The animal people v1 0, p.14
The Animal People (v1.0),
p.14
“Waitaki speaking! Waitaki speaking! We have heard your call, Sierra Haven! Let us have your message!”
“It’s the Zeals! The Zeals!” Roy reported exultantly to his companions, slipping off the headgear, which he eagerly replaced a moment later, before speaking again into the hornlike contrivance. “Sierra Haven! Sierra Haven! We have great news for you, Waitaki!”
He thought it best to say nothing of the revolt against the Regulators—how could he gauge the effect upon the Zeals? Instead, remembering that the islanders craved as many able men and women as possible to be trained as workers and technicians, he confined himself to stating that a large number of Atavs were prepared to leave immediately if the Zeals would send one of their flying transports.
“Why immediately?” came back the voice over the receiver. “In about two months, if all goes well, we will make one of our regular trading missions to your country. Won’t that do?”
Upon both Ed and Phil a sudden sinking sensation had descended. Two months! Certainly, the rebels could not hold out for half if even a quarter of that time.
Roy, however, remained unflustered. “Listen!” he called back into the machine. The expected emigrants had great difficulty to get a begrudging permission from the Regulators. At any time, the permission may be rescinded. So, for your own sakes, we counsel you to send a flying ship just as soon as you can.”
There came a long pause, punctuated by a nasty rattling of static. Finally the voice of the invisible was heard again. “How many Atavs want to come here?” Now it was Roy’s turn to pause. Yet his voice, when after a few seconds he spoke, betrayed no indecision. “We re not sure yet of the exact count. Roughly, I’d say, about two hundred*
“Two hundred?” came the surprised echo from halfway around the world. “Why should the Regulators all at once permit so many Atavs to leave?”
“God, what a question!” Ed groaned on the side to Phil. “Now how’s he going to answer that?”
But Roy’s gray-green eyes sparkled as at a pleasant challenge. “That’s easy to explain. There’s been a little trouble here of late. I won’t take time to go into the details. For a long while, as maybe you know, the Atavs have been grumbling against the Tants. Now the complaints are bubbling to a head. The Grand Regulators fear worse disturbances, and, for their own protection, want to get rid of as many Atavs as they can. That is another reason why it is important for you to get here—and fast!—before they feel obliged to take severer measures”
Several seconds had passed before, in slow and weighted syllables, the answer came: “I seel Yes, I see! Well, stand by. It may be an hour, at least, before I have anything else to say. Meanwhile 111 get directions from the Head of the State Council.”
“Curse it all!” muttered Ed as Roy slipped off his headgear. “What if those Zeals won’t cooperate?”
“But of course they’ll cooperate!” prophesied Phil. *You know, there’s another—there’s another thing that worries me. Certainly, as I’ve said, I’m anxious to get away, but things being as they are, I’m not sure I really want to fly so far off so soon—that is, not unless…” “Not unless she goes, too!” Ed finished, rapping his old friend resoundingly on the back. “Naturally, I understand, you fiendish woman-hater you! Life wouldn’t ever be the same for you again—not until you found some nice, sweet dame among the Zeals!*
He broke into uproarious laughter, and poked Phil companionably in the ribs, but the latter withdrew resentfully.
I’ll swear to you, old fellow, there couldn’t be any other!” he protested. And then, with a mournful look, “I don’t suppose, though, she’ll want to go with the Zeals.”
“Don’t see why not,” answered Ed, now, for a change, the optimistic one. To be honest with you, I think she’ll enliven things for us considerably.”
“Lucky those Zeal flying ships are so big—and can take a couple of hundred passengers,” interjected Roy, evidently eager to change the subject. “One of them could be here by tomorrow, if they really wanted to make it fast. But that’s more than we can expect.”
As the minutes dragged away, Roy tried to make use of the time by planning how he would announce the trip to the Atavs and arrange to recruit the men and women for the voyage. “The trouble,” he foresaw, “won’t be which to accept. There are so many of us, the trouble will be which to reject.”
