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Chapter 2




Cool spring air chilled their faces as they stepped out onto the parking lot. A gust of wind blew several pages of a newspaper, folding and unfolding, across the blacktop, to press them flat against the link fence. Then they were out of the shadow of the building and the sun was warm as they walked toward the gate.

Donovan’s voice came to them from a car backed part way out in the lot. “Mind trying your cars before you leave?”

Brian thought for an instant that perhaps they’d been mistaken, and it was only a local power failure. Then he saw the puff of steam blow away in the cool air as the car glided forward. That was the experimental steam car, and all it used electricity for was lights, accessories, and a device that could be used to ignite the pilot which, in turn, lit the main burner. But a match would do the job just as well.

Carl and Brian waved their assent to Donovan and split up to go to their own cars.

Brian slid into his car, put the key in the ignition and turned it. Ordinarily there was a faint noise from somewhere in the machinery as he turned on the ignition. But now there was silence.

Brian turned the key further, to switch on the starting motor. The only sound was of the wind blowing past. The car remained silent.

Brian tried again, and then once more. Nothing happened.

He looked at the clock on the dashboard, stopped at nineteen after eight. He tried the dome light without success, then glanced at the ammeter and turned the headlight switch on. The ammeter needle stayed dead on zero. He snapped on the radio and the only sound was the click of the pushbutton. Habit led him to turn off the useless switches before he got out. Then he stood, one hand on the door, the cold wind whipping his trouser legs about his ankles, and abruptly he asked himself: How could all these things stop working? The car battery was self-contained, and as long as the generator kept the battery charged, it, in turn, would supply current to start the motor and run all the car’s accessories. How could anything affect this self-contained power supply?

Scowling, Brian opened the hood and checked the connections of the battery cables. They were tight and clean. He got out a pair of pliers, spread their handles wide, wrapped his handkerchief around the wide-open jaws, and pressed the end of one handle to the positive terminal of the battery. Cautiously, he swung the pliers to touch the tip of the other handle to the battery’s negative terminal.

Nothing happened.

Brian rubbed and pressed the bare metal against the battery terminals. There was no spark, no sign of life from the battery.

He put the pliers away, took a last look under the hood, lowered it, and locked the car door.

Across the lot, Carl slammed down the hood of his car, tossed about eight feet of cable with clamps on both ends into the trunk, and crossed the lot, the sun glinting on his blond hair, his pale blue eyes narrowed in exasperation.

“Any luck?” he called.

“All bad,” said Brian.

Carl nodded dispiritedly.

Donovan was just climbing out of another car. He called to them, “How did it go?”

Carl held both hands up with his thumbs down.

Donovan waved his hand in thanks. Brian and Carl headed toward the gate.

“It acts,” said Carl, “exactly like a dead battery. The question is, is it a dead battery?”

“I couldn’t raise a spark,” said Brian.

“Me either. But what could make the charge leak away that fast?”

“Ionized air?”

“Maybe. Or a conducting surface layer on the battery. But where would that come from?”

“According to the news—what was it?—a law of nature can be changed.”

Carl’s lips tightened. “Something like that. I think he said, ‘We have here the key to lead nature to do things another way, in a limited region of space.’ That was the sense of it.”

“Yes,” said Brian. “There was more, too. Something about, if you could break the wires that carry electricity to factories, and keep the wires broken, the factories would be just as useless as if you blew them up with an H-bomb.”

“Break the wires,” said Carl. “Did he mean make actual breaks in the wires, or was it just a figure of speech?”

“The trouble is,” Brian said, “we don’t have enough to go on.”

They were through the gate now, on the sidewalk. In front of them, in the street, opposite the entrance to the parking lot, sat a motionless car. About twenty feet behind it was another motionless car, its hood raised. Both vehicles were empty. People were hurrying along the sidewalk, their faces baffled or angry. At a curbside phone booth, a well-dressed man irritably jiggled the hook of the dead phone. “Hello? Hello! Operator!” The traffic light over the intersection ahead swayed in the wind, its three lenses dark.

Snatches of conversation flew past like the bits of paper that blew along the sidewalk.

