“Evelyn, darling—” he said, trying to reach up his arms. “No dear,” she said. She looked back in fright. “You’ve got to hurry. You’ve got to watch out behind!”
“The cinder storms?” He grimaced. “I’ve been through them before.”
“Not the storms!” Evelyn cried. “Something else. Oh, Stephen—”
Then she was gone, but Crane knew she had spoken the truth. There was something behind—something that had been following him all those weeks. Far in the back of his mind he had sensed the menace. It was closing in on him like a shroud. He shook his head. Somehow that was impossible. He was the last living thing on Earth. How could there be a menace?
The wind roared behind him, and an instant later came the heavy clouds of cinders and ashes. They lashed over him, biting his skin. With dimming eyes, he saw the way they coated the mud and covered it with a fine dry carpet. Crane drew his knees under him and covered his head with his arms. With the knapsack as a pillow, he prepared to wait out the storm. It would pass as quickly as the rain.
The storm whipped up a great bewilderment in his sick head. Like a child he pushed at the pieces of his memory, trying to fit them together. Why was Hallmyer so bitter toward him? It couldn’t have been that argument, could it?
What argument?
Why, that one before all this happened.
Oh, that!
Abruptly, the pieces fit themselves together.
Crane stood alongside the sleek lines of his ship and admired it tremendously. The roof of the shed had been removed and the nose of the ship hoisted so that it rested on a cradle pointed toward the sky. A workman was carefully burnishing the inner surfaces of the rocket jets.
The muffled sounds of an argument came from within the ship and then a heavy clanking. Crane ran up the short iron ladder to the port and thrust his head inside. A few feet beneath him, two men were buckling the long tanks of ferrous solution into place.
“Easy there,” Crane called. “Want to knock the ship apart?”
One looked up and grinned. Crane knew what he was thinking. That the ship would tear itself apart. Everyone said that. Everyone except Evelyn. She had faith in him. Hallmyer never said it either. But Hallmyer thought he was crazy in another way. As he descended the ladder, Crane saw Hallmyer come into the shed, lab jacket flying.
“Speak of the devil!” Crane muttered.
Hallmyer began shouting as soon as he saw Crane. “Now listen—”
“Not all over again,” Crane said.
Hallmyer dug a sheaf of papers out of his pocket and waved it under Crane’s nose.
“I’ve been up half the night,” he said, “working it through again. I tell you I’m right. I’m absolutely right—”
Crane looked at the tight-written equations and then at Hallmyer’s bloodshot eyes. The man was half mad with fear.
“For the last time,” Hallmyer went on. “You’re using your new catalyst on iron solution. All right. I grant that it’s a miraculous discovery. I give you credit for that.”
Miraculous was hardly the word for it. Crane knew that without conceit, for he realized he’d only stumbled on it. You had to stumble on a catalyst that would induce atomic disintegration of iron and give 10 X 1010 foot-pounds of energy for every gram of fuel. No man was smart enough to think all that up by himself.
“You don’t think I’ll make it?” Crane asked.
“To the moon? Around the moon? Maybe. You’ve got a fifty-fifty chance.” Hallmyer ran fingers through his lank hair. “But for God’s sake, Stephen, I’m not worried about you. If you want to kill yourself, that’s your own affair. It’s the Earth I’m worried about—”
“Nonsense. Go home and sleep it off.”
“Look”—Hallmyer pointed to the sheets of paper with a shaky hand— “no matter how you work the feed and mixing system you can’t get one hundred percent efficiency in the mixing and discharge.”
“That’s what makes it a fifty-fifty chance,” Crane said. “So what’s bothering you?”
“The catalyst that will escape through the rocket tubes. Do you realize what it’ll do if a drop hits the Earth? It’ll start a chain of iron disintegrations that’ll envelope the globe. It’ll reach out to every iron atom—and there’s iron everywhere. There won’t be any Earth left for you to return to—”
“Listen,” Crane said wearily, “we’ve been through all this before.”
He took Hallmyer to the base of-the rocket cradle. Beneath the iron framework was a two-hundred-foot pit, fifty feet wide and lined with firebrick.
