The Return - H. Beam Piper, ebook, Temp
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//-->Project Gutenberg's The Return, by H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuireThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.orgTitle: The ReturnAuthor: H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuireIllustrator: Kelly FreasRelease Date: July 17, 2006 [EBook #18855]Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ISO-8859-1*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RETURN ***Produced by Greg Weeks, Sankar Viswanathan, and the OnlineTranscriber's Note:This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction,January, 1954. Extensive research did not uncover anyevidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.THE RETURNBY H. BEAM PIPERANDJOHN J. McGUIREThe isolatedlittle group they found were doing fine—but their religion was most strange—and yet quitelogical!Illustrated by Kelly FreasAltamont cast a quick, routine, glance at the instrument panels and then looked down through thetransparent nose of the helicopter at the yellow-brown river five hundred feet below. Next he scraped thelast morsel from his plate and ate it."What did you make this out of, Jim?" he asked. "I hope you kept notes, while you were concocting it.It's good.""The two smoked pork chops left over from yesterday evening," Loudons said, "and that bowl of ricethat's been taking up space in the refrigerator the last couple of days together with a little egg powder,and some milk. I ground the chops up and mixed them with the rice and the other stuff. Then added somebacon, to make grease to fry it in."Altamont chuckled. That was Loudons, all right; he could take a few left-overs, mess them together, popthem in the skillet, and have a meal that would turn the chef back at the Fort green with envy. He filled hiscup and offered the pot."Caffchoc?" he asked.Loudons held his cup out to be filled, blew on it, sipped, and then hunted on the ledge under the desk forthe butt of the cigar he had half-smoked the evening before."Did you ever drink coffee, Monty?" the socio-psychologist asked, getting the cigar drawing to his taste."Coffee? No. I've read about it, of course. We'll have to organize an expedition to Brazil, some time, toget seeds, and try raising some."Loudons blew a smoke ring toward the rear of the cabin."A much overrated beverage," he replied. "We found some, once, when I was on that expedition intoIdaho, in what must have been the stockroom of a hotel. Vacuum-packed in moisture-proof containers,and free from radioactivity. It wasn't nearly as good as caffchoc. But then, I suppose, a pre-bustupcoffee drinker couldn't stomach this stuff we're drinking." He looked forward, up the river they werefollowing. "Get anything on the radio?" he asked. "I noticed you took us up to about ten thousand, while Iwas shaving."Altamont got out his pipe and tobacco pouch, filling the former slowly and carefully."Not a whisper. I tried Colony Three, in the Ozarks, and I tried to call in that tribe of workers inLouisiana; I couldn't get either.""Maybe if we tried to get a little more power on the set—"That was Loudons, too, Altamont thought. There wasn't a better man at the Fort, when it came to dealingwith people, but confront him with a problem about things, and he was lost. That was one of the reasonswhy he and the stocky, phlegmatic social scientist made such a good team, he thought. As far as he,himself, was concerned, people were just a mysterious, exasperatingly unpredictable, order of thingswhich were subject to no known natural laws. That was about the way Loudons thought of things; hecouldn't psychoanalyze them.He gestured with his pipe toward the nuclear-electric conversion unit, between the control-cabin and theliving quarters in the rear of the box-car-sized helicopter."We have enough power back there to keep this windmill in the air twenty-four hours a day, threehundred and sixty-five days a year, for the next fifteen years," he said. "We just don't have enough radio.If I'd step up the power on this set any more, it'd burn out before I could say, 'Altamont calling FortRidgeway.'""How far are we from Pittsburgh, now?" Loudons wanted to know.Altamont looked across the cabin at the big map of the United States, with its red and green and blueand yellow patchwork of vanished political divisions, and the transparent overlay on which they hadplotted their course. The red line started at Fort Ridgeway, in what had once been Arizona It angled eastby a little north, to Colony Three, in northern Arkansas; then sharply northeast to St. Louis and its lifelessruins; then Chicago and Gary, where little bands of Stone Age reversions stalked and fought and ate eachother; Detroit, where things that had completely forgotten that they were human emerged from theirburrows only at night; Cleveland, where a couple of cobalt bombs must have landed in the lake anddrenched everything with radioactivity that still lingered after two centuries; Akron, where vegetation wasonly beginning to break through the glassy slag; Cincinnati, where they had last stopped—"How's the leg, this morning, Jim?" he asked."Little stiff. Doesn't hurt much, though.""Why, we're about fifty miles, as we follow the river, and that's relatively straight." He looked downthrough the transparent nose of the 'copter at a town, now choked with trees that grew among tumbledwalls. "I think that's Aliquippa."Loudons looked and shrugged, then looked again and pointed."There's a bear. Just ducked into that church or movie theater or whatever. I wonder what he thinks weare."Altamont puffed slowly at his pipe, "I wonder if we're going to find anything at all in Pittsburgh.""You mean people, as distinct from those biped beasts we've found so far? I doubt it," Loudons replied,finishing his caffchoc and wiping his mustache on the back of his hand. "I think the whole eastern half ofthe country is nothing but forest like this, and the highest type of life is just about three cuts belowHomoNeanderthalensis,almost impossible to contact, and even more impossible to educate.""I wasn't thinking about that; I've just about given up hope of finding anybody or even a reasonably highlevel of barbarism," Altamont said. "I was thinking about that cache of microfilmed books that was buriedat the Carnegie Library.""If it was buried," Loudons qualified. "All we have is that article in that two-century-old copy ofTimeabout how the people at the library had constructed the crypt and were beginning the microfilming. Wedon't know if they ever had a chance to get it finished, before the rockets started landing."They passed over a dam of flotsam that had banked up at a wrecked bridge and accumulated enoughmass to resist the periodic floods that had kept the river usually clear. Three human figures fled across asand-flat at one end of it and disappeared into the woods; two of them carried spears tipped withsomething that sparkled in the sunlight, probably shards of glass."You know, Monty, I get nightmares, sometimes, about what things must be like in Europe," Loudonssaid.Five or six wild cows went crashing through the brush below. Altamont nodded when he saw them."Maybe tomorrow, we'll let down and shoot a cow," he said. "I was looking in the freezer-locker; thefresh meat's getting a little low. Or a wild pig, if we find a good stand of oak trees. I could enjoy whatyou'd do with some acorn-fed pork. Finished?" he asked Loudons. "Take over, then; I'll go back andwash the dishes."
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