The Year When Stardust Fell Read online

  Chapter 10. _Victory of the Dust_

  By the time Ken was through with the ordeal in court, Art Matthews hadsucceeded in building an engine from entirely new parts. He had itinstalled in an airtight room into which only filtered air could pass.

  This room, and another air filter, had been major projects inthemselves. The science club members had done most of the work aftertheir daily stint at the laboratory, while Art had scoured the town forparts that would fit together.

  At the end of the hearing Ken went to the garage. The engine had beenrunning for 5 hours then. Art was grinning like a schoolboy who had justwon a spelling bee. "She sure sounds sweet," he said. "I'll bet we cankeep her going as long as we have gasoline."

  "I hope so," Ken said. "It's just a waste of power to let it run thatway, though."

  Art scratched his head. "Yeah. It's funny, power is what we've beenwanting, and now we've got a little we don't know what to do with it."

  "Let's see if we can find a generator," said Ken. "Charge some batterieswith it. Do you think there's one in town?"

  "The best deal I can think of would be to scrounge a big motor, say anelevator motor, and convert it. The one belonging to the 5-storyelevator in the Norton Building is our best bet. I don't imagine itfroze up before the power went out."

  "Let's get it then," said Ken. "Shut this off until we're ready to useit. To be on the safe side, could you cast some new bearings for thegenerator?"

  "I don't see why not."

  When he returned home Ken told his father for the first time about theproject Art was working on.

  "It sounds interesting," Professor Maddox said. "I'm not sure exactlywhat it will prove."

  Ken slumped in the large chair in the living room, weak after hisexertions of the day. "It would mean that if we could find enoughunfrozen engines, or could assemble them from spare parts, we could getsome power equipment in operation again.

  "However, as Art said about this one engine, what good is it? Dad--evenif we lick this problem, how are things ever going to get started upagain?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "We've got one automobile engine going. Pretty soon we'll run out of gashere in Mayfield. Where do we get more? We can't until the railroad canhaul it, or the pipelines can pump it. What happens when the stock atthe refineries is all used up? How can they get into operation again?They need power for their own plant, electricity for their pumps andengines. All of their frozen equipment has to be replaced. Maybe some ofit will have to be manufactured. How do the factories and plants getstarted again?"

  "I don't know the answers to all that," Ken's father said. "Licking thecomet dust _is_ only half the problem--and perhaps the smallest half, atthat. Our economy and industry will have to start almost from scratch ingetting underway. How that will come about, if it ever does, I do notknow."

  To conserve their ration of firewood, only a small blaze burned in thefireplace. The kitchen and living room were being heated by it alone.The rest of the house was closed off.

  "We ought to rig up something else," Ken said tiredly. "That wastes toomuch heat. What's Mom cooking on?"

  "Mayor Hilliard found a little wood burner and gave it to me. I haven'thad time to try converting our oil furnace."

  Ken felt unable to stay awake longer. He went upstairs to bed for a fewhours. Later, his mother brought a dinner tray. "Do you want it here, orwould you rather come down where it's warm?" she asked.

  "I'll come down. I want to get up for a while."

  "Maria is out in the shack. She has a scheduled contact with Berkeley,but she says the transmitter won't function. It looks like a burned-outtube to her. She wanted to call Joe."

  Ken scrambled out of bed and grabbed for his clothes. "I'll take care ofit. Save dinner for me. We've got to keep the station on the air, nomatter what happens!"

  He found Maria seated by the desk, listening to the Berkeley operator'srepeated call, to which she could not reply. The girl wore a heavycardigan sweater, which was scarcely sufficient for the cold in theroom. The small, tin-can heater was hardly noticeable.

  Maria looked up as Ken burst through the doorway. "I didn't want you tocome," she said. "They could have called Joe."

  "We can't risk disturbing our schedule. They might think we've goneunder and we'd lose our contact completely."

  Hastily he examined the tube layout and breathed a sigh of relief whenhe saw it was merely one of the 801's that had burned a filament. Theyhad a good stock of spares. He replaced the tube and closed thetransmitter cage. After the tubes had warmed up, and the Berkeleyoperator paused to listen for their call, Ken picked up the microphoneand threw in the antenna switch.

