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+Project Gutenberg's The Return, by H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Return
+
+Author: H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
+
+Illustrator: Kelly Freas
+
+Release Date: July 17, 2006 [EBook #18855]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RETURN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+        This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction,
+        January, 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any
+        evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+
+
+                              THE RETURN
+
+
+
+                           BY H. BEAM PIPER
+
+                                 AND
+
+                           JOHN J. McGUIRE
+
+
+                            [Illustration: ]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+             _The isolated little group they found were doing fine--
+             but their religion was most strange--and yet quite logical!_
+
+                      Illustrated by Kelly Freas
+
+
+Altamont cast a quick, routine, glance at the instrument panels and
+then looked down through the transparent nose of the helicopter at the
+yellow-brown river five hundred feet below. Next he scraped the last
+morsel from his plate and ate it.
+
+"What did you make this out of, Jim?" he asked. "I hope you kept
+notes, while you were concocting it. It's good."
+
+"The two smoked pork chops left over from yesterday evening," Loudons
+said, "and that bowl of rice that's been taking up space in the
+refrigerator the last couple of days together with a little egg
+powder, and some milk. I ground the chops up and mixed them with the
+rice and the other stuff. Then added some bacon, to make grease to fry
+it in."
+
+Altamont chuckled. That was Loudons, all right; he could take a few
+left-overs, mess them together, pop them in the skillet, and have a
+meal that would turn the chef back at the Fort green with envy. He
+filled his cup and offered the pot.
+
+"Caffchoc?" he asked.
+
+Loudons held his cup out to be filled, blew on it, sipped, and then
+hunted on the ledge under the desk for the butt of the cigar he had
+half-smoked the evening before.
+
+"Did you ever drink coffee, Monty?" the socio-psychologist asked,
+getting the cigar drawing to his taste.
+
+"Coffee? No. I've read about it, of course. We'll have to organize an
+expedition to Brazil, some time, to get seeds, and try raising some."
+
+Loudons blew a smoke ring toward the rear of the cabin.
+
+"A much overrated beverage," he replied. "We found some, once, when I
+was on that expedition into Idaho, in what must have been the
+stockroom of a hotel. Vacuum-packed in moisture-proof containers, and
+free from radioactivity. It wasn't nearly as good as caffchoc. But
+then, I suppose, a pre-bustup coffee drinker couldn't stomach this
+stuff we're drinking." He looked forward, up the river they were
+following. "Get anything on the radio?" he asked. "I noticed you took
+us up to about ten thousand, while I was shaving."
+
+Altamont got out his pipe and tobacco pouch, filling the former slowly
+and carefully.
+
+"Not a whisper. I tried Colony Three, in the Ozarks, and I tried to
+call in that tribe of workers in Louisiana; I couldn't get either."
+
+"Maybe if we tried to get a little more power on the set--"
+
+That was Loudons, too, Altamont thought. There wasn't a better man at
+the Fort, when it came to dealing with people, but confront him with a
+problem about things, and he was lost. That was one of the reasons why
+he and the stocky, phlegmatic social scientist made such a good team,
+he thought. As far as he, himself, was concerned, people were just a
+mysterious, exasperatingly unpredictable, order of things which were
+subject to no known natural laws. That was about the way Loudons
+thought of things; he couldn't psychoanalyze them.
+
+He gestured with his pipe toward the nuclear-electric conversion unit,
+between the control-cabin and the living quarters in the rear of the
+box-car-sized helicopter.
+
+"We have enough power back there to keep this windmill in the air
+twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, for
+the next fifteen years," he said. "We just don't have enough radio. If
+I'd step up the power on this set any more, it'd burn out before I
+could say, 'Altamont calling Fort Ridgeway.'"
+
+"How far are we from Pittsburgh, now?" Loudons wanted to know.
+
+Altamont looked across the cabin at the big map of the United States,
+with its red and green and blue and yellow patchwork of vanished
+political divisions, and the transparent overlay on which they had
+plotted their course. The red line started at Fort Ridgeway, in what
+had once been Arizona It angled east by a little north, to Colony
+Three, in northern Arkansas; then sharply northeast to St. Louis and
+its lifeless ruins; then Chicago and Gary, where little bands of Stone
+Age reversions stalked and fought and ate each other; Detroit, where
+things that had completely forgotten that they were human emerged from
+their burrows only at night; Cleveland, where a couple of cobalt bombs
+must have landed in the lake and drenched everything with
+radioactivity that still lingered after two centuries; Akron, where
+vegetation was only beginning to break through the glassy slag;
+Cincinnati, where they had last stopped--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How's the leg, this morning, Jim?" he asked.
+
+"Little stiff. Doesn't hurt much, though."
+
+"Why, we're about fifty miles, as we follow the river, and that's
+relatively straight." He looked down through the transparent nose of
+the 'copter at a town, now choked with trees that grew among tumbled
+walls. "I think that's Aliquippa."
+
+Loudons looked and shrugged, then looked again and pointed.
+
+"There's a bear. Just ducked into that church or movie theater or
+whatever. I wonder what he thinks we are."
+
+Altamont puffed slowly at his pipe, "I wonder if we're going to find
+anything at all in Pittsburgh."
+
+"You mean people, as distinct from those biped beasts we've found so
+far? I doubt it," Loudons replied, finishing his caffchoc and wiping
+his mustache on the back of his hand. "I think the whole eastern half
+of the country is nothing but forest like this, and the highest type
+of life is just about three cuts below _Homo Neanderthalensis_, almost
+impossible to contact, and even more impossible to educate."
+
+"I wasn't thinking about that; I've just about given up hope of
+finding anybody or even a reasonably high level of barbarism,"
+Altamont said. "I was thinking about that cache of microfilmed books
+that was buried at the Carnegie Library."
+
+"If it was buried," Loudons qualified. "All we have is that article in
+that two-century-old copy of _Time_ about how the people at the
+library had constructed the crypt and were beginning the microfilming.
+We don't know if they ever had a chance to get it finished, before the
+rockets started landing."
+
+They passed over a dam of flotsam that had banked up at a wrecked
+bridge and accumulated enough mass to resist the periodic floods that
+had kept the river usually clear. Three human figures fled across a
+sand-flat at one end of it and disappeared into the woods; two of them
+carried spears tipped with something that sparkled in the sunlight,
+probably shards of glass.
+
+"You know, Monty, I get nightmares, sometimes, about what things must
+be like in Europe," Loudons said.
+
+Five or six wild cows went crashing through the brush below. Altamont
+nodded when he saw them.
