Read The Pool of Fire (The Tripods) for Free Online Page A

included free wine and sausages. It also included the use of magnifying glasses.
    I had seen a shop window full of these, and had gathered that this was a center for their manufacture. I had wondered why, at the time, not understanding the connection. I knew now. We looked out over the heads of a crowd, with the sunlight glinting from a great number of lenses. Not far away, where a road ran steeply downhill, a man had set up a telescope on a stand. It was at least six feet long, and he was shouting, “Genuine close-up views! Fifty groschen for ten seconds! Ten schillings for the kill! As close as if he were on the other side of the street!”
    The crowd’s frenzy grew with the waiting. Men stood on platforms and took bets—as to how long the Hunt would last, how far the man would get. This seemed absurd to me at first, for I did not see how he could get any distance at all. But one of the others in the room explained. The man was not sent out on foot, but on horseback. The Tripod could easily outdistance the horse, of course, but a horseman, getting what advantage he could from the terrain, might evade being taken for as long as a quarter of an hour.
    I asked if anyone ever escaped. My companion shook his head. It was theoretically possible: there was a rule that beyond the river there was no pursuit. But it had never happened, in all the years that the Hunt had been held.
    Suddenly the crowd hushed. I saw that a saddled horse was being led into the field above which the Tripod loomed. Men in gray uniforms brought along another man, dressed in white. I stared through the glasses and saw that he was a tall raw-boned man, about thirty, who looked lost and bewildered. He was helped to mount the horse, and sat there, with the uniformed men holding the stirrups on either side. The hush deepened. Into it came the tolling of the bell of the church clock, as it struck the hour of nine. On the last stroke they stood back, slapping the horse’s flank. The horse bounded forward, and the crowd’s voice rose in frenzy.
    He rode down the slope toward the distant silver gleam of the river. He had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile before the Tripod moved. A huge metal foot uprooted itself, arced through the sky, and was followed by another. It was not hurrying particularly. I thought of the man on horseback, and felt his fear rise as bile in my own mouth. I looked from the scene to the faces around me. Fritz’s was impassive, as usual, intent and observing. The others . . . they nauseated me, I think, more than what was taking place outside.
    It did not last long. The Tripod got him as he galloped across the bare brown slope of a vineyard. A tentacle came down and picked him from the horse with the neatness and sureness of a girl threading a needle. Another cry rose from those who watched. The tentacle held him, a struggling doll. And then a second tentacle . . .
    My stomach heaving, I scrambled to my feet, and ran from the room.
    The atmosphere was different when I returned, the feverishness having been replaced by a sort of relaxation. They were drinking wine and talking about the Hunt. He had been a poor specimen, they decided. One, who appeared to be a senior servant from the estate of a Count who had a castle near by, had lost money on him and was indignant about it. My reappearance was greeted with a few mocking remarks and some laughter. They told me I was a weak-bellied foreigner, and urged me to have a liter of wine to steady my nerves. Outside, the same relaxation—a sense almost of repletion—could be observed in the crowd. Bets were being paid off, and there was a brisk trade in hot pasties and sweetmeats. The Tripod, I noticed, had gone back to its original position in the field.
    Gradually, as the hour ticked by, tension built up once more. At ten o’clock, the ceremony repeated itself, with the same quickening of excitement in those about us, the same roar of joy and approval as the Hunt began. The second victim