Nightfall

by Isaac Asimov

  The light was dim, dimmer even than the most tenuous sunlight. The flames reeled crazily, giving birth to drunken, swaying shadows. The torches smoked devilishly and smelled like a bad day in the kitchen. But they emitted yellow light.

  There was something joyous about yellow light, Theremon thought. Especially after nearly four hours of somber, dwindling Dovim.

  Siferra warmed her hands at the nearest, regardless of the soot that gathered upon them in a fine, gray powder, and muttered ecstatically to herself. “Beautiful! Beautiful! I never realized before what a wonderful color yellow is.”

  But Theremon continued to regard the torches suspiciously. He wrinkled his nose at the rancid odor and said, “What are those things made out of?”

  “Wood,” she replied.

  “Oh, no, they’re not. They aren’t burning. The top inch is charred and the flame just keeps shooting up out of nothing.”

  “That’s the beauty of it. This is a really efficient artificiallight mechanism. We made a few hundred of them, but most went to the Sanctuary, of course. You see”—she turned and dusted off her blackened hands—“you take the pithy core of coarse water reeds, dry them thoroughly, and soak them in animal grease. Then you set fire to it and the grease burns, little by little. These torches will burn for almost half an hour without stopping. Ingenious, isn’t it?”

  “Wonderful,” Theremon said dourly. “Very modern. Very impressive.”

  But he couldn’t remain in this room any longer. The same restlessness that had led him to come up here now afflicted him again. The reek of the torches was bad enough; but also there was the cold blast of air coming in through the open panel in the dome, a harsh wintry flow, the icy finger of night. He shivered. He wished that he and Sheerin and Beenay hadn’t finished off that whole bottle of miserable wine so quickly.

  “I’m going to go back below,” he said to Siferra. “There’s nothing to see here if you aren’t an astronomer.”

  “All right. I’ll go with you.”

  In the flickering yellow light he saw a smile appear on her face, unmistakable this time, unambiguous.

  [27]

  They made their way down the clattering spiral staircase to the lower room. Not much had changed down there. The people on the lower level had lit torches there too. Beenay was busy at three computers at once, processing data from the telescopes upstairs. Other astronomers were doing other things, all of them incomprehensible to Theremon. Sheerin was wandering around by himself, a lost soul. Folimun had carried his chair directly beneath a torch and continued reading, lips moving in the monotonous recital of invocations to the Stars.

  Through Theremon’s mind ran phrases of description, bits and pieces of the article he had planned to write for tomorrow’s Saro City Chronicle. Several times earlier in the evening the writing machine in his brain had clicked on the same way—a perfectly methodical, perfectly conscientious, and, as he was only too well aware, perfectly meaningless procedure. It was wholly preposterous to imagine that there was going to be an issue of the Chronicle tomorrow.

  He exchanged glances with Siferra.

  “The sky,” she murmured.

  “I see it, yes.”

  It had changed tone again. Now it was darker still, a horrible deep purple-red, a monstrous color, as though some enormous wound in the fabric of the heavens were gushing fountains of blood.

  The air had grown, somehow, denser. Dusk, like a palpable entity, entered the room, and the dancing circle of yellow light about the torches etched itself into ever sharper distinction against the gathering grayness beyond. The odor of smoke here was just as cloying as it had been upstairs. Theremon found himself bothered even by the little chuckling sounds that the torches made as they burned, and by the soft pad of Sheerin’s footsteps as the heavyset psychologist circled round and round the table in the middle of the room.

  It was getting harder to see, torches or no.

  So now it begins, Theremon thought. The time of total Darkness—and the coming of the Stars.

  For an instant he thought it might be wisest to look for some cozy closet to lock himself into until it was all over. Stay out of the way, avoid the sight of the Stars, hunker down and wait for things to become normal again. But a moment’s contemplation told him what a bad idea that was. A closet—any sort of enclosed place—would be dark too. Instead of being a safe snug harbor, it might become a chamber of terrors far more frightening than the rooms of the Observatory.

