Free Triumph by Philip Wylie Page B

vaults, he told himself--most of the refugees lay sleeping . . . or, George had said, reading. Or weeping. Or in prayer.

    He found Vance Farr--now alone but still at the bridge table, the cards not put away--sitting back with half-closed eyes. Hearing the scientist, Farr straightened up and smiled. "What's happening?"

    Briefly, Ben told of the message from the space vehicle. Then he discussed his newer findings.

    "What's your guess?" Farr asked calmly.

    "It's just a guess. I'd say the enemy mined the offshore waters with hundreds of medium-yield devices this side, and monsters in the Pacific, which they are exploding in a rapid sequence."

    "Why?"

    "I could guess on that, too. If the blast-yield is low on our coasts, these ocean bursts won't rise so high. Much of the hot material, in consequence, will be captured in the troposphere." "I get you! If those devices are rigged to make appropriate masses of hot material for each coast! I read, years back, that sodium would be 'ideal.'"

    The scientist's mouth tightened. His eyes burned. "Sodium has a hall-life of fifteen hours. It's just a guess. If we watch the counters outdoors--the few that still send readings--we can be pretty sure in a couple of hours. You see, the metropolitan areas--
    forests, too, along both coasts and inland--are in firestorm, or in its red-hot aftermath, so rising heat will be pulling billions of tons of air inland from such coastal areas."

    "I'd anticipated something of the sort."

    Again the scientist was astonished by Farr's foresight. Said as much.

    "Anybody who could read, for the last fifteen years, could have known it possible." Farr drew a breath, expelled it in a slow sigh. "All hands here have turned in at my suggestion. Barlow wanted to sit out a night watch. I appointed him instead to hit the sack early and set his alarm for 4 A.M. Just to make him feel useful. Valerie went earlier.
    The three girls turned in without a murmur. Stunned. Everybody is. Do you realize, for instance, it was five in the afternoon and we'd been milling and sitting and babbling and praying around here for five hours before anybody even remembered we'd missed lunch?"

    This time Ben smiled a little. "And Davey and that gorgeous daughter of his jumped to the kitchen like shots!" "And that," Farr replied, "is a thing we've got to change, at once." "I wondered"--the scientist's blue eyes held a look of warmth--"if you were going to say that."

    Farr's face relaxed in a grin. "Of course! There can't be any servant-master setup down here! We're all going to have to stand shifts. Cooking. Public-room cleaning.
    Laundry. Dishwashing. All other chores. Tomorrow we'll have a meeting and I'll prepare schedules of duties for everybody, with change-off times." He sighed deeply. "My wife won't like it."

    Ben started to speak, and refrained.

    Vance read his repressed thought: "How did she get liquor down here? Poor soul!
    I'm afraid she's lost in it. Remember--or do you?--when she hurried to the elevator, she was carrying a miniature trunk, covered with purple plush?"

    "I remember a big, purple box."

    "Her jewel case, and a collection of knick-knacks, she said. Kept it ready, on the outside chance that the thing she believed unlikely might happen and she'd be rushed down here. She perhaps did just that. The box actually held her most valuable jewelry--
    she was throwing it in when I passed her room. But it was extremely heavy. And so futile! What did she plan to do after she'd made those few bottles of--of, I'd bet, straight grain alcohol, last as long as possible?"

    Ben merely shook his head.

    "Even a gallon of grain alcohol would be gone soon."

    "How long, with the number of people here, could the place hold out?" It was a question Ben had put to Farr without success during their tour of the underground establishment, although he had realized that Farr had planned everything for many, many times the period that civil-defense people had continued to stress as the