“. . . have to get there by ten, but am I going to do it?”

“. . . place is going to be a disaster area by this time tomorrow if this goes on . . .”

“. . . So? It’s a vacation. How could I get to work? I’ll watch TV . . .”

At the corner, two lines of cars, headed in opposite directions, were drawn up as if waiting for the light. On the intersecting street, the cars were spread out, one halfway through the intersection, another making a right turn, just outside the crosswalk, as if waiting for a pedestrian. Most of the cars were empty, but here and there stood one with its hood up, the exasperated owner leaning in to check connections or tighten wires.

Carl led the way around the corner and they walked up a few blocks, through a district of small stores. Here the owners, wearing aprons or suitcoats, stood in the doorways of the darkened shops. Outside a small tavern, a burly bartender was frowning heavily and talking with several customers sipping beer.

“Sure,” he was saying, as Brian and Carl passed. “This isn’t the first time the lights went out on me. Or the TV. But what about the traffic? How do you explain that?”

A few doors away they sighted a store with new bicycles out on the sidewalk.

Carl said, “Here we are,” and they went inside. A thin, gray-haired man joked with Carl for a few minutes, then agreed to rent them two bicycles for seventy-five cents each, till early afternoon. The owner grinned. “Seeing it’s you, Carl. For anyone else, I’d charge a buck and a half, at least. I’ve got the only wheels in town that work.”

“Better not charge me a buck and a half,” said Carl. “Or the next time your TV quits—” He drew a finger across his throat.

The proprietor laughed. “Okay. Bring them back in good shape. Speaking of TV, have you got any idea what’s wrong?”

“Beyond me. Maybe a sudden ionization of the air let the charge flash out of car batteries and grounded a lot of wires.” He glanced at the battered bicycles. “What do you mean, bring them back in good shape? You want us to do a repair job?”

The proprietor responded with a cheerful insult and then they were out in the street.

The scene, as they pedaled toward the river and the bridge leading out of town, remained about the same; but, seen on a larger scale, because they were going faster, it became alarming. Endlessly, they raced past cars to their left, while to their right the people mingled on the sidewalks, some hurriedly trying to keep appointments, others milling aimlessly. As they passed through the main shopping district, pedestrians overflowed the sidewalks, and Brian and Carl swerved to flash down the white line in the center, passing stalled cars and trucks on either side of them. Then they were pedaling up the gently arching bridge over the river.

Brian had let Carl lead the way, but now he pedaled harder and pulled up beside him.

“North Hill?”

Carl thought a moment, then nodded. “Good view from there.”

They shot down a little-traveled side street and raced down comparatively deserted roads where only a few cars were stalled, and only a few puzzled people walked, frowning, beside low buildings and wooden fences. Then they were on a road that led into town from the hills outside.

Carl, leaning forward, his blond hair blown back by the wind, big hands gripping the handle bars, grinned at Brian suddenly.

“Race?” he challenged.

Something about the fresh country air, the brisk wind, the bright sun, and invigorating exercise after the tensions of the morning, gave Brian a sense of boyish pleasure.

“Why not?”

“To the overpass.”

“Okay.”

Carl spurted forward. Brian, grinning, raced after him. Using a trick that had served him well in the past, Brian began to breathe hard, well before he needed to.

Carl glanced back over his shoulder. “What’s the matter, Grandpop? Out of shape?”

Brian, the exhilarating extra oxygen pouring through his system, began to pedal harder. Carl glanced ahead, then glanced back, surprised. Brian was edging up on him. Already the front wheel of Brian’s bicycle was level with the rear wheel of Carl’s.

Carl fixed his gaze on the bridge coming into view a half mile up the road, and pedaled mercilessly.

Brian, his attention fastened on the front wheel of Carl’s bike, willed the distance to shorten, then focused his thoughts on the rhythm of his legs and lungs. For a moment he was conscious of nothing but the wind hard on his face, then vaguely conscious that he was drawing forward, moving slowly and steadily ahead of the man and the bicycle beside him. Carl became aware of this, too, and for a moment he began to pull away.

