Battlefield Earth Part 107

The small gray man was popping together slabs of cardboard. He would hit them on two diagonal corners and they became a fairly large red box. An unignited smoke pot and flare were on the top of each box and a small gong which would keep sounding.

In a tearing hurry, the small gray man took the first card Sir Robert signed, filled it in with a flurry of entries, initialed it, banged a seal on it, and popped it into the box. "Hockner!" he said to Angus and trotted over to the center of the firing platform, dropped the box, and came back quickly and started to work on the next box.

Jonnie looked at his watch, took the coordinates and marks Angus had drawn out of the computer with a tape, punched them in. "Time!" He punched the firing b.u.t.ton.

The first box s.h.i.+mmered an instant and vanished.

"Tolnep!" said the small gray man. "Front steps of their House of Plunder."

Angus rattled the computer. Jonnie set the console. The small gray man raced over and put the second box on the platform. The moment he was off, Jonnie punched the firing b.u.t.ton. That red box vanished.

Two Buddhist communicators saw the drill and relieved the small gray man putting the boxes out on the platform. The small gray man was getting quite out of breath. The boy, Quong, noticed the cards were the same except for the addresses and helped him fill those in so he just had to initial and seal them and pop them in a box. The small gray man caught up and everything was ready to fire forty minutes before the last one would go.

Panting a bit, the small gray man stood aside and let them get on with it.

Sir Robert said to him, "Are you going to conduct this conference too?"

The small gray man shook his head. "Oh dear, no. I'm just helping out. When they get here, it is all up to you!"

Jonnie and Sir Robert exchanged a look. They had better think of something fast! Six and a half hours from now authorized ministers of twenty-nine races, which apparently made up about five thousand separate planets, would be here!

The small gray man said something into his lapel.

A guard outside intercommed in, "The lights on his s.h.i.+p just changed. The blue one is flas.h.i.+ng faster and now they have a big flas.h.i.+ng red one going."

A communicator said to Sir Robert, "The radio message that keeps going out just changed. It is saying 'Local truce area. Security and safety of your own representatives would be endangered by gunfire, motors, or attack. Keep five hundred miles clear of zone."'

Sir Robert said, "Can't you just call a general truce for the planet?"

"Oh, my no. I couldn't do that. It would be a protest producer- an usurpation of the powers of the state. I am sorry. Your people in other places will just have to hold out."

Sir Robert went to ops to put messages on the command channel to tell them what was going on. They were encouraged. They reported there was no diminution of the attack's ferocity. They were holding out, but just barely. For some foolish reason the enemy, per pilot reports, had set ancient ruined London on fire.

Angus had tapes punched now for the bulk of the firings. But the small gray man said he could do the rest for him and then do those necessary for the "fire and recall" after the three-hour wait.

A Chinese engineer and Chief Chong-won had been hanging back but were trying to attract Jonnie's attention.

He saw them and turned the console over to Angus.

"Forgive us," said Chief Chong-won. "But it is the dam. The water level is dropping and you can now see the tops of the generator intake ports. My engineer here, Fu-ching, says that you won't have any electricity in another four hours."

And they had another six and a half to go!

Chapter 3.

Jonnie sent for Thor and some maps, including a copy of the old Psychlo defense map.

While he waited, he watched the small gray man working the computer beside the console. His fingers were flying. The handling of that computer compared to the skill of a very experienced pilot on a console. Then he realized the small gray man wasn't even looking at the computer keys. His fingers seemed to move in rapid blurs all by themselves. Jonnie thought that there was more to this small gray man than had surfaced so far. Not just his name and ident.i.ty, for they didn't know those yet either. But he had some much greater reason to help than he had let on. It was not that Jonnie distrusted him. It was just a feeling Jonnie had that even back of any information the small gray man gave them, there would be much deeper reasons for his presence. He decided that whatever the small gray man might tell them later, he, Jonnie, was going to really get the reasons which underlay all of this. Just a feeling. No, a certainty.

Well, one thing at a time. He had the dam to worry about, for if power failed, that would be the end of all this! And he only had, really, two working hours coming up. Repair a dam that size in two hours? Ow!

The maps came. One was a sketch the Chinese engineers had lately made. They had put the village location in. They had done a sketch map of the lake and aside from the Chinese character notations and numbers, it was all quite nice and comprehensible. They had even taken soundings.

He looked at the defense map and noticed for the first time that it was "copied from the original survey." And from the Psychlo dates, the original survey was nearly eleven hundred years ago. By means of a gla.s.s he read the original dam data.

The original Kariba dam, as modified by the Psychlos when they first took over and installed this defense installation, was shown to be about two thousand feet long. The structure height was about four hundred and twenty feet, backed by a lake one hundred seventy-five miles long and about twenty miles wide at its widest point. A truly big dam. It had even had a road for vehicles running all along the top of it.

Jonnie compared the maps. The original had no place for any village! What was this? Had the planet changed its face?

