The Pool of Fire (The Tripods) by John Christopher
“I am sure you would. But there is another thing a general has to do—organize men and time. You do not wait for one operation to be over before starting the next. We dared not launch machines into the air while the City was all-powerful, but our men were studying them. The first machine went up the day after the dome cracked.”
I argued, “But I could join them, and probably catch up. You’ve said I’m small. Isn’t that a help? I would be less weight for the machine to carry.”
He shook his head. “Weight is not so important. In any case, we have more than enough pilots. You know our rule, Will. Individual preferences do not matter: all that matters is what contributes to efficiency and success. The number of machines we have is limited, and so are the facilities for training pilots. Even if I thought you so much more suitable than those we already have—and in fact I don’t—I would not approve something which meant that you would have to ‘catch up’ with others more advanced. It would not be an efficient thing to do.”
He had spoken firmly, to some extent in rebuke, and I had no choice but to put on as good a face as I could. Later, though, I told the story to Fritz, a bit resentfully. He listened with his usual stolidness, and commented, “What Julius said is right, of course. You and I were included in the party that was to attack the City because we had lived in the City and had the advantage of knowing it. There is no such advantage in the case of the flying machines.”
“So we have to stay here, messing about, while things happen on the other side of the ocean?”
Fritz shrugged. “It seems so. And since there is no choice, we might as well make the best of it.”
I am afraid I was not very good at doing this. I still felt that we could have caught up with those who had a start on us in driving the flying machines; and also that what we had done had earned us the right to be included in the final attack. I was hoping that Julius would change his mind, though that was not a thing that often happened. I only abandoned hope on the morning he rode out of the castle, on his way to another of our bases.
As I stood on the broken battlements, watching his horse jog away, Beanpole came to join me. He asked, “Nothing to do, Will?”
“There are plenty of things I could do. Swim, lie in the sun, catch flies . . .”
“Before he left, Julius gave me permission to start a project. You could help with it.”
I said listlessly, “What is it?”
“Did I ever tell you about the time, before I met you, when I noticed that steam from a kettle rises, and I tried to make a balloon, which would go up in the air, and perhaps carry me?”
“Yes, you did.”
“I thought of floating away to a land where there were no Tripods. It didn’t work, of course. For one thing, the air would cool and bring it down again pretty quickly. But when we were working on separating the gases in the air, to make those special masks so that you could swim upstream into the City, we also found how to make gases that are lighter than the air. If you fill a balloon with those, then it should go up and stay up. In fact, the ancients had them before they built flying machines.”
I said, without much enthusiasm, “It sounds very interesting. What do you want me to do?”
“I’ve built a few balloons, and I’ve persuaded Julius to let me take a few people and see if we can get them working. We shall set up camp on our own and just—well, fly them, I suppose. Do you want to come? I’ve asked Henry and Fritz, and they’re keen.”
Under other circumstances, the idea would have intrigued me. At the moment, though, I saw it as putting a seal of finality on Julius’s refusal to let me take part in the air attack on the third City, and very dull by comparison. I said, grudgingly, “I suppose so.”
• • •
My bad mood did not last; I soon found that ballooning was tremendous fun. We took the balloons on carts to a place inland where the country was wild and almost uninhabited—rough hilly land, the foothills of mountains which were less high than the White Mountains, but impressive enough. One of the things Beanpole wanted to learn was the way of maneuvering in different gusts and currents of air, and the hills provided plenty of these.
The balloon was of oilskin, held in a mesh of silken cord which was attached in turn to the basket in which one traveled. The basket was staked to the ground before the balloon was filled with the light gas, and would bob there, straining against its ropes as though impatient to be up and away. The balloon was quite large, as much as ten feet across, and the basket large enough to carry four people, though two was our more usual crew. It also carried ballast—bags of sand which could be dropped to lighten the load in downdrafts. Coming down was a relatively simple matter. One pulled a cord which opened the balloon a little and let out some of the light gas. It was not difficult, but needed care: if it were pulled fully open, the balloon and basket would sink like a stone . . . not a pleasant prospect when the ground was hundreds of feet below you.
But this did not detract from the pleasure we got from it. I do not think I can recall anything so exhilarating as the first time I went up. My previous experience of leaving the ground had been when I was plucked into the air by the tentacle of a Tripod, and that had been terrifying. Here, by contrast, everything was calm, and yet tremendously exciting. Beanpole cast off the last rope and we began to rise, smoothly and steadily. It was a calm afternoon, and we soared almost straight up toward a sky barred high with white cirrus. Trees, bushes, the faces of those watching from the ground, dwindled and fell away. Every instant widened the vista we could see: the feeling was god-like. I felt that I never wanted to come down to earth again. How nice it would be if one could float through the skies forever, feeding on sunlight and drinking rain from the clouds!
