by Jerry
He returned my gaze after a moment. He smiled thinly and spoke, his voice a mere whisper of sound. “This is it! We’re doing it!”
“We’re approaching light speed?”
“Yes. One-hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second now. Think of it, runt—one-hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second!” There was awe and exultation in Burdeen’s tone.
As we reached our maximum, constant speed, all sense of pressure finally vanished. I was exhausted, with a feeling of soreness in every fibre, but aside from this, my sensations were those ordinarily experienced during free flight in space. There was little indication of our incredible velocity. The stars in the view-plate, to each side of us, remained visually much the same.
Those immediately in front of us, however, showed a noticeable Doppler effect. The Earth was a bright green star far to our rear, and the Sun was an intolerable ball of incandescence off our port side. For very obvious reasons, I didn’t attempt a look at the Sun, or otherwise use it as a means of reference.
A little over an hour and a half had passed. The chronometer continued busily to tick off the seconds. It seemed fantastic, even while I knew it was true, to think that each tick of the chronometer measured off a span of over one-hundred and eighty-six thousand miles.
Time passed more slowly as the unbelievable was accepted, digested, and rendered commonplace. Burdeen and I said nothing to each other. He was pressing forward against his safety straps, glancing from the instruments to the view-plate, features intent and hawkish. I was not a little tense myself. Everything seemed to be turning out all right. But would it last?
Minutes that were centuries of nervous strain dragged by. Finally Burdeen reached once more for the controls in the arm of his chair. The crucial, all-important half-hour had past—and safely. We would now begin decelerating for the return to Earth. It was a delicate task. Instead of riding the warp, we would now be using it to slow our speed, in somewhat the same way that a gradually applied brake slows a spinning wheel.
MY EXHAUSTION pulled at me like an insistent hand. I didn’t try to resist it. I slumped back into my chair, as far as my safety straps would let me, and closed my eyes. I’d seen everything there was to see on the trip out. And having traveled close to light speed had dulled my interest in further wonders.
I think I slept. The next thing I knew, Burdeen had me by the arm and was shaking me roughly.
“Gilroy! Wake up! Something has happened!” In his excitement, he forgot to call me runt.
I stared at him, struggling for full alertness, and asked, “What’s the matter?”
“The Earth! Look at it.”
I turned my eyes in sudden apprehension to the view-plate. The immense bluish-green orb of Earth filled the entire screen. I gazed at it for a moment, perplexed. Nothing seemed to be wrong. It was Earth as it would normally be upon our return.
Then I understood. It was Earth, true enough—but somehow not the same Earth that we had left some three hours previously.
The continents of North and South America were in our field of vision. They were still recognizable, still much the same to casual scrutiny. But a moment’s study showed that they had changed. The shapes of the two continents were not the same as I had last seen them. It was as though the oceans had risen, or the land had sunk in spots. And snow covered great areas of them surfaces. The colors were now predominantly white and greenish-brown instead of the brown and green that I remembered.
A thought rose above the clouds of dazed horror which filled my mind. I reached for the view-plate dial, tense with dread at what I might see.
Under my fingers, the scene changed. Space and its Countless blazing stars appeared. I stared at them numbly.
I couldn’t recognize a single star. The old, familiar constellations were gone. Stars still formed patterns and designs across the ebon background of space, singly and in groups—but none that I knew. The constellations in the view-plate were different, strange—alien.
I readied for the dial again, turned it slowly. But when the disc of the Sun came into view, it wasn’t necessary to shield my eyes. The Sun was a shrunken reddish orb. It looked tired and worn, a little unhappy.
I looked slowly at Burdeen. In his blue eyes was the same question that must have been mirrored in my own.
What had happened to the world and the cosmos we knew?
CHAPTER III
Valley of the Machines
THERE was a long silence, while dismay faded slowly from our minds and the full scope of the mystery to which we had returned began to penetrate. Finally my attention focused once more on the view-plate, and I brought Earth—or what we had known as Earth—back in its field. I think I had the dim hope that a second look would somehow find everything normal. But I was doomed to disappointment.
Burdeen said, “Gilroy . . . you’re a scientist. What do you think caused this?”
“I couldn’t say for certain just yet,” I told him. “I haven’t anything to go on. But a good guess would be that it was brought about in some way by traveling close to light speed.”
Burdeen looked at the image in the view-plate, and then at me. “I’ve been thinking about it, Gilroy. Maybe . . . maybe that isn’t the Earth at all. Maybe traveling close to light speed threw us out of our own Universe entirely.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The planet looks a lot like Earth. And if there’s a moon . . .”
“There is,” Burdeen said. “I saw it as we circled in.”
“Then it must be Earth.”
“But the changes—the snow, the stars, the sun . . .?”
“I don’t know,” I said again.
There was a silence. After a while Burdeen gestured helplessly and asked: “Well, what are we going to do? This wasn’t in the instructions Alward gave me.”
“We might as well do what we intended to do upon our return—land.” I shrugged listlessly. “There’s no other place to go.”
“How about the house—the spot where we took off?”