He grabbed a man-map of the area. The river had been named the "Zambesi," about twenty-two hundred miles long and one of the world's major rivers. It had flowed through "Kariba Gorge" and here it had been dammed for hydroelectric power, an immense undertaking. The sides of the gorge at this place had been steep too. No place for any village! He compared the maps.

The top of the dam that had been a road, even before the s.h.i.+p hit the lake, had been awash.

Then Jonnie knew what had happened.

The floods of the Zambesi, year after year for eleven hundred years, had been silting up this lake.

No wonder the water level had dropped so incredibly fast. The crash must have blown a million tons of silt over the dam. And now there was not enough water flow to replace it so fast for there wasn't that much lake! It was now only about one hundred twenty miles long, and the water at the dam itself was only about a thousand feet wide. The rest had been mud.

He said to Chong-won and the Chinese engineer, "This dam had six generator intake ports where the water entered from the lake, fell through the dam, and turned the generators. Right now, I want all six of them closed. The instant they are through firing, in about twenty-five minutes, we're going to cut all power. Do that, then close the ports. When they need electricity to start firing again we will omit lake defense cable to get rid of its power drain and we will open up only two generator ports. Can you do this?"

"Ah, yes!" Then a repeat. "You want us to shut off all power in about twenty-five minutes, close all generator ports, and about two hours later omit defense cable at the lake and open only two ports to the generators. We will also close all spillways?"

Jonnie nodded. The excess dam water hadn't ever before gone over the top of this dam. It spilled through spillways under the dam and reentered the river far below. Conserve water. That wouldn't handle the whole situation but it might help.

Thor was there. "Get Dwight!" Jonnie said.

"He's in the hospital. Broken arm, bashed up."

"He was also our best explosives man at the lode," said Jonnie. "Get him."

They were still firing at the console but he could use this time to organize.

Dwight came. He had two black eyes and a plaster cast on his arm. He was limping. But he was grinning like a lighthouse.

Jonnie wasted no time. "Dwight, collect two one-thousand-foot rolls of blast cord, about three one-hundred-pound drums of liquid explosive, three of those port-a-pack drill rigs with a hundred feet of shaft for each, and fuses and things."

"What are you going to do?" asked Thor. "Blow up the planet?"

Jonnie said, "You, Thor, collect every man here we had with us at the lode and a lot of Chinese."

Stormalong was there. "Get ready to transport explosives and men across that lake," Jonnie told him. "The instant they are through with this first hour's firing, we've got to be ready to roll."

He scribbled a note for a communicator to give to Angus the instant he was finished with firing boxes: "You are going to lose all power for two hours. Inform us when you are through with this first run as we'll be running motors and blasting. Don't start firing again until you get an all-clear from us. Communicate with me by mine radio."

Men were being sent through the pa.s.sage to the outside. Some of them were veterans from the raid, and hospital cases. Dr. Allen looked on with disapproval, especially at Jonnie. But he said nothing.

Jonnie got outside. It was daylight now, thank heaven. He could see what he was doing. He looked at the dam. Yes, indeed. Silt! There was silt splattered all over the place. What a muddy job this would be. Where the top of the dam had been broken, piles of silt lay there. There was silt all up the cliff sides. Splattered as if with a gigantic paintbrush. Wet silt. One of the biggest dangers here was slipping and sliding.

He had his mine radio on so he could be told when they were done with the first hour's firing. Men were running dollies out of deep magazines, getting explosives to a plane. Pilots were standing by. Two mine pa.s.senger planes were loading personnel. A dozen Chinese raced into the powerhouse equipped with big wrenches: they would need them to move levers and controls frozen in place for a thousand years.

Jonnie walked to the dam edge and looked up the lake.

He couldn't believe his eyes. He would have thought the plunge through the atmosphere would have destroyed more of it than that.

There was the capital s.h.i.+p, a gigantic wreck, dug sideways into the silt five miles uplake from the dam.

And it was contributing its share to the disaster.

The twisted, charred hulk was blocking fresh water flow to the dam! Above it, a new lake was forming.

He got Dwight. "You pick about three men. Put them on a flying platform. Lay blast cord on the east side of that wreck and blow a new water channel around it. I'll give you the time to fire the cord. Get it laid and come back to me."

Dwight rushed off to find his men and more explosives.

Jonnie walked over to a point where he could see the opposite end of the dam. It was a very curved dam, its lake side jutting into the lake like a half-moon. Yes, there sure was water escaping. Because of the shape of the dam, a hard push of concussion against it would cause the ends to thrust much more strongly into the banks. The far end over there was firm enough against the cliff, but the bottom of the dam must have moved. Water was roaring out under that far edge like a gigantic fire hose.

Possibly ancient cracks at the far base had been filled with silt until now. But the blast had torn them open. The only thing that would plug that was about half a million tons of rock dumped upstream from it. And this was no time to be dumping rock with blade sc.r.a.pers and cranes.

The half-formed plan he had made had been right. He looked at the cliffs on the far side of the gorge. If he blew one of them down to fill the breach, would the concussion also rip out the rest of the dam?

The defense cable also ran along those cliffs. He did not dare sacrifice that too.

