by C. L. Moore
Karen lay a little way from him, her red hair showering across the bent arm pillowing her head. With a slow, impersonal pleasure he liked the way the curved lines of her caught shadow and low light as she sprawled there asleep.
He sat up very slowly, very stiffly, like an old man. Memory was returning—there should be others. He saw them in a moment, relaxed figures dreaming on the shining floor.
And beyond them all, in the center of the huge sphere, was the high, dark doorway, narrow and pointed at the top like an arrow, within which blackness would be lying curdled into faintly visible clouds of deeper and lesser darkness. That was the Alien. The name came painfully into his brain, and his stiff lips moved soundlessly, forming it. He remembered—what did he remember? It was all so long ago it really couldn't matter much now, anyhow. He thought of the slow-swinging years upon which he had rocked so long.
He frowned. Now how did he know it had been Time that rocked him in his sleep? Why was he so sure that years had ebbed like water through the darkness of this mirrory place and the silence of his dreams? Dreams! That must be it! He had dreamed—about the Alien, for instance. He had not known that name when he fell asleep. His mind was beginning to thaw a bit, and now there was a sharp distinction in it between the things that had happened before this sleep came upon him—and afterward.
Afterward, in the long interval between sleeping and walking, the Alien was a part of that afterward. The things he dimly knew about it must have come floating into his mind from somewhere entirely outside the past he remembered. He closed his eyes and struggled hard to recall those dreams.
No use. He shook his head dizzily. The memories swam formlessly just out of conscious reach. Later, they might come back—not now. He stretched, feeling the long muscles slip pleasantly along his shoulders. In a moment or two the others would be waking.
It would be wiser if they woke unarmed. Whatever had been happening here in the dim time while Alan slept, Karen and Smith would wake enemies still. From here he could see that a revolver lay on the shining floor under Karen's hand. He got up stiffly, conscious of an overwhelming lassitude, and leaned to take the gun from her relaxed fingers.
Above her as he straightened he saw the high, arched doorway, and a sudden shock jolted him. For that dark and narrow portal was untenanted now. Nothing moved there, no curdled darkness, no swirl of black against black. The Alien was gone.
Why he was so certain, he did not know. No power on earth, he thought, could have drawn him to that arrow-shaped doorway to peer inside. But without it, he still knew they were alone now in the great empty shell of the ship.
He knew they had all come in here, out of the desert night and the distant thunder of sea-fighting—come in silence and obedience to a command not theirs to question. They had slept. And in their sleeping, dreamed strangely. The Alien, hovering in the darkness of its doorway, must have controlled those dreams. And now the Alien had gone. Where, why, when?
Karen stirred in her sleep. The dreams were still moving through her brain, perhaps; perhaps she might remember when she woke, as he had not. But she would remember, too, that they were enemies. Alan Drake's mind flashed back to the urgent present, and he stepped over her, past Sir Colin, to Mike Smith. He was lying on his side with a hand thrust under his coat as if even in the mindless lassitude which had attended their coming here, he had reached for his weapon.
Mike Smith groaned a little as Alan rolled him over, searching for and finding a second gun. An instinctive antagonism flared in Alan as he looked down upon the big, bronzed animal at his feet. Mike Smith, soldier of fortune, had battled his way across continents to earn the reputation for which Nazi Germany paid him. A reputation for tigerish courage, for absolute ruthlessness. One glance at his blunt brown features told that.
-
KAREN sat up shakily. For a full minute she stared with blind blue eyes straight before her. But then awareness suddenly flashed into them and she met Alan's gaze. Like a mask, wariness dropped over her face. Her finger closed swiftly, then opened to grope about the floor beside her. Simultaneously she glanced around for Mike.
Alan laughed. The sound was odd, harshly cracked, as if he had not used his throat-muscles for a long time.
"I've got the guns, Karen," he said. A distant ghost mocked him from the high vaults above them. "Guns—Karen—guns—Karen ..."
