“Jump it!” Buck yelled. “Full belt! You’ll just make it!”
The why and wherefore flashed unanswered in Clem’s brain. He gave the autobus everything it had got, shot over the crumbling edge of the fissure, then slammed with shattering force onto the other side of the bridge. So terrific was the shock of the front wheel axle snapped like a carrot, slewed the car round, and then-plastered it with splintering impact against the cross-girders at the bridge side.
“Whew!” Buck whistled in relief, mopping his face. “That was too close for comfort. You okay, Miss Ancient History?”
He heaved the slumped girl up beside him and she gave a nervous little laugh. “Yes — yes, I’m all right, but—” She stared at the waters so far below and wondered if the river might actually be Old Father Thames still on his way to the sea; then she twisted her head to survey the still enlarging gap in the bridge. “Just what is wrong?” she asked finally.
“Hanged if I know,” Clem snapped. “First my brake pedal broke off like a match-stick, then the front axle gave way, and the bridge is rapidly—”
He broke off and stared as headlights flashed into view on the distant dark stretch.
“They’ll go over!” he gasped, vaulting over the car’s side. “Maybe I can warn them in time.”
He went pelting back along the bridge, pulling out the safety red light he used underground and flashing it as he ran. Desperately he waved it to and fro. He saw, as the first vehicle came hurtling nearer, that it was a public service transport. Closer — closer, until he could read its brightly illuminated number-plate — KT 897.
“Stop!” he screamed helplessly. “Stop, you fool!”
The driver saw the danger too late. The transport went plunging over the edge of the broken bridge, a private autobus behind it following suit. Dazed with horror Clem watched both vehicles go hurtling down into the wastes below. The cries of the doomed people floated up in a ghastly echo.
“My God,” he whispered. “All those folks—”
“I can’t get the emergency station,” Buck said, hurrying up. “If the bridge is cracked then the wires along it will be too.” He stopped, his eyes widening as he stared at the fissure. “Look at the infernal thing, Clem! It’s still enlarging—!”
“I know.” Clem’s voice was grim as he shifted his gaze from the depths below. “There’s something incredibly wrong about all this, Buck. First the light and power goes off, and then this—”
“Altogether,” Lucy remarked, not finding it easy to keep a hint of sarcasm from her voice, “my arrival in a time a thousand years ahead of my own hasn’t been too auspicious.”
“Believe me, Ancient, things like this never happened before,” Buck insisted.
“Confound it, Buck, the lady has a name,” Clem objected, but the girl only laughed.
“I rather like being called ‘Ancient’. It’s so different. And it sounds natural coming from you, Buck.”
Buck scratched the back of his thick neck as he tried to determine whether Lucy was serious or not; then Clem spoke again, obviously preoccupied with the problem on hand.
“It’s incredible that tried and tested steel, rust-proof and everything, should start behaving in this way! Forgetting the brake and axle on the autobus for a moment, take the case of this bridge. For a hundred years it has been regularly overhauled. Supersonic testers have proved it to be absolutely perfect without even an air bubble or inner fault. Yet now it behaves as though suffering from atomic blight—”
“What’s that?” Lucy enquired curiously.
“Oh, a sort of corrosion which afflicts metals if they have been in contact with atomic radiation anywhere. But in the case of this bridge such a thought isn’t even admissible. No; it’s something else, but don’t ask me what.”
“Something coming up from the distance,” Buck remarked. “It looks like an emergency car.”
He was right. In a few moments an emergency official transport came speeding up from behind them. A uniformed officer jumped out and came hurrying forward.
“What’s gone wrong here?” he demanded, and Buck promptly gave the details whilst the official glanced around him, taking in the situation. Finally he turned to his man.
“Send a radio call and have the bridge closed at both ends pending examination. Had a smash, eh?” he went on, surveying the shattered autobus.
“Just leapt the gap in time,” Clem answered.
“I don’t understand this at all,” the officer continued, frowning. “This steel here is like treacle, just melting away. I hear the same sort of thing happened in the master powerhouse this evening. Flywheel went spongy, or something, and just blew to bits.”
“Oh?” Clem looked thoughtful. “It did, did it? Any serious damage?”
“Chief engineer killed and light and power cut off. It’s the impossibility of it all. This city is so flawless the thought of even a screw coming loose is unheard of. Anyhow, let’s have your index cards.”
Buck delayed in handing his over whilst Clem did some fast thinking to explain away the anxious Lucy. Presently the officer turned to her and she looked at him uneasily, fumbling in. the borrowed mining tunic which Clem had loaned her before they had left the site.
“Come along, miss!” the officer insisted impatiently. “I have a lot to do.”
“S-sorry. I — er — I seem to have lost my card.”
“Of course you did!” Clem exclaimed suddenly, trying to sound as though he had just remembered something. “Don’t you remember, when we were out of town something fell and we were in too much of a hurry to bother with it? That must have been what it was.”
“What’s your number?” the guard asked.
“She’s Worker Ten, Domestic Section,” Clem said quickly.
“Domestic Section? What’s she doing out here, coming from the city outskirts?”
“She was staying with friends and we picked her up,” Buck Cardew said levelly.
“Mmm, I see. See you produce your index-card at Civic Headquarters tomorrow, without fail.” The officer handed Lucy a ticket. “Now all three of you had better get off this bridge. What’s left of your car will be returned to you later on. Move along, please.”
They turned away, glancing at each other in the dim light.
“That,” Buck commented, “was even more uncomfortably close than that dash across the bridge. We’ll square it all right tomorrow with Worker Ten’s card.”
“Uh-huh,” Clem agreed absently.
“Queer,” Lucy remarked, “that a bridge of steel should actually melt like that — and a powerhouse flywheel fly apart and a brake snap on the car. Sounds very much like ‘troubles never come singly’ as we used to say in my time.…” Her voice trailed off into wistfulness for a moment; then it dawned on the two silently pacing men that she was crying softly to herself.
“Here now, Ancient, this won’t do,” Buck told her, his great arm about her shoulder. “What’s wrong? Homesick?”
“Wouldn’t you be?” she asked, between sniffs. “There’s Reggie, and my baby, and— It all seems so recent to me. As though only a few hours ago I was with them. And now I’m here, with the knowledge that I can never see or know of them again.”
“It’s tough all right,” Clem agreed, dislodging Buck’s arm and putting his own in its place, “but we’ll look after you. We’re not such bad folks when you get to understand our ways — even though we’ll probably seem a bit regimented.”
More pacing and Lucy slowly recovered again. Then she asked a question: “I suppose you’ve no idea what’s gone wrong with the steel?”
“None whatever,” Clem replied. “It’s a complete mystery.”
“I’ve got one angle on it,” Buck said, thinking. “It’s probably the work of Eastern agents. They’re everywhere, honeycombing the West. Some new scientific devilry of theirs, I’ll gamble.”