The Return | Page 5

smoke? That's the gunner's slow-match. I'd thought maybe that thing on the island was a powder mill. That would be where they'd put it. Probably extract their niter from the dung of their horses and cows. Sulfur probably from coal-mine drainage. Jim, this is really something!"
"I hope they don't cut loose on us with that thing," Loudons said, looking apprehensively at the brass-rimmed black muzzle that was covering them from the belfry. "I wonder if we ought to--Oh-oh, here they come!"
* * * * *
Three or four young men stepped out of the wide door of the old church. They wore fringed buckskin trousers and buckskin shirts and odd caps of deerskin with visors to shade their eyes and similar beaks behind to protect the neck. They had powder horns and bullet pouches slung over their shoulders, and long rifles in their hands. They stepped aside as soon as they were out; carefully avoiding any gesture of menace, they stood watching the helicopter which had landed among them.
Three other men followed them out; they, too, wore buckskins, and the odd double-visored caps. One had a close-cropped white beard, and on the shoulders of his buckskin shirt he wore the single silver bars of a first lieutenant of the vanished United States Army. He had a pistol on his belt; it had the saw-handle grip of an automatic, but it was a flintlock, as were the rifles of the young men who stood watchfully on either side of the two middle-aged men who accompanied him. The whole party advanced toward the helicopter.
"All right; come on, Monty." Loudons opened the door and let down the steps. Picking up an auto-carbine, he slung it and stepped out of the helicopter, Altamont behind him. They advanced to meet the party from the old church, halting when they were about twenty feet apart.
"I must apologize, lieutenant, for dropping in on you so unceremoniously." He stopped, wondering if the man with the white beard understood a word of what he was saying.
"The natural way to come in, when you travel in the air," the old man replied. "At least, you came in openly. I can promise you a better reception than you got at that city to the west of us a couple of days ago."
"Now how did you know we'd had trouble at Cincinnati day-before-yesterday?" Loudons demanded.
The old man's eyes sparkled with childlike pleasure. "That surprises you, my dear sir? In a moment, I daresay you'll be amazed at the simplicity of it. You have a nasty rip in the left leg of your trousers, and the cloth around it is stained with blood. Through the rip, I perceive a bandage. Obviously, you have suffered a recent wound. I further observe that the side of your flying machine bears recent scratches, as though from the spears or throwing-hatchets of the Scowrers. Evidently they attacked you as you were leaving it; it is fortunate that these cannibal devils are too stupid and too anxious for human flesh to exercise patience."
"Well, that explains how you knew we'd been recently attacked," Loudons told him. "But how did you guess that it had been to the west of here, in a ruined city?"
"I never guess," the oldster with the silver bar and the keystone-shaped red patch on his left shoulder replied. "It is a shocking habit--destructive to the logical faculty. What seems strange to you is only so because you do not follow my train of thought. For example, the wheels and their framework under your flying machine are splashed with mud which seems to be predominantly brick-dust, mixed with plaster. Obviously, you landed recently in a dead city, either during or after a rain. There was a rain here yesterday evening, the wind being from the west. Obviously, you followed behind the rain as it came up the river. And now that I look at your boots, I see traces of the same sort of mud, around the soles and in front of the heels. But this is heartless of us, keeping you standing here on a wounded leg, sir. Come in, and let our medic look at it."
"Well, thank you, lieutenant," Loudons replied. "But don't bother your medic; I've attended to the wound myself, and it wasn't serious to begin with."
"You are a doctor?" the white-bearded man asked.
"Of sorts. A sort of general scientist. My name is Loudons. My friend, Mr. Altamont, here, is a scientist, also."
There was an immediate reaction; all three of the elders of the village, and the young riflemen who had accompanied them, exchanged glances of surprise. Loudons dropped his hand to the grip of his slung auto-carbine, and Altamont sidled unobtrusively away from him, his hand moving as by accident toward the butt of his pistol. The same thought was in both