Chapter VI

There was a vivid spring greenness about the grass and foliage that Matt couldn't recall having seen outside of England. To their left, the muddy Salt emptied into the muddy Ohio behind them. The turf underfoot was soft and springy.

Flanked by Nesbit and Isaac Trigg, Matt crossed to the disused drive. Dead leaves and twigs littered it all the way to the gate, where it disappeared through heavy steel doors into the fort. The doors themselves, large enough to admit a freight car, stood open, a drift of dead leaves piled against one massive panel.

"It's bristling with guns!" Isaac Trigg pointed at a row of slots that ran across the second story. The grim snouts of fifty-calibre machine guns poked wickedly through the embrasures.

Matt shifted his rifle into a handier position. He had seen the canvas covered barrel of a 5.35 dual-purpose anti-aircraft gun on the roof.

Above the third floor, rows of windows began, narrow slits closed with heavy bulletproof glass. Higher up, he made out banks of rocket guns.

"Seven months," he said half to himself.

"Eh?"

"I was thinking that only seven months have elapsed since these guns were serviced. We should have no trouble getting them into operation."

He paused before the gaping entrance, peering into the dark cavern ahead of them. "Get out your light," he told Nesbit.

The younger man snapped on his flash, the blade of light piercing the gloom. The drive, Matt saw, led into a vaulted hall. Along one side ran freight elevators. A loading platform lined the opposite wall. At the rear, a spiral ramp led up from the basement to the floors above. An abandoned truck was still in one of the elevators.

"If we can get the truck running," suggested Nesbit, "we can move the equipment faster."

Matt nodded. "Do you smell anything?"

"Yes," agreed Isaac.

"It's not bad here, though," said Nesbit. He was still stiff with Matt and addressed his comments pointedly to the director.

Matt said, "No. I imagine the living quarters are on the top floors. Some of the men in space suits will have to clear out the rooms. But that can wait. I'm curious about the source of power for the elevators and lights. Let's try the basement."

They advanced cautiously into the hall, disturbing a bat which circled eerily around and around the light. Nesbit flinched each time it swooped close.

"Nasty beast!"

Matt didn't reply, his eyes searching out the dusty walls for a stairway. "There." He pointed with his rifle.

The door stood open. Stairs descended into blackness.

The fort proved to have not one basement, but three. The first level held trucks, tanks, half-tracks, and cars in solid ranks. The second basement was stored with ammunition, the third held furnaces, a pumping system and a power plant, the generating force being a massive atomic boiler.

Matt whistled softly. "We'll have to get the engineers down here right away."

Isaac said, "Three basements, thirty floors. It'll take us a month to explore the building."

Matt turned to Nesbit. "Go back to the ship, Hi. Tell Captain Bascom to send the chief engineer and the first assistant to put these atomic engines back in operation. The second assistant engineer is to start one of the trucks, load it with explosives and blow up all the bridges across Salt River except the highway bridge.

"Tell Sawyer to take two more men and another truck and fortify the highway bridge. Dismount some of these machine guns if necessary, and set up a pill box at this end. String barbed wire across the bridge. Got it?"

"Yes," said Nesbit. He turned to leave. "What should I do then?"

"Get another truck and start hauling our equipment into the fort. Isaac and I are going to look over the upper floors."

Nesbit nodded and strode toward the stairs. "Come along, Isaac," said Matt. "We've seen enough here."

* * * * *

During the next hour, Matt got a fair idea of the plan of the lower floors of the fort.

They had entered through the freight entrance in the rear, the main doors fronting the highway, on the other side of which lay the small town of West Point.

The lower levels were largely devoted to storage and offices. The fort, he realized, had been equipped to withstand a siege. There were tons of food and equipment. Above, they found forges, foundries, machine shops, laboratories and even hydroponic gardens.

It was a world to itself; a world without any inhabitants.

They were on the seventeenth floor, examining the modern, well-equipped guardhouse, when lights began to blink on.

Matt said, "That was quick work." He found an inter communication televisor, hunted for the engine-room number and buzzed it experimentally.

After a moment, the screen glowed and the square rough features of the chief engineer flashed in its depths.

