“Let’s not get downhearted, folks!” pleaded the Mayor, but it was too late for that. The spell was broken. The people of Middletown were at last confronted with their awful aloneness.
The party was over. The crowd silently dispersed, not speaking to each other, each man going back to his own home, his own thoughts.
Kenniston tried to find words of comfort for Carol when he left her, but he could not. There was no comfort for anyone, not now. They all had to face it, the certainty that they were the last on Earth.
He walked slowly back through the silent, empty streets, to relieve Beitz. The Moon had risen now, and through the great dome it poured coppery light upon the deserted plaza. Then, suddenly, he stopped and turned as he heard a voice and running feet pursuing him.
“Hey! Hey, Mr. Kenniston!”
He recognized Bud Martin, who had owned the garage in old Middletown. Bud’s lean young face was excited, and the words came tumbling out of him so fast as to be almost incoherent.
“Mr. Kenniston, I thought I just saw a plane going over the dome, high up! Only it looked more like a big submarine than a plane. But I saw it, I know I did!”
Kenniston thought that he might have expected this. In their reaction of bitter disappointment, many of the Middletowners might be expected now to “see” the other people they so longed to see.
He said, “I didn’t hear anything, Bud.”
“Neither did I. It went quiet and fast, high up there. I got just a glimpse of it.”
Kenniston looked up with him. They stared for moments, but the moonlit sky was cold and empty. He lowered his gaze. “It must have been a cloud shadow, Bud. There’s nothing there.”
Bud Martin swore, and then said earnestly, “Listen, Mr. Kenniston, I’m not an hysterical woman. I saw something.”
It gave Kenniston pause. For a moment, his heart quickened. Was it possible..? He stared again, for long minutes. The sky remained empty, and yet his throb of excitement persisted.
He said abruptly, “We’ll get Hubble. But don’t say anything to anyone else. Stirring up false hopes now would be disastrous.”
Hubble was with McLain and Crisci in a candlelit room, listening to their account of that other dead city they had found. He heard Bud Martin’s eager tale, and then looked at Kenniston.
“I saw nothing,” Kenniston admitted. “But through the dome, anything would be hard to see except when it was dead overhead.”
Hubble rose. “Perhaps we’d better have a look from outside. Get your coats on.”
Heavily wrapped, the five of them went along the silent streets to the portal, and through it into the outer night. They walked a hundred yards out from the portal, along the sand-drifted highway, and then stopped and scanned the sky. The cold was intense. The big Moon shone with a hard, coppery brilliance that washed the looming dome of New Middletown with light.
Kenniston’s gaze swept the blazing chains of stars. The old groups were much changed by the ages but a few he could still vaguely recognize—the time-distorted Great Bear warding the north, the warped and altered star-pattern of the Lyre. And individual stars still burned in unmistakable splendor—the blue-white, flaring beacon of Vega, the somber, smoky red magnificence of Antares, the throbbing gold of Altair.
“People are going to be seeing plenty of things,” said McLain skeptic-ally. “We might as well…”
“Listen!” said Hubble sharply, holding up his hand. Kenniston heard only the whisper of the bitter wind. Then, faintly, he caught a thrumming sound that rose and fell and rose again.
“It’s from the north,” Crisci said suddenly. “And it’s coming back around toward us.”
All five of them were suddenly rigid, held in the grip of an emotion too big for utterance, as they peered at the starry sky. The thrumming deepened.
“That’s no plane motor!” McLain exclaimed.
It wasn’t, Kenniston knew. It was neither the staccato roar of combustion engines nor the scream of jets, but a deep bass humming that seemed to fill the sky. He was aware that his heart was pounding.
Crisci shouted and flung up his hand. They saw it almost at once, an elongated black mass cutting rapidly down across the stars.
Bud Martin yelled. “It’s coming right down on us!”
The thing, in a heartbeat, had become an enormous dark bulk rushing down upon them, looming like a thundercloud. They ran back toward the portal, their feet slipping on the loose sand.
