The Year When Stardust Fell by Raymond F. Jones (book club suggestions .txt) 📕

The spectators had been driven back. The armed men fanned out to cover the entire hill in a slowly advancing line. They dwindled and became silhouettes against the flames.

At the top, Sheriff Johnson called out to the mob through an improvised megaphone. "Give up your arms and come forward with your hands up!" he cried. "In 10 seconds we start shooting!"

His command was answered by howls of derision. It was like the cries of maniacs, and their drifted words sounded like, "Kill the scientists!"

Bullets accompanied the shouts and howls. The Sheriff's men took cover and began a slow and painful advance.

There could be a thousand mobbers on top of the hill, Ken thought. The Sheriff's men might be outnumbered several times over. He wondered if they ought to try to get reinforcements, and decided against it unless word should be sent down from the top.

There was no way of telling how the battle was going. Gunfire was continuous. A freezing wind had come up and swept over the length of the valley and over those who waited and those who fought. It fanned the flames to volcanic fury.

Ken touched his father's arm. "There's no use for you to stay in this cold," he said. "You ought to go back to the house."

"I've got to know how it comes out up there, who wins."

The cold starlight of the clear sky began to fade. As dawn approached, the flames in the college buildings had burned themselves out. But the gunfire continued almost without letup. Then, almost as quickly as it had started, it died.

After a time, figures appeared on the brow of the hill and came down in a weary procession. Sheriff Johnson led them. He stopped at the bottom of the hill.

"Was it Meggs?" Ken asked. "Did you get Frank Meggs?"

"He fell in the first 10 minutes," said Johnson. "It wasn't really Meggs keeping them going at all. They had a witch up there. As long as she was alive nothing would stop them."

"Granny Wicks! Was she up there?"

"Sitting on a kind of throne they'd made for her out of an old rocking chair. Right in the middle of the whole thing."

"Did she finally get shot?"

Sheriff Johnson shook his head. "She was a witch, a real, live witch. Bullets wouldn't touch her. The west wall of Science Hall collapsed and buried her. That's when they gave up.

"So maybe you can say you won, after all," he said to Professor Maddox. "It's a kind of symbol, anyway, don't you think?"

For the first time since the coming of the comet, Ken sensed defeat in his father. Professor Maddox seemed to believe at last that they were powerless before the invader out of space. He seemed like a runner who has used his last reserve of strength to reach a goal on which his eye has been fixed, only to discover the true goal is yet an immeasurable distance ahead.

Professor Maddox had believed with all his heart and mind that they had hurdled the last obstacle with the construction of the pilot projector. With it gone, and all their tools and instruments and notes, there was simply nothing.

As Ken considered the problem, it seemed to him the situation was not as bad as first appeared. The most important thing had not been lost. This was the knowledge, locked in their own minds, of what means could prevail against the dust. Beyond this, the truly essential mechanical elements for starting over again were also available.

Art Matthews had been very busy, and he had parts enough for six more motor-generator sets. These were decontaminated and sealed in protective packing. It would be only a matter of hours to assemble one of them, and that would power any supersonic projector they might choose to build.

And they could still choose to build one. In the radio supply stores of the town, and in the junk boxes of the members of the science club, there were surely enough components to build several times over the necessary number of generator elements. In the barns and chicken sheds of the valley there was plenty of aluminum sheeting to build reflectors.

The more he considered it, the more possible it seemed to take up from where they had left off the night before the fire. There was one important question Ken asked himself, however: Why stop with a replica of the small pilot model they had built on the roof of Science Hall?

As long as they were committed to building a projector to test for effectiveness, they might as well build a full-scale instrument, one that could take its place as an actual weapon against the dust. If there were errors of design, these could be changed during or after construction. He could see no reason at all for building a mere 30-foot instrument again.

The greatest loss suffered in the fire was that of the chemistry laboratory and its supplies and reagents. Materials for running tests on the dust could not be replaced, nor could much of their microchemical apparatus. The electron microscope, too, was gone. These losses would have to be made up, where necessary, by having such work done by Pasadena, Schenectady or Detroit. If the projector were as successful as all preliminary work indicated, there would be little need for further testing except as a matter of routine check on the concentration of dust in the atmosphere.

Before approaching his father, Ken talked it over with his fellow members of the science club. He wanted to be sure there was no loophole he was overlooking.

"Labor to build the reflector is what we haven't got," said Joe Walton. "It would take months, maybe a whole year, for us to set up only the framework for a 250-foot bowl!"

"Getting the lumber alone would be a community project," said Al.

