Journey to Infinity - [Adventures in Science Fiction 02]

by Edited by Martin Greenburg

  “Starting from tomorrow we shall send the small aircraft we carry on reconnaissance flights.

  “And more than that we cannot do.”

  “You have done more than any other man could have done, Noab.” There was a general murmur of approbation from the foot of the table. “You have snatched some faint memory of the happiness that was Attrin from the burning, and you will see the seeds of the new Attrin planted in the islands of the east!”

  Noab rose to his feet. He seemed to be deeply moved. He signaled to a girl who was standing by a locker against the after bulkhead. From it she took jars and flagons, handed wine to the captain and to each of his guests.

  “To the new Attrin,” toasted Angam. “To the new dawn of civilization besides which this that has just perished will be the false dawn!”

  “To the true dawn!”

  ~ * ~

  Solitary, a ship by herself, Arrak moved over the face of the waters. Her once clean hull was streaked with rust, the crimson funnel with its golden lion was salt-caked and dingy. To the west the afterglow painted the sky with pale fire. Eastward, among the first, faint .stars, was a little light that bobbed and dipped, that wove among the fixed constellations, that steadily waxed in brightness.

  The whine of an aircraft turbine was heard, the throbbing of aerial propellers. The little airship circled the surface vessel. It came in from astern, hovered above the after deck, matched course and speed with its mother ship. From it snaked down a plummet weighted line. The sailors caught it, took it to a winch. Swaying on the end of its tether like a child’s toy balloon the little airship was drawn down to the deck. Willing hands seized the lines pendant from its gondola, threw hasty turns around cleats and bollards. When his craft was securely moored the pilot clambered down to the gently rising and falling planking. His keen eyes distinguished in the dusk the one he was looking for. “Captain Noab! Sir! Land!”

  The cry went round the ship like wildfire. Long before Noah and his aviator in the chartroom had determined such matters as course and speed every man, woman and child in the vessel knew that their voyaging was almost ended. Even the livestock below decks seemed to sense it—there arose a clamorous bellowing from their stalls that had nothing in it of fear or apprehension.

  On his bridge Noab walked to the binnacle, peered into its dimly lighted bowl. “Steer South Ninety-Five East,” he ordered the quartermaster. One of the officers was speaking into a voice pipe. “Revolutions for five knots, please,” he said.

  In his cramped quarters Angam sat with Evanee and Linith.

  “Land,” he said. In his voice was wonder that there should be any solidity left in the world.

  “And about time,” grumbled Evanee. “I don’t believe that that old man Noab ever knew where we were!”

  “But what sort of land?” Linith, as always, was practical.

  “The airman said that there were hills, and forests, and streams. But to the west it was bare and glistening, like the ooze of the ocean bed. It seemed that it was still rising from the sea.”

  “Something must rise, I suppose, to balance Attrin.”

  “What does it matter? We have found a new home.”

  “And when do we get there?”

  “The captain has reduced speed” —at this there was a cry of indignation from Evanee—”he does not want to arrive before dawn.”

  It was not only Evanee who was incensed by Noab’s caution. Throughout the ship ran the impatient murmuring, the indignant whispers. The rails were lined by people peering ahead into the darkness. Overhead rode Loana, not far from the full, her once smooth face scarred and pitted. On any other night the spectacle of the seared sister world, still dreadfully novel, would have held the eye of every observer. But not on this night. Every low dark cloud along the eastern horizon was hailed as the long desired and anticipated landfall—and every low dark cloud that lifted from the rim of the world made all beholders prey to the uneasy suspicion that the pilot of the little airship had been the victim of an hallucination.

  But, recking little of the hopes and fears of her living freight, the ship ploughed steadily on. From aft, at regular intervals, came the whine of the little steam winch as the questing plummet, having failed in its search for bottom, was hauled once more to the taffrail. From the bridge, deep, sonorous, came the sound of the gong as the last watches of the voyage tolled each its own requiem.

  At about an hour before dawn Arrak struck. It was not a violent jar—as strandings go it was very gentle. The ship slid forward slowly, then stopped. The great screws threshed in reverse—but Arrak did not move. From the stern a depth of ninety fathoms was obtained—but along the sides, from forward to as far aft as the mainmast, there was a bare thirty-five feet. And this was Arrak’s draught.

  On the bridge the tired old man who wore on his wrists the gold bracelets of authority heard the latest reports, then said—”There is nothing more for me to do. I have found land for them. The ship is safe. Today, or tomorrow, or the day after, the land will have risen still further—and they will be able to walk ashore. And I have thrown away my ship.”

  One of his officers suggested laying out an anchor astern, the jettison of stores and ballast, but the captain refused to listen.

  “No,” he said. “The purpose of this, our last voyage, has been fulfilled. This is our last port. And nowhere, in all the world, is there another haven for us.”