“We wouldn’t be able to find it. Look at the view-plate. The landmarks which were to have guided us back to the house are gone. There’s only snow down there—snow and ice. The house is gone, too.” I thought abruptly, piercingly, of Suzanne. She had gone with everything else.
Burdeen straightened with returning purpose. “There ought to be people down there somewhere,” he said, turning to the controls. “If we can find them, they might be able to help us.” I clutched at the thought. Alward had had the foresight to load aboard a store of emergency provisions. These wouldn’t last forever. People meant food and shelter. But what, I wondered, if there were no people?
The ship sped toward the planet at gradually decreasing speed. Burdeen made adjustments on the controls from time to time. Soon the immense sphere was no longer convex, but concave, and its continents began to fill the entire field of vision. We dropped down toward the middle of what had once been North America—or what appeared to resemble it.
Finally we were within a thousand feet or so over the surface and moving eastward. We watched the view-plate eagerly. But no roads or buildings showed below us. There was only the snow, interspersed with glittering patches of ice, and great forests of what appeared to be firs and pines. The country had all the characteristics which the far North had once shown.
Presently we reached a great city. It didn’t seem, from its location, to be Chicago. The city was like no city I had ever known. It was an incredible, sprawling maze of colossal towers, strung level upon level with leaping spans. The towers gleamed metallically in the pale, cold light, unmarred by the storms of countless years.
WE CRUISED slowly over the city for a while, searching for signs of life. But there were none that we could see. From the highest spans, down to the lowest visible levels, nothing moved. The glittering mantle of snow which lay over the city was everywhere smooth and unbroken.
Burdeen said slowly, “It’s deserted. Everybody’s gone.”
“There
should be other cities,” I said. “They can’t all be deserted.”
“Where? Further north?”
“No, it’s cold there. If any people remain, they would most logically inhabit the warmer, southern regions.” Burdeen nodded, and turned back to the controls. The ship swung around, and soared in the general direction of the Gulf of Mexico. Near the coast, we turned west. Our speed was slowed, and we moved some five-hundred feet above the surface.
The snow was thinner here than toward the north. It covered the ground only in occasional patches. Trees here were profuse in numbers and in variety, and grasses and shrubs carpeted great expanses of the land. But an atmosphere of desertion lay heavy over everything. It was as though we moved over a wilderness where the feet of Man had never trod. There were no roads. The few houses we saw were so apparently neglected, that we knew people no longer lived in them.
Our discouragement grew as time passed. We were about ready to stop the search when the ship moved over a great rectangular valley. Almost at once we saw the buildings scattered over its floor. The buildings were rather widely scattered, except at one point, approximately in the valley’s center, where they were numerous enough to form what seemed to be a small city. The ground bordering the city and between the scattered buildings showed the patchwork effect of soil under cultivation. As we descended for a closer inspection, we saw in the tilled fields glinting, angular shapes that clearly were farming machines. They were in motion, performing obscure tasks among the crops. They seemed to be working without human guidance, for we saw no men anywhere near them.
Burdeen flashed me a grin of joy and relief. I nodded my understanding. Farms and farming machines indicated the presence of people. The valley was inhabited.
Moving very slowly now, we drew over the city. It was very small, more like a town or village, its buildings laid out in a neat geometric pattern. The buildings were white and small, with the classical simplicity of ancient Grecian architecture. The ground between them was arranged and tended with the order and care of a park or garden. Scattered about were what seemed to be numerous statues and fountains. And there were people. They stood about in groups, staring up at the ship in surprise. As we watched, more came running from the buildings—and others floating through the air. Burdeen and I were startled until we realized that the floating figures had flying apparatus of some sort strapped to their shoulders.
Burdeen glanced at me. “Looks as if it’ll be all right to land.”
I nodded agreement. “These people are civilized. It isn’t likely that they’ll make trouble.” I realized, suddenly, without feeling much surprise over the fact, that relations between Burdeen and myself were friendlier than at any time since we’d met. It was understandable enough. We shared a common problem. We, each to the other, were the only familiar things in a world where all else had changed. The spites and quarrels of the past had been paled into insignificance by the perplexities and dangers of the present.
Burdeen set the ship down on a broad expanse of lawn before a building that might have been a temple lifted bodily from ancient Athens. Thus ended—or seemed to end at the time—the Starling’s incredible flight. A little less than eight hours had passed.
Burdeen began to unbuckle his safety straps. “We’ll go out and talk to them,” he said. “Maybe they can tell us where we are.”
WE WERE both very stiff from the long confinement to our chairs, and had to spend a few minutes in limbering up. Then, straightening his jacket and setting his cap at a rakish angle over his blonde hair, Burdeen strode toward the entrance port. I followed after him with turbulent feelings, the most predominating of which seemed to be excitement.
Together, Burdeen and I unsealed the port and pushed it open. The people had gathered in a crowd before the ship. As the port swung out, revealing us, they drew back, abruptly silent. Amid a deep quiet, Burdeen and I climbed down from the port and to the ground.
