CHAPTER 3
Dying Planet
Kenniston walked back down Mill Street, toward the garage where he had left his car a billion years ago when such things were still important. He knew they kept a jeep there for road service, and he knew also that they would not have any need for it now because there were no longer any roads. He wished he had a topcoat. At the rate the air was chilling off it would be below zero by nightfall.
Quite literally, he began to feel as though he were walking in a nightmare. Above him was an alien sky, and the red light of it lay strangely on the familiar walls of brick. But the walls themselves were not altered. That, he decided, was the really shocking thing—the drab everyday appearance of the town. When time and space gape open for the first time in history, and you go through into the end of the world, you expect everything to be different. Middletown did not look different, except for that eerie light.
There were a lot of people on Mill Street, but then, there always were a good many. It was the street of dingy factories and small plants that connected Middletown with the shabby South Side, and there were always buses, cars, pedestrians on it Perhaps the bumbling traffic was a bit more disorganized than usual, and the groups of pedestrians tended to clot together and chatter more excitedly, but that was all.
Kenniston knew a number of these people, by now, but he did not stop to talk to them. He was somehow unwilling to meet their eyes. He felt guilty, to know the truth where they did not. What if he should tell them, what would they do? It was a terrible temptation, to rid himself of his secret. His tongue ached to cry it out.
There were people like old Mike Witter, the fat red-faced watchman who sat all day in his little shack at the railroad crossing, with his small rat-terrier curled up by his feet. The terrier was crouching now, shivering, her eyes bright and moist with fear, as though she guessed what the humans did not, but old Mike was as placid as ever.
“Cold, for June!” he hailed Kenniston. “Coldest I ever saw. I’m going to build a fire. Never saw such a freak storm!”
There was the knot of tube-mill workers at the next corner, in front of Joe’s Lunch. They were arguing, and two or three of them that Kenniston knew turned toward him.
“Hey, there’s Mr. Kenniston, one of the guys at the Industrial Lab. Maybe he’d know!” Their puzzled faces, as they asked, “Has a war started? Have you guys heard anything?”
Before he could answer, one asserted loudly, “Sure it’s a war. Didn’t someone say an atomic bomb went off overhead and missed fire? Didn’t you see the flash?”
“Hell, that was only a big lightning flash.”
“Are you nuts? It nearly blinded me.”
Kenniston evaded them. “Sorry, boys—I don’t know much more than you. There’ll be some announcement soon.”
As he went on, a bewildered voice enquired, “But if a war’s started, who’s the enemy?”
The enemy, Kenniston thought bitterly, is a country that perished and was dust—how many millions of years ago?
There were loafers on the Mill Street bridge, staring down at the muddy bed of the river and trying to explain the sudden vanishing of its water. In the beer-parlors that cheered the grimy street, there were more men than was normal for this hour. Kenniston could hear them as he passed, their voices high, excited, a little quarrelsome, but with no edge of terror.
A woman called across the street from an upstairs flat window, to the other housewife who was sweeping the opposite front porch. “I’m missing every one of my radio stories! The radio won’t get anything but the Middletown station today!”
Kenniston was glad when he got to Bud’s Garage. Bud Martin, a tall thin young man with a smudge of grease on his lip, was reassembling a carburetor with energetic efficiency and criticizing his harried young helper at the same time.
“Haven’t got to your car yet, Mr. Kenniston,” he protested. “I said around five, remember?”
Kenniston shook his head and told Martin what he wanted. Martin shrugged. “Sure, you can hire the jeep. I’m too busy to answer road calls today, anyway.” He did not seem particularly interested in what Kenniston intended to do with the jeep. The carburetor resisted and he swore at it.
A man in a floury baker’s apron stuck his head into the garage. “Hey, Bud, hear the news? The mills just shut down—all of them.”
“Ah, nuts,” said Martin. “I been hearing news all morning. Guys running in and out with the damnedest stories. I’m too busy to listen to ’em.”
