The Great Hydration

Roncie was left with Karvass, who though badly shaken by everything he had just heard, offered to show him round the underground camp.

“A great enterprise is underway,” he revealed. “The tyranny of the Tlixix is over. We and other tribes are ready to rise in revolt. Furthermore we have new weapons and devices which not even the Tlixix have.”

In a side cavern he showed Northrop where one of these devices, referred to as ‘radiators’ was in production. To the Earthman’s bemusement it turned out to be a primitive form of radio. Like all early inventions, it was unnecessarily large and cumbersome.

But it followed the general pattern of technology on the desert planet. All powered machinery on Tenacity depended on the presence of the radioactive element radium, plus a means to convert its radioactivity to electric current, which was also due to a serendipitous natural resource. Tenacity was rich in exotic crystals, some of which generated enough electricity to turn an electric motor if placed adjacent to pure radium. Tenacity mechanics had also devised accumulators, again exploiting naturally occurring exotic minerals, able to absorb a hefty amperage at fairly high tension. Hence a radium power source continued to charge up an accumulator whether the machine was in use or not. A Tenacity vehicle could therefore travel at top speed for many days, drawing additional power from a previously charged accumulator.

The layout of the ‘radiator’ was somewhat similar, except that no accumulator was necessary. Semiconductor crystals sent an oscillating current to the antenna, causing it to transmit a carrier wave which was modulated by means of a simple microphone. In addition there was a speaker for receiving. And that was all. There was no tuning. The frequency was fixed.

Northrop silently saluted the unknown Analane genius—or geniuses—who had discovered radio waves and developed the rig, something which the Tlixix had failed to do throughout their history.

Perhaps, he told himself, Krabbe & Bouche were doing business with the wrong side.

Indeed, no sooner had he finished inspecting the radiator than word came to Karvass. The council had taken his warning seriously. In an effort to avert the catastrophe they were bringing forward the revolt.

Task forces were to set out immediately to launch attacks on the Tlixix hydroriums.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The inhabited part of Tenacity consisted of the bed of the dead ocean together with the former shoreline. The old Tlixix civilisation had centred on that shoreline. When the Tlixix created their helper races they confined them to the great empty space around which were ranged the new domes of survival. They had no wish to see those races spread to the highlands, which even before the great dehydration had consisted mostly of desert. They knew they would be unable to exercise control over so vaster an area, and that endangered their security.

Now, from the secret giant camp of the Artaxa, from the camps of the Toureen, from the camps of the Sawune and of those others who had thrown in their lot with the rebellion, which included the Limes and one of the two Jodobrock tribes, motorised war-hordes set out. Gaminte patrols they encountered were wiped out, any individuals who fled or escaped hunted down in the fastest available vehicles. It was essential the Tlixix should not know what was about to hit them.

Had O’Rourke in fact kept a watch to search for Northrop they might have received a warning—supposing anyone had remarked on the number of desert caravans heading for the Tlixix refuges. He had delegated a crew member to make a scan through the interferometric telescope initially, though without moving the Enterprise to get a better view. Almost as quickly, he had taken her off the duty to supervise the delivery of shock tubes to the eight sites in preparation.

The Artaxa meanwhile diverted from the main column a detachment to the only one of those sites known to them, and from which Northrop had been taken. They were disappointed to find it abandoned, the tents gone, only the litter of past human occupation remaining. They were not to know that a shock tube had already been put in place and the shaft over it filled in, or that the stiff wire jutting out of the yellow sand was the antenna for the detonation signal.

A hastily set up network of radiators enabled the Artaxa to launch their attacks simultaneously. Carrying flingers specially adapted for throwing spherical shells of eruptionite, the humming columns approached their targets.

When Karl Krabbe felt the first explosion rock the dome of the hydrorium he wondered if Castaneda had jumped the schedule, or worse, something had gone amiss. He got through to O’Rourke on the gogetter ship.

“O’Rourke, what the hell’s going on?”

The answering tone was puzzled. “Going on, sir?”

Krabbe formed a suspicion, making him momentarily furious.

“Say, you didn’t use any of that prehistoric junk, did you?”