City at World's End

by Edmond Moore Hamilton

  Her eyes met his coldly and steadily. “It will do you no good. Our disappearance, and yours, will be noticed very soon.”

  She said nothing more. She glanced once at the flier, and then at the men around her, and at the fleet Magro. She did not try to escape. Arnol had turned to face his men. He told them, “You are not responsible for my plans, and you are not yet under any penalty. Therefore you are free to decide now whether or not you will go with me.”

  The Chief Pilot stepped forward. He was a tall young man with a reckless grin and eyes that were not given to showing fear.

  “I’ve sweated this tub across the galaxy too many times to quit now,” he said. “I don’t know about the other boys, but I’m going.”

  The others, technicians and crewmen alike, shouted assent.

  “We’ve worked too long and too hard to throw this chance away! We’re with you, Arnol!”

  Arnol’s dark eyes suffused with a mist that was very like the tears of gratitude. But his voice rang out like a bugle, crying, “Then prepare for takeoff! The Government ships will be after us as soon as the Coordinator and Varn Allan and Lund are missed and traced!”

  Men began to run toward the starcruiser. Kenniston went with them, holding tight to Varn Allan, with Gorr Holl coming after with the squirming, protesting Lund clutched in his great arms. Magro brought the pale-faced Mathis, who neither spoke nor resisted.

  The hatches were shut. The airlock valves clanged into place. As he followed Arnol along a narrow passageway, Kenniston was aware of the swift, ordered confusion that seethed throughout the ship. Warning lights flashed on the bulkheads. Bells rang. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the cruiser, machinery jarred into life, settling to a steady humming.

  Arnol thrust open two doors that faced each other across the passage.

  Indicating one, he said, “I think this is the most comfortable, Administrator Allan. You’ll understand if we keep the door locked.”

  She went inside without a word. Lund and Mathis were thrust into the opposite cabin, the former still snarling threats. Arnol glanced at the warning lights.

  “All set,” he said. “Come on.”

  In the cruiser, Kenniston sat dazedly through the last taut seconds of preparations, feeling all his weariness collapsing upon him. Then a bell rang, and the little ship went smoothly skyward. There was little sensation of the tremendous acceleration, any more than in the Thanis. He had learned by now of the elastic force-stasis that gripped everything in a starship to temper acceleration pressure.

  As in a dream, Kenniston listened to the banshee scream of atmosphere past the outer hull. Then through the port he saw the great cloudy bulk of Vega Four falling away with slow majesty. And then the sky was gone, replaced by the depthless black vault of space that was hung thick with loops and chains and pendants of blazing Suns.

  He became aware later of Gorr Holl’s big paws shaking him gently.

  “Gome on, Kenniston. You’re nearly out. Time to sleep.”

  The big Capellan bore him away bodily to a cabin, and rolled him into a bunk.

  He woke hours later, feeling rusty and still tired from the strain of the past days. He looked out. The cruiser was in deep space now, droning steadily across the mighty gulf that separated it from Earth. Kenniston felt an involuntary thrill. This voyaging in the great interstellar deeps was getting into his blood.

  He stuck his head in the bridge and found Magro there with the Chief Pilot.

  “I’ve been listening with the Visor operator,” said the Spican. “There’s been no alarm yet, back there.”

  “But there will be, when they find all of us gone.”

  “Yes. And Control ships will be after us like hounds. We’re not going to have much time, on Earth.”

  Kenniston was silent. Then he asked, “Where’s Arnol?”

  “You’ll find him down in the bomb compartment.”

  As Kenniston groped his way down a series of ladders, into the compartment where the great bomb brooded in its well, that troubling doubt rose again within him.

  Until now, the swiftness of events had crowded it down. But now it seemed suddenly fantastic that he should pin the hopes of Earth’s last people to this black thing. It had only been tested once, and that test had ended disastrously…

  But Jon Arnol sat there in the dim light and smiled, a happy, peaceful smile.

