The Pool of Fire (The Tripods) by John Christopher
• • •
At a council of war we were in low spirits. Even Julius, I thought, was dismayed, though he did his best not to show it. I found it impossible to conceal my own despair.
Julius said, “One sees how it works. They follow set courses on these patrols. If the course is varied for some reason, that variation is kept on subsequent trips.”
A scientist said, “It probably has something to do with automatic piloting.” I wondered what that was. “The course is plotted—and if you override it you set up a new pattern which remains constant until that is overridden in turn. I can see how it might work.”
Which was more than I did. Talking about the why and wherefore did not strike me as important, anyway. The question was: how to get at the Tripod now?
Someone suggested digging another pitfall, across the new course. That remark fell into silence, which Julius broke.
“We could. But the new course does not pass within a mile of the shore, and the going in between is very bad. No road, not even a track. I think we would have them swarming around us before we had our prisoner halfway to the boat.”
After a second or two, André said, “I suppose we could call the operation off temporarily. We could look for another Tripod track within reach of the sea, and work on that instead.”
Someone else said, “It took us four months to find this one. Finding another could take as long, or longer.”
And every day counted: none of us needed telling that. Silence fell again. I tried to think of something, but found only a blank in my mind. There was a sharp wind, a smell of snow in the air. Land and sea alike were black and desolate, under a lowering sky. It was Beanpole who spoke at last. He said, diffident in the presence of our elders, “It does not seem that the jamming last week made it suspicious. It would hardly have come so close again if so; or would have come closer still, to investigate. The altered course is—well, more or less an accident.”
André nodded. “I would accept that. Does it help?”
“If we could lure it back on to the old route . . .”
“Of course. The problem is: how? What would lure a Tripod? Do you know? Does anyone?”
Beanpole said, “I am thinking of something Will told me, that Fritz and he had witnessed.”
He told them, briefly, the story of the Hunt. When he had finished, one of the scientists said, “We know about that. But it’s a tradition, going back scores of years. Do you propose starting a tradition during the next nine days?”
Beanpole began to say something, which was interrupted. All our nerves were frayed; tempers likely to be short. Julius, though, cut across the interruption, “Go on, Jean-Paul.”
“I was thinking . . . we know strange things make them curious. When Will and I were floating down-river on a raft, one of them veered off course to look at the raft and smash it. If somehow we could attract this one’s attention, and perhaps lead it into the trap . . . I think it might work.”
André objected. “To attract its attention, and then stay out of its clutches long enough to bring it in . . . it’s a tall order.”
“It would be impossible for someone on foot,” Beanpole said. “But in the Hunt the men were on horseback. One covered quite a distance before he was caught.”
There was a pause again. Julius said thoughtfully, “Yes, it might work. But can we be sure he will rise to the bait? A man on horseback is not a particularly strange thing. They see them every day, by the score.”
“If the man were strangely dressed—and perhaps the horse painted . . .”
“Green,” Fritz said. “It is their special color, after all. A green man, on a green horse? I think that would attract attention.”
Julius said, “Yes.” He nodded. “Yes, it could do the trick. All we need is a horse and rider.”
I felt excitement rise. Most of these were scientists, unused to physical pursuits like horse riding. In fact, the two with an obvious claim were Fritz and me. And I had Crest, and we had learned each other’s ways through a long year’s journeying.
I caught Julius’s eye.
“Sir, if I might suggest . . .”
• • •
We used a green dye on Crest, which would wash off afterward. He took the indignity well, with no more than a snort of disgust. The color was bright emerald, the effect startling. I wore a jacket and trousers of the same eye-wrenching hue. I objected when Beanpole approached my face with a rag dipped in the dye but, on Julius’s confirmation, submitted. Fritz burst into laughter. He was not given to expressing mirth, so I must have been a truly comic sight.
During the previous nine days I had many times rehearsed my part in this morning’s events. I was to pick up the Tripod as it came around the hill and, as soon as it made a move in my direction, gallop at full speed for the pitfall. We had built a narrow causeway across the top, which we hoped would take Crest’s weight and mine, and marked it with signs meant to be conspicuous enough for me to pick out but unlikely to make the occupants of the Tripod suspicious. It was a narrow and ill-defined path we had to follow, and more than once I had found myself off course and only been saved by a last-minute swerve from plunging into the pit.
Now, at last, all was ready. I checked Crest’s girths for the tenth time. The others shook hands with me, and withdrew. I was very lonely as I watched them go. Now there was the waiting again, familiar and yet different. This time things were more crucial, and this time I was alone.
I felt it first: the earth vibrating to the stamp of huge metal feet. Another, and another—a steady succession, eventually audible. I patted Crest’s head as I watched for the Tripod. It came at last: a monstrous leg broke the line of the hillside, followed by the hemisphere. I shivered, and felt Crest shiver too. I was on the alert for any deviation from the course the Tripod had followed on the last two occasions. If it did not move toward me, I must move toward it. I hoped I would not have to.
