[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The resemblance did not end there, because they also wore, over head andshoulders, a mask similar to the one that had protected me against thepoisonous air of the Masters.With one difference: where the pouch with filterhad been there was a tube, and the tube ran to a boxlike thing strapped to theback.A signal was given.The two figures moved across the rocks and waded into thewater.It rose to cover their knees, their thighs, their chests.Then, together, they plunged forward and disappeared below the surface.For asecond or two one could see them dimly, shadowy figures striking out, awayfrom the castle.After that, they were lost, and we watched and waited forthem to reappear.It was a long wait.Seconds became minutes.Although I had been told what toexpect, I grew apprehensive.I was sure that something had gone wrong, thatthey had drowned in that limitless azure serenity.They had been swimmingagainst the tide, which was coming in from the ocean.There were strangeundercurrents in these parts, and submerged reefs.Time passed, slowly butrelentlessly.The object of all this was to help us get into the Cities.We could not usethe method we had used previously; something more direct and more certain hadto be found.The obvious solution was to reverse the process by whichFritz and I had escaped, and get in from the river, through the dischargevents.All three Cities stood on watercourses, so the method would applyuniversally.The difficulty was that, even going with the flow of water, thepassage had taxed our physical resources to their limit and, in my case,beyond.To swim up against the tide would be quite impossible without aid.I burst out at last, "It hasn't worked! They can't be still alive down there."Page 31 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlBeanpole said, "Wait.""It must have been over ten minutes.""Nearer fifteen."Henry said suddenly, "Over there.Look!"I looked where he was pointing.Far out on the glassy blue, a dot hadappeared, followed by another.Two heads.Henry said, "It worked, but I don'tunderstand how."Beanpole did his best to explain to us.It was something to do with the air,which I had always thought of as a sort of invisible nothing, being made up oftwo different nothings, two gases, and the part that was smaller being thepart we needed to keep alive.The scientists had learned how to separate thetwo, and keep the useful part in those containers on the swimmers' backs.Things called valves regulated a supply of it to the masks the men wore.Onecould stay submerged for a long time.Flippers attached to the feet wouldenable one to swim strongly against a tide.We had found our means of enteringthe Cities.The next morning, Henry left.He took the lean taciturn stranger with him.Healso took a supply of the masks, and the tubes and boxes that went with them.From a dugout by the river bank, I looked at the City of Gold and Lead again,and could not entirely repress the tremor that ran through my body.Theramparts of gold, topped with the emerald bubble of its protective dome,stretched across the river and the land on either side, immense and massiveand seemingly impregnable.It was ludicrous to imagine that it could beoverthrown by the half dozen of us who had collected here.None of the Capped would venture so close to the City, having such an awe ofit, so we were safe from any interference by them.We saw Tripods in plenty,of course, giant-striding across the sky on journeys to or from theCity, but we were not near any of the routes they used.We had been here threedays, and this was the last.As daylight faded from a blustery gray sky, ittook with it the last few hours before the moment of decision.It had not been easy to synchronize the attacks on the three Cities.Theactual entries had to be made at different times, because the cover ofdarkness varied throughout the world.The one in which Henry was concernedwould follow six hours after ours.That in the east was taking place justabout now, in the middle of the night.That City, we all knew, represented theriskiest part of the enterprise.Our base out there was the smallest andweakest of the three, existing in a land where the Capped were entirely alienand spoke an incomprehensible language.Our recruits had been few.Those whowere to make the attack had come to the castle the previous autumn; they wereslim, yellow-skinned boys who spoke little and smiled less
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
