cliff where the _Comet_ lay, thecircle closed.
"Jump," I called, and threw myself up over them toward the stone. Garthwould have fallen back, but I caught his hand and pulled him to safety.We had won.
But had we? Joined by reinforcements from somewhere, the creatures werepacked all around the base of the cliff and had begun to climb itswalls, to cut us off from the ship. We rushed separately toward the twosides, and they backed away. But those in front were now established onthe top. We stepped backward, and the whole line came on. But now weturned and ran for the _Comet_.
We were just able to turn again and clear them away with our swords. Ina moment others would be climbing up from behind over the ship. And thedoor to safety was on a level with our heads.
There was just one chance. Stamping threateningly, we cleared the thingsout for ten feet in front of us. But once we turned our backs for arunning start they were at us again.
"Boost you up, Dunal," said Garth pantingly.
"No, you first."
But in the midst of my words, he almost threw me into the doorway. Iturned to pull him up after me. They were around his legs, and one hadjumped down upon his helmet. And he must have known it would happen.
"Go back to her," he cried, and slammed shut the door.
* * * * *
There was no time to help him, to interfere with the way of expiation hehad chosen. I tried to look away, but a sort of fascination kept mewatching him through the glass. He had been dragged to his knees. Thenhe was up again, whirling to keep them away on all sides in a mad,gallant fight. But the creatures knew it was the kill. Now they werearound his knees, now up to his waist in their overpowering mass. It wasonly a matter of minutes.
Garth took a staggering step backward, dragging them all with him. Hewas facing me, and swung up his sword in the old Lunar salute. "Goodluck, Dunal." The words, coming clearly over the radio, had a note ofexaltation.
Then flashing his blade over his head, he hurled it into the midst ofthe accursed things. With a tremendous effort, Garth tore the protectinghelmet from his head, and plunged backward over the cliff....
There was nothing to do but get in out of the lock and start for home,and little on the trip is worthy of recounting. Without unsurpassabledifficulty, I was able to operate the machinery and steer, first forBetelguese, then for the sun. Counting on the warning bells to arouseme, I managed to get in snatches of sleep at odd intervals. At times thestrain of the long watches was almost maddening.
By the time the midpoint had been passed, I was living in a sort ofwaking dream; or rather, a state of somnambulism. I ate; my hands movedthe controls. And yet all the while my mind was wandering elsewhere--outto Garth's body under the blazing light of Rigel, back to the moon andKelvar, or else in an unreal, shadowy world of dreams and vaguememories.
* * * * *
With perfect mechanical accuracy I entered the solar system and adjustedthe projectors for the sun's attraction. Running slower and slower, Iwatched Venus glide by. And then, gradually, everything faded, and I waswalking along the great Nardos bridge with Kelvar. The ocean was sostill that we could see mirrored in it the reflection of each whitecolumn, and our own faces peering down, and beyond that the stars.
"I shall bring you a handful for your hair," I told her, and leaned overfarther, farther, reaching out.... Then I was falling, with Kelvar'sface growing fainter, and in my ears a horrible ringing like the worldcoming to an end.
Just before I could strike the water, I wakened to find the alarm belljangling and the object-indicator light flashing away. Through thetelescope, the moon was large in the sky.
It was an hour, perhaps two, before I approached the sunlit surface andhovered over the shore by Nardos. Try as I would, my sleep-drugged bodycould not handle the controls delicately enough to get the _Comet_ quitein step with the moon's rotation. Always a little too fast or too slow.I slid down until I was only ten or fifteen feet off the ground thatseemed to be moving out from under me. In another minute I should beabove the water. I let everything go, and the _Comet_ fell. There was athud, a sound of scraping over the sand, a list to one side. I thoughtfor an instant that the vessel was going to turn over, but with theweight of the reserve mercury in the fuel tanks it managed to rightitself on a slope of ten or fifteen degrees.
From the angle, I could barely see out the windows, and everythinglooked strange. The water under the bridge seemed too low. The half-fullEarth had greenish-black spots on it. And the sky?