  “I have been admiring my child, Kenniston. That seems silly, doesn’t it? But I’ve put most of my life into that thing. I’ve waited—how long I’ve waited! And now, in a little while…”

  His gaze dwelt fondly again upon the black metallic ovoid in its cradled pit.

  “It is a dream, and it is half a lifetime of toil, and it is a power that will revive a world.”

  Kenniston cried, out of his haunting doubt, “Can this bomb really re-kindle Earth’s interior heat? How?”

  Arnol said, a little helplessly, “I know the uncertainty that must oppress you. I’d like to explain my equations. But how can I, without first teaching you all that the ages have brought in new science?”

  He went on, “But even though a primitive scientist, you are a scientist.

  I will try to make you understand the principle, at least. You know that most suns derive their energy from a nuclear reaction that changes four hydrogen atoms into one helium atom, by a series of shifting transmutations involving carbon and nitrogen?”

  Kenniston nodded quickly. “Yes, that carbon-nitrogen cycle was discovered in my time. Scientists called it the Solar Phoenix. The tiny fraction of atomic weight left over, after the cycle, was the source of solar radiation.”

  “Exactly,” said Arnol. “What you wouldn’t know is that scientists in the ages since then have succeeded in triggering similar cyclical reactions in other, heavier elements. That is the key to my process.

  “Most planets, like your Earth, have a central core of iron and nickel.

  Now, a transformation of iron to nickel in cyclic reaction had been achieved in the laboratory, liberating the energy. I asked myself—instead of in a laboratory, why not start that reaction inside a planet?”

  “Then it would reproduce the basic solar reaction inside such a planet?” Kenniston said incredulously.

  “Not really, for the iron-nickel cycle does not yield such terrific radiation as your Solar Phoenix,” Arnol corrected. “It would, however, create a giant solar furnace inside a planet, and raise the surface temperature of that world by many degrees.”

  Kenniston voiced his worry. “There wouldn’t be danger of the nuclear reaction bursting through to the surface?”

  “It can’t burst through,” Arnol declared. “The cycle can only feed on nickel and iron, and the massive outer sphere of silicon and aluminum around the core would contain the reaction forever.”

  He added, “That is why the energy-bomb that triggers the reaction must be detonated in the core. And that is why we can quickly start the process on your Earth—because the ancient heat shafts there provide access to the deep core without elaborate preliminary boring.”

  Kenniston nodded. The theory seemed sound enough. And yet—

  He said slowly, “But when you tested it before, the planet was nearly destroyed by quakes that the convulsion in the core started.”

  “Planetoid” said Arnol wearily. “Not planet. Haven’t I explained that enough times? The mass was insufficient to sustain the blast.” He was suddenly angry. “Why was I ever fool enough to accept that impossible test? But I repeat, Kenniston, I know what I am doing. The entire College of Science has not been able to find flaws in my equations. You’ll have to be content with that.”

  “Yes,” said Kenniston. “Yes, I’ll have to be.” But as he left Arnol, he could not entirely crush his apprehension. This man-made creation of a solar furnace in the heart of a planet was as monstrous to his mind as the making of fire must have been to the first man. What if, by his faith in Jon Arnol, he had doomed Earth instead of helping it?

  One decision came cl
ear in his mind. If there was a possibility that Earth’s surface might be ravaged by destructive quakes, no one should remain for the detonation of the bomb who did not do so of his own free will.

  With a queer pang of guilt, he thought of Varn Allan. She and Lund and Mathis, prisoners against their will, would have to be let go before the great risk was taken. He would give her that reassurance, at least.

  The door of her cabin had a simple combination lock, and the dial numbers had been given to all hands in case of necessity. Kenniston opened it, and went in.

  She was sitting rather as he had sat that time aboard the Thanis, her shoulders bent, her gaze brooding on the immensity of space beyond the port. He thought she had not slept, from the lines of strain and weariness in her face.

  She straightened up at once, and turned toward him defiantly. “Have you come to your senses and abandoned this criminal project?” she demanded.

  The hard anger in her clear eyes awakened answering anger in Kenniston.

  “We have not,” he said. “I came only to tell you that you and Lund and Mathis will be allowed to leave Earth before the thing is done.”