+
+"Maybe tomorrow, we'll let down and shoot a cow," he said. "I was
+looking in the freezer-locker; the fresh meat's getting a little low.
+Or a wild pig, if we find a good stand of oak trees. I could enjoy
+what you'd do with some acorn-fed pork. Finished?" he asked Loudons.
+"Take over, then; I'll go back and wash the dishes."
+
+They rose, and Loudons, favoring his left leg, moved over to the seat
+at the controls. Altamont gathered up the two cups, the
+stainless-steel dishes, and the knives and forks and spoons, going up
+the steps over the shielded converter and ducking his head to avoid
+the seat in the forward top machine-gun turret. He washed and dried
+the dishes, noting with satisfaction that the gauge of the water tank
+was still reasonably high, and glanced out one of the windows. Loudons
+was taking the big helicopter upstairs, for a better view.
+
+Now and then, among the trees, there would be a glint of glassy slag,
+usually in a fairly small circle. That was to be expected; beside the
+three or four H-bombs that had fallen on the Pittsburgh area,
+mentioned in the transcripts of the last news to reach the Fort from
+outside, the whole district had been pelted, more or less at random,
+with fission bombs. West of the confluence of the Allegheny and
+Monongahela, it would probably be worse than this.
+
+"Can you see Pittsburgh yet, Jim?" he called out.
+
+"Yes; it's a mess! Worse than Gary; worse than Akron, even. _Monty_!
+Come here! I think I have something!"
+
+Picking up the pipe he had laid down, Altamont hurried forward,
+dodging his six-foot length under the gun turret and swinging down
+from the walkway over the converter.
+
+"What is it?" he asked.
+
+"Smoke. A lot of smoke, twenty or thirty fires, at the very least."
+Loudons had shifted from _Forward_ to _Hover_, and was peering through
+a pair of binoculars. "See that island, the long one? Across the river
+from it, on the north side, toward this end. Yes, by Einstein! And I
+can see cleared ground, and what I think are houses, inside a
+stockade--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Murray Hughes walked around the corner of the cabin, into the morning
+sunlight, lacing his trousers, with his hunting shirt thrown over his
+bare shoulders, and found, without much surprise, that his father had
+also slept late. Verner Hughes was just beginning to shave. Inside the
+kitchen, his mother and the girls were clattering pots and skillets;
+his younger brother, Hector, was noisily chopping wood. Going through
+the door, he filled another of the light-metal basins with hot water,
+found his razor, and went outside again, setting the basin on the
+bench.
+
+Most of the ware in the Hughes cabin was of light-metal; Murray and
+his father had mined it in the dead city up the river, from a place
+where it had floated to the top of a puddle of slag, back when the
+city had been blasted, at the end of the Old Times. It had been hard
+work, but the stuff had been easy to carry down to where they had
+hidden their boat, and, for once, they'd had no trouble with the
+Scowrers. Too bad they couldn't say as much for yesterday's hunting
+trip!
+
+As he rubbed lather into the stubble on his face, he cursed with
+irritation. That had been a bad-luck hunt, all around. They'd gone out
+before dawn, hunting into the hills to the north, they'd spent all day
+at it, and shot one small wild pig. Lucky it was small, at that.
+They'd have had to abandon a full-grown one, after the Scowrers began
+hunting them. Six of them, as big a band as he'd ever seen together at
+one time, and they'd gotten between them and the stockade and forced
+them to circle miles out of their way. His father had shot one, and
+he'd had to leave his hatchet sticking in the skull of another, when
+his rifle had misfired.
+
+That meant a trip to the gunsmith's, for a new hatchet and to have the
+mainspring of the rifle replaced. Nobody could afford to have a rifle
+that couldn't be trusted, least of all a hunter and prospector. And
+he'd had words with Alex Barrett, the gunsmith, just the other day.
+Not that Barrett wouldn't be more than glad to do business with him,
+once he saw that hard tool-steel he'd dug out of that place down the
+river. Hardest steel he'd ever found, and hadn't been atom-spoiled,
+either.
+
+He cleaned, wiped and stropped his razor and put it back in the case;
+he threw out the wash-water on the compost-pile, and went into the
+cabin, putting on his shirt and his belt, and passed on through to the
+front porch, where his father was already eating at the table. The
+people of the Toon liked to eat in the open; it was something they'd
+always done, just as they'd always liked to eat together in the
+evenings.
+
+He sweetened his mug of chicory with a lump of maple sugar and began
+to sip it before he sat down, standing with one foot on the bench and
+looking down across the parade ground, past the Aitch-Cue House,
+toward the river and the wall.
+
+"If you're coming around to Alex's way of thinking--and mine--it won't
+hurt you to admit it, son," his father said.
+
+He turned, looking at his father with the beginning of anger, and then
+grinned. The elders were constantly keeping the young men alert with
+these tests. He checked back over his actions since he had come out
+onto the porch.
+
+To the table, sugar in his chicory, one foot on the bench, which had
+reminded him again of the absence of the hatchet from his belt and
+brought an automatic frown. Then the glance toward the gunsmith's
+shop, and across the parade ground, at the houses into which so much
+labor had gone; the wall that had been built from rubble and topped
+with pointed stakes; the white slabs of marble from the ruined
+building that marked the graves of the First Tenant and the men of the
+Old Toon. He _had_ thought, in that moment, that maybe his father and
+Alex Barrett and Reader Rawson and Tenant Mycroft Jones and the others
+were right--there were too many things here that could not be moved
+along with them, if they decided to move.
+
+It would be false modesty, refusal to see things as they were, not to
+admit that he was the leader of the younger men, and the boys of the
+Irregulars. And last winter, the usual theological arguments about the
+proper chronological order of the Sacred Books and the true nature of
+the Risen One had been replaced by a violent controversy when Sholto
+Jiminez and Birdy Edwards had reopened the old question of the
+advisability of moving the Toon and settling elsewhere. He'd been in
+favor of the idea himself, but, for the last month or so, he had begun
+to doubt the wisdom of it. It was probably reluctance to admit this to
+himself that had brought on the strained feelings between himself and
+his old friend the gunsmith.
+
+"I'll have to drill the Irregulars, today," he said. "Birdy Edwards
+has been drilling them, while we've been hunting. But I'll go up and
+see Alex about a new hatchet and fixing my rifle. I'll have a talk
+with him."
+
+He stepped forward to the edge of the porch, still munching on a
+honey-dipped piece of corn bread, and glanced up at the sky. That was
+a queer bird; he'd never seen a bird with a wing action like that.
+Then he realized that the object was not a bird at all.
+
+His father was staring at it, too.
