They waited until the helicopter had climbed to position and was circling above, and then turned their attention to the place where the sheet of fused earth and stone bulged upward. It must have been almost ground-zero of one of the hydrogen-bombs; the wreckage of the Cathedral of Learning had fallen predominantly to the north, and the Carnegie Library was tumbled to the east.
“I think the entrance would be on this side, toward the Library,” Altamont said. “Let’s try it, to begin with.”
He used the solenoid-hammer, slowly pounding a hole into the glaze, and placed a small charge of the plastic explosive. Chunks of the lavalike stuff pelted down between the little mound and the huge one of the old library, blowing a hole six feet in diameter and two and a half deep, revealing concrete bonded with crushed steel-mill slag.
“We missed the door,” he said. “That means we’ll have to tunnel in through who knows how much concrete. Well—”
He used a second and larger charge, after digging a hole a foot deep. When he and his helpers came up to look, they found a large mass of concrete blown out, and solid steel behind it. Altamont cut two more holes sidewise, one on either side of the blown-out place, and fired a charge in each of them, bringing down more concrete. He found that he hadn’t missed the door, after all. It had merely been concreted over.
A few more shots cleared it, and after some work, they got it open. There was a room inside, concrete-floored and entirely empty. With the others crowding behind him, Altamont stood in the doorway and inspected the interior with his flashlight; he heard somebody back of him say something about a most peculiar sort of a dark-lantern. Across the small room, on the opposite wall, was a bronze plaque.
It carried quite a lengthy inscription, including the names of all the persons and institutions participating in the microfilm project. The History Department at the Fort would be most interested in that, but the only thing that interested Altamont was the statement that the floor had been laid over the trapdoor leading to the vaults where the microfilms were stored. He went outside to the radio.
“Hello, Jim. We’re inside, but the films are stored in an underground vault, and we have to tear up a concrete floor,” he said. “Go back to the village and gather up all the men you can carry, and tools. Hammers and picks and short steel bars. I don’t want to use explosives inside. The interior of the crypt oughtn’t to be damaged, and I don’t know what a blast in here might do to the film, and I don’t want to take chances.”
“No, of course not. How thick do you think this floor is?”
“Haven’t the least idea. Plenty thick, I’d say. Those films would have to be well buried, to shield them from radioactivity. We can expect that it’ll take some time.”
“All right. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
The helicopter turned and went windmilling away, over what had been the Golden Triangle, down the Ohio.
Altamont went back to the little concrete bunker and sat down, lighting his pipe. Murray Hughes and his four riflemen spread out, one circling around the glazed butte that had been the Cathedral of Learning, another climbing to the top of the old library, and the others taking positions to the south and east.
Altamont sat in silence, smoking his pipe and trying to form some conception of the wealth under that concrete floor. It was no use. Jim Loudons probably understood a little more nearly what those books would mean to the world of today, and what they could do toward shaping the world of the future. There was a library at Fort Ridgeway, and it was an excellent one—for its purpose. In 1996, when the rockets had come crashing down, it had contained the cream of the world’s technological knowledge—and very little else. There was a little fiction, a few books of ideas, just enough to give the survivors a tantalizing glimpse of the world of their fathers. But now—
A rifle banged to the south and east, and banged again. Either Murray Hughes or Birdy Edwards—it was one of the two hunting rifles from the helicopter. On the heels of the reports, they heard a voice shouting: “Scowrers! A lot of them, coming from up the river!” A moment later, there was a light whip-crack of one of the long muzzle-loaders, from the top of the old Carnegie Library, and Altamont could see a wisp of gray-white smoke drifting away from where it had been fired. He jumped to his feet and raced for the radio, picking it up and bringing it to the bunker.
Tenant Jones, old Reader Rawson, and Verner Hughes had caught up their rifles. The Tenant was shouting, “Come on in! Everybody, come in!” The boy on top of the library began scrambling down. Another came running from the direction of the half-demolished Cathedral of Learning, a third from the baseball field that had served as Altamont’s point of reference the afternoon before. The fourth, Murray Hughes, was running in from the ruins of the old Carnegie Tech buildings, and Birdy Edwards sped up the main road from Shenley Park. Once or twice, as he ran, Murray Hughes paused, turned, and fired behind him.
Then his pursuers came into sight. They ran erect, and they wore a few rags of skin garments, and they carried spears and hatchets and clubs, so they were probably classifiable as men. Their hair was long and unkempt; their bodies were almost black with dirt and
