Rocket guns are very simple contrivances so far as the mechanism of launching the bullet is concerned. They are simple light tubes, closed at the rear end with a trigger-actuated pin for piercing the thin skin at the base of the cartridge. This piercing of the skin starts the chemical and atomic reaction. The entire cartridge leaves the tube under its own power, at a very easy initial velocity, just enough to insure accuracy of aim; so the tube does not have to be of heavy construction. The bullet increases in velocity as it goes. It may be solid or explosive. It may explode on contact or on time, or a combination of these two.
Dave and I talked mostly of weapons, military tactics and strategy. Strangely enough he had no idea whatever of the possibilities of the barrage, though the tremendous effect of a "curtain of fire" with such high-explosive projectiles as these modern rocket guns used was obvious to me. But the barrage idea, it seemed, had been lost track of completely in the air wars that followed the First World War, and in the peculiar guerrilla tactics developed by Americans in the later period of operations from the ground against Han airships, and in the gang wars which until a few generations ago I learned, had been almost continuous.
"I wonder," said Dave one day, "if we couldn't work up some form of barrage to spring on the Bad Bloods. The Big Boss told me today that he's been in communication with the other gangs, and all are agreed that the Bad Bloods might as well be wiped out for good. That attempt on Wilma Deering's life and their evident desire to make trouble among the gangs, has stirred up every community east of the Alleghanies. The Boss says that none of the others will object if we go after them. Now show me again how you worked that business in the Argonne forest. The conditions ought to be pretty much the same."
I went over it with him in detail, and gradually we worked out a modified plan that would be better adapted to our more powerful weapons, and the use of jumpers.
"It will be easy," Dave exulted. "I'll slide down and talk it over with the Boss tomorrow. "
During the first two weeks of my stay with the Wyomings, Wilma Deering and I saw a great deal of each other. I naturally felt a little closer friendship for her, in view of the fact that she was the first human being I saw after waking from my long sleep.
It was natural enough too, that she should feel an unusual interest in me. In the first place, I was her personal discovery, and I had saved her life. In the second, she was a girl of studious and reflective turn of mind. She never got tired of my stories and descriptions of the 20th Century.
The others of the community, however, seemed to find our friendship a bit amusing. It seemed that Wilma had a reputation for being cold toward the opposite sex, and so others misinterpreted her attitude, much to their own delight. Wilma and I, however, ignored this as much as we could.
CHAPTER 4
There was a girl in Wilma's camp named Gerdi Mann, with whom Dave Berg was desperately in love, and the four of us used to go around a lot together. Gerdi was a distinct type. Whereas Wilma had the usual dark brown hair and hazel eyes that marked nearly every member of the community, Gerdi had red hair, blue eyes and very fair skin. She was a throwback in physical appearance to a certain 20th Century type which I have found very rare among modern Americans. The four of us were engaged one day in a discussion of this very point, when I obtained my first experience of a Han air raid.
We were sitting high on the side of a hill overlooking the valley that teemed with human activity, invisible beneath its blanket of foliage.
The other three, who knew of the Irish but vaguely and indefinitely, as a race on the other side of the globe, which, like ourselves, had succeeded in maintaining a precarious and fugitive existence in rebellion against the Mongolian domination of the earth, were listening with interest to my theory that Gerdi's ancestors of several hundred years ago must have been Irish. I explained that Gerdi was an Irish type, and that her surname might well have been McMann, or McMahan, and still more anciently "mac Mathghamhain." They were interested too in my surmise that "Gerdi" was the same name as that which had been "Gerty" or "Gertrude" in the 20th Century.
In the middle of our discussion, we were startled by an alarm rocket that burst high in the air, far to the north, spreading a pall of red smoke that drifted like a cloud. It was followed by others at scattered points in the northern sky.
"A Han raid!" Dave exclaimed in amazement. "The first in seven years!"
"Maybe it's just one of their ships off its course," I ventured.
"No," said Wilma in some agitation. "That would be green rockets. Red means only one thing, Tony. They're sweeping the countryside with their disbeams. Can you see anything, Dave?"
"We had better get under cover," Gerdi said nervously. "The four of us are bunched here in the open. For all we know they may be twelve miles up, out of sight, yet looking at us with a projecto."
Dave had been sweeping the horizon hastily with his glass, but apparently saw nothing.
"We had better scatter, at that," he said finally. "It's orders, you know. See!" He pointed to the valley.
Here and there a tiny human figure shot for a moment above the foliage of the tree tops.
"That's bad," Wilma commented, as she counted the jumpers. "No less than fifteen people visible, and all clearly radiating from a central point. Do they want to give away our location?"
The standard orders covering air raids were that the population was to scatter individually. There should be no grouping, or even pairing, in view of the destructiveness of the disintegrator rays. Experience of generations had proved that if this were done, and everybody remained hidden beneath the tree screens, the Hans would have to sweep mile after mile of territory, foot by foot, to catch more than a small percentage of the community.
Gerdi, however, refused to leave Dave, and Wilma developed an equal obstinacy against quitting my side. I was inexperienced at this sort of thing, she explained, quite ignoring the fact that she was too; she was only thirteen or fourteen years old at the time of the last air raid.
However, since I could not argue her out of it, we leaped together about a quarter of a mile to the right, while Dave and Gerdi disappeared down the hillside among the trees.
Wilma and I both wanted a point of vantage from which we might overlook the valley and the sky to the north, and we found it near the top of the ridge, where, protected from visibility by thick branches, we could look out between the tree trunks, and get a good view of the valley.