Starburst

by Alfred Bester

  He was lying curled in the cup of the crystal 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. Krane 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 Krane watched, it was suddenly blotted over with hazy tones of red, scarlet and crimson. Hallmyer had been right.

  Krane lay frozen in the cup of the nose 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 people snuffed out, a green fair planet reduced to ashes and cinders. 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 action. 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 clogging grit like now.

  Every breath was a lungful of ground glass—or ashes— or cinders—He had returned to a suffocating black present that hugged him with soft weight and made him fight for breath. Krane struggled in 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. Krane clawed with his hands, inching out of 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. Krane 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 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 Hon.

  Krane said: "But why do we have to get to the sea?"

  Hallmyer blew a spume of ashes.

  "Ask her," he said, pointing to Krane's other side.

  Evelyn was there, crawling seriously, intently, mimicking Krane'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. 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—"

  Krane said: "That's nice."

  Then Evelyn turned her head and screamed: "Oh, Steven! Watch out!" and Krane 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. Krane 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 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—Krane dropped his head and lay still. 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 he 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, Krane 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 Krane 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!" Krane croaked gaily. "Here, boy!"

  He was overcome with joy. He realized that loneliness had hung over him, 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 Mastiff hung back, showing fangs and a lolling tongue. The dog was emaciated and its eyes gleamed red in the dusk. As Krane called once more, the dog snarled. Puffs of ash leaped beneath its nostrils.

  He's hungry, Krane thought, that's all. He reached into the knapsack and at the gesture the dog snarled again. Krane 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 snapped up the food. Ashes powdered its muzzle. It licked its chops ceaselessly and continued to advance on Krane.

  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—" Krane whispered. "That isn't right that we should tear at each other and seek to devour—"

  But Umber was advancing with a slinking sidle, and his teeth showed sharp and white. And even as Krane stared at him, the dog snarled and lunged.

  Krane thrust up an arm under the dog's muzzle, but the weight of the charge carried him backward. He cried out in agony as his broken, swollen leg was struck by the weight of the dog. With his free hand he struck weakly, again and again, scarcely feeling the grind of teeth on his left arm. Then something metallic was pressed under him and he realized he was lying on the revolver he had let fall.

  He groped for it and prayed the cinders had not clogged it. As Umber let go his arm and tore at his throat, Krane brought the gun up and jabbed the muzzle blindly against the dog's body. He pulled and pulled the trigger until the roars died away and only empty clicks sounded. Umber shuddered in the ashes before him, his body nearly shot in two. Thick scarlet stained the gray.

  Evelyn and Hallmyer looked down sadly at the broken animal. Evelyn was crying, and Hallmyer reached nervous fingers through his hair in the same old gesture.

  "This is the finish, Steven," he said. "You've killed part of yourself. Oh—you'll go on living, but not all of you. You'd best bury that body, Steven. It's the corpse of your soul."

  "I can't," Krane said.
"The wind will blow the cinders away."

  "Then burn it," Hallmyer ordered with dream-logic.

  It seemed that they helped him thrust the dead dog into his knapsack. They helped him take off his clothes and packed them underneath. They cupped their hands around the matches until the cloth caught fire, and blew on the weak flame until it sputtered and burned limply. Krane crouched by the fire and nursed it. Then he turned and once again began crawling down the ocean bed. He was naked now. There was nothing left of what-had-been but his flickering little life.

  He was too heavy with sorrow to notice the furious rain that slammed and buffeted him, or the searing pains that were searing through his blackened leg and up his hip. He crawled. Elbows, knee, elbows, knee— Woodenly, mechanically, apathetic to everything ... to the latticed skies, the dreary ashen plains and even the dull glint of water that lay far ahead.

  He knew it was the sea—what was left of the old, or a new one in the making. But it would be an empty, lifeless sea that some day would lap against a dry, lifeless shore. This would be a planet of stone and dust, of metal and snow and ice and water, but that would be all. No more life. He, alone, was useless. He was Adam, but there was no Eve.

