CHAPTER XX
Slowly, Doug straightened, descended the stairs with Dot's trembling body still in his arms. The boys stood motionless.
There was only the sound of Dot's quiet sobbing, and that of Doug's boots as they struck hollow sounds from the steel stair treads, moved heavily as though fitted to the legs of an awkward robot to scatter the shattered bits of the power-pack tubes and crush them as they came underfoot.
Gently, he put her down. The boys knelt at either side of her, Doug himself before her.
"Don't, please don't, Dot," he said.
"Oh, Doug—"
And then she clung to him, and her face was wet against his own, but they were the last of her tears.
"Afraid?"
"No. Scared a little, but just scared. I don't fear them, Doug ... they're not worth enough to fear."
Mike and Terry had gone over to where the Contraption was, had pulled off its dust-cover, and stood looking at it as though puzzled, as though wondering why, so suddenly, it had become a worthless thing.
"Nobody's touched it, Dad," Doug heard Mike saying. "I don't think anybody's done anything to it."
Doug didn't answer, for he did not know how to tell them, how to make them know that there was no way.
"I just—just dropped it, Doug...."
He tried to smile, and his face felt old and tired. "We were overdue anyway," he said. "Way overdue. I guess it's against the rules to beat the odds forever."
"I just ... just dropped it...."
"Don't, don't my darling. It wasn't you, don't you understand? It wasn't you, or me—the little fight we made just prolonged things for awhile. Sort of like living itself, I guess. The big system. You can let it sweep you along as it will or you can fight it if you're fool enough...."
"Doug! Doug, you don't believe those things!"
He felt the muscles of his face tighten, and he said nothing. No, no he did not believe them, but what difference did that make? It was the ways things were that mattered!
He picked up the broadsword Terry had let fall.
"How long—how long will it be, Doug?"
Her voice was calm; there was even a faint flush of color in her face again.
"I don't know," he said. "For awhile at least, this might seem the least logical place."
"Dad, what's in this big box? Hey, Dad!"
He stood up, turned toward them. The kids—so full of life and the love of living, so full of the myriad curiosities that made living a colorful vibrant thing.
"This one here. Over here—a big tall wooden one."
Doug heard her quick intake of breath, turned to her.
"Before the telecall, Doug. Before they took me. A helicopter came, from the electronics place ... they brought that box, and I—"
In quick strides he was beside Mike and Terry, and everything inside him was suddenly churned up, cold, hot....
Mike had wrenched a section of planking loose, had reached inside.
"I got the label, Dad.... High-Speed Blower-Rack, With Double Blower, Model 4-L532, two each—"
The final, hellish irony. As though it were not enough to fail, but to be mocked as he failed, as though Fate—or was it Providence?—could not close the incident without at least a gentle laugh at him, a cruel laugh to make light of all his confusion, his efforts and all that had driven him to make them. Doug wondered if there would be enough of the strength he would need, when he died, to laugh back.
The planking squawked as Terry pried with Mike's broadsword.
"Maybe it can help, Dad ... maybe it can," Terry said, and he continued the prying. Mike pulled at it, and there were louder squawks as the nails protestingly surrendered.
Doug wanted to stop them, to tell them, but there could be such a little time left, and if it kept them busy there might not be time for them to become afraid.
He watched them as they ripped the top from the crate, eagerly began hauling out its contents.
Four large, wide-bladed fans, each perhaps sixteen inches in diameter, and each driven by a compact electric motor. They were coaxially mounted on tall, slender chromium plated racks and could be adjusted on them to meet any conceivable experiment in ventilation engineering.
Doug said nothing, let them continue. It might not even be necessary to tell them that their discovery was nothing more than two ingeniously designed air conditioning units.
He wondered why they had come at all. The Prelatinate-Attorney's idea, perhaps, of a not-too-subtle jest. That, or even a veiled warning.
There was more squawking of wood, and in a few moments Mike and Terry had each of the units placed beside each other on the cellar floor.
"There's other junk here too," Terry was saying. "Pulleys and stuff, Dad. And a sheet of directions or something. Here, look Dad ... maybe it'll help."
Doug looked at the smudged sheet of plastisheet that Terry had thrust in his hand. Only simple diagrams, indicating the use and assembly of the pulleys for desired variations in blower speeds. Even the simple rheostat, Doug mused, was taboo....
He crumpled the sheet, let it fall to the floor.
And suddenly grabbed it up again, smoothed it, looked again at the last sentence! ... each motor operates on regular household direct current of 250 Kemps, as authorized by ...
Two hundred fifty Kemps—and there were four of the motors!
"Dot! Dot those tools by the Contraption! And any scrap wire there—hurry!"
He worked with inhuman swiftness of desperation. Dot knelt beside him, handed him tool by tool as he asked for it, as though she were a scrub nurse and he the surgeon, with a patient that might have but moments to live.
And silently, Terry and Mike watched, eyes wide with wonderment. They watched as Doug equipped two of the motors with the large pulleys, the two others with pulleys of less than half their diameter. Then he linked them with the flat rubber belts.
"See if you can get the insulation off the ends of those wires—the ones a couple feet long are all right."
He moved the racks next to the bench, brought them close together, and when Dot handed him the wire, he had the two motors on which he had placed the small pulleys denuded of their streamlined jackets. It was between those two that he made a simple connection in series.
"Terry, Mike—while I'm making connections to the Contraption, see if you can get the fan blades off their shafts."
Two connections—two simple connections....
He finished the second connection.
"One more fan to go, Dad—"
He plugged the two outer motors with the large pulleys into the wall outlets above the bench. Then his fingers waited on the switches.
"But Doug, the fan motors will only work on house current—"
"Yes, that's right, but I've geared—pulleyed, I mean—two of them up, so that they'll turn the other two at least twice their normal armature speed. And the simple electric motor works—"
"—in reverse, too, doesn't it! If you turn it by mechanical means, it generates electric current!"
"That's about it. I ought to get about five hundred volts from each, with the pulley ratio I'm using. And they're both connected in series, so—a thousand volts, I hope. Childish, isn't it—"
There was sudden chaos above them.
"Doug—"
Terry dropped the last fan-blade to the floor.
Doug pressed the switches, and the two electric motors spun into humming, whirring motion, driving the other two at a speed he knew might burn them out in minutes. Then he closed the Contraption's main switch, and pulled Terry and Mike bodily to him with one arm as he held tightly to Dot with the other.
S-men swarmed down the cellar stairs.