“Look!” cried Crisci. “Look at it!”
They turned, there at the portal. And Kenniston saw now that the downward rush of the black visitant upon them had been only an illusion born of its bigness. For the thing, whatever it was, humming like a million tops, was settling upon the plain a half-mile from New Middletown. Sand spumed up wildly to veil the giant bulk, then fell away and disclosed it resting on the plain.
It was, Kenniston saw instantly, a ship. Bud Martin’s description had been accurate. The thing looked for all the world like a gigantic submarine without a conning tower, that had come down out of the sky to land upon the plain.
The deep bass thrumming had stopped. The thing lay there in the moonlight, big, dark, silent. They stared rigidly.
“A ship from another world?” Kenniston whispered. “A spaceship?”
“It must be. But there were no rocketjets. It uses some other kind of power.”
“Why don’t they come out of it, now they’ve landed?”
“What did they come here for? Who are they?”
The bulky enigma out there brooded, silent, unchanged. Then Kenniston heard a calling of voices, a rising uproar in the city behind him. Others had seen, and called the news. The uproar of voices and running feet increased. All the thousands in New Middletown were beginning to stream in wild excitement toward the portal.
Mayor Garris’ pudgy figure ran toward them. “Have they really come? Have the other people come?”
Hubble’s voice crackled. “Keep the people back! They mustn’t go outside yet. Something has come, we don’t know what. Until we do know, we’ve got to be careful.”
Into Kenniston’s mind suddenly flashed the remembrance of that big meeting hall that Jennings had found, with its special section of queer seats that no ordinary human man or woman could have used. He felt a chill along his nerves. What manner of beings were in the looming, monstrous mass out there?
Garris sounded a little scared. “Why—why, I never thought that if people came, they might be enemies.”
He started to shout to the police and National Guardsmen already on hand. “Get those people back! And get your guns!”
Presently the crowd had been forced back into the adjacent streets.
And a score of armed police and Guardsmen waited with Hubble and Kenniston and the others, just inside the portal. The Mayor, his teeth chattering in the cold, said, “Shall we go out to them?”
Hubble shook his head. “No, we’re not sure of anything. We’ll wait.”
They waited, shivering in the cold wind, and as they waited, Kenniston’s mind rioted with speculation. This great vessel from outer space—whence had it come to dying Earth? From the farther stars? Why had it come? And what was going on inside it now? What eyes were watching them?
They waited. All New Middletown waited, and watched, as the Moon swung lordly across the zenith and the stars shifted and the cold deepened. And nothing happened. The monster metal bulk out there lay lightless and without sound.
The stars dimmed. Bleak gray light crept up the eastern sky. To Kenniston, chafing half-frozen hands, the mighty vessel out on the plain seemed unreal and dreamlike.
McLain swore. “If they’re not coming to see us, we might as well go out to see them.”
“Wait,” said Hubble.
“But we’ve waited for hours, and—”
“Wait,” said Hubble again. “They’re coming now.”
Kenniston saw. A dark opening had appeared, low in the side of the distant, looming hull. Figures that were
vaguely unreal in the dawn light were emerging from that opening, and moving slowly toward New Middletown.
Chapter 10
FROM THE STARS
Kenniston watched them come, the four vague figures walking slowly through the dawn, toward New Middletown. His heart pounded and his mouth was dry, and he was strangely afraid.
Perhaps it was the manner of their coming that made him so—the brooding, enigmatic bulk of that unknown ship, that long and cautious silence. It came to him that they, too, were doubtful.
The three leading figures resolved themselves gradually into men, clad in slacks and jackets against the biting cold. The fourth member of the party trudged along some distance behind them, a stocky form veiled in the blowing dust.
Mayor Garris said, wonderingly, “They look just like us. I guess people haven’t changed much after all, in a billion years.”
Kenniston nodded. For some reason, the cold knot in the pit of his stomach would not relax. There was something overpowering in this incredible meeting of two epochs.
He glanced at the others. Their faces were white and tense. There was a fooling of excitement verging almost on hysteria.