+
+"Murray! That's ... that's like the old stories from the time of the
+wars!"
+
+But Murray was already racing across the parade ground toward the
+Aitch-Cue House, where the big iron ring hung by its chain from a
+gallows-like post, with the hammer beside it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The stockaded village grew larger, details became plainer, as the
+helicopter came slanting down and began spiraling around it. It was a
+fairly big place, some forty or fifty acres in a rough parallelogram,
+surrounded by a wall of varicolored stone and brick and concrete
+rubble from old ruins, topped with a palisade of pointed poles. There
+was a small jetty projecting out into the river, to which six or eight
+boats of different sorts were tied; a gate opened onto this from the
+wall. Inside the stockade, there were close to a hundred buildings,
+ranging from small cabins to a structure with a belfry, which seemed
+to have been a church, partly ruined in the war of two centuries ago
+and later rebuilt. A stream came down from the woods, across the
+cultivated land around the fortified village; there was a rough flume
+which carried the water from a dam close to the edge of the forest and
+provided a fall to turn a mill wheel.
+
+"Look; strip-farming," Loudons pointed. "See the alternate strips of
+grass and plowed ground. Those people understand soil conservation.
+They have horses, too."
+
+As he spoke, three riders left the village at a gallop, through a gate
+on the far side. They separated, and the people in the fields, who had
+all started for the village, turned and began hurrying toward the
+woods. Two of the riders headed for a pasture in which cattle had been
+grazing, and started herding them, also, into the woods. For a while,
+there was a scurrying of little figures in the village below, and then
+not a moving thing was in sight.
+
+"There's good organization," Loudons said. "Everybody seems to know
+what to do, and how to get it done promptly. And look how neat the
+whole place is. Policed up. I'll bet anything we'll find that they
+have a military organization, or a military tradition at least. We'll
+have to find out; you can't understand a people till you understand
+their background and their social organization."
+
+"Humph. Let me have a look at their artifacts; that'll tell what kind
+of people they are," Altamont said, swinging his glasses back and
+forth over the enclosure. "Water-power mill, water-power
+sawmill--building on the left side of the water wheel; see the pile of
+fresh lumber beside it. Blacksmith shop, and from that chimney I'd say
+a small foundry, too. Wonder what that little building out on the tip
+of the island is; it has a water wheel. Undershot wheel, and it looks
+as though it could be raised or lowered. But the building's too small
+for a grist mill. Now, I wonder--"
+
+[Illustration: ]
+
+"Monty, I think we ought to land right in the middle of the enclosure,
+on that open plaza thing, in front of that building that looks like a
+reconditioned church. That's probably the Royal Palace, or the
+Pentagon, or the Kremlin, or whatever."
+
+Altamont started to object, paused, and then nodded. "I think you're
+right, Jim. From the way they scattered, and got their livestock into
+the woods, they probably expect us to bomb them. We have to get
+inside; that's the quickest way to do it." He thought for a moment.
+"We'd better be armed, when we go out. Pistols, auto-carbines, and a
+few of those concussion-grenades in case we have to break up a
+concerted attack. I'll get them."
+
+The plaza and the houses and cabins around it, and the
+two-hundred-year-old church, were silent and, apparently, lifeless as
+they set the helicopter down. Once Loudons caught a movement inside
+the door of a house, and saw a metallic glint. Altamont pointed up at
+the belfry.
+
+"There's a gun up there," he said. "Looks like about a four-pounder.
+Brass. I knew that smith-shop was also a foundry. See that little curl
+of smoke? That's the gunner's slow-match. I'd thought maybe that thing
+on the island was a powder mill. That would be where they'd put it.
+Probably extract their niter from the dung of their horses and cows.
+Sulfur probably from coal-mine drainage. Jim, this is really
+something!"
+
+"I hope they don't cut loose on us with that thing," Loudons said,
+looking apprehensively at the brass-rimmed black muzzle that was
+covering them from the belfry. "I wonder if we ought to--Oh-oh, here
+they come!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three or four young men stepped out of the wide door of the old
+church. They wore fringed buckskin trousers and buckskin shirts and
+odd caps of deerskin with visors to shade their eyes and similar beaks
+behind to protect the neck. They had powder horns and bullet pouches
+slung over their shoulders, and long rifles in their hands. They
+stepped aside as soon as they were out; carefully avoiding any gesture
+of menace, they stood watching the helicopter which had landed among
+them.
+
+Three other men followed them out; they, too, wore buckskins, and the
+odd double-visored caps. One had a close-cropped white beard, and on
+the shoulders of his buckskin shirt he wore the single silver bars of
+a first lieutenant of the vanished United States Army. He had a pistol
+on his belt; it had the saw-handle grip of an automatic, but it was a
+flintlock, as were the rifles of the young men who stood watchfully on
+either side of the two middle-aged men who accompanied him. The whole
+party advanced toward the helicopter.
+
+"All right; come on, Monty." Loudons opened the door and let down the
+steps. Picking up an auto-carbine, he slung it and stepped out of the
+helicopter, Altamont behind him. They advanced to meet the party from
+the old church, halting when they were about twenty feet apart.
+
+"I must apologize, lieutenant, for dropping in on you so
+unceremoniously." He stopped, wondering if the man with the white
+beard understood a word of what he was saying.
+
+"The natural way to come in, when you travel in the air," the old man
+replied. "At least, you came in openly. I can promise you a better
+reception than you got at that city to the west of us a couple of days
+ago."
+
+"Now how did you know we'd had trouble at Cincinnati
+day-before-yesterday?" Loudons demanded.
+
+The old man's eyes sparkled with childlike pleasure. "That surprises
+you, my dear sir? In a moment, I daresay you'll be amazed at the
+simplicity of it. You have a nasty rip in the left leg of your
+trousers, and the cloth around it is stained with blood. Through the
+rip, I perceive a bandage. Obviously, you have suffered a recent
+wound. I further observe that the side of your flying machine bears
+recent scratches, as though from the spears or throwing-hatchets of
+the Scowrers. Evidently they attacked you as you were leaving it; it
+is fortunate that these cannibal devils are too stupid and too anxious
+for human flesh to exercise patience."
+
+"Well, that explains how you knew we'd been recently attacked,"
+Loudons told him. "But how did you guess that it had been to the west
+of here, in a ruined city?"
