At a thousand feet, he settled for the planted field up ahead. Lowering his landing gear and flaps (they worked!), he came in to what he thought was a wheat field.
“Dear God… dear God… dear God,” Beinheimer muttered, clutching the armrest with fear-whitened fingers.
“That the only prayer you know, Moe?”
“The only one, by God, but it’s sincere! After this, I’ll learn some more. I swear I will!”
“Hang on, gang!” von Bork shouted into the intercom. “The old barnstormers could do it, and we’re only eighty ahead of them in technology!”
Von Bork was no farm boy, and what with the speed, altitude, and darkness, he was wrong about it being a wheat field; it was corn, tall Kansas corn.
The Cessna’s landing gear had been designed for use on a surface infinitely harder than rich, tilled soil. All three wheels sheared off within twenty yards of touchdown. This was good, because von Bork’s air-speed indicator had been rendered grossly inaccurate by two metal-munching larva. He had come in more than eighty knots too fast.
The Cessna sliced through the mile-wide cornfield, narrowly missing the center pivot irrigation machine. The wings took an amazing beating, each cornstalk sending its own thump through the airframe.
The plane had slowed to sixty before the wing strut gave way almost exactly in the center and both wings tore off together. This too was lucky, for had one gone before the other, the plane would have rolled.
The battered fuselage skidded to a stop, and all was suddenly quiet.
Von Bork took his hands from the wheel, hardly able to believe it was over and he was alive. He said into the intercom: “How’s it going back there?”
“We’re all okay, Mr. von Bork.”
“Well,” von Bork said to Beinheimer, “I guess that was a good landing.”
Public consternation was, of course, extreme. Every political body in the world sat in emergency session. Crash programs and task forces were funded, but none had time to accomplish anything. Research takes years. The larvae took only days. Accusations and counter—accusations flashed across national borders.
India abruptly ceased all communication with the rest of the world on the same day that the swans flew. Israel, the fifth most powerful nation after Russia, the U.S., China, and India, took her silence as an admission of guilt for the metal-eating plague. The Israelis’ aircraft and missiles were already useless, but their tanks were made of thicker metal. Even perforated with holes, char—bram armor could stop most projectiles, and turbine engines contain little iron or aluminum. Damaged fuel tanks were fitted with plastic liners, gun barrels were given a cursory inspection, and the attack was launched.
The last tank stopped twenty kilometers from its depot. A tread weakened by hundreds of holes had broken.
So ended the last mechanized war the world would ever see.
Radio and television stations suspended their regular programming, devoting their time to emergency broadcasts, but the messages from the world’s governments were monotonously similar: “Don’t panic. Stay in your homes. We’ll take care of you.”
But there was nothing that anyone could do.
Air time was also allotted to religious programs. A thousand priests, ministers, and shamans called on as many gods to help them, but the gods remained silent.
Many of the religious leaders proclaimed that the end of the world was at hand. And in a sense, they were right.
Trains, being made of thicker metal, lasted a week longer than cars or trucks. Their last freights were mostly food and water for the cities; very few places on Earth had more than a week’s supply of food on hand. Canned food became useless as the cans were slashed and destroyed. And the larvae soon riddled the refrigerator units that kept frozen food fresh. The trucks and trains that once brought fresh supplies no longer existed.
The food trees sprouted quickly, and each grew six vines that spread out evenly for fifteen feet and then generated new roots at these spots. The space between was quickly covered with heart-shaped leaves, close to the ground. Each leaf had a red cross at its center. Though Guibedo had no love for the Red Cross (or any other organization, for that matter), the red cross was the only symbol of help that he could think of that was universally known.
In six weeks each food plant would cover forty acres of land. Trees and other plants that were in the way were absorbed with remarkable rapidity. Animals found their leaves to be bitter and spat them out; those that persisted, died. Farmers who tried to uproot the new weed found that it recovered in hours. Herbicides were ineffective.
In two months the dense ground cover would start to rise as tree trunks grew in a triangular pattern every fifteen feet. The trunks would grow to be eight feet tall. Only then, three months from planting, once there was enough photosynthetic area, would they start to produce food gourds on their trunks. But each tree could feed a thousand people.
“The bridge is out,” Senator Beinheimer said.
A farmer had driven the ten of them into town, at which point the truck’s engine failed due to a larva hole in the oil gallery.
Three days in Bristol, Colorado, convinced von Bork that transportation was not available, and would probably never be available.
Striking out on foot, they headed west.
The two men and six women who were subordinate to von Bork were all Rejuves. They all had more than sixty years of experience. They all had healthy twenty-year-old bodies. Among them, they had a vast array of useful knowledge. How to pick mushrooms, how to dig roots, how to trap rabbits, and how to build shelter. Traveling upstream along the Arkansas River, they survived well. The senator was able to keep up, though his bones ached.
It took them a month to cross the Colorado Plains and the Rocky Mountains. Now, on the downhill side, the road came quite literally to an end.
“I said the bridge is out.”
“Obviously,” von Bork said. “But that is the Gunnison River, and the Gunnison empties into the Colorado, and the Colorado pours into Lake Mead, spitting distance from Life Valley.”
“You crazy, boy? You’re talking about maybe a thousand miles of white water.”
“True. I’m also talking about riding instead of walking. Personally, I’m sick of walking. Who’s with me?”
“We’re always with you, Mr. von Bork.”
Senator Beinheimer was the last one down.
Within a mile, they found an abandoned twelve-man rubber raft.
Antenna towers are held stable by long steel cables, and when these were eaten through, the towers fell. Radio and TV stations went off the air.
The orbiting communications satellites still operated but their crews could give no useful information to the people below because they themselves had no way of finding out what was happening.
These stations, and those on the moon, were largely self-sufficient, and could survive several years without help from Earth. But they could provide no help in return.
The world’s electrical power was cut off, as power towers crumpled and high-voltage wires crashed to the Earth. There was no way for most people to listen to the satellite broadcasts.
No insects had been spread over the oceans, so ships at sea were generally not affected until they came to land. There they were promptly plagued by egg-laying mosquitoes. Most of them sank at the docks, their hulls riddled with holes. Some left and tried to make it to their home ports, and, of these, some made it back. But those