The strangers were close enough now to distinguish features. The stocky laggard remained indistinct, but of the three who came before, Kenniston saw now that only two were men. The third was a blue-eyed woman, tall and lithe, with hair the color of pale gold smooth-coiled about her head. Kenniston was struck by her. He had seen more beautiful women, but he had seldom seen one who carried herself with such grace and authority, and who looked at the world with such a direct, intelligent gaze. Almost instantly he resented her, for no more reason than that she made him instantly conscious of vast horizons of knowledge and experience which were far beyond his present ken. And yet her mouth was friendly, quite a strong mouth, but ready to smile.
The younger of the two men was broad and hard and healthy, with sorrel hair and one of those frank, jovial faces that is built over flint. Like the woman’s, his attitude was of alert, half-cautious reserve.
The other man was thin and untidy and very human. He had none of the cool reserve of his companions. He was excited, and showed it, blinking eagerly at the Middletowners. Kenniston warmed to him at once.
There was a strange silence, and the woman and two men stopped.
They looked at the Middletowners, and the Middletowners stared at them. Then the woman said something to her companions in a rapid, unfamiliar tongue. The younger man nodded silently, and the thin eager man poured out a tumbling flood of words.
Mayor Garris stepped forward hesitantly, a paradox of pompous humility.
“I…” he said, and stopped. The small word vanished away on the wind, and he could seem to find nothing to replace it. The blond woman regarded him with her bright gaze, intent and faintly amused.
The thin man stepped forward toward them. Forming the words very carefully, he said, “Middletown calling.” And again, “Middletown—calling!”
Kenniston was shaken by a great amazement. Relief and understanding made him almost giddy for the moment, and he heard again his own tired voice speaking those two hopeless, pleading words into a silence that neither heard nor answered. But it had heard. It had answered, from somewhere. From where? Another world, another star? Not from anywhere on Earth, surely. That great ship had never stooped to make such a paltry journey.
He heard Mayor Garris utter a squeaking, strangled cry. A wave of shock, audible in the indrawn breath of every man there, swept the tight-packed group. Kenniston’s wandering thoughts came back with a start.
The fourth member of the party had come up and joined the other three. And Kenniston himself was appalled at what he saw.
The fourth of the newcomers was not human. Man-like, yes—but not a man.
He was tall, his body enormously strong and massive, his thick arms ending in hands like heavy paws. He was clothed in his own shaggy fur, supplemented by a harness-like garment. His head was flattened, its muzzle protruding in the fashion of a beast, his round and tufted ears alert. And his eyes… It was the eyes that were most shocking. They met Kenniston’s, large, and dark and full of a quick, penetrating intelligence.
Good-natured eyes, curious, smiling…
The Mayor had backed away. His face was quite white. He cried out shrilly, “Why, it isn’t human!”
The furry one looked puzzled by this outburst. He glanced at the woman and the two men, and they all looked at Garris, frowning, as though at a loss to understand his fright.
The creature moved toward Garris a step or two, his pawlike hands outstretched. He spoke in a slow, rumbling voice and smiled, showing a row of great teeth that glistened sharp as sabres in the light.
Garris shrieked. And Kenniston saw panic on the faces of the other men, and saw the guns come up.
“Wait!” he yelled, and darted forward, thrusting the Mayor aside. “For God’s sake, wait, you fools!” He faced them, standing so that his body shielded the alien one. He had, himself, a revulsion from that creature that was both beastlike and manlike. But the furry one had looked at him, and had smiled…
“Don’t shoot!” he cried. “It’s intelligent, it’s one of them!”
“Stand aside, Kenniston,” shouted the Mayor, his voice high with panic. “The brute looks dangerous!”
The guns he faced swung sharply away from Kenniston. He turned and saw that the four newcomers had suddenly stepped a little to one side. And abruptly, the scene ended. The woman raised her hand in a swift gesture. From the ship out on the plain came a flash of white light.