She glanced up and then back again, and he wondered if a little shudder ran over her. Did she remember? Did she share this inexplicable feeling of strange nameless loss, of wrongness and disaster beyond reason? She did not betray it.
Mike Smith was getting slowly to his feet, shaking his head like a big cat, groping for the guns that were not there. Deliberately Alan crossed to the curved wall. He wanted something solid at his back. Curiously, he noticed that his feet roused no echoes in all that vast, hollow place. Walking on steel as if he walked on velvet, he carried his load of guns toward the great circular crack in the outer wall that outlined the closed door they had entered through. Mike and Karen watched him dazedly. Beyond them, Sir Colin was sitting up, blinking.
Mike's eyes were on the gun that Alan held steadily. He said:
"Karen, what's up? Were we gassed?" And his voice was rusty too, unused.
Sir Colin's burred tones almost creaked as he spoke. Faint echoes roused among the shadows overhead. "Maybe we were," he said. "Maybe we were."
There was silence. Four people had dreamed the same dream, or a part of it. They were groping in their memories now, and finding no more than Alan had found to judge by their bewildered faces. Presently Karen shook her red head and said:
"I want my gun back."
Sir Colin was staring about, uneasily rubbing his beard. 'Wait," he said. "Things have changed, you know."
"Things may have changed," the girl said, and took a step toward Alan. "But I still have my job to do."
"For Germany," Alan murmured, and gently covered the revolver's trigger with his middle finger. "Better stay where you are, Karen. I don't trust you."
Sir Colin's eyes were troubled under the shaggy reddish brows. "I'm not so sure there is a Germany," he said bluntly. "There's—"
Alan saw the almost imperceptible signal Karen gave. Mike Smith had apparently been paying little attention to the dialogue. But now, without an instant's warning, he flung himself forward in a long smooth leap toward Alan. No—to Alan's left. The revolver had swung in a little arc before Alan realized his mistake. He saw Karen coming at him and swept the gun in a vicious blow at her head.
He didn't want to kill her—merely to put her out of the picture so that he could attend to Smith. But Karen's movement had been startling swift. She slid under the swinging gun, twisted sidewise, and suddenly she had crashed into him with the full weight of her body, jolting him back hard against the closed port. Alan stumbled, and felt the door slip smoothly away. He swayed on his heels against empty air. Mike Smith was coming in, lithe and boneless as a big cat, a joyous little smile on his face.
Motion slowed down, then. For Alan, it always slowed down in moments like this, so that he could see everything at once and act with lightning deliberation. Hard ground crunched under his heels as he pivoted and put all his force into a smashing blow that caught Mike Smith heavily across the jaw with the gun-barrel.
Mike went back and down, teeth bared in a feline snarl. Alan took one long forward stride to finish the job—and then saw Karen. And what he saw froze him. She had paused in the doorway, and it was surely not a trick that had twisted her smooth features into such a look of blank astonishment. Behind her, Sir Colin stood frozen, too, the same incredulity on his face.
Drake turned slowly, still holding his gun ready. Then for a moment his mind went lax, and what he saw before him had no significance at all.
For this was not the flame-scorched valley they had left. And it was not morning, or noon, or night. There was only a ruddy twilight here, and a flat unfeatured landscape across which patches of mist drifted aimlessly as th
ey watched, like clouds before a sluggish wind. Low down in the sky hung a dull and ruddy sun that they could look upon unblinded, with steady eyes.
Briefly, in the distance, something moved high up across the sky. There was a dark shape out there somewhere, a building monstrously silhouetted against the sun. But the mists closed in like curtains to veil it from his gaze, as if it were a secret to this dead world not for living eyes to see.
Sir Colin was the first who came to life. He reached out a big, red-knuckled hand and barred Mike Smith's automatic lurch forward, toward Alan and the gun.
"Not now," he burred. "Not now! You can forget about Germany. And Bizerte and Sousse and all Tunisia too, all Africa. This is—"
Alan let his own gun sink. Their quarrel seemed curiously lacking in point now, somehow against the light from that dying sun. For Germany and America and England had been—must have been—dust for countless millenniums. Their way did not belong in a world from which all passion must have ebbed forever long ago.