+
+"I never guess," the oldster with the silver bar and the
+keystone-shaped red patch on his left shoulder replied. "It is a
+shocking habit--destructive to the logical faculty. What seems strange
+to you is only so because you do not follow my train of thought. For
+example, the wheels and their framework under your flying machine are
+splashed with mud which seems to be predominantly brick-dust, mixed
+with plaster. Obviously, you landed recently in a dead city, either
+during or after a rain. There was a rain here yesterday evening, the
+wind being from the west. Obviously, you followed behind the rain as
+it came up the river. And now that I look at your boots, I see traces
+of the same sort of mud, around the soles and in front of the heels.
+But this is heartless of us, keeping you standing here on a wounded
+leg, sir. Come in, and let our medic look at it."
+
+"Well, thank you, lieutenant," Loudons replied. "But don't bother your
+medic; I've attended to the wound myself, and it wasn't serious to
+begin with."
+
+"You are a doctor?" the white-bearded man asked.
+
+"Of sorts. A sort of general scientist. My name is Loudons. My friend,
+Mr. Altamont, here, is a scientist, also."
+
+There was an immediate reaction; all three of the elders of the
+village, and the young riflemen who had accompanied them, exchanged
+glances of surprise. Loudons dropped his hand to the grip of his slung
+auto-carbine, and Altamont sidled unobtrusively away from him, his
+hand moving as by accident toward the butt of his pistol. The same
+thought was in both men's minds, that these people might feel, as a
+heritage of the war of two centuries ago, a hostility to science and
+scientists. There was no hostility, however, in their manner as the
+old man advanced and held out his hand.
+
+"I am Tenant Mycroft Jones, the Toon Leader here," he said. "This is
+Stamford Rawson, our Reader, and Verner Hughes, our Toon Sarge. This
+is his son, Murray Hughes, the Toon Sarge of the Irregulars. But come
+into the Aitch-Cue House, gentlemen. We have much to talk about."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By this time, the villagers had begun to emerge from the log cabins
+and rubble-walled houses around the plaza and the old church. Some of
+them, mostly young men, were carrying rifles, but the majority of them
+were unarmed. About half of them were women, in short deerskin or
+homespun dresses; there were a number of children, the younger ones
+almost completely naked.
+
+"Sarge," the old man told one of the youths, "post a guard over this
+flying machine; don't let anybody meddle with it. And have all the
+noncoms and techs report here, on the double." He turned and shouted
+up at the truncated steeple: "Atherton, sound 'All Clear!'"
+
+A horn, up in the belfry, began blowing, to advise the people who had
+run from the fields into the woods that there was no danger.
+
+They went through the open doorway of the old stone church, and
+entered the big room inside. The building had evidently been gutted by
+fire, two centuries before, and portions of the wall had been
+restored. Now there was a rough plank floor, and a plank ceiling at
+about twelve feet; the room was apparently used as a community center.
+There were a number of benches and chairs, all very neatly made, and
+along one wall, out of the way, ten or fifteen long tables had been
+stacked, the tops in a pile and the trestles on them. The walls were
+decorated with trophies of weapons--a number of old M-12 rifles and
+M-16 submachine guns, all in good clean condition, a light machine
+rifle, two bazookas. Among them were stone and metal-tipped spears and
+crude hatchets and knives and clubs, the work of the wild men of the
+woods. A stairway led to the second floor, and it was up this that the
+man who bore the title of Toon Leader conducted them, to a small room
+furnished with a long table, a number of chairs, and several big
+wooden chests bound with iron.
+
+"Sit down, gentlemen," the Toon Leader invited, going to a cupboard
+and producing a large bottle stopped with a corncob and a number of
+small cups. "It's a little early in the day," he said, "but this is a
+very special occasion. You smoke a pipe, I take it?" he asked
+Altamont. "Then try some of this; of our own growth and curing." He
+extended a doeskin moccasin, which seemed to be the tobacco-container.
+
+Altamont looked at the thing dubiously, then filled his pipe from it.
+The oldster drew his pistol, pushed a little wooden plug into the
+vent, added some tow to the priming, and, aiming at the wall, snapped
+it. Evidently, at times the formality of plugging the vent had been
+overlooked; there were a number of holes in the wall there. This time,
+however, the pistol didn't go off. He shook out the smoldering tow,
+blew it into flame, and lit a candle from it, offering the light to
+Altamont. Loudons got out a cigar and lit it from the candle; the
+others filled and lighted pipes. The Toon Leader reprimed his pistol,
+then holstered it, took off his belt and laid it aside, an example the
+others followed.
+
+They drank ceremoniously, and then seated themselves at the table. As
+they did, two more men came into the room; they were introduced as
+Alexander Barrett, the gunsmith, and Stanley Markovitch, the
+distiller.
+
+"You come, then, from the west?" the Toon Leader began by asking.
+
+"Are you from Utah?" the gunsmith interrupted, suspiciously.
+
+"Why, no; we're from Arizona. A place called Fort Ridgeway," Loudons
+said.
+
+The others nodded, in the manner of people who wish to conceal
+ignorance; it was obvious that none of them had ever heard of Fort
+Ridgeway, or Arizona either.
+
+"We've been in what used to be Utah," Altamont said. "There's nobody
+there but a few Indians, and a few whites who are even less
+civilized."
+
+"You say you come from a fort? Then the wars aren't over, yet?" Sarge
+Hughes asked.
+
+"The wars have been over for a long time. You know how terrible they
+were. You know how few in all the country were left alive," Loudons
+said.
+
+"None that we know of, beside ourselves and the Scowrers until you
+came," the Toon Leader said.
+
+"We have found only a few small groups, in the whole country, who have
+managed to save anything of the Old Times. Most of them lived in
+little villages and cultivated land. A few had horses, or cows. None,
+that we have ever found before, made guns and powder for themselves.
+But they remembered that they were men, and did not eat one another.
+Whenever we find a group of people like this, we try to persuade them
+to let us help them."
+
+"Why?" the Toon Leader asked. "Why do you do this for people you've
+never met before? What do you want from them--from us--in return for
+your help?" He was speaking to Altamont, rather than to Loudons; it
+seemed obvious that he believed Altamont to be the leader and Loudons
+the subordinate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Because we're trying to bring back the best things of the Old Times,"
+Altamont told him. "Look; you've had troubles, here. So have we, many
+times. Years when the crops failed; years of storms, or floods;
+troubles with these beast-men in the woods. And you were alone, as we
+were, with no one to help. We want to put all men who are still men in
+touch with one another, so that they can help each other in trouble,
+and work together. If this isn't done soon, everything which makes men
+different from beasts will soon be no more."
+
+"He's right. One of us, alone, is helpless," the Reader said. "It is
+only in the Toon that there is strength. He wants to organize a Toon
+of all Toons."