"Any trouble?" Matt asked.

"Nary a bit. The engine had been shut down. That was all."

"What about the elevators?"

"Power's been cut in on all lines."

"Good," said Matt. He snapped the televisor off, just as a dull boom sounded in the distance.

"There goes one of the bridges," Isaac said nervously.

Matt cut in the walkie-talkie strapped to his back. "Captain Bascom. Captain Bascom."

"Check," came Bascom's voice through earphones.

"How is the moving coming along?"

"Fine. We have three trucks shuttling between the ship and the freight hall. Everyone's turned to." Matt glanced at his watch; they'd been at the fort two hours.

"Arm the women with rifles," he told the captain. "Put Lynn in charge. Have them bring our captives to the seventeenth floor. There's a brig here where we can lock them in. Is Lynn handy?"

"She's right here."

"Let me speak to her."

"Right."

There was a silence; then Lynn's voice came clear and small. "That you, Matt?"

"Yes," he said. "Now listen carefully. I'm putting you in charge of the women. You're to bring those Amazons we captured to the seventeenth floor of the fort. If any of them show fight, shoot them!"

He heard her gasp. "But, Matt...."

"Shoot them!" he interrupted fiercely. "We can't afford to take chances--and there's plenty more where they came from!"

There was a pause, then Lynn said, "Yes," in a strained voice.

Matt clicked off the walkie-talkie. He realized Isaac was regarding him with a queer expression.

Matt said, "Damn it, Isaac, we _can't_ afford to take chances. There are nineteen of those Amazons locked in the messroom. They'd like nothing better than to get the upper hand. They're mean, Isaac. Mean as cats that have run wild!"

"You're right, of course," Isaac agreed. "But to order them shot down if they...."

A second dull boom interrupted him as another bridge across Salt River was blown by Barren, the third assistant engineer.

A buzzer on Matt's walkie-talkie began to whir softly. He clicked it on. The voice of Sawyer, the fat biologist whom he had sent to fortify the highway bridge, sounded in his ear.

"Sawyer reporting. Two cars coming from the direction of Louisville."

"Scouts?" Matt asked.

"I think so."

"Are you dug in yet?"

"We have one machine gun set up and barbed wire strung across the bridge. We can hold them."

"Let them get on the bridge," said Matt. "Then shoot up the cars. See if you can't put them out of commission."

"Very well. They're coming onto the bridge now--slow." There was a silence. Then Matt heard Sawyer say, "Hold your fire." Again there was a silence that stretched on and on. Matt could feel his nerves tighten like violin strings. After an interminable period, Sawyer said, "Now!" Obviously, he was turned away from the mouthpiece because his voice was faint.

Matt's fists clenched as the distant rattle of a machine gun reached his ears. There was a second burst, and a third.

"We knocked out one car," Sawyer's voice sounded suddenly in Matt's ear. "The other got away."

"Too bad," said Matt. "But that still gives us about six hours before they can bring up the main body."

There was a loud boom from the direction of the river. "What was that?" Matt snapped.

"Barren. He just blew the railroad bridge. That's the last one except the one we're guarding."

"O.K.," said Matt. "Hang on."

"Don't leave me stuck out here in case they cross at Shepherdsville and come up behind us. I don't want to be cut off."

"Don't worry," said Matt. "I'm sending a scout car up the highway toward Elizabethtown. They'll warn us in plenty of time if they come that way."

He snapped the radio off and turned to Isaac. "Well, we may as well wait here until Lynn fetches our captives," and lit a cigarette.

* * * * *

By dark they had all the vital stores and their personal goods transferred from the _Argus_ to the fort. The nineteen women from Margot Drake's band were locked in the jail. The second assistant engineer had dismantled key parts of the rocket ship so that it couldn't be moved. And what was left of the bodies of the former personnel of the fort were being removed from the top floors by a special detail of space-suited men and dumped into the river.

Matt himself had seen to it that their defenses were in order. Floodlights illuminated the grounds. The machine guns were oiled and ammunition belts stacked handily.

At seven o'clock, he called in Jesse Sawyer. "Take up the machine gun," he ordered, "and let the bridge go. It isn't practical to hold it any longer. I'm calling in the scout car from Elizabethtown."