  With the first flush of dawn the water fell still further, and as the wan light increased so did the depth of water around the ship decrease. From aft came ominous creakings as the stern hanging clear of the ledge with no support, began to sag and buckle. But only the seamen were concerned with this. The refugees crowded the decks, staring ahead to the promised land. They saw the green hills and the trees, the river that poured itself over the golden sand of the beach and then spread itself over the gray slime of what had been the ocean bed.

  Some were already over the side, clambering down the hastily improvised ladders, floundering waist deep in the stinking ooze. Overhead the little airship circled, its balloon glowing golden in the first rays of Ramanu. And the ship that had served them so faithfully was no more than a prison from which they proposed to escape with the utmost possible speed.

  ~ * ~

  Angam Matangu sat outside his hut on the westward slopes of Mount Arrak. The ship after which the hill was named, the mountain that had been upthrust from the ocean depths silently and smoothly, was now little more than a mound of rusted girders and ruined, useless machinery—standing silent among the rank grasses, a mute witness to the high estate from which Man had fallen.

  Yet Angam was content. Blue in the evening air rose the thin smoke of the cooking fires where the women of the tribe prepared the evening meal. Around him were his fields—the ground from which he had wrested, by the sweat of his brow throughout the long, hard years, sustenance for his family and himself. Linith was gone—but it was pleasant to sit here and remember her. He wrinkled his hairy brows—gray now—in an effort to recall how many winters ago that had been.

  She had been too civilized for this life, had Linith. But Evanee —it was surprising how she had hardened. Yes—a wry smile flickered over his broad mouth—and coarsened. But she had the qualities that made for survival until the race should recover from the shock of its near extinction, should begin once more the long climb upwards to mechanized civilization.

  Abrel appeared on the slope of the hill, climbed upwards to his father with long, easy strides. He sat down beside the older man, pulled a generous bunch off the spray of berries that he was carrying and gave them to him.

  “Thank you, Abrel. These are good.”

  “Yes. I was thinking that we might take cuttings and try to cultivate the bushes in our own garden.”

  “By all means, son.”

  For a while the two sat in silence. Then—

  “What is the trouble between you and Carran?”

  “Trouble? Why, there is no trouble, Father.” />
  “Evanee told me that you had been interfering with him, would not let him live his life his own way.”

  “Suppose that way is altogether alien from what we consider right?”

  “Oh. So there has been trouble between you and your brother. Just what was it?”

  “It would have come to the ears of the Village Fathers sooner or later. It is all these people who were born after the Day of the Ending. You must know that they are different.”

  “Physically, yes. They are smooth and hairless. Their bodies are frail. And they move around so quickly that they will be worn out before they reach maturity.”

  “But it’s more than physical, father. It’s here!” The young man tapped his head. “Do you know what I found them doing? Carran and Dorilee and Turbal? They had taken a cow from the herd of Drinrud, and they had slit its throat with a sharp instrument they had made from the metal of the Arrak. And they were cutting off great pieces of the bleeding flesh—and they were eating it!”

  “Abrel!”

  “But it’s true, Father. And when I stopped them they were ashamed —but I saw a look in their eyes that wasn’t human. Have you ever looked into the eyes of a trapped rat? And seen the dreadful, sickening hate there? It was like that.”

  “Hate,” muttered the old man. “We do not hate. We cannot. Yet—” His mind winged back to the evil plain west of Boondrom, to the plant monsters encircling it, to the power of the plain and the power that had blasted Loana and that had sunk Attrin. He thought of the new hairless folk that had been born since the Day of the Ending—of them and of the other children scarce more intelligent than the beasts. He thought of the arrogance of these new hairless folk, of their drive and ambition, of the unhuman intensity of their emotions. Yet, one of them was his son—and was beloved by Evanee.

  “I must think this over,” he muttered. “Tomorrow I will call a meeting of the Village Fathers.”

  ~ * ~

  But the next day was too late.

  Late that night he was awakened by Evanee. She bent over his bed, the bed in which he was sunk deep in a nostalgic dream of Attrin. She shook him, gently at first, then roughly. “Linith,” he said, half awake. “Linith.”

  “It’s me, you old fool. It is long past the tenth hour, and neither Abrel nor Carran are in.”

  “What of it? They are old enough to look after themselves.”

  “Yes. But you don’t know all of it. Abrel has been interfering with Carran and his friends. I am afraid that he may have done them some hurt.”

  And Angam was afraid, but not for Carran. He arose hastily, cast around him a robe against the night chill. Swiftly for one of his bulk he padded to the doorway of the hut, bent his head under the low lintel and passed outside.

  The sky was clear and Loana was at the full. The ghastly silver face shone with a hard radiance. casting black shadows from huts and trees and rocks. It was very quiet.