Gradually we became skilled in the handling of these huge bubbles which lifted us and carried us through the air. It was a more difficult art than one would have thought. Even on apparently calm days, there were eddies, and at times the turbulence was wild. Beanpole talked of constructing much larger balloons which would have rigid bodies and engines to push them through the air, but that was a hope for the future. The craft we had now were at the mercy of wind and weather. We had to learn to sail them like canoes passing down uncharted rivers, where a stretch of sluggish calm might be followed, around the next bend, by a savage tumble of rapids. We learned to know the sky, to read signs and portents in small things, to anticipate how a current of air would ride up the side of a rock face.
In this fascination I was able to forget, to some extent, that we were out of the struggle which must soon come to its crisis. The worst moment was when we were joined by some others from the castle, who told us that the men who would ride the flying machines had left to cross the ocean. They were traveling in a number of different ships for safety’s sake, and each of the ships carried parts that would be assembled, over there, to make the flying machines. Henry and I brooded over the news. I discovered that he felt, if anything, worse than I did—after all, he had actually been inside the third City and suffered the bitter experience of seeing his hopes of destroying it dashed.
But at least we had our own useless and haphazard kind of flying—we could rise high over the hills and float on a level with the brown summer peaks of the mountains. On the ground, we camped out and lived rough . . . but the roughness included catching our own fish in the rivers that tumbled down through bracken and heather and cooking them right away on hot embers. It included expeditions to trap not only rabbits and hares, but deer and wild pig, and subsequent feasting around a crackling fire in the dusk. After that, we slept soundly on the hard ground, and woke refreshed.
So the days and weeks and months went by. Summer passed, and the days shortened with the approach of autumn. It would soon be time to return to winter quarters at the castle. But a few days before we expected to move, a messenger arrived. The message was short and simple: Julius wanted us back at once. We dismantled our balloons and packed them on the carts, and set off early the next day, through a th
I had never seen Julius look so strained and old. His eyes were tired, and I wondered how much he slept at night. I felt guilty about my own carefree time up in the hills.
He said, “It is best to tell you right away. The news is bad. As bad as can be.”
Beanpole said, “The attack on the third City . . . ?”
“Failed utterly.”
“What went wrong?”
“With the preparations, nothing. We got all the flying machines over safely, and established three bases, two in the north and one in the south. We disguised them, successfully it seemed, painting the machines so that from a distance, from a Tripod’s height, they seemed to blend with the ground. It was a trick the ancients used, in their wars, and it seemed to work. The Tripods gave no indication of knowing they were there. So, at the hour appointed, they set off, carrying their explosives toward the City.”
Julius paused a moment. “Not one got within reach. All at once, their engines stopped.”
Beanpole asked, “Do we know why—how?”
“A part of the way the engines worked was through electricity. You will know more of that than I do. At the bases, miles farther back, everything electrical stopped at that same moment, but started again later on. A different kind of invisible ray, the scientists think, which kills all electrical things when it is used.”
I said, “And the flying machines, sir? What happened to them?”
“Most crashed into the ground. A few managed to get down more or less intact. The Tripods came out from the City and destroyed them as they lay there, helpless.”
Henry said, “All of them, sir?”
“Every one. The only flying machine we have left is one that would not start from its base because something was wrong with its engine.”
Only now did the significance of what he had told us really sink in. I had been so sure that the attack would succeed, that these wonderful devices of the ancients would destroy the last stronghold of the enemy. Yet not only had the attack failed, the weapon on which our hopes were pinned had been shown to be useless.
Beanpole said, “Well, sir?”
Julius nodded. “Yes. We are down to our last throw. Let us hope your balloons will pull us through.”
• • •
I said to Beanpole, “You mean, you knew all the time that this was possible—that the balloons were something to fall back on if the flying machines didn’t succeed?”
He looked at me with mild surprise. “But, of course. You do not think Julius would fail to have an alternative plan, right up to the last?”
“You might have told me.”
He shrugged. “One leaves it to Julius to tell people what he thinks proper. And the balloons are a good project in themselves. Those air-ships I spoke of—the ancients had something of the sort, but abandoned them for the heavy flying machines. I am not sure they were right to do that.”
I said, “Do you know how soon we are to cross the ocean?”
“No. There are preparations to be made.”
“Yes, of course.”
He admonished me sharply, “Will, stop grinning. This is not designed for your benefit. It would have been better—infinitely better—if the flying machines had succeeded. As Julius said, this is our last chance.”
I said penitently, “Yes, I realize that.”
But penitence was not the feeling uppermost in my mind.
Eight
The Freedom Bubbles
We, too, and our balloons, were split between different ships for the journey across the ocean. Henry and I, though, found ourselves together, on a vessel of four or five hundred tons called La Reine d’Azure. The French sailors asked us, before we left harbor, if we would care to take some concoction of theirs which was designed to prevent seasickness. The sky, they said, promised dirty weather ahead. Henry accepted the offer, but I refused. The liquid looked doubtful, and smelled worse, and, as I told them, I had crossed the seas before.
