Page 65 - 1952 VES Meteor

"IF"
Oron heard all of it on his B-R set Lustion dialogue over intercoms giv- ing bomber flight instructions.
Oron was ready an hour before reports blasted officially over the radios and public com units. The people in the city were panic-strick- en. They wanted to take all their treasures with them . . . groveling,
fighting and trampling each other, they grasped everything valuable they could corry and waddled to their
shel ters.
Oron was ready though. He had
the ideal shelter. It was 90 feet under- ground. It had an air purifier. It was inclosed by three feet of steel and two feet of lead and was IS feet wide and 30 long. Oron had spent a good deal of work on it.
He waited, the battery lights dim in the compartment.
Then it came. He felt the shelter heave and shudder under the strain. The R-gauge was doing calesthentics and a steady roar prevailed.
There was hideous destruction oc- curring above but neither opponent would win; because there was too much power involved.
He wanted no part of it. He only wanted his life.
The wrenching had gone on for an hour now. Oron's knuckles were white, clinging to the arms of the chair. The body-rending tremors continued for another hour or two; then all was quiet. Oron was unconscious.
The slow painful feeling of regain- ing consciousness crept over Oron. The shelter was a twisted rectangle
now but it was livable still.
Oron noticed the air was pressing,
almost crushing him. He staggered to the A-P gauge. The pressure was twice normal. He turned the release valve until the gauge registered norm- al. The continual vibration was not so violent and frequent as 12 hours ago. He began to wonder how things were overhead.
Oron tried to sleep. He woke up o day later.
At 1500 on the third day oil trem- ors ceased ... Now came the hard part; the waiting for the radio-activi- ty to clear. Only silence now . . . broken by the obsolete clock he had brought along ...
It would not be a short wait . . . What if he were the only one left on Earth? Would he have an advantage
"JV"-CLUB
First row, right to left: Ould, McQuail, Pendleton, Gailey: Second row: Brax- ton, Peterson, Opie, Stieglitz, B., Mr. Lee. Third Row. Houck, Jeager, Turner, Jones, L., Norfleet. Fourth row: Carrington, Winfree, Hotelling, W., Fore, Baber, McCormick, Barrett, J. Fifth row: Lee, Russell, George, Johnstone, Nash, Boyer, Wilson, Fuller, Barrett, M., Harper.
THE METEOR
9
THE SCHOOL
over the Dead? He erased these biting questions from his mind.
Oron began to live indifferently. H e drank very violently; so violently that several times he lay on the com- partment floor in o stupor for hours.
The time passed quickly.
Then one day the R-gauge started dropping. In seven hours it dropped o hundred meters. The radio-activity was rapidly decreasing.
Tense pains continually descended on Oron . . . pains of unbearable heights evidently caused by the minor internal injuries caused by the trem- ors, or the strange consistency of the purified air.
The time was now ... the waiting was over. The gauges on the exterior showed normal for human life.
Oron's heart was pounding with ex- citement. He slowly turned the hatch
lock to his shelter ... he noticed the A-P gauge dropping rapidly and an ear-splitting hiss issuing from the hatch.
Abruptly, the hatch flew open and he was catapulted to the surface. The sudden ascent rendered him uncon- scious. The reason for the difference in air pressure was probably the normal atmosphere had been burned away.
Oron, after a few more minutes of adoption to the pressure, stirred slightly and opened his eyes.
The desolate, empty scene para- lysed him. The sky was a deep blue- black color yet the sun shone through as a bright red ball. The most stir- ring scene was the once flowering earth; it was death-like.
(Continued on poge t 2, col. 3)