+
+"That's about it. We are beginning to make helicopters like the one
+Loudons and I came here in. We'll furnish your community with one or
+more of them. We can give you a radio, so that you can communicate
+with other communities. We can give you rifles and machine guns and
+ammunition, to fight the ... the Scowrers, did you call them? And we
+can give you atomic engines, so that you can build machines for
+yourselves."
+
+"Some of our people--Alex Barrett, here, the gunsmith, and Stan
+Markovitch, the distiller, and Harrison Grant, the iron worker--get
+their living by making things. How'd they make out, after your
+machines came in here?" Verner Hughes asked.
+
+"We've thought of that; we had that problem with other groups we've
+helped," Loudons said. "In some communities, everybody owns everything
+in common; we don't have much of a problem, there. Is that the way you
+do it, here?"
+
+"Well, no. If a man makes a thing, or digs it out of the ruins, or
+catches it in the woods, it's his."
+
+"Then we'll work out some way. Give the machines to the people who are
+already in a trade, or something like that. We'll have to talk it over
+with you and with the people who'd be concerned."
+
+"How is it you took so long finding us," Alex Barrett asked. "It's
+been two hundred or so years since the Wars."
+
+"Alex! You see but you do not observe!" The Toon Leader rebuked.
+"These people have their flying machines, which are highly complicated
+mechanisms. They would have to make tools and machines to make them,
+and tools and machines to make those tools and machines. They would
+have to find materials, often going far in search of them. The marvel
+is not that they took so long, but that they did it so quickly."
+
+"That's right," Altamont said. "Originally, Fort Ridgeway was a
+military research and development center. As the country became
+disorganized, the Government set this project up, to develop ways of
+improvising power and transportation and communication methods and
+extracting raw materials. If they'd had a little more time, they might
+have saved the country. As it was, they were able to keep themselves
+alive and keep something like civilization going at the Fort, while
+the whole country was breaking apart around them. Then, when the
+rockets stopped falling, they started to rebuild. Fortunately, more
+than half the technicians at the Fort were women; there was no
+question of them dying out. But it's only been in the last twenty
+years that we've been able to make nuclear-electric engines, and this
+is the first time any of us have gotten east of the Mississippi."
+
+"How did your group manage to survive?" Loudons said. "You call it the
+Toon; I suppose that's what the word platoon has become, with time.
+You were, originally, a military platoon?"
+
+"_Pla_-toon!" the white-bearded man said. "Of all the unpardonable
+stupidity! Of course that was what it was. And the title, Tenant, was
+originally _lieu_-tenant; I know that, though we have all dropped the
+first part of the word. That should have led me, if I'd used my wits,
+to deduce platoon from toon.
+
+"Yes, sir. We were originally a platoon of soldiers, two hundred years
+ago, at the time when the Wars ended. The Old Toon, and the First
+Tenant, were guarding pows, whatever they were. The pows were all
+killed by a big bomb, and the First Tenant, Lieutenant Gilbert Dunbar,
+took his ... his platoon and started to march to Deecee, where the
+Government was, but there was no Government, any more. They fought
+with the people along the way. When they needed food, or ammunition,
+or animals to pull their wagons, they took them, and killed those who
+tried to prevent them. Other people joined the Toon, and when they
+found women whom they wanted, they took them. They did all sorts of
+things that would have been crimes if there had been any law, but
+since there was no law any longer, it was obvious that there could be
+no crime. The First Ten--Lieutenant--kept his men together, because he
+had The Books. Each evening, at the end of each day's march, he read
+to his men out of them.
+
+[Illustration: ]
+
+"Finally, they came here. There had been a town here, but it had been
+burned and destroyed, and there were people camping in the ruins. Some
+of them fought and were killed; others came in and joined the platoon.
+At first, they built shelters around this building, and made this
+their fort. Then they cleared away the ruins, and built new houses.
+When the cartridges for the rifles began to get scarce, they began to
+make gunpowder, and new rifles, like these we are using now, to shoot
+without cartridges. Lieutenant Dunbar did this out of his own
+knowledge, because there is nothing in The Books about making
+gunpowder; the guns in The Books are rifles and shotguns and revolvers
+and airguns; except for the airguns, which we haven't been able to
+make, these all shot cartridges. As with your people, we did not die
+out, because we had women. Neither did we increase greatly--too many
+died or were killed young. But several times we've had to tear down
+the wall and rebuild it, to make room inside it for more houses, and
+we've been clearing a little more land for fields each year. We still
+read and follow the teachings of The Books; we have made laws for
+ourselves out of them."
+
+"And we are waiting here, for the Slain and Risen One," Tenant Jones
+added, looking at Altamont intently. "It is impossible that He will
+not, sooner or later, deduce the existence of this community. If He
+has not done so already."
+
+"Well, sir," the Toon Leader changed the subject abruptly, "enough of
+this talk about the past. If I understand rightly, it is the future in
+which you gentlemen are interested." He pushed back the cuff of his
+hunting shirt and looked at an old and worn wrist watch.
+"Eleven-hundred; we'll have lunch shortly. This afternoon, you will
+meet the other people of the Toon, and this evening, at
+eighteen-hundred, we'll have a mess together outdoors. Then, when we
+have everybody together, we can talk over your offer to help us, and
+decide what it is that you can give us that we can use."
+
+"You spoke, a while ago, of what you could do for us, in return,"
+Altamont said. "There's one thing you can do, no further away than
+tomorrow, if you're willing."
+
+"And that is--?"
+
+"In Pittsburgh, somewhere, there is an underground crypt, full of
+books. Not bound and printed books; spools of microfilm. You know what
+that is?"
+
+The others shook their heads. Altamont continued:
+
+"They are spools on which strips are wound, on which pictures have
+been taken of books, page by page. We can make other, larger pictures
+from them, big enough to be read--"
+
+"Oh, photographs, which you enlarge. I understand that. You mean, you
+can make many copies of them?"
+
+"That's right. And you shall have copies, as soon as we can take the
+originals back to Fort Ridgeway, where we have equipment for enlarging
+them. But while we have information which will help us to find the
+crypt where the books are, we will need help in getting it open."
+
+"Of course! This is wonderful. Copies of The Books!" the Reader
+exclaimed. "We thought we had the only one left in the world!"
+
+"Not just The Books, Stamford; other books," the Toon Leader told him.
+"The books which are mentioned in The Books. But of course we will
+help you. You have a map to show where they are?"
+
+"Not a map; just some information. But we can work out the location of
+the crypt."
+
+"A ritual," Stamford Rawson said happily. "Of course."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They lunched together at the house of Toon Sarge Hughes with the Toon
+Leader and the Reader and five or six of the leaders of the community.