But that was a different sea—the narrow Channel between my homeland and France—and in different conditions. We put out into choppy white-capped waves, with a wind from the east whipping spray along their tops. This was the wind we wanted, and all possible sail was crammed on to take advantage of it. La Reine swept along under a sky that steadily darkened, although it was not much past the middle of the day. A Queen, perhaps, but a tipsy one, lurching from side to side, digging her bows into the troughs as the waves increased and deepened, and scattering foam as she came up again.
My own sensation was one of, at first, mild discomfort, and I thought it would pass as I grew used to the motion. I stood by the bulwarks with Henry, wrapped up against the wind and wet and talked cheerfully and cracked jokes. The discomfort, though, instead of passing, grew more insistent. One of the sailors who had offered me the seasickness remedy passed and asked me how I was. I laughed, and told him I was feeling fine—that it reminded me of the carousel that had been set up at the village fairs when I was a boy. The ship dropped, at that moment, from the crest of her upward swing down into horrific depths, and I shut my mouth and swallowed hastily. Fortunately, he had already gone.
From that point, the ship’s battle with the waves was matched by another waged by my mind against my stomach. I was determined not to show what I was feeling even to Henry—my pride was stupidly engaged—and was relieved when he went below at the word that there was a hot drink waiting in the galley. He asked me if I were coming, and I shook my head, smiling desperately. I said, as was perfectly true, that I did not feel like a drink at the moment. So he left me, and I hung on to the rail, and stared at the sea, willing either it or my churning stomach to lie quiet. Neither did so. Time slowly passed, with nothing happening except that the sky was darker, the waves more extreme, the shuddering plunges and climbs of La Reine d’Azure more precipitous. My head was aching as well; but I hung on, and felt I must be winning.
Someone touched me from behind. Henry said, “You still here, Will? You’re a glutton for fresh sea air.”
I mumbled something, I don’t know what. Henry continued.
“I was talking to the Captain. He says he thinks there might be some really rough weather ahead of us.”
I turned, drawn by my incredulity over this remark. I opened my mouth to say something and, on second thought, closed it again. Henry said solicitously, “Are you all right, Will? Your face is a funny color. A bit like one of the Masters, only greener . . .”
I plunged back to the rail, hung over it, and was sick. Not just once, but again and again, my stomach going on heaving long after there could possibly be anything left in it to bring up. My recollection of the rest of the day, that night, and the following day, is hazy; nor would I wish to remember more clearly. At some stage, the French sailor came back with his mixture, and Henry held my head while he poured it down my throat. I think I felt a little better afterward, but I could scarcely have felt worse.
Gradually my state improved. On the fourth morning, although I was still queasy, signs of hunger made themselves known. I washed in salt water, tidied myself up, and made my rolling way toward the galley. The cook, a fat smiling man who prided himself on speaking some English, said:
“Ah, so you are better, yes? You ’ave recover le bon appètit, and prepare to break-the-fast?”
I smiled. “I think I could manage something.”
“Good, good! So we ’ave the special break-the-fast for you. I ’ave cook ’im ready.”
He passed me a plate, and I took it. It contained slices of bacon. They were thick, the meat was fat apart from a couple of narrow bars of pink, and they looked as though they had not been fried but boiled in grease, which still adhered to them. I stared at it, while the cook watched me. Then the ship heaved one way, and my stomach heaved another, and I hurriedly put the plate down and staggered for the fresh air of the deck. As I went, I heard the cook’s merry laughter echoing along the companionway behind me.
• • •
By
So we were thrown back on contemplation of the sea and the sky, and on each other’s company. I had noticed a change in Henry on his return from the Americas, and this had been confirmed during our long ballooning summer. It was not just a physical change, though he was much taller and leaner. There had been a change in his character, too, I thought. He was more reserved, and I felt that might be because he had more in reserve, that he was surer of himself and of his aims in life—aims, that is, apart from the one we all shared, of overcoming and destroying the Masters. But we had lived a communal life up in the hills, with little opportunity for or inclination toward confidences. It was only now, in the long days of winter sunshine, with the sea stretching emptily to the four horizons, that he gave me some insight into what the aims might be.
On the rare occasions when I turned my mind to look beyond our primary objective, and thought of the world that could be when it was liberated from our oppressors, my vision was hazy and mostly, I am afraid, centered on pleasures. I envisaged a life of hunting, riding, fishing—all the things which I enjoyed made a hundred times more enjoyable by the knowledge that no Tripod would ever again stride across the skyline, that we were the masters of our own habitation and destiny, and that any cities that were built would be cities for men to dwell in.