He gave the signal again on his transmitter, knowing with a faint spine-crawling sensation of the rocket batteries trained on him from the green of those mountains. When one plane could carry the end of a city, all planes were under suspicion. Not that anyone outside was supposed to know that that innocuous little town was important. But you never could tell. The war wasn’t officially over. It might never be, with sheer personal survival overriding the urgency of treaties.
A light-beam transmitter gave him a cautious: «O.K. Can you land in the street?»
It was a narrow, dusty track between two wooden rows of houses, but Drummond was a good pilot and this was a good jet. «Yeah,» he said. His voice had grown unused to speech.
He cut speed in a spiral descent until he was gliding with only the faintest whisper of wind across his ship. Touching wheels to the street, he slammed on the brake and bounced to a halt.
Silence struck at him like a physical blow. The engine stilled, the sun beating down from a brassy blue sky on the drabness of rude «temporary» houses, the total-seeming desertion beneath the impassive mountains—Home! Hugh Drummond laughed, a short harsh bark with nothing of humor in it, and swung open the cockpit canopy.
There were actually quite a few people, he saw, peering from doorways and side streets. They looked fairly well fed and dressed, many in uniform, they seemed to have purpose and hope. But this, of course, was the capital of the United States of America, the world’s most fortunate country.
«Get out—quick!»
The peremptory voice roused Drummond from the introspection into which those lonely months had driven him. He looked down at a gang of men in mechanics’ outfits, led by a harassed-looking man in captain’s uniform. «Oh—of course,» he said slowly. «You want to hide the plane. And, naturally, a regular landing field would give you away.»
«Hurry, get out, you infernal idiot! Anyone, anyone might come over and see—»
«They wouldn’t get unnoticed by an efficient detection system, and you still have that,» said Drummond, sliding his booted legs over the cockpit edge. «And anyway, there won’t be any more raids. The war’s over.»
«Wish I could believe that, but who are you to say? Get a move on!»
The grease monkeys hustled the plane down the street. With an odd feeling of loneliness, Drummond watched it go. After all, it had been his home for—how long?
The machine was stopped before a false house whose whole front was swung aside. A concrete ramp let downward, and Drummond could see a cavernous immensity below. Light within it gleamed off silvery rows of aircraft.
«Pretty neat,» he admitted. «Not that it matters any more. Probably it never did. Most of the hell came over on robot rockets. Oh, well.» He fished his pipe from his jacket. Colonel’s insignia glittered briefly as the garment flipped back.
«Oh… sorry, sir!» exclaimed the captain. «I didn’t know—»
«’S O.K. I’ve gotten out of the habit of wearing a regular uniform. A lot of places I’ve been, an American wouldn’t be very popular.» Drummond stuffed tobacco into his briar, scowling. He hated to think how often he’d had to use the Colt at his hip, or even the machine guns in his plane, to save himself. He inhaled smoke gratefully. It seemed to drown out some of the bitter taste.
«General Robinson said to bring you to him when you arrived, sir,» said the captain. «This way, please.»
They went down the street, their boots scuffing up little acrid clouds of dust. Drummond looked sharply about him. He’d left very shortly after the two-month Ragnarok which had tapered off when the organization of both sides broke down too far to keep on making and sending the bombs, and maintaining order with famine and disease starting their ghastly ride over the homeland. At that time, the United States was a cityless, anarchic chaos, and he’d had only the briefest of radio exchanges since then, whenever he could get at a long-range set still in working order. They made remarkable progress meanwhile. How much, he didn’t know, but the mere existence of something like a capital was sufficient proof.
Robinson—His lined face twisted into a frown. He didn’t know the man. He’d been expecting to be received by the President, who had sent him and some others out. Unless the others had—No, he was the only one who had been in eastern Europe and western Asia. He was sure of that.
Two sentries guarded the entrance to what was obviously a converted general store. But there were no more stores. There was nothing to put in them. Drummond entered the cool dimness of an antechamber. The clatter of a typewriter, the WAC operating it—He gaped and blinked. That was—impossible. Typewriters, secretaries—hadn’t they gone out with the whole world, two years ago? If the Dark Ages had returned to Earth, it didn’t seem—right—that there should still be typewriters. It didn’t fit, didn’t—
He grew aware that the captain had opened the inner door for him. As he stepped in, he grew aware how tired he was. His arm weighed a ton as he saluted the man behind the desk.
«At ease, at ease,» Robinson’s voice was genial. Despite the five stars on his shoulders, he wore no tie or coat, and his round face was smiling. Still, he looked tough and competent underneath. To run things nowadays, he’d have to be.
«Sit down, Colonel Drummond.» Robinson gestured to a chair near his and the aviator collapsed into it, shivering. His haunted eyes traversed the office. It was almost well enough outfitted to be a prewar place.
Prewar! A word like a sword, cutting across history with a brutality of murder, hazing everything in the past until it was a vague golden glow through drifting, red-shot black clouds. And—only two years. Only two years! Surely sanity was meaningless in a world of such nightmare inversions. Why, he could barely remember Barbara and the kids. Their faces were blotted out in a tide of other visages—starved faces, dead faces, human faces become beast-formed with want and pain and eating throttled hate. His grief was lost in the agony of a world, and in some ways he had become a machine himself.
«You look plenty tired,» said Robinson.
«Yeah… yes, sir—»
«Skip the formality. I don’t go for it. We’ll be working pretty close together, can’t take time to be diplomatic.»
«Uh-huh. I came over the North Pole, you know. Haven’t slept since—Rough time. But, if I may ask, you—» Drummond hesitated.
«I? I suppose I’m president. Ex officio, pro tem, or something. Here, you need a drink.» Robinson got a bottle and glasses from a drawer. The liquor gurgled out in a pungent stream. «Prewar Scotch. Till it gives out I’m laying off this modern hooch. Gambai.»
The fiery, smoky brew jolted Drummond to wakefulness. Its glow was pleasant in his empty stomach. He heard Robinson’s voice with surrealistic sharpness:
«Yes, I’m at the head now. My predecessors made the mistake of sticking together, and of traveling a good deal in trying to pull the country back into shape. So I think the sickness got the President, and I know it got several others. Of course, there was no means of holding an election. The armed forces had almost the only organization left, so we had to run things. Berger was in charge, but he shot himself when he learned he’d breathed radiodust. Then the command fell to me. I’ve been lucky.»
«I see.» It didn’t make much difference. A few dozen more deaths weren’t much, when over half the world was gone. «Do you expect to—continue lucky?» A brutally blunt question, maybe, but words weren’t bombs.