  The old man paused, listening intently. It seemed to him that from a black copse on the upper slopes of the hill came the noise of chanting. There was some quality about it, evil, alien, that made every hair of his body stand erect. He hesitated—then reached inside his doorway for the metal-tipped sapling that served both as spear and staff. The feel of the rough haft of his weapon in his hand was comforting.

  Swiftly, silently, he climbed the hill. More slowly, but still silently, he crept through the undergrowth of the coppice. A lane of trees had been cut down in a north-south direction, and at the northern end was a stone slab. There was something tied on the slab, something dark. It lay in the shadows cast by the hairless folk around the sitar.

  One of them was Carran.

  Held high in his right hand was something that glinted. He faced away from the slab, faced south so that the rays of Loana shone full in his face.

  “Mother Loana, behold us, thy children,” he cried.

  “Mother Loana, behold us, thy children,

  “Spawned of the thunder, the flame and the flood—

  “Lift us to sit with thee,

  “Smite thou our enemy—

  “Let the sins of our fathers be washed out in blood!”

  The group before the altar parted. Behind it was revealed the girl Dorilee. In the masses of her black hair was bound a crescent of shining silver. And in the light of Loana her body shone as silvery bright as Loana herself.

  In her right hand was a long knife.

  And the thing on the altar trussed and gagged, was Abrel.

  Angam moved fast—but not fast enough. The knife had buried itself in Abrel’s heart before he had broken through the undergrowth. At first those around the sacrifice did not notice him—then Carran turned. His right hand, that held a knife like that used by Dorilee, swept forward. Angam parried with his spear, caught his son a resounding blow on the right temple. The young man staggered and fell to the ground.

  Immediately the hairless folk were all around the old man. They were weak—but they were many. They pinioned his arms to his sides, one of them grasped the hair of his head and pulled it back to stretch his neck for the eager knife.

  But Carran, raising himself on one elbow, called to his followers to stop.

  “It is my father,” he said. “Do not harm him.”

  “But Abrel was your brother.”

  “No matter. Him I hated.”

  He took the old man’s spear, leaned upon it like a staff. In spite of his youth an almost visible mantle of authority seemed to descend upon him.

  “I am sorry, father,” he said, “but it is best that we—I and my people—go. We are too like—and too unlike—to live in peace. Besides—we know that you and your fellows, by your neglect of Loana, who craves worship, brought upon yourselves the fire and the flood. We can live no longer with unbelievers.”

  “Then go,” said Angam.

  There was nothing more to be said, Carran and his people trooped silently from the clearing. Angam watched them go, their pale forms flitting down the hillside. He wondered dimly what they would make of it all—whether they would, in the fullness of time, attain the heights of lost Attriu. He could not say—balanced against their undoubted drive was their emotional instability, their queer. unbalanced beliefs, the savagery that might as easily cast them into the depths as force them, fighting tooth and nail, to the peaks.

  Angam sat by the altar and the dead body of his son Abrel—an old man and tired. The night was chill and he drew his robe ever closer about him. The stars shone scintillant in the clear sky. Loana slowly slipped from the meridian and dipped, lower and lower, to the western horizon. In the east fresh constellations rose and wheeled in slow processional towards the zenith. A wan light, ghostly, seemingly darker than the starry darkness, waxed slowly. And as the old man rose stiffly to his feet it was already fading.

  “The false dawn,” he muttered into his beard. “The false dawn—

  Were Carran and his kind, then, the true dawn?

  Or would they play out, here on Earth, the tragic drama that had made the Moon a scarred and pitted horror—unleash powers that would send the world reeling forever through time and space, a seared and sterile mausoleum of the hopes and fears of the ages?

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  ~ * ~

  After Attrin Man reverted to savagery, his scientific knowledge forgotten. The first ice age came and went, completing the destruction of the historical past. In the difficult periods which followed neither the past nor the future seemed to matter. Slowly, however, Mans aspirations flickered to life and grew into a civilization so mighty that it blanketed the world. Technician though he was, he had yet to conquer himself.

  ATLANTIS

  by Edward E. Smith, Ph.D.

  A

  riponides, recently elected Faros of Atlantis for his third five-year term, stood at a widow of his office atop the towering Farostery. His hands were clasped loosely behind his back. He did not really see the tremendous expanse of quiet ocean, nor the bustling harbor, nor the metropolis spread out so magni
ficently and so busily beneath him. He stood there, motionless, until a subtle vibration warned him that visitors were approaching his door.

  “Come in, gentlemen . . . Please be seated.” He sat down at one end of a table molded of transparent plastic. “Psychologist Talmonides, Statesman Cleto, Minister Philamon, Minister Marxes and Officer Artomenes, I have asked you to come here personally because I have every reason to believe that the shielding of this room is proof against eavesdroppers; a thing which no longer can be said of our supposedly private television channels. We must discuss, and if possible come to some decision concerning, the state in which our nation now finds itself.