Journey to Infinity - [Adventures in Science Fiction 02]

by Edited by Martin Greenburg

  Outside his street door he seized the clapper of the bell that would summon the messenger for this locality. For a few seconds the deep note reverberated, then he stopped ringing and waited for the almost silent approach of the motorcycle, the bright beam of the headlamp sweeping up the pathway to his door.

  Again he rang, and yet again. But for all the effect his summons had he might just as well have been upon one of the uninhabited islands to the far east. He guessed what was wrong. All the messenger boys would be gathered in some quiet corner, out of the wind, discussing eagerly the signs and wonders that had blazed so terrify­ingly in the dawn sky.

  Grumbling a little he went to the outhouse in which he kept his car. As he backed out he saw that, in spite of the heavy overcast and the rain that was beginning to fall, it was almost light. As he drove down to the road the rain started to come down in earnest. Even in the gray light it seemed almost luminous, and as it fell there was a hissing and a crackling and a running of little blue sparks along the ground.

  But Angani was in no mood to notice these things. He drove as fast as he dared, peering stolidly ahead through the almost solid sheets of water, his wheels casting a continuous fountain of spray on either side. At last he found that for which he was seeking—a column on which was mounted a curiously conventionalized little piece of statuary depicting a man holding in his hands a great flask. He turned sharp right, splattered up the drive to the house among its wet, weatherbeaten trees.

  At his pull of the lanyard at the door he heard a gong somewhere within boom sonorously. Impatiently he waited, shifting from one foot to the other whilst the torrential rain made rivulets down through the close, thick fur of his body.

  It was a woman who answered.

  “The doctor,” he said, before she could speak. “It’s my wife, Evanee Matangu, it’s her first child. It shouldn’t have come for another month. It was the shock of—”

  “It was a shock for all of us.”

  She turned, called into the house —”Handrin! Another maternity case!”

  “Coming! Has he got a car?”

  “Yes. You won’t need yours.”

  ~ * ~

  Little remained for the doctor to do when, finally, Angam succeeded in navigating the flooded streets to his home. Evanee was in bed and with her, a tiny morsel of yellow furred humanity, was her first son. All that remained for Handrin to do was to enter the date and time of the birth in his book, to act as witness when Angara formally named the child.

  Linith brought wine, poured a flagon for herself, Evanee and each of the men. Mother and father dipped fingers into each other’s flagons, then each, with wine moistened index finger, touched the forehead of the infant.

  “I name you Abrel,” said Angam.

  “I name you Abrel,” said Evanee.

  Then all raised their flagons.

  “To the new life,” they said. “May it he as fair and as good as ours has been!”

  “I would sleep,” said Evanee.

  “Then sleep,” said the doctor. “And you need have no worry about Abrel. Perhaps he was a little premature—but that I doubt. As far as I can judge he is quite normal. Feed him as you would any other child. Sleep well.”

  They adjourned to the living room. Here Linith had spread a simple meal of bread and wine. The doctor needed no urging to stay and break his fast—outside the wind was howling and driving the rain in streaming sheets against wall and window.

  Normally, on these occasions, conversation would inevitably have been about the new life that had come into the world. But on this morning there was only one possible topic—Loana and the .dramatically tragic fate that had overtaken her.

  Angam mentioned the strange prickling he had felt on his skin just after the disaster.

  “Yes,” said Handrin, “I felt it too. And I have felt it before—”

  “Where?”

  “You know the country around Boondrom?”

  “No. I have often meant to spend a vacation there—although, they tell me, there is little to see these days. Boondrom is almost extinct.”

  “The volcano is the least interesting thing. A few miles to the west there is a rocky plain. It is barren, and at night shines with a strange luminescence. Around its outskirts are stunted, misshapen plants and shrubs. They are pallid, unhealthy, and it is hard to determine their species. And there is always heat there—a dry, scorch­ing heat. Although this may be volcanic.

  “But if you venture over this plain you feel the same unpleasant prickling as we all felt when Loaria went up in flames. If you stay there too long it is literally unendurable—and persists. I have treated too daring, or foolhardy, explorers of this region. Their fur has fallen out all over their bodies. Their skin has—rotted. They have become blind.”

  “And what could you do for them?”

  “What could I do for them? The sleep of peace—that is all.”

  “So you think—?”

  “I don’t know what to think. But it seems to me that there must be power there—power of some kind. Perhaps power such as Lingrud, with his zinc plates and jars of acid has discovered—the power of the lightning. Or perhaps it has other applications. There is heat there—if that could be harnessed and used to drive a steam turbine, what need for elaborate oil furnaces? It would put Mang’s heavier than air flying machine into the realm of practical politics.”

  “But Loana—”

  “I’m coming to that. Suppose the Loanans—whoever or whatever they were—had this power. Suppose, in their final struggle for the last air and water, they used this power for weapons to destroy each other. And suppose, at the finish, it got out of hand—what then?”