It seemed to Brian that there was nothing more he could do, but from somewhere inside him came an unexpected determination that brought him forward again, and then side by side, the two of them flashed over the overpass and up the first rise of the road that branched off to lead up the side of North Hill.

After a hard uphill climb, Brian and Carl, breathing heavily, leaned the bicycles against two trees at the edge of a graveled parking place where in the summer cars often stopped to look south over the city. Among the trees were green-painted picnic benches and stone fireplaces, and Brian and Carl, each casting secret yearning glances at the benches, yet neither willing to admit to the other how worn, weak, and tired he felt, walked unsteadily through the picnic grounds, past occasional patches of grainy snow that lay in hollows and behind fallen logs, where the sun couldn’t reach till it rose so high that the branches of the thick hemlocks no longer intervened. Underfoot, the ground felt soft and springy, and Brian was afraid that if he stepped a little too abruptly, both knees might give way and he would land flat in the snow.

“Ah,” said Carl, his mouth opened only slightly in order to disguise the sound of heavy breathing, “here we are.”

Brian made his own voice as steady as he could. “Yes. Here we are.”

Spread out below them was a wide, clear view of the city, the highway curving into view from the side, sweeping across in front of them, then swinging away in a wide, gentle circle to disappear on the other side. The scene was clear, and so plainly different from what either of them had ever seen from this vantage point, they both forgot the need to appear invincible, and sank down on a large, gently sloping granite rock on the edge of the hill.

From here they could see the city, the river curving through it, shining here and there in the bright sun, and the railroad tracks between road and river.

This much, they’d both seen before.

But the motionless cars and trucks dotted endlessly along the highways, the people trudging along the side of the road, the long freight train dead still on the tracks, the thick pall of smoke pouring from the factory chimneys, the tail of a crashed plane just visible in the wreckage of a burning house near the edge of town—all this was different.

After a few minutes Brian and Carl had both recovered their breath, and they were both still staring at the scene. All through town, and as far as the eye could see, no single car or truck, large or small, was moving.

Brian said, “There’s nothing local about this.”

“No. And seeing it all at once, it looks worse.”

Brian glanced at the smoke pouring from the factory chimneys.

“Why so much smoke?”

“They use electric precipitators to collect the smoke particles. With the electricity out, the precipitators don’t work.”

Brian looked from the chimneys to the highway. Unlike the situation in a traffic jam, the cars were well spread out. Some few were pulled to the side, but most were still in the traffic lanes.

Carl got to his feet a trifle unsteadily.

“Well, we’ve seen what we came for.”

“Wait a minute,” said Brian. “Let’s be sure we understand what we see.”

“The main thing is, nothing’s moving. No motors work. That’s what the chief wanted to know.”

“Maybe,” said Brian, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, “you can see and digest the whole thing without thinking it over, but I can’t.”

“What is it,” said Carl, sarcasm creeping into his voice, “that you’d like explained to you?”

“To begin with,” said Brian, “that train—” He paused, startled, as he saw something out of the corner of his eye.

Down on the highway, at the extreme right, something large was moving. “Forget the train. Take that for a starter. Explain that to me.”

Carl, on his feet a few paces back from Brian, stepped forward and bent to see under the low limb of a nearby hemlock.

“I don’t see—” He paused, blank-faced.

Down on the highway, a huge truck was steadily weaving its way in and out amongst the stalled cars. It slowed, edged up to two cars abreast, shoved the left-hand one well forward out of the way, then backed and came ahead again to weave through between them. A puff of black smoke drifted up from its vertical exhaust. The sun shone in a brief flash on the lettering giving the trucking company’s name.

The truck slowed, stopped, and one of the drivers jumped out to take the wheel of a car slewed across the road. The grind of gears was plainly audible as the truck eased forward, pushed the car to the edge of the road, backed and filled, picked up the driver who’d gotten out, then eased ahead again.

Carl nodded slowly. “It’s a diesel. That explains it.”

Brian said, “The compression of the fuel and air fires it, and they don’t use spark plugs?”