Angus's voice on the mine radio. "First stage of firing is complete. Ready to shut down!"

"Shut down!" said Jonnie into his mine radio. "Powerhouse! Take the power off! Stormalong! Fly them!"

The sizzle of the armor cable vanished. There was a patter of burst sh.e.l.l fragments, dead birds, and leaves and they dropped to the ground, no longer held there by the ionization armor.

The planes took off with a blasting roar.

Jonnie had spotted an unused flying platform and he stepped aboard and hit the console. He went streaking out over the dam and lake, heading for the tops of the far cliffs.

Dwight was there. Jonnie eyed the texture of the rock in the cliffs. He estimated the rush and flow of water which must be occurring at this side bottom of the lake. His task was to dump enough rock off these cliffs into the lake and get it carried into that break to plug it. A tricky calculation.

Three holes. He needed to drill three holes, each about a hundred feet deep and each at an exact angle. These would be at the points where the cliff must be sheered off.

He pointed, racing along back of the cliff edge. One, two, three. About two hundred yards uplake from the dam. Down at an angle of about fifteen degrees from the vertical.

Men got the port-a-pack drills in operation. They were usually used to deep-core a vein. But they could drill a fast hole. Fast enough? He only had two hours.

The cable! This section lay closer to the lake than they were drilling. He mustn't sacrifice it. If left where it was it would get severed by any blast and slide into the lake.

"Stormalong!" yelled Jonnie. The pilot had just climbed out of a mine pa.s.senger plane. "What's the biggest motor we've got here now?"

Stormalong looked at the planes. They had brought over four. One was a marine attack plane. Stormalong pointed at it.

"Get some technicians down to this end of the dam. There's a cable junction box there according to this old defense map. Get them to unhook it. And then you put a heavy line on that end and fly this whole section of it out of the ground and dump it up there."

This was right where Stormalong lived. What a crazy idea! To take the unfastened cable end and secure it to a plane and fly the plane southwest up the lake and tear the cable out! He needed no further instructions. He knew the weight of a tenth of a mile of cable might well crash the plane. He'd put a quick release trip on it. He sent technicians racing to disconnect the dam end of it.

Jonnie looked at the drills. There were armored bits and they could stand an awful lot of heat. But they were smoking. How fast could they drill? He looked at his watch and saw how many sections they were down already. This was going to be close!

Up the lake, five miles away, the old mine hand that Dwight had sent and two a.s.sistants were sliding and slithering around in the silt beside the battles.h.i.+p wreck. They were sinking almost to their hips. The flying platform they had taken had to be reflown by its operator every few minutes to prevent it from simply sinking out of sight in the ooze.

What a gigantic wreck! No wonder they couldn't put those down in atmosphere. They must a.s.semble them on that moon, Asart, above Tolnep. Probably they flew the pieces up there section by section. Only intricate calculations of planetary gravity and gravitic force flows would let those things fly at all.

He wondered for a sad moment whether Glencannon's body was in there somewhere. But even a Mark 32 couldn't stand up to that internal blast. That s.h.i.+p was really a graveyard. There must be charred chunks of fifteen hundred Tolneps in that twisted, blackened wreck. How long was it? Two thousand feet? Three thousand? Hard to tell from here, so much was buried. But it was sure making a great dam. One would have thought it would have buried itself deeper. Then he saw what really was the case. It had made a sort of crater and it was the crater edge that was restraining the water.

He took a small scope from his pocket to see exactly what the men were doing. Yes, they were doubling up blast cord over the far crater edge and then another one of them was doing the same thing on the near crater edge. They needed no advice.

The drills were screaming through the rock, steam shooting up from their overheated water-coolant jets.

Twenty men were rigging a line from the lake water to a mine pump. They were getting more cooling water.

Ow, the silt! It was hard to walk without sliding and nearly all the crews by now were caked with mud.

He looked at his watch. It would be very touch and go. To drill a hundred feet of hole in three hours would be a bit of a feat; they had to do it in about one and a half! They were really leaning on those drills. Four men on each were adding their weight to the handles.

He hoped that flas.h.i.+ng signal on the small gray man's s.h.i.+p would hold good. They had skeletonized their defense force to handle this dam and they were wide open to attack with no cable armor.

His mine radio came alive. It was the party at the wreck calling Dwight.

They were ready to fire. Dwight looked over to Jonnie.

With his scope, Jonnie tried to see the generator intake ports in the dam. Were they closed? Muddy, muddy water. He couldn't see from here. He called the Chinese engineers inside the dam. Chief Chong-won was in there.

"It needs five minutes to close the last port," the chief's voice came back.

"They've got the excess spillway ports closed. I am sorry, Lord Jonnie. I don't think these levers and wheels have been moved for years."

"Make it a thousand," said Jonnie. "How many men have you got in there?"

"Seventy-two," said the chief.

Good lord, he had half his force inside that dam.

"You're doing great. Finish it up and then get everyone out of there. That dam could go, the whole thing, with these blasts."

"We'll hurry," said the chief.