  “But such power is inconceivable, doctor!”

  “So was the power that wiped Loana clean of life—that, for all we know, blew her to fragments.”

  “Blew her to fragments? But —the tides!”

  Angani looked at the clock—then remembered that he had forgotten to wind its weights up the previous night. But, time or no time, his place was at his power storage plant when anything threatened his source of power. Linith and the doctor heard the door slam as he hastened out into the storm; faintly, above the wind and the rain, heard his splashing progress down the pathway to the road.

  “I hope that Loana is still with us,” said the doctor. “Otherwise Lingrud will have to get ahead fast with his experiments—or we shall have to move Darnala to Boondrom!”

  ~ * ~

  At Boondrom was a small. settlement, taking its name from the volcano. Guides lived there, and a few scientists, and those who maintained the hostels for tourists. There was railway communication with Darnala and with Tirona, although most visitors preferred to come by air. The last few miles of the rail journey were both hazardous and uncomfortable—the still frequent earth tremors did no good to the permanent way.

  But Boondrom’s days of glory were over. The crater was crusted thick with drab slag, only an occasional wisp of steam from an infrequent crack told of the fires slumbering quiescent in the depths.

  The sleeping giant no longer attracted the casual sightseer. The arid, sterile plains to the westward had even less to recommend them to the holiday maker—yet the hostels of Boondrom were full. Lingrud was there, seeking some connection between the strange powers, sensed rather than measured, and the half-understood powers he was finding in his jars of acid with their zinc and carbon plates. Talang, the biologist, was there. It was he who conceived the idea of inducing a cow and a bull to mate in the middle of that unhealthy, uncanny expanse of bare rock. The result was even more grotesque than the examples of plant teratology surrounding the area. And Talang’s fur turned snow white. His assistant was not so lucky. For him—the sleep of peace.

  The scientists were watching on the summit of Boondrom when the last of Loana’s city lights went out in a blaze of hell fire. Sonic there were who looked down to that plain to the westward, saw it flicker with answering, sympathetic light. Others forced themselves to keep
their regard on the eastern heavens, saw, when the first thin veils of cirrus made vision possible, that the white-hot sphere was horribly scarred and pitted.

  Then, with the first waves of heat striking the upper atmosphere, the clouds had swiftly arisen, the winds had striven to duplicate the turbulence of the end of Loana, and rain and lightning had hidden the sky, with its signs and portents, from human view.

  Long and loud were the conferences held by the scientists in their hostel on the lower slopes of Boondram. Long and loud were their arguments concerning the power that had devastated the sister world. That this power was man-made —or the work of beings with intelligence approximating that of humanity—they did not doubt. And the evidence they had seen of this same power unleashed opened vistas at once exhilarating and terrifying. The stars were now within reach—unless the world, man’s footstool, were blasted into oblivion.

  Power. Power. Power.

  What was the power derived from the rise and fall of the tides, from the burning of mineral or vegetable oil, from little glass jars full of acid and zinc and carbon plates, besides this power that could lick the surface of a world clean of life?

  They did not know the nature of this power. But they had seen it used—and they knew that what had been done by the ruling species of one world could be done again by that of another. And with less risk. It seemed obvious that the Loanans had destroyed themselves by desperate, savage warfare. With the people of Attrin this could never happen. The race was too kindly, too sane. The only danger would be unwise, rash experimentation. And surely safeguards could be devised. In any case it might well be centuries, generations, before the secret of the Loanans’ power was stumbled upon. But it would he a goal to strive for.

  It was on the fifth day after the trans-spacial disaster that the ship came down from Loana.

  The sky was still overcast, although the wind had dropped a little and the rain had ceased. Observers around Mount Boondrom saw a bright light at their zenith—a light that, although it was high noon, was almost intolerable to the unshielded eye.

  As it dropped lower it was intolerable. It so happened, however, that in the village of Boondrom was a fairly large supply of dark spectacles. Those who investigated the sterile plains to the westward were liable to suffer from optic disorders—and so it was logical that the local shopkeepers should keep in stock aids to impaired vision.

  The light drifted down very slowly.

  The watchers on the slopes of the slumbering volcano could, at last, see that it was under a spindle-shaped structure, metallic, with huge vanes at its lower end. It was no flying machine such as they had ever seen before. It was no flying machine such as had ever taken off from the land of Attrin —and to the north were only the icy, polar wastes, and to the south and west and east were wild lands peopled only by wild beasts.

  This construction, this ship, could be only one thing.

  A means of escape for some few survivors from Loana, a frail ark in which they had dared the deeps of space, in which they had defied and conquered the eternal darkness, escaped the fires of hell that had ravaged their own world.

  How it could be done the watchers had no idea. Of one thing only were they certain—that it would require Power. And that Loana had possessed such power had been conclusively demonstrated.