  “Do you think I’m worried about my own safety?” cried Varn Allan.

  “It’s the thousands of your people whom you’re endangering by this mad defiance of Federation law.”

  “To the devil with Federation law,” he said roughly. Her eyes flashed hotly. “You’ll learn its power. Control ships will speed to Earth before you can even do this thing.”

  Exasperated beyond measure, he grabbed her shoulders with a brutal impulse to shake her.

  Then the totally unexpected happened. Varn Allan began to cry.

  Kenniston’s anger melted into distress. She had always seemed so cool and self-contained that it was upsetting to see her in tears.

  After a moment, he clumsily patted her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Varn. I know you were trying to help me there at Vega Center. And it must seem to you that I’m ungrateful. But I’m not! It’s just that I have to try this thing, or see Middletown’s people break their hearts trying to fight your Federation.”

  She looked a him, wet-eyed, and murmured, “I’m behaving like an emotional fool.”

  He looked down at her, his hands still on her shoulders. She pushed him back. She seemed to avoid his eyes as she said,

  “I know you’re sincere, Kenniston. But I know too that this thing is wrong, that you can’t successfully defy the power of all the stars.”

  He was strangely depressed when he left her. He tried not to think about it—tried not to remember the touch of her, tried not to recognize the choking emotion that had leaped in him for a moment.

  “That’s just insane,” he muttered to himself. “And there’s Carol—”

  He would not go to her again, in all the hours and days that the little starcruiser swept full speed across the galactic void. He was, somehow, afraid to see her once more.

  A tension grew in Kenniston as the dim red spark of Sol largened to a sullen sphere. As the cruiser swept in at decelerating speed past the lifeless outer planets, he looked ahead.

  “We must work fast, once we’re there,” Jon Arnol was saying tautly.

  He, too, was showing the strain. “Already Federation ships must be on their way here to stop us.”

  Kenniston made no answer. That cold, haunting doubt was a deeper shadow on him as he watched the gray blob of old Earth grow big ahead.

  His people were there, waiting. What was he bringing to them and their dying planet? New life, or final, ultimate death?

  Chapter 19

  MIDDLETOWN DECIDES

  With tightening nerves, Kenniston walked across the dust and desolation of the plain toward the bright dome of New Middletown. Arnol was with him, and big Gorr Holl. The cold wind was as he remembered it, and the red, lowering Sun with its crown of fire.

  “Perfect!” whispered Arnol. “Perfect! Such a world as I have dreamed of for a test!”

  “Here they come,” said Gorr Holl, and pointed to the portal.

  The armed lookouts had recognized Kenniston and the big Capellan.

  Word had gone around, and the folk of Middletown were pouring out through the portal to meet them.

  Within seconds the crowd was around them, shouting, all but trampling them in its excitement. He recognized well-known faces—Bud Martin, John Borzak, Lauber—

  McLain’s towering figure shouldered toward him. “What happened out there, Kenniston?”

  “Yeah, what’s the verdict?” came a cry from beside him. “Are they going to let us be?”

  He raised his voice to shout back to the wildly excited crowd.

  “Everybody—go to the plaza! Pass the word around. I’ll tell you all about it, there.”

  “The plaza! The plaza!”

  Some of them began to run back toward the city, to cry the news through the streets. Others swarmed around Gorr Holl, glad to see him back. They stared curiously at Jon Arnol, demanding to know who he was, but Kenniston shook his head. The story would be hard enough to tell once. He was not going to do it twice.

  He searched for Carol’s face in the crowd. He yearned to see her—and yet deep in his mind somewhere there was a strange reluctance to see her, to face her, and he did not know why this should be so. But she was not there, he should have known she would not have ventured into this excited crowd.

  Mayor Garris bustled up to him at the portal, preceding Hubble and a few of the City Council.

  “Did you fix things, Kenniston?” he cried. “Did you make them understand out there?”

  Kenniston said, “I’d like to make my report in the plaza, where everyone can hear.”

  The Mayor gave him a worried, half-frightened look, and fell back.