  "Mayfield calling Berkeley." He repeated this several times. "Ourtransmitter's been out with a bum bottle. Let us know if you read usnow." He repeated again and switched back to the receiver.

  The Berkeley operator's voice indicated his relief. "I read you,Mayfield. I hoped you hadn't gone out of commission. The eggheads hereseem to think your Maddox-Larsen combination is coming up with more dopeon comet dust than anybody else in the country."

  Ken grinned and patted himself and Maria on the back. "That's us," hesaid. She grimaced at him.

  "Hush!" she said.

  "I've got a big report here from Dr. French. Confirm if you're ready totape it, and I'll let it roll."

  Maria cut in to confirm that they were receiving and ready to record.The Berkeley operator chuckled as he came back. "That's the one I liketo hear," he said. "That 'Scandahoovian' accent is real cute. Just assoon as things get rolling again I'm coming out there to see what elsegoes with it."

  "He's an idiot," Maria said.

  "But probably a pretty nice guy," Ken said.

  They listened carefully as the Berkeley operator read a number of pagesof reports by Dr. French and his associates, concerning experiments runin the university laboratories. These gave Ken a picture of the presentstage of the work on the comet dust. He felt disheartened. Although thematerial had been identified as a colloidal compound of a new,transuranic metal, no one had yet been able to determine its exactchemical structure nor involve it in any reaction that would break itdown.

  It seemed to Ken that one of the biggest drawbacks was lack ofsufficient sample material to work with. Everything they were doing wasby micromethods. He supposed it was his own lack of experience and hisclumsiness in the techniques that made him feel he was always working inthe dark when trying to analyze chemical specimens that were barelyvisible.

  When the contact was completed and the stations signed off, Maria toldKen what she had heard over the air during the time he was in thehospital. Several other amateur operators in various parts of thecountry had heard them with their own battery-powered sets. They hadasked to join in an expanded news net.

  Joe and Al had agreed to this, and Ken approved as he heard of it. "It'sa good idea. I was hoping to reach some other areas. Maybe we can addsome industrial laboratories to our net if any are still operating."

  "We've got three," said Maria. "General Electric in Schenectady, GeneralMotors in Detroit, and Hughes in California. Amateurs working for thesecompanies called in. They're all working on the dust."

  Through these new amateur contacts Maria had learned that Chicago hadbeen completely leveled by fire. Thousands had died in the fire and inthe rioting that preceded it.

  New York City had suffered almost as much, although no general fire hadbroken out. Mob riots over the existing, scanty food supplies had takenthousands of lives. Other thousands had been lost in a panicky exodusfrom the city. The highways leading into the farming areas in upstateNew York and New England areas were clogged with starving refugees.Thousands of huddled bodies lay under the snow.

  Westward into Pennsylvania and south into Delaware it was the same. Herethe refugees were met with other streams of desperate humanity movingout of the thickly populated cities. Epidemics of disease had brokenout where the starving population was thickest and the sanitaryfacilities poorest.
/>   On the west coast the situation was somewhat better. The population ofthe Bay Area was streaming north and south toward Red Bluff andSacramento, and into the Salinas and San Joaquin valleys. From southernCalifornia they were moving east to the reclaimed desert farming areas.There were suffering and death among them, but the rioting and mobviolence were less.

  From all over the country there were increasing reports of groups ofwanderers moving like nomadic tribesmen, looting, killing, anddestroying. There was no longer any evidence of a central governmentcapable of sufficient communication to control these elements of thepopulation on even a local basis.

  Maria played the tapes of these reports for Ken. She seemed stolid andbeyond panic as she heard them again. To Ken, hearing them for the firsttime, it seemed utterly beyond belief. It was simply somescience-fiction horror story played on the radio or television, and whenit was over he would find the world was completely normal.

