispirited men.

"We'll simply have to do something," she said with a shaky smile. "I
feel just as they do. This morning I hated the thought of having
to go back to my boarding-house to-night, but right now I feel as
if the odor of cabbage in the hallway would seem like heaven."

Arthur led the way to the flat-topped desk in the middle of the room.

"Let's settle a few of the more important matters," he said in
a businesslike tone. "None of us has any authority to act for
the rest of the people in the tower, but so many of us are in a
state of blue funk that those who are here must have charge for a
while. Anybody any suggestions?"

"Housing," answered Van Deventer promptly. "I suggest that we draft
a gang of men to haul all the upholstered settees and rugs that
are to be found to one floor, for the women to sleep on."

"M—m. Yes. That's a good idea. Anybody a better plan?"

No one spoke. They all still looked much too homesick to take any
great interest in anything, but they began to listen more or less
half-heartedly.

"I've been thinking about coal," said Arthur. "There's undoubtedly
a supply in the basement, but I wonder if it wouldn't be well to
cut the lights off most of the floors, only lighting up the ones
we're using."

"That might be a good idea later," Estelle said quietly, "but light
is cheering, somehow, and every one feels so blue that I wouldn't
do it to-night. To-morrow they'll begin to get up their resolution
again, and you can ask them to do things."

"If we're going to starve to death," one of the other men said
gloomily, "we might as well have plenty of light to do it by."

"We aren't going to starve to death," retorted Arthur sharply. "Just
before I came down I saw a great cloud of birds, greater than I
had ever seen before. When we get at those birds—"

"When," echoed the gloomy one.

"They were pigeons," Estelle explained. "They shouldn't be hard
to snare or trap."

"I usually have my dinner before now," the gloomy one protested,
"and I'm told I won't get anything to-night."

The other men began to straighten their shoulders. The peevishness
of one of their number seemed to bring out their latent courage.

"Well, we've got to stand it for the present," one of them said
almost philosophically. "What I'm most anxious about is getting
back. Have we any chance?"

Arthur nodded emphatically.

"I think so. I have a sort of idea as to the cause of our sinking
into the Fourth Dimension, and when that is verified, a corrective
can be looked for and applied."

"How long will that take?"

"Can't say," Arthur replied frankly. "I don't know what tools,
what materials, or what workmen we have, and what's rather more to
the point, I don't even know what work will have to be done. The
pressing problem is food."

"Oh, bother the food," some one protested impatiently. "I don't
care about myself. I can go hungry to-night. I want to get back to
my family."

"That's all that really matters," a chorus of voices echoed.

"We'd better not bother about anything else unless we find we
can't get back. Concentrate on getting back," one man stated more
explicitly.

"Look here," said Arthur incisively. "You've a family, and so have a
great many of the others in the tower, but your family and everybody
else's family has got to wait. As an inside limit, we can hope to
begin to work on the problem of getting back when we're sure there's
nothing else going to happen. I tell you quite honestly that I think
I know what is the direct cause of this catastrophe. And I'll tell
you even more honestly that I think I'm the only man among us who
can put this tower back where it started from. And I'll tell you
most honestly of all that any attempt to meddle at this present time
with the forces that let us down here will result in a catastrophe
considerably greater than the one that happened to-day."

"Well, if you're sure—" some one began reluctantly.

"I am so sure that I'm going to keep to myself the knowledge of what
will start those forces to work again," Arthur said quietly. "I
don't want any impatient meddling. If we start them too soon God
only knows what will happen."

Van Deventer was eying Arthur Chamberlain keenly.

"It isn't a question of your wanting pay in exchange for your
services in putting us back, is it?" he asked coolly.

Arthur turned and faced him. His face began to flush slowly. Van
Deventer put up one hand.

"I beg your pardon. I see."

"We aren't settling the things we came here for," Estelle
interrupted.

She had noted the threat of friction and hastened to put in a
diversion. Arthur relaxed.

"I think that as a beginning," he suggested, "we'd better get
sleeping arrangements completed. We can get everybody together
somewhere, I dare say, and then secure volunteers for the work."

"Right." Van Deventer was anxious to make amends for his blunder
of a moment before. "Shall I send the bank watchmen to go on each
floor in turn and ask everybody to come down-stairs?"

"You might start them," Arthur said. "It will take a long time
for every one to assemble."

Van Deventer spoke into the telephone on his desk. In a moment he
hung up the receiver.

"They're on their way," he said.