However, the structural scheme and the materials chosen had made each gate exceedingly strong. It would have required artillery to reduce it; and artillery here did not exist, except perhaps in some museum of archæology of the Vanished People.
The blast of the atomic tubes, which had transported the Arks through space, of course could reduce any of the gates; but first they must be brought to the vicinity and placed in position; and if this could be done without danger, there was the problem of the lining of the tubes. Those in the second space-ship from Michigan, commanded by Ransdell, actually had burnt out at the end of the passage, and had contributed to the disaster which overtook that party.
Little, indeed, had been left of the lining in the tubes of the Ark which Hendron himself, more successfully, had piloted. So it was fairly certain that the propulsion tubes in the possession of the Midianites must be in similar state.
“What they have left of the lining, they’ll save for their own defense—as we used ours,” Jack expressed his opinion to Eliot James, who to-day was standing watch with him.
Eliot nodded. “I think so. At least, I’m sure they’ll not attack us with the tubes; they’ll not think it necessary. They figure, of course, we’ve got to come to them.”
“Well,” challenged Jack, “haven’t we?”
Eliot gazed out the gate along the road where the shadow of a post placed by the Ancient People lay long and faint upon the ground.
“There goes the sun,” he said. “And gosh, it’s cold already! But we can burn things to keep warm. It’s humiliating as hell; but we can burn old wood or grain, or a thousand things, and keep warm for a while, anyway. Physically, we’re not forced to go to them; but can we be men—and stay away?”
“That’s it,” Jack commended his friend. “That’s it exactly.”
“I know,” said Eliot. “I was never so mad in my life as the night when they cut off our light and heat. I could have done anything—if I could have got to them, for it. It was the most infuriating thing I ever felt.”
“Are you telling me?” said Jack. “You thought you were alone in that feeling?”
“Of course not; but I can’t laugh at it yet. Can you?”
“No; and I never expect to—until I can fix that feeling.”
“But how can we fix it?”
“Exactly. How can we? How in the world—how on Bronson Beta, Jack, are we going to be able to get at them?”
“Tony’d like to know; but it’s got to be without too great a risk. He won’t have us killed—not too many, anyway.”
“Well, how many of us would he think it worth while to lose, if we took Gorfulu?”
“Do you think you know how to do it? … Whew, that chill certainly comes on.”
“Sun’s gone; and damn’ little of it there was to go. We simply weren’t made to be this far away from the sun.”
“Half a year from now, you’ll be saying we weren’t made to be as near the sun as we’ll be.”
“If we live till then.”
“Yes; and if this cock-eyed world decides to do a decent orbit really around the sun, and not go sliding off into space, as it’s done before.”
“What makes you say that? Do you think Duquesne and Eiffenstein are giving us a run-around? They say we’re coming back, and too close to the old sun for comfort.”
“Yes,” agreed Jack. “But do they know? Does anybody know until the old apple does it—or doesn’t do it? Somebody certainly must have told the people who built these cities that they were going to stay in sight, at least, of some sun; and they certainly took a long ride in the dark.… Hello, here’s our relief.” And Jack hailed the pair who appeared in the twilight of the street; he passed them his report, “Everything quiet,” and he started up the street with Eliot toward his quarters.
“What’s the hurry, soldiers?” some one softly hailed from the darkness of a hooded doorway. It was a girl’s voice, teasing, provocative.
Both halted. “Who are you?”
“Please, soldiers, we’re only friends caught out in the dark and needing protection.”
Jack laughed, and knew her before he turned on his flashlight. “Marian,” he demanded, “what are you doing here, and who’s with you?”
Then her companion, Shirley Cotton, made herself known.
“We were hoping,” Marian Jackson said, as the two girls walked along with the two young men, “for somebody to come by who knows how to turn on the heat again, not to speak of the lights.”