* * * * *
So dead with sleep that I could scarcely move, I managed to crane myneck around to see better. There was no sky, only a faint gray hazethrough which the stars shone. And yet the sun must be shining. Istretched still further. There the sun burned, and around it was anunmistakable corona. It was like airless space.
Was I dreaming again?
With a jerk, I got to my feet and climbed up the sloping floor to theatmosphere tester. My fingers slipped off the stop-cock, then turned it.And the air-pressure needle scarcely moved. It was true. Somehow, as thescientists had always told us would be the case eventually, the air ofthe moon, with so little gravity to hold it back, had evaporated intospace.
But in six months? It was unthinkable. Surely someone had survived thecatastrophe. Some people must have been able to keep themselves alive incaves where the last of the atmosphere would linger. Kelvar _must_ bestill alive. I could find her and bring her to the _Comet_. We would goto some other world.
Frantically, I pulled on my space-suit and clambered through theair-lock. I ran, until the cumbersome suit slowed me down to astaggering walk through the sand beside the Oceanus Procellarum.
Leaden and dull, the great sea lay undisturbed by the thin atmospherestill remaining. It had shrunk by evaporation far away from its banks,and where the water once had been there was a dark incrustation ofimpurities. On the land side, all was a great white plain of glitteringalkali without a sign of vegetation. I went on toward Nardos theBeautiful.
* * * * *
Even from afar off, I could see that it was desolate. Visible now thatthe water had gone down, the pillars supporting it rose gaunt andskeletal. Towers had fallen in, and the gleaming white was dimmed. Itwas a city of the dead, under an Earth leprous-looking with black spotswhere the clouds apparently had parted.
I came nearer to Nardos and the bridge, nearer to the spot where I hadlast seen Kelvar. Below the old water level, the columns showed agreenish stain, and half-way out the whole structure had fallen in agreat gap. I reached the land terminus of the span, still glorious andalmost beautiful in its ruins. Whole blocks of stone had fallen to thesand, and the adamantine pillars were cracked and crumbling with theerosion of ages.
Then I knew.
In our argument as to the possible speed of the _Comet_, Garth and I hadboth been right. In our reference frame, the vessel had put on anincredible velocity, and covered the nine-hundred-odd light-years aroundRigel in six months. But from the viewpoint of the moon, it had beenunable to attain a velocity greater than that of light. As theaccelerating energy pressed the vessel's speed closer and closer towardthat limiting velocity, the mass of the ship and of its contents hadincreased toward infinity. And trying to move laboriously with such vastmass, our clocks and bodies had been slowed down until to our leadenminds a year of moon time became equivalent to several hours.
The _Comet_ had attained an average velocity of perhaps 175,000 milesper second, and the voyage that seemed to me six months had taken athousand years. A thousand years! The words went ringing through mybrain. Kelvar had been dead for a thousand years. I was alone in a worlduninhabited for centuries.
I threw myself down and battered my head in the sand.
* * * * *
More to achieve, somehow, my own peace of mind, than in any hope of itsbeing discovered, I have written this narrative. There are two copies,this to
be placed in a helio-beryllium box at the terminus of thebridge, the other within the comet[TN-3]. One at least should thus beable to escape the meteors which, unimpeded by the thin atmosphere, havebegun to strike everywhere, tearing up great craters in the explosionthat follows as a result of the impact.
My time is nearly up. Air is still plentiful on the _Comet_, but myprovisions will soon run short. It is now slightly over a month since Icollapsed on the sands into merciful sleep, and I possess food and waterfor perhaps another. But why go on in my terrible loneliness?
Sometimes I waken from a dream in which they are all so near--Kelvar,Garth, all my old companions--and for a moment I cannot realize how faraway they are. Beyond years and years. And I, trampling back and forthover the dust of our old life, staring across the waste, waiting--forwhat?
No, I shall wait only until the dark. When the sun drops over theGrimaldi plateau, I shall put my manuscripts in their safe places, thentear off my helmet and join the other two.
An hour ago, the bottom edge of the
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