“That’s for the initial discharge flames. If any of the catalyst goes through, it’ll be trapped in this pit and taken care of by the secondary reactions. Satisfied now?”
“But while you’re in flight,” Hallmyer persisted, “you’ll be endangering the Earth until you’re beyond Roche’s limit. Every drop of non-activated catalyst will eventually sink back to the ground and—”
“For the very last time,” Crane said grimly, “the flame of the rocket discharge takes care of that. It will envelop any escaped particles and destroy them. Now get out. I’ve got work to do.”
As he pushed him to the door, Hallmyer screamed and waved his arms. “I won’t let you do it!” he repeated over and over. “I’ll find some way to stop you. I won’t let you do it—”
Work? No, it was sheer intoxication to labor over the ship. It had the fine beauty of a well-made thing. The beauty of polished armor, of a balanced swept-hilt rapier, of a pair of matched guns. There was no thought of danger and death in Crane’s mind as he wiped his hands with waste after the last touches were finished.
She lay in the cradle ready to pierce the skies. Fifty feet of slender steel, the rivet heads gleaming like jewels. Thirty feet were given over to fuel the catalyst. Most of the forward compartment contained the spring hammock Crane had devised to take up the initial acceleration shock. The ship’s nose was a solid mass of natural quartz that stared upward like a cyclopian eye.
Crane thought: She’ll die after this trip. She’ll return to the Earth and smash in a blaze of fire and thunder, for there’s no way yet of devising a safe landing for a rocket ship. But it’s worth it. She’ll have had her one great flight, and that’s all any of us should want. One great beautiful flight into the unknown.
As he locked the workshop door, Crane heard Hallmyer shouting from the cottage across the fields. Through the evening gloom he could see him waving frantically. He trotted through the crisp stubble, breathing the sharp air deeply, grateful to be alive.
“It’s Evelyn on the phone,” Hallmyer said.
Crane stared at him. Hallmyer was acting peculiarly. He refused to meet his eyes.
“What’s the idea?” Crane asked. “I thought we agreed that she wasn’t to call—wasn’t to get in touch with me until I was ready to start? You been putting ideas into her head? Is this the way you’re going to stop me?”
Hallmyer said, “No—” and studiously examined the indigo horizon.
Crane went into his study and picked up the phone.
“Now, listen, darling,” he said without preamble, “there’s no sense getting alarmed now. I explained everything very carefully. Just before the ship crashes, I take to a parachute and float down as happy and gentle as Wynken, Blynken and Mod. I love you very much and I’ll see you Wednesday when I start. So long—”
“Goodbye, sweetheart,” Evelyn’s clear voice said, “and is that what you called me for?”
“Called you!”
A brown hulk disengaged itself from the hearth rug and lifted itself to strong legs. Umber, Crane’s Great Dane, sniffed and cocked an ear. Then he whined.
“Did you say I called you?” Crane shouted.
Umber’s throat suddenly poured forth a bellow. He reached Crane in a single bound, looked up into his face and whined and roared all at once.
“Shut up, you monster!” Crane sa
id. He pushed Umber away with his foot.
“Give Umber a kick for me,” Evelyn laughed. “Yes, dear. Someone called and said you wanted to speak to me.” “They did, eh? Look, honey, I’ll call you back—”
Crane hung up. He arose doubtfully and watched Umber’s uneasy actions. Through the windows, the late evening glow sent flickering shadows of orange light. Umber gazed at the light, sniffed and bellowed again: Suddenly struck, Crane leaped to the window.
Across the fields a solid mass of flame thrust high into the air, and within it was the fast-crumbling walls of the workshop. Silhouetted against the blaze, the figure of half a dozen men darted and ran.
“Good heavens!” Crane cried.
He shot out of the cottage and with Umber hard at his heels, sprinted toward the shed. As he ran he could see the graceful nose of the spaceship within the core of heat, still looking cool and untouched. If only he could reach it before the flames softened its metal and started the rivets.