How long?
"It's Time," Alan heard himself whisper. "Time—gone out like a tide and left us stranded."
-
IN the silence Karen cried, "It's still a dream—it must be!" But her voice was hushed to a half-whisper by the desolation all around, and she let the words die. Alan shook his head. He knew. They all knew, really. That was part of the dream they shared. By tacit agreement none of them mentioned that cloudy interval that had passed between their sleeping and their waking, but in it enough had seeped into their minds to have no doubt there now. This was no shock, after the first surprise wore away.
"Look," Sir Colin said, stepping away from the ship. "Whatever happened, we must have been buried." He pointed to the mounds of sandy soil heaped around the great sphere, as if it had thrust itself up from the depths of the earth. And even the soil was dead. This upheaval from far underground had turned up no moisture, no richness, no life.
"We'd better have our guns again, all of us," Karen said in a flat voice. "We may need them."
Mike Smith returned his guns to their holsters beneath his coat, and laughed with a short, unpleasant bark. Alan turned an impassively icy gaze upon him. He knew why Mike laughed. Mike was making the mistake that many others had made when they saw Alan Drake smile. Mike thought it was the fear of the unknown world, not simple acceptance of altered conditions, which had made Alan give up the gun. Well, Mike would have to learn sooner or later that the gentleness of Alan's smile was not a sign of weakness.
"Listen!" called Karen breathlessly. "Didn't you hear it? Listen!"
And while they all stood in strained quiet, a far, faint keening cry from high overhead came floating down to them through the twilight and the mist. Not a bird-cry. They all heard it clearly, and they must all have known it came from a human throat. While they stood frozen, it sounded again, nearer and lower and infinitely sad. And then across their range of vision, high in the ruddy gloom, a slim, winged shape floated, riding the air-currents like a condor with broad, pale wings outspread. They had glimpsed it before. And it was no bird-form. Clearly, even at this distance, they all could see the contours of a human body sailing on winged arms high in the twilight.
Once more the infinitely plaintive, thin cry keened through the air before the thing suddenly beat its winged arms together and went soaring off into the dimness, with the echoes of its heartbreaking wail fading on the air behind it.
No one spoke. Every face was lifted to the chilly wind as the pale, soaring speck melted into the sky and vanished far out over the unfeatured landscape. Alan found himself wondering if this slim, winged thing fading into the twilight would be the last man on earth, down an unimaginable line of evolution that had left all humanity winged and wailing—and mindless.
Alan shook himself a little.
"Evolution," Sir Colin was murmuring, an echo of Alan's thought. "So that's the end of the race, is it? How long have we slept, then?"
"One thing," said Alan in as brisk a voice as he could manage. "Whatever the thing was, it's got to eat. Somewhere in the world there must be some food and water left."
"Good for you, laddie," Sir Colin grinned. "Hadn't thought of that yet. Maybe there's hope for us yet, if we follow—"
"Don't forget, it can fly," reminded Karen.
Alan shrugged. "All the more reason to start after it now, while we're fresh. There isn't anything here to stay for."
"I think I'll just have a wee look inside before we go," put in Sir Colin thoughtfully. "There's a bare chance ..." He led the way back inside, and the rest followed, none of them willing to stay out alone in the desert of the world.
But there was nothing here. Only the vast curved walls, the confused reflections of themselves that swam dizzily when they moved. Only empty concavity, and the arrow-shaped doorway behind which nothing dwelt now. The Alien was gone, but whether he—it—had just preceded them into the ruddy twilight of the world's end, or whether he had been gone for many years when they woke, there was no way of guessing.
"If this was a space-ship once," murmured Sir Colin, scratching his rusty beard, "there must have been controls, motors—something! Now where could they be but there?" And he cocked a bristling eyebrow toward the dark doorway.
A little coldness shivered through Alan and was gone. He did not know what he remembered of that narrow door, but the thought of approaching it made the flesh crawl on his bones.