It struck like a snake, at all the crowd of Middletowners in the portal. It struck, and was gone in an instant.
Kenniston had been in its path, too. He felt a stunning shock in every nerve of his body. There was only a split second of pain, and then a numbed paralysis as from an electric shock. He saw Garris and Hubble and the others stagger, their faces white and shaken. The guns dropped from nerveless hands.
Then the furry one trudged toward Kenniston. Again, his dark eyes smiled. He made reassuring rumbling sounds, and his big pawlike hands kneaded into Kenniston’s neck with expert deftness. The paralysis of Kenniston’s nerves began to fade.
The sorrel-haired younger man had stepped forward and picked up one of the fallen guns. Incredulity came into his eyes as he examined it.
He said something in a sharp voice to the others. They looked the gun over and over. Then, puzzled and startled, they stared at Kenniston and at the other Middletowners who now seemed returning to normal.
“They’ve got a death ray or something!” choked Bertram Garris. “They can kill us!”
Hubble said savagely, “Shut up. You’re making an ass of yourself. That weapon was only a nonlethal means of defense that you forced them to use.”
The woman called excitedly to the furry one. “Gorr Holl!” It was, obviously, his name. And Gorr Holl rejoined the other three. He too uttered sounds of bewilderment as he looked at the gun.
Kenniston spoke to Hubble, ignoring Garris and the dazed police. “I think they’ve just begun to suspect where we came from.”
The excitement of the four newcomers was obvious. It was the woman, Kenniston noticed, who first recovered from that bewilderment. She spoke quickly to the thin, blinking man, the one who had so happily repeated, “Middletown calling!” From her repeated use of the name, Kenniston guessed the man was called Piers Eglin. And Piers Eglin looked the most staggered of all the four—and the most joyful.
He came back to Kenniston. He almost devoured him with those blinking eyes. “Middletown,” he said. And then, after a moment,
“Friends.”
Kenniston seized on that. “Friends? Then you speak English?” The word “English” set Piers Eglin off into a new paroxysm of excitement. He began to babble to the others, but the woman cut him short. He swung back to Kenniston. “English—language,” he almost panted. “You—speak—English—language.” Kenniston simply nodded.
&
nbsp; A look of awe crept into Piers Eglin’s blinking eyes as he asked,
“Who—No!” He began again. “Where—do you—come from?”
“From the past,” Kenniston answered, and felt the full unreality of it as he said it. “From far in the past.”
“How far?”
Kenniston realized that twentieth-century dates would mean little, after all these epochs. He thought a moment. Then he said, “Very far in the past. In our lifetime, atomic power was first released.”
“So far?” whispered Piers Eglin numbly. “But how? How?” Kenniston shrugged helplessly. “There was an atomic explosion over our city. We found our whole city in this age. That’s all.”
The thin man feverishly translated for the others. The woman showed deep interest. But it was Gorr Holl, the furry one, who made the longest comment in his rumbling voice.
Piers Eglin swung back to Kenniston, but Kenniston stemmed the other’s eager questions by a question of his own. “Where do you come from?”
The thin one pointed up at the dawnlit sky. “From—” he seemed trying to remember the ancient name. Then, “—from Vega.”
It was Kenniston’s turn to be staggered. “But you’re Earth-men!” He pointed to Gorr Holl’s furry figure. “And what about him?”
Again, Piers Eglin seemed to search his memory for a name. Then he said it. “Capella. Gorr Holl is from Capella.”
There was a silence, in which the four looked at the men of Middletown. Kenniston’s mind was a chaotic whirl, out of which one thing stood clear. The televisor-radio of this domed city had indeed been far outside his comprehension. That radio had been designed for interstellar distances. That was where the call had gone, and whence it had been answered—from Vega, from Capella, from the stars!
“But you speak our old language!” he cried incredulously.
Piers Eglin stumblingly explained. “I am an—historian, specializing in the pre-atomic Earth civilization. I learned its language from the old records. That is why I asked leave to accompany this party to Earth.”
City at World's End Page 8
