"Murray Leinster - The Best of Murray Leinster" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

III



And at half past ten a.m. on the morning of June 5th, Professor Minott turned upon the party of students with a revolver in each hand. Gone was the appearance of an instructor whose most destructive possibility was a below-passing mark in mathematics. He had guns in his hands now, instead of chalk or pencil, and his eyes were glowing even as he smiled frostily. The four girls gasped. The young men, accustomed to seeing him only in a classroom, realized that he not only could use the weapons in his hands, but that he would. And suddenly they respected him as they would respect, say, a burglar or a prominent kidnaper or a gang leader. He was raised far above the level of a mere mathematics professor. He became instantly a leader, and, by virtue of his weapons, even a ruler.
"As you see," said Professor Minott evenly, "I have, anticipated the situation, in which we find ourselves. I am prepared for it, to a, certain extent. At any moment not only we, but the entire human race may be wiped out with a completeness of which you can form no idea. But there is also a chance of survival And I intend to make the most of my survival, if we do live."
He looked steadily from one to another of the students who had followed him to explore the extraordinary appearance of a sequoia forest north of Fredericksburg.
"I know what has happened," said Professor Minott. "I know also what is likely to happen. And I know what I intend to do about it. Any of you who are prepared to follow me, say so. Any of you who object, well, I can't have mutinies! I'll shoot him!"
"But professor," said Blake nervously, "we ought to get the girls home" "They will never go home," said Professor Minott calmly. "Neither will you, nor any of us. As soon as you're convinced that I'm quite ready to use these weapons, I'll tell you what's happened and what it means. I've been preparing for it for weeks."
Tall trees rose around the party. Giant trees. Magnificent trees. They towered two hundred and fifty feet into the air, and their air of venerable calm was at once the most convincing evidence of their actuality, and the most improbable of all the things which had happened in the neighborhood of Fredericksburg, Virginia. The little group of people sat their horses affrightedly beneath the monsters of the forest. Minott regarded them estimatingly these three young men and four girls, all students of Robinson College. Professor Minott was now no longer the faculty member in charge of a party of exploration, but a definitely ruthless leader.
At half past eight a.m. on June 5, 1935, the inhabitants of Fredericksburg had felt a curious, unanimous dizziness. It passed. The sun shone brightly. There seemed to be no noticeable change in any of the facts of everyday existence. But within an hour the sleepy little town was buzzing with excitement. The road to Washington-Route One on all road maps ceased abruptly some three miles north. A colossal, a gigantic forest had appeared magically to block the way.
Telegraphic communication with Washington had ceased. Even the Washington broadcasting stations were no longer on the air. The trees of the extraordinary forest were tall beyond the experience of any human being in town. They looked like the photographs of the giant sequoias on the Pacific Coast, but, well, the thing was simply impossible.
In an hour and a half, Professor Minott had organized a party of sightseers among the students. He seemed to pick his party with a queer definiteness of decision. Three young men and four girls. They would have piled into a rickety car owned by one of the boys, but Professor Minott negatived the idea.
"The road ends at the forest," he said, smiling. "I'd rather like to explore a magic forest. Suppose we ride horseback? I'll arrange for horses."
In ten minutes the horses appeared. The girls had vanished to get into riding breeches or knickers. They noted appreciatively on their return that besides the saddles, the horses had saddlebags slung in place. Again Professor Minott smiled.
"We're exploring," he said humorously. "We must dress the part.. Also, we'll probably want some lunch. And we can bring back specimens for the botanical lab to look over."
They rode forth; the girls thrilled, the young men pleased and excited, and all of them just a little bit disappointed at finding themselves passed by motor cars which whizzed by them as all Fredericksburg went to look at the improbable forest ahead.
There were cars by hundreds where the road abruptly ended. A crowd stared at the forest. Giant trees, their roots fixed firmly in the ground. Undergrowth, here and there. Over it all, an aspect of peace and utter serenity and permanence. The watching crowd hummed and buzzed with speculation, with talk. The thing they saw was impossible. It could not have happened. This forest could not possibly be real. They were regarding some sort of mirage.
But as the party of riders arrived, half a dozen men came out of the forest. They had dared to enter it. Now they returned, still incredulous of their own experience, bearing leaves and branches and one of them certain small berries unknown on the Atlantic coast.
A State police officer held up his hand as Professor Minott's party went toward the edge of the forest.
"Look here!" he said. "We've been hearin' funny noises in there. I'm stoppin' anybody else from goin' in until we know what's what."
Professor Minott nodded. "We'll be careful. I'm Professor Minott of Robinson College. We're going in after some botanical specimens. I have a revolver. We're all right."
