The Pool of Fire (The Tripods) by John Christopher Read Free Book Online Page A

would not have thought that was easy.”
    “No,” Julius agreed, “not easy. But we have been studying them. They are creatures of routine, and generally follow particular paths. We have mapped and timetabled many of them. There is a place, some fifty miles to the north, where one passes every nine days. It strides across rough land at the sea’s edge. Between one passing and the next we have nine days to dig a hole and cover it lightly with brush and clods. We will bring our Tripod down, and after that all we have to do is winkle the Master out and get him into his box and onto the boat lying hard by. Since your report told us that their breathing is much slower than ours, there should be no danger of his suffocating before we can get a mask on him.”
    Fritz objected. “They can communicate with each other, and with the City, by invisible rays.”
    Julius smiled. “We can handle that part, too. Now,talk to us about the Tripods. There is paper in front of you, and pencils. Draw diagrams of them. The drawing will refresh your memories.”
    •  •  •
    We were a week at the castle, before moving north. During that time I learned a little, from Beanpole and the others, of the great strides that had been taken, during the previous year, in relearning the skills of the ancients. A breakthrough had been made by an expedition into the ruins of one of the great-cities, where a library had been found containing thousands on thousands of books which explained the marvels of the time before the Tripods came. These gave access to an entire world of knowledge. It was possible now, Beanpole told me, to make those bulbs which, by means of the power called electricity, would glow with light far brighter and more constant than the oil lamps and candles to which we were accustomed. It was possible to get heat from an arrangement of wires, to build a carriage which would travel along not pulled by horses but by means of a small engine inside it. I looked at Beanpole, when he said that.
    “Then the Shmand-Fair could be made to work again, as it used to work?”
    “Very easily. We know how to machine metals, to make the artificial stone which the ancients called concrete. We could put up towering buildings, create great-cities again. We can send messages by the invisible rays that the Masters use—even send pictures through the air! There is so much that we can do, or could learn to do in a short time. But we are concentrating only onthose things which are of direct and immediate help in defeating the enemy. For instance, at one of our laboratories we have developed a machine which uses great heat to cut through metal. It will be waiting for us in the north.”
    Laboratories, I wondered—what were they? My mind was confused by much of what he said. We had both learned a lot during the time we had been separated, but his knowledge was so much greater and more wonderful than mine. He looked a lot older. The clumsy contraption of lenses, which he had worn when we first set eyes on him at the other side of a smoky bar in a French fishing town, had been replaced by a neat symmetrical affair which sat on the bridge of his long thin nose and gave him an air of authority. They were called spectacles, he had told me, and others among the scientists wore them. Spectacles, scientists . . . so many words, for things outside my ken.
    I think he realized how much at a loss I felt. He asked me questions about my own experiences, and I told him what I could. He listened to it all intently, as though my ordinary travels were as interesting and important as the fantastic things he had been learning and doing. It was kind of him.
    •  •  •
    We set up camp in caves not far from the intended place of ambush. The boat we were to use, a forty-foot fishing smack, stayed close at hand, her nets out to provide an appearance of innocence. (In fact, she caught a fair haul of fish, mostly mackerel; some provided rations for us and the rest were