+The food was plentiful, but Altamont found himself wishing that the
+first book they found in the Carnegie Library crypt would be a cook
+book.
+
+In the afternoon, he and Loudons separated. The latter attached
+himself to the Tenant, the Reader, and an old woman, Irene Klein, who
+was almost a hundred years old and was the repository and arbiter of
+most of the community's oral legends. Altamont, on the other hand,
+started, with Alex Barrett, the gunsmith, and Mordecai Ricci, the
+miller, to inspect the gunshop and grist mill. Joined by half a dozen
+more of the village craftsmen, they visited the forge and foundry, the
+sawmill, the wagon shop. Altamont looked at the flume, a rough
+structure of logs lined with sheet aluminum, and at the nitriary, a
+shed-roofed pit in which potassium nitrate was extracted from the
+community's animal refuse. Then, loading his guides into the
+helicopter, they took off for a visit to the powder mill on the island
+and a trip up the river.
+
+They were a badly scared lot, for the first few minutes, as they
+watched the ground receding under them through the transparent plastic
+nose. Then, when nothing disastrous seemed to be happening,
+exhilaration took the place of fear, and by the time they set down on
+the tip of the island, the eight men were confirmed aviation
+enthusiasts. The trip up-river was an even bigger success; the high
+point came when Altamont set his controls for _Hover_, pointed out a
+snarl of driftwood in the stream, and allowed his passengers to fire
+one of the machine guns at it. The lead balls of their own
+black-powder rifles would have plunked into the waterlogged wood
+without visible effect; the copper-jacketed machine-gun bullets ripped
+it to splinters. They returned for a final visit to the distillery
+awed by what they had seen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Monty, I don't know what the devil to make of this crowd," Loudons
+said, that evening, after the feast, when they had entered the
+helicopter and prepared to retire. "We've run into some weird
+communities--that lot down in Old Mexico who live in the church and
+claim they have a divine mission to redeem the world by prayer,
+fasting and flagellation, or those yogis in Los Angeles--"
+
+"Or the Blackout Boys in Detroit," Altamont added.
+
+"That's understandable," Loudons said, "after what their ancestors
+went through in the Last War. But this crowd, here! The descendants of
+an old United States Army infantry platoon, with a fully developed
+religion centered on a slain and resurrected god--Normally, it would
+take thousands of years for a slain-god religion to develop, and then
+only from the field-fertility magic of primitive agriculturists. Well,
+you saw these people's fields from the air. Some of the members of
+that old platoon were men who knew the latest methods of scientific
+farming; they didn't need naive fairy tales about the planting and
+germination of seed."
+
+"Sure this religion isn't just a variant of Christianity?"
+
+"Absolutely not. In the first place, these Sacred Books can't be the
+Bible--you heard Tenant Jones say that they mentioned firearms that
+used cartridges. That means that they can't be older than 1860 at the
+very earliest. And in the second place, this slain god wasn't
+crucified or put to death by any form of execution; he perished,
+together with his enemy, in combat, and both god and devil were later
+resurrected. The Enemy is supposed to be the master mind back of these
+cannibal savages in the woods and also in the ruins."
+
+"Did you get a look at these Sacred Books, or find out what they might
+be?"
+
+Loudons shook his head disgustedly. "Every time I brought up the
+question, they evaded. The Tenant sent the Reader out to bring in this
+old lady, Irene Klein--she was a perfect gold mine of information
+about the history and traditions of the Toon, by the way--and then he
+sent him out on some other errand, undoubtedly to pass the word not to
+talk to us about their religion."
+
+"I don't get that," Altamont said. "They showed me everything they
+had--their gunshop, their powder mill, their defenses, everything." He
+smoked in silence for a moment. "Say, this slain god couldn't be the
+original platoon commander, could he?"
+
+"No. They have the greatest respect for his memory--decorate his grave
+regularly, drink toasts to him--but he hasn't been deified. They got
+the idea for this deity of theirs out of the Sacred Books." Loudons
+gnawed the end of his cigar and frowned. "Monty, this has me worried
+like the devil, because I believe that they suspect that you are the
+Slain and Risen One."
+
+"Could be, at that. I know the Tenant came up to me, very
+respectfully, and said, 'I hope you don't think, sir, that I was
+presumptuous in trying to display my humble deductive abilities to
+_you_.'"
+
+"What did you say?" Loudons demanded rather sharply.
+
+"Told him certainly not; that he'd used a good quick method of
+demonstrating that he and his people weren't like those mindless
+subhumans in the woods."
+
+"That was all right. I don't know how we're going to handle this. They
+only suspect that you are their deity. As it stands, now, we're on
+trial, here. And I get the impression that logic, not faith, seems to
+be their supreme religious virtue; that skepticism is a religious
+obligation instead of a sin. That's something else that's practically
+unheard of. I wish I knew--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tenant Mycroft Jones, and Reader Stamford Rawson and Toon Sarge Verner
+Hughes, and his son Murray Hughes, sat around the bare-topped table in
+the room, on the second floor of the Aitch-Cue House. A lighted candle
+flickered in the cool breeze that came in through the open window
+throwing their shadows back and forth on the walls.
+
+"Pass the tantalus, Murray," the Tenant said, and the youngest of the
+four handed the corncob-corked bottle to the eldest. Tenant Jones
+filled his cup, and then sat staring at it, while Verner Hughes thrust
+his pipe into the toe of the moccasin and filled it. Finally, he drank
+about half of the clear wild-plum brandy.
+
+"Gentlemen, I am baffled," he confessed. "We have three alternate
+possibilities here, and we dare not disregard any of them. Either
+this man who calls himself Altamont is truly He, or he is merely what
+we are asked to believe, one of a community like ours, with more of
+the old knowledge than we possess."
+
+"You know my views," Verner Hughes said. "I cannot believe that He was
+more than a man, as we are. A great, a good, a wise man, but a man and
+mortal."
+
+"Let's not go into that, now." The Reader emptied his cup and took the
+bottle, filling it again. "You know my views, too. I hold that He is
+no longer upon earth in the flesh, but lives in the spirit and is only
+with us in the spirit. There are three possibilities, too, none of
+which can be eliminated. But what was your third possibility, Tenant?"
+
+"That they are creatures of the Enemy. Perhaps that one or the other
+of them _is_ the Enemy."
+
+Reader Rawson, lifting his cup to his lips, almost strangled. The
+Hugheses, father and son, stared at Tenant Jones in horror.
+
+"The Enemy--with such weapons and resources!" Murray Hughes gasped.