The workmen trotted up to him, grimy and panting. Crane gaped at them in a mixture of fury and bewilderment. “Hallmyer!” he shouted. “Hallmyer!”
Hallmyer pushed through the crowd. His eyes were wild and gleamed with triumph.
“Too bad,” he said. “I’m sorry, Stephen—”
“You swine!” Crane shouted. “You frightened old man!” He grasped Hallmyer by the lapels and shook him just once. Then he dropped him and started into the shed.
Hallmyer cried something and an instant later a body hurtled against Crane’s calves and spilled him to the ground. He lurched to his feet, fists swinging. Umber was alongside, growling over the roar of the flames. Crane smashed a man in the face, and saw him stagger back against a second. He lifted a knee in a vicious drive that sent the last man crumpling to the ground. Then he ducked his head and plunged into the shop.
The scorch felt cool at first, but when he reached the ladder and began mounting to the port, he screamed with the agony of his bums. Umber was howling at the foot of the ladder, and Crane realized that the dog could never escape from the rocket blasts. He reached down and hauled Umber into the ship.
Crane was reeling as he closed and locked the port. He retained consciousness barely long enough to settle himself in the spring hammock. Then instinct alone prompted his hands to reach out toward the control board. Instinct and the frenzied refusal to let his beautiful ship waste itself in the flames. He would fail— Yes. But he would fail, trying.
His fingers tripped the switches. The ship shuddered and roared. And blackness descended over him.
How long was he unconscious? There was no telling. Crane awoke with cold pressing against his face and body, and the sound of frightened yelps in his ears. Crane looked up and saw Umber tangled in the springs and straps of the hammock. His first impulse was to laugh; then suddenly he realized. He had looked up! He had looked up at the hammock.
He was lying curled in the cup of the quartz nose. The ship had risen high—perhaps almost to Roche’s zone, to the limit of the Earth’s gravitational attraction, but then without guiding hands at the controls to continue its flight, had turned and was dropping back toward Earth. Crane peered through the crystal and gasped.
Below him was the ball of the Earth. It looked three times the size of the moon. And it was no longer his Earth. It was a globe of fire mottled with black clouds. At the northernmost pole there was a tiny patch of white, and even as Crane watched, it was suddenly blotted over with hazy tones of red, scarlet and crimson. Hallmyer had been right.
He lay frozen in the cup of the nose for hours as the ship descended, watching the flames gradually fade away to leave nothing but the dense blanket of black around the Earth. He lay numb with horror, unable to understand—unable to reckon up a billion people snuffed out, a green fair planet reduced to ashes and cinders. His family, home, friends, everything that was once dear and close to him—gone. He could not think of Evelyn.
Air, whistling outside, awoke some instinct in him. The few shreds of reason left told him to go down with his ship and forget everything in the thunder and destruction, but the instinct of life forced him to his feet. He climbed up to the store chest and prepared for the landing. Parachute, a small oxygen tank—a knapsack of supplies. Only half aware of what he was doing he dressed for the descent, buckled on the ‘chute and opened the port. Umber whined pathetically, and he took the heavy dog in his arms and stepped out into space.
But space hadn’t been so clogged, the way it was now. Then it had been difficult to breathe. But that was because the air had been rare—not filled with dry clogging grit like now.
Every breath was a lungful of ground glass—or ashes—or cinders—
The pieces of memory sagged apart. Abruptly he was in the present again—a dense black present that hugged him with soft weight and made him fight for breath. Crane struggled in mad panic, and then relaxed.
It had happened before. A long time past he’d been buried deep under ashes when he’d stopped to remember. Weeks ago—or days—or months. Crane clawed with his hands, inching forward through the mound of cinders that the wind had thrown over him. Presently he emerged into the light again. The wind had died away. It was time to begin his crawl to the sea once more.
The vivid pictures of his memory scattered again before the grim vista that stretched out ahead. Crane scowled. He remembered too much, and too often. He had the vague hope that if he remembered hard enough, he might change one of the things he had done—just a very little thing—and then all this would become untrue. He thought: It might help if everyone remembered and wished at the same time—but there isn’t any more everyone. I’m the only one. I’m the last memory on Earth. I’m the last life.
