They had waited in the passage to the air lock. Now Matt pulled himself
together, ran to the port and threw it open.
Fort Knox had been moved since World War II. The atom bomb had made a
large army, navy or air force obsolete. The barracks of the old fort
had been enlarged and modernized and, at the time of the plague, housed
workers who commuted back and forth to Louisville. The gold vault had
been turned into a museum and library, the parade ground into a park.
New Fort Knox was a single massive building of gray monolithic
concrete. Large as a city block and thirty stories high, the frowning
structure was located on a promontory overlooking the Ohio and Salt
rivers. It had housed a detachment of the world police, and the
laboratories and living quarters of the technicians who had come to
replace the standing army in the new era of push-button warfare.
Matt, staring at the cubical gray fort, realized that it had been built
to protect the lethal experiments that had been carried out in its
labs. There were no windows on the first or second floors. Nothing less
than an atom bomb could destroy it.
He cast a cautious glance at the silent deserted town of West Point
beyond the highway and the brown slack waters of Salt River, muddied by
spring rains. The _Argus_ had landed directly behind the fort and the
Ohio was at their backs.
Isaac Trigg came into the passage with Captain Bascom. Rapidly the
others began to assemble.
"Well?" asked Isaac.
"Look for yourself. We could have scoured the world and not found a
better place."
They crowded to the port, staring out at the silent pile of concrete.
"Splendid! Splendid!" Isaac rubbed his dry hands together. Broad grins,
laughter and exultant comments broke out among the others.
Isaac gazed fondly at Matt. "You're the boss, Matt. What's to be done?"
"Strip the _Argus_ of everything that can be moved and carry it into
the fort. There should be guns in there and ammunition. It housed a
detachment of the world police force, you remember. They used the
obsolete weapons--never resorted to A-bombs unless necessary.
"We've crossed Salt River, but not the Ohio. That means we'd better
destroy the monorail and the tube crossing and the railway bridge.
We can leave the highway bridge up, but we'll have to fortify it
temporarily."
"Then," broke in Captain Bascom, "you think the Amazons will follow?"
Matt nodded. "They could see us come down not too far off." He paused,
pushing his hand through his short black hair. "But we were north of
Salt River. Now we're south of it. They can't know that. Neither can
they know whether we've crossed the Ohio or not. I imagine they'll send
scout cars."
"That bridge"--he pointed to the arches spanning the Salt river--"is
the only one this side of Shepherdsville.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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