  And then too, if something big was going to happen, something that would reshape the history of the world, Theremon didn’t want to be tucked away with his head under his arm while it was going on. That would be cowardly and foolish; and it might be something he would regret all the rest of his life. He had never been the sort of man to hide from danger, if he thought there might be a story in it. Besides, he was just selfconfident enough to believe that he would be able to withstand whatever was about to occur—and there was just enough skepticism left in him so that at least part of him wondered whether anything significant was going to happen at all.

  He stood still, listening to Siferra’s occasional indrawn breaths, the quick little respirations of someone trying to retain composure in a world that was all too swiftly retreating into the shadow.

  Then came another sound, a new one, a vague, unorganized impression of sound that might well have gone unnoticed but for the dead silence that prevailed in the room and for Theremon’s unnatural focus of attention as the moment of totality grew near.

  The newspaperman stood tensely listening, holding his breath. After a moment he carefully moved toward the window and peered out.

  The silence ripped to fragments at his startled shout:

  “Sheerin!”

  There was an uproar in the room. They were all looking at him, pointing, questioning. The psychologist was at his side in a moment. Siferra followed. Even Beenay, crouched in front of his computers, swung around to look.

  Outside, Dovim was a mere smoldering splinter, taking one last desperate look at Kalgash. The eastern horizon, in the direction of the city, was lost in Darkness, and the road from Saro City to the Observatory was a dull red line. The trees of the wooded tracts that bordered the highway on both sides had lost all individuality and merged into a continuous shadowy mass.

  But it was the highway itself that held attention, for along it there surged another, and infinitely menacing, shadowy mass, surging like a strange shambling beast up the slopes of Observatory Mount.

  “Look,” Theremon cried hoarsely. “Someone tell Athor! The madmen from the city! Folimun’s people! They’re coming!”

  “How long to totality?” Sheerin asked.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Beenay rasped. “But they’ll be here in five.”

  “Never mind, keep everyone working,” Sheerin said. His voice was steady, controlled, unexpectedly commanding, as though he had managed to tap into some deep reservoir of inner strength in this climactic moment. “We’ll hold them off. This place is built like a fortress. You, Siferra, go upstairs and let Athor know what’s happening. You, Beenay, keep an eye on Folimun. Knock him down and sit on him if you have to, but don’t let him out of your sight. Theremon, come with me.”

  Sheerin was out the door, and Theremon followed at his heels. The stairs stretched below them in tight, circular sweeps around the central shaft, fading into a dank and dreary grayness.

  The first momentum of their rush had carried them fifty feet down, so that the dim, flickering yellow from the open door of the room behind them had disappeared, and both up above and down the same dusky shadow crushed in upon them.

  Sheerin paused, and his pudgy hand clutched at his chest. His eyes bulged and his voice was a dry cough. His whole body was quivering in fear. Whatever the final source of resolve he had found a moment ago now seemed exhausted.

  “I can’t … breathe … go down … yourself. Make sure all doors are closed—”

  Theremon took a few downward steps. Then he turned.
“Wait! Can you hold out a minute?” He was panting himself. The air passed in and out of his lungs like so much molasses, and there was a little germ of screeching panic in his mind at the thought of making his way farther below by himself.

  What if the guards had left the main door open, somehow?

  It wasn’t the mob he was afraid of. It was—

  Darkness.

  Theremon realized that he was, after all, afraid of the Dark!

  “Stay here,” he said unnecessarily to Sheerin, who was huddled dismally on the staircase where Theremon had left him. “I’ll be back in a second.”

  He dashed upward two steps at a time, heart pounding—not altogether from the exertion—tumbled into the main room, and snatched a torch from its holder. Siferra stared at him, eyes wide with bewilderment.

  “Shall I come with you?” she asked.

  “Yes. No. No!”

  He ran out again. The torch was foul-smelling, and the smoke smarted his eyes almost blind, but he clutched that torch as if he wanted to kiss it for joy. Its flame streamed backward as he hurtled down the stairs again.