Kenniston thought that probably that was the answer to the relative calm in Middletown. The men, particularly, had been too busy. The strong habit patterns of work, a job at hand to be done, had held them steady so far.
He sighed. “Bud,” he said, “I’m afraid this story is true.”
Martin looked at him sharply and then groaned. “Oh, Lord, another recession! This’ll ruin business—and me with the garage only half paid for!”
What was the use of telling him, Kenniston thought, that the mills had been hastily shut down to conserve precious fuel, and that they would never open again.
He filled spare gasoline cans, stacked them in the back of the jeep, and drove northward.
Topcoats were appearing on Main Street now. There were knots of people on street corners, and people waiting for buses were looking up curiously at the red Sun and dusky sky. But the stores were open, housewives carried bulging shopping-bags, kids went by on bicycles. It wasn’t too changed, yet. Not yet.
Nor was quiet Walters Avenue, where he had his rooms, though the rows of maples were an odd color in the reddish light. Kenniston was glad his landlady was out, for he didn’t think he could face many more puzzled questions right now.
He loaded his hunting kit—a .30-30 rifle and a 16-gauge repeating shotgun with boxes of shells—into the jeep. He put on a mackinaw, brought a leather coat for Hubble, and remembered gloves. Then, before re-entering the jeep, he ran down the street half a block to Carol Lane’s house.
Her aunt met him at the door. Mrs. Adams was stout, pink and worried.
“John, I’m so glad you came! Maybe you can tell me what to do. Should I cover my flowers?” She babbled on anxiously. “It seems so silly, on a June day. But it’s so much colder. And the petunias and bleeding-heart are so easily frost-bitten. And the roses—”
“I’d cover them, Mrs. Adams,” he told her. “The prediction is that it will be even colder.”
She threw up her hands. “The weather, these days! It never used to be like this.” And she hurried away to secure covering for the flowers, the flowers that had but hours to live. It hit Kenniston with another of those sickening little shocks of realization. No more roses on Earth, after today. No more roses, ever again.
“Ken—did you find out what happened?” It was Carol’s voice behind him, and he knew, even before he turned to face her, that he could not evade with her as he had with the others. She didn’t know about science, and such things as time warps and shattered continuums had never entered her head. But she knew him, and she gave him no chance to temporize.
“Are they true, the stories about an atom bomb going off over Middletown?”
She had had time, since he called her, to become really alarmed. She had dark hair and dark eyes. She was slim in a sturdy fashion, and her ankles were nice, and her mouth was firm and sweet. She liked Tennyson and children and small dogs, and her ways were the ways of pleasant houses and fragrant kitchens, of quiet talk and laughter. It seemed a dreadful thing to Kenniston that she should be standing in a dying garden asking questions about atomic bombs.
“Yes,” he said. “They’re true.” He watched the color drain out of her face, and he went on hastily, “Nobody was killed. There are no radiation effects in the city, nothing at all to be afraid of.”
“There is something. I can see it in your face.”
“Well, there are things we’re not sure of yet. Hubble and I are going to investigate them now.” He caught her hands. “I haven’t time t
o talk, but…”
“Ken,” she said. “Why you? What would you know about such terrible things?”
He saw it coming, now, the necessity he had always a little dreaded and had hoped might be forever postponed, the time when Carol had to learn about his work. With what eyes would she look on him when she knew? He was not sure, not sure at all. He was glad he could evade a little longer.
He smiled. “I’ll tell you all about it when I get back. Stay in the house, Carol, promise me. Then I won’t worry.”
“All right,” she said slowly. And then, sharply, “Ken…”
“What?”
“Nothing. Be careful.”
He kissed her, and ran back toward the jeep. Thank God she wasn’t the hysterical type. That would have been the last straw, right now.