"That's what it's going to be," Ken answered. "Johnson is behind us. He'll give us anything we want, if he knows where to get it. I don't think there's any question of his authorizing the construction by the men here."

There was nothing else they could think of to stand in the way of the project.

It had been two days since the fire, but Ken's father still seemed stunned by it. After dinner, he sat in his old chair where he used to read, but he did not read now. He sat for hours, staring at the opposite corner of the room.

Professor Larsen seemed locked in a similar state of shock. In addition to his wife's death, this destruction of their entire scientific facilities seemed a final blow from which he could not recover.

Ken recognized, too, that there was a burden these men had carried that no one else knew. That was the burden of top-level responsibility for a major portion of the world's effort against the "invader." It was an Atlas-like burden that men could not carry without suffering its effects.

Ken approached them that evening, after he and Maria had helped his mother with her chores and had gathered snow to melt overnight for their next day's water supply.

"Dad," Ken said, "I've been wondering when we could get started on the project again. The fellows in the club are all ready to go. I guess most everyone else is, too."

His father looked as if Ken had just uttered something absolutely unintelligible. "Start!" he cried. "Start what? How can we start anything? There's nothing left to work with, absolutely nothing!"

Ken hesitated, an ache in his heart at the defeat he saw in his father's eyes. He held out his hands. "We've got these," he said. He tapped the side of his head. "And this."

Professor Maddox's face seemed to relax a trifle. He looked at his son with a faint suggestion of a smile on his lips. "Yes? What do you propose to do with them?"

Carefully, then, Ken outlined the results of his inventory. "Art can build up to six engines, if we need them. We've got plenty of electronic parts, and tubes big enough to put 60 or 70 kilowatts of supersonic energy in a beam. We don't want to build a little reflector again; we want to put up a full-scale instrument. When that's done, build another one, and still another, until we've used every scrap of material available in the valley. By that time maybe we'll have some cars running and can go to Frederick and other towns for more parts."

Ken's father leaned back in his chair, his eyes closed. "If enthusiasm could do it, we could look forward to such a structure the day after tomorrow."

"Maybe enthusiasm can do it," said Professor Larsen quietly. "I believe the boy is right. We've let ourselves despair too much because of the fire. We still have the necessary principles in our heads. If Ken is right, we've got the materials. The only problem is that you and I are a pair of old, exhausted men, without the necessary enthusiasm and energy. Perhaps we can borrow enough of that from these boys. I'm in favor of undertaking it!"

By the light of oil lamps they planned and talked until far past midnight. There were still no objections to be found outside the labor problem. When they were through, rough drawings and calculations for the first projector were finished.

"Such a projector could surely reach well into the stratosphere," said Professor Larsen. "With the tremendous velocities of the air masses at those heights, one projector should be able to process hundreds of tons of atmosphere per day."

"I am wondering," said Professor Maddox, "if we should not make the reflector parabolic instead of hyperbolic. We may disperse our energy too widely to be effective at high levels."

"I think not. The parabola would narrow the beam to little more than its initial diameter and would concentrate the energy more than is required. With the power Ken speaks of, I believe the hyperbolic form could carry an effective wave into the stratosphere. We'll make some calculations for comparison tomorrow."

They authorized Ken to speak with the Sheriff the following day.

"I've been wondering when I'd see some of you people," Johnson said bluntly. "What are you doing about the mess on the hill?"

"My father thought maybe you'd drop in," said Ken.

The Sheriff shook his head. "It's your move. I just wondered if you had any ideas, or if this fire had knocked the props out from under you."

"It did, but now we're ready to go, and we need help." Briefly, Ken gave a description of the projector they planned to build. "Labor is the problem for us. If we could have all the carpenters in town, and all who could be spared from woodcutting and every other activity for 2 or 3 weeks I think we could get it done."

"You know how many men are left," said Johnson. "Between the war with the nomads and the epidemic of flu, one-third of those we had when this started are dead. A third of the ones left are sick, and quite a few of those on their feet have to take care of the ones that aren't."

"I know," said Ken.

"You know how the people feel about you scientists?"

"Yes."

The Sheriff stared at him a long time before continuing. "It won't be easy, but we'll do it. When do you want to start?"

"Tomorrow morning. In Jenkin's pasture, north of town."

"How many men?"

"All the carpenters you can get and a hundred others to rustle materials and tear down old buildings."

"I meet with the Council this afternoon to go over work assignments. You'll have your men in the morning."

The rest of the day, Ken and his fellow club members chose the exact spot to erect the projector and staked it out. They spotted the nearest buildings that could be dismantled for materials, and made estimates of how much they needed.

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