+Then he emptied his cup and refilled it. "No! I can't believe that;
+he'd have struck before this and wiped us all out!"
+
+"Not necessarily, Murray," the Tenant replied. "Until he became
+convinced that his agents, the Scowrers, could do nothing against us,
+he would bide his time. He sits motionless, like a spider, at the
+center of the web; he does little himself; his agents are numerous.
+Or, perhaps, he wishes to recruit us into his hellish organization."
+
+"It is a possibility," Reader Rawson admitted. "One which we can
+neither accept nor reject safely. And we must learn the truth as soon
+as possible. If this man is really He, we must not spurn Him on mere
+suspicion. If he is a man, come to help us, we must accept his help;
+if he is speaking the truth, the people who sent him could do wonders
+for us, and the greatest wonder would be to make us, again, a part of
+a civilized community. And if he is the Enemy--"
+
+"If it is really He," Murray said, "I think we are on trial."
+
+"What do you mean, son? Oh, I see. Of course, I don't believe he is,
+but that's mere doubt, not negative certainty. But if I'm wrong, if
+this man is truly He, we are being tested. He has come among us
+incognito; if we are worthy of Him, we will penetrate His disguise."
+
+"A very pretty problem, gentlemen," the Tenant said, smacking his lips
+over his brandy. "For all that it may be a deadly serious one for us.
+There is, of course, nothing that we can do tonight. But tomorrow, we
+have promised to help our visitors, whoever they may be, in searching
+for this crypt in the city. Murray, you were to be in charge of the
+detail that was to accompany them. Carry on as arranged, and say
+nothing of our suspicions, but advise your men to keep a sharp watch
+on the strangers, that they may learn all they can from them.
+Stamford, you and Verner and I will go along. We should, if we have
+any wits at all, observe something."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Listen to this infernal thing!" Altamont raged. "'_Wielding a
+gold-plated spade handled with oak from an original rafter of the
+Congressional Library, at three-fifteen one afternoon last week--_'
+One afternoon last week!" He cursed luridly. "Why couldn't that
+blasted magazine say _what_ afternoon? I've gone over a lot of
+twentieth century copies of that magazine; that expression was a
+regular cliche with them."
+
+Loudons looked over his shoulder at the photostated magazine page.
+
+"Well, we know it was between June thirteen and nineteen, inclusive,"
+he said. "And there's a picture of the university president, complete
+with gold-plated spade, breaking ground. Call it Wednesday, the
+sixteenth. Over there's the tip of the shadow of the old Cathedral of
+Learning, about a hundred yards away. There are so many inexactitudes
+that one'll probably cancel out another."
+
+"That's so, and it's also pretty futile getting angry at somebody
+who's been dead two hundred years, but why couldn't they say
+Wednesday, or Monday, or Saturday, or whatever?" He checked back in
+the astronomical handbook, and the photostated pages of the old
+almanac, and looked over his calculations. "All right, here's the
+angle of the shadow, and the compass-bearing. I had a look, yesterday,
+when I was taking the local citizenry on that junket. The old baseball
+diamond at Forbes Field is plainly visible, and I located the ruins of
+the Cathedral of Learning from that. Here's the above-sea-level
+altitude of the top of the tower. After you've landed us, go up to
+this altitude--use the barometric altimeter, not the radar--and hold
+position."
+
+Loudons leaned forward from the desk to the contraption Altamont had
+rigged in the nose of the helicopter--one of the telescope-sighted
+hunting rifles clamped in a vise, with a compass and a spirit-level
+under it.
+
+"Rifle's pointing downward at the correct angle now?" he asked. "Good.
+Then all I have to do is hold the helicopter steady, keep it at the
+right altitude, level, and pointed in the right direction, and watch
+through the sight while you move the flag around, and direct you by
+radio. Why wasn't I born quintuplets?"
+
+"Mr. Altamont! Dr. Loudons!" a voice outside the helicopter called.
+"Are you ready for us, now?"
+
+Altamont went to the open door and looked out. The old Toon Leader,
+the Reader, Toon Sarge Hughes, his son, and four young men in
+buckskins with slung rifles, were standing outside.
+
+"I have decided," the Tenant said, "that Mr. Rawson and Sarge Hughes
+and I would be of more help than an equal number of younger men. We
+may not be as active, but we know the old ruins better, especially the
+paths and hiding places of the Scowrers. These four young men you
+probably met last evening; it will do no harm to introduce them again.
+Birdy Edwards; Sholto Jiminez; Jefferson Burns; Murdo Olsen."
+
+"Very pleased, Tenant, gentlemen. I met all you young men last
+evening; I remember you," Altamont said. "Now, if you'll all crowd in
+here, I'll explain what we're going to try to do."
+
+He showed them the old picture. "You see where the shadow of a tall
+building falls?" he asked. "We know the location and height of this
+building. Dr. Loudons will hold this helicopter at exactly the
+position of the top of the building, and aim through the sights of the
+rifle, there. One of you will have this flag in his hand, and will
+move it back and forth; Dr. Loudons will tell us when the flag is in
+the sight of the rifle."
+
+"He'll need a good pair of lungs to do that," Verner Hughes commented.
+
+"We'll use radio. A portable set on the ground, and the helicopter's
+radio set." He was met, to his surprise, with looks of incomprehension.
+He had not supposed that these people would have lost all memory of
+radio communication.
+
+"Why, that's wonderful!" the Reader exclaimed, when he explained. "You
+can talk directly; how much better than just sending a telegram!"
+
+"But, finding the crypt by the shadow; that's exactly like the--"
+Murray Hughes began, then stopped short. Immediately, he began talking
+loudly about the rifle that was to be used as a surveying transit,
+comparing it with the ones in the big first-floor room at the
+Aitch-Cue House.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Locating the point on which the shadow of the old Cathedral of
+Learning had fallen proved easier than either Altamont or Loudons had
+expected. The towering building was now a tumbled mass of slagged
+rubble, but it was quite possible to determine its original center,
+and with the old data from the excellent reference library at Fort
+Ridgeway, its height above sea level was known. After a little
+jockeying, the helicopter came to a hovering stop, and the slanting
+barrel of the rifle in the vise pointed downward along the line of the
+shadow that had been cast on that afternoon in June, 1993, the cross
+hairs of the scope-sight centered almost exactly on the spot Altamont
+had estimated on the map. While he peered through the sight, Loudons
+brought the helicopter slanting down to land on the sheet of fused
+glass that had once been a grassy campus.