He climbed in and drove to the Lab, wondering all the way what this was going to do to Carol and himself, whether they would both be alive tomorrow or the next day, and if so, what kind of a life it would be. Grim, cold thoughts, and bitter with regret. He had had it all so nicely planned, before this nightmare happened. The loneliness would all be over, and the rootless drifting from place to place. He would have a home again, which he had not had since his parents died, and as much peace as a man was allowed in the modern world. He would have the normal things a man needed to keep him steady and give meaning to his years. And now…
Hubble was waiting for him outside the Lab, holding a Geiger counter and a clutter of other instruments. He placed them carefully in the jeep, then put on the leather coat and climbed into the seat beside Kenniston.
“All right, Ken—let’s go out the south end of town. From the hills we glimpsed that way, we can see more of the lay of the land.”
They found a barricade, and police on guard, at the southern edge of town. There they were delayed until the Mayor phoned through a hasty authorization for Hubble and Kenniston to go out “for inspection of the contaminated region.”
The jeep rolled down a concrete road between green little suburban farms, for less than a mile. Then the road and the green farmland suddenly ended.
From this sharp demarcation, rolling ocher plains ran away endlessly to east and west. Not a tree, not a speck of green broke the monotony. Only the ocher-yellow scrub, and the dust, and the wind.
Hubble, studying his instruments, said, “Nothing. Not a thing. Keep going.”
Ahead of them the low hills rose, gaunt and naked, and above was the vast bowl of the sky, a cold darkness clamped down upon the horizons. Dim Sun, dim stars, and under them no sound but the cheerless whimper of the wind.
Its motor rattling and roaring, its body lurching over the unevenness of the ocher plain, the jeep bore them out into the silence of the dead Earth.
CHAPTER 4
Dead City
Kenniston concentrated on the wheel, gripping it until his hands ached. He stared fixedly at the ground ahead, noting every rock, guiding the jeep carefully across shallow gullies, driving as though there were nothing in the universe but the mechanical act. He envied the jeep its ability to chug unemotionally over the end of the world. It struck him as so amusing that he laughed a little.
Hubble’s fingers clamped his shoulder, hard enough to hurt even through the heavy coat. “Don’t, Ken.”
Kenniston turned his head. He saw that Hubble’s face was drawn and gray, and that his eyes were almost pleading.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Hubble nodded. “I know. I’m having a hard enough time hanging on myself.”
They went on across the empty plain, toward the low skeletal hills that were like bony knees thrust up from the ocher dust. Soon the jeep was climbing an easy slope, its motor clattering and roaring. Somehow, the familiar motor sound only served to emphasize the fact that around them lay the silence and red dusk of world’s end. Kenniston wished that Hubble would say something, anything. But the older man did not, and Kenniston’s own tongue was frozen. He was lost in a nightmare, and there was nothing to do but drive.
A sudden whistling scream came piping down the slope at them. Both men started violently. With hands slippery with cold sweat, Kenniston swung the jeep a little and saw a brown, furry shape about the size of a small horse bolting over the ridge, going with long, awkward bounds.
Kenniston slowed down until he had stopped shaking. Hubble said in a low whisper, “Then there is still animal life on Earth—of a sort. And look there—” He pointed to a deep little pit in the dusty ground with a ridge of freshly dark new soil around it. “The thing was digging there. Probably for water. The surface is arid, so it must dig to drink.”
They stopped the jeep, and examined the pit and the scrub around it. There were marks of teeth on the bark of the low shrubs.
“Rodential teeth,” said Hubble. “Enormously larger than anything like them occurring in our time, but still recognizable.” They looked at each other, standing in the chill red light. Then Hubble turned back to the jeep. “We’ll go on.”
They went on, up the ridge. They saw two more of the pits made by the diggers, but these were old and crumbling. The blind red eye of the Sun watched them coldly. Kenniston thought of a frightened, furry thing loping on and on over the ocher desolation that once long ago had been the home of men.
They came up onto the low ridge, and he stopped the jeep so they could look out across the red-lit plain beyond.
Hubble stared southwest, and then his hands began to tremble a little.
“Ken, do you see it?” Kenniston looked that way, and saw.
The stunning shock of relief and joy! The wild gladness at finding that you and your people are not alone on a lifeless Earth!