“Right. I think some of them use a spark at the beginning, when the engine’s cold, but after it heats up they don’t need that. And, of course, the engine’s hot now.”

The truck was creeping past. People at the side of the road were shouting to the driver, apparently asking for rides to the nearest town, but the driver shook his head and kept going down the highway.

“How,” said Brian, puzzled, “do they start those things?”

Carl thought for a moment. “I think they start the same as any other car, with an electric starting motor.”

“In that case, as long as the engine runs, they’re all right. But if they turn it off, it’s dead, and that’s the end of it?”

Carl ran a hand through his yellow hair. It was plain from his look of chagrin that Carl was remembering his own confident statement that they’d seen everything they needed to know.

Brian, wrestling with the problem the truck presented, was only vaguely aware of Carl’s discomfort. As far as Brian was concerned, the only thing that mattered was to get the clear picture of the situation as Cardan had requested. And as far as Brian was concerned, he knew that his picture wasn’t clear yet.

“How about that train?” he said. “That’s a diesel, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Would it fire by compression, the same as the truck?”

“Yes, but they’re actually electric trains. The diesel engines turn generators, and the electricity that’s generated runs the electric motors which turn the wheels.”

Brian looked at the trucks stalled here and there along the road. He could see at least one of them, close behind a small foreign-made car, that hid the upright stack of a diesel.

Carl, his expression alert, had noticed the same thing. “Looks like that one almost ran into the car in front.”

Brian nodded. “He probably stopped in a hurry, took one look around—”

“And he’d naturally be dumbfounded to see all the cars stopped at once,” Carl continued. “No doubt, people would start getting out. If he’d had his radio on, all of a sudden all the stations would go off.”

“He might think it was an atomic attack.”

“He’d yank on the brake, turn off the ignition, and take a flying dive for the nearest ditch.”

“Then, when nothing happened and he came back, the engine wouldn’t start.”

Carl looked at Brian with a puzzled expression, then frowned and looked down again at the highway. The diesel that was still running was out of sight now. The people were still walking along the edge of the highway, a few scrambling up the bank to the overpass Brian and Carl had crossed, and heading into town.

“Now have we seen everything?” Carl asked.

Brian looked around and spotted a medium-sized white oak about fifty feet away. “If we climb that tree over there, couldn’t we see over these evergreens?”

“Sure, but—you mean, so we could see further down the road?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the point of that? We’ll just see more of the same.”

“How do we know?”

Carl started to speak, then changed his mind. Scowling, he led the way to the oak. He turned to say something, then shrugged, took hold of a low limb, and pulled himself up into the tree.

Brian waited till Carl was up in the tree and out of the way, then took hold of a small limb, feeling the rough bark under his fingers, pulled himself up, got his feet onto a limb nearby, stood up to grip another limb overhead. The dead, brown, violet-tinged leaves still clinging to the limbs rustled around him as he climbed.

At last they were above the level of the young hemlocks and could look out onto a stretch of highway that reached far out into the distance. As far as the eye could see, the sun shone on the smooth hoods, roofs, and front windows of stalled cars spread out along the highway.

“See,” said Carl. “What did I tell you?”

“Yes,” said Brian. “You were right. But now we know it.”

Carl flushed slightly, started angrily to speak, then stopped. Ruefully, he said, “You’ve got a point there. I do go off half-cocked sometimes.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Maybe not, but it’s so. That’s something in your favor.”

Brian failed to get the point, but Carl reminded him, “Remember, we both want the same girl.”

“Sure, but can’t we leave that up to her?”

“Suppose you thought I was going to get her?”

“I wouldn’t be happy. But—she could do worse.”

Carl looked blank for an instant, then grinned. “Thanks. But how does that help you? You like her, don’t you?” “Of course I like her.”

“Then how,” said Carl, looking puzzled, “could you give her up?”

Brian exasperatedly started to speak. He was going to say: I don’t own her. Neither of us do. How do I give up something I don’t have? But he saw this wasn’t what Carl meant. Slowly, Brian said, “I’ve lost things before.”

For a brief instant, Carl looked sympathetic. Then he shook his head. “That’s the difference between you and me. I always get what I want.”