  Lower and lower drifted the strange construction, the alien ship. Brighter and brighter flared the incandescence at its base. Avidly, eagerly, the scientists scanned the details of its construction, hastily they held the object glasses of binoculars and telescopes over smoky oil flames, improvised filters that would enable them to see more than they could hope to see with the naked eye.

  Here was the power of which they had dreamed, drifting down from the storm rent skies. Here was the power that would give into the hands of their race the keys to knowledge unguessed, undreamed. Here was the first contact with an alien folk from an alien world—a contact that could bring nothing good in its wake.

  It seemed at first that the ship from Loana would fall upon the village of Boondrom—and then that it would fall in the cold crater of Boondrom itself. But the wind was blowing strong from the eastward, and it seemed that the strange vessel was making considerable westerly drift. It may have been that the pilot was avoiding a landing on what, even from the air, could be identified as the habitation of intelligent beings. And it is almost certain that he would try to avoid a landing on a mountain peak.

  So it was that the alien ship with its tail of fire dipped behind the shoulder of Boondrom—and with its vanishing it seemed very dark. And with the abrupt cutting off of the thunder of its passage an ominous hush fell upon the world.

  Some few observers, on the very summit of the mountain, saw the ship land. They saw the roaring, intolerable flames from its tail lick the surface of that dead, evil plain —and that is the last that they ever saw. The instantaneous, searing flare that followed was of too great an intensity for their minds to register, as was the crash of supernal thunder. But before the sound waves of the atomic explosion burst their eardrums all life had been scorched from them.

  There were a few survivors in Boondrom itself. The village collapsed like a pack of cards—those people who were out of doors were incinerated—those between four walls were crushed by those same walls. But one or two, those who were under staircases or within doorways, escaped immediate death. Among these was a pilot of the regular air service to Darnala. He crawled out of the wreckage almost unhurt. For awhile he searched for others who were still living, tore his hands and broke his nails burrowing among the wreckage. Those whom he did find—

  All that he could do was administer the sleep of peace.

  Increasingly violent earth tremors were completing the destruction caused by the explosion. From the summit of Boondrom came a growing, expanding pillar of steam, of smoke, of fire. Then it burst into a shower of debris, a huge mushroom of black and white and brown vapor that ballooned up to mingle with that of the first cataclysm. It was then that the pilot realized that he was deaf. He could see—hazily—but for him the volcano’s rebellion and defiance was enacted in dumb show.

  Reeling like one drunken, whimpering a little, although he did not know it, he made his way to the airport. Most of the mooring masts were down—and the ships which had swung to them were fast drifting west, unmanned derelicts destined to fall at last in the sea to the brief wonder of the shark and whale.

  One mast remained standing, and to it lay a little four-passenger ship. The pilot clambered up the ladder to the head of the mast, swung himself hand over hand to the gondola. He checked his water, his oil. He worked the lever that would ignite the furnace, looked anxiously at the gauge that would tell him when he had enough power to get under way.

  Already volcanic debris was falling from the sky. Some of it fell with dull thuds on to the fabric of the balloon—although the noise he never heard. But he felt the vibration that trembled through the structure of the ship with every impact. He thought of cutting adrift—then realized that should he do so the wind would carry him right over the crater of the furiously erupting Boondrom. And beyond the volcano—should he survive the passage. The sky was alight with the flaring incandescence that made the volcanic fires a negation of light by contrast.

  The needle of the gauge quivered, crept with agonizing slowness to the red line. The pilot pulled out the toggle from the eye of his mooring rope, opened his throttle and fed the steam from his water tube boiler into the turbines. The screws spun until they became shimmering, transparent circles. With helm hard over the little airship circled, steadied on a southeasterly course for Darnala.

  When the man from Boondrom, nursing his battered little ship through the wind, the lightning and the torrential rain, reached Darnala he found the city in flames. He was too dazed, too mentally shattered by what he had already experienced to feel more than a mild surprise. And a dull resentment was there too, a feeling that it was essentially unfair that he should be the bearer of unappreciated,
almost ignored evil tidings.

  When a full twenty miles from the coast he had become aware that something was wrong. Down the wind came a haze of smoke, an acrid smell of burning. Sparks glinted and briefly glowed in the gale-driven murk like evil fireflies. And in the hills to the west of the town a new volcano spouted lava and boiling mud, so that he was obliged to make a wide detour to escape being wrecked in the violent updraught.

  So it was that he approached the city from the south. He noted, almost without interest, the devastation in the harbor. The shipping was lying on its beam ends, sunk at its moorings with only masts and funnels showing above the heavy swell that was sweeping in over the breakwater. And surely the breakwater was gone— Certain it was that the watery hosts were marching in from the east to hurl themselves with unbroken fury upon the quays and wharves of the port. Only the great Arrak seemed undamaged, seaworthy. But she was berthed on the western side of the Dirnig Mole, partially protected from wind and sea by the low, strong warehouse running along its length. He could see the little figures of men busy about her decks, and from her tall smokestack a thin stream of black smoke poured down wind to mingle with the funeral pall of the doomed city.