  He looked up and saw Maria watching him. He saw the little tin-can stovewith a few sticks of green wood burning ineffectively. He saw the largerack of batteries behind the transmitter. Unexpectedly, for the firsttime in many days, he thought of the Italian steamship alone in themiddle of the Atlantic.

  "The _White Bird_," he said to Maria. "Did you hear anything more ofher?"

  "One of the amateurs told me he'd picked up a report from the ship abouta week ago. The radio operator said he was barricaded in the radio room.Rioting had broken out all over the ship. Dozens of passengers had beenkilled; the ones who were left were turning cannibalistic. That was thelast report anyone has heard from the ship."

  Ken shuddered. He glanced through the window and caught a vision ofScience Hall on College Hill. A fortress, he thought. There were maybe adozen other such fortresses scattered throughout the world; in them laythe only hope against the enemy that rampaged across the Earth.

  In the sky, he could see the comet's light faintly, even through thelead-gray clouds from which snow was falling.

  "You should get back to bed," said Maria. "You look as if you had beenhit two hours ago instead of two weeks."

  "Yeah, I guess I'd better." Ken arose, feeling weak and dizzy. "Can youget that report typed for Dad tonight? It would be good for him to beable to take it to the lab with him in the morning."

  "I'll get it done," said Maria. "You get off to bed."

  As much as he rebelled against it, Ken was forced to spend the next twodays in bed. Dr. Adams allowed him to be up no more than a few hours onthe third day. "I'm afraid you took a worse beating than any of usthought," the doctor said. "You'll just have to coast for a while."

  It was as he was finally getting out of bed again that he heard ArtMatthews, when the mechanic came to the door and spoke with Ken'smother.

  "This is awfully important," Art said. "I wish you'd ask him if hedoesn't feel like seeing me for just a minute."

  "He's had a bad relapse, and the doctor says he has to be kept veryquiet for a day or two longer."

  Dressed, except for his shoes, Ken went to the hall and leaned over thestair railing. "I'll be down in just a minute, Art. It's okay, Mom. I'mfeeling good today."

  "Ken! You shouldn't!" his mother protested.

  In a moment he had his shoes on and was racing down the stairs. "What'shappened, Art? Anything gone wrong?"

  The mechanic looked downcast. "Everything! We got the Norton elevatormotor and hooked it up with the gas engine. It ran fine for a couple ofdays, and we got a lot of batteries charged up."

  "Then it quit," said Ken.

  "Yeah--how did you know?"

  "I've been afraid we had missed one bet. It just isn't enough to supplyfiltered air to the engines built of new parts. The parts themselves arealready contaminated with the dust. As soon as they go into operation,we have the same old business, all over again.

  "Unless some means of decontamination can be found these new parts areno better than the old ones."

  "Some of these parts were wrapped in tissue paper and sealed incardboard boxes!" Art protested. "How could enough dust get to them toruin them?"

  "The dust has a way of getting into almost any corner it wants to," saidKen. "Dad and the others have found it has a tremendous affinity formetals, so it seeps through cracks and sticks. It never moves off onceit hits a piece of metal. What parts of the engine froze?"

  "Pistons, bearings--just like all the rest."

  "The generator shaft, too?"

  Art nodded. "It might have gone a few more revolutions. It seemed loosewhen we started work, but as soon as we broke the bearings apart theyseemed to fasten onto the shaft like they were alive. How do you accountfor that? The bearings were new; I just cast them yesterday."

  "They were contaminated by dust between casting and installation in theprotected room. We've got to dig a lot deeper before we've got the rightanswer. It might be worthwhile setting up another rig just like the onewe have in order to get some more juice in our batteries. Do you thinkyou could do it again, or even several times? That engine lasted about90 hours, didn't it?"

  "Eighty-eight, altogether. I suppose I could do it again if you thinkit's worth it. The trouble is getting generators. Maybe we could machinethe shaft of this one and cast a new set of bearings to fit. I'll try ifyou think it's worth it."

  "Get it ready to run," said Ken. "The battery power for our radio isn'tgoing to last forever. We'll be in a real jam if we lose touch with theoutside."