  Evelyn waved gaily to him from the shore. She was standing alongside the white cottage with the wind snapping her dress to show the slender lines of her figure. And when he came a little closer, she ran out to him and helped him. She said nothing—only placed her hands under his shoulders and helped him lift the weight of his heavy pain-ridden body. And so at last he reached the sea.

  It was real. He understood that. For even after Evelyn and the cottage had vanished, he felt the cool waters bathe his face.

  Here's the sea, Krane thought, and here am I. Adam and no Eve. It's hopeless.

  He rolled a little farther into the waters. They laved his torn body. He lay with face to the sky, peering at the high menacing heavens, and the bitterness within him welled up.

  "It's not right!" he cried. "It's not right that all this should pass away. Life is too beautiful to perish at the mad act of one mad creature—"

  Quietly the waters laved him. Quietly . . . Calmly . . .

  The sea rocked him gently, and even the death that was reaching up toward his heart was no more than a gloved hand. Suddenly the skies split apart—for the first time in all those months—and Krane stared up at the stars.

  Then he knew. This was not the end of life. There could never be an end to life. Within his body, within the rotting tissues rocking gently in the sea was the source of ten million-million lives. Cells—tissues—bacteria— amoeba— Countless infinities of life that would take new root in the waters and live long after he was gone.

  They would live on his rotting remains. They would feed on each other. They would adapt themselves to the new environment and feed on the minerals and sediments washed into this new sea. They would grow, burgeon, evolve. Life would reach out to the lands once more. It would begin again the same old repeated cycle that had begun perhaps with the rotting corpse of some last survivor of interstellar travel. It would happen over and over in the future ages.

  And then he knew what had brought him back to the sea. There need be no Adam—no Eve. Only the sea, the great mother of life was needed. The sea had called him back to her depths that presently life might emerge once more, and he was content.

  Quietly the waters comforted him. Quietly . . . Calmly . . . The mother of life rocked the last-born of the old cycle who would become the first-born of the new. And with glazing eyes Steven Krane smiled up at the stars, stars that were sprinkled evenly across the sky. Stars that had not yet formed into the familiar constellations, and would not for another hundred million centuries.

  Star Light, Star Bright

  The man in the car was thirty-eight years old. He was tall, slender, and not strong. His cropped hair was prematurely gray. He was afflicted with an education and a sense of humor. He was inspired by a purpose. He was armed with a phone book. He was doomed.

  He drove up Post Avenue, stopped at No. 17 and parked. He consulted the phone book, then got out of the car and entered the house. He examined the mail boxes and then ran up the stairs to apartment 2-F. He rang the bell. While he waited for an answer he got out a small black notebook and a superior silver pencil that wrote in four colors.

  The door opened. To a nondescript middle-aged lady, the man said: "Good evening. Mrs. Buchanan?"

  The lady nodded.

  "My name is Foster. I'm from the Science Institute. We're trying to check some flying saucer reports. I won't take a minute." Mr. Foster insinuated himself into the apartment. He had been in so many that he knew the layout automatically. He marched briskly down the hall to the front parlor, turned, smiled at Mrs. Buchanan, opened the notebook to a blank page and poised the pencil.

  "Have you ever seen a flying saucer, Mrs. Buchanan?"

  "No. And it's a lot of bunk. I—"

  "Have your children ever seen them? You do have children?"

  "Yeah, but they—"

  "How many?"

  "Two. Them flying saucers never—"

  "Are either of school age?"

  "What?"

  "School," Mr. Foster repeated impatiently. "Do they go to school?"

  "The boy's twenty-eight," Mrs. Buchanan said. "The girl's twenty-four. They finished school a long—"

  "I see. Either of them married?"

  "No. About them flying saucers, you scientist doctors ought to—"

  "We are," Mr. Foster interrupted. He made a tick-tack-toe in the notebook, then closed it and slid it into an inside pocket with the pencil. "Thank you very much, Mrs. Buchanan," he said, turned, and marched out.

