The Pool of Fire (The Tripods) (16 page)

But they had reached their quota by the time appointed, and Henry thought it would be easy from that point. Although our attempt had to be made at midday, they were able to start theirs at dawn, before the first duty shift of Masters came on. Or, at least, they thought they could. The way to the ramp leading down to the water purification plant, however, as in the City which we had tackled, was through an open place with garden-pools, and they found that one of them was occupied by two Masters.

They looked as though they were wrestling, pushing and tugging at each other with their tentacles, threshing the water and sending up gouts of spray. Fritz and I had seen a similar thing, during the night when we were searching for the river and a way out of the City. We had made nothing of it—it was one of the many strange habits of the Masters over which the scientists had shaken their heads—and Henry did not, either. All he could do was hope that, whatever it was, they would soon put an end to it and go away. But they did not, and time was passing, whittling away the minutes that remained before the first day shift would arrive.

In the end, deliberately, he took a chance. The two Masters seemed entirely preoccupied and they were in
the pool farthest from the ramp. He decided to have his men worm their way along the wall that enclosed the second pool, and then dash for the ramp where the shadows were deepest. Three did so successfully, but the fourth must have been seen. With a surprising swiftness, the Masters heaved themselves out of the pool and came to investigate.

They killed one, and would have killed the other, Henry thought, if he had stood his ground. But this one had actually seen the incredible happen—Masters attacked by slaves—and went spinning from the scene. He would obviously return with others: there was no hope of getting more than half a dozen containers of alcohol into the culvert before he did, and they were alerted any way. Not only there, perhaps, but in the other two Cities as well; for the messages would go to them immediately on the invisible rays.

The enterprise had failed. Avoiding capture—at least long enough for the attacks on the other two Cities to go through—must be the objective now. Henry told his men to scatter, and set off through the warren of the City’s streets, heading for the river exit.

He got through, and so did two others. He had no idea of what had happened to the remaining three, but thought they must have been captured: they had watched the river for their bodies, but found nothing. (It was not a true river but a creation of the ancients—a canal connecting the western ocean with the even vaster ocean on the far side of the isthmus.) There had been great activity by patrolling Tripods, but they had
lain low in an underground refuge and had escaped detection. Eventually, they had managed to get away, to the ship and so back here.

“A miserable failure altogether,” he concluded.

“You had bad luck,” I said. “We all needed good luck to succeed, and you didn’t have it.”

“It was not a failure, even,” Fritz said. “Whatever happened to those you lost, they must have avoided capture until it was too late. No warning came to the other Cities.”

Beanpole said, “I was with Julius when the news arrived. He said he would have been pleased to have taken one City. Two was more than anyone could have hoped for.”

Henry said, “That doesn’t alter the fact that they have the continent of the Americans still. What do we do now? They may not know quite what went wrong, but they certainly won’t trust human slaves again.”

I said, “I can’t understand why they have not counterattacked.”

“They may still,” Fritz said.

“They’re leaving it a bit late. If they had been able to set up another transmitter over here before we fixed the Caps, they would have made things much more difficult for us.”

The Caps, which were woven into the very flesh of those who wore them, could not be removed, but our scientists had found how to tamper with the mesh so that they would no longer serve their own purpose.

Fritz said, “I think maybe they decided to concentrate on defense. Their Cities here and in the east are
destroyed, and they can do nothing about that. In a year and half, the great ship will come, from their home planet. They probably feel that they only have to hold out until then. As long as they still have one continent, they can set up the machines to poison our air.”

Henry said restlessly, “A year and a half . . . It’s not long. Do you know what’s being planned, Beanpole?”

Beanpole nodded. “Some of it.”

“But I suppose you can’t say?”

He smiled. “You’ll know soon enough. I think Julius is going to break it to us at the banquet tomorrow.”

•  •  •

The weather holding fine, the banquet was held in the courtyard of the castle. It was meant as a victory celebration, for those who had been concerned in the capture of the City. We had all kinds of fish from the sea, and from the rivers trout and crayfish, followed by chicken and duck, suckling pig, pigeon pie, and cuts from an ox that had been roasted whole on a spit. There were also fruit cups and cider, ales and still and sparkling wines. The food and drink were served to us by the ex-Capped. They treated us as heroes, which was embarrassing but not unpleasant.

Julius spoke first about the recent past, praising our achievements. He singled Fritz out for special mention, as was right. It had been Fritz’s steadiness and resourcefulness which had pulled us through.

He went on, “You will have been wondering what comes next. We succeeded in destroying the Cities of the enemy here and in the east. But one City remains untaken, and as long as it stands the knife is at our
throat. More than half the short time we have has passed. We must destroy that final citadel before their ship arrives.

“But at least there is only one. A single assault, if properly organized and carried out, will bring us victory. And a plan for this is well advanced.

“It is based, as any with a hope of success must be, on the enemy’s special vulnerability, which stems from the fact that they are alien to this world and must carry their own environment with them to survive. In our first attack, we drugged the Masters, and switched off the power which made the City work, but victory was not final till the dome cracked, letting their air out and earthly air in. This is the way we must strike at the remaining City.

“The approach we used before will no longer serve. The latest news we have is that the Masters in the west have stopped recruiting Capped humans. We do not know what became of those already living as slaves in the City, but it is almost certain that they will have been killed, or commanded to kill themselves. And we can be sure the river tunnels will be guarded. No, we must attack from outside, and the question is: how?

“In the old days, as we have learned, men had means of obliterating areas as big as the City from halfway around the world. We could develop them again, but not in the time left to us. We might be able to produce a more primitive form of gun for throwing explosives, but it would not serve. Another report from across the ocean tells us that the Masters are laying waste the land for many miles both north and south,
making sure that nothing can live there which might menace them. We need something else.