+
+"Well, this is probably it," Altamont said. "We didn't have to bother
+fussing around with that flag, after all. That hump, over there, looks
+as though it had been a small building, and there's nothing
+corresponding to it on the city map. That may be the bunker over the
+stair-head to the crypt."
+
+[Illustration: ]
+
+They began unloading equipment--a small portable nuclear-electric
+conversion unit, a powerful solenoid-hammer, crowbars and intrenching
+tools, tins of blasting-plastic. They took out the two hunting rifles,
+and the auto-carbines, and Altamont showed the young men of Murray
+Hughes' detail how to use them.
+
+"If you'll pardon me, sir," the Tenant said to Altamont, "I think it
+would be a good idea if your companion went up in the flying machine
+and circled around over us, to keep watch for Scowrers. There are
+quite a few of them, particularly farther up the rivers, to the east,
+where the damage was not so great and they can find cellars and
+shelters and buildings to live in."
+
+"Good idea; that way, we won't have to put out guards," Altamont said.
+"From the looks of this, we'll need everybody to help dig into that
+thing. Hand out one of the portable radios, Jim, and go up to about a
+thousand feet. If you see anything suspicious, give us a yell, and
+then spray it with bullets, and find out what it is afterward."
+
+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 from the sun. A
+few of them were yelling; most of them ran silently. They ran more
+swiftly than the boy they were pursuing; the distance between them
+narrowed every moment. There were at least fifty of them.
+
+Verner Hughes' rifle barked; one of them dropped. As coolly as though
+he were shooting squirrels instead of his son's pursuers, he dropped
+the butt of his rifle to the ground, poured a charge of powder,
+patched a ball and rammed it home, replaced the ramrod. Tenant Jones
+fired then, and then Birdy Edwards joined them and began shooting with
+the telescope-sighted hunting rifle. The young man who had been north
+of the Cathedral of Learning had one of the auto-carbines; Altamont
+had providently set the fire-control for semi-auto before giving it
+to him. He dropped to one knee and began to empty the clip, shooting
+slowly and deliberately, picking off the runners who were in the lead.
+The boy who had started to climb down off the library halted, fired
+his flintlock, and began reloading it. And Altamont, sitting down and
+propping his elbows on his knees, took both hands to the automatic
+which was his only weapon, emptying the magazine and replacing it. The
+last three of the savages he shot in the back; they had had enough and
+were running for their lives.
+
+So far, everybody was safe. The boy in the library came down through a
+place where the wall had fallen. Murray Hughes stopped running and
+came slowly toward the bunker, putting a fresh clip into his rifle.
+The others came drifting in.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Altamont, calling Loudons," the scientist from Fort Ridgeway was
+saying into the radio. "Monty to Jim; can you hear me, Jim?"
+
+Silence.
+
+"We'd better get ready for another attack," Birdy Edwards said.
+"There's another gang coming from down that way. I never saw so many
+Scowrers!"
+
+"Maybe there's a reason, Birdy," Tenant Jones said. "The Enemy is
+after big game, this time."
+
+"Jim! Where the devil are you?" Altamont fairly yelled into the radio,
+and as he did, he knew the answer. Loudons was in the village, away
+from the helicopter, gathering tools and workers. Nothing to do but
+keep on trying.
+
+"Here they come!" Reader Rawson warned.
+
+"How far can these rifles be depended on?" Birdy Edwards wanted to
+know.
+
+Altamont straightened, saw the second band of savages approaching,
+about four hundred yards away.
+
+"Start shooting now," he said. "Aim for the upper part of their
+bodies."
+
+The two auto-loading rifles began to crack. After a few shots, the
+savages took cover. Evidently they understood the capabilities and
+limitations of the villagers' flintlocks; this was a terrifying
+surprise to them.
+
+"Jim!" Altamont was almost praying into the radio. "Come in, Jim!"
+
+"What is it, Monty? I was outside."
+
+Altamont told him.
+
+"Those fellows you had up with you yesterday; think they could be
+trusted to handle the guns? A couple of them are here with me,"
+Loudons inquired.
+
+"Take a chance on it; it won't cost you anything but my life, and
+that's not worth much at present."
+
+"All right; hold on. We'll be along in a few minutes."
+
+"Loudons is bringing the helicopter," he told the others. "All we have
+to do is hold on, here, till he comes."
+
+A naked savage raised his head from behind what might, two hundred
+years ago, have been a cement park-bench, a hundred yards away.
+Reader Stamford Rawson promptly killed him and began reloading.
+
+"I think you're right, Tenant," he said. "The Scowrers have never
+attacked in bands like this before. They must have had a powerful
+reason, and I can think of only one."
+
+"That's what I'm beginning to think, too," Verner Hughes agreed. "At
+least, we have eliminated the third of your possibilities, Tenant. And
+I think probably the second, as well."
+
+Altamont wondered what they were double-talking about. There wasn't
+any particular mystery about the mass attack of the wild men to him.
+Debased as they were, they still possessed speech and the ability to
+transmit experiences. No matter how beclouded in superstition, they
+still remembered that aircraft dropped bombs, and bombs killed people,
+and where people had been killed, they would find fresh meat. They had
+seen the helicopter circling about, and had heard the blasting; every
+one in the area had been drawn to the scene as soon as Loudons had
+gone down the river.
+
+Maybe they had forgotten that aircraft also carried guns. At least,
+when they sprang to their feet and started to run at the return of the
+helicopter, many did not run far.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Altamont and Loudons shook hands many times in front of the Aitch-Cue
+House, and listened to many good wishes, and repeated their promise to
+return. Most of the microfilmed books were still stored in the old
+church; they were taking away with them only the catalogue and a few
+of the more important works. Finally, they entered the helicopter. The
+crowd shouted farewell, as they rose.
+
+Altamont, at the controls, waited until they had gained five thousand
+feet, then turned on a compass-course for Colony Three.
+
+"I can't wait till we're in radio-range of the Fort, to report this,
+Jim," he said. "Of all the wonderful luck! And I don't yet know which
+is more important; finding those books, or finding those people. In a
+few years, when we can get them supplied with modern equipment and
+instructed in its use--"
+
+"I'm not very happy about it, Monty," Loudons confessed. "I keep
+thinking about what's going to happen to them."
+
+"Why, nothing's going to happen to them. They're going to be given the
+means of producing more food, keeping more of them alive, having more
+leisure to develop themselves in--"
+
+"Monty; I saw the Sacred Books."
+
+"The deuce! What were they?"
+
+"It. One volume; a collection of works. We have it at the Fort; I've
+read it. How I ever missed all the clues--You see Monty, what I'm
+worried about is what's going to happen to those people when they find
+out that we're not really Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Return, by H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
+
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