Out there on the barren plain stood a city. A city of white buildings, completely enclosed and roofed and bounded by the great shimmering bubble of a transparent dome.
They looked and looked, savoring the exquisite delight of relief. They could see no movement in that domed city at this distance, but just to see it was enough.
Then, slowly, Hubble said, “There are no roads. No roads across the plain.”
“Perhaps they don’t need roads. Perhaps they fly.” Instinctively both men craned their necks to examine the bleak heavens, but there was nothing there but the wind and the stars and the dim Sun with its Medusa crown of flames.
“There aren’t any lights, either,” said Hubble.
“It’s daytime,” said Kenniston. “They wouldn’t need lights. They’d be used to this dusk. They’ve had it a long time.”
A sudden nervousness possessed him. He could barely perform the accustomed motions of starting the jeep again, grating the gears horribly, letting in the clutch with a lurching jerk.
“Take it easy,” said Hubble. “If they’re there, there’s no hurry. If they’re not…” His voice was not quite steady. After a moment he finished, “There’s no hurry then, either.”
Words. Nothing but words. It seemed to Kenniston that he could not bear the waiting. The plain stretched endlessly before him. The jeep seemed to crawl. Rocks and pits and gullies moved themselves maliciously into its path. The city mocked, and came no nearer.
Then, all at once, the domed city was full before them. It loomed in the sky like a glassy mountain out of fairy tale, for from this angle its curved surface reflected the sunlight.
Here, at last, they struck a smooth, broad road. It went straight toward a high, arched portal in the glassy wall of the city. The portal was open.
“If they domed this city to keep it warm, why should the door be open?” Hubble said.
Kenniston had no answer for that. No answer, except the one that his mind refused to accept.
They drove through the portal, were beneath the city dome. And after the emptiness of the plain, the weight of this city and its mighty shield was a crushing thing.
And it was warmer here beneath the dome. Not really warm, but the air here lacked the freezing chill of the outside.
They went down a broad avenue, going slowly now, timidly,
shaken by the beating of their own hearts. And the noise of the motor was very loud in the stillness, echoed and re-echoed from many facets of stone—blasphemously loud, against the silence. Dust blew heavily along the pavement, hung dun-colored veils across the open places where boulevards met. It lay in ruffled drifts in the sheltered spots, in doorways and arches and the corners of window ledges.
The buildings were tall and massive, infinitely more beautiful and simple in line than anything Kenniston had ever imagined. A city of grace and symmetry and dignity, made lovely with the soft tints and textures of plastics, the clean strength of metal and stone.
A million windows looked down upon the jeep and the two men from another time. A million eyes dimmed with cataracts of dust, empty, blind. Some were open, some shut, but none saw.
The chill wind from the portal whispered in and out of sagging doorways, prowling up and down the streets, wandering restlessly across the wide parks that were no longer green and bright with flowers, but only wastes of scrub and drifting dust. Nowhere was there anything but the little wind that stirred. Yet Kenniston drove on. It seemed too terrible a thing to accept, that this great domed city was only a shell, an abandoned corpse, and that Middletown was alone on the face of the dying Earth.
He drove on shouting, crying out, sounding the horn in a sort of frenzy, both of them straining their eyes into the shadowy streets. Surely, somewhere in this place that men had built, there must be a human face, a human voice! Surely, in all these countless empty rooms and halls, there was space enough for life! But there was no life.
Kenniston drove more and more slowly. He ceased to sound the horn and call out. Presently he ceased even to look. He allowed the jeep to roll to a halt in a great central plaza. He cut the motor, and the silence descended upon him and Hubble like an avalanche.
He bowed his head in his hands and sat that way for a long time. He heard Hubble’s voice saying, “They’re all dead and gone.”
Kenniston raised his head. “Yes. Dead and gone, all of them, long ago.” He looked around the beautiful buildings. “You know what that means, Hubble. It means that Earth won’t support human life any more. For even in this domed city they couldn’t live.”
The Edmond Hamilton Megapack: 16 Classic Science Fiction Tales Page 18