Who Goes There by W. Campbell John

Author:W. Campbell, John
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780575129023
Publisher: Orion

IV

Thirty years of harsh, rugged life lay behind old Hugh. Somehow the fever abated, the pain lessened as his sturdy old body rallied in defense. Slowly, he began to recover, and still no message came through from Schenectady, though two weeks passed. The women who cared for him had cleaned the room, and Ban told old Hugh, negligently, that the message he’d been unable to clear up had been thrown out.

Old Hugh was busy thinking. But the problem eluded him. Somehow, he was sure, he had destroyed some of the rock crystals to powder as he had hoped, yet he could not understand; it was beyond his belief that so tiny a power, a bare three horsepower, could do so much damage. Surely, it seemed, it would have taken vastly more. But, perhaps it was some really rare constituent of the rock, rare but vastly important that held the secret, some unconsidered crystal that was the key log in the jam that made rock solid, vibrating in chance tune to his set, and vibrated to powder.

He cursed that lost nut he knew must be guilty for his fall. A little rolling nut – but the feeling as he fell had been so strange—

He didn’t see his ragged, raveled clothes. When the women brought them back to him they had been carefully repaired, as all things must be where all things are worked for and made by the sweat of man’s brow and the craft of his hand. Perhaps they would have given him some little hint.

But he itched to be at it again, determined now that, pointed to the skies, the thing must be safe. So he had the men bring in samples of every rock they could find at the great slide, and, when he could hobble again on his crutch with Ban’s aid, he set the paraboloid on its back, and the rock specimens above it on wooden shelves, turning the power to a very low degree. Then he turned on the set that had not operated since he had fallen there by the window, and broken his leg as the mountain slid down.

Slowly the tubes warmed up. He watched with interest and care the little stones on the little platform just under the low roof of the little wooden shack.

Then the tubes were warm, and there were a great many slight pings of sound, and a very quiet, swift slip of the roof and the sudden heavy thrashing as the roof fell in. It was fortunate that the device was so effective, for the roof came in as separate shingles and boards.

Old Hugh groaned as they dug him out, and reached a hand to feel the device that had done this. His leg hurt, his head ached abominably, his laboratory was a ruin, evidently, but he was not seriously hurt, nor was Ban. Ban’s wife was crying and dabbing at his bleeding face, questioning frantically and tongue-lashing old Hugh simultaneously. She was pale, and very scared, for the shack looked as though a monstrous giant had stepped heedlessly on it.

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