MALCOLM JAMESON: Science Fiction Collection - 17 Books in One Edition. Malcolm Jameson

mostly in the dark to conserve the few remaining candles. It was more than twenty days when finally he broke through the surface into a bright starlit night.

      He hauled himself out onto the turf and drew his first breath of outside air. If the interior of the vault had been amazing, the world outside was no less so. Instead of emerging into an air-besieged German city, the American had emerged into virgin woods. It was a country of little hills, heavily grassed, and tall trees stood all about.

      Winchester made a short tour of exploration close by, but saw no lights or sign of human habitation whatever. When he returned to the cavern, he sat for a long time looking at the sky.

      Until the Moon rose, it looked much as it had always done. But when the Moon emerged from behind a towering oak-top, Winchester had to gasp in unstinted admiration. Whereas the Moon he had always known had been a pallid disk, featured only by craters in monochrome, this Moon was a thing of scintillating color.

      It was as if it had been studded with jewels.

      One crater gave off a many-faceted ruby light, another purest emerald green. Another was of the color of a prime sapphire, while over the whole surface of the globe were patches of a vague iridescence, such as is seen in fire-opals and choice moonstones. Winchester gazed and marveled.

      At length he tired, and decided to go below. Tomorrow he must get up early and explore the country about him.

      It was clear that the war had destroyed Munich and that it had ceased to exist as a city, but surely somewhere nearby the Germans had rebuilt its successor.

      But by a happy coincidence, when Winchester went below the girl stirred slightly of her own accord and opened a lazy eye. He stood above her, holding the stump of their last candle.

      She sat up, blinking.

      "I think I must have fallen asleep," she said apologetically.

      "I think you must have," he said. It had been three weeks since he himself had awakened.

      All that time the girl had slept without moving.

      "Did you rest well?" he asked.

      "Oh, quite," she said, stifling a small yawn. "Do you think the raid is over?"

      "Yes," Allan Winchester said, very soberly. "The raid is over."

      For some reason he found it very hard to tell the girl what had happened.

      Or rather, what he thought had happened. For he was not too sure that it was not all part of a not altogether unpleasant dream. Yet despite her merry peals of incredulous laughter, as if he was trying to amuse her, the aspects of the room and, above all, the gaunt carcasses of the trapped animals at last convinced her.

      "So we're years and years in the future — is that it?" she asked cheerfully. "Like Wells and the others used to write about?"

      "Sort of," Winchester admitted. "Only what you've read is no help. It's all woods outside, and no people that I can see. Maybe the war washed the whole world up and we're all that's left."

      "Another Adam and Eve, you mean?" she asked archly.

      The American blushed.

      "W-well, no," he stammered. "That's not what I meant, exactly." He ruffled his hair and stared at the floor.

      He felt a little out of his depth. He groped for an appropriate come-back, since she seemed to be in a light mood despite the momentous news he had given her.

      "I do think, though," he managed, with a gulp, "that it is about time I knew your name. Since it is a decade or so — or maybe a century — that we've been living in this cave."

      "Nonsense!" the girl retorted. "Do you call this living? But since you want to know, my name is Cynthia Schnachelbauer. My father was German. German-American."

      "Oh," Winchester said, repeating the name slowly. "Sounds rather cumbersome, the last half."

      "Do you want to make something of it?" Cynthia challenged, planting her hands on her hips and jutting a small jaw at him.

      "I may, at that," he said thoughtfully.

      CHAPTER III

       Prince Lohan

       Table of Contents

      Cynthia made clothes for them. The ones they had were falling apart from rot. She worked from a roll of chamois skins she found in the kitchen-laboratory. In the meantime, Winchester gathered together a pack of selected provisions. When the two of them were quite ready for their expedition, they crawled up the steps to the outside vent and stepped into the woods above. After Winchester had sealed their cave with a flat stone, they started on their journey.

      Of Munich there was nothing left, or hardly a trace. The frosts of unnumbered winters and the encroachment of vegetation had thrown apart what bits of masonry were left intact after the bombers had gone. Now it was virgin forest. But beyond, where once there had been fields, the adventurers came upon an endless lawn, on which tame deer grazed and peacocks strutted.

      It was mid-afternoon before they encountered any evidence of the existence of man. Rounding the spur of a low hill, they came upon a valley where the grass had every appearance of just having been mowed. Winchester stooped to examine it, for his bewilderment had been growing at seeing so many thousand acres of carefully tended lawn. As he did, his eye caught a moving object.

      The thing resembled a huge tortoise, and was racing down the valley at a great clip. It had a metallic, reddish sheen, as if plated with burnished copper. It approached rapidly, and as it came, Winchester noted that the color of the grass in its wake was not quite the same as that to its right. It was a mowing machine!

      It halted abruptly some fifty feet away. A gaunt fellow, clad in a simple gray blouse and kilts of a coarse and cheap-looking material, popped out of a hatch that opened at its top. He leaped to the ground and at once prostrated himself, oriental style. In the same movement, he snatched open the back of his blouse, revealing his naked shoulders and the upper half of his back.

      Since the fellow persisted in remaining in the position into which he had thrown himself, kneeling and with his face buried in the grass, Winchester and Cynthia approached him slowly. As they neared, they saw that there were symbols and numbers branded or tattooed on his back.

      Winchester stared at them with a frown. What troubled him was that the figures were placed so as to be read upside down! The creature was identifying himself, and to do so he had to perform the kow-tow!

      "Get up, man!" called Winchester sharply, seeing the fellow continued to grovel. "Tell us where is the nearest town."

      "Ay, milord, whip me if you will, but do not mock me by calling me a 'man'," whined the operator of the mowing machine. "I am but your miserable slave. They did not tell me you were abroad today, or I would not have been so bold — "

      "Nonsense!" snorted Winchester, stooping and shaking the fellow by the shoulder. "Stand up and talk face to face."

      He stepped back, astonished that what he supposed to be a German peasant should speak English so instinctively. Not that it was English exactly, but a peculiar Anglo-Saxon dialect.

      The man stood up, and the visitors saw he was trembling. But the moment he looked into Winchester's face, his attitude changed with startling abruptness. He dropped his whining, abject servility. In its place he registered a curious blend of rage and fright. With a bound he sprang back into his machine, screaming at the same time.

      "Away! Masterless slaves, away! I have not seen you — I have not spoken to you — I do not know you!" His utterances trailed off into a wail. "Ah, why did they have to come here? Now they will punish us all!"

      He slammed the hatch cover down. The machine darted forward and in a moment was no more than a dwindling speck on the distant lawn.

      "That's the payoff," said Winchester softly.