He crawled. Elbows, knee, elbows, knee— And then Hallmyer was crawling alongside and making a great game of it. He chortled and plunged in the cinders like a happy sea lion.
Crane said; “But why do we have to get to the sea?” Hallmyer blew a spume of ashes.
“Ask her,” he said, pointing to Crane’s other side.
Evelyn was there, crawling seriously, intently; mimicking Crane’s smallest action.
“It’s because of our house,” she said. “You remember our house, darling? High on the cliff. We were going to live there forever and ever, breathing the ozone and taking morning dips. I was there when you left. Now you’re coming back to the house at the edge of the sea. Your beautiful flight is over, dear, and you’re coming back to me. We’ll live together, just we two, like Adam and Eve—”
Crane said: “That’s nice.”
Then Evelyn turned her head and screamed: “Oh, Stephen! Watch out!” and Crane felt the menace closing in on him again. Still crawling, he stared back at the vast gray plains of ash, and saw nothing. When he looked at Evelyn again he saw only his shadow, sharp and black. Presently, it, too, faded away as the marching shaft of sunlight passed.
But the dread remained. Evelyn had warned him twice, and she was always right. Crane stopped and turned, and settled himself to watch. If he was really being followed, he would see whatever it was, coming along his tracks.
There was a painful moment of lucidity. It cleaved through his fever and bewilderment, bringing with it the sharpness and strength of a knife.
I’m going mad, he thought. The corruption in my leg has spread to my brain. There is no Evelyn, no Hallmyer, no menace. In all this land there is no life but mine—and even ghosts and spirits of the underworld must have perished in the inferno that girdled the planet. No—there is nothing but me and my sickness. I’m dying—and when I perish, everything will perish. Only a mass of lifeless cinders will go on.
But there was a movement.
Instinct again. Crane dropped his head and played dead. Through slitted eyes he watched the ashen plains, wondering if death was playing tricks with his eyes. Another facade of rain was beating down toward him, and h
e hoped he could make sure before all vision was obliterated.
Yes. There.
A quarter mile back, a gray-brown shape was flitting along the gray surface. Despite the drone of the distant rain, Crane could hear the whisper of trodden cinders and see the little clouds kicking up. Stealthily he groped for the revolver in the knapsack as his mind reached feebly for explanations and recoiled from fear.
The thing approached, and suddenly Crane squinted and understood. He recalled Umber kicking with fear and springing away from him when the ‘chute landed them on the ashen face of the Earth.
“Why, it’s Umber,” he murmured. He raised himself. The dog halted. “Here boy!” Crane croaked gayly. “Here, boy!”
He was overcome with joy. He realized that a miserable loneliness had hung over him, almost a horrible sensation of oneness in emptiness. Now his was not the only life. There was another. A friendly life that could offer love and companionship. Hope kindled again.
“Here, boy!” he repeated. “Come on, boy—”
After a while he stopped trying to snap his fingers. The Great Dane hung back, showing fangs and a lolling tongue. The dog was emaciated to a skeleton and its eyes gleamed red and ugly in the dusk. As Crane called once more, mechanically, the dog snarled. Puffs of ash leaped beneath its nostrils.
He’s hungry, Crane thought, that’s all. He reached into the knapsack and at the gesture the dog snarled again. Crane withdrew the chocolate bar and laboriously peeled off the paper and silver foil. Weakly he tossed it toward Umber. It fell far short. After a minute of savage uncertainty, the dog advanced slowly and gabbled up the food. Ashes powdered its muzzle. It licked its chops ceaselessly and continued to advance on Crane.
Panic jerked within him. A voice persisted: This is no friend. He has no love or companionship for you. Love and companionship have vanished from the land along with life. Now there is nothing left but hunger.
“No—” Crane whispered. “That isn’t right. We’re the last of life on Earth. It isn’t right that we should tear at each other and seek to devour—”
Adventures in Time and Space Page 49