He rode ahead. The State policeman, without definite orders for authority, shrugged his shoulders and bent his efforts to the prevention of other attempts to explore. In minutes, the eight horses and their riders were out of sight. That was now three hours past. For three hours, Professor Minott had led his charges, a little south of northeast. In that time they saw no dangerous animals. They saw some many familiar plants. They saw rabbits in quantity, and once a slinking gray form which Tom Hunter, who was majoring in zoology, declared was a wolf. There are no wolves in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, but neither are there sequoias. And the party had seen no signs of human life, though Fredericksburg lies in farming country which is thickly settled.
In three hours the horses must have covered between twelve and fifteen miles, even through the timber. It was just after sighting a shaggy beast which was unquestionably a woodland buffalo-extinct east of the Rockies as early as 1820-that young Blake protested uneasily against further travel.
"There's something awfully queer, sir," he said awkwardly. "I don't mind experimenting as much as you like, sir, but we've got the girls with us. If we don't start back pretty soon, we'll get in trouble with the dean." And then Minott drew his two revolvers and very calmly announced that none of them would ever go back. That he knew what had happened and what could be expected. And he added that he would explain as soon as they were convinced he would use his revolvers in case of a mutiny.
"Call us convinced now, sir," said Blake.
He was a bit pale about the lips, but he hadn't flinched. In fact, he'd moved to be between Maida Haynes and the gun muzzle.
"We'd like' very much to know how all these trees and plants, which ought to be three Thousand miles away, happen to be growing in Virginia without any warning. Especially, sir, we'd like to know how it is that the topography underneath all this brand-new forest is the same. The hills trend the same way they used to, but everything that ever was on them has vanished, and something else is in its place."
Minott nodded approvingly. "Splendid, Blake!" he said warmly. "Sound observation! I picked you because you're well spoken of in geology, even though there were other reasons for leaving you behind. Let's go on over the next rise. Unless I'm mistaken, we should find the Potomac in view. Then I'll answer any questions you like. I'm afraid we've a good bit more of riding to do today."
Reluctantly, the eight horses breasted the slope. They scrambled among underbrush. It was queer that in three hours they had seen not a trace of a road leading anywhere. But up at the top of the hill there was a road. It was a narrow, wandering cart track. Without a word, every one of the eight riders turned their horses to follow it. It meandered onward for perhaps a quarter of a mile. It dipped suddenly. And the Potomac lay before and below them.
Then seven of the eight riders exclaimed. There was a settlement upon. the banks of the river. There were boats in harbor. There were other boats in view beyond, two beating down from the long reaches upstream, and three others coming painfully up from the direction of Chesapeake Bay. But neither the village nor the boats should have been upon the Potomac River.
The village was small and mud-walled. Tiny, blueclad figures moved about the fields outside. The buildings, the curving lines of the roofs, and more especially the unmistakable outline of a sort of temple near the center of the fortified hamlet, these were Chinese. The boats in sight were junks, save that their sails were cloth instead of slatted bamboo. The fields outside the squat mud walls were cultivated in a fashion' altogether alien. Near the river, where marsh flats would be normal along the Potomac, rice fields intensely worked spread out instead.
Then a figure appeared near by. Wide hat, wadded cotton-padded jacket, cotton trousers, and clogs, it was Chinese peasant incarnate, and all the more so when it turned a slant-eyed, terror-stricken face upon them and fled squawking. It left a monstrously heavy wooden yoke behind, from which dangled two buckets filled with berries it had gathered in the forest.
The riders stared. There was the Potomac. But a Chinese village nestled, beside it, Chinese junks plied its waters.
"I-I think," said Maida Haynes unsteadily, "I- think I've-gone insane. Haven't I?"
Professor Minott shrugged. He looked disappointed but queerly resolute.
"No," he said shortly. "You're not mad. It just happens that the Chinese happened to colonize America first. It's been known that Chinese junks touched the American shore, the Pacific coast, of course, long before Columbus. Evidently they colonized it. They may have, come all the way overland to the Atlantic, or maybe around by Panama. In any case, this is a Chinese continent now. This isn't what we want. We'll ride some more."
The fleeing, squawking figure had been seen from the village. A huge, discordant gong began to sound. Figures fled toward the walls from the fields rounds about. The popping of firecrackers began, with a chorus of most intimidating yells.
"Come on!" said Minott sharply. "We'd better move!"
He wheeled his horse about and started off at a canter. By instinct, since he was the only one who seemed to have any definite idea what to do, the others flung after him.
And as they rode, suddenly the horses staggered. The humans on them felt a queer, queasy vertigo. It lasted only for a second, but Minott paled a little.
"Now we'll see what's happened," he said Corn, posedly. "The odds are still fair, but I'd rather have had things stay as they were until we'd tried a few more places."



IV