Time of the Great Freeze Read Online Free PDF Page A

on an expedition to the surface!"
    Ellis shook his head. The pudgy meteorologist was downcast and fearful now. He knotted his plump fingers together tensely. "I was talking about a proper expedition," he said. "One that had months of planning. Surveys of the surface to test conditions up there. Special equipment. And now, here they are, just throwing us out. Poof! Twelve hours to plan the whole thing!"
    Dr. Barnes said, "We'll manage, somehow. There's no sense giving up in advance. Pull yourself together, Dave!"
    Ted Callison nodded. "We'll make it!" he said fiercely. "We'll make it all the way to London. Three thousand miles-what's that? If we can hike twenty miles a day we can get there in less than six months!"
    "Why go all the way to London?" Dom Hannon asked, nervously fingering his thinning hair. "There are cities closer at hand. Boston. Philadelphia."
    "We don't know anything about them," Jim said. "For all we can tell, everyone's been dead in those cities for two hundred years. We couldn't raise them on the radio. At least we know London's alive. We've talked to people there. Ted's right: we'll have to try to make it to London."
    "Three thousand miles," Dave Ellis murmured feebly. "It isn't possible!"
    "We're going to make it possible," Ted Callison said.
    One thing, at least, could be said for the Mayor and the City Councilors: they were not deliberately trying to send the condemned men to their deaths. They were willing to supply the outcasts with whatever New York City had available in the way of survival equipment. Which was not very much. No one had been out of the city since before the turn of the century, and the warm clothing, the tents, the signal flares, and all the rest of the surface-going materiel had been stored as museum pieces.
    In the hours that remained to them, Jim and his father and the rest of their group rummaged desperately through the storehouse on Level M, taking what they thought they would need. The Councilors were kind enough, at least, to let them take their radio. New York had no need of such things.
    It was only now, in the final hours before leaving New York City, that Jim began to realize what a slim chance of survival they all had. Not one of them had ever been exposed to weather below sixty-eight degrees, for the temperature in the underground city was never allowed to fall below that point. None of them had ever covered a distance of more than a mile on foot, for there was nowhere to walk any great length in the city of tunnels. None of them had hunted for food. None of them had any experience at all in the techniques of survival under adverse conditions.
    Well be babes in the woods , Jim thought.
    No help for it now. They would simply have to learn survival as they went along-or else.
    The day was drawing to its close by the time they had assembled their equipment. The two prizes were a pair of jet-sleds that could each seat five men comfortably, plus baggage. At least they would not have to cross the trackless wastes on foot! A search through the city archives produced an instruction manual for the sleds; they had a copy made.
    Knives, hatchets, tinned provisions and a six-month supply of food pellets, glare-goggles, compasses, sextants, power torches-no, they were not exactly going forth naked into the wilderness. But their total lack of experience with surface conditions would make every moment incalculably hazardous.
    There were no good-bys. The trial had happened too fast. Not until the condemned men were outside would the people of the city be told of what had taken place. That is, if they were told at all. One could never be sure that the Mayor would see fit to release the news. Seven citizens had "disappeared," and no one would be the wiser for it. In a world where the largest families had two children-under rare circumstances, three-there were few family alliances, few relatives to ponder the disappearances. Dr. Barnes' wife had died when Jim was a baby; none of the other