Farnham's Freehold Read Online Free PDF Page A

wall, the cat in his lap. Karen looked round-eyed as her father approached but she said nothing.
    “You kids can get up.”
    “Thanks,” said Karen. “Pretty warm for snuggling.” Barbara backed out and Karen sat up.
    “So it is. Did you hear what just happened?”
    “Some sort of argument,” Karen said cautiously.
    “Yes. And it’s the last one. I’m boss and Joseph is my deputy. Understood?”
    “Yes, Daddy.”
    “Mrs. Wells?”
    “Me? Why, of course! It’s your shelter. I’m grateful to be in it—I’m grateful to be alive! And please call me Barbara, Mr. Farnham.”
    “Sorry. Hmmm—Call me ‘Hugh,’ I prefer it to ‘Hubert.’ Duke, everybody—first names from now on. Don’t call me ‘Dad,’ call me ‘Hugh.’ Joe, knock off the ‘mister’ and the ‘miss.’ Catch?”
    “Okay, Boss, if you say so.”
    “Make that ‘Okay, Hugh.’ Now you girls peel down, panties and bra or such, then get Grace peeled to her skin and turn the light out there. It’s hot, it’s going to get hotter. Joe, strip to your shorts.” Mr. Farnham took his jacket off, started unbuttoning his shirt.
    Joseph said, “Uh, I’m comfortable.”
    “I wasn’t asking, I was telling you.”
    “Uh… Boss, I’m not wearing shorts! ”
    “He’s not,” Karen confirmed. “I rushed him.”
    “So?” Hugh looked at his ex-houseboy and chuckled. “Joe, you’re a sissy. I should have made Karen straw boss.”
    “Suits me.”
    “Get a pair out of stores and you can change in the toilet space. While you’re about it, show Duke where it is. Karen, the same for Barbara. Then we’ll gather for a powwow.”
    The powwow started five minutes later. Hugh Farnham was at the table, dealing out bridge hands, assessing them. When they were seated he said, “Anybody for bridge?”
    “Daddy, you’re joking.”
    “My name is ‘Hugh.’ I was not joking, a rubber of bridge might quiet your nerves. Put away that cigarette, Duke.”
    “Uh…sorry.”
    “You can smoke tomorrow, I think. Tonight I’ve got pure oxygen cracked pretty wide and we are taking in no air. You saw the bottles in the toilet space?” The space between the bays was filled by pressure bottles, a water tank, a camp toilet, stores, and a small area where a person might manage a stand-up bath. Air intakes and exhausts, capped off, were there, plus a hand-or-power blower, and scavengers for carbon dioxide and water vapor. This space was reached by an archway between the tiers of bunks.
    “Oxygen in those? I thought it was air.”
    “Couldn’t afford the space penalty. So we can’t risk fire, even a cigarette. I opened one inlet for a check. Very hot—heat ‘hot’ as well as making a Geiger counter chatter. Folks, I don’t know how long we’ll be on bottled breathing. I figured thirty-six hours for four people, so it’s nominally twenty-four hours for six, but that’s not the pinch. I’m sweating—and so are you. We can take it to about a hundred and twenty. Above that, we’ll have to use oxygen just to cool the place. It might end in a fine balance between heat and suffocation. Or worse.”
    “Daddy—‘Hugh,’ I mean. Are you breaking it gently that we are going to be baked alive?”
    “You won’t be, Karen. I won’t let you be.”
    “Well… I prefer a bullet.”
    “Nor will you be shot. I have enough sleeping pills to let twenty people die painlessly. But we aren’t here to die. We’ve had vast luck; with a little more we’ll make it. So don’t be morbid.”
    “How about radioactivity?” asked Duke.
    “Can you read an integrating counter?”
    “No.”
    “Take my word for it that we are in no danger yet. Now about sleeping—This side, where Grace is, is the girls’ dorm; this other side is ours. Only four bunks but that’s okay; one person has to monitor air and heat, and the other one without a bed can keep him awake. However, I’m taking the watch tonight and won’t need company; I’ve taken Dexedrine.”
    “I’ll