Sir Colin moved as slowly toward the door as if he too shared the unreasoning revulsion, but he moved, and Alan followed at his heels. He was at Sir Colin's elbow when the hulking scientist stooped his big, bony shoulders forward to peer into that slitted doorway they all feared without remembering why.
"Um—dark," grunted the Scotsman. He was fumbling in the pocket of his shapeless suit. He found a tiny flashlight there and clicked on an intense needle-beam of light that flared in blinding reflection from the wall as he swung it toward the doorway.
He grunted in astonishment. "It shouldn't work," he muttered. "A battery, after a million years—"
But it did work, and it was useless. The light, turned to the narrow doorway, seemed to strike a wall of darkness and spray backward. That black interior seemed as solidly tangible as brick. Sir Colin put out his gun-hand and saw it vanish to the wrist in dark like water. He jerked it out again, unharmed.
Alan whistled softly. There was a moment of silence.
"All the same," Alan said doggedly, "we've got to explore that room before we leave. There's just a bare hope of something in there that can help us."
He drew his own gun and took a deep breath, and stepped over the threshold of the arrow-shaped door like a man plunging into deep water. The most hideous revulsions crawled through every nerve of his body as that blinding darkness closed over his eyes. He could not even hear Sir Colin's step behind him, but he felt a groping hand find his shoulder and grip it, and the two men moved forward with wary, shuffling steps into a darkness that blinded every sense like oblivion itself.
Alan's outstretched hand found the wall. He followed it grimly, prepared for anything. He was trying very hard not to remember that once the Alien had seemed to brim this little room, filling the high doorway with a curling and shifting of dark against dark.
-
IT WAS a small room. They groped their way around the wall and, in a space of time that might or might not have been long, Alan felt the wall fall away beneath his fingers, and he stepped out into the comparative brightness of the great dim hollow again. He had a moment of utter vertigo. Then the floor steadied under his feet, and he was looking into Sir Colin's face, white and a little sick.
"You—you look the way I feel," he heard himself saying inanely. "Well—"
Sir Colin put his gun away methodically, pocketed the flash. "Nothing," he said, in a thinnish voice. "Nothing at all."
Karen lifted questioning blue eyes to them, searched each face in turn. She did not ask them what they had found inside the arrowy doorway, perhaps she did not
want to know. But after a moment, in a subdued voice, she echoed Mike.
"Yes, we'd better go. This ship—it's no good any more. It will never move again." She said it flatly, and for a moment Alan almost recaptured the memory he had been groping for. She was right. This ship had never needed machinery, but whatever motive power had lifted it no longer existed. It was as dead as the world it had brought them to.
He followed the others toward the door.
The dust of the world's end rose in sluggish whirls around their feet, and settled again as they plodded across the desert. The empty sphere of the ship was hidden in the mists behind them. Nothing lay ahead but the invisible airy path the birdman had followed, and the hope of food and water somewhere before their strength gave out.
Alan scuffed through the dust which was all that remained of the vivid world he had left only yesterday, before the long night of his sleep. This dust was Tunis, it was the bazaars and the shouting Arabs of Bizerte. It was tanks and guns and great ships, his own friends, and the titanic battle that had raged about the Mediterranean. He shivered in the frigid wind that whirled the dust of ages around him. Iron desolation was all that remained, desolation and silence and—
There was that cryptic structure he had glimpsed, or thought he glimpsed, against the sky. It might hold life—if he had not imagined it. The bird-like creatures might have come from there. In any case, they might as well walk in that direction, lacking any other sign.
The stillness was like death around them. But was it stillness? Alan tilted his head away from the wind to catch that distant sound, then called out, "Wait!"
In a moment they heard it, too, the great rushing roar from so far away that its intensity was diminished to a whisper without, somehow, diminishing its volume. The roar grew louder. Now it was low thunder, shaking the drifting mists, shaking the very ground they stood on. But it did not come nearer. It went rushing and rumbling off into diminuendo again, far away through the mists.