  Kenniston reached out to take Hubble’s hand.

  “I’ve got to talk to you, Hubble,” he said. “I’ve done something, and I don’t know…”

  He talked in a rapid undertone to the older scientist as they made their way through the streets.

  Hubble’s reaction was the same as Kenniston’s had been when the thing had been first broached to him. He recoiled from it.

  “Good God, Ken! It’s mad—dangerous…”

  But as he heard more, his alarm changed to grave attention, and then keenest interest.

  “Yet it does sound logical, by every principle of our own physical science.” He looked at Jon Arnol. “If I could only talk clearly to him!”

  “It wouldn’t do any good,” said Kenniston grimly. “That’s the awful part of it. His science is a million years beyond us.”

  Hubble turned to Gorr Holl. He had worked beside the big furry Capellan. He knew and trusted his ability as an atomic technician. Haltingly, he asked, “Will Arnol’s process work?”

  Gorr Holl answered simply, “I believe in it enough to risk my life helping to try it.”

  Kenniston translated that. And Hubble seemed reassured. “It still seems a great gamble, Ken. But—I think it’s worth it.”

  Soon Kenniston had mounted the steps of the building that was City Hall, and stood by the microphone. Before him were the gathered thousands of Middletowners—a kaleidoscope of eager faces, excited, waiting.

  This was the moment he had dreaded—the moment he had thought he could not endure. And it was harder even than he had dreamed, to say the words he must say.

  There was no use being gentle about it. He told them almost brutally,

  “The decision is against us. They say we have to go.” He listened to the roar that broke out then, the angry cry of a people driven beyond their patience.

  Mayor Garris voiced the passionate reaction of all Middletown.

  “We won’t leave Earth! And if they want to push it to a fight, they can!”

  Kenniston raised his hands, begging for quiet.

  “Wait!” he shouted into the microphone. “Listen! You may not have to go, and you may not have to fight. There’s one chance…”

  He told them, as simply and carefully
as he could, of Jon Arnol’s great proposed experiment.

  “Earth would be warm again—perhaps not quite as warm as before, but warm enough so that you could live here comfortably for all time to come.”

  There was a long silence. He knew that the concept was too enormous for them to grasp at once. But they were trying to grasp it, trying to equate it with some familiar thing. The planetary scale of it, their minds could not hold onto. They struggled for a personal significance they could understand.

  Finally John Borzak stepped forward, a rawboned, grizzled man who had spent a lifetime in the mills.

  “Does it mean, Mr. Kenniston, that we could go back then to Middletown?”

  He answered, “Yes.”

  A cheer went up that shook the very walls of the buildings. “Back to Middletown! Did you hear that? We could go back to Middletown!”

  Kenniston was touched beyond measure. To them, the shocking of a planet back to life meant primarily one thing—the ability to return to the drab little city beyond the hills, the city that was still home.

  He motioned to them again for silence.

  “I have to warn you. This experiment has never been tried on a world like Earth. It’s possible that it may fail. If it does, the surface of the Earth may be wrecked by quakes.”

  That gave them pause. Kenniston saw the shadow of fear cross their faces, saw how they turned to one another and talked, and shook their heads, and looked anxiously back and forth.

  Finally a voice cried, “What do you and Doctor Hubble think? You’re scientists. What’s your advice?”

  Kenniston hesitated. Then he said slowly, “If I were alone on Earth, I would try it. But I cannot advise you. You must make your own decision.”

  Hubble said into the microphone, “We can’t advise you, because we don’t know ourselves. We are dealing here with the science of this future age, which is far beyond us. We can only take what their scientists tell us on faith.

  “They say that the theory is entirely workable. We have warned you of the possibility of failure. It’s up to you to decide how great the risk is, and how much you are willing to gamble.”

  Kenniston turned and spoke to Mayor Garris. “Tell them to think it over carefully. Then call for a vote—those in favor of trying it to go to one side of the plaza, those against it to the other.” Aside, to Hubble, he said, “They should have months to decide a thing like this, instead of minutes!”