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Jo
Boxes were being opened behind him.
Angus raced up. His lamp was shining on an all-metal, light-weight hand rifle. It was block-solid covered with grease that ages ago had formed into a tight, hard cast.
“Mark 50 assault rifle!” said Angus. “The last thing they issued! I can clean these up so they purr!”
Jo
Angus let another Scot open it for him. He was back there rummaging in cases.
A box right ahead, standing among vast tiers of boxes, said “Ammunition, Mark 50 Assault.” Jo
The brass was okay and the bullet clean, but the primer at the bottom told its tale. The ammunition was dud. He called Angus and showed him the cartridge.
They went on looking for nuclear weapons.
More storerooms and more storerooms.
And then pay dirt!
Jo
His excited hands ripped open a package. Lead-impregnated clothing. Lead-glass faceplates.
And in mountain camouflage: gray, tan, and green.
Riches! The one thing that would let them handle radiation!
He showed Robert the Fox. Robert put it on the radio as real news but told the others to go on with their own searches and inventories.
They were on their way outside for food and air when another piece of news came through. It was Du
He guided them to him. Robert the
Fox looked at Angus and Angus shook his head. “No keys,” said Angus.
The explosives team rigged nonflame blasting cartridges to the hinges and everyone went into the next corridor while the explosives team trailed wire. They held their ears. The concussion was head-splitting. A moment later they heard the crash of a door hitting the floor. The fire member of the team raced in with an extinguisher but it was not needed.
Lamps beamed through the settling dust.
Presently they were holding in their hands operations manuals, maintenance manuals, repair manuals, hundreds and hundreds of separate manuals that gave every particular of every nuclear device that had been built, how to set it, fire it, fuse and defuse it, store it, handle it, and safeguard it.
“Now we've got everything but the nuclear devices,” said Robert the Fox.
“Yes,” said Jo
Chapter 4
It must have been night outside, but nothing could be darker than the deep guts of this ancient defense base. The black seemed to press in upon them as though possessed of actual weight. The miner's lamps were darting shafts through ink.
They had come down a ramp, gone through an air-sealed door, and found an enormous cavern. The sign said
“Heliport.” The time-decayed bulks of collapsed metal that stood along the walls had been some kind of planes, planes with large fans on top. Jo
The small party of Scots with him were interested in something else. The doors! They were huge, made of metal, reaching far right and far left and up beyond their sight. Another entrance to the base– a fly-in entrance for their type of craft.
Angus was scrambling around some motors to the side of the doors. “Electrical. Electrical! I wonder if these poor lads ever thought there would be a day when you had to do something manually. What if the power failed?”
“It’s failed,” said Robert the Fox, his low voice booming in the vast hangar.
“Call me the lamp boys,” said Angus. And presently the two Scots who were packing lamps, batteries, wires, and fuses for their own lighting trotted down the ramp, pushing their gear ahead of them on a dolly they had found.
Hammering began over by the motors that operated the doors.
Robert the Fox came over to Jo
Jo
Yes, there was his eagle. With arrows in its claws, dim but huge on the side of this machine. Not like the other machines, which had minor insignia. He made out the letters: “President of the United States.” This was a special plane!
The historian answered his pointing finger. “Head of the country. Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.”
Jo
Another air-sealed door at the top, even harder to open.
This was an entirely different complex. It stood independent of the rest of the base. And due to dry air and seals and possibly something else, the bodies were not dust. They were mummified. Officers on the floor, slumped over desks. Only a few.
Communication and file rooms. A briefing room with few chairs. A bar with glasses and bottles intact. Very superior grade of furnishings. Carpets. All very well preserved. Then he saw the door symbol he was looking for and went in.
The sign was on the splendid polished desk. A huge eagle plaque on the wall. A flag, with some of its fabric still able to stir when he caused a faint breeze opening the door.
The man was slumped over the desk, mummified. Even his clothing still looked neat.
Jo
The top date and the hour were two days later than the ones that ended in the operations room in the other complex.
The only explanation Jo
The president and his staff had died from lack of air.
Jo
He hastily skimmed through the reports to make sure he had it all.
A strange object had appeared over London without any trace of where it came from.
Teleportation, filled in Jo
It had been at an altitude of 30,000 feet.
Important, thought Jo
It had dropped a canister and within minutes the south of England was dead.