I gazed at the nearest of the figures with the same curiosity with which they were staring at me. Oddly enough, the very first impression I received made me think of Burdeen’s runt epithet. Applied to me here the term would no longer be one of spite, but of literal accuracy. For the people were all fully as tall, or taller, than Burdeen. The similarity didn’t end there, since the majority had blonde hair and a statue-like perfection of features and form. And so many of the staring eyes were blue, that I began to have somewhat the feelings of a stranger at a family reunion. I think I lost at that moment a lot of my incipient friendliness for Burdeen.
The people were simply yet colorfully dressed. They wore long-sleeved tunics, belted at the waist, and falling mid-way to the knees. Their feet were covered with a kind of light boot which moulded snugly to ankles and calves. Over their tunics they wore voluminous, hooded cloaks, or belted, short coats, also hooded. The wearers of this latter type of garment seemed to be those Burdeen and I had glimpsed flying through the air, for criss-crossing straps bound an apparatus of some sort to their shoulders.
The air was cool without being actually cold, and it had the crisp tang which only early morning or autumn air seems to have. A light but steady breeze touched my face, laden with the fresh, clean smell of grass. I could hear the musical gurgling of a nearby fountain, and from somewhere overhead came a flutter of wings from curiously circling birds, with occasional inquiring twitters or trills.
Abruptly, a new sound came. It was that of a voice, a deep, authorative voice, raised in a tone of command. A ripple of motion spread through the crowd. The massed figures before Burdeen and myself parted, and a man strode with vigorous self-assurance into the intervening space and came toward us.
He was an old man, but as straight and purposeful as a youth of half his years. He was dressed much like the others, except that his tunic partly visible through the opening in his cloak, fell to his ankles, and a silver chain bearing a medal or badge hung from his neck. The hair beneath his hood was long and white, and his features were finely patrician, grave with the responsibilities of leadership, but without any of its arrogance of stiffness. From blue eyes piercing beneath the snow-drift overhang of white brows, he surveyed first Burdeen and me, and then the gleaming shape of the Starling behind us.
A murmur rose from the crowd. I could not distinguish what was said, but one word seemed frequently to be repeated. It was “Julon”—obviously the name of the patriach who stood before me. And as though the crowd drew courage and confidence from his presence, the murmurs swelled and deepened.
Julon half turned, and his peremptorily lifted hand brought immediate silence. Then he faced Burdeen and me once more. He spoke. What he said was put in the form of a question, but I didn’t understand the words. They seemed vaguely familiar, in the way that words in the English of Chaucer would have been familiar, but without essential meaning.
Burdeen glanced at me, his features puzzled. I shook my head to show that my understanding of Julon’s question was little better than his own.
JULON seemed to realize that his language was strange to us. He considered a moment, brows furrowed in thought, evidently pondering his next move. Finally he pointed from Burdeen and me to the ship, and waved a hand at the sky.
“He probably wants to know if we came from some place a great distance away,” I told Burdeen.
“I guess that can be answered in the affirmative,” Burden said. “It’s true enough.” He turned to Julon and nodded emphatically, waving his own hand at the sky.
Julon seemed satisfied. Turning to the grouped people behind him, he spoke a few words of explanation. A stir of excitement ran through the gathering. Voices rose in sudden, eager babble.
Julon attempted a few more questions in sign talk, but the ideas behind them this time were a bit too complex to grasp. He seemed to want to know our purpose in coming to the valley. It would have been too difficult to explain, if that actually was the gist of his inquiries. How could Burdeen and I have made him understand that we had landed in the valley with the vague, desperate
hope of finding some way to return to the world we had originally left?
With a smile of resignation, Julon abandoned his efforts. He dismissed the crowd with a few quiet words of command, then indicated that Burdeen and I were to accompany him.
For the first time, I noticed that Julon had a companion, a stalwart, golden-haired young giant who was a younger edition of himself, and apparently his son. Julon laid a hand on the shoulder of the youth and said: “Elvar.” It was obviously an introduction.
I smiled and nodded. Pointing to myself, I said: “Charles Gilroy.”
Burdeen spoke his own name, his glance at Elvar faintly challenging. They were of a size, and except for a certain classical refinement in Elvar’s features, they might easily have been mistaken for brothers. Elvar grinned a trifle self-consciously, acknowledging the introductions with a bow.
Gesturing, Julon finally turned and began to walk briskly toward some point in the spacious, garden-like city. Burdeen and I hesitated only long enough to close and lock the entrance port of the Starling, then turned to follow him.
Little groups of people stood everywhere. They fell silent as we passed, glancing at us curiously. They seemed entirely friendly and no more inquisitive than any other people would have been under the same circumstances, but there seemed to be a restrained eagerness about them that puzzled me. The arrival of Burdeen and myself in the valley seemed to mean something to them.
Flying figures passed over us frequently as we strode along. And complex machines of all sizes and shapes, and as far as I could see, uncontrolled, sped smoothly over the grass, bound on mysterious errands. They seemed intelligent in ways I had never guessed a machine could be. A few times, when our progress blocked the path of one, it detoured carefully around us, as though aware of us not merely as obstructions, but as human beings. The machines and the flying figures were oddly jarring notes against the classical atmosphere of the city.