"Good," came Sawyer's relieved voice. Matt detected a note of excitement in it. "Good. I've something important that I want you to see, Matt. Is the microscope set up?"

"Not ours," said Matt, "but the fort has some of the finest-equipped laboratories I've ever seen. You can use the one here. What have you found?"

"I'll be there in a jiffy. Show you then. But it's big, Matt. It's big. I'll want you and Isaac in the laboratory. Yes, and Frazer, too." The radio clicked off.

A frown furrowed Matt's brow. What the hell had Sawyer stumbled across? He had never heard the biologist so urgent before. And Sawyer wasn't an excitable person.

He wondered why he wanted Frazer, Isaac and himself all in the laboratory?

Suddenly it struck him. Frazer was the biochemist. Isaac, besides being the director, was the expedition's zoologist, and he himself was the botanist!

It was not long before the three men were in the organic laboratory. Jesse Sawyer entered, wheezing and dabbing at his moon face with a handkerchief. Matt noticed that he was carrying a specimen jar in his other hand.

"What have you found, Jesse?" Matt began, but the fat man waved him to silence.

"Not so fast. I want a look at this under the microscope first. Then I want all of you to see it, before I say anything. Where is the microscope? Oh, here."

With trembling hands he began to prepare a slide. Matt watched him fascinated, noting the deftness of the biologist's pudgy fingers. At length, perspiring freely, Sawyer put his eye to the microscope, making several adjustments. He drew in his breath sharply.

The jar that he had been carrying, Matt saw, was filled with some liquid that radiated a pale yellow light. Was it phosphorescing? He ran his hand through his coal black hair, his blue eyes narrowed.

"I thought so!" Sawyer muttered. "I thought so. Come here, Frazer. Take a look."

The biochemist rose, looked through the microscope. "Well, I'll be damned!" he ejaculated. "Where did you get that specimen?"

"Never mind. Isaac, you and Matt come see what you think."

When it came Matt's turn to put his eye to the aperture, he could distinguish nothing at first. Then he made out dozens of minute amoeba-like organisms squirming in the specimen on the slide.

Their resemblance to amoebae, he saw, was only superficial. Each one of the minute organisms was glowing like a very small incandescent light. He glanced up in bewilderment.

"Well," said Sawyer, "What do you make of them? Are they plant or animal?"

"Where did they come from?" Matt asked.

"The river. That's a specimen of river water." The fat man pointed at the bottle. "I tell you, Salt River and the Ohio are alive with these organisms. Have you ever seen anything like them before?"

The three men shook their heads.

"What do you think, Jesse?" Matt asked the biologist.

"What do I think? I think they're the first evolutionary step of the life spores that invaded Earth!"

"The life spores?"

The fat man nodded emphatically, crinkling an extra chin. "An alien life form starting up the evolutionary ladder. I'm positive that they're neither plant nor animal...."

"Then what are they?" Matt interrupted.

Jesse Sawyer shrugged fat shoulders. "I don't know. I want Frazer to analyze them if he can."

"An alien life form!" said Matt speculatively. "Two dominant life forms on the same planet...." He broke off as the eerie wail of sirens rent the building.

"The Amazons! They're here!" he cried.

From the northeast corner of the building there came the staccato roar of a machine gun.

"The roof!" Matt cried and dashed for the elevator.

The four men ran out on the landscaped roof. They made hurriedly for a tight knot of men and women at the opposite rail.

Megaphones roared suddenly as Captain Bascom called through them: "Don't approach any closer! We've machine guns trained over the grounds!"

His voice was the voice of a giant through the electric megaphones.

Matt reached the rail and peered down. "Where are they?" he asked.

"There!" Lynn cried, pointing. Thirty stories below, Matt could see the grounds lit by the flood lights as bright as day. At the edge of illumination, he could make out tiny shadowy figures.

Suddenly, someone grasped his shoulder.

"Never mind the women," he heard Sawyer's voice grate in his ear. "Look at the river!"

Matt raised his eyes. Salt River and the mile-wide Ohio were broad glowing ribbons of light.

"The alien amoebas!" he gasped.