Suddenly one of the legs swung sharply around. It had spotted me, and was coming after me. I touched my heels to Crest’s sides. He shot off, and the chase was on.
I had an urge to look back, but dared not; every scrap of effort must go into the gallop. I could tell, though, by the shortening intervals between footfalls, that the Tripod was increasing speed. Familiar landmarks fell away on either side. Ahead there was the coast, the sea dark gray, capped with white by a freshening wind. I knew it was fast gaining on me. The wind blew in my face, and I resented it for slowing my flight even by a fraction of a second. I passed a thorn bush I knew, a rock shaped like a cottage loaf. Less than a quarter of a mile to go . . . And as I framed that thought, I heard the whistling of steel through the air, the sound of the tentacle swishing down.
I made a guess, and urged Crest to the right. I thought I had got away with it, then felt Crest shudder violently from the shock of being hit by the metal flail. It must have caught him on the hind quarters, just behind the saddle. He swayed and collapsed. I managed to get my feet out of the stirrups and went forward over his head as he fell. I hit the ground, rolling, scrambled to my feet, and ran.
At every instant I expected to be plucked into the air. But the Tripod was more immediately concerned with Crest. I glanced back and saw him lifted, jerking feebly, and brought close to the green ports at the bottom of the hemisphere. I ran on furiously. Only a couple of hundred yards . . . If the Tripod busied itself with Crest for even half a minute, I would be there.
I risked another look back in time to see my poor horse dropped, from a height of some sixty feet, to land in a broken heap on the ground; and to see the Tripod move in renewed pursuit. I could go no faster. The metal feet thudded behind, and the edge of the pitfall seemed to get no nearer. For the whole of the last fifty yards, I thought I was finished. Perhaps the Tripod was playing with me, like a great steel cat with a frantically scurrying mouse. (That was what Beanpole suggested afterward.) All that I knew then was that my legs were desperately aching, my lungs, it seemed, on the point of bursting. I be
I knew I had succeeded in my task when, instead of the stamp of a metal foot, I heard a ripping noise behind me, and at the same time felt the surface collapse beneath my own feet. I grabbed at a branch which had been woven into the camouflaged surface of the pit. It came away, and I was falling again. I seized another branch, of thorn, and it held longer, though lacerating my hands as I gripped it. While I was thus perilously suspended, the sky darkened over me. The surface had yielded beneath the foremost leg of the Tripod, with the second leg in midair. Off-balance, it was plunging forward, with the hemisphere swinging uncontrollably across and down. Looking up, I saw it hurtle past, and a moment later felt the shock of its impact with the solid ground on the far side. I myself was hanging halfway up the pit, at grave risk of falling the rest of the way. No one was going to come to my assistance: they had more important work to do. I collected my scattered senses and climbed, slowly and gingerly, up the tangled web of reeds and branches.
By the time I reached the scene, things were well under way. The outer door had fallen open with the shock, and Fritz led the team with the metal-cutting machine inside and set to work on the inner door. They wore masks, for protection against the green air which eddied out as the machine penetrated the metal. It seemed a long time to those waiting, but in fact it was only a matter of minutes before they were through and tackling the dazed occupants. Fritz confirmed that one of them was definitely alive, and they pulled the mask that had been prepared over his head and tied it tight around his middle.
I watched as they heaved him out. A cart had been drawn up close, and on it stood the vast crate—of wood, sealed with a tar which would keep the green air in and our own out—which was to take him. He was pulled and pushed and at last dropped in, a grotesque figure with his three short stumpy legs, tapering conical body, three eyes and three tentacles, and that green reptilian skin I remembered with such lively horror. The top dropped down on the crate, and more men got to work, sealing it. Then the word was given to the men on the horse teams, and the horses pulled away, dragging cart and cargo toward the beach.
The rest of us cleared our traces, as far as possible, from the scene. The Masters, when they came on the broken Tripod, could no longer doubt that they were facing organized opposition—this was no casual haphazard thing such as our destruction of a Tripod on the way to the White Mountains had been—but even though it amounted to a declaration of war, there was no point in leaving unnecessary clues. I should have liked to bury Crest, but of course there was no time. In case the trick might serve again, we sponged the green dye from his body, and left him there. I walked a little apart from the others as we came away, not wanting them to see my eyes.
The cart was hauled out through the waves until the water lapped against the chests of the horses. The fishing boat had a shallow enough draught to get alongside, and the crate with our prisoner was winched on board. Viewing the smoothness of the operation I was more than ever impressed by the planning that had gone into it. The horses were unharnessed and led ashore; from there they would be scattered north and south in pairs, one ridden, one led.
The rest of us heaved our wet shivering bodies over the gunwales. One thing remained to be done. A line had been fastened to the cart and, as the boat stood off, it rolled behind us till the waves closed over it. When that happened the line was cut and the boat, released from its burden, bobbed briefly in the gray waters. On shore, the horses had already disappeared. All that was left was the shattered wreck of the Tripod, with a faint green mist eddying from the mutilated hemisphere. The remaining Masters were certainly dead by now. And our jammer had worked. The Tripod lay crumpled and solitary; there was no sign yet of others coming to help.
