Chapter 7

Before we had gone too far to make it possible, I had looked back at the building and saw that it was engulfed in the kind of yellow flames that come from burning wood. Apparently, the falling rubble had only snuffed out the original flames from conventional burning. However, it had not extinguished the thermite, and that had restarted the fire.

Dammit, we just had to find a reliable source of the raw materials for more thermite. The stuff was perfect for what we wanted to do. It looked to me like we should pause everything else until we could find the stuff to make up several thermite bombs. Sarah was due for a very lucky night for her suggestion that we give thermite a try.

The success with the bomb was the sole topic of conversation that night during and after supper. The lessons in flying were skipped so that we could talk some more about what we had accomplished and what more we could do. We must have said the same things at least 20 times that evening, and we would probably have said them another 20 times if we had not gotten so sleepy. Besides, I had not forgotten what I had thought about giving Sarah an extra thank you tonight, so I suggested that we shut down for bed before we fell asleep in the living room.

The next morning, we got out the map and tried to figure out where we could find the stuff we needed for more thermite bombs. None of us knew enough industrial chemistry to be able to predict where we might easily acquire what we needed. We were just going to have to look in every nook and cranny until we found what was required.

There were a lot of places in Worcester that might have the powdered aluminum and iron oxide, so I dragged out the map to see how hard a time we were going to have getting there. Worcester was about 40-45 miles away in a straight line, so I asked Bill and Joe about our prospects of flying there to search for what we needed. Their answer was that it could be done, but we might wind up spending a night there before we could get home.

We had a big community meeting and discussed the prospects of flying to Worcester. The real question was how the women were going to feel being left alone while we were gone. Well, we got that answer quickly enough. Sarah and Tilly agreed that all of us men should go, and we should take with us what we would need to spend two nights. We did not know how badly Worcester had been attacked, so we were not sure what we would find. Now that we had the women's approval, we planned to leave in two days.

The flight to Worcester took about four hours because we were unsure of what we might find, and we were damned sure that we did not want to attract the attention of the UFOs. Mostly, we crossed a sea of trees with a few places that were denuded by the aliens. I wondered if those places were test plots just to check out how the harvesting would run this far from Boston.

We found a lot of destruction in Worcester, but not nearly as much as in Boston. That was kind of surprising to me. It looked like the UFO pilots had gotten bored and a bit sloppy in their destruction. Worcester was the second largest city in New England, so I had expected more destruction than we found. We wondered if we would encounter any humans still living in the rubble. Well, if any were there, they avoided us.

We knew where to find the universities that Worcester was famous for, and we were especially interested in WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) because of its fame as a world-class technical school. We landed on a street very near the chemistry facilities and taxied the ultralights up to the front doors. We parked under some trees and entered the building through the front. The door was not locked, so we had no trouble getting in.

A minimum of searching led us to the chemical stock room. As one would expect, this room was stocked mostly with chemicals used in organic labs, but there was a section devoted to inorganic chemistry. There we found six 5 kg (12 pound) cartons of powdered aluminum and four cartons of ferrous oxide (iron oxide) of the same size. These were exactly what we were looking for, so we hauled them up to the lobby before we went back to fetch the magnesium ribbon.

One more find like this would hold us for a while, so we went looking for another place that might have what we needed. There had been a branch office of a chemical supplier in the city, so we went there next. Dammit, the place had been hit by the UFOs, but the destruction was not complete. We found a 50-pound plastic barrel of ferrous oxide, and it was almost too much for us to handle.

There was more of that and several large containers of powdered aluminum that we simply could not carry in this load. In fact, it really looked like we needed to make a trip to this place with the ATVs and trailers. A lot of that type of traveling would have to be made by winding roads, so it could easily take a full day just to travel from home to Worcester. We had the raw materials for several bombs, so we probably should wait until spring to make that trip.

We spent the night in an empty motel and flew home the next day. We unloaded and decided to split up the job. The women were to make the bombs while we hunted for places to use them. Before we could do much searching, the weather took a turn for the worse, and we were stuck indoors for nearly three weeks. It was well into February before we could return to searching for targets.

As soon as possible, we took off to resume our searching. We stayed together while we did this because we did not want to wander around in what amounted to a war zone without some support. The weather was a bit too chancy at this time for us to head north, so we were back to flying south. We saw seven more harvesting sites before we even reached Rhode Island, and that was enough to key us into looking for more distilleries.

We found three of the distilleries and marked them as targets on our map. We wondered what would happen if we hit those three plants on the same day. Two were close enough together to be targeted easily, but the third one was a bit problematical. Nevertheless, we decided to do what we could to go after all three at once, and that was the way we loaded up.

Sam and Joe were still the best combination we had, so they took four bombs onto their plane and took off. The fourth bomb was a backup in case one of the bombs failed to work as we wanted it to. Bill and I flew cover, but I still felt like a tourist.

The first target was almost a perfect duplicate of the previous run with them going in at 50 feet over the factory and moving at a very slow speed. Sam's aim was perfect, and the bomb went through the hole in the monster funnel without even striking any place but the hole.

They went after the second target in the same manner and scored the same result. Now there was no way they could be stopped from heading toward the third target. We followed, but we knew that there was nothing for us to do but to cheer when the bomb went off. It turned out that this bomb produced a spectacular explosion that exceeded any that we had seen to date.

Hot damn! We were on a roll! It looked like we had the means to destroy any distillery that we could find as long as the aliens did not put up any resistance. We wondered how much longer that would be, but we hoped that the aliens were in no hurry to interfere with us.

Aboard the Ankrock Xeron

"Gentlemen, let me call this unusual meeting to order. As all of you know, our exalted leader, Zemon Ankor'armonsly, is very upset by the destruction of five of our production plants. He wants to remind you that our family has made strong commitments to other powerful families to deliver the ethyl alcohol on specific dates, and we are being paid a substantial bonus to make those delivery dates.

"So far, the five destroyed plants have not made a significant difference in the rate of production, but, should we lose 10 more such plants, we will not be able to meet our commitments. That would be very embarrassing to our exalted leader, and you can be sure that he would not take the embarrassment lightly.