Robert Heinlein - Farnham's Freehold

"I see," Barbara said slowly, "a beautiful wooded hillside, green trees, bushes, and a lovely sunny day."

"That's what we saw."

"But it's impossible."

"Yes."

"Karen is outside. The tunnel isn't more than eight feet long. She's holding Dr. Livingstone. She says, 'Come on out!" "Tell her to get away from the mouth. It's probably radioactive."

"Karen! Get away from the tunnel! Hugh, what time is it?"

"Just past seven."

"Well, it's more like noon outside. I think."

"I've quit thinking." "Hugh, I want to go out."

"Uh- Oh, hell! Don't tarry at the mouth. And be careful."

"I will." She started to crawl.

Hugh turned to his deputy. "Joe, I'm going out. Get me a forty-five and a belt. I shouldn't have let those girls go out unarmed." He eased himself down the hole. "You two guard the place."

His son said, "Against what? There's nothing to guard in here."

His father hesitated. "I don't know. Just a spooky feeling. All right, come along. But arm yourself. Joe!"

"Coming!"

"Joe, arm Duke and yourself. Then wait until we get outside. If we don't come back right away, use your judgment. This situation I hadn't anticipated. It just can't be."

"But it is."

"So it is, Duke." Hugh buckled on the pistol, dropped to his knees. Framed in the tunnel's mouth was still the vision of lush greenness where there should have been blasted countryside and crater glass. He started to crawl.

He stood up and moved away from the mouth, then looked around.

"Daddy! Isn't this lovely!"

Karen was below him on a slope that ran down to a stream. Across it the land rose and was covered with trees. On this side was a semi-clearing. The sky was blue, sunlight warm and bright, and there was no sign of war's devastation, nor any sign of man-not a building, a road, a path, no contrails in the sky. It was wilderness, and there was nothing that he recognized.

"Daddy, I'm going down to the creek."

"Come here! Where's Barbara?"

"Up here, Hugh." He turned and saw her up the slope, above the shelter. "I'm trying to figure out what happened. What do you think?"

The shelter sat cocked on the slope, a huge square monolith. Dirt clung to it save where the tunnel had cracked off and a jagged place where the stairwell had been. The armor door was exposed just above him.

"I don't think," he admitted.

Duke emerged, dragging a rifle. He stood up, looked around, and said nothing.

Barbara and Karen joined them. Dr.-Livingstone-I-Presume came bounding up to tag Hugh on the ankle and dash away. Obviously the Persian gave the place full approval; it was just right for cats.

Duke said, "I give up. Tell me."

Hugh did not answer. Karen said, "Daddy, why can't I go down to the creek? I'm going to take a bath. I stink."

"It won't hurt you to stink. I'm confused. I don't want to be confused still more by worrying about your drowning-"

"It's shallow."

"-or eaten by a bear, or falling in quicksand. You girls go inside, arm yourselves, and then come out if you want to. But stick close and keep your eyes peeled. Tell Joe to come out."

"Yes, sir." The girls went.

"What do you think, Duke?"

"Well... I reserve my opinion."

"If you have one, it's more than I have. Duke, I'm stonkered. I planned for all sorts of things. This wasn't on the list. If you have opinions, for God's sake spill them."

"Well- This looks like mountain country in Central America. Of course that's impossible."

"No point in worrying about whether it's possible. Suppose it was Central America. What would you watch for?"

"Let me see. Might be cougars. Snakes certainly. Tarantulas and scorpions. Malaria mosquitoes. You mentioned bears."

"I meant bears as a symbol. We're going to have to watch everything, every minute, until we know what we're up against."

Joe came out, carrying a rifle. He kept quiet and looked around. Duke said, "We won't starve. Off to the left down by the stream."

Hugh looked. A dappled fawn, hardly waist high, was staring at them, apparently unafraid. Duke said, "Shall I drop it?" He raised his rifle.

"No. Unless you are dead set on fresh meat."

"All right. Pretty thing, isn't it?"

"Very. But it's no North American deer I ever saw. Duke? Where are we? And how did we get here?"

Duke gave a lopsided grin. "Dad, you appointed yourself Fuehrer. I'm not supposed to think."

"Oh, rats!"

"Anyhow, I don't know. Maybe the Russkis developed a hallucination bomb."

"But would we all see the same thing?"

"No opinion. But if I had shot that deer, Ill bet we could have eaten it."

"I think so, too. Joe? Ideas, opinions, suggestions?"

Joe scratched his head. "Mighty pretty country. But I'm a city boy."

"One thing you can do, Hugh."

"What, Duke?"

"Your little radio. Try it."

"Good idea." Hugh crawled inside, caught Karen about to climb down, sent her back for it. While he waited, he wondered what he had that was suitable for a ladder? Chinning themselves in a six-foot manhole was tedious.

The radio picked up static but nothing else. Hugh switched it off. "We'll try it tonight. I've gotten Mexico with it at night, even Canada." He frowned. "Something ought to be on the air. Unless they smeared us completely."

"Dad, you aren't thinking straight."

"How, Duke?"

"This area did not get smeared."

"That's why I can't understand a radio silence."

"Yet Mountain Springs really caught it. Ergo, we aren't in Mountain Springs."

"Who said we were?" Karen answered. "There's nothing like this in Mountain Springs. Nor the whole state."

Hugh frowned. "I guess that's obvious." He looked at the shelter-gross, huge, massive. "But where are we?"

"Don't you read comic books, Daddy? We're on another planet."

"Don't joke, baby girl. I'm worried."

"I wasn't joking. There is nothing like this within a thousand miles of home-yet here we are. Might as well be another planet. The one we had was getting used up."

"Hugh," Joe said, "it sounds silly. But I agree with Karen."

"Why, Joe?"

"Well, we're someplace. What happens when an H-bomb explodes dead on you?"

"You're vaporized."

"I don't feel vaporized. And I can't see that big hunk of concrete sailing a thousand miles or so, and crashing down with nothing to show for it but cracked ribs and a hurt shoulder. But Karen's idea-" He shrugged. "Call it the fourth dimension. That last big one nudged us through the fourth dimension."

"Just what I said, Daddy. We're on a strange planet! Let's explore!"

"Slow down, honey. As for another planet- Well, there isn't any rule saying we have to know where we are when we don't. The problem is to cope."

Barbara said, "Karen, I don't see how this can be anything but Earth."

"Why? Spoilsport."

"Well-" Barbara chucked a pebble at a tree. "That's a eucalyptus, and an acacia beyond it. Not at all like Mountain Springs but a normal grouping of tropical and subtropical flora. Unless your 'new planet' evolved plants just like Earth, this has to be Earth."

"Spoilsport," Karen repeated. "Why shouldn't plants evolve the same way on another planet?"

"Well, that would be as remarkable as finding the same-"

"Hubert! Hubert! Where are you? I can't find you!" Grace Farnham's voice echoed out the tunnel.

Hugh ducked into the tunnel. "Coming!"

They ate lunch under a tree a little distance from the shelter. Hugh decided that the tunnel had been buried so deeply that the chance of its mouth being more radioactive than the interior was negligible. As for the roof, he was not certain. So he placed a dosimeter (the only sort of radiation instrument that had come through the pummeling) on top of the shelter to compare it later with one inside. He was relieved to see that the dosimeters agreed that they had suffered less than lethal dosage-although large-and that they checked each other.