  Downstairs, Mr. Foster got into the car, opened the telephone directory, turned to a page and ran his pencil through a name. He examined the name underneath, memorized the address and started the car. He drove to Fort George Avenue and stopped the car in front of No. 800. He entered the house and took the self-service elevator to the fourth floor. He rang the bell of apartment 4-G. While he waited for an answer he got out the small black notebook and the superior pencil.

  The door opened. To a truculent man, Mr. Foster said, "Good-evening. Mr. Buchanan?"

  "What about it?" the truculent man said.

  Mr. Foster said, "My name is Davis. I'm from the Association of National Broadcasters. "We're preparing a list of names for prize competitors. May I come in? Won't take a minute."

  Mr. Foster/Davis insinuated himself and presently consulted with Mr. Buchanan and his redheaded wife in the living room of their apartment.

  "Have you ever won a prize in radio or television?"

  "No," Mr. Buchanan said angrily. "We never got a chance. Everybody else does but not us."

  "All that free money and iceboxes," Mrs. Buchanan said. "Trips to Paris and planes and—"

  "That's why we're making up this list," Mr. Foster/ Davis broke in. "Have any of your relatives won prizes?"

  "No. It's all a fix. Put-up jobs. They—"

  "Any of your children?"

  "Ain't got any children."

  "I see. Thank you very much." Mr. Foster/Davis played out the tick-tack-toe game in his notebook, closed it and put it away. He released himself from the indignation of the Buchanans, went down to his car crossed out another name in the phone book, memorized the address of the name underneath and started the car.

  He drove to No. 1215 East Sixty-eighth Street and parked in front of a private brownstone house. He rang the doorbell and was confronted by a maid in uniform.

  "Good evening," he said. "Is Mr. Buchanan in?"

  "Who's calling?"

  "My name is Hook," Mr. Foster/Davis said. "I'm conducting an investigation for the Better Business Bureau."

  The maid disappeared, reappeared and conducted Mr. Foster/Davis/Hook to a small library where a resolute gentleman in dinner clothes stood holding a Limoges demitasse cup and saucer. There were expensive books on the shelves. There was an expensive fire in the gr
ate.

  "Mr. Hook?"

  "Yes, sir," the doomed man replied. He did not take out the notebook. "I won't be a minute, Mr. Buchanan. Just a few questions."

  "I have great faith in the Better Business Bureau," Mr. Buchanan pronounced. "Our bulwark against the inroads of—"

  "Thank you, sir," Mr. Foster/Davis/Hook interrupted. "Have you ever been criminally defrauded by a business man?"

  "The attempt has been made. I have never succumbed."

  "And your children? You do have children?"

  "My son is hardly old enough to qualify as a victim."

  "How old is he, Mr. Buchanan?"

  "Ten."

  "Perhaps he has been tricked at school? There are crooks who specialize in victimizing children."

  "Not at my son's school. He is well protected."

  "What school is that, sir?"

  "Germanson."

  "One of the best. Did he ever attend a city public school?"

  "Never."

  The doomed man took out the notebook and the superior pencil. This time he made a serious entry.

  "Any other children, Mr. Buchanan?"

  "A daughter, seventeen."

  Mr. Foster/Davis/Hook considered, started to write, changed his mind and closed the notebook. He thanked his host politely and escaped from the house before Mr. Buchanan could ask for his credentials. He was ushered out by the maid, ran down the stoop to his car, opened the door, entered and was felled by a tremendous blow on the side of his head.

  When the doomed man awoke, he thought he was in bed suffering from a hangover. He started to crawl to the bathroom when he realized he was dumped in a chair like a suit for the cleaners. He opened his eyes. He was in what appeared to be an underwater grotto. He blinked frantically. The water receded.

  He was in a small legal office. A stout man who looked like an unfrocked Santa Claus stood before him. To one side, seated on a desk and swinging his legs carelessly, was a thin young man with a lantern jaw and eyes closely set on either side of his nose.