In justice to the Russians, he had to admit that at no one time had he seen two trains. If he had been flying over the area, the most he would have seen was a train going downhill or a yard engine going uphill. Unless the N.K.A.R. people were complete fools, the waiting trains were hidden in tunnels or in sheds of some kind between their disconnection from the hypothetical, camouflaged electric line which brought them there and the plain-in-sight steam line which took them down the slope to the factory.
This time the train hesitated in front of the gate. The soldiers must have been getting tired of their jobs. This gave Dugan a chance to steady his two lenses and to get a clear view of the little railroad cars. They were open trucks but they did not carry rock.
They carried people. The people gave an unusual impression of being well dressed. Each car had a guard standing up in it. The guards did not seem to hold rifles. Presumably they held submachine guns or machine pistols. Even with the telescope he could not make that out.
This view spoiled one of Dugan's hopes. He had half hoped that he might find regular trails running underground or overground, with forest concealment, into Atomsk. He might have tried to slip a ride on an ordinary-sized train. But a well-policed toy was not likely to provide him any concealment. He couldn't expect to hang on underneath anything that small and it was out of the question for him to try to sneak a ride in a flat car with a guard pointing a machine pistol at him. "Feet. You got to take me," he murmured. The train went on into the factory and soon afterward the little busybody of an engine came charging out of the gate at a frantic rate of speed. The guards had to jump. Dugan rather liked the personality of that unknown engineer.
The little engine went boldly up the hillside and disappeared into the quarry. Why should the Russians take to running a cross between Wagnerian elves and Labor Day at Coney Island?
Labor Day! There was the answer. Dugan made a quick mental count. This day was the thirtieth of April. Thirty days hath September, April — and the next day would therefore be the first of May, Russian Communist Labor Day. All the big shots of the atomic administration and atomic police were getting down to Spassk or even Vladivostok for the parades, the speeches, the singing, and the binges.
When the third train came out, Dugan tried to follow it with his telescope to see if the figures of women and children could be seen intermixed with those of men. At that distance, he could not be sure but he suspected that nobody got away from the N.K.A.R. without leaving a family behind. The people all sat in the flat cars. They all wore white tops to their clothes, odd coats, or else uniforms; he could not be sure of who they were. They did not stand up so that he could sort them out according to size and shape. Mighty unobliging of them, thought Dugan.
The importance of the holiday impressed itself on Dugan. People couldn't ride very long in little flat cars like that. Not at the density in which those people were packed in. Therefore the people had all stood up and waited in the "quarry" before getting on the little train to come down to the "factory." But if they had been doing that, where was the little engine getting all its fresh trains? And if the trains were the ones on which the people had ridden all the way from Atomsk center, whatever it was called, would they be likely to add large numbers of additional waiting people from the mysterious reserves of the quarry? That, too, seemed improbable. Therefore the people had probably come straight through from Atomsk center. Therefore Atomsk center could not be very far away. An electric locomotive could take cars like that at almost any speed, but it seemed unlikely that even Russians would run more than forty miles an hour with that many people, no evidence of safeguards, and a slightly uneven roadbed.
"Calendar," said Dugan, very happily talking to himself, "you have gone and set it up for me."
Holiday.