  Sheerin hadn’t budged. He opened his eyes and moaned as Theremon bent over him. The newspaperman shook him roughly. “All right, get hold of yourself. We’ve got light.”

  He held the torch at tiptoe height, and, propping the tottering psychologist by an elbow, made his way downward again, protected now by the sputtering circle of illumination.

  On the ground floor everything was black. Theremon felt the horror rising within him again. But the torch sliced a way through the Darkness for him.

  “The Security men—” Sheerin said.

  Where were they? Had they fled? It looked that way. No, there were a couple of the guards Athor had posted, jammed up against the corner of the hallway, trembling like jelly. Their eyes were blank, their tongues were lolling. Of the others there was no sign.

  “Here,” Theremon said brusquely, and passed the torch to Sheerin. “You can hear them outside.”

  And they could. Little scraps of hoarse, wordless shouts.

  But Sheerin had been right: the Observatory was built like a fortress. Erected in the last century, when the neo-Gavottian style of architecture was at its ugly height, it had been designed for stability and durability, rather than for beauty.

  The windows were protected by the grillwork of inch-thick iron bars sunk deep into the concrete sills. The walls were solid masonry that an earthquake couldn’t have touched, and the main door was a huge oaken slab reinforced with iron at the strategic points. Theremon checked the bolts. They were still in place.

  “At least they can’t just walk right in the way Folimun did,” he said, panting. “But listen to them! They’re right outside!”

  “We have to do something.”

  “Damned right,” Theremon said. “Don’t just stand there! Help me drag these display cases up against the doors—and keep that torch out of my eyes. The smoke’s killing me.”

  The cases were full of books, scientific instruments, all sorts of things, a whole museum of astronomy. The gods only knew what the display cases weighed, but some supernal force had taken possession of Theremon in this moment of crisis, and he heaved and pulled them into place—aided, more or less, by Sheerin—as though they were pillows. The little telescopes and other gadgets within them went tumbling over as he jockeyed the heavy cases into position. There was the sound of breaking glass.

  Beenay will kill me, Theremon thought. He worships all that stuff.

  But this was no moment for being delicate. He slammed one case after another up against the door, and in a few minutes had built a barricade that might, he hoped, serve to hold back the mob if it succeeded in breaking through the gate.

  Somewhere, dimly, far off, he could hear the battering of bare fists against the door. Screams—yells—

  It was all like a ghastly dream.

  The mob had set out from Saro City driven by the hunger for salvation, the salvation held forth by the Apostles of Flame, which could be attained now, they had been told, only by the destruction of the Observatory. But as the moment of Darkness drew near a maddening fear had all but stripped their minds of the ability to function. There was no time to think of ground cars, or of weapons, or of leadership, or even of organization. They had rushed to the Observatory on foot, and they were assaulting it with bare hands.

  And now that they were there, the last flash of Dovim, the last ruby-red drop of sunlight, flickered feebly over a humanity that had nothing left but stark, universal fear.

  Theremon groaned. “Let’s get back upstairs!”

  There was no sign of anyone now in the room where they had been gathered. They had all gone to the topmost floor, into the Observatory dome itself. As he came rushing in, Theremon was struck by an eerie calmness that seemed to prevail in there. It was like a tableau. Yimot was seated in the little lean-back seat at the control panel of the gigantic solarscope as if this were just an ordinary evening of astronomical research. The rest were clustered about the smaller telescopes, and Beenay was giving instructions in a strained, ragged voice.

  “Get it straight, all of you. It’s vital to snap Dovim just before totality and change the plate. Here, you—you—one of you to each camera. We need all the redundancy we can get. You all know about—about times of exposure—”

  There was a breathless murmur of agreement.

  Beenay passed a hand over his eyes. “Are the torches still burning? Never mind, I see them!” He was leaning hard against the back of a chair. “Now remember, don’t—don’t try to look for fancy shots. When the Stars appear, don’t waste time trying to get t-two of them in the scope field at a time. One is enough. And … and if you feel yourself going, get away from the camera.”