“Even—” Brian began.

“By hook or by crook,” said Carl positively, his light-blue eyes frank and clear. “I win. I’ve got to.”

Brian looked off in the distance for a moment. He, too, had an outlook on life, picked up in the bruising punishment that had come about before he learned it, and he could put it in a few words, just as Carl could put his philosophy in a few words. But something warned Brian that this wasn’t the time. Instead, he smiled suddenly and looked at Carl.

“What happens if two guys like you meet head-on? Something gets broken?”

Carl grinned. “We try to avoid each other.”

Brian laughed. They took a final look around, then climbed down the tree, dropped to the ground, wincing as the impact put strain on their sore legs, and headed back for the bicycles.

Brian, smiling, said, “Race back?”

“Ouch,” said Carl. “Let’s just see how far we can coast.”

“I wonder if we could put the bikes out of sight by the side of the road on that last curve, then walk down and ask some of those people about the cars. You know, what it was like when they stalled?”

Carl thought a long moment. “Worth a try.”

They left the bikes in the trees by the road and asked the people coming up from the highway about what had happened. The answer was always the same:

“The engine just stopped, that’s all. And then nothing worked. Starter, lights, horn, radio—the whole business was dead. So we got out and walked.”

Brian and Carl got their bicycles and went back into town.

On the way through town they could see the trouble building up.

In the streets, with their motionless cars and dead traffic signals, without the usual faint sounds of radios playing, and of juke boxes in the background, with the television sets dark, the lights and electricity gone, and the phones dead, with the novelty of the thing starting to wear off, and the fact that it was going to have to be lived with beginning to dawn, with the familiar tools and comforts missing, and uncertainties and vague horrors beginning to loom, people were instinctively gathering together.

The little groups Brian and Carl had seen earlier were big groups now. They stood about on the sidewalks, some staring glumly and others talking excitedly while they looked around at the dead neon signs, really noticing for the first time the gray untended structures that rose up behind the shiny storefronts. They looked down the streets where no cars or buses ran, for the first time seeing a mile as a mile, not as a vague distance to be overcome via a token handed to the driver, a few steps to an empty seat, and a five-minute wait. Other little mobs of people had taken over neighborhood grills or soda fountains, invited in by special prices as worried proprietors cut down the stocks of food and ice-cream that wouldn’t keep with electric refrigerators and freezers off. And once the crowds gathered, they stayed there, no one anxious to leave his own, now-familiar group to walk down the nearly empty sidewalk. In a crowd, there was warmth, companionship. Outside, the silent city, with its main life-current cut off, seemed strange and alien, and the atmosphere had the stillness that came before a thunderstorm.

Past these uneasy, tentatively waiting groups of people, Brian and Carl pedaled with casual slowness, their expressions unconcerned. No one made any hostile gesture toward them. A few people called, “Hey, taxi!” or “Pretty good, no battery.” Brian and Carl grinned back and said nothing, but the perspiration on their brows wasn’t just from the exertion of pedaling the bikes.

The tension of potential trouble was growing in the air, though the people in those groups waiting in occasional stores might not know it. They saw only each other, whereas Brian and Carl saw the city. So far, nothing really irreversible had happened. Let the power come on again in a few hours, and it would just be an event that stood out, like Hurricane Hazel, or The Blizzard. It would be referred to in later days as The Power Failure, an event more unusual than natural disasters, but on the whole less harmful. It would be made into a joke by entertainers on TV. Magazine articles would be written to describe the way it came about, and how it ended.

But what if the power failure didn’t end in a few hours?

From somewhere came the smell of smoke, and up ahead Brian saw perspiring men in firemen’s uniforms carry past a long ladder, axes, and a length of hose. In a moment, they vanished up a side street.

When the fire trucks won’t run, what can the fireman do? Who has more power then, the fire company, or the man with a match?

Brian and Carl glanced at each other, their faces deadly serious. Then they forced smiles, and kept pedaling slowly, casually, back toward the Research East building.

Around them in the city, the pent-up hysteria slowly mounted.








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