“And I believe we have it. There was one thing our ancestors achieved which the Masters seem never to have equaled. This was the construction of machines which could fly through the air. The Masters came from a planet whose heaviness must have made flight difficult, if not impossible. They went straight from surface travel to travel between worlds. Presumably, they could have copied the flying machines of our ancestors, but they did not do so. Perhaps because they thought the Tripods were good enough for their purposes . . . or because some quirk in their nature made them reject the idea. We know they have weaknesses; perhaps they were afraid of flying.”

I remembered my own fear and dizziness, climbing the ramp up the Wall and later walking along the narrow ledge high above the City’s roofs. The Masters had obviously not felt like that or they would not have built in such a way. But there is not always rationality in fear. It could be that they were all right as long as their feet had some contact with the ground; frightened otherwise.

Julius said, “We have built flying machines . . .”

He said it without emphasis, but his words were lost in a roar of applause from all of us.

Julius put his hand up for silence, but he was smiling.

“Not the sort of machines that the ancients built—machines which could carry hundreds of people across the western ocean in a few hours. Yes, you may gasp, but it is true. That sort of thing, like the
machines for hurling destruction halfway around the world, is beyond our present reach. These are small and simple machines. But they do fly, and a man can ride in them and also carry explosives. These are what we shall use, and hope with their aid to crack the enemy’s last shell.”

He went on to talk more generally. I had been expecting him to say something concerning our part in the new enterprise, but he did not. Later, when we were watching an exhibition given by some jugglers, I asked him directly, “How soon do we start training on the flying machines, sir? And do we do it here, or in the land across the ocean?”

He looked at me with merry eyes. “I should have thought you were too full to talk, Will, after the amount I have just seen you stuffing yourself with, let alone to think of flying through the air! How do you manage to eat so much and stay so small?”

“I don’t know, sir.” I pressed on. “About the machines, though—they really have been built?”

“They have.”

“So we can start learning to drive them soon?”

“We have men learning already. In fact, they have learned. It is a question of practicing now for the assault.”

“But . . .”

“But what about your part in it? Listen, Will, a general does not use the same troops over and over again. You have done well, you and Fritz, and earned a rest.”

“Sir! That was months ago. We’ve been doing nothing since except live on the fat of the land. I would
much rather start training on the flying machines.”

“I am sure you would. But there is another thing a general has to do—organize men and time. You do not wait for one operation to be over before starting the next. We dared not launch machines into the air while the City was all-powerful, but our men were studying them. The first machine went up the day after the dome cracked.”

I argued, “But I could join them, and probably catch up. You’ve said I’m small. Isn’t that a help? I would be less weight for the machine to carry.”

He shook his head. “Weight is not so important. In any case, we have more than enough pilots. You know our rule, Will. Individual preferences do not matter: all that matters is what contributes to efficiency and success. The number of machines we have is limited, and so are the facilities for training pilots. Even if I thought you so much more suitable than those we already have—and in fact I don’t—I would not approve something which meant that you would have to ‘catch up’ with others more advanced. It would not be an efficient thing to do.”

He had spoken firmly, to some extent in rebuke, and I had no choice but to put on as good a face as I could. Later, though, I told the story to Fritz, a bit resentfully. He listened with his usual stolidness, and commented, “What Julius said is right, of course. You and I were included in the party that was to attack the City because we had lived in the City and had the advantage of knowing it. There is no such advantage in the case of the flying machines.”

“So we have to stay here, messing about, while things happen on the other side of the ocean?”

Fritz shrugged. “It seems so. And since there is no choice, we might as well make the best of it.”

I am afraid I was not very good at doing this. I still felt that we could have caught up with those who had a start on us in driving the flying machines; and also that what we had done had earned us the right to be included in the final attack. I was hoping that Julius would change his mind, though that was not a thing that often happened. I only abandoned hope on the morning he rode out of the castle, on his way to another of our bases.

As I stood on the broken battlements, watching his horse jog away, Beanpole came to join me. He asked, “Nothing to do, Will?”

“There are plenty of things I could do. Swim, lie in the sun, catch flies . . .”

“Before he left, Julius gave me permission to start a project. You could help with it.”

I said listlessly, “What is it?”

“Did I ever tell you about the time, before I met you, when I noticed that steam from a kettle rises, and I tried to make a balloon, which would go up in the air, and perhaps carry me?”

“Yes, you did.”

“I thought of floating away to a land where there were no Tripods. It didn’t work, of course. For one thing, the air would cool and bring it down again pretty quickly. But when we were working on separating the gases in the air, to make those special masks so that you could swim upstream into the City, we also found how
to make gases that are lighter than the air. If you fill a balloon with
those,
then it should go up and stay up. In fact, the ancients had them before they built flying machines.”

I said, without much enthusiasm, “It sounds very interesting. What do you want me to do?”

“I’ve built a few balloons, and I’ve persuaded Julius to let me take a few people and see if we can get them working. We shall set up camp on our own and just—well, fly them, I suppose. Do you want to come? I’ve asked Henry and Fritz, and they’re keen.”

Under other circumstances, the idea would have intrigued me. At the moment, though, I saw it as putting a seal of finality on Julius’s refusal to let me take part in the air attack on the third City, and very dull by comparison. I said, grudgingly, “I suppose so.”

•  •  •

My bad mood did not last; I soon found that ballooning was tremendous fun. We took the balloons on carts to a place inland where the country was wild and almost uninhabited—rough hilly land, the foothills of mountains which were less high than the White Mountains, but impressive enough. One of the things Beanpole wanted to learn was the way of maneuvering in different gusts and currents of air, and the hills provided plenty of these.