Triumph by Philip Wylie Page B

moment. He blinked, moved, filled a kettle, turned a switch, and minutes later carried a thermos of coffee, a cup, a saucer, and a handful of lumps of sugar into the vast main chamber. There he smelled smoke and thought something was on fire, a thought that brought him close to panic. Then he realized it was tobacco smoke.

    He rushed to the bridge table. One neat set of tipped-off cigar ashes. Numerous crushed-out cigarettes. He raced back to his room for his own package and returned with a cigarette already going, to sit and merely smoke, with immense satisfaction.

    By-and-by he made such rounds as he was capable of at that time. All doors to private rooms were shut. Nobody was about. In the remote chambers where diesels throbbed, and in those where generators spun, the machinery seemed, to Kit's inexpert eye, purring smoothly, under rows of brilliant electric lights.

    He went into the communications room and read the message George had typed out. It chilled him but he shrugged away the icy feeling. What the devil could he do about three guys stuck in some weather satellite, a thousand miles high, over--he looked at the nearby globe--over the southern edge of Colombia, in South America? His eyes moved around the walls and touched on the electronic devices, lining them. They meant nothing to Kit. He glanced into the seismological chamber, but merely glanced. The earth wasn't shaking or rocking now, and no deadly hunks of stone were falling from their ceilings, or likely to fall, so long as no more bombs made near hits.

    He returned to the Hall and poured another cup of coffee. Soon he began to feel sheepish about accepting the suggestion that he take this early morning "watch." Kit grinned faintly as he realized that he'd been given that duty so he'd turn in, like a good little boy. Old man Farr, he mused, is sure a smart operator! Wanted people to go to bed, to sleep, and so steady up! And tricked 'em into it, in his case. He should have been brighter at the time, he thought. Bright enough to know there was nothing he could
    "watch," simply because everything ran automatically and if there was a breakdown of any sort, he could only wake somebody--George Hyama, specifically--providing he had sense enough to notice the breakdown. Doubtless there were breakdown warning bells, or some such gadgets.

    In fact, he now reasoned correctly, failure of any apparatus on which their survival depended would certainly set off alarms in George's room. Farr's, too.

    He sat there, smoking and feeling a fool.

    Once in a while pain coursed through him as the thought of his parents, and other people he cared for, came burning into his mind. Like everybody in his group during the first day--a half day and an evening, actually--he shoved away as best he could such miserable reflections. He took to mere sitting and smoking, almost vacant of mind.
    Everybody had been--was--probably would be, for days--stunned as hell. Shock. And why not?

    He had about decided to get a book or a magazine from the unopened room he'd been told was a library, to pass time till somebody else finally appeared, when he noticed, or thought he noticed, a change in the even, very faint humming that was the background sound of the Hall--and of the whole place, so far as he'd seen it. He listened, and decided his ears had tricked him.

    Then it came again.

    Three far-off, nearly-inaudible taps, a pause, three more, and so on, till a series ended. A considerable interval followed. Then the sounds were repeated. This time Kit went into one of the exits and listened. He heard nothing there. Though if the noise had been made by machinery, he'd have heard it better.

    Something, or maybe somebody, apparently outside, was making that distant, repetitive noise. It could not be true, but there it was.

    Kit Barlow then went into several more of the passageways that opened off the main chamber. In each he listened. In none could he hear the faint, tap-tap-tap, pause, tap-tap-tap