  At the door, Sheerin whispered to Theremon, “Take me to Athor. I don’t see him.”

  The newspaperman did not answer immediately. The vague forms of the astronomers wavered and blurred, and the torches overhead had become only yellow splotches. The room was cold as death. Theremon felt Siferra’s hand graze his for a moment—only a moment—and then he was unable to see her.

  “It’s dark,” he whimpered.

  Sheerin held out his hands. “Athor.” He stumbled forward. “Athor!”

  Theremon stepped after him and seized his arm. “Wait. I’ll take you.” Somehow he made his way across the room. He closed his eyes against the Darkness and his mind against the pounding chaos that was rising within it.

  No one heard them or paid attention to them. Sheerin stumbled against the wall.

  “Athor!”

  “Is that you, Sheerin?”

  “Yes. Yes. Athor?”

  “What is it, Sheerin?” Athor’s voice, unmistakably.

  “I just wanted to tell you—don’t worry about the mob—the doors are strong enough to hold them out—”

  “Yes. Of course,” Athor muttered. He sounded, Theremon thought, as if he were many miles away.

  Light-years away.

  Suddenly another figure was among them, moving swiftly, a whirling flail of arms. Theremon thought it might be Yimot or even Beenay, but then he felt the rough fabric of a cultist’s robe and knew that it must be Folimun.

  “The Stars!” Folimun cried. “Here come the Stars! Get out of my way!”

  He’s trying to get to Beenay, Theremon realized. To destroy the blasphemous cameras.

  “Watch—out—” Theremon called. But Beenay still sat huddled in front of the computers that activated the cameras, snapping away as the full Darkness swept down.

  Theremon reached out. He caught hold of Folimun’s robe, yanked, twisted. Suddenly there were clutching fingers at his throat. He staggered crazily. There was nothing before him but shadows; the very floor beneath his feet lacked substance. A knee drove hard into his gut, and he grunted in a blinding haze of pain and nearly fell.

  But after the first gasping moment of agony his strength returned. He seized Folimun by the shoulders, somehow swung him around, h
ooked his arm around the Apostle’s throat. At the same moment he heard Beenay croak, “I’ve got it! At your cameras, everyone!”

  Theremon seemed conscious of everything at once. The entire world was streaming through his pounding mind—and everything was in chaos, everything was screaming with terror.

  There came the strange awareness that the last thread of sunlight had thinned out and snapped.

  Simultaneously he heard one last choking gasp from Folimun, and a heavy bellow of amazement from Beenay, and a queer little cry from Sheerin, a hysterical giggle that cut off in a rasp—

  And a sudden silence, a strange, deadly silence, from outside.

  Folimun had gone limp in his loosening grasp. Theremon peered into the Apostle’s eyes and saw the blankness of them, staring upward, mirroring the feeble yellow of the torches. He saw the bubble of froth upon Folimun’s lips and heard the low animal whimper in Folimun’s throat.

  With the slow fascination of fear, he lifted himself on one arm and turned his eyes toward the bloodcurdling blackness of the sky.

  Through it shone the Stars!

  Not the one or two dozen of Beenay’s pitiful theory. There were thousands of them, blazing with incredible power, one next to another next to another next to another, an endless wall of them, forming a dazzling shield of terrifying light that filled the entire heavens. Thousands of mighty suns shone down in a soul-searing splendor that was more frighteningly cold in its awful indifference than the bitter wind that shivered across the cold, horribly bleak world.

  They hammered at the roots of his being. They beat like flails against his brain. Their icy monstrous light was like a million great gongs going off at once.

  My God, he thought. My God, my God, my God!

  But he could not tear his eyes away from the hellish sight of them. He looked up through the opening in the dome, every muscle rigid, frozen, and stared in helpless wonder and horror at that shield of fury that filled the sky. He felt his mind shrinking down to a tiny cold point under that unceasing onslaught. His brain was no bigger than a marble, rattling around in the hollow gourd that was his skull. His lungs would not work. His blood ran backward in his veins.