Much more than the stipulated hour had passed before they once more heard a rattling in the short-wave receiver and a thick voice, only a little blurred now, called out again.
“Waitaki speaking! Waitaki speaking! Are you there, Sierra Haven?”
“This is Sierra Haven!” Roy hastily called back. “We await your word, Waitaki!”
There came a sputtering of blue sparks before the reply rang out.
“If we send a flying ship, Sierra Haven, what special inducement have you to offer us?”
“None—none except Atavs to add to your work force. No, hold on just a minute!” Roy suddenly changed tactics as he caught a frantic signal from Ed.
“Listen!” Ed shouted at him after he had turned a switch that cut the conversation off the air. “Of course we have special inducement to offer them! Haven’t I been told that the Zeals are interested in making researches into the twentieth century? So are you forgetting the crimson capsule? Why, we’ve all sorts of gadgets and products of our times stored there so as to show some other period what we’re like. Tell those Zeals—well, tell them we’ve made an extraordinary find of twentieth century relics, all of them in an unusual state of preservation, and are eager to turn them over to a civilized people before those savages of Tants destroy them.”
“Good! That should get them!” agreed Roy with a laugh. And so he immediately conveyed his message, going out of his way to emphasize the rarity, importance, and value of the find.
Now, for the first time, the voice at the other end of the line showed eagerness, even warmth. I must confer again with the Head of the State Council,” the speaker decided. “Stand by for another hour!”
But, less than an hour later, the voice was heard again. “Waitaki speaking! Waitaki speaking!…The Head of the State Council has authorized me to say that on the third day from now, at noon by your time, the flying vessel Auckland will alight at Sierra Haven.”
Down from the hot and hazy sky, the silver and blue airship slowly descended. She was shark-shaped and about as long as an average city block, and her prow was featured by two bright golden-red lights like enormous eyes, while her taillights were of alternately blinking crimson and green. Along both her sides, in such rapid rotation that they made mere gray blurs, were numerous projections like propeller blades, but each set turned in the opposite direction from its nearest neighbors, as many moving clockwise as counterclockwise, with the effect of checking the ship’s speed and making her travel much like a helicopter, hovering and then drifting down toward the open ground near Sierra Haven.
There, scores of cheering spectators had gathered—men, women, and children, all of them Atavs, except for a few hairless, earless, noseless, or six-fingered Tants who hovered in superstitious awe in the background, having heard rumors of something portentous attending the Auckland’s coming.
A little apart from the crowd, three men stood in a group conferring.
“You bet, boys,” one of them said in clear, incisive tones, “first thing I did was to free all those poor devils in the Hospitarium. They’ll be coming with us.”
“Roy and I are with you there, Ed!” answered a tall man with reddish-brown hair and bushy eyebrows. “Did you notice how happy all those fellows from the Atavarium are, now that we’ve given them hope? And all the women, tool I hope to heaven we’ll have room to take every last one.”
Wistfully his gaze traveled to a slim yellow-haired girl who stood a little distance off beside a stooped, white-bearded man. But his attention was diverted to the Auckland, which, with a great whirring of motors, was just settling to earth a few yards away. Her golden-red headlights blinked on and off and her tail-lights flickered and went out as, with a final lurch and a shudder, she settled down in her assigned strip.
Instantly, one of the forward doors shot open, and two men in green-braided gray uniforms emerged. Their tall, well-formed frames and sturdy, attractive features showed no evidence of Tant blood.
“Were here at the direction of the Head of the State Council of Zeals,” one of the men announced in a firm voice with a peculiar foreign ring, while a curious crowd drew round. “Which of you is the spokesman for Sierra Haven?”
“I am!” stated Roy, pressing forward. “That is,” he amended, designating Ed and Phil and giving the names of all three, “I and my two colleagues.”
“I am Ralph Hoy, the first mate of the Auckland,” the official went on in a brisk, businesslike way. “This is Matthew Faye, the second mate. We are to stay here up to twenty-four hours if necessary, but no longer. We understand that you have an important find of relics from before the Year of Infamy.”
“That’s so,” reported Roy. “However, you’ll have to come with us to the site of the discovery, several miles from here.”
To Ed and Phil it seemed a boring waste of time to make the round trip of about ten miles to the crimson capsule, accompanied by Hoy and Faye and twelve of their crew, who were to help them bear the spoils away. But when they returned after sunset, finding their way by the beams of the Zeals’ flashlights after a hard, slow trip, they were all weighed down with vials and bottles, with electronic devices such as phonographs and tape recorders, and with boxes containing cameras, portable typewriters, clocks and watches, books and magazines, and disks filled with records of the twentieth century.
“You didn’t exaggerate,” Hoy acknowledged enthusiastically. “These will make a magnificent addition to our museum of pre-infamy antiquities. We’ll be ready to embark in the morning.”
“How many of us can you take?” asked Ed.
“Our maximum capacity is two hundred.”
Here was, indeed, a problem! For there were two hundred nineteen Atavs in all. Would they have to draw lots? But one-by-one some of the older men and women, who had long ago lost the adventurousness of youth, came forward and announced that their fear of the Ruling Tants was less than their dread of beginning an unknown life in an unknown world. These hold-backs were found to number more than twenty.
One who stood hesitating was old Frank Harley. “I’ve always longed to escape from those tyrannical Tants,” he told Ed and Phil, thoughtfully fingering his long white beard. “Still, at my time of life it’s pretty hard for a bird to change nests. What do you say, Olga?”
Phil’s heart, as he awaited the reply that came haltingly from the girl’s lips, fluttered and seemed to miss a beat.
Even as her lips moved to speak, her eyes caught his, and she looked down quickly and blushed slightly.
“I know, Father—I know how hard it is for you to go away,” she answered in tones so low that Phil had difficulty in following her. “But wouldn’t it be even harder to stay? Wouldn’t it be much, much harder for us both?”
Harley, seeing the yearning in her face, hesitated only a second longer. “Of course, my girl, of course I should have remembered,” he said. “You are young, and should not be obliged to stay in this deadly place. However, it would not be right to expect you to fly off all alone, without a father to look after you. I myself—I myself could not bear that.”
To Phil, it seemed that the sun had suddenly broken out from behind black clouds.
And when, an hour later, he stood in the Auckland with Merwin, Ed, and Roy at his side, while Olga and Harley stood together near the rail only a few paces away, he felt himself to be one of the most fortunate of men. He hardly heard Ed telling how, upon reaching his new home, he would devote himself to inaugurating a program of extensive reforestation of Earth, so that the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might gradually be absorbed and the planet, in the course of the centuries, might be started back toward its former greener state, while immense coastal areas might be reclaimed from the sea.
But it was of no distant future that Roy was thinking. “You know,” he exclaimed, jubilantly, “I’d give a lot to see the faces of those overseers and Regulators when they wake up and find we’ve skipped halfway around the world! Now that we’ve withdrawn the guard, it’s only a matter of time before somebody opens the door of their sealed room, releasing the Trichloro and permitting them to revive. But when that happens, we’ll be ten thousand miles away!”
As the cry “All aboard!” rang out and the airship quivered and slowly, gracefully arose, Phil’s interest was not in the swift, smooth movement of the vessel, not in the waving groups of Atavs, nor in the Tants somberly watching below. His whole world was embodied in one confident, happy flash thrown in his direction from beneath the flowing yellow hair of a fellow adventurer.
“You know,” he remarked to Ed as he saw the receding ramparts of Sierra Haven stretching cold and fortress-like beneath him, “after all, old man, I think we chose right in changing centuries.”
Ed laughed indulgently as his gaze, too, traveled to the slender girl with the violet-tinged eyes who stood near the rail talking to a white-bearded man.
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Unknown Author, The Animal People (v1.0)