Our course was south. With the wind stiff and blowing from only a few points north of west, progress was slow, involving a fair amount of tacking. All available hands bent to the task, and gradually the distance from our embarkation point increased. There was a headland we needed to clear; we rounded it with painful sluggishness, wallowing in a tide which had just begun to turn.
But now the shore was distant, the broken Tripod a dot on the horizon. They brought mulled ale up from the galley, to warm our chilled bones.
Four
A Little Drink for Ruki
Julius arranged a general reshuffle once we were back at the castle. Many of those who had taken part in the capture of the Master were detailed for duties elsewhere, and Julius himself left two or three days later. The immediate crisis was over, the examination and study of our captive would take long weeks or months, and there were a dozen other things which needed his attention. I had thought that Fritz and I might be sent away also, but this was not so. We were kept as guards. The prospect of relative inactivity was one I viewed with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I could see that it might well prove boring after a time; on the other, I was not sorry to be having a rest. A long and exhausting year lay behind us.
It was also pleasant to be in fairly continuous contact with Beanpole, who was one of the examining group. Fritz and I knew each other very well by now, and were good friends, but I had missed Beanpole’s more inventive and curious mind. He did not say so himself, but I knew he was viewed with respect by the other scientists, all a great deal older than he was. He never showed the least sign of conceit over this, but he never did over anything. He was too interested in what was going to happen next to bother about people’s opinions of him.
In return for our various losses we had one gain, and a gain that for my part I could have well done without. This was Ulf, the erstwhile skipper of the Erlkönig, the barge that had been intended to take Fritz and Beanpole and me down the great-river to the Games. He had been forced to leave the barge because of sickness, and Julius had appointed him as guard commander at the castle. This meant, of course, that Fritz and I were directly under his authority.
He remembered us both very well, and acted on the memories. As far as Fritz was concerned, this was all very fine. On the Erlkönig, as in everything else, he had obeyed orders punctiliously and without question, and been content to leave anything outside the allotted task to his superiors. Beanpole and I had been the offenders, first in persuading his assistant to let us off the barge to look for him and then, in my case, in getting myself into a brawl with the townspeople which landed me in trouble, and in Beanpole’s case in disobeying him and coming to rescue me. The barge had sailed without us, and we had been forced to make our own way downriver to the Games.
Beanpole did not fall under Ulf’s jurisdiction, and I think Ulf was rather in awe of him, as belonging to the wise men, the scientists. My case was quite different. There was no glamour attaching to me, and he was my superior officer. The fact that, despite being left behind, we had got to the Games in time, that I had won there and, with Fritz, gone on into the City and in due course come back with information, did not mollify him. If anything, it made things worse. Luck (as he saw it) was no substitute for discipline; indeed, its enemy. My example might encourage others into similar follies. Insubordination was something which needed to be borne down on, and he was the man to do the bearing down.
I recognized the bitterness but did not, at first, take it seriously. He was just, I thought, working out his resentment over my (admittedly) thoughtless behavior during our previous encounter. I decided to stick it out as cheerfully as possible, and give no cause for complaint this time. Only gradually did it penetrate to me that his dislike was really deeply rooted, and that nothing I could do now was likely to change it. It was not until later that I realized how complex a man he was; nor that in attacking me he was fighting a weakness, an instability, which was part of his own nature. All I knew was that the more courteously and promptly and
His physical appearance and habits did nothing to help. His barrel-chested squatness, his thick lips and squashed nose, the mat of black hair showing through the buttonholes of his shirt—all these repelled me. He was the noisiest consumer of soups and stews that I had ever encountered. And his trick of continually hawking and spitting was made worse, not better, by the fact that these days he did not spit on the floor but into a red-and-white spotted handkerchief which he carried around in his sleeve. I did not know then that much of the red was his own blood, that he was a dying man. I am not sure such knowing would have made all that much difference, either. He rode me continuously, and my control of my temper wore thinner day by day.
Fritz was a great help, both in calming me down and in taking things on himself where possible. So was Beanpole, with whom I talked a lot during off-duty times. And I had another source of interest, to take my mind off things to some extent. This was our prisoner, the Master: Ruki.
• • •
He came through what must have been a harrowing and painful experience very well. The room which had been made ready for him was one of the castle dungeons, and Fritz and I attended him there, entering through an airlock and wearing facemasks when we were inside. It was a big room, more than twenty feet square, much of it hewn out of solid rock. On the basis of our reports, the scientists had done everything to make him as comfortable as possible, even to sinking a circular hole in the floor which could be filled with warm water for him to soak in. I do not think it was, by the time we got it there in buckets, as hot as he would have liked, and it was not renewed often enough to meet the longing all the Masters had for continually soaking their lizard-like skins; but it was better than nothing. Much the same applied to the food which had been worked out, like the air, on the